True Detective: Night Country - Season 4 Wrap-up Part 2

[00:00:00] The legends are true over building power.

[00:00:02] The sauce of testing.

[00:00:03] Yes!

[00:00:04] The most legendary sauce has arrived as McDonald's

[00:00:07] transforms into the anime world of McDonald's.

[00:00:11] The greatest flavors unite in all news.

[00:00:14] Haverie chili McDonald's sauce to make your 10-piece

[00:00:16] with nuggets, fries, and sprites ultra-powerful.

[00:00:19] Unlock manga comics with every meal and sit down for a new anime

[00:00:23] short every week only at McDonald's!

[00:00:26] But up up up up up go!

[00:00:28] I participated in McDonald's for limited time while supplies last.

[00:00:51] Hey everyone, this is John here and with me is David. We're back to do the rest of the feedback as promised.

[00:00:55] We're all of the feedback.

[00:00:56] It's going to be about a two hour pod.

[00:00:58] We already recorded most of it and we're recording the rest of it today.

[00:01:01] So hope you all enjoy.

[00:01:03] Of course, join us for Shogun. If you didn't know, we're covering that rest of it today. So hope you all enjoy. Of course, join us for Shogun.

[00:01:05] If you didn't know,

[00:01:05] we're covering that next with full coverage.

[00:01:08] We got plenty of other stuff we'll talk about at the end.

[00:01:10] And here is the feedback with Ron.

[00:01:13] You know, this is usually where we say

[00:01:15] where you can send us things.

[00:01:17] Unfortunately, this is the last episode of the season,

[00:01:20] but you can still send us emails at lorehounds.com.

[00:01:24] Hop on our Discord server, go to the website, send us a contact for a mentree or voicemail,

[00:01:29] whatever you want to do to get your opinions to us if you want to chat.

[00:01:33] Yeah, the discussion's still rolling on the Discord too.

[00:01:36] So yeah, I like I said, today they were debating whether it should have been a true

[00:01:40] detective season.

[00:01:41] That's a cool conversation.

[00:01:43] So yeah, definitely hop in on there.

[00:01:45] I guess David, you and I are going to alternate reading feedback and then the three of us can

[00:01:50] react to it. Yeah, as we go along. Yeah. And I think as I was compiling the feedback,

[00:01:56] I thought, Oh, well, maybe I should break apart these things or I have, I have four documents and

[00:02:01] I've got over 1500 words of notes from the last few days.

[00:02:06] So just my brain leaking out. And so I thought, you know what? No, let's just stick with the listeners.

[00:02:12] Thank you everyone for who wrote in because they're all really thoughtful responses. And I think

[00:02:17] pretty much all of the major issues that I would have wanted to touched on are touched on

[00:02:22] at some point in somebody's email. And so I figured, but that's

[00:02:25] just the easiest time saver for us is the framework off of everybody's email. So

[00:02:31] Cool. All right, let's start off. I'll start with the first email from Aria. It's a first time

[00:02:38] emailer and her email does a lot to frame some key issues. They start off, hi, David and John. I'm a first time

[00:02:46] listener to the podcast. I found you guys while trying to find true detective night

[00:02:50] country content. And I'm glad I did. I enjoyed your thoughtful critique of the show. Well,

[00:02:55] thanks, Aria. I absolutely loved night country as a woman of color. It was so refreshing

[00:03:01] to see complex female characters and get to spend time among an

[00:03:05] indigenous community. I think the scope of the show was grand and it's debatable whether it

[00:03:10] delivered on the detective aspect of a true detective show. However, there are so many things

[00:03:15] to love about it. I thought the finale was amazing. I liked that it was the overlooked women of the

[00:03:21] community that set things right. Unfortunately, I've seen some social media criticism centered around the fact that the show's central voice represents

[00:03:28] the indigenous community, something about being quote, woe colli wood. I also found it

[00:03:34] very off putting the original creator, Nick Pizzolato has gone out of his way multiple

[00:03:39] times to really undermine what Isalope has done done this season. I thought Isa did an amazing job

[00:03:45] and I'm hoping to see more from her in the future. Thanks for providing some such great

[00:03:50] commentary on the show, Arya. So, a very thoughtful email. I feel like that echoed a lot of what

[00:03:57] we just talked about, especially you Ron. You know, you brought up the detective aspect of the show too and how that was a little weaker. And also brought

[00:04:08] up, we didn't bring up, but Arya brought up Nick Fitzilato. I don't know what he's doing

[00:04:13] out there, but it's not good. It's not good.

[00:04:17] And it's only been a couple of comments on a couple of threads. It's a very minimal amount, but everybody's on high alert.

[00:04:26] And so when they saw anything,

[00:04:28] it was like a wildfire got lit.

[00:04:31] And I think that's just something you don't do.

[00:04:34] You just keep your mouth shut in Hollywood.

[00:04:36] He's burning bridges left.

[00:04:37] Big time.

[00:04:38] And he's gonna be getting bigger checks

[00:04:40] because the season franchise is going up.

[00:04:42] He's keeping his EP credit

[00:04:44] because executive producer credit. So he's going to get a bump. So be quiet and collect your checks, man.

[00:04:50] You know, very odd, very odd. And I think HBO, if I were at HBO, I'd be hesitant to work with

[00:04:54] them again, right? It's because I don't know if he's going to try to sabotage my own franchise

[00:04:59] later. There is a show, gentlemen, have you ever seen the cartoon fat Albert?

[00:05:07] Oh, yeah, I grew up. Yeah, maybe.

[00:05:10] Then I saw the awful live action movie they made at some point.

[00:05:15] I go back. I go back.

[00:05:16] I think of fat Albert because there's one character who would say something along

[00:05:19] the lines Nick Pizlato is like school on Saturday afternoon.

[00:05:26] No class.

[00:05:27] In terms of these comments that he's making.

[00:05:34] I just think it's, yeah, it's just,

[00:05:37] and I feel like Esa Lopez's response to him

[00:05:41] is the epitome of class.

[00:05:43] She kept it high when he went low.

[00:05:48] She kept it high.

[00:05:49] I just felt like as a creator of the show,

[00:05:54] you are almost like the godfather.

[00:05:57] You're the one who started this.

[00:05:59] And I mean, godfather isn't a traditional godfather,

[00:06:02] not like a godfather movie type of other.

[00:06:07] Oranges.

[00:06:08] Right, right, right.

[00:06:09] And he should have been the kind of person who represented a role model for everyone

[00:06:16] in this industry and instead he kind of represented like the worst of the internet. And you know, going back to the letter that we received, the negativity on social

[00:06:29] media, again, the kind of comedy made fuels that kind of thing.

[00:06:35] I saw interviews of him from season one, and he kind of exude just

[00:06:39] in the interview, I kind of feel like he has he almost exudes sort of like

[00:06:47] compostity. I don't know if that's a word, but it just the vibes are

[00:06:50] off as the divides are off. And it's unfortunate. It's unfortunate.

[00:06:55] He could have been a person who could have been supporting her. And I think when it comes to

[00:07:01] these issues of people in demographics that are traditionally underserved,

[00:07:06] whether it be women or people of color.

[00:07:08] Oftentimes, it is people who are in the majority demographic,

[00:07:14] whether it's men supporting women

[00:07:16] or it is white people supporting people of color.

[00:07:20] He represents, I assume he's a sister in a street man,

[00:07:24] I don't know for sure, but he's definitely like a white man.

[00:07:27] And codes that way out here as we're receiving him, right?

[00:07:31] Right. And he is in a position,

[00:07:34] being a man in that position to be a powerful ally

[00:07:39] to people of color.

[00:07:40] Even if behind closed doors, he's not crazy about it.

[00:07:43] He could have been, There was a lost opportunity for him to be an amazing role model

[00:07:48] to be the kind of person that people would be writing positive things about.

[00:07:54] This is how you do it in Hollywood.

[00:07:56] And instead, he just kind of subdued to the lowest common denominator.

[00:08:01] So I've thought that was unfortunate.

[00:08:04] And I think it's a shame that we're talking, due to the lowest common denominator. So I've thought that was unfortunate.

[00:08:08] And I think it's a shame that we're talking, we kind of have to talk about it

[00:08:09] because when I hear an interview with Issa Lopez,

[00:08:13] she's passionate, she's thoughtful,

[00:08:16] she's done so much research in the genre,

[00:08:20] she's watched all these other shows

[00:08:22] that people keep referencing,

[00:08:23] oh, it's like this show or it's like that show,

[00:08:24] she watched those shows.

[00:08:26] Exactly.

[00:08:26] And she she used them and used them to steer away from them or steer into them.

[00:08:32] And she has been on record multiple times saying that she loves season one and that

[00:08:38] this is a part of what she was doing was an homage to season one as a love for season one to

[00:08:44] to pick it up where

[00:08:45] he left off, where certain things got left off.

[00:08:48] And let's have some fun and let's tell us what sit around the campfire and tell some

[00:08:51] more stories with these crazy tunnels, you know, and these crazy rust colds like who

[00:08:57] cares if it's contiguous from one season to the next.

[00:09:01] It's a campfire story, right?

[00:09:02] We're having fun.

[00:09:03] We're enjoying. and she's doing it

[00:09:06] out of a sense of love and enjoyment. And for me, when I look at Yissel Lopez as a woman director,

[00:09:13] a strong woman director, as a creative, I'm just really proud that she's been able for her. She's

[00:09:19] just standing her ground. She's like, you know, I created something out of love. But you know,

[00:09:24] if you don't like it, don't watch it.

[00:09:26] But you're obviously watching it because you're every episode.

[00:09:29] You're complaining about it.

[00:09:31] So, you know, you know, and she's just kind of, she's just like, okay, whatever.

[00:09:35] And this is also her first, it looks like from her Wikipedia.

[00:09:40] It's her first American TV run ever.

[00:09:42] And she had only done a telenovela in 2000.

[00:09:46] So 24 years ago, she did a telenovela.

[00:09:48] But other than that, this is her only TV run.

[00:09:50] And she did an amazing job for it being her first, like big TV run.

[00:09:56] Absolutely.

[00:09:57] Absolutely.

[00:09:58] And yeah, I thought I thought she did great.

[00:10:01] I thought the way she handled it was great.

[00:10:04] It was unfortunate, you know, the way he had handled it.

[00:10:08] Especially when you consider,

[00:10:09] it wasn't even her idea to make it to be a.

[00:10:13] It's like, dude, it wasn't my plan

[00:10:17] to have this be a true detective show,

[00:10:19] but since it became one,

[00:10:21] I'm gonna make it be the best one

[00:10:24] that I can possibly make it in the context of

[00:10:27] this original grinder story that I have. So that's the other thing that kind of, there's almost like

[00:10:31] she got a raw deal in the sense. In one sense, but in another sense, because it was true detective,

[00:10:36] like we said earlier, I think there was a huge benefit bump that she got from it.

[00:10:40] I think hopefully people will warm up to her for season five, you know, maybe maybe people are like alright

[00:10:45] This is now the person at the helm. It's not Nick Pitzolato anymore. He's not coming back

[00:10:50] Let's just lead into this. I hope or maybe you know the toxic fans see themselves out right?

[00:10:56] I'm done with this and we all sit here. We enjoy our our campfire story with Isalot Bez

[00:11:02] The irony of season one is like he was, Ron, was that he wasn't even

[00:11:07] intentionally leaning into the supernatural.

[00:11:10] It was sort of the vapors or the fumes that were coming off of it that everybody was getting

[00:11:14] high from.

[00:11:16] And then we all loved it.

[00:11:17] Oh my God, it's so metaphysical.

[00:11:18] It's so psychological and Carcosa and yellow king.

[00:11:28] And so Lopez was like, this is great. I'm gonna lean into it.

[00:11:30] And I'm gonna use native,

[00:11:33] I'm gonna use a Nupiac native cultural stories

[00:11:38] to accentuate that.

[00:11:39] And I'm gonna have it rhyme with season one, right?

[00:11:43] You know, yellow king, blue crab, right?

[00:11:46] You know, we're gonna, you know, spiral going one way.

[00:11:50] Well, my spiral is gonna go the other way, right?

[00:11:52] They're inverse of each other.

[00:11:55] And I think that's great.

[00:11:57] And I love the fact that she was able to recenter

[00:12:00] the story locus so effectively.

[00:12:04] And to really invert the whole thing. It's like, okay, the first three

[00:12:07] seasons are very male dominated. So, okay, let's take two women who are in similar positions,

[00:12:14] high stress, high pressure, guardians, police, law justice, all that stuff we want to talk about.

[00:12:21] And let's flip it and then like how would a couple of women deal with this?

[00:12:25] And then throw in, not throw in, but fold in these cultural

[00:12:32] elements from the Anupiaq communities.

[00:12:35] Yeah.

[00:12:35] Speaking of that, one of the things that the letter brought up

[00:12:39] was Aria is her name.

[00:12:42] Yeah.

[00:12:43] I always think of Aria from Game of Thrones. But I think it's a it Aria? Is her name? Yeah. Um, I always think of Aria from, uh, Game of Thrones, but, uh, I think it's a different

[00:12:47] Aria.

[00:12:48] It's a popular name now.

[00:12:50] We actually know people who've named her.

[00:12:51] Oh, that's crazy.

[00:12:52] Anyway, or it's Ira.

[00:12:54] Anyway, she's being a woman of color and thinking the season finale was amazing.

[00:13:01] One, how we even call those pick. One of the things that

[00:13:05] actually didn't follow me actually, John, I think when I was listening to you and

[00:13:09] David talk about the finale, I think you said you had liked this. I know from

[00:13:14] some TikTok videos I've seen, lots of people love the scene, like where all

[00:13:18] the NUPI equipment came in, they stood their ground, they told their story.

[00:13:24] and they stood there ground, they told their story. I personally, and hey,

[00:13:26] I am a biggest proponent for women, people of color,

[00:13:33] fair representation.

[00:13:34] I thought this show overall was a great example of that.

[00:13:39] For me personally, I think,

[00:13:41] I felt like this is an example

[00:13:43] that for me didn't work that well in terms of,

[00:13:48] and let me explain why.

[00:13:50] Yeah, break it down.

[00:13:52] I feel like it's really when you are telling stories

[00:13:56] of people of color or any kind of person

[00:13:59] in an unrepresented group in Hollywood,

[00:14:03] whether you're making them heroes or whatnot.

[00:14:05] Sometimes it's a heart needle the thread to do it

[00:14:08] in such a way where it doesn't feel like it is,

[00:14:13] where it feels like that's what you're purposely trying to do.

[00:14:17] And it's a nuanced thing.

[00:14:19] So like having-

[00:14:20] It is really a nuanced thing.

[00:14:21] I totally agree.

[00:14:22] Having these women come in and stand is like,

[00:14:24] yeah, women of

[00:14:25] color so so cool. And I feel like it is being too, it's like

[00:14:31] shouting out almost, I don't know if that tactics is the right

[00:14:34] word, but like, I love the fact that they were the ones who did

[00:14:38] it. I love the fact that these are invisible women, even the

[00:14:42] flashback into how it happened. I love that. But it just kind of feels like, okay,

[00:14:48] this is the scene for applause.

[00:14:51] So I know the example that comes to mind

[00:14:54] is the girl boss scene in Endgame.

[00:14:57] And where there's a scene in the last Endgame

[00:15:00] where like all the women superheroes

[00:15:03] are getting behind Captain America.

[00:15:07] Cause they're going to go kick ass and take names. And it's meant to be like this girl boss scene and a lot of people loved it.

[00:15:11] That was one for me.

[00:15:12] It was a little eye relief for me.

[00:15:14] Cause one, they were doing it behind Captain America.

[00:15:17] And for me, that was kind of like Jimmy Olsen going up to Superman saying, I got

[00:15:21] your back Superman.

[00:15:23] It's like, you know, Captain America,

[00:15:27] she doesn't need your help.

[00:15:28] She is, actually I think there's a,

[00:15:31] how it should have ended episode.

[00:15:32] They actually, I think addresses that exact topic.

[00:15:36] For, to me, that's an example where it feels like,

[00:15:38] like you were trying to show,

[00:15:40] in an over top way, amazing women.

[00:15:44] Examples where I feel like it works well,

[00:15:47] the fight scenes in Black Panther.

[00:15:49] You see all these beautiful, strong African people kicking ass

[00:15:54] and taking names, the context makes sense

[00:15:56] because they're in Africa or the women king fighting scenes.

[00:16:00] That's another example I think where it felt real.

[00:16:04] David and I, you and I recently were talking about Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

[00:16:07] There's this scene where Jane Smith is, this is in a spoiler.

[00:16:12] But anyway, she's kicking, she's in this brawl fighting with this one dude and she's kicking

[00:16:17] ass.

[00:16:18] I mean, she's taking some hits, but she's kicking ass.

[00:16:20] And you know, any scene where you have like a male and female partner and the guy partner

[00:16:27] is going to go try to help, but the woman partner is like holding her own.

[00:16:31] Like that's an example where I feel like it works where it's not over the top trying

[00:16:37] to make a message.

[00:16:39] And so for me personally, I felt like this scene in the finale kind of felt like that.

[00:16:43] Like, okay, let's show all of these.

[00:16:45] It's two on the nose.

[00:16:46] It was two on, perfect.

[00:16:48] That's a great way of explaining it.

[00:16:49] It was two on the nose.

[00:16:50] Yeah, right.

[00:16:51] As opposed to some little, like, or if Danvers had,

[00:16:55] so here we are rewriting the show.

[00:16:56] If Danvers had started to construct,

[00:16:58] wait a minute, I saw that woman

[00:17:00] and we found this evidence over here

[00:17:02] and then she started to stitch it together

[00:17:04] instead of the Justice League assembling before us. Right, right. and we found this evidence over here. And then she started to stitch it together

[00:17:05] instead of the Justice League assembling before us.

[00:17:08] We did it.

[00:17:10] Well, I want to push back a little bit.

[00:17:12] In debates, absolutely.

[00:17:13] I'm going to defend this scene a little bit.

[00:17:16] I think that you can draw a clear distinction

[00:17:18] between this and let's say,

[00:17:20] the Avengers women assemble,

[00:17:22] because the Avengers women assemble deal because the Avengers women assemble.

[00:17:28] Those are all people who would hold their own against that enemy alone.

[00:17:34] And it's almost a victory lap, right?

[00:17:36] It's, it's, we don't need each other.

[00:17:38] We're just here to kind of have a little victory lap here.

[00:17:42] You have the story being told by one older

[00:17:48] cleaning woman who, if she was alone,

[00:17:51] really good chance she gets arrested by Danvers and Navarro.

[00:17:56] And the only reason she doesn't

[00:17:59] is because all of the invisible women come one by one

[00:18:04] behind them.

[00:18:05] And they casually stand there.

[00:18:08] Well, they'll come in and they check in with B2.

[00:18:10] They touch her on the shoulder or, you know, a nod or something.

[00:18:14] It's so there's this active thing going on.

[00:18:16] It's not. Yeah.

[00:18:18] And I think that the nature of it being a TV show and a screen production

[00:18:22] kind of takes away from it, but in my head, they're there for like over an hour listening to B-talk, right?

[00:18:30] And these women are getting calls like come support the, you know, come, come be part of

[00:18:36] the family.

[00:18:37] Or they see the salol van outside, you know, right?

[00:18:39] It's house and they're like, what's that about?

[00:18:42] Right.

[00:18:43] And that's a head cannon.

[00:18:44] So that's, you know's part of my own defense,

[00:18:46] but you don't have to accept it.

[00:18:49] I think you're winning me over, John.

[00:18:50] I like that.

[00:18:52] Because I only saw it the one time.

[00:18:53] And as I think back into how it played out, I like that.

[00:19:00] You give me something to think about.

[00:19:03] I appreciate that.

[00:19:04] I could see that. I think back to a real example of how the United States oppressed

[00:19:10] indigenous communities. And when, you know, after the Trail of Tears, after, you know, everyone was

[00:19:19] was forced to leave and brutally, brutally oppressed,

[00:19:26] you know, the US government at some point needed

[00:19:28] to give some land back to Native Americans.

[00:19:32] And to do that, and still quietly oppressed

[00:19:37] indigenous populations, they started saying,

[00:19:41] okay, you have these two plots of land,

[00:19:43] one is 50 miles away from

[00:19:45] another and you have no car. So if you don't go to that land, if you don't go

[00:19:51] to either one for X amount of time, it goes back to the government and we're

[00:19:55] gonna sell it. And so they did that and they very quickly were able to sell most

[00:20:00] of the land to white people, most of the land to non-native populations.

[00:20:07] And the point I'm trying to make here,

[00:20:09] I'm getting there, I promise, is,

[00:20:12] you know, the oppressors are very good

[00:20:16] at dividing and conquering.

[00:20:18] And what this native community came together and did

[00:20:21] was they said, okay, you can go arrest B,

[00:20:24] but you're not arresting everybody in this room.

[00:20:26] You don't have the manpower.

[00:20:27] Your police force is weak.

[00:20:29] You couldn't solve this murder.

[00:20:30] You couldn't solve any K's murder.

[00:20:32] You couldn't stop the water from being poisoned.

[00:20:34] You can't stop the mind from walking all over you.

[00:20:37] And we will solve the problem.

[00:20:39] So you can try to take us in, but overall we did what we came here to do.

[00:20:45] You may, you make a strong argument.

[00:20:51] Which gets into this whole other question, which we should

[00:20:53] probably put a pin in and pick it up later, because I know

[00:20:55] there's another email that has touches on this, but law

[00:20:58] versus justice, you know, the institutions of authority and

[00:21:03] legal and why we set up legal frameworks versus vigilante

[00:21:09] ism. And then we've got these other accesses of law and justice. And so I think there's

[00:21:14] some fun things to talk about them there.

[00:21:18] But maybe we should move on.

[00:21:20] Yeah, for sure. Jaya, who is a self-identified couch detective,

[00:21:28] sent in an email, I think Jaya understood the assignment. So their email starts off,

[00:21:34] in addition to the Sedna myth, there's the myth of the narwhal, and they provided a link to notable

[00:21:40] works of narwhal art. Narwhals are real animals, you know, the so-called unicorns of the sea.

[00:21:47] The horn is actually a spiral-shaped tooth that only the male narwhals have. Many narwhal,

[00:21:52] so there are many, Jaya points out that there are many narwhal dental references throughout the

[00:21:57] whole season. A unicorn on a little girl's t-shirt at the hairdressers. The police station was an old dental office.

[00:22:12] Kayla Bites-Pete in the first episode. The scientists bite themselves. SpongeBob toothbrush, teeth whitening. The laundromat grandmother, Kayla's grandmother, went to the dentists when she was

[00:22:20] away for a while. There was hair in the washing machine, parallels the myth of how

[00:22:26] narwhals, horns were first formed.

[00:22:28] So I think what Jaya is picking up on here is

[00:22:32] I don't think that it was intentional.

[00:22:35] I don't know if it was intentional.

[00:22:37] But again, the construction between

[00:22:39] Lopez and her team, her production designers

[00:22:42] and everybody else, there's all these little

[00:22:44] rhyming couplets

[00:22:45] all throughout the show,

[00:22:47] which makes it for a more interesting and rich context, I think.

[00:22:52] The whole two thing I completely didn't pick up on.

[00:22:55] I didn't think that there were two things.

[00:22:57] And then of course with Peter's,

[00:22:59] picking the plucking the tooth out of the corner of the wall.

[00:23:03] So, Jai continues lots of references to blindness

[00:23:09] as well, not seeing Danvers can't find her glasses,

[00:23:12] drinking homebrew.

[00:23:14] And then there's, you know, obviously with Holden

[00:23:17] and the eye playing the peek-a-boo game.

[00:23:20] And then I'm kind of prayer-phrasing Jai's email here,

[00:23:22] Danvers is blind to her own pain at first

[00:23:25] and blind to the community suffering,

[00:23:27] but eventually when she becomes whole, she can see again

[00:23:31] and she can see what justice means in that particular case

[00:23:35] when she's confronting the group of women.

[00:23:40] And then Jia went on with some other stuff

[00:23:43] that was all just a bunch of notes.

[00:23:45] But the one last thing I wanted to point out

[00:23:46] was that Kavik fixed Navarro's dislocated finger

[00:23:51] by fake proposing.

[00:23:53] And then this plays into some more of the Sedna,

[00:23:55] some of the larger Sedna mythology

[00:23:58] about how he takes care of his dogs

[00:24:01] and how that sort of makes him a good character

[00:24:03] in this larger mythological context.

[00:24:06] So good job, Jaya, on picking up on some of these more subtle themes that are laced throughout.

[00:24:12] Did you guys see anything else that you wanted to pick up on in terms of the mythology or

[00:24:18] the deeper couplets of the show?

[00:24:23] I just want to say thank you for telling me that narwhals are real because ever since I saw them

[00:24:27] in like Rudolph's, you know,

[00:24:30] Island of Mitzvit toys or something,

[00:24:32] I always thought that was like some kind of North Pole myth.

[00:24:35] Oh, you're being silly.

[00:24:37] No, I'm not.

[00:24:38] I didn't think that narwhals were real until this email.

[00:24:41] Yeah, it's in.

[00:24:42] Bloody hell.

[00:24:43] What are you thinking of the elf scene and elf? Yeah, I think I am. I think you're right.

[00:24:49] Where elf is leaving. He's a kind Mr. Norwell.

[00:24:54] Yeah, you're right. You're right. That's it. I knew they were real,

[00:24:57] but I never actually seen a photo of a romance. When I clicked on

[00:25:01] that link to look at some photos of actual real ones. I didn't know it was a case.

[00:25:06] That's a shame.

[00:25:07] I thought that was really the biological truth of them.

[00:25:10] Only the mission.

[00:25:12] It's a tooth that comes up out of their low,

[00:25:14] it's one of their lower, like,

[00:25:16] it's not a canine tooth, but it's like one of their,

[00:25:18] I forget what dental they're called,

[00:25:20] it's one of the front two sort of incisors, I guess.

[00:25:23] And it spirals out and pokes a hole through their lip and then grows out.

[00:25:27] It's super sensitive and they don't know if it's used for fighting, for feeding, like

[00:25:35] if they can swish it around and stun fish, or if it's actually used to poke holes in

[00:25:39] the ice or all of the above.

[00:25:41] I mean, the first line of this article is contrary to what some may think

[00:25:45] no rules do in fact exist. It's crazy. I'm not the only one. Yeah. Yeah. Me and Buddy the elf.

[00:25:54] All right. Shall we move on to Kyle M? Yes. A newly minted Lourhound posted on the Patreon

[00:26:00] thread for the episode six podcast and then sent in an email on Patreon. Kyle said

[00:26:05] was Leah the baby crying after Wheeler was killed.

[00:26:11] I think this is a hard no because we know that Jake, her partner was Leah's father from

[00:26:20] before.

[00:26:21] Yeah, I don't think so. Yeah. But the fact that there was that baby cry in that scene

[00:26:27] was shocking. All right, I'm going to continue to email them.

[00:26:32] If I'm being 100% honest and I always try to be, then I need to admit my biggest gripe with this

[00:26:37] finale is what happens with Kavik or more to the point, what doesn't happen? Why doesn't he get

[00:26:43] to be with Navarro? Why doesn't he get to be with Navarro?

[00:26:45] Why doesn't she get to be with him?

[00:26:47] Kavic is the best, making pancakes, cracking jokes, cleaning his teeth with a novelty children's

[00:26:52] toothbrush.

[00:26:53] And hey, no one loves the recurring joke about his SpongeBob toothbrush more than me, but

[00:26:58] that's all we get to close this arc.

[00:27:01] Navarro leaving him another toothbrush or the same one, it's hard to tell. That's the toothbrush. That's what I'm going with.

[00:27:07] Come on, they have something real.

[00:27:09] And if she's sticking around, which I am assuming she is,

[00:27:13] given people have spotted her around town plus Danvers closing line,

[00:27:17] no one ever really leaves.

[00:27:18] Then we deserve a little more closure to their arc.

[00:27:21] He asked Navarro to come back. Let's see her come back.

[00:27:25] I think this brings up a good point to about the ending for Navarro.

[00:27:29] So maybe we can we can bridge that conversation.

[00:27:33] That was one of my biggest gripes with the finale, not not the

[00:27:36] comic thing. I mean, that's Kyle's gripe.

[00:27:38] But my gripe is is Navarro ghost?

[00:27:41] I don't know.

[00:27:44] I've heard that theory.

[00:27:46] I think it's a Rorshark test.

[00:27:47] I think it's intentionally a Rorshark test.

[00:27:50] What do you see in it and where do you want to take the story?

[00:27:55] I think that.

[00:27:58] And we've got another email too later on that talks a little bit more

[00:28:02] about doing a long walk or a walk about

[00:28:06] kind of thing, which might shed some more more light on on what Navarro did. For me, I think she

[00:28:14] needed to go out and reconnect and refine herself as the person who has a new name and a new identity and a new wholeness to herself.

[00:28:25] And so for me, it wasn't that she

[00:28:31] committed suicide or died in some way that she's a ghost, but that she's just out

[00:28:36] there. And I thought that that little in scene on the deck is just sort of a

[00:28:42] filmmaker's way of saying,

[00:28:45] well, you know, did, or in inception, right?

[00:28:47] Did the top spin, you know, is the top still spinning?

[00:28:49] Or, you know, or did it topple?

[00:28:52] And just to leave, just to give us a little shove off

[00:28:55] into the metaphysical waters and we can just sort of drift

[00:28:58] in whatever way we want.

[00:29:00] And I think that's another thing

[00:29:01] that a lot of people were bouncing off of

[00:29:02] is the ambiguity that there are certain things that are left intentionally ambiguous, that we don't have specific

[00:29:08] answers to. And I think those are also intentional choices in there. And again, from an enjoyment

[00:29:14] factor, some people enjoy that and some people don't. And then the question is, does it make for,

[00:29:20] did she, did she build those in in a way that made for a good television? I'm not sure yet.

[00:29:28] Yeah, you know, I think that the reason this whole ambiguity bothered me so much was because it was revealed within Danvers, you know, as

[00:29:39] as brought up monologue, monologuing and exposition dumping. Allie, you said, this was by far the worst offending part to me.

[00:29:48] Was this very odd deposition that Danvers is doing.

[00:29:54] Oh, right.

[00:29:54] Where she's giving cryptic answers to everything.

[00:29:57] There's no way they would let her get away with saying, well, let's just say

[00:30:01] you're not going to find her on the ice.

[00:30:03] What?

[00:30:04] What does that mean, Danvers?

[00:30:05] Did you bury her somewhere?

[00:30:07] Like, I don't know what that means.

[00:30:10] No way an investigator is letting her get away with that.

[00:30:13] So that really bothered me.

[00:30:15] And I think that combined with having Navarro just be like an ethereal being, perhaps living

[00:30:22] or dead really, really did not work for me.

[00:30:25] How did the video interview set up from season one strike you

[00:30:30] around since especially since you just watched season one recently?

[00:30:34] It definitely works better in season one than it is here.

[00:30:36] And season one it makes sense because they're being interviewed

[00:30:40] because they're trying to get some insights into the case that is

[00:30:44] happening right then. And there's all some insights into the case that is happening

[00:30:45] right then. And there's all these similarities to the case that happened, you know, 17 years

[00:30:50] earlier. So it made sense. If the purpose of this interview is to get her deposition

[00:30:58] as it relates to what happened with the came murder or Hank or whatever.

[00:31:07] I can't recall like were they asking her questions

[00:31:10] about Hank and if so I don't remember if they dove into it.

[00:31:15] It seems like the only part of the interview they showed

[00:31:17] was her commenting on whether or not

[00:31:20] like what happens in Navarro.

[00:31:22] So I get the impression Navarro left

[00:31:27] and maybe she'll come back,

[00:31:29] but it's only been about five months or so.

[00:31:32] Yeah, that's right.

[00:31:33] Since from time, all this happened to now,

[00:31:36] to the time of this interview.

[00:31:39] It didn't work for me for the same reason,

[00:31:41] you know, John mentioned it was weird, it was cryptic. The cuts to Navarro walking out on the deck.

[00:31:49] When I immediately saw it, it didn't even

[00:31:52] occurred to me that maybe she's supposed to be a ghost.

[00:31:54] After I heard some podcast episodes that made that suggestion, I thought, oh,

[00:32:00] I could see it maybe being like that.

[00:32:03] My immediate thought was, are they living together now?

[00:32:06] Like, you know, we were never clear.

[00:32:08] Like if one of them, if they ever had a relationship

[00:32:12] with each other at some point, excuse me,

[00:32:16] or was she just visiting or was she still alive?

[00:32:20] And she is just only revealing herself to Danvers.

[00:32:25] I agree with you, David.

[00:32:26] I think it's kind of left up in the air.

[00:32:28] You can interpret it however you want to interpret it.

[00:32:32] I will agree that of all the season one tie back stuff,

[00:32:38] I felt this was the most hamfisted.

[00:32:40] This was the most sort of obviously constructed.

[00:32:45] I'm obviously constructing something

[00:32:47] as opposed to a name that gets dropped

[00:32:49] in an information dump about the credit history of

[00:32:53] or the who's paying the bills kind of thing.

[00:32:57] Or the, oh yeah, this dude, his name was this

[00:33:03] and he died of this cancer, right?

[00:33:05] Like, oh yeah, wait, that's Rush Cole, if you know season one, you know that you can put those together.

[00:33:09] Cool. It's non-determinative though, right?

[00:33:12] It doesn't mean anything. It's just fun. It puts you in the same universe.

[00:33:17] Whereas this videotaped opposition, I get that we wanted to have some sort of epilogue and I get a sense of where things

[00:33:29] have been left, but then it was very clunky the way that it was.

[00:33:35] In season one, it was a device that was a really important part of the set up of the

[00:33:40] season.

[00:33:41] It just felt awkward for it to be in here. It felt kind

[00:33:47] of stupidly intentional, I guess.

[00:33:48] Yeah.

[00:33:49] You know, I know that we probably want Jody Foster. If I'm writing this show, I probably

[00:33:53] want Jody Foster to have the last words of the season, but wouldn't it have been fun

[00:33:58] to have Pete confessing everything to his wife as the thing. You know what I mean?

[00:34:05] Right. You know what I mean? He wasn't confessing anything to

[00:34:09] gailies like I just need your help and he's like, all right, it's

[00:34:11] been a few months, I'm ready to tell you. Here's how it all went

[00:34:14] down.

[00:34:15] Yeah, yeah. I mean, he did all the detective work. He should

[00:34:19] have the opportunity to spill the beans. My God is a good cleaning.

[00:34:26] Yes.

[00:34:27] It's amazing how a Swiffy rock can be effective in cleaning up gallons of blood.

[00:34:37] It's interesting, David, that you felt like this was the most hand-fisted.

[00:34:41] Maybe and how they did it.

[00:34:44] I actually feel like all the other illusions felt more hand-fisted it. Maybe and how they did it. I actually feel like all the other illusions felt more

[00:34:46] hand-fist it. Like this- interesting. Okay. Because I feel like this deposition is something

[00:34:53] in the context of a case like this makes sense. So where I feel like the execution of it is not

[00:35:00] great. The fact that they had it I think makes perfect sense. Agreed. The other things that were allusions to episode to season one, I mean, were the ones that,

[00:35:10] especially times a flat circle, right?

[00:35:15] Yeah. Like why?

[00:35:16] Like when Clark said that.

[00:35:17] What's the point of dropping that in? In fact, when I heard it, I was trying to remember,

[00:35:21] was that from season one? I think they just, I was trying to remember if I had heard it, I was trying to remember, was that from season one? I think they just I was trying to remember if I had heard it from like an earlier

[00:35:27] episode of this season or if it was because I literally had just finished

[00:35:31] watching the finale of season one when I watched.

[00:35:35] Like I watched the finale of season one the same day, watched the finale of the season.

[00:35:38] Oh, okay.

[00:35:39] So I was trying to remember.

[00:35:41] Yeah, I heard this earlier today.

[00:35:43] Was it from which season was from? So, but know I heard this earlier today. Was it from, which season was from?

[00:35:46] So, but I wanted to address Kyle's thing about Kavik.

[00:35:52] And I kind of feel like I too is disappointed

[00:35:56] they didn't come together,

[00:35:57] but actually felt like that was emotionally real.

[00:36:01] She's not ready to be in a relationship with someone who is as healthy as

[00:36:06] Kavic. I think if she got back together with Kavic, it would have, it would have

[00:36:11] been bad for him. He seems a lot more emotionally mature than she is right

[00:36:15] now. Not that she's emotionally immature, but she needs some personal

[00:36:20] processing. She needs some therapy work. She needs a good, better help

[00:36:23] subscription for six months or whatever. I don't know if there, I don't know if Personal processing she needs some therapy work. She needs a good better help subscription

[00:36:28] Six months or whatever. I don't know if they're I don't know if they're

[00:36:40] But she needs something like that in order to process a lot of this stuff before she's ready to be any kind of serious

[00:36:42] relationship Now we don't know if she's gonna get that based on how it ended, but I think,

[00:36:48] I was fine from an emotional story standpoint

[00:36:51] that she did not get back together with Kavik.

[00:36:54] And I think it was probably an emotionally mature thing

[00:36:58] for her to do not to go back together with him

[00:37:01] if she knows that she's not ready for that.

[00:37:05] Yeah, I think I would agree with that. I think our storybook fairy tale

[00:37:13] are used to that and we want to see that coming together. And I really do want them to end up,

[00:37:18] but I also agree that she's got some things that she needs to do for herself before she can come

[00:37:24] back as an equal partner to comic because comic is a man who is ready to be equal with somebody.

[00:37:29] Yeah.

[00:37:30] And he's a good dude.

[00:37:31] Totally.

[00:37:32] He's going to make some woman happy one day.

[00:37:34] Yeah.

[00:37:35] I just know.

[00:37:36] I remember five women left in this town.

[00:37:38] Yes.

[00:37:39] Right.

[00:37:40] Yeah.

[00:37:41] Well, I'm sure that we'll see enough of them in the ghost remake.

[00:37:45] But for now, David, let's do the tongue discussion.

[00:37:49] All right.

[00:37:50] We're ready for it.

[00:37:51] It's time.

[00:37:52] It's time.

[00:37:53] This is the one that seems to be, it's the, it's a kind of a tip of the iceberg topic because it touches on so many other things about voicing, about

[00:38:09] ambiguity, about the murder mystery itself.

[00:38:13] So I compiled several comments from that we got all into sort of one group discussion

[00:38:21] and we can sort of break it down as we go through.

[00:38:24] So first up is Peter O.H., our old friend and lore master.

[00:38:28] And Peter says, I was pondering what might explain Annie Kay's tongue showing up at the

[00:38:32] lab.

[00:38:33] Her corpse lack of tongue seemed to be taken as a warning to others to think carefully

[00:38:37] before they speak out against the mind.

[00:38:40] It does not seem like a huge leap to assume that Hank prior was the one who removed the

[00:38:45] tongue.

[00:38:46] So let's pause there really quick.

[00:38:48] Um, I would buy that.

[00:38:50] Okay.

[00:38:51] Ron, are you, you know, I agree with that.

[00:38:54] Okay.

[00:38:55] He's the one who removed it.

[00:38:56] So then Peter continues, but then six years later, it shows up at the lab crime scene,

[00:39:00] almost as if to say any K will not be silenced.

[00:39:04] But who would have done that?

[00:39:06] Perhaps Hank, but that doesn't really track. Another possible explanation is that Clark or

[00:39:10] another scientist kept the tongue. But why would they do that? It makes no sense.

[00:39:14] Also, Clark was really confused when she asked about the tongues. He's like, I don't know anything

[00:39:18] about that. Right. So Peter concludes, if you bind to the tongue symbolizing Annie's voice, then the vengeful

[00:39:27] women would be suspects in leaving the tongue at the lab.

[00:39:31] But it is an unnecessary loose end that might lead back to them.

[00:39:35] And then you have to assume the women somehow remove the tongue six years ago for the purpose

[00:39:40] of keeping it in the first place.

[00:39:42] The woman also denied doing this, but of course they would if they were worried

[00:39:46] about anything leading back to them.

[00:39:47] But right now, I think this is the most logical explanation.

[00:39:52] So it's like there's no clear mundane answer, right?

[00:39:58] I wanna know, how has that tongue preserved for six years?

[00:40:02] I mean, it's pretty cold out there.

[00:40:04] There's no answer.

[00:40:05] The only thing that we have is Danvers saying to Navarro that there are some weird cellular

[00:40:10] damage that is possibly related to freezing.

[00:40:15] But we never have a definitive answer on it.

[00:40:18] So then I think a lot of the internet detectors went sideways into the, oh, it has to do with

[00:40:23] the microbe and what the Solal research was up to.

[00:40:25] And it's preserved and, you know, maybe Annie is really alive. And she's some sort of zombie

[00:40:32] monster that's going to come eat all over her faces. Yeah. Next week on The Last of Us.

[00:40:36] Exactly. We're going to, uh, Michonne and Rick are going to show up in Alaska.

[00:40:40] It starts crying tendrils in the trunk. Right. Or, yeah, the last of us, a night

[00:40:46] country, the last of us. I don't know how to put those two shows together. But then

[00:40:51] Al-Shalant, a good friend of ours, who we've got another email from him later when we get

[00:40:57] back around and stuff, says, Hank also doesn't make sense. He moved her body, but the tongue

[00:41:02] was found by the delivery man before the cops came for the investigations, and he wouldn't have had a method to preserve it. I had a suspicion that

[00:41:09] the scientist took it for research purposes on the microorganism at one point, maybe if she had

[00:41:14] come in contact with it like a patient zero type thing. But this doesn't make sense now,

[00:41:19] either seeing the murder scene, total mystery here, unless I'm missing something. Being the first piece of physical evidence that originally links the two cases

[00:41:28] seems like a big oversight not to get a solid answer. But it seems the researchers were behind

[00:41:34] it somehow since it was preserved for years and man, if it was the sandwich guy, well,

[00:41:39] WTF. It says, all shallot. And then I think we'll wrap it around here with dooves.

[00:41:46] I plucked this from doovrode in a much bigger email as well.

[00:41:49] Says for me, the show had done decent job of painting Clark

[00:41:54] as an already a bit of a flaky character

[00:41:56] before the incident at Sol Station.

[00:41:59] He struck me as someone who was emotionally fragile

[00:42:01] and the reveal that he was not just a bystander to Annie Kay's murder,

[00:42:05] but actually delivered the coup de gras led me to think that he had a total breakdown after

[00:42:10] the murder. So here's Duv's head Ganon. At some point after the killing, Clark removes Annie's tongue,

[00:42:17] and this plays a part in the veneration of Annie in the building of the shrines, the one we see in

[00:42:22] the caravan, and the one that we see in the ice in the subterranean ice lab.

[00:42:27] The tongue was a relic of Annie and venerated by Clark.

[00:42:31] In the aftermath of the Salal incident, exhausted emotionally and mentally altered by his own guilt over Annie,

[00:42:38] Clark in a fugue state takes the relic and places it in the station.

[00:42:42] A totally subconscious admission of his own guilt in

[00:42:45] that the placement of the tongue is the key link to connect any case murder to the Salal

[00:42:52] incident helps to expose the connection between the scientists in the mine and ultimately

[00:42:57] how any K died. So that's a big, big piece of headcanon.

[00:43:02] Dubes getting hired by Aesalope as a season 5.

[00:43:05] Seriously.

[00:43:08] And I have to say, Dube sent in a really big email.

[00:43:10] We'll get to some of his stuff later,

[00:43:12] but I've actually asked him to write it up as a blog post,

[00:43:15] and we can actually publish it on our website,

[00:43:17] because he's got some really good stuff

[00:43:19] to talk to say about walkabouts and long walks

[00:43:21] and those kinds of things.

[00:43:25] So, Tong, where do you guys fall out on this?

[00:43:29] John, what do you think?

[00:43:32] Is it answerable or unanswerable?

[00:43:35] And if it's unanswerable, is that just satisfying?

[00:43:38] I think it is just satisfying if it's unanswerable.

[00:43:41] I think it was meant to be unanswerable.

[00:43:43] But if I'm going to pick a headcanon, I like the idea that Clark is an unreliable narrator

[00:43:47] and perhaps he did it.

[00:43:48] Got it.

[00:43:49] I think do's on the nose with that one.

[00:43:52] And what did he say was the reason why Clark would have done it?

[00:43:55] Um, kind of a Edgar Allan Poe guilt kind of thing, right?

[00:44:00] You know, the tap, tap, tapping, you know You know, he saved it because he loved her and then he kept

[00:44:07] it in, you know, in a shrine as a relic in a reliquary. And then at some point he sort of

[00:44:13] got rid of it, you know, in a fugue state or out of guilty consciousness or whatever.

[00:44:18] And then that leaves the clue for... And who would have cut it out? He would have cut it out?

[00:44:23] for and who would have cut it out. He would have cut it out.

[00:44:29] Maybe I don't think do sit. Yeah. I don't think the listener says that in their email, but that's maybe what I'm assuming that maybe he.

[00:44:34] Yeah. Why? Why would Clark do exactly?

[00:44:37] There's no answer. There's no way I could he would cut out the Percy.

[00:44:43] He seemed to have really loved her

[00:44:50] Yeah, but he also did the whole I I would never hurt her as we had a flashback of him smothering her

[00:44:56] Wait, were you the one I think were you complaining about the fact that he did that John? I think I heard you on the season I I actually I like that he was so

[00:45:04] What am I trying to say?

[00:45:06] He was kind of cognitively dissident there, right?

[00:45:08] He's like, I would never hurt her.

[00:45:11] But he was the one who struck the final blow.

[00:45:14] Yeah, I disagree with you on that one.

[00:45:17] I remember listening to you and David talking about it because she had just been stabbed

[00:45:23] 32 times.

[00:45:25] She had to be in pain.

[00:45:28] She was definitely gonna die.

[00:45:30] I think it was an essence.

[00:45:35] Now, whether or not he's justified in doing this,

[00:45:37] I think from his mindset, it was a mercy killing.

[00:45:40] He wasn't trying to hurt her.

[00:45:41] I think he really felt like he was trying to help her.

[00:45:43] I mean, she had to have been an agony. They obviously were not going to take her to a hospital. So she

[00:45:49] had a choice. Does she die by bleeding out from 32 stab wounds or can he put her out of her

[00:45:56] misery quickly? You know, I think about the scene in Game of Thrones where

[00:46:03] the scene where that window is about to be burned.

[00:46:06] I'll go.

[00:46:07] No, the scene where the when do is going to be bring what that to yeah, that's a good

[00:46:10] example to maybe that's even a better one.

[00:46:13] But I was thinking of the one where the guy was being burned at the stake and John kills

[00:46:16] him with the arrow.

[00:46:18] So he doesn't have to be burnt.

[00:46:21] Oh, yeah.

[00:46:22] It was one of the later seasons. So I am, but like you said, the Drogo one where Daenerys kills

[00:46:33] Drogo when he's catatonic.

[00:46:36] And so I feel like that's where I,

[00:46:40] that's the impression that I got from it personally.

[00:46:43] So I think it's an interesting thing that Lopez does in putting Clark in that position

[00:46:49] because he's trying to ease her into the transition of death, right?

[00:46:56] But then she's fighting him and he's like, you know, stop. And then there's something else that comes in as well,

[00:47:07] which is his own anger at her for destroying the samples,

[00:47:11] because he's a committed scientist.

[00:47:13] And I think this is another interesting avenue

[00:47:16] that the show opens up, which is these are scientists

[00:47:21] who are telling themselves that they're doing good for the world,

[00:47:24] that they're going to solve, you know, they're going to cure themselves that they're doing good for the world, that

[00:47:25] they're going to solve, you know, they're going to cure cancer, they're going to do

[00:47:29] all these wonderful miracle things, but at what cost.

[00:47:33] And the ultimate cost, you know, they're poisoning a community.

[00:47:39] They're stopping the lives of children who will never be able to live and experience

[00:47:46] life.

[00:47:47] Depriving parents, there's so much stuff about missing parents in this season as well.

[00:47:53] Nobody has a mom or dad.

[00:47:55] Nobody's got a functional family in this season.

[00:47:57] I mean, what could go wrong with means and logic?

[00:48:02] I mean, there's nothing has ever been bad about that.

[00:48:05] And what makes a good bad guy in our storytelling that we like, I mean, if we go to again, to

[00:48:12] an in game to a Thanos thing,

[00:48:13] Yeah, it's the five infinity stones, actually, to do it.

[00:48:16] That we want, you know, that Thanos was an interesting bad guy because he had a point

[00:48:21] of view and it wasn't just mustache twirling, but it was actual, like, no,

[00:48:26] I'm trying to actually solve a problem.

[00:48:28] I'm actually trying to do something good for the universe.

[00:48:30] So these scientists are trying to do something good

[00:48:32] for society.

[00:48:34] And Clark says that at the end,

[00:48:36] like he's like, as he's smothering her,

[00:48:41] I forget the exact words,

[00:48:42] but he's basically saying to the effect that, you can see his anger that she destroyed his work. So he's mad at her at the same time

[00:48:53] that he's trying to, you know, put her out of her misery. So it's a really complex moral

[00:48:58] situation. So it's all wrapped up in there, but I love this aspect of the scientists and their hubris.

[00:49:07] Oh, but we're doing good. But are you really? And who's really going to get the benefit of that

[00:49:12] medicine that you've discovered, right? Are you actually going to give it to us for you?

[00:49:17] Can you actually, you know, share it with the world or the tunnel is just going to keep it for

[00:49:21] themselves? It's actually part of their cruise package now. You can't get it unless you attend one of the tunnel cruises.

[00:49:29] The scientists was another frustration ahead with the show.

[00:49:33] For two reasons.

[00:49:34] One, trying to buy the fact that men of science would turn into bloodthirsty murders.

[00:49:44] Like, they just snapped and turned,

[00:49:49] you know, they turned, just to go off, and all of them, like all of them to go off. And then

[00:49:57] even the idea that they were purposefully, purposefully poisoning this community,

[00:50:06] even if it was for the betterment of the world.

[00:50:13] Scientists don't do anything like that.

[00:50:15] And I think the analogy of Thanos,

[00:50:23] we got to note Thanos with a very number of movies. So we got to know Thanos over a number of movies.

[00:50:25] So we got to understand his worldview, his universe view, if you will.

[00:50:32] And so we could understand why he would do that.

[00:50:34] I think the same thing for like Killmogger and Black Panther.

[00:50:39] We could understand, he made some good points.

[00:50:41] Like I can understand why he's doing what he's doing. We don't get to know these scientists

[00:50:47] So then we have to make this leap of logic that eight men of science

[00:50:53] Would be one willing to poison an entire community and to be willing to become

[00:51:00] You know bloodthirsty

[00:51:02] killers because of

[00:51:05] This person yes, even though they may be devastated you know, bloodthirsty killers because of this person.

[00:51:09] Yes, even though they may be devastated, I could see maybe one person going crazy

[00:51:12] and like hitting her with something,

[00:51:15] and maybe that kills her.

[00:51:17] But to get to the point where you all turn to death,

[00:51:21] yeah, it was just too much.

[00:51:24] And I would have need to have seen something

[00:51:27] that laid the groundwork for these scientists

[00:51:30] having the capacity to be like that.

[00:51:32] Something that established that they were either mad

[00:51:35] or crazy or maybe one of them was kind of off the deep end.

[00:51:40] And that's the person who does it,

[00:51:42] but again, to have all eight of them.

[00:51:44] So for me personally, the scientists turning into, you know, the monster

[00:51:49] trying to monsters the way they did.

[00:51:52] And I think, you know, and they weren't really villains.

[00:51:55] Like a good villain is someone who you're following throughout the season.

[00:52:02] And it was almost like the villain of the season

[00:52:05] was the ghost in a sense,

[00:52:08] who may or may not have been real.

[00:52:10] Like we weren't really following these scientists

[00:52:16] as a villain per se.

[00:52:17] So...

[00:52:19] The scientists were almost singular,

[00:52:21] they were mono-dimensional.

[00:52:22] They weren't multifaceted like everyone else was.

[00:52:25] And so they're just a caricature of evil. And I think, again,

[00:52:30] I'm going to go back to the sin of six episodes. We didn't get

[00:52:33] in. We got barely anything with the scientists. So like you say,

[00:52:37] I don't have anything to really connect myself to them, to

[00:52:42] then feel their their heel turn or or what have you. There are little

[00:52:48] drops of oh they really kept to themselves. They don't rotate staff, blah, blah, blah. So they're

[00:52:53] somehow exceptional. They're different. But yeah, there's there's not enough depth there. There's

[00:52:58] not enough there there for us to really. Yeah. And you probably could have done it and went

[00:53:02] in episode maybe. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I do think there's an argument to be made for the banality of evil kind of thing of,

[00:53:10] you know, we all have the capacity for monstrous acts and we-

[00:53:14] You all as a monster.

[00:53:15] I'm going to ignore that one.

[00:53:17] And, you know, we all have the capacity for great and kind acts and we all have the capacity for monstrous acts. It's our choices to define who we are.

[00:53:28] And I mean, how many people have, you know, done things in war that they would find morally reprehensible under normal circumstances, but they feel like it's for a greater cause. So they do it anyway.

[00:53:43] Right.

[00:53:44] And that's a big moral debate, right?

[00:53:47] Look at Nazi scientists trying to get, you know, cures for different diseases or human

[00:53:54] experimentation doing truly evil things. And I think there are people who are both intelligent and able to, you know, we're really good at humans as humans at holding cognitive

[00:54:09] dissonances. And I think it's very possible that these people got themselves to a point where they said it's

[00:54:17] impossible for us to ever get through this permafrost unless we do this awful thing to this community. And so to save the world in their

[00:54:27] eyes, I'm not, you know, I'm not my view, but to save the world in their eyes, they have to lead

[00:54:34] to a few syllabers in the community. And that's a price they're willing to pay.

[00:54:38] Which opens up the whole conversation of the trolley problem, right? You know, one versus many.

[00:54:44] Well, the trolley problem doesn't count if you're driving the train.

[00:54:49] Right. Not from that point of view, for not, we're not the

[00:54:52] trolley problem requires you to be at the turnstile, right?

[00:54:55] Right.

[00:54:55] Directing on force. It's already in motion. If you're driving the

[00:54:58] train, you are the problem.

[00:55:00] That's a good point. Somebody brought up on our Spotify comments as

[00:55:04] well about this issue

[00:55:06] as it related to Operation Paperclip, which is when the United States started bringing in German

[00:55:11] scientists from World War II and incorporating them into our rocketry and nuclear programs.

[00:55:16] And again, these moral questions of what do we do as society and as an institution's

[00:55:24] ethical research, how do we absorb, how

[00:55:26] do we move forward.

[00:55:28] So this is where I get into the show is tapping into a lot of different interesting concepts

[00:55:35] overall in all kinds of different places in the show in the plot.

[00:55:39] What if they had something, again, as we do our back seat rewriting of the show.

[00:55:50] What if they had a scene where they established that these scientists were Nazis, like real Nazis, or are they established

[00:55:56] that these scientists were part of a known group that hated

[00:56:02] indigenous people, something that made it clear,

[00:56:05] that would make it clear in a scene or shorter,

[00:56:10] that would give us understanding

[00:56:11] of why they would have no problem

[00:56:13] doing this to an indigenous community.

[00:56:16] This is where I kept waiting for the title references

[00:56:20] to come into play.

[00:56:22] That the titles, so where I would rewrite it is that the titles,

[00:56:28] you know, there was a scientific discovery,

[00:56:30] Lund was out fundraising, trying to shake the money trees,

[00:56:34] came across the titles, and the titles were like,

[00:56:37] oh, it could give us immortality,

[00:56:39] it could give us, you know, longevity on a scale

[00:56:42] unbeknownst to humanity.

[00:56:44] Yeah, we're in, we wanna fund that.

[00:56:46] We wanna do it for all of our evil nefarious reasons.

[00:56:50] Here's a pile of cash,

[00:56:52] and we're gonna stay really connected to you.

[00:56:55] And so that they were the ones

[00:56:56] that were gonna derive the initial benefit

[00:56:59] of the Solal research.

[00:57:01] That's my rewrite.

[00:57:02] Yeah.

[00:57:03] And then the men of science are just motivated by, well,

[00:57:05] I must discover it, right? I must be, you know, I'm, I'm the only one who can discover this.

[00:57:10] And so this hubris, right, this ego and hubris. Yeah, but I almost think it's more interesting

[00:57:15] and more human to have them go to not have them have an outward, not that they don't have an

[00:57:22] implicit but not have an outward bias towards this community. But instead, just be like, well, my cause is more important

[00:57:29] than the few human lives around me. Like it's a callousness. It's a banality of evil.

[00:57:33] Yeah. Which is, you know, in and or carn is having cereal with his mom, but he can also

[00:57:39] commit atrocities, right? Like these guys are watching twists and shout and they can

[00:57:43] also murder,

[00:57:44] drinking non-star beer. It doesn't, they're not mutually exclusive, right? We all have that capacity.

[00:57:48] Yeah. And I think for me, I just would have need to have seen that character development to buy that.

[00:57:54] 100% agree. Yeah. Because I agree with you, John, I think that would have

[00:57:58] in some ways that could have been more interesting, but I would have just need to see them develop in that. Yeah, I hear you.

[00:58:07] So Al Shalant wrote in and said, enjoyed the show and overall, although I'm bumping on

[00:58:13] a few things since I look at Mystery Crime Show very closely.

[00:58:18] The white noise machine was blocking the spookies for Liz.

[00:58:22] In episode six, the blacked out salal station, the spookies start to creep in

[00:58:27] for her to when she takes a nap without her white noise machine. Okay. All right.

[00:58:32] I like this idea. I think the whole time holding is one of those ghosts who, what did Rose say,

[00:58:44] the three different kinds of ghosts?

[00:58:45] They want to say hi, right? Or they want to tell you something?

[00:58:47] Yeah, it's the one that wants to say hi. And Holden's trying to reach out to her to heal her, right?

[00:58:52] He doesn't want his mommy to be in pain anymore. So the polar bear is a symbol of a guardian spirit for a new pay act people.

[00:59:00] And so the polar bear is a manifestation of Holden and twist and shout and all of these

[00:59:05] other things.

[00:59:06] And Liz is drinking, sexing, and working and working everyone around her to block out

[00:59:14] all of that.

[00:59:15] And I think the white noise is, I don't know if Lopez intentionally put that in there, but

[00:59:19] I think it works perfectly if she did.

[00:59:21] It's great is that that is her absolutely pushing back against the

[00:59:27] spirit world and trying to not listen. So I like this take a lot.

[00:59:32] And if you're looking for a white noise machine, consider a pink noise machine because that's

[00:59:36] more shaped to the human ear. White noises, all frequencies equal and pink noises like soothing

[00:59:42] to the human ear anyway. You learn something every day.

[00:59:43] and pick noises like soothing to the human ear anyway. You learn something every day.

[00:59:44] That's from my audio background.

[00:59:46] You come to the podcast, stay for the audio engineering lessons.

[00:59:52] Right.

[00:59:54] I will assume with confidence the native women

[00:59:56] tracked down and killed the engineer Oliver Tugak, also.

[01:00:00] Spiral left behind and his clothes left folded.

[01:00:04] Seems they did this after the investigation uncovered his location, but how did they find

[01:00:09] out where he was?

[01:00:10] They got ice everywhere.

[01:00:12] Hard disagree.

[01:00:13] I do not think, I think Tagak just went out on the ice and just went outside the confines

[01:00:19] of traditional, you know, not traditional.

[01:00:22] Still running.

[01:00:23] Yeah.

[01:00:24] Outside of the urban, you know, not traditional, but yeah, outside of the urban, you know, structures.

[01:00:27] I think he went back to being living closer to the land further away from developments

[01:00:33] and settlements.

[01:00:34] So, right.

[01:00:35] He was a ghost all along.

[01:00:36] No, no, that's not one.

[01:00:40] Was he one of the original scientists?

[01:00:43] He was the equipment engineer at Saul station that they went to his shack right now

[01:00:48] I remember yeah him go I remember them going to the shack

[01:00:51] But I can't remember what was his connection to so he was he was a equipment guy

[01:00:55] He was the guy that kept the generator running and stuff. Okay. Yeah, and I think he left

[01:01:00] Well like two years prior. It was after any Kay's death though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:01:05] And the question is, did he know, did he suspect or know anything about Andy Kay?

[01:01:10] I think that is a better question.

[01:01:12] I kind of feel like he probably had something like why was he so,

[01:01:16] he was so standoffish when they came for him.

[01:01:20] Yeah. Yep.

[01:01:20] Just the way he was reacting to them when they came to talk,

[01:01:25] suggests either that he knew something or yeah,

[01:01:29] that's the feeling I got when they had the interaction.

[01:01:31] And then he kind of disappears.

[01:01:33] Yeah, I mean, he could have been freaked out

[01:01:34] by the whole, all your friends are dead thing,

[01:01:36] but I don't know.

[01:01:38] I would not wonder too, I would also wonder

[01:01:42] if he, how much he knew and or suspected what the mine was actually doing.

[01:01:48] And so if there's not-

[01:01:50] And they just had to resist my gimley impressions so hard.

[01:01:53] They called it to mine.

[01:01:58] So yeah, who knows what he knew or didn't know and how that played out in his guilt or you know wanting to avoid

[01:02:07] you know the law right the institution of the police.

[01:02:13] Yeah yeah. What was the noise the cave mapping team heard 30 years ago that resulted in a similar incident to the Salomon unsolved. Good question. Any

[01:02:27] thoughts?

[01:02:28] The noise. What noise is he referring to? The thing that got, I can't remember. Yeah,

[01:02:37] he's out there and he's surviving the similar incident. So heiss had similar injuries and then ran Navarro or sorry, Danversa's

[01:02:46] interrogating it or questioning him. Right. He's like, yeah, I heard all the men heard

[01:02:51] a weird noise. They went out in the ice. And then I blacked out and woke up in the hospital

[01:02:56] with my injuries. Oh, can it have been the women who came?

[01:03:00] But that was 30 years prior. So like, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. It was not even, yeah.

[01:03:05] You could have been there.

[01:03:06] So I mean, not a lot of them though.

[01:03:08] This goes into the question of ambiguity and Lopez intentionally, even certain things

[01:03:13] open.

[01:03:14] You know, it's clearly the answer is Sedna in my opinion.

[01:03:18] Right, right.

[01:03:20] So but of course we don't have any evidence of said now other than a tongue.

[01:03:25] So.

[01:03:30] And the fact that I guess the guys didn't come back, but that could also have just been like

[01:03:32] again, a weather event, right? A slab avalanche.

[01:03:33] Yeah.

[01:03:33] I mean, two things can be true.

[01:03:35] They could have been killed by the avalanche and they would not have been out there but for

[01:03:41] the NUPIAC women.

[01:03:44] out there but for the NUPIAC women. So well, this comes up later, I think, in another email, but the question of justice

[01:03:50] and, you know, was this murder, you know?

[01:03:53] Oh, it absolutely was.

[01:03:55] Yeah, absolutely.

[01:03:56] You send people out to the elements.

[01:03:57] Yeah.

[01:03:58] Yeah, that's murder.

[01:03:59] Yeah.

[01:04:00] Oh, yeah, I'm for sure.

[01:04:01] Yeah.

[01:04:02] I don't think anyone's debating that.

[01:04:03] I think we're calling it a justified murder.

[01:04:12] But it's still a murder. Yeah, for sure. All right. The video of Annie on her phone doesn't seem to quite match up with what's being shown in episode six. The video shows her discovering the lab and

[01:04:17] being very quiet and hushed. But now we see she had just completed destroying the lab, so why hush hush after causing all

[01:04:25] that noise tossing around ice cores and lab equipment?

[01:04:30] She starts the video saying I found it, then we hear the hatch open and she seems to move

[01:04:35] to hide and continues.

[01:04:36] I found it, my name is Annie Kotik.

[01:04:39] If anything happens, screams of terror.

[01:04:42] But she starts the video hhed even before the hatch opens.

[01:04:45] It's strange.

[01:04:47] We see the phone recording stopped because Clark stepped on the phone.

[01:04:51] It seems like he got from his bed down to the secret lab very quickly based on the video

[01:04:57] length.

[01:04:58] No way someone even in a peak physical condition can go from sleeping to down that hallway to

[01:05:03] down that ladder in less than 10 seconds to line up with the video evidence. Hmm.

[01:05:09] So my thought on this is that it's just filmmakers cutting corners here. I think it's just, I

[01:05:20] can't read anything into it other than, oh, the plot doesn't quite work. So we're just

[01:05:24] going to mash it together and call it good.

[01:05:26] That that's my two cents.

[01:05:28] Conny new.

[01:05:28] I'm chucking up to continuity errors.

[01:05:31] Yeah.

[01:05:31] Yeah.

[01:05:32] Ron, no, no, I was, I was going to agree.

[01:05:35] OK.

[01:05:36] For sure.

[01:05:38] Rip team, but I got a gross rose ghost.

[01:05:42] It's it's it's oh Rip team rose ghost.

[01:05:45] He uses little emojis in the emoji. Yeah.

[01:05:48] I think it's rest in peace. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:05:52] Yeah. Rest in peace. Leave it in. Rest in peace team rose ghost.

[01:05:57] But I got a wild head cannon to spin out here still about rose.

[01:06:01] It seems so just a quick just to hang something quick. Last

[01:06:07] you last show last episode, Al Shalom was positing that Rose was a ghost and not actually real.

[01:06:14] So that's the point. Yeah, because nobody nobody but Navarro talks to her.

[01:06:20] Until episode six. Until episode six when when Navarro or to the very end of episode five

[01:06:26] When Navarro says to Pete go to Rose and right otherwise Rose doesn't interact with anybody but Navarro so

[01:06:33] Also, I'm spitting this theory that she was a ghost and we were like, oh, that's interesting. Yeah

[01:06:39] Sorry, well

[01:06:41] It seemed some story with Rose was missing or changed. It just seems so strange everything surrounding this character.

[01:06:47] I think many came up with the Rose ghost theory because of filming.

[01:06:51] It seems like she filmed Tristan separately.

[01:06:54] The that's not her real name in episode four and the interactions with Pete and episode

[01:06:58] six makes me think, was she at one point supposed to be Pete's mom?

[01:07:03] I'm thinking this because of a specific quote from

[01:07:06] The actor fin the actor who plays pit Pete on a podcast when asked what to pay attention to in the show

[01:07:14] He said to pay attention to people's relationships to each other

[01:07:17] We know his mom walked out on the family years before without much more info

[01:07:22] We know Hank is a bad person and a bad cop. Pete is a good

[01:07:26] person and a great investigator. Is Rose perhaps Pete's mother hold my beer who had an affair with

[01:07:32] Travis Cole and their son is Pete and she left Pete with Hank to run away into the wilderness? I case. He's Russ brother. Oh my gosh. Can you imagine? That was the case. Season one brother

[01:07:51] be losing. I was just going to see. Okay. No, that's all I'm going to say. No. The

[01:08:01] psycho obsessive shrine with the stuffed doll and all that crazy car coasters shit

[01:08:06] seems like an oversight.

[01:08:08] Clark must have been really crazy and haunted to do this.

[01:08:11] Why the doll on the bed?

[01:08:13] Was that supposed to be a cuddle pillow after the real girl died?

[01:08:16] Was he crazy enough to think that he was trying to resurrect her or something?

[01:08:20] With all the cult stuff hanging around the trailer?

[01:08:23] This is still very bizarre compared to how the guy acted in the final episode.

[01:08:28] He was probably a lot more unhinged given the contents of the fuck trailer.

[01:08:32] Boy, a lot of interesting terminology in this email that Al Shulan.

[01:08:37] Al Shulan was having a good time writing this email out.

[01:08:41] Al was the one with the wild theory last week that had us rolling, right?

[01:08:45] Yeah.

[01:08:46] Yeah.

[01:08:47] Yeah.

[01:08:48] So keep it coming in.

[01:08:49] Yeah, for sure.

[01:08:50] Keep it, keep it fresh.

[01:08:51] Keep it, keep it hot and fresh.

[01:08:53] I am really disappointed that none of the trailer stuff, none of the Clark crazy, shiny

[01:08:59] stuff.

[01:09:00] It made no sense.

[01:09:01] Yeah, it was just so flash and then gone.

[01:09:04] And we didn't even get in the ice cave

[01:09:06] in the secret underground laboratory.

[01:09:09] There's a brief scene of it and then it's gone.

[01:09:12] And that was some of the great stuff about season one

[01:09:16] was all of the creepy factor that stuff brought into it.

[01:09:20] Yeah.

[01:09:21] And I feel like that scene in this season,

[01:09:24] no purpose again was to make some

[01:09:26] connection because the trailer had the spiral, had all the weird wiki models similar to season

[01:09:34] one.

[01:09:36] It was almost like the Civil War Fort scene in the finale of season one.

[01:09:43] This was the trailer was almost like a version of that.

[01:09:46] You're right.

[01:09:46] Again, we hadn't established that there was this type

[01:09:50] of mindset that Clark had.

[01:09:52] All we knew is that he was disappeared.

[01:09:54] We didn't know he was the kind of person

[01:09:56] that created these little things, left them around.

[01:09:59] So I felt like that whole scene,

[01:10:02] like did it contribute anything to the story? Like, did they

[01:10:05] discover anything from that that helped them do more detective work? And no,

[01:10:10] there was no connection. I think the thing that the trailer got them was the

[01:10:14] hairdresser. Because they got photographs. And then they asked the question,

[01:10:20] who took the photograph? Right. But you didn't eat all the wicker stuff in order to get that.

[01:10:25] To get that.

[01:10:26] Yeah, exactly.

[01:10:27] Right.

[01:10:27] Yeah.

[01:10:28] So very weird, very weird.

[01:10:30] It makes me wonder, how much of this

[01:10:33] would not have been in the show if it was just night country

[01:10:39] and not true detective night country?

[01:10:41] I agree.

[01:10:41] But this had been a scene.

[01:10:42] I doubt it.

[01:10:44] Yeah.

[01:10:44] Yeah. Right, it. Yeah.

[01:10:45] Yeah.

[01:10:46] Right.

[01:10:47] Right.

[01:10:48] It feels like this is injected.

[01:10:49] This is added in.

[01:10:50] This is an additive element to connect it to the season one world.

[01:10:52] Yeah.

[01:10:53] Got it.

[01:10:54] Interesting.

[01:10:55] David, you want to lead us into Bettina W?

[01:10:57] Sure.

[01:10:58] Bettina W.

[01:10:59] Loremaster and friend of the pod.

[01:11:00] She says, did I miss something or was there absolutely no point to Lund being alive?

[01:11:04] I guess this was only played for horror and the supernatural of it all, question mark.

[01:11:09] If that's the case, then the construction of the scene where he sits up and talks to Navarro still bothers me.

[01:11:14] We see him sitting up while Navarro is still looking the other direction.

[01:11:18] If he was one of Navarro's ghosts, we definitely need her to see the thing happening. Otherwise, it's us seeing the ghosts.

[01:11:26] Hmm.

[01:11:27] So yeah, good point about London.

[01:11:29] I think it goes back, Ron, to your point about, we, you know,

[01:11:32] saw all scientists, scientists, we barely knew ye.

[01:11:36] Right.

[01:11:36] Right.

[01:11:37] Now I agree.

[01:11:38] This is, I think the only point that lunch sitting up serves

[01:11:44] is to feed into the narrative that Navarro is seeing

[01:11:49] stuff.

[01:11:50] Right.

[01:11:51] That's really all he does, like the fact that he survives just for no other purpose

[01:11:55] than delivering that because shortly after that, he dies.

[01:11:59] So again, from a story perspective, it's a device used to have to add a creepy factor because I'm

[01:12:07] remembering it right. Does he like set up in a kind of creepy way in the background?

[01:12:11] Yeah, exactly.

[01:12:12] You also streams when they find him alive in the when they break his arm right.

[01:12:18] Right. Right. Exactly. So it's it's he's there to offer these jumpscreens or these jump scares,

[01:12:26] these freaky encounters.

[01:12:27] They add to the supernatural element

[01:12:30] and it ultimately doesn't go anywhere.

[01:12:34] I will say that it was of all the visitations

[01:12:37] of all of the ghostly supernatural things,

[01:12:39] it was one of my favorites.

[01:12:41] Him sitting up really creeped me out.

[01:12:44] And the makeup on him was great. So yeah. Very effective. All right. Uh, Bettina continues.

[01:12:51] What was the point of Tugak Danvers and Navarro never got any important information from him,

[01:12:55] right? I might be forgetting something here, but I kind of have the feeling that the story

[01:13:00] would have been exactly the same if he wasn't in it. I heard somebody say that he might have been the one driving the truck for the native women that came for Salal,

[01:13:09] but I thought Tagak Lok to generally shocked when Liz and Aif told him that his ex-colleagues

[01:13:15] were dead.

[01:13:16] Yeah, I doubt that. That's not, yeah. He was not driving.

[01:13:20] No, and I kind of agree with her on that point. What purpose did he play?

[01:13:27] The spiral thing didn't really, I mean, the stone,

[01:13:30] they got the stone from him after he fled,

[01:13:34] and then Kavek got the stone and then Billy

[01:13:38] or whatever his bartending buddy had an answer to it.

[01:13:41] And then they told her that in the laundromat.

[01:13:43] So it was a very, it was very busy roundabout sort of way to get that answer.

[01:13:48] And then it was the answer was just like, oh, it's a warning for ice, you know, unstable

[01:13:52] ice.

[01:13:53] Oh, wait a minute.

[01:13:55] What?

[01:13:56] Like, it's painted everywhere.

[01:13:57] It's like been built up.

[01:13:58] It's this whole thing.

[01:13:59] So like, where's the through line?

[01:14:01] Why did Annie have a tattooed on her body?

[01:14:03] Why was she having dreams about it when she was in high school and got a tattoo? So there's just some pieces missing

[01:14:10] from the continuity, right? And I think this contributes to what I was saying earlier about

[01:14:15] all these storylines and these main points that I kind of brought up and like all of these

[01:14:21] tingles that don't go anywhere, like I don't ever see my I don't ever see myself

[01:14:27] revisiting the season like rewatching it. Okay. Just because the again because of the mystery

[01:14:36] issue that I mentioned earlier and because it has all these pieces that in and of themselves are

[01:14:41] interesting but they don't they don't go anywhere. London didn't go anywhere.

[01:14:46] The wicker dolls didn't go anywhere.

[01:14:49] The spirals really didn't go anywhere.

[01:14:53] They were just kind of thrown in there either to have some type of fabricated connection

[01:14:58] to season one or to add some spook factor to it.

[01:15:02] And it didn't really contribute to the main mystery

[01:15:06] of what was going on.

[01:15:07] And so like these points that the feedback is bringing up,

[01:15:12] I think kind of are contributes to that.

[01:15:15] It's when I'm initially.

[01:15:16] And I guess the season.

[01:15:17] There could have been more of that time

[01:15:18] spent on character development, right?

[01:15:20] Like you say, show us more about Solal,

[01:15:22] show us more about Anikay.

[01:15:23] I mean, the scene where she's giving birth to everybody

[01:15:27] over to the one child to not to everybody in the world.

[01:15:31] Was really great. And that really showed me like what a treasure she was to this community and how vital she was to the health care of this community.

[01:15:38] Yeah, but I could have used more of that. I could have used more her. I could have used more of Salah. I could have used more of a lot of people.

[01:15:41] I could've used more of that. I could've used more of her.

[01:15:41] I could've used more of Solal.

[01:15:43] I could've used more of a lot of people.

[01:15:47] So I'm gonna paraphrase Bettina's email here

[01:15:51] and skip a little bit because we're gonna,

[01:15:53] the next email from Mules Bain is gonna cover it.

[01:15:56] But one last little critique that she has,

[01:15:58] the Orange Peel spiral really made my eyes

[01:16:00] world really hard.

[01:16:02] And looking back on the whole season,

[01:16:03] I wish they hadn't done any of the season one callbacks.

[01:16:06] They didn't do anything for the story,

[01:16:07] never went anywhere.

[01:16:08] And as a consequence,

[01:16:09] made the world feel really weirdly small.

[01:16:12] It was as if Esalopez was just fucking

[01:16:14] with season one producers, fine.

[01:16:16] But as a viewer, I usually don't like to be jerked around

[01:16:19] like that.

[01:16:20] I can take a little, but that was a lot.

[01:16:22] I kind of agree.

[01:16:23] I think, you know, maybe the rust

[01:16:25] coal thing and the title thing, and then that would have been enough. I don't know

[01:16:28] we needed to go further and further into it. Ron, you just did season ones or

[01:16:34] how are you feeling about the the the the cross season connectivity?

[01:16:40] John has seen season one at all. So yeah, not at all. Oh, in terms of like how?

[01:16:46] Was it too much?

[01:16:47] Was the orange peel too much?

[01:16:48] Was the rust?

[01:16:49] Yeah, it was all too much.

[01:16:51] Honestly, they didn't,

[01:16:53] I don't know why they had to make any kind of connection

[01:16:55] to season one, be honest.

[01:16:57] Like season two has no connection to season one.

[01:16:59] And season three, I think there's one phrase,

[01:17:01] once one reference to season one.

[01:17:04] Right, right. I mean, if they left it at a vague connection to Travis being Cole's dad

[01:17:12] and left it at that, I think they would have been up. That would have, you know, because

[01:17:16] there's established that, you know, his dad was in Alaska. Yeah. We could have made it.

[01:17:21] That would have been enough. Like that's enough spice. That's enough season when spice, but they piled so much season one stuff on top of it

[01:17:29] with the spiral and then the wicker.

[01:17:32] Uh, dogs.

[01:17:33] Yeah, exactly.

[01:17:34] Yeah.

[01:17:34] And then the recurring references to Travis that, um, and then of course the.

[01:17:42] Time is a flat circle.

[01:17:44] Yeah.

[01:17:44] Right.

[01:17:44] All these drops.

[01:17:46] Yeah.

[01:17:46] There was no reason to do that.

[01:17:48] Like it didn't really serve the story.

[01:17:50] It didn't go anywhere.

[01:17:52] It didn't need to be connected in that sense.

[01:17:54] It started raising questions that too much.

[01:17:57] I need to highlight too much.

[01:17:58] Right.

[01:17:58] Because people started looking, you know,

[01:18:00] are the tunnels going to come back?

[01:18:02] Is there going to be something?

[01:18:03] Are we going to learn something that we didn't learn?

[01:18:06] And so you almost start creating this anticipation or an expectation of a greater season one connection

[01:18:13] That never materialized and so it was like what is the point?

[01:18:17] It would have been cool to have that one reference with Travis. Yeah, I believe it. Yeah, never know

[01:18:22] That's a coolest and that's kind of like how they did it with Fargo. Like usually like one character was like maybe the son of somebody from a previous season.

[01:18:28] Right.

[01:18:29] And that's the closest connection you will get between seasons.

[01:18:32] It doesn't really go deep into dropping all of these hints of connecting, you know, the two seasons, especially.

[01:18:41] And the times that they did do it in Fargo,

[01:18:48] it gives you some additional insight into the particular character.

[01:18:53] We realize, oh, that's the sun from season four or whatever.

[01:18:59] That kind of makes more sense when you look at, you know, those characters in retrospect, whereas here, I don't

[01:19:08] like, I don't get any additional insight into Cole having watched this season. And I don't think

[01:19:14] Cole's story gives any additional insight into Navarro or Rose either. Yeah. All right. I'm going to summarize the last bit of the Bettina's email so that we can

[01:19:29] keep moving on. But she goes, she has a whole paragraph about the whole message of taking justice

[01:19:36] into your own hands and how that can be problematic. And I think that opens up that conversation of

[01:19:41] law versus justice of vigilantism versus institutions.

[01:19:48] And in this case, the institutions are failed or captured,

[01:19:53] whereas these are vigilantes

[01:19:54] and they executed a form of justice

[01:19:57] by putting these men out to their death.

[01:20:00] And so I think that that's problem.

[01:20:03] I mean, we can all go raw. You know,

[01:20:05] the aunties did it for themselves because the society was failing them. But that can lead to

[01:20:11] some bad outcomes down the road, right? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think in the,

[01:20:36] As the television show where you want to root for the underdog, we can watch the show knowing that it's make believe and cheer for the women. But this was in real life.

[01:20:39] Like, I would have different thoughts about it. Like you can't point, eat, eat me now to gun point. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

[01:20:50] Like maybe if it brought them to justice, like the other ones you brought to justice and

[01:20:54] Emma, who knows again, we can do our backseat rewriting if I could have worked.

[01:21:00] But like, yeah, it's, it's, I think this is a case where you know,

[01:21:05] I can't really justify this type of justice

[01:21:07] being taken into your, into their own hands

[01:21:11] as opposed to if there was a way to have done it

[01:21:15] where they could have been the ones

[01:21:17] to bring these men to justice and stop it.

[01:21:20] Caused.

[01:21:21] Right, without having to also become monsters themselves.

[01:21:26] Right.

[01:21:26] And maybe monsters is too strong word, but become killers and murderers themselves in

[01:21:31] order to have it then.

[01:21:33] I think this opens up an interesting commentary to about Navarro and Danvers, where Danvers

[01:21:39] is the face of the institution, Navarro is the face of justice, right?

[01:21:47] Pouring the liquor in the guy's gas tank, that's not legal, right?

[01:21:53] That's criminal mischief.

[01:21:54] But it's a kind of justice because that guy's a domestic abuser, right?

[01:21:58] And we don't want to see, you know, we would not feel bad if bad things happened to him, intentionally or otherwise.

[01:22:07] And so this idea that the uniform, Navarro wears the uniform as a means of expression,

[01:22:18] of her sense of justice.

[01:22:20] And there needs to be people out in the world being guardians and protectors of people,

[01:22:25] a kind of a big sister, where Liz is, you know, she puts on the uniform because she

[01:22:29] believes in the law.

[01:22:31] She believes in the structure.

[01:22:32] She reads the policy to her chief, right?

[01:22:36] She's like, well, you know, you need 48 hours or whatever it is to let these things thaw.

[01:22:40] She knows chapter and verse.

[01:22:42] She's an institutionalist in that sense. Yeah, and they touch on this in season one as well

[01:22:48] in a sense of, because Cole uses some dirty means

[01:22:52] in order to get some information out of some people.

[01:22:56] So he definitely is one to bend the law,

[01:23:02] so to speak.

[01:23:04] He never went so far to my knowledge of actually killing anyone. to bend the law, so to speak.

[01:23:05] He never went so far to my knowledge

[01:23:06] of actually killing anyone to.

[01:23:08] But Marty did.

[01:23:09] Well anyway, it's spoilers.

[01:23:11] Marty's in life.

[01:23:12] That's right.

[01:23:13] Sorry.

[01:23:15] Yeah, so that never really transpires to,

[01:23:22] but, and that's the case where those are men who have been established to be

[01:23:27] bad men, right, doing that. Whereas here we have, you know, the women of the community doing it.

[01:23:36] And again, in the moment we can feel like we're rooting for them because of everything that has

[01:23:42] been done to them. Nobody else is doing anything. So they're-

[01:23:45] And nobody else is doing anything, right?

[01:23:46] Yeah.

[01:23:47] So we feel good about them taking matters

[01:23:50] into their own hands, yeah.

[01:23:52] Right.

[01:23:52] So thanks, Petina.

[01:23:54] Thanks for all your feedback and thanks

[01:23:57] for being a Loremaster.

[01:23:58] John, you wanna queue up the next one?

[01:23:59] Yeah, Mules Bain Road Anne.

[01:24:01] Mules Bain, AKA Neat T, a Loremaster,

[01:24:04] posted it on the discord. And I guess

[01:24:08] David you're going to bring up the Lopez test. That's the point of this this brings in the the

[01:24:13] Lopez test into into focus. David has to quantify everything we do. He will he will do that.

[01:24:20] Ultimately, I think there are a few important common threads and themes that are the foundation

[01:24:26] of all the true detective seasons which help me resolve the loose ends and unknowns.

[01:24:31] Each season explores the complex and mysterious human relationship with experiencing life

[01:24:36] and death and the spaces between.

[01:24:38] In life it appears that we experience things in a linear trajectory with a beginning and

[01:24:44] an end. However, many of us

[01:24:46] have deep and innate suspicions and convictions like Navarro and Russ that this is not all that

[01:24:52] there is. Number two, in the spaces where life and death overlap, where space and time dissolve,

[01:25:00] there can be a confluence of lightness and darkness or good and evil.

[01:25:05] And number three, with the telling of these stories, each true detective becomes drawn

[01:25:10] to connected with and entangled with this phenomenon in some profound way.

[01:25:17] A true detective is a witness is witness to a dynamic transcendence where life meets

[01:25:22] death and our limited human perception of reality mingles with the limitless mystique of the unfolding universe and things much

[01:25:32] greater than ourselves.

[01:25:35] I have a response of this.

[01:25:38] What is your soul?

[01:25:40] What was that?

[01:25:41] What did it take?

[01:25:43] What is your soul? That's Gollum saying, what did you say?

[01:25:47] Oh, okay.

[01:25:48] From the Lord of the Rings.

[01:25:49] Right.

[01:25:50] I got the Gollum.

[01:25:51] He got that it was Gollum.

[01:25:54] I was reading this and I was like, man, it's almost 10 o'clock at night and I don't know

[01:25:59] if I fully got everything there.

[01:26:00] But overall, I mean, that's really cool.

[01:26:04] I love this intersection of life and death

[01:26:06] and sort of this, this inability to fully deal with it, right? I think Navarro and Danvers get

[01:26:14] there in the end with the NUPAC women where, I mean, Jody Foster really sells it when she gets up

[01:26:19] and she's like, Oh, yeah, we just wanted to tell you that the case is closed And she really seems flustered there and I thought that was a great performance and a great way to sort of demonstrate what you're making with this third point here mules

[01:26:35] Yeah, I think this goes into the whole conversation is does this belong within the true detective?

[01:26:47] is does this belong within the true detective franchise? Does this fulfill? And that's what the Lopez test is, is does a particular season of television fall within the framework of its

[01:26:55] franchise, of its umbrella? Does it fall within the panumbra of the shows overall mystique and hallmarks.

[01:27:06] And we can debate that what makes a true detective season

[01:27:10] a true detective and some of it's gonna be a little bit

[01:27:12] objective and some of it's gonna be a little subjective.

[01:27:16] But I think this season passes the Lopez test for me.

[01:27:20] I know John can't really answer that question

[01:27:22] because he hasn't seen any other seasons

[01:27:23] and you've seen one

[01:27:31] Ron, so I don't know where your thoughts I mean there's a question of should it have been included as a true detective

[01:27:37] It is included in true detective. So is it true detective? Like that's that's the question. I

[01:27:43] Like the parameters that are kind of set here in terms of like what makes true detective You know every if again since I didn't see seasons two or three

[01:27:47] I can't speak to that

[01:27:48] But if I were using season one which obviously is universally praised as the favorite among the four

[01:27:55] as the blueprint, you know, I feel like a

[01:28:00] true detective is a

[01:28:03] story that looks at death and pain and personal anguish.

[01:28:11] I think it would be one that looks at the past and the present.

[01:28:18] That's something, based on what you said earlier, David, it seems like that's

[01:28:23] something season three also. Yeah, very much so. Yeah. So themes of the past and the present. This,

[01:28:29] so this, this show, this season definitely deals with that past and present, definitely deals with

[01:28:34] personal pain, family pain, deals with murder. So I think it crosses all the T's and that's all the I's. In terms of it being a true detective show,

[01:28:48] I think for me where it goes off the rails a little bit,

[01:28:51] which I mentioned earlier, is too many illusion,

[01:28:54] too many storylines, too many illusions to the supernatural.

[01:28:58] So as fighting does it wanna be a true detective show?

[01:29:02] Or does it wanna be in Isolopes history horror thing?

[01:29:06] Yeah.

[01:29:07] Right, right, right.

[01:29:07] Like imagine if this was more of a detective show,

[01:29:11] a detective mystery, they had a true supernatural bent to it.

[01:29:17] Versus I feel like true detective

[01:29:20] would keep stays grounded in the real world.

[01:29:23] Or should stay grounded in the real world. should stay grounded in the real world and maybe

[01:29:26] you can have some freaky elements but it's not really meant or intended to be a ghost story.

[01:29:31] Yeah.

[01:29:32] For me personally.

[01:29:34] Aside from that, I think this particular season does cover a lot of the basis of what makes

[01:29:39] something a true detective show.

[01:29:42] And I think for me, one element I would add,

[01:29:45] and I've talked about this on previous podcasts,

[01:29:48] is that you've got to have this duo of detectives

[01:29:52] who we examine the price they pay

[01:29:55] for being these guardians between the,

[01:29:59] you know, the bad men being and keeping the bad men out,

[01:30:01] which is something that Russ says in one,

[01:30:04] which is what does it cost me as a human being to be the one who's buffering all this evil.

[01:30:09] And there's a point where Peter even says to Leah, like, you don't want to get close

[01:30:13] to this corpusical thing.

[01:30:14] You do not want that, you know, as part of your memory of your psychology.

[01:30:18] But yet Peter's there examining it, being very forensic about it, interesting in it.

[01:30:23] So, and he pays a cost right he ultimately pays a price for that in terms of the damage to his own

[01:30:31] Moral the moral harm that he does to himself as well as the

[01:30:37] The cost to his relationship with his wife and his child

[01:30:40] I mean it seems like it that resolves, but it's still a cost. It's still a wound on their relationship.

[01:30:47] Yeah. Well, Ron, I know you've got to head out. So David and I will stick around to finish

[01:30:52] last few emails. But thank you so much for being with us. It was really a pleasure to

[01:30:57] speak with you and to chat with you about this show. It was a great conversation. So

[01:31:02] where can people find you?

[01:31:13] Yeah, these is place to find me. If you just go to blurder.com B L E R D R O N N E R kind of like blade runner, but blurred, which is a black nerd, runner, like Ron. And all the links, you know,

[01:31:19] there you can get links to my book, to my podcast, my socials. And yeah, I really enjoy having this conversation.

[01:31:28] I love doing this kind of stuff.

[01:31:29] I'm happy to come back and talk with you too again anytime.

[01:31:35] Yeah, well, I appreciate it.

[01:31:36] I think we want to talk about Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

[01:31:39] So we'll let some stuff up.

[01:31:40] We have you on the...

[01:31:42] What's that?

[01:31:43] My obsession.

[01:31:43] My obsession of the year so far.

[01:31:44] I love it, yeah. And then we have you on the, what's that? My obsession of the year so far.

[01:31:45] I love it, Chef.

[01:31:45] And then we got you on the, our Oscars coverage and you,

[01:31:49] we reached out and you said you wanted to talk

[01:31:51] about American fiction.

[01:31:52] So we got your thoughts about that.

[01:31:54] And I know we were like, oh, you know,

[01:31:56] we'll have you on for a little while.

[01:31:58] It'll be like an hour and a half.

[01:32:00] And here we are.

[01:32:01] No, I think you said a couple hours.

[01:32:04] So that's okay. We have a running joke in the Lourhounds about like we could get this done in 90 minutes.

[01:32:10] Three hours later, we know we're still pocket.

[01:32:12] My wife has rolled her eyes at that statement.

[01:32:14] Right.

[01:32:15] Or times and I can count.

[01:32:17] And they call it a mine.

[01:32:19] They call it a mine.

[01:32:22] At some point in the future, I definitely want to have some type of Lord of the Rings

[01:32:29] discussions with you too.

[01:32:30] Well, come on a Silmarillion story.

[01:32:33] Are you Silmarillion?

[01:32:34] I've never read it.

[01:32:36] Okay.

[01:32:37] We can pick a chapter for you.

[01:32:39] Yes.

[01:32:40] I can definitely do that.

[01:32:41] Because I love the Lord of the Rings.

[01:32:43] Awesome.

[01:32:44] Yeah, we're going to have love the Lord of the Rings. Awesome.

[01:32:45] Yeah, we're going to have some good rings of power coverage.

[01:32:47] And then of course, our favorite Tolkin scholar, Marilyn Arpequila just launched her new podcast

[01:32:53] of rings and rituals.

[01:32:54] So check that out.

[01:32:56] They're going to be going episode by episode of season one, looking at all the rituals that

[01:33:02] were in there, but then in good Lordhound fashion, they're gonna roll that out.

[01:33:06] They're gonna flip that inside out

[01:33:08] and then examine ritual and what, like,

[01:33:11] oh, I make my coffee the same way every morning,

[01:33:13] or that's a ritual, like, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.

[01:33:15] So.

[01:33:15] Got it, got it.

[01:33:16] Yeah.

[01:33:17] Well, keep up the great work, gentlemen.

[01:33:19] This was fantastic.

[01:33:20] I appreciate it.

[01:33:21] I'm so, so honored that you invited me to have,

[01:33:23] you invited me to be on and I appreciate it. Our pleasure. Happy honored that you invited me to have you invited me to be on and I appreciate it our pleasure

[01:33:26] Happy to have you all right. So now that Ron has left us David

[01:33:31] Would you like to tackle the rest of the feedback sure? I think we've got about four emails left to go. We even got a couple

[01:33:38] People writing in really quick between

[01:33:41] Recording takes so that that worked out for

[01:33:48] For a couple of folks. But anyway, let's do it.

[01:33:54] All right, next up is Kim M, a lore master. Kim says, hi, David and John. I've watched the finale twice and I picked up more the second time through. Like when Danvers says her son was

[01:34:00] trapped in a car when he died. That's all we know about his death, right?

[01:34:05] We never get the full story on some things

[01:34:07] and I like the mystery in that.

[01:34:10] It's as if we are eavesdropping on a conversation

[01:34:13] or peeking through a window.

[01:34:14] We only get partial bits and pieces of the story

[01:34:17] and we have to fill in the rest.

[01:34:19] Really quick, what do you think about this here, John?

[01:34:21] I think detail wise, yes.

[01:34:23] We have only outlined sketches of what happened to

[01:34:28] Holden and Jake. Yeah, I agree with that. And it's a little disappointing, I'll say, because in some

[01:34:34] shows that works, in a mystery show, I think you need to give me the details of the end.

[01:34:39] You know, like that's the whole point of the show is to find out what happened at the end.

[01:34:43] Right. Yeah, and then, yeah, there are, well, and that goes into this whole question of ambiguity

[01:34:48] versus explicitly, I guess you could say, where are we getting all of the details?

[01:34:54] And it's interesting.

[01:34:55] Some people are enjoying that and some people aren't.

[01:34:58] Yeah.

[01:34:58] It's nice that the show runner and writers are treating us nicely.

[01:35:02] Like we don't have to have huge exposition dumps.

[01:35:05] They're relating to us like, we can pick it up.

[01:35:09] We can pattern match.

[01:35:10] We can figure out the things.

[01:35:11] And I think in this show, they did a nice job

[01:35:14] of creating that quote unquote,

[01:35:15] voyeuristic point of view like Kim is referring to here.

[01:35:19] Yeah, I always think back to you,

[01:35:21] there's an always Sony episode where they try to make

[01:35:23] a sequel to lethal weapon.

[01:35:26] That would be a funny episode to watch.

[01:35:27] And they have this line where he goes, see, I'm succeeding with the object I failed with at the beginning of the movie.

[01:35:34] And I was like, and the other character goes, okay, we get it, we know.

[01:35:39] And I'm like, that's what I always think about with the overexposition kind of thing.

[01:35:44] All right, Kim continues,

[01:35:45] Navarro seems a little more unhinged,

[01:35:47] just like the culmination of everything

[01:35:49] finally caught up with her.

[01:35:51] I went to believe that was really her

[01:35:53] standing on the deck in the end.

[01:35:56] But if not, she's probably one badass ghost.

[01:35:59] She'll hunt the crap out of anyone

[01:36:00] that messes with the town again.

[01:36:03] Quickly on this, what's your headcanon for that?

[01:36:06] I can't remember what our prior conversation was with Ron.

[01:36:09] I think that was a bad mistake of the show to not make clear if she was a ghost or not.

[01:36:15] Interesting.

[01:36:16] Muddy is the message that you're trying to give with her.

[01:36:19] But I refuse to take a stance because they have not given me enough information.

[01:36:23] Got it.

[01:36:24] My personal headcanon is that she's alive and she's doing the thing like David

[01:36:29] Carradine did in Kung Fu, you know, just walking the earth and doing stuff, bringing

[01:36:34] justice to the people.

[01:36:35] It doesn't work very well in 2024 though, does it?

[01:36:37] Not in the same way, but that's sort of what my Gen X brain goes to.

[01:36:43] Kim wraps up, Night Country is my new favorite true detective.

[01:36:47] And I loved Capital L,

[01:36:49] the first season,

[01:36:50] Issa Lopez is on my radar now.

[01:36:52] I'm looking forward to whatever she does next.

[01:36:55] Same goes for Callie Reese and Finn Bennett,

[01:36:57] both new to me.

[01:36:59] Looking forward to whatever y'all are doing next as well.

[01:37:02] Appreciate you both best, Kim M.

[01:37:04] Kim, we appreciate you.

[01:37:06] Thanks for being a lore master.

[01:37:08] I am definitely going to keep my eyes on Issa Lopez,

[01:37:12] especially now that we know that she's going to have the keys to the true

[01:37:16] detective franchise for maybe a couple of seasons, we'll see.

[01:37:21] But she also has an overall deal with HBO.

[01:37:24] So that means that she'll probably be able to get to start, you know, to produce some

[01:37:27] other stuff that she wants to do for fun as well.

[01:37:30] I've been thinking since we last recorded with Ron about, it's funny because people

[01:37:34] are listening to this minutes after, but this is like a week after for us.

[01:37:37] But I was thinking about what he said, you know, it's hampered by the true detective

[01:37:41] brand.

[01:37:42] Sure.

[01:37:43] And I think that's right.

[01:37:44] Like I'm actually more excited to see what East Lopez does without the true

[01:37:48] detective brand than with it.

[01:37:50] I mean, interesting.

[01:37:51] Okay.

[01:37:52] And I said this before at the beginning and you were giving me a little side

[01:37:56] out about this, but whether Lopez is a director who falls into the same

[01:38:04] category as O Fargo is,

[01:38:08] Noah Hawley.

[01:38:09] And then who was the other one that I was thinking of?

[01:38:13] Who did, Oh boy, my brain is really mushy.

[01:38:16] Was it David Goyer, maybe?

[01:38:18] No, no, no, it was Mr. Robot.

[01:38:21] Well, I don't know.

[01:38:22] Um, Mark.

[01:38:23] Oh, yeah.

[01:38:24] Um, at Lost, are you talking about? No, David, I don't know. Oh, yeah.

[01:38:25] Um, lost.

[01:38:26] Are you talking about?

[01:38:28] No, David, Damon Lindeloff.

[01:38:30] No.

[01:38:31] Damon Lindeloff is another guy who I like follow everything he does.

[01:38:34] Yeah.

[01:38:35] I want to, you know, follow what he does.

[01:38:37] Sam Esmail.

[01:38:38] Okay.

[01:38:39] I don't even know who that is.

[01:38:40] So, yeah, Sam Esmail, who did Mr. Robot and leave the world behind.

[01:38:46] These are a couple of directors that I feel have a really good hand being able to address

[01:38:53] or to make social commentary to address those difficult topics, but then fold them in.

[01:38:59] It's kind of like, I don't know, my brain goes to folding in egg whites.

[01:39:02] You've got to be careful in how you do it, you know, so that you don't collapse it. But it, you know, keeps the egg white structure,

[01:39:10] which is, you know, what you want. And so they're able to talk about current social issues without

[01:39:18] collapsing them while folding in really cool story, you know, and telling interesting stories and I hope,

[01:39:26] I guess I should say it this way.

[01:39:28] My hope is that Lopez is that kind of director

[01:39:30] and that we're gonna see that more of those kinds

[01:39:33] of productions from her.

[01:39:35] Sure, I think hope is fair.

[01:39:37] Hope is fair.

[01:39:38] I don't think I'm there on like,

[01:39:39] branding her is that right now.

[01:39:41] Sure.

[01:39:41] After seeing this one season of television,

[01:39:43] I think she has a lot of potential.

[01:39:44] I think, you know, this was, you know, she did a much better job than I could have done. We're just

[01:39:48] two guys sitting here, working into her microphones. But I just mean, if I'm going to compare to the

[01:39:55] people I know who really run a tight ship, it's less tight here. There's some sloppiness here and

[01:40:01] there. I think structurally the season didn't come right as we've talked about. Yeah, but I think we've hashed that out enough

[01:40:08] You know, it's a great season could have been a little better, but overall really great

[01:40:12] especially again

[01:40:12] This is basically her TV debut and and that she's got some room now with an overall D with an overall deal with HBO

[01:40:21] That you know that has some constraints, but that also gives her some room to play.

[01:40:27] She's not out hunting for her next thing.

[01:40:29] There's no that feeling of like, oh my God, what's my next project?

[01:40:34] Am I going to get it funded?

[01:40:36] And da da da da da da.

[01:40:37] She can create now.

[01:40:38] She has this space to fulfill some ideas and some thoughts.

[01:40:43] And I think maybe that will give us some more room to run.

[01:40:48] Right, because David Zazloff has never messed up a creative

[01:40:51] project.

[01:40:52] Well, yeah, there's some news about HBO the other day too.

[01:40:57] Their earnings call the other week was not great.

[01:40:59] But.

[01:41:00] Can they just write off like a good movie?

[01:41:02] Yes, yes.

[01:41:03] Yeah, a couple of them.

[01:41:11] Yeah, Zazloff, but their cash flow is up, but their share price is down, but HBO and Casey Bloys, like they're kind of a strong independent unit within the Warner Discovery thing, but

[01:41:15] we're not here to litigate the streaming wars.

[01:41:17] So let's carry on with our emails.

[01:41:19] And we're nervous about things of HBO.

[01:41:20] Anyway, sure, sure.

[01:41:21] Fair enough.

[01:41:22] Shall we move?

[01:41:23] Move to do.

[01:41:25] All right. about things at HBO. Anyway, fair enough. Sure, sure. Fair enough. Shall we move? Move to dov?

[01:41:26] All right, dov71 writes in lore master, friend of the pod, rooting a novella.

[01:41:31] Gonna turn it into a blog post for our website.

[01:41:33] Gonna be a lot of fun.

[01:41:34] Yeah.

[01:41:35] And I just got that from him the other day and it looks like it's about a 2,200 word blog

[01:41:42] post.

[01:41:43] Oh my god. So we're going to publish that on our website and you can email us for the link or just

[01:41:50] go to Lorehounds.com and go to the blog section.

[01:41:53] We'll probably cross post it in the Discord as well.

[01:41:55] All right.

[01:41:56] Do burden of long email, as you said, David, but you have edited it down a little bit.

[01:42:02] So I'm going to read your edited portion. I have strong feelings

[01:42:07] about not wanting a show like true detective to wrap things up neatly. And I also think that if

[01:42:14] you start hinting at more answers when related to the supernatural, it becomes less super. It sucks

[01:42:19] the mystery out of everything. Yeah, as we've been going back and forth with different people on this,

[01:42:25] there's a right.

[01:42:25] I think it's a fine line and just kind of depending on your personal

[01:42:29] preferences, you might dip one side or the other.

[01:42:32] Right.

[01:42:33] Navaros walk out into the ice in the various examples we were told about in

[01:42:37] the show of the pull of what's out there got me to thinking on the whole

[01:42:42] long walk type scenario.

[01:42:45] In many Australian Aboriginal cultures, the walkabout is a traditional rite of passage.

[01:42:51] Traditionally these journeys require the individual to live off the land for a period, ranging

[01:42:56] from a few months to several years, traveling across ancestral lands and sacred sites.

[01:43:03] The walkabout is a spiritual journey

[01:43:05] that signifies the transition from childhood to adulthood,

[01:43:08] teaching survival skills, responsibility,

[01:43:10] and the deep spiritual connection

[01:43:13] to the land and ancestral beings.

[01:43:16] The walkabout is deeply intertwined

[01:43:17] with the concept of the dream time or dreaming.

[01:43:21] The central spiritual belief in many Aboriginal cultures

[01:43:24] that explains the creation and order of the universe.

[01:43:27] Through these journeys, individuals trace the paths laid

[01:43:30] down by their ancestral spirits, reconnecting

[01:43:33] with their culture, history, and the spiritual essence

[01:43:37] of the land.

[01:43:38] The walkabout serves as a profound personal and communal

[01:43:42] experience, reinforcing the individual's place within

[01:43:45] the community and the broader cosmos.

[01:43:47] The concept of the long walk in the context of an UPIAC culture does not directly correspond

[01:43:54] to a single universally recognized event or spiritual journey named as such akin to the

[01:44:00] examples found in other indigenous cultures.

[01:44:02] However, in the UPIiac way of life, deeply

[01:44:05] intertwined with migration, hunting expeditions, and spiritual practices offers a perspective

[01:44:11] on long journeys that hold significant cultural and spiritual importance. For Anupiac and

[01:44:17] Aboriginal cultures, the land is not just a physical place, but a living spiritual entity

[01:44:22] that sustains, teaches, and guides their way of life.

[01:44:26] The journeys are imbued with spiritual significance. They are acts of remembrance, healing, and renewal,

[01:44:32] offering profound insights into the interconnections of life, spirit, and environment. Through these

[01:44:39] walks, individuals and communities affirm their identity, heritage, and spiritual beliefs, ensuring that

[01:44:45] their cultural practices and connections to the land are preserved for future generations.

[01:44:50] I really like this final point that he makes that, you know, a journey such as this is

[01:44:59] a way to situate yourself within your culture and within your landscape.

[01:45:05] And it's an affirmative.

[01:45:07] And it is something that you, by doing this, you really get connected in a deeper way.

[01:45:16] And so I think for me, that's kind of what I see Navarro doing when she walks out, right?

[01:45:22] She's going to go on a walk and she's going to go hang out with different people and go

[01:45:26] to different places and use that connectivity to the land to not only process what she's

[01:45:33] been through, but to reconnect herself to something that she feels disconnected from,

[01:45:41] has been feeling disconnected from.

[01:45:43] Right.

[01:45:44] Yeah, I could see that.

[01:45:45] Um, and I think they did that a lot with, you know, her discovering her name and

[01:45:48] then using that with, uh, B.

[01:45:52] Again, I wish they would have took taking a more definitive stance on the end,

[01:45:57] but that's, that's a minor critique.

[01:45:59] I think overall it was a successful theme, especially, you know, comparing her

[01:46:02] and Julia, her sister.

[01:46:04] Yeah.

[01:46:04] I think that was an effective contrast there.

[01:46:07] And look for the blog post from dove where he goes into more depth about this.

[01:46:15] Yep.

[01:46:17] Overall, I enjoyed this finale and the series as a whole.

[01:46:20] I posted earlier last week that we were probably super imposing our own

[01:46:24] expectations of the horrific unknowns, whereas the reality would be more grounded. It was indeed but totally

[01:46:30] plausible as well and the reveal of the revenge on the perpetrators was done excellently.

[01:46:37] As is fitting there are loose ends, it plays into the mythology of the region, the frontier of

[01:46:42] civilization and the wilderness, the edge of the fabric of our reality and the mythology of the region, the frontier of civilization and the wilderness, the edge

[01:46:45] of the fabric of our reality and the realm of the night country. Well done, Isalou Peasant

[01:46:49] team and worthy entry in true detective. Thanks again, guys, for a great start to the Lourhounds

[01:46:56] year. Lots to look forward to do 71 somewhere in the night country. Well, thanks, dove. That

[01:47:03] was a really cool perspective.

[01:47:05] It made me appreciate Navarro's journey a little bit more.

[01:47:08] You know, my question is,

[01:47:10] what made the call of the wild, the call of nature

[01:47:16] kill Julia and not Navarro and not, you know,

[01:47:21] Evangeline.

[01:47:22] That's something that muddles the message a little bit for me.

[01:47:27] And in an unplanned transition, that is going to be what the next email is a little

[01:47:32] bit about.

[01:47:33] But before we did, we jumped to Nicole's email.

[01:47:37] I did want to mention this idea that what Doof points out, which is what Rose had

[01:47:42] said, like this is a place where the fabric is sort of torn

[01:47:47] and shredded a little bit or, you know,

[01:47:49] things are coming apart here.

[01:47:51] And I like the way that Doove has put together

[01:47:54] that idea with the idea that there are loose ends

[01:47:57] in this story, that it's okay for our story

[01:47:59] to have a little bit of loose ends because

[01:48:02] Enos is a place where things are a little afraid.

[01:48:05] So that works for me in a head can in sort of way.

[01:48:09] No.

[01:48:10] Not allowed.

[01:48:12] Nicole B. So Nicole had, we emailed back and forth a little bit after she wrote this in.

[01:48:19] And I wanted to read this because she has a strong reaction to something here.

[01:48:26] And so I wanted to make sure that we're aware that this is something that Nicole

[01:48:32] cares about.

[01:48:33] It's important for them.

[01:48:34] And so some of the lines of the email may seem like she's coming in hot,

[01:48:39] but again, it's because it's a place of something that she cares about.

[01:48:42] So she says, Hi, Lourhounds.

[01:48:44] I was appalled and again confused by Lopez's poetic

[01:48:47] glorification of suicide as a theme for the season.

[01:48:52] How many characters took their lives?

[01:48:54] And downplaying mental illness versus the spirit world,

[01:48:57] despite Rose's warning not to confuse the two.

[01:49:00] I can outwrap my head around why Lopez would market a show

[01:49:03] around the horrific history

[01:49:05] of missing and murdered indigenous women, only to have the main character and indigenous

[01:49:09] woman willingly disappear.

[01:49:12] And and Kim Nicole says this, I'm sorry, and take her own life.

[01:49:17] Lopez can do more to ambiguity in interviews, but this last scene was not like the sopranos

[01:49:23] cut to black, a moment that

[01:49:25] was earned many times over and foreshadowing. This ending felt more like a cop-out in the

[01:49:30] storytelling rather than earned payoff. It's going to take me time to process my feelings

[01:49:37] on the season, but I can't understand why a story that was only six episodes long had

[01:49:41] to rely on suicide so much to tell it, instead

[01:49:45] of really digging into mental illness and the paths to getting better, both medicinal

[01:49:49] and spiritual.

[01:49:50] Lopez used the idea of taking one's own life as a convenient plot device.

[01:49:55] I don't think this was the theme she was going for, but it's impossible to ignore.

[01:50:00] We'd love your thoughts.

[01:50:01] Thanks for your coverage.

[01:50:02] Thanks, Nicole.

[01:50:03] So, yeah, like I said, Nicole and I emailed back and forth a little bit

[01:50:08] about this and I totally get her point, which is there was a conversation

[01:50:17] around mental health, but then that conversation was never fully realized in the show.

[01:50:22] Yeah.

[01:50:23] And that's important to me.

[01:50:24] It goes back.

[01:50:28] Yeah. And it kind of goes back to what I was saying with Navarro, right? Like, why did one sister?

[01:50:30] Yeah, exactly.

[01:50:31] Why did it kill one sister and not the other?

[01:50:34] And I don't know what the message was there.

[01:50:37] I don't think they gave us an answer, really.

[01:50:39] And I think Nicole's putting her finger on that,

[01:50:40] that there's something that's muddled in there.

[01:50:44] And I would go back to saying six episodes is not long enough to tell that kind of nuanced

[01:50:51] story.

[01:50:52] Right.

[01:50:53] And that if there are, quote unquote, sins committed by this season of television, it

[01:51:00] goes to the compression and it goes to the fact that we didn't get spent to spend a lot of time

[01:51:06] Unpacking that stuff I agree with that and I appreciate Nicole highlighting that for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Nicole

[01:51:12] All right, so Kyle M writes in with additional info about a true crime connection Kyle is on the job

[01:51:19] Hi there following a DM. I sent David on discord

[01:51:24] Aside from this podcast. I also listened to a lot of true crime podcast. You listen to other podcast Kyle Hi there, following a DM I sent David on Discord.

[01:51:26] Aside from this podcast, I also listened to a lot of true crime podcasts.

[01:51:28] You listen to other podcasts, Kyle?

[01:51:29] I mean, come on, come on.

[01:51:32] The other night I was going through a back catalog,

[01:51:35] trying to find one to listen to,

[01:51:37] and I stumbled across the murder of Annie Lay.

[01:51:41] Lee. Lee. Lee.

[01:51:43] Okay, it's only one E, so I'm all like, what is it? Any lay early? All right.

[01:51:47] The murder occurred on September 8, 2009, while she was working in the New Haven, Connecticut

[01:51:52] campus of Yale University.

[01:51:57] Annie Marie Fu Lee was a 24 year old doctoral student at the Yale School of Medicine's Department

[01:52:04] of Pharmacology. She was last seen in a research building on the New Haven campus

[01:52:09] on September 8th. On September 13th, the day she was to be married, she was found

[01:52:15] dead inside the building. On September 17th, police arrested the perpetrator Raymond

[01:52:20] J. Clark, a Yale laboratory technician who worked in the building. Clark pleaded guilty to the murder on March 17, 2011 and was sentenced to 44 years imprisonment

[01:52:32] on June 3.

[01:52:34] The Connecticut medical examiner's autopsy found that Lee's death was a result of traumatic

[01:52:40] asphyxia due to neck compression, the same way Clark finishes off any in-night

[01:52:45] country. Is that true? I thought it was basically like a pillow or cloth.

[01:52:48] Well, yeah. He suffocation.

[01:52:51] Yeah. I found the connection very interesting. Not sure if Lopez got any inspiration from

[01:52:57] the case or not, but a young lady being murdered in a lab by a man named Rimming Clark couldn't

[01:53:01] be ignored. I agree with that. It's called the Generation Y podcast and you can go look that up. So yeah,

[01:53:09] I heard on an interview on the Vanity Fair podcast, somebody else who listens to other

[01:53:15] podcasts, me, so you're okay. Don't worry. Don't let John, don't let John bully you.

[01:53:19] Oh, you can listen to whatever you want. I'm just joking around.

[01:53:22] Oh, you can listen to whatever you want. I'm just joking around.

[01:53:29] And they brought this up and Lopez said, no, not at all. Like she had never heard of that case before.

[01:53:32] And I don't believe you. Yeah. No, I don't believe you.

[01:53:34] And it's just totally weird life and art.

[01:53:37] Well, life and art. I mean, Jesus, it's a murder.

[01:53:41] But yeah, these two things accidentally mirroring each other.

[01:53:43] It's really wild. And

[01:53:45] Lopez was completely blown away and weirder about the connection as well. So apparently Clark is a

[01:53:53] hybrid name. She took a couple like from an Arctic explorer Clark, and then Raymond from like,

[01:53:58] I don't know, from like some other scientist or something like that. So, you know, she she

[01:54:02] constructed this before she knew it according to her and I tend to believe her. So fun. I don't believe her. I'll I'll be the other

[01:54:09] side. Right. Okay. We're almost done here. Ida, a new listener from Sweden. She got an

[01:54:15] email in between recordings. And she's got some experiences and living in North latitudes.

[01:54:22] Hey, hey, Ida. We should exchange our pulp recipes sometime.

[01:54:27] She lives in Sweden, so I'm kind of-

[01:54:29] Sosh.

[01:54:30] Very nice.

[01:54:30] Many thanks for a great podcast.

[01:54:31] Most recently, I've been listening to your comments

[01:54:34] on true detectives season four, enjoyed it a lot.

[01:54:35] Thanks for also pointing out obvious flaws.

[01:54:38] Like when people leave the door open,

[01:54:40] like Liz did on a few occasions.

[01:54:42] If you're used to a cold climate

[01:54:44] and living in the country

[01:54:45] side, you know to close the door. The second you pass through it, even a short time with the door

[01:54:51] open can lower the temperature in the whole house. Even my five-year-old knows to make sure

[01:54:56] to shut the door really fast or people will come running and yelling from all other parts of the

[01:55:00] house. But I like that in the series, they were rather realistic clothing.

[01:55:05] It's not always so on TV.

[01:55:07] And I remember years of rolling her eyes

[01:55:09] and making face palms when warm hats

[01:55:11] seem not to be invented in the game of Thrones universe.

[01:55:15] I, you know, I think one of the things too

[01:55:18] with costuming is sometimes bulky

[01:55:20] or appropriate clothing on that level.

[01:55:24] There might be some cost issues as well,

[01:55:25] but then just in terms of the practicality of filming,

[01:55:28] I know when they were talking about the expanse filming

[01:55:31] the television show, the expanse,

[01:55:35] they talked about the difficulty of having actors

[01:55:38] in helmets all the time, reflections, air,

[01:55:41] quality circulation, heat, there's all these issues.

[01:55:44] So big arctic clothing could be, you know, impractical at times. Anyway,

[01:55:51] So in terms of living in northern latitudes, the and the question of, you know, whether you rather live in dark or light.

[01:56:03] Ita says, the answer is very easy. Darkness is worse.

[01:56:04] Where I come from, we don't even have polar nights, meaning that for us the sun rises

[01:56:09] above the horizon every day, even in midwinter.

[01:56:12] However, even though we get a sunrise every day on my latitude, it does not mean that

[01:56:17] we actually see the sun or get proper daylight.

[01:56:20] In midwinter, the sun just makes it above the forest line and it's very overcast,

[01:56:26] which is magnitude percent of the time. We only get something like a quote unquote blue

[01:56:30] day when there is finally a sunny sky after weeks without it. It's the talk of the town.

[01:56:36] What did you guys do on the sunny day? Did you manage to catch the sun for a little bit?

[01:56:40] Autumn depression is a real problem for many people when the darkness is closing in and the rest of us who don't get clinically depressed at least get tired, less social and feel

[01:56:49] down.

[01:56:50] It's a physical reaction and therefore I would claim that the choice of whether long darkness

[01:56:57] or light is better or worse is not just a matter of preference but it's also a fact

[01:57:01] that the human body is not adapted to life without light.

[01:57:06] Nobody except perhaps parents who are struggling to convince their young kids that it's...

[01:57:11] ...and this is about living in daylight.

[01:57:16] Nobody except perhaps parents who are struggling to convince their young kids it's bedtime,

[01:57:21] even if it's full daylight, ever complained about bright summer evenings.

[01:57:25] IKEA also has an excellent selection of roller blinds and blackout curtains. Everyone longs for

[01:57:31] the light and excitedly shares experiences of signs that spring is on its way. For example,

[01:57:37] we tell news like, for the first time since last year, it wasn't pitch black when I went to work

[01:57:41] this morning. And I think I heard a bird yesterday and I didn't even have to deice the car this morning. Thanks again.

[01:57:49] Yeah. Thanks, Ida. Thanks for writing in from Sweden. I totally agree. I think light would be a better

[01:57:58] situation to live in than darkness. You can we can block out the light. We can't create the light in the darkness.

[01:58:05] So.

[01:58:07] Yeah, I can't imagine that.

[01:58:09] I live in the continental US,

[01:58:11] and so I don't have that problem.

[01:58:12] And so I'm sorry.

[01:58:14] I hope things are okay.

[01:58:17] Yeah.

[01:58:19] All right, Ikea.

[01:58:21] What a thought.

[01:58:22] Should I go to Ikea?

[01:58:24] I don't have one near enough to be. No, that's in my head. No, that's in my head, should I go to IKEA? I don't have one near now.

[01:58:26] That's in my head.

[01:58:27] Yeah.

[01:58:27] Now that's in my head.

[01:58:28] I got to go to IKEA.

[01:58:29] All right.

[01:58:29] Matt E finishes up our feedback today with a final email that says, had a long

[01:58:37] business trip and didn't get to watch the end until a couple of days ago.

[01:58:44] I think my comment holds up in the end.

[01:58:46] I saw this article online.

[01:58:48] True Detective Night Country is one of the worst mystery shows I've ever seen on Forbes.com.

[01:58:52] Made me laugh.

[01:58:53] Probably one pun too far, but it was a good documentary film.

[01:58:57] But was it a good documentary film?

[01:58:59] Romcom or sci-fi?

[01:59:00] Nope wrong question.

[01:59:01] I liked it.

[01:59:03] Okay.

[01:59:04] Okay. Okay. I liked it true to the end. A story about

[01:59:11] people and their stories. I am a perfect ending with people telling more stories. I give it

[01:59:17] a 10 for what it was, but I think that's mostly because I knew what I was versus wasn't getting

[01:59:24] into. You could criticize the main plot line, but the stories converge well.

[01:59:27] And as you guys have taught me, it's more satisfying to see everyone's

[01:59:30] self-interested actions come to a plausible conclusion.

[01:59:33] Oh, we're teachers now, David.

[01:59:38] We are training the samurai of the next generation.

[01:59:44] Like and Shogun. All right. all right, I've done it