True Detective - S04E01 - Night Country: Part 1

[00:00:01] Okay, David, this is where we're supposed to choose a side. Green or black? John, my soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life! So, we're not fighting? I thought this is where HBO wanted us to, like, pick sides and fight and stuff.

[00:00:24] Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod. But we seem to agree on one thing. We both really like this show. The politics, the drama, the lore! It was made for the Lorehounds.

[00:00:35] And since we just finished recapping season one, we couldn't be more ready to defend our black queen in the Dance of the Dragons.

[00:00:42] And with the season pass option in Supercast, listeners can get early ad-free access to each weekly scene-by-scene deep dive, plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections. See you in the Lorehounds podcast feed each week for our Dragonfire Hot, but probably positive, takes.

[00:01:00] The Lorehounds House of the Dragon coverage is also safe for team green consumption. Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a heartened conflict with itself, and an inescapable urge to read the book Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.

[00:01:15] Welcome to the True Detectives podcast, where the Lorehounds are your guides to the weirdness of the long night. I'm David. I'm John, and this is our coverage for season four, episode one of True Detective Night Country on HBO Max.

[00:01:44] In this podcast, we're going to start off with some background on the season and the show itself, and then we're going to share our spoiler-free hot takes. After we take a break, we're going to get into a full scene-by-scene breakdown of the episode.

[00:01:59] It took me two nights to do the outline of the show. It's so packed. Oh boy. Hold on to your socks. We do have access to screeners, however we would love to have your feedback as we go along.

[00:02:09] We will be tacking on messages to the podcast every week, even though we're recording in advance, so send emails to truedetective at thelorehounds.com or head to our website and use the voicemail feature on the contact page.

[00:02:22] We've got a fun and active Discord community too, so join us there. We've got a full channel for True Detective, and you can get all these links in the show notes.

[00:02:31] And check us out on Patreon. Subscribers not only get early and ad-free access to all of our podcasts, subscribers are also going to have special access to our customized detectives notebook.

[00:02:46] I've set up a special set of pages on our show tracker, which is also a Patreon benefit, and I'm building a character guide along with a clues tracker and notes from each episode.

[00:02:58] So if you watched season one of True Detective, think of this as an online version of Rust's notebook.

[00:03:05] I want to be honest, everyone. David's gone insane. This thing looks amazing, and he's put work into this that I could not imagine doing, and you're going to want to see this.

[00:03:15] So check it out if you're on the Patreon or if you want to see it, then get on the Patreon. That's right. And we'll talk about this a little bit more in the Patreon at the end of the podcast as well.

[00:03:24] Exactly. And that and the programming notes, of course. Right. So, John, yes. Hi. How are you? Happy New Year. I know. Happy New Year. This is our first flagship show of the new year. Are you excited? I am. I'm detecting some notes of excitement in you as well.

[00:03:43] I'm nerding out hardcore. That's great. That's great. So I guess maybe we should talk about even what our history is with this series because it's very different. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, we do have a bunch of stuff that we want to probably set up ahead of time.

[00:04:01] I will just add to the note of excitement that after watching a full one hour drama mystery television show, I kind of felt a little out of shape. I was a little flabby. You know, like I'm used to these 38 minute, you know, 37 minute, you know, little things.

[00:04:22] And this was a full I think our screener for this episode one was like 58 minutes. And that was just a little bit of stuff on either end. So that was a solid chunk of material. And it feels weird to be back into the full game of it.

[00:04:37] But it also feels good. I'm very excited. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's cool to be breaking down something like this. I don't think we've ever really done this kind of mystery show before. The closest thing I would say is Kaleidoscope.

[00:04:50] And that does not compare. No, let's just not even go there. But anyway, the point is this is this is some fresh takes we're going to have today. Yeah. And I think it's going to be a lot of fun to go through this.

[00:05:01] Absolutely. Yeah, I think you're right. I don't think we've done a mystery at all where we've got to track clues and we got to think about, you know, what the central mystery is and what all that means. So, yeah, it's it's it's going to be fun.

[00:05:15] Yeah. Well, I mean, Lotus had it. I'll say that the White Lotus mystery, but that's not the point of the show. I would know, whereas this is the point of this show. Right. And I'm kind of glad I messaged you on our private discord, too.

[00:05:28] And I was like, it's probably a good thing that this is six episodes because if it were 10 episodes, it might kill me with all the extra work that I'm putting into it. I know. And thank you for doing that.

[00:05:40] I'm having fun. If it becomes too much, you just let us all know. Yeah, yeah. I'm OK. Well, you have a note here that we have screeners. We mentioned that earlier in the intro, but we are not watching ahead.

[00:05:53] That's what we wanted to say here. So we have only seen episode one for this podcast and we will not be spoiling anything and being like, well, we'll have to wait and see because that's annoying. And, you know, to deal with that.

[00:06:05] And what we're going to try to do with feedback is, you know, we'll have an episode recorded.

[00:06:11] We'll have it all queued up. And if we've got a bunch of good feedback that we can hop on the mic really quick, run that feedback and then just tack that onto the ends of our recordings.

[00:06:21] And if not, then we'll just keep rolling it forward as we go through. So definitely want to encourage people, even though we're pre recording these.

[00:06:30] Don't hesitate in sending in your feedback because there's this is a big show and there's gonna be a lot of theories and a lot of clues to keep track of. So we want all of your takes, voicemails, emails, discord messages.

[00:06:43] And the cool thing with the screeners and the reason we're talking about them is not just for bragging rights, but because we're going to be able to have this episode out immediately after the episode airs on HBO for patrons.

[00:06:53] And then we'll have it up at 6 a.m. the following morning. So every Monday morning for the public. Right. And frankly, having screeners allows me to spend two days breaking down a single episode.

[00:07:06] I mean, I didn't spend the whole day. I think it was maybe about four hours of my time. But, you know, this first episode was so much material. I was looking up things like the Arctic Circle and the Anupiat people and doing research on the Alaska State Troopers.

[00:07:23] You know, I was kind of going crazy. So it should smooth out as we get along.

[00:07:29] But, yeah, don't hesitate to send us stuff and know that screeners are helping us manage our life and then be able to put this extra quality that we're putting out for you guys. Yeah, should be fun.

[00:07:43] So we should also mention that this is series four of True Detective. The first three seasons are all standalone. They don't have any explicit interconnectivity except for, I believe, one scene in season three that directly calls back to season one.

[00:08:09] Other than that, I think this will be the first of the four shows that is going to have a little bit more explicit connection back to season one.

[00:08:19] But at the same time, I'm not expecting that this show is going to in any way depend on season one to tell its story. So what we're going to do, and John, we'll talk about this in a minute, about our relative histories with the series.

[00:08:36] But whenever we do talk about prior seasons, I'm going to do my best to make sure that we dance around any plot spoilery points. Okay.

[00:08:46] So that nobody gets, you know, because if you haven't seen season one, you don't have to see, like we said, we don't have to see any of the previous. Season one is a hell of a television, episodes of television. It is an incredible show.

[00:09:00] Season two is, eh, some people like it, some people are not so hot on it. I've heard from folks that a second watch on season two is not so bad as the first one.

[00:09:10] And I think season two suffered partly being in the shadow of season one because season one was so good. And it wasn't at all like season one in the cosmic horror elements that surrounded the main story.

[00:09:28] Season three was really great with Masha Ali. It was amazing storytelling that went on there. It was a solid, I think what we could call a true detective style story where we're, there's some weirder mystery stuff on the outside,

[00:09:46] but then at the core of the story is the detective, their personal life and how their personal lives intermesh with the work that they're doing. So I would highly encourage everyone to go watch all three previous seasons. Season one stands out there, can be a little fiery.

[00:10:05] I've been reading the Reddits and stuff and people get into really crazy, you know, it's a smaller fandom, but people get really intent about the show. Okay. So we'll do our best to navigate around any major spoilers, even though I might refer to something

[00:10:22] or I'll call something out for people who know they'll know, you know, what we're kind of talking about. So there are going to be some reoccurring details from season one that we know are going to be in here

[00:10:35] that were in some of the publicly released material ahead of time. And then a last little call out to some literary works, especially the author Robert W. Chambers and a book of short stories that he published back in 1895 called The King in Yellow.

[00:10:55] And all of this stuff is, it's all, I think Lovecraft is credited as taking inspiration from Chambers. So a lot of that Cthulhu mythos and this whole genre, there's a whole sub genre of literature called cosmic horror.

[00:11:12] And this whole thing of like, are we alone in the universe? And there's these weird things out in the universe that are hard to understand. Anyway, The King in Yellow and Carcosa and all that kind of stuff.

[00:11:23] We don't know if it's going to play any role in the show, but those things exist. And if you don't know, you don't have to. But if you're interested in that stuff, there's another layer of storytelling that's going on in here.

[00:11:34] So John, what's your background with the True Detective franchise? I have heard the name. That's it. That's it. I've heard mixed things, like you said, like I've heard season one's great, season two's eh.

[00:11:51] And I was not aware that it was an anthology until you told me about this show. So I was thinking to myself, well, I'm not going to get into a show just for it to fall flat season two.

[00:12:02] But I didn't know that I could have just watched season one and stopped. Anyway, I'm excited to get into the world. It's kind of fun to come into it cold because I have no idea what to expect. I did not do any Googling about True Detective.

[00:12:15] I didn't want to know like how they're structured or what kind of world building they do or anything like that. I wanted to go in and see if it could sell me on its own merits. So hopefully it does.

[00:12:27] I think that that puts you in a perfect position to be the audience proxy, as a lot of times we do with our podcast coverage, where one of us may know the deeper material and the other doesn't. The lore, one might say.

[00:12:40] Yeah, exactly. Oh, hmm. That's an interesting concept, lore. So yeah, that's great. Now I will say that I am not a huge True Detective head. I just rewatched season one. I binged it in like three days. That did my head in.

[00:12:56] But I'm not one of these folks who are on the Reddits talking about it all the time. Right, right. I enjoy the season and I'm really excited for this. What are you talking about between seasons? Don't you know who killed everybody? Exactly.

[00:13:11] There's nothing to figure out. What are you doing? Get off the Reddit. So I think that'll be a fun setup for us is to do this that way. This show seems to be generating a lot of heat.

[00:13:27] I think this is the first big title out of the gate for 2024. Yep, I agree. It slots into that Sunday night HBO Prime. This is exactly where The Last of Us was. I can't remember when The Last of Us started. Yeah, it started right after the new year.

[00:13:47] Yeah, so it locks right into that. I think there's going to be a lot of people, a lot of podcasts covering the show. A lot of YouTubers are going to be covering the show.

[00:13:57] I think we're going to see a lot of it on the bigger media franchise, NPR and the like. So from what I can see, there's a lot of buzz. Yeah, so much buzz.

[00:14:10] Some of it's incorrect and terrified me because I was Googling just some publicity stuff for this season. And I read an article and it was like, two episodes will drop on January 14th. And this was right before we were about to record.

[00:14:25] And I was like, oh my God, we have to schedule another recording. And it was completely wrong. I triple checked in other places. But it made me panic for a minute. So get your stuff right, Boston Herald. That's shocking that they got that wrong.

[00:14:39] But you know, it's a common thing that happens. Yeah, but HBO isn't one for that. Anyway, so yeah, there's going to be a lot of information out there. And I think one of the things we have to take into account as well,

[00:14:52] and I noticed this when I was doing my outlining the other day, that I don't have a lot of other websites or material to rely on because we're recording this and watching it before the episode is out.

[00:15:05] And usually when the episode is out, there's a ton of material that we can go and then rely on and synthesize and bring in. So in some ways, we're really out here flying solo because we don't have a lot of –

[00:15:20] we have to do a lot of primary research. We did solo last month. Oh, right. Yeah, that's right. On our Star Wars Film Festival. I'm excited for what we're going to do. Get your head in the game, David. My head is lost in the details.

[00:15:32] So that said, regarding show research and whatnot, as we mentioned in the intro, I've been working on a compendium resource thing, a sort of Rust Coles diary, if you will, online. There's a platform out in the world called Notion, and it's this cool database web pagey thing where –

[00:15:59] I'm not even going to try and explain it. If you know, you know. If you don't know, then you just know that if you go to this page, you're going to get a lot of depth of information

[00:16:08] and there's going to be a lot of trackback links to other things, sort of all a web, if you will, of information. If you're a Patreon subscriber, this will be available to you. I'll pin a post on our Patreon with the link for it.

[00:16:23] I'm nominally calling it a detective's notebook, and it's going to be embedded on the show page in our show tracker. We have a big show tracker that tracks curated shows, titles, and movies all throughout the year, and it provides a lot of basic information.

[00:16:39] These are all resources that subscribers to our Patreon have access to. Now look – and John, I don't know. We haven't really talked about this attitude yet, but if people want to subscribe and hang out for the show and then unsubscribe, that doesn't really bother me.

[00:16:55] I mean, yeah. That's what Patreon is for, right? Yeah. You can sign up and then you can cancel the next month. It works. Yeah. You can dip in and dip out. So if that works for you, it's great. But we'd love to have you stay.

[00:17:07] Exactly. We've got a fun community. It's a good number of people. We have a good time. Yeah. And if you want – there's our – we offer annual memberships, which is like a really nice thing. We give like a 10% discount. You can upgrade your account anytime if you want.

[00:17:23] So there's going to be – and there's value. There's a whole bunch of value in this whole notebook. So one of the things that I'm doing with the episode is I'm using my phone to screenshot things and clues or characters and then I'm putting them in.

[00:17:38] I'm building a character guide so you could like see who the characters are. I'm going to start tracking key clues, some notes and fun things in episodes. There were some details that I caught in episode one, little Easter eggs.

[00:17:52] And I can post a photo of that Easter egg and then you can see it there on that page. So if that sounds at all interesting to you, please head over to our Patreon, subscribe. You can get the link or you can send me a message.

[00:18:06] On the flip side of that is if you catch a clue that I don't or you've got some good information, take a screenshot or what have you, send it in, truedetective at thelorehounds.com and I will add it.

[00:18:21] I will take your information and add it into our big database of stuff going on here. So – because there are things that I'm going to miss invariably. So, John, I think that's about it for our sort of pregame coverage here. What did you think of episode one?

[00:18:40] I thought it was pretty good. I thought it was pretty good. It could have been better. I think coming in as a new viewer, it was really disorienting. That could be on purpose. Okay. But it was – I remember I messaged you halfway through the episode and said,

[00:18:56] I am lost. And I got to the end of the episode. And you're a wheel of time head. Sure, yeah. I mean I'm no stranger to complex worlds. I think that things just felt really arbitrary. It's not that there was too much world building.

[00:19:09] It was just that the scenes just felt like they didn't go together. But on second watch, I liked it better because I knew what was coming. Because by the end of the first episode, I generally understood what was happening. I understood the basics of the world.

[00:19:21] I understood the basics of the scenario. But yeah, I wasn't sure certain clues like where they went, where they fit into things. And I think some of that's intentional. Some of it's not. So I was a little disoriented.

[00:19:34] And I'll say actually, I don't usually watch shows like this. This is not my preferred genre of a murder mystery. I think there's some things that feel very Sherlockian in this episode. Yeah, yeah. That's true. That's like a pet peeve of mine. Oh, really?

[00:19:53] That's like an ick moment for me when they go, well, this means this. It's elementary Watson. I don't like that. I don't like that. There's a definite little scene where that happens, doesn't it? Yes. I'm sure we'll talk about it in the spoiler section. We will.

[00:20:07] But at the moment that happened, I was like, okay. But other than that, there was no like – well, actually, no. There were some ick moments. There were some subject matters that I thought were unnecessary.

[00:20:18] But again, I don't know where the series is going and it could develop into something important. So I will reserve judgment. Overall, I thought it was entertaining. It was very creepy. It was very spooky. Good. Great.

[00:20:34] There was a great ambiance and I'm looking forward to seeing where it's going. So again, like I did not like the episode but I just think that I'm not fully in on this world yet.

[00:20:43] I'm hoping in episode two they can sort of solidify my belonging in this world. I don't think that I'm far off of your assessment in terms of my enjoyment of episode one. I think I had to – I think I was going in with a lot of expectation myself.

[00:21:02] And then when I was watching, there's some CGI of some wildlife early on and it was a little off and it like almost borderline took me out of it. And there were some other things here, there. But the episode was trying to do so much work.

[00:21:20] I mean, this is a six episode run and it's got to on ramp us. This is like getting on a freeway on ramp where we have to be at speed in a very short amount of time. So we've got to introduce characters.

[00:21:33] We've got to set central motivations and tension and conflict with other characters. They have to establish the central mystery. And I think on my second watch – my second watch, gosh. My crawl through it a second time taking it apart piece by piece.

[00:21:51] As a piece of television, it is really well structured and the Easter eggs are nicely placed and the clues and certain little setups, little importances, things that become important later on. They're set up nicely and they're integrated nicely.

[00:22:11] So it's a well constructed from a technical level, I guess from a plot level, a mystery level. It's well integrated. But I did feel that there was a little bit of rough around the edges or again, maybe it's an episode one of a show.

[00:22:30] So it hasn't really found its rhythm yet and that kind of stuff. I will say that the sets are looking good. The acting is on point. All of the actors seem really great. Even Jodie Foster's primary counterparts, Cali Reese, they seem to be – I love their chemistry.

[00:22:53] Their anti-chemistry, whatever their friction is so far is pretty good. It seems like it's done the work too, to understand Alaska, to understand who lives there and some of the history of it.

[00:23:06] So I'm feeling pretty confident and I'm feeling pretty excited to have a good mystery in front of us. This started well. Yeah. Certainly not a bad start. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

[00:23:20] I think the more I think about it, the more I like it, which is probably what the show wants. Right. So I guess we should probably start talking about the show soon. We probably should. It's about 22 minutes in. Yes.

[00:23:32] Well, let's take a quick break and then when we get back, then we'll get into our heavy spoilers. And we'll do a scene by scene breakdown of the whole episode. Sounds good. And we're back. So, David, you did the scene by scene recap.

[00:24:00] So I'm sure you're going to read the actual scenes, but we have some housekeeping to get through quickly. Yes. You noted we don't have the title of episode one at the time of recording. Right.

[00:24:12] The screeners aren't listing us the titles and I couldn't find them anywhere on the web. No, they're not published anywhere either. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:24:20] And then, like I mentioned, we don't have the benefit of having the hive mind, having gone out and done a whole bunch of research for us that we can then sort of skim off and then re-report.

[00:24:32] So we're doing a lot of our own quote unquote research at the time of this. So a lot of our own internet searching may be, or at least mine because I'm primarily doing it, may fall a little short.

[00:24:47] And that's fine and that's a good opportunity for listeners to send us feedback. For sure. Although these are going to be coming out pretty much right after the show. So it shouldn't be too far behind the hive mind. Yeah.

[00:25:00] And again, we have the Discord to talk about it and we've got the detective's notebook as well. So, and I think I mentioned this already. It was a 58 minute runtime on our screener.

[00:25:13] So nice full episode and that'll probably push it over an hour once HBO tacks on the front and behind of these things. And oh, and another thing, we don't have a subtitle track on this.

[00:25:28] So sometimes we may get a name wrong or a piece of text wrong because we can't go back and look at subtitles. So, okay. With those caveats out of the way, we start the episode with an opening quote.

[00:25:41] For we do not know what beasts the night dreams when it's hours grow too long for even God to be awake. Hildred Castagane. Now, this is where Issa Rae and the rest of the writers are stepping firmly onto this ground of cosmic horror literature.

[00:26:05] So this person, this name Hildred Castagane is a character in a short story called The Repairer of Reputations by Robert Chambers, who I mentioned before. And it's one of the stories that's in the collection, a book of short stories that he all wrote called The King in Yellow.

[00:26:25] So you can go onto Wikipedia and look up Repairer of Reputations if you're interested in that. And there's a whole article about that.

[00:26:33] What is important I think here with this quote and with this, why this character is being quoted is to enter us into the realm of the cosmic horror.

[00:26:45] But also to set this whole stage about nighttime and dreams and what beasts might lurk there even when God is not around. One of the hallmarks of a true detective show is questions of existentialism. Who are we in the world? How do we know ourselves in the world?

[00:27:09] And then this boundary of what is out in the world that we cannot know or if we did know is terrifying and beyond comprehension. So I think this quote serves to put us firmly into that mindset. That's interesting. I didn't realize that that show got that deep.

[00:27:28] See, I just thought this was a standard like, hey, fella, we found this dead guy. How do we solve the murder, man? I thought we were doing a procedural here, just more prestige. Yes, it is. And it goes to this deeper level. A prestigeral. A prestigeral.

[00:27:46] Ooh, I like that. Well done. A new phrase coined right here on The Lore Hounds. Yeah, that's one of the things that really caught people for season one was Matthew McConaughey's character. He's this very practical person in the world, a police detective doing his job.

[00:28:04] But he's always talking this really wild stuff where his detective partner, Woody Harrelson, is a pretty average run-of-the-mill guy. He's got a family. He was a football player. He's a detective on the rise. And he broke into Watergate too. Yes, exactly. A crook in the Watergate.

[00:28:26] And so you have this guy who's a very big, deep thinker and this guy who's just living his life. And so that was part of their central tension.

[00:28:36] And the character, Rust Cole, is always going on about these really bigger, deeper thoughts and really thinking about the nature of existence. Okay. So yeah, it's not just a basic procedural.

[00:28:51] The one asterisk I'll put on Hildred Castagane is that that character, and I don't know how much further this quote will go or if it was just a one-off to set the stage, is we should, through the whole series, I think be a little skeptical.

[00:29:09] Because Hildred Castagane is not necessarily a reliable narrator of his own story.

[00:29:15] So whether that's true and carries through or not, but let's keep that in mind that maybe some of our characters or some of the story that we get, maybe there's some unreliability in some of what we are getting. So be skeptical. Yeah, I bet that for sure. Yeah.

[00:29:34] I already don't trust half the people on this show. Alaska's a hard place, man. It's intense. Okay. So literally a cold open.

[00:29:43] We open on the frozen tundra of Alaska with a title card informing us that where we are is 150 miles or 241 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle on December 17th, which is the last sunset of the year, last day that has a sunset in the year.

[00:30:02] And as the sun sets, we see a man, probably an Inupiat man taking aim on a herd of caribou, aka reindeer. And as he prepares to shoot, something spooks the animals, which causes them to stampede off the edge of a cliff.

[00:30:20] John, what did you make of this scene? I was like, all right. What am I supposed to say about this? It was very, the White Walkers are coming. It was very White Walkers, wasn't it? Totally. I got that vibe too.

[00:30:37] We had a zombie bear because we thought it would be cool. It was kind of that. Because other people have done it. Yeah. This scene really confused me. I was like, what's going on?

[00:30:49] Obviously, I think it's here to establish some of the central mystery that something so fundamental is occurring that it's even disturbing animals. There's stories of animals who react before an earthquake or before a storm comes, things like that.

[00:31:09] I think they're relying on that idea that animals' senses are picking up stuff that is happening that we can't necessarily pick up.

[00:31:19] I think this was one of the aspects of this episode that didn't sit well with me, which was it felt like a lot of the scenes were just to say weird stuff's happening. We don't know why.

[00:31:33] That to me was a little frustrating because when I enjoy Mystery Box, what I consider to be the perfect Mystery Box is Severin season one. What I love about that is by the end of every episode, something is solved for you.

[00:31:48] I didn't feel like anything, any small piece was solved by the end of this episode. Agreed. I would have liked to see something, give me the small victory so that the big victory feels earned. Mm-hmm, right. I think that's where this episode fell a little short for me.

[00:32:07] I can understand that. It just asked a lot of questions and it set up a whole lot of stuff. Right.

[00:32:12] Yeah. As I mentioned, for me, the CGI, there were a couple of parts of the CGI here that felt ... I think we did, we get disclaimers in our screeners saying that they're still doing work on the episode? Yeah. I think that the CGI is not finalized. Okay.

[00:32:33] I wouldn't get too deep into that, but hopefully it looks good on the main ... The caribou running and all of that stuff actually was fine. It was just some of the wider shots or the medium shots that were a little off for me.

[00:32:47] Like we said, it could be something that they're still working on. I did a little research too, because the title card informed us that we're above the Arctic Circle.

[00:32:58] The Arctic Circle is a line of latitude above which the sun will not set during summer and in winter it will not rise. About a third of the land mass of Alaska is within the Arctic Circle.

[00:33:16] When they talk about these long nights and the land that the sun never rises or sets or whatever, we're within that circle of latitude where that is occurring. That's one of the facts about Alaska that I learned as a kid and went, whoa, that's crazy.

[00:33:36] I feel like that's a common experience. It's just like we who have grown up in the regular, the majority of the world have no concept of living in night for a quarter of the year. Half the year, I guess.

[00:33:53] No, sorry, a quarter of the year and then we're only in sun for a quarter of the year. Right. Yeah. Anyway, it's crazy. I think it's interesting.

[00:34:02] We were just on the MCU show with Sean and Alicia, and we were talking about season two of the What If? cartoon series. The first episode starts off where a world has been plunged into darkness that typically is not used to that.

[00:34:19] It has three sons and a very vibrant population. What perpetual darkness does to that culture and that society, it was really interesting. Yeah, to try to imagine what life would be like in that perpetual darkness is – I don't think I could imagine it.

[00:34:38] There's just no way I have any experience. The elves of Middle Earth could imagine it. Indeed, they could. Before the sun and moon, which we just covered on Silmarillion Stories. Isn't that funny? We did not plan that. Yeah, yeah, that is funny.

[00:34:50] I don't know what happened with the caribou. We just see them flying off and the hunter looking confused. I don't know if this is going to be a detail that comes back or if this is just a one-off to give us the creepy vibes. Yeah, I don't know.

[00:35:06] I'm sure we'll learn eventually what's making them run off. I would hope so. I hope though that they do the Jaws thing where they don't really let you see the monster until there's a short bit. It's scarier if you don't see it. It is.

[00:35:22] I think there was a point in a scene that we're about to go into soon where you see a flash of a shadow. I liked that. That's nice and spooky. Right. Yeah, our imaginations do a lot.

[00:35:36] We can be more creeped out by our own imaginations than by the direct visual. Indeed. Right. All right, our next scene. We're introduced to the Salal Arctic Research Station. We get a tour and meet the researchers who are stationed there.

[00:35:52] Twist and Shout by The Beatles plays as part of the soundtrack from the 1986 generational hit movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which is playing on the TV in the lounge. A title card gives us latitude and longitude coordinates.

[00:36:09] We'll pause there before we get into the next scene where the guy is making the sandwich. Any thoughts or impressions from this little montage that introduces us to where our central mystery starts off?

[00:36:25] I mean, it seems like they were just doing, hey, it's a regular day in the life. They're just normal guys hanging out, doing their research and then chilling out. Yeah. And sort of showing it, giving us little bios of each one in their daily activities.

[00:36:42] So this is where I thought the episode was well constructed in that. We learn a lot about who these people are, even though they're about to get frozen. You know, by the end of the episode, at least we have a sense of character.

[00:36:54] So we have a sense of caring for them, I guess. And we've got great choices in movies. Have you seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off? Of course I have. Everyone's seen Ferris Bueller. I never make assumptions with you about what movies you have or have not seen.

[00:37:08] You know, it was nice. I think my social studies teacher in the seventh grade put it on for my whole class right before a long break. And he was like, just enjoy it, kids. And we did. And that was such a nice moment.

[00:37:26] Seeing that on the last day of school in a while, that was nice. Yeah, it's a fun movie. I'm not sure why they chose that movie. So we'll see if it plays anything further. I wonder if they were telling us that they're slacking. They're taking a day off.

[00:37:41] They're doing like a day of hokey. They're not actually working. Oh, interesting. Well, certainly Danvers later on hates this song for some reason. She acts very strongly to the Beatles song. So a couple of things. The title card gives us a latitude and longitude coordinate.

[00:37:59] And that coordinate is up near Point Hope, up on the Chutki Sea in the northwestern part of Alaska. So it's very much in the North Slope area. And I put a link to the coordinates and a map on our detectives notebook there. Did you Google Earth it?

[00:38:23] I did. I just used Google Maps. I didn't use Google Earth. I do have Google Earth, but I just use Google Earth. Do you remember when Google Earth came out and everybody's like, let me look at my house. Oh my God, we had that car five years ago.

[00:38:33] It was great. Yeah, I look at our house and our street and I'm like, whoa, I didn't realize that they cut that down or they painted it that color. It lets you feel like an old man. That's right.

[00:38:46] So there's one other detail that we should be aware of here, that the name Salal, this T-S-A-L-A-L, has a whole bunch of potential deeper significance. And there's a couple of really good Reddit posts about this that do quite an intense breakdown.

[00:39:09] There is a reference to Edgar Allen Poe, Jules Verne, Thomas Ligotti, some stories and some references that they all reference. And then there's also a potential Hebrew Old Testament connection. Huh. So I'm going to be tracking that.

[00:39:31] I don't know where that's going to come into play, but yeah, the name itself here is foreboding, has some gravity to it. But we're not sure just yet where it's going to lead us. And we don't know what Salal, T-S-A-L-A-L, stands for yet.

[00:39:48] We haven't been given that information. All right. Well, I'm excited to get into it. I Googled Salal and I get a bunch of stuff about the Cthulhu mythos. Yes, yes. So okay. Yeah. So we're back in your Lovecraftian cosmic horror. Exactly.

[00:40:08] So they're dropping these little things all over the place. They're being very intentional about it. And they're giving the Easter egg hunters a lot of material to run with. Yeah. All right.

[00:40:21] So as biophysicist Facundo Molina finishes recording himself making a sandwich, we get a reveal of paleo microbiologist Raymond Clark having some kind of seizure. And then he says that she's awake and the lights go out in the station.

[00:40:42] So this is our second big signal that weird stuff is happening. Yeah. I mean, yeah, this was the point where I'm like, okay, something is I mean, the first she's awake that that is this the first she's awake. I thought this is the first she's.

[00:40:58] This is the first one. Yeah. So yeah, the first she's awake. I'm like, OK, it's supernatural. Right. And as it goes on through the episode, of course, it's only more definitive. Like these people aren't just randomly saying she is awake and it's not connected. Right. Yeah.

[00:41:14] No, there's something. And as we see like with Rose later on that, there's a whole bunch of stuff being awakened and responding to this. And I think that's what the obviously what they're telling us is that the caribou were reacting to is the same stimulus. Yeah.

[00:41:30] Whatever this thing is. When Facundo is making a sandwich, I had my spouse who she's very fluent in Spanish. I had her listen to the audio and he's basically talking about putting lots of mayonnaise on the bread. And, you know, hey, we're live and making my sandwich.

[00:41:50] You got to put a lot of mayo on it. And ta-da, here it is. So he's he's the one little Easter egg in there is the mayonnaise, which we learn later. Yeah. For Danvers. For Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Danvers.

[00:42:04] The other thing I'll note is the phone that he was recording on was still probably recording when we get the reveal of Clark, who is standing there having that seizure.

[00:42:21] And later on, we see that when they're investigating the scene and collecting up the phones, he points out that that phone was sitting here just in that position and the battery is dead. Hmm. I wonder how much it caught because the lights went out, right? Yeah.

[00:42:37] But it's going to at least catch Clark saying, you know, she's awake. So we're at least going to get that. That's cool. All right. I'm liking this this this little clue that they've planted there. And I'll give you one more.

[00:42:49] We'll pick it up later, but there's a detail in what the guy wearing the or the guy who's having the seizure, what he's wearing, which is kind of an obvious if you remember the rest of the episode. But there's a very key detail right there.

[00:43:06] And I've taken a picture of it and put it in the in the detective's notebook in the journal. Hmm. We we are going to find Blue's clues, right? Isn't that how that works? What is it? Blue's clues. Blue's clues. You didn't do Blue's clues?

[00:43:21] No, I think that was generationally missed. Oh boy. Blue's clues. That was the show of my childhood and my daughter loves it, too. It's all OK. It's all about it.

[00:43:30] This is going to be a short digression into Blue's clues because Blue's clues revolutionized children's educational television because instead of doing a narrative. Now, see, Sesame Street was actually less effective because they focused on narrative, whereas kids don't learn a narrative. They learn a repetition.

[00:43:46] And so what they would do in Blue's clues is you would have to find three Blue's clues and that would give you the answer. And they would play the same episode five days in a row, Monday through Friday. OK.

[00:43:58] Each day, the kids would be able to follow the clues a little more until Friday. You could get to the end by yourself. And that was like revolutionary. And they did studies and it was like way more effective than the narrative structure. That makes sense.

[00:44:13] Even to this day, our daughter will listen to songs or watch episodes over and over again. And it's a less so now. Maybe now she would watch an episode two or three times where when she was younger, she would watch it five or six times. Right.

[00:44:30] And it must be that repetition. She's passing through each time picking up another detail. Very interesting. Right. OK. So here we're looking for Blue's clues. Yes, exactly. I got you now. And we're going to have a great time.

[00:44:40] So on our rewatches, we'll be able to solve the mystery a little better. Exactly. And that's what the online journal, you know, the detective's notebook is for. All right. We cut scene to an overhead shot of a delivery truck driving up to the Salal Station.

[00:44:52] Diagenic music of the 1992 reggae fusion song Sweat a la la la la long by Inner Circle plays. And a title card gives us the date of December 20th, which is the third day of the long night. The delivery driver finds no one in the station.

[00:45:09] Twist and shout is still playing. And then he finds a human tongue on the floor of the kitchen. The human tongue. That was one of the two things from this episode that. Oh, I guess we'll get to it later when Carol actually. Oh, wait. I just said Carol.

[00:45:30] Carol Danvers like Miss Marvel. Liz Danvers. Liz Danvers. Liz Danvers. When Liz Danvers does her actual examination of it, there's two. That's one of the two Sherlock moments that I was like, I don't know about that. But yeah, him finding the tongue.

[00:45:44] Yeah, it was just it was just all shock stuff, right? It wasn't wasn't it was all set up. There wasn't. Right. We're pushing the mystery forward. Yeah, exactly. And we get that little jump scare with something moving down at the end of the hallway. Mm hmm.

[00:45:59] Yes, he does. When he walks in. And so obviously we don't know what that was about yet. But yeah, definitely giving us the thing. I love that stuff. And then we also we get the glitch in the electronics with the Ferris Bueller looping itself.

[00:46:15] Like there's a little it gets to a certain point and goes. And then starts back up at the top. Yeah. And loops. And so whatever this central mystery is, is not only affecting wildlife, but it's affecting electronics. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting.

[00:46:34] I like how the music from Ferris Bueller's Days Off with the cheer syncs with him finding the tongue. So you get a scream from the music as he as we realize what this what he's looking at.

[00:46:52] So it was a nice little bit of editing there to, you know, punch punch the emotion a little bit more. Maybe that's why they picked it, because how many songs do you know with a scream like that? Yeah, that's true.

[00:47:01] And in what movies are you going to watch? I mean, they have a lot of movies and I'm going to there's another Easter egg on the on the DVD shelf or on the VHS shelf that we'll get to later.

[00:47:10] But yeah, you know, sometimes you just want to feel good, turn off your brain and kick back and watch something fun. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're slacking off from work. Exactly. Well, you know, you know, it's after it's you know, it's the long night.

[00:47:23] What if they're off until they're off until the spring? What if you severance in the Arctic Circle? That would be kind of weird. All right.

[00:47:32] We get the opening credit sequence with a montage of mixed scenes from the show and what look like to be weird visions intercut with things that actually come from the you know, they actually filmed.

[00:47:48] So one of the things is there's a lot in that opening month opening title credit. I haven't done my work on it yet. I'm just getting started here. So I thought maybe I would wait for the hive mind to do work.

[00:48:03] I would save myself a little effort and wait till the episode starts to air before I get into that because I'm doing so much else. Maybe we should contact the showrunner and make them go through it line by line like David Goyer did for us.

[00:48:14] Ooh, that would be great. We should definitely reach out and see if there's some press availability. Let's see. Yeah. Anyway, the song our title song, bury a friend is a 2019 song by Billie Eilish.

[00:48:28] And the opening lyrics or one of the main part of the lyrics is when we all fall asleep, where do we go? Or no, I'm sorry. That's the I believe that's the album title. I'm not a I think you're more of a Billie Eilish fan than I am.

[00:48:45] I'm not like I don't think usually listen to her went like randomly, but my friend showed in 2019. I was living in a very hipster area and a lot of my friends were very hipster. And they were they were in with the cool kids.

[00:48:58] And one of them showed me Billie Eilish and showed me this video actually to I don't know if you've seen the actual music video, David. I did. I watched it.

[00:49:08] That's one of the reasons why my outline took so long, because I stopped and actually watched this whole video among. It's a great video is very cool. Great video. Yeah. You know, she's a demon under the bed, right? Yep. And there's this like possession stuff.

[00:49:22] Like I think she floats at one point. Somebody somebody floats in it. So the when I did my reading about this, obviously, I was looking for the thematic elements that were going to connect the song to this.

[00:49:34] And there are some very on point themes here about sleeping, about monsters, about what we can see and what we can't see.

[00:49:41] And there's a quote by Billie Eilish that's well quoted on multiple websites that says, Barry, a friend is literally from the perspective of the monster under my bed. If you put yourself in that mindset, what is this creature doing or feeling?

[00:49:56] I also confess that I am this monster because I am my own worst enemy. I might be the monster under your bed, too. Yeah, it's a really good song. Billie Eilish is incredibly talented. If I actually listen to music at any frequency, I'd probably listen to her.

[00:50:11] I just never listen to music. I end up listening to podcasts and audio books. Right. And falling asleep to Tolkien and other things. I heard you're into Star Trek these days.

[00:50:21] I'm starting it a little bit, but I turned on one piece a little bit and then I got sidetracked. OK. All right. It happens. Next obsession. All right. OK, we open back up on a scene of a crab processing plant where Alaska State Trooper or agent.

[00:50:37] I'm not sure what to call her because some references are calling her detective. Others are trooper. Others are agents. And I couldn't find out how Alaska State Troopers actually refer to themselves. So if you if you know, write in and let me know.

[00:50:50] But anyway, Evangeline Angie Navarro, played by Callie Reese, I believe I'm pronouncing her name correctly, is investigating a domestic violence situation. As she makes an arrest, she gets a phone call about something urgent. I will also add to this.

[00:51:08] I went on the Alaska.gov website and they say the Division of Alaska State Troopers. So we are OK to call them state troopers. And I think Danvers also says you're a state trooper. You're a trooper now. Yeah, exactly.

[00:51:24] So I have not seen Callie Reese in anything else. I don't know anything about her as an actor or her history, other than that she's a professional boxer as well. Yeah, that's super cool. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you go on her Wikipedia page.

[00:51:42] She's only got four things in her filmography, including this. OK. So it sounds like her first thing was in 2021. So she's just getting into it. Right. Is she? Well, it's like she's following in the footsteps of who is on Mandalorian. Oh, we don't talk about her anymore. Right.

[00:52:01] But it's an interesting crossover, right? Coming in from being in the world of physical sports, you know, fighting sports and over into television and movies. I think she's doing a heck of a job. I am really enjoying what she's giving us in this character.

[00:52:19] I don't know how you're reacting to her portrayal or what you. Yeah, I thought she was good. I wouldn't have known that she was not already an established actor, except for the fact that I didn't know her. You know, she was doing a good job acting.

[00:52:31] It wasn't like sometimes I'm just going to say it. The Rock. I watched The Rock and I'm like, you are an athlete who is just doing the school play right now. Even though he's done so much, I just feel like he's always just The Rock.

[00:52:46] He's not playing himself or he's playing. Yeah, which is fine. Like, he's fine for what he is. And some people do that. Enjoy him. You know, in what's the new Jumanji movie? Like, great. He's great in that. But this isn't that this is she's actually acting.

[00:53:00] You could tell, which is great. I think she's doing a great job and she's going to toe to toe with Jodie Foster literally toe to toe and holding her own. Right. It's got to be a little bit intimidating, you know, to be acting alongside somebody like that.

[00:53:13] So, well, we look some things that we learn. We learned that Navarro is a badass, right? She puts that guy down without too many problems.

[00:53:24] And I think another little clue that got dropped and I don't know how significant it is, but the plant manager was saying that the crab season has been shitty and it's only getting worse. So I don't know if that's a general thing or a specific thing.

[00:53:40] And then this issue, I believe and I'm not well versed in it, but I believe that that domestic violence is a serious issue for Alaskan residents and for native women as well. I think there's a big thing there.

[00:53:57] So I think they're touching on that a little bit and we'll see how much they skirt in and around that overall topic. I'm sure you stick around at home more than a lot of other areas during the winter. And it's dark out.

[00:54:12] It's a hard place to live, right? Like there's a lot. What do I want to say? You know, people are really living in a frontier type of place. So I don't. Yeah. You know, there's not a lot of I don't know. It's a lot of hard.

[00:54:32] You've got to be hard to be there. And I think that attracts certain types of characters and as well allows for society to live. Yeah, there's a way where it's I can't explain it.

[00:54:49] I don't think I have the right language to talk about what life is like there. But that it's a problem is, I think, an issue that the show is highlighting slightly.

[00:55:00] So when Navarro is talking to the victim or and she's talking to the auntie, I guess, is a way to refer to the other woman that is helping the woman that got hit. She says, who's your Akka?

[00:55:15] And I couldn't find anything on the phonetic spelling or just by listening to what an Akka is. So maybe that'll be something that comes up a little bit later. But I couldn't just doing some basic Googling without the subtitles. I couldn't find anything.

[00:55:30] And then lastly, the woman, the victim, she was missing two fingers. I don't know if you noticed that. And they talked about the hazards of the job being in a processing plant. She was missing her pinky and ring fingers. Yikes.

[00:55:44] Yeah, I'm sure that is a big hazard to work. Yeah. It's not as fun as the I love Lucy scene with the chocolates. It's not all fun and games like that. Not at all. Not at all. All right.

[00:55:58] We cut scenes and we go back to the research station where police chief Elizabeth Danvers, played by Jodie Foster, catches up with her fellow officers prior and prior, the elder and the younger.

[00:56:11] And we learn more about our principal cast getting a tour of the station and we learn more about our central mystery. And all of this is set to magpie by the unthanks. That's the name of the band.

[00:56:26] I don't know if there's gonna be a Spotify list, but my Shazam was in overdrive when I was watching this episode, picking up all these songs. Fair enough. Yeah, I like her from the get go. I liked Liz Danvers. I think she's a cool character.

[00:56:40] I think Jodie Foster is doing a great job playing this no nonsense seasoned cop who's got a little bit of a chip on her shoulder. A little bit. I'm a sucker for that kind of character. It's a really fun archetype.

[00:56:54] I wish she didn't Sherlock later because that took away from that, I thought. I just want her to be. I don't know. I don't know what I want her to be. Show me what you want me to see her as. True detective. Right. Well, we can.

[00:57:09] We certainly know that she is tenacious and smart and professional. She really knows what she's talking about. She figures out the hidden compartment, right?

[00:57:20] When the other guys kind of gave up on it and actually tried to put a blanket over the television that didn't really work very well. So I think they're telling us that she's tenacious here. I found it interesting that she couldn't find her glasses, but then later does.

[00:57:35] And then later, her glasses or she actually uses the camera uses her glasses for us to focus in on some clues when she's looking at some photos later. So I thought that was an interesting device.

[00:57:49] So they set it up right here where she's like, I can't find my glasses. And then when she solves the case, she's like, oh, look, here they are. And I am Sherlock. Well, you see, Watson mayonnaise. Yes, exactly. More than a couple of days.

[00:58:06] The town of Enos, Alaska is a fictional town. I thought it was Enos. Enos, Enos, Enos. Got two N's. I'm going to say Enos. Enos. That's fine. Enos.

[00:58:18] But there is an Enos, Texas, which is not far from the Louisiana border, which is and I don't think Enos has a hard tie back. But Texas and Alaska have hard tie backs to the rust coal character from season one.

[00:58:35] So, again, they're dropping some Easter eggs and little been whether it's just fun connective tissue or it's actually functional. We don't know yet. But yeah, Enos, Texas is about three hours from Shreveport and not sure how much the season. I can't remember where all season one took place.

[00:58:51] But anyway, interesting little connection. Also, the patch for Enos has polar bears on it. And of course, we get some polar bear connectivity later on. There's a polar bear in the opening credits and we have a couple of encounters with polar bears.

[00:59:08] There's a photo of a polar bear in that big spiral of photographs that she's looking at. Then obviously Navarro encounters one later and Danvers has a one eyed polar bear stuffy as well. We'll have to wait till next week on Lost to find out what they're doing there.

[00:59:22] Exactly. I swear to God, it's so. It was so lost and it was also so White Walker. I was like, well, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I can see a polar bear without thinking of Lost, though.

[00:59:35] I think that's just like the most iconic thing from it. Exactly. Hank Pryor and his son, Peter Pryor. They were a couple of interesting characters. It took me a while to realize what the actual relationship was there.

[00:59:49] I can see why you were maybe scratching your head a little bit after your first watch. Yeah. Whoa. Just took a little bit for everything to click, but I think it did eventually. Yeah, for sure. Okay. A couple of clues in and around Salal Station.

[01:00:09] The first thing I want to shout out, which I got really excited for, was when Danvers is by the TV screen. There is, if you look and I posted this in the notebook, there is a picture of her. One of the video cassettes that's there.

[01:00:29] I'm pretty sure it's a video cassette, not a DVD of the John Carpenter movie, The Thing. And then in another shot, they move it so that it's on a different shelf so that the video cassette box stays in the frame.

[01:00:44] And it's very clearly in the shot so that we can see it without question. So who moved it? Well, it doesn't matter. Who moved it was the props department. Well, you know what I mean though. No, no, no. I think it's a continuity error on production. Oh, really?

[01:01:03] Okay. But not an error in as much as they wanted to make sure that we really saw it because I don't think you see it the first time very clearly. But in the second shot at the end of that little sequence, it's very clearly there.

[01:01:14] So nothing spooky supernatural is moving. And I think the props department just moved it so that we could see it in the shot.

[01:01:21] But that's very clearly an homage and maybe just a fun Easter egg to what happens in that movie, The Thing, which is all about an Arctic research station and where shit goes wrong.

[01:01:33] You know, I've never watched The Thing, but I did listen to Proper Lee Howard's review of it. And that was a lot of fun. So I get the vibe of The Thing. Exactly. Okay. So the – well, I'll get to this part later. There's a mission statement.

[01:01:51] So I took a photograph of that and I decoded the text so we could – if somebody wants to read what the mission statement of the Salal Station is, that it will be available as well.

[01:01:59] Obviously, they've been around for 18 years doing core sampling and looking at the microbiology and looking for the source of life. We get the whiteboard where the director of the station, Anders Lund, was working on some data in the earlier montage.

[01:02:18] But then he's written on there, we are all dead. So – See, this is what confuses me. And I guess this is, again, another question raised where you're like, you're not going to give me any answers this episode, are you? Right. None.

[01:02:32] Which is if the lights went out, how did he write that and when did he write it? Did he have time? Like, I just don't – I wonder if like he was the last one alive.

[01:02:43] Is this the kind of show where like we're going to get a scene at the end where they play what actually happened? Yeah, that's interesting. I don't know if they'll do that, if they will actually unravel all of that or not. Yeah.

[01:02:54] Because sometimes shows will do that, but I don't know if that's this kind of show. If the lights just went out momentarily and like a generator kicked back in after that or if there was some emergency lighting turned on, yeah, that's an interesting thought.

[01:03:08] Yeah, and also I guess the lights were on when the delivery man came. That's true. So maybe they just flickered momentarily. Yeah. On that whiteboard, there are some coordinates that are circled and some altitudes and stuff.

[01:03:22] And I looked those up as well and that ends up placing you somewhere in Greenland. So I have no idea how that set of coordinates relates to Alaska because they're obviously very different. Did they shoot it in Greenland or was it Iceland? They shot it in Greenland.

[01:03:37] OK. Maybe they just made a mistake. They were like, where are we right now? Let's just put that in there. Exactly. That could very well be what it is. That's a fun nod to being that they did shoot in Greenland. What did you make of Hank Pryor?

[01:03:54] I think he's an asshole for later in the episode. But yeah, he really is not a great guy. He does not want to do his job.

[01:04:05] We all know someone like that, but he's certainly one of those people who just doesn't want to do his job for any reason. And he's really rude to Danvers and I don't like that. And he's not very nice to his son either.

[01:04:17] Now, he's got quite a chip on his shoulder. I mean, you know, actually saying, you know, telling your boss like, are you sure you really want to do that? That doesn't seem like a good idea. And she completely takes him apart.

[01:04:28] So I think so. I think that he is a very good foil for Liz. I'm going to call her Carol again. I feel it coming. But anyway, it's like a sneeze coming on. Yeah. So Miss Marvel, sorry, Captain Marvel, Liz Danvers, she is like the boss.

[01:04:50] Like if you think about them as like two different kinds of bosses, she's the boss who's hard to impress, but her approval feels so good. And he's the boss who you'll never impress and he will take credit for whatever you do.

[01:05:04] Nice. Yeah, that's a good like they're both kind of dick sometimes. Yeah. But in very different ways. Yeah. Yeah. They're just one can be charming and one is an asshole. And later, Danvers totally guilt trips Peter in.

[01:05:23] She's like, did I hear a no? Oh, that must be a connection. Right. Maybe something like she totally is guilt tripping him. Right. Right. And he does totally go for it. So I think you're right. It's same thing with oh, who who who funds them?

[01:05:35] I don't know. Government grants. Are you asking me like, you know, a lot of a lot of snide snarks and things like that. Totally. But it's not mean spirited.

[01:05:46] You know what I mean? It's all like for the cause and like trying to make them better cops and whatnot. You know, I think that's why I'm going to keep talking about this.

[01:05:56] And I hate that I'm going to keep talking about this. But the Mayo thing and the tongue thing, I think that's why those scenes bothered me. Because those felt very well, you see, like she suddenly launches into like a monologue about it almost.

[01:06:09] Right. And that felt very out of character for her character in the short term. I've known her. Interesting. Interesting. Where typically she would just snark off.

[01:06:19] There would be snarky comment or something. Yeah. Like she she I feel like this character would have been like, well, maybe the cold cuts. But Mayo goes Mayo goes bad in a couple of days. So that's what we got. You know? Right.

[01:06:30] And I think that that's instead of being more in character. I think they're signaling to us that she is consummate professional. Right. She's well seasoned, well experienced. She uses a lot of search and rescue terminology.

[01:06:46] She says, OK, well, let's mark this as the LKP and the POA, which are last known position and probability of area. And yes, I did go on the search and rescue websites to look up these acronyms.

[01:06:57] Yeah. But she's they're signaling to us very clearly that she is smart, seasoned, tenacious and, you know, on top of this sort of sarcasm and emotionally reactive in some ways.

[01:07:15] But show don't tell. That's my exact line with that is do it in a way that feels natural for the character to have the conversation. Don't do it in service of the plot. I'm sorry. Rather, don't do it in the service of showing me your clever writing.

[01:07:29] Right. And everywhere else, I think that was embedded in just in that one little scene was where she sort of took off her glasses and said, well, my dear Watson.

[01:07:37] I agree. Yeah. I think that overall, she was very, a very consistent character, which is why this scene felt so weird to me. You sort of out of place for you. Yeah, I get it. That makes sense.

[01:07:46] Now I'm done talking about it. I'm done complaining about it. That was, I thought the weakest part of the episode. I thought it was overall pretty good episode. So I'm done with my complaints.

[01:07:55] Fair enough. Well, now we cut over to a scene of Rose Agenou, I believe is how I pronounce this, played by Fiona Shaw. I'm not even going to try. No.

[01:08:04] Gutting what looks like a wolf while listening to the radio when something weird starts to happen and she sees an apparition of Travis. And of course, I'm sure you recall our illustrious Fiona Shaw.

[01:08:17] Of course. Of course. Mrs. Dudley is having a hard time in Alaska. Mrs. Dursley. I'm sorry. Well, and of course, I just got a lot of Andor vibes instantly the moment I saw her. Was that her too? Yeah.

[01:08:29] I never put together that she was Mrs. Dursley and what? Oh, wow. No, I only recognized her as Mrs. Dursley from Harry Potter. Oh my Lord. That's so funny. Now I see it. Yeah. I totally locked in on the Andor stuff. So that's funny.

[01:08:48] Well, I mean, I think Harry Potter movies are more like burned into my brain forever because I watched them so much as a kid. I understand. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Less so for me. So.

[01:08:58] Yeah, she's that's the first thing I saw her in. You know, I think I've only seen her in that and Andor and now this. She's a heavy hitter, like a stage actor and a lot of stuff. So they really are bringing in somebody in.

[01:09:10] And what we can infer so far from this episode about Rose is that she's got some weird. She's a nexus of the weird, I guess we could say. Yeah, that was the Travis thing was the first thing that actually made me scared in the episode. Really?

[01:09:28] That was the first thing that honestly freaked me out. The rest of the episode I was like, ah, been there, done that with TV. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. I watch horror movies with my wife. Like I'm like, that's nothing.

[01:09:40] But this like nothing terrifies me more than unhinged human beings. Hmm. And ghostly apparitions and strange, yeah, strange appearances. OK, cool. That's that's good to know. I thought it was weird to the the wolf body pulsed when the radio fuzzed out and just before Travis showed up.

[01:10:03] So, again, signaling that whatever phenomena is occurring here affects both biological and biological life as well as electronics. Yeah, that's cool. That's cool. Travis in his bare feet. So if he's an apparition, it doesn't matter, I think. Right. He doesn't care. He's cool.

[01:10:25] Right. Well, we don't know the rules of this world, but probably. There we go. Yeah, I'm sure he probably is an apparition, but I don't know if that's something that Fiona Shaw's character Rose is just seeing in her own mind or if that's something supernatural.

[01:10:42] She seemed pretty nonplussed by it. She was like, hey, Travis, like what's up now? I don't know. What what did you have in your head, Ken, or what did you guess about their relationship between Travis and Rose?

[01:10:54] I thought. Did you make any assumptions or maybe maybe a long lost son? That was thinking husband, maybe. Yeah, I was kind of thinking husband. He seemed he seemed a little young for the husband. But if he died a long time ago, then maybe, you know. Right. OK.

[01:11:11] Yet to be seen. All right. We catch up with Danvers back at the police station while the receptionist speaks in bad Spanish and Navarro is waiting for her in her office. They discuss the tongue. Danvers tells the younger prior to look for the file of any Masu Kota.

[01:11:33] Danvers gets an angry phone call. So this is the second interrupting phone call. We get a lot of interrupting phone calls in this episode. You know, this whole thing with Annie's case.

[01:11:44] I think that this is where I really liked the characterization of Danvers, because it showed me that she's someone who is all about the job in a way where she's not looking for glory or an added girl or anything.

[01:12:01] Because she doesn't tell Navarro that she looked into it, but she did. And the minute she gets a clue here, she goes, go reopen that case right now. You know, and I think that that shows that she really does care about the outcomes of these cases.

[01:12:16] That's interesting because later when they reencounter each other at the Salal station, I'm trying to find the quote here. I wrote it down. Navarro says, we carry them all.

[01:12:30] And Danvers says, no, we don't. Basically like I'm carrying the weight of this person's life and maybe not necessarily guilt, but some sort of social obligation to solve this mystery and to care for her memory.

[01:12:45] And Danvers is like, F no, we don't. I don't owe you know, we don't owe them anything kind of attitude. But yet by her very actions, as you said, she is all about the job and not doing it for glory.

[01:12:58] She's just trying to do it. So it's an interesting dimensionality to her character where she cares, but she doesn't care. Yeah. Yeah. I took it as an emotional weight of like we carry them all. Just like, you know, not even guilt, but just like a heaviness over you.

[01:13:15] Right. Right. Because you because you couldn't figure out what happened. And I think Danvers is someone who, you know, I don't even know. We know that she recently transferred in. Right.

[01:13:28] Yeah. So, yeah. Over the course of the episode in their interactions with them, we I think they established that Danvers came in after Annie Kaye was murdered. Yes. Yes. And then took over the case.

[01:13:45] Right. Well, and took over as you know, maybe she hired in, but then there's some indication that did she come there with somebody else or because of somebody else so that Leah, her quote unquote, sir, her daughter or her, you know, what is adopted mother?

[01:14:02] Or I'm not sure what the relation we don't know what the relationship is there. Mm hmm. But she stepped into some sort of social situation. That guy is now gone.

[01:14:10] Leah's father is now gone. So, yeah, I'm not sure the time span because Navarro has three hash marks on her sleeve. There's little yellow patches that you uniformed officers, whether military or police officers were aware that indicate length of service.

[01:14:32] And depending on the agency, if it's a civilian law enforcement agency, it's usually either three years or five years. And she's got three of those hash marks on her sleeve.

[01:14:43] So I don't know yet. I'm not clear yet on the time difference between when Annie Kaye was murdered and because later Peter says I used to you know, when he comes over to Liz's house, he reminisces on, oh, it was so much easier to babysit Leah when she didn't talk back to me.

[01:15:03] Mm hmm. So there's a definite time gap here. Yeah. Between when the murder happened and now. Yeah, I just don't know how long. But I I think what I'm getting at here is you ever watch Broadchurch? No, I never watched that. That's OK.

[01:15:22] I watched the first season and a half, and the first season is really good. I would recommend it. I didn't really watch past that.

[01:15:27] And I heard it kind of fell off. But the point is, the David Tennant detective moved to that town because he was running away from a town where he failed to solve a murder. Interesting. And I'm wondering if we're having a similar thing with Danvers here.

[01:15:47] And she's playing it off while Navarro is carrying it. And I know it's in the next scene, but you talk about the flashback. Yes. When she's walking towards a car. Is that because she was on a case that she couldn't solve and it's still on her mind?

[01:16:02] Interesting. Because those shoes in the flashback. Well, let's hold on to that. We'll come back around to it at the end. But I do like this theory because that would make Navarro and Danvers the same but different.

[01:16:15] They both care and one is carrying it on their shoulder and the other one is like... Because Danvers is running away from something or ashamed of something, but yet still can't help herself. She is as obsessive as Navarro is in some ways.

[01:16:33] So it makes them the same but different. Yeah, that's what I mean when I talk about she's kind of the curmudgeonly but lovable boss. Exactly. She's got a big heart. It's just buried.

[01:16:45] Right. Yeah, I like it. I like that theory. That's really good. Good pull on the broad church as well. I do my best to watch Libertas TV. There's one little thing in this scene where Navarro pulls off a group photo of something and she refers to daddy someone.

[01:17:03] And we don't have the subtitle so I couldn't hear what that was referencing. But they intentionally blur out most of that photo so we could only really see Danvers in the photo for just a brief second.

[01:17:15] So there's something funny going on there, maybe a character that we are going to meet later. So we'll keep an eye on that. All right, we jump scenes and we go to Danvers talking to a Gillard who called her on the phone.

[01:17:30] And they're under a sign that says Gillard Attorney at Law. So maybe that's that person who's giving Danvers an earful while Danvers' quote unquote daughter Leah looks on from the car. They argue about Leah.

[01:17:44] Then Danvers, they drive away and Danvers and Leah argue about Leah's life choices and they almost get T-boned by a drunk driver. Yeah, this definitely got my blood pumping. This scene with the that was that was the second scariest thing in this, right? Something mundane. Yeah, right.

[01:18:04] The mundane scares me so much more than the supernatural. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I love too after where Leah goes, she's 16 and Danvers is just thinking about the crash. She's like, what?

[01:18:22] Like, it's so teenager to be just like still in your own thing right after a life changing, possibly life changing incident. Right, right. Yeah, it's crazy. How old do you think Leah is? Let's just get it out of the way.

[01:18:37] She's got to be 18 I'm guessing if statutory like if Danvers is really upset about it in that regard. Yeah, this person's 15 or 16. She's got to be maybe 18 I'm guessing.

[01:18:50] So I did look up the age of consent in Alaska, which I hate that that's in my Google search history now. But hey, we're the warhounds. It's OK. Exactly. So yeah, so it's 16. So she she's playing the line right there. She could be 35 and probably be fine. Right.

[01:19:08] Like that's it. But I think that she's like 18, 19, 20. She's got to be. Yeah. Across that legal threshold of being tried as an adult, I guess you would say. Now, the problem is you're still a minor at 16. You can't be making pornographic material and that can't be distributed.

[01:19:26] And so that's where the crime probably is. I see. And people are overlooking it. But, you know, and and I'm sure there's a million nude photos exchanged between teenagers every day. But, you know, it's still it's still icky.

[01:19:43] And depending on how old Leah is, that's some serious penalties if she gets caught with that. And being the ward of the chief of police. Right. Yeah. And that's a very serious violation. Right. Right. And interesting, the generation they're setting up character here and their generational attitudes. Right.

[01:20:04] Like, what's the big deal? It's just some a sex video on her phone. So what? And Danvers is horrified by this. She's like, you have no idea where that can go. And I also think she not only is she rude about culture and Native or Native Alaskan culture.

[01:20:22] But I think she's also a little bit homophobic here. Like, I can't deal with the fact that you're gay, that that I had to watch you in a sex video. Right. She was react. She really had a hard time formulating the words around that. OK, yeah.

[01:20:38] I actually thought that they perhaps had both people be women to soften it a little bit for the viewer. Because I think if you had an older man and a young and a 16 year old girl, that would be good.

[01:20:51] The viewers would immediately hate Leah if she were a man. And so I mean, maybe it's a critique on like, maybe we shouldn't have double standards for that. Like, just don't don't do that. But I mean, look, I get it if she's 18 and the other girl is 16.

[01:21:09] That's pretty normal. Like they went to high school together. It's you know, it's not out of out of nowhere. But right. Yeah. You can't be making videos like that.

[01:21:17] I mean, I was just I was thinking that Danvers, this all also goes to Danvers being a bit of a curmudgeon like she in and a bit of older, you know, just having an older generation, a difference in opinion about cultural norms from a generational gap that wide.

[01:21:32] So now let's ask something here, though. Why did Gillard have to show Danvers the video? I think that was more of why Danvers was upset. She's like, I don't want to see that. It's it's.

[01:21:47] And she's trying to walk this parental line at the same time of like, I don't care. You know, I don't care that you were what you were doing, but that I had to get involved in your business. That's the problem. That's where you need to curb yourself.

[01:22:02] You know? Yeah. Don't involve me in your messes like that sort of. Yeah, it's it was a weird vibe. Right. Yeah. And in one second is like, well, you don't know where that's going to go and you could get in trouble. And that seems very parental.

[01:22:16] And then all the very all of a sudden she goes, well, but I don't care. Just don't get me involved. It's like, I don't know. She's toeing this line between a parent and a guardian.

[01:22:29] And then later we we get some more information about that when they when they have a conversation. So yeah, yeah. I wouldn't say information more. Another mystery. Right? Yeah. Like you're not my mom. Basically this flashback.

[01:22:45] So the shoes that the person we were wearing were white tennis shoes and they were not typically a shoe that a police officer would wear. And the pants were like a gray khaki jean pants. And the grass was green.

[01:23:03] And we just started to see what might have been a bunch of debris.

[01:23:07] So I was wondering if as she's walking up to Stacy, who crashed her car there, if the crunch of the glass brought her back to a previous situation where something traumatic happened involving a car crash.

[01:23:24] And I don't wonder if it's not related to why Danvers is with Leah and her mom, but not her mom. Hmm. Yeah. Maybe that's that's discovering the father's car crash. Yeah, that's what I'm wondering. That or it's a murder she couldn't solve.

[01:23:44] Yours is probably the more likely theory, to be honest. I still think she's running away from stuff, though. I still agree with you on that.

[01:23:50] OK, we cut over to Navarro, who's waiting for the shift change outside the Silver Sky mine where she talks to Ryan, who asks if there is a break in the case referring to Kotak. They get back to the company housing where they discuss the past.

[01:24:06] Ryan asks Navarro if she believes in God. Navarro gets an interrupting phone call. It's like the third interrupting phone call in the story. What was the last time you made a cold call? I did one. I did it the other day, actually. Strangely enough.

[01:24:23] OK, I was calling for some references on a contractor. So I felt weird. I felt weird doing it. I felt like, like, hi, I'm calling for this person that I know your first name and I have your phone number.

[01:24:35] And like, I kind of have to ask you something. Yeah, yeah, it was weird. It was definitely weird. And like, it's one thing if you're like calling a business or something like that, you know, they're expecting calls.

[01:24:44] But like calling a person is like, oh man, you better unless unless it's like really like you have to like what you just said, like calling a contractor or something. You do a text first. Yeah, yeah. You always do a text first.

[01:24:58] Hey, you got a minute so I can call? It's it's it's so weird because that's changed in both of our lifetimes. Right. Is you used to be able to just call me like, hey, is this person there?

[01:25:08] And during the pandemic, when we moved out and we were staying at a relative's house and they don't have very good cell service where they lived. And so there was a central line.

[01:25:18] And so when we were talking to our relative, we get a phone call and like if I picked it up, I'd be like, oh, hey, how you doing? We'd like chit chat for a little while.

[01:25:26] And like, oh, you know, here's my wife, you know, and like we don't do that anymore. You don't pick up the phone and have a random conversation with somebody and reestablish those social bonds. So we we commented on that at the time.

[01:25:39] So, yeah, my my my dad inherited the house from his parents. And after my parents split, he moved back into that house because my grandma had passed away anyway. So he moved there, but he kept the landline that they had that was next to the basement door.

[01:25:56] So you had to take the cord past the basement door and shut it to get any kind of privacy on the phone. Perfect. Yeah, it's just super fun. OK, back to the story. Yes, back to the story. The point is they're getting a lot of phone calls.

[01:26:10] I don't I don't know if I've ever gotten this many phone calls that aren't spam ever. Right. Very. Yeah, no, they and it's a little theme in this. It's a little sub theme in this thing because Pete gets one. Navarro gets one and Danvers gets one.

[01:26:26] So kind of interesting anyway. So we talk with Ryan, who is the brother of Annie Kaye, and we learn about her protesting activities outside the mine and how potentially that that was a part of what had played a part in her murder.

[01:26:45] And then Navarro was asking if Ryan knew if Annie had any Salal connections, which primes the pump for the clue later on with the parka. So it's sort of a little bit of an in-story exposition here. We're just learning more about the world and the connectivities.

[01:27:01] Yeah. And then we learn about Navarro having served in the military. And in the voiceover of her talking to her comrade who has half their head missing, there's a the only thing that I could make out was somebody whispering the word listen. Yeah.

[01:27:20] So and that was relative to Navarro being asked if she believed in God or not. And I think this goes into this questions of existentialism and cosmic horror genre stuff that that is a stamp of the True Detective franchise. Yep. So yeah, it was interesting.

[01:27:40] Again, I have no answers from this. None, none. All just seating mystery. So that's fine. That's fine. David, what do you think about taking a quick break? Sounds like a good plan. When we get back, we'll meet back up with Navarro. And we're back. What's next, David?

[01:28:11] Navarro goes to a hotel and meets with Officer Cooper of the NS Police Department who reports that Jules Navarro, we learn is Navarro's sister, was worried that somebody was in her room. Navarro tries to reassure Jules and then Jules reassures Navarro.

[01:28:29] The song that was playing here was the Base 10 by Ola Smit. I can't pronounce this name. S-Z-M-I-D-T. I'm not even going to try that one. There's a lot of tough names tonight.

[01:28:42] Exactly. Interestingly about Ola is that she's a sound therapist as well as a musician and composer and all of that kind of stuff. So I thought it was interesting that this song was overlaying this connectivity around Jules, who's obviously having some sort of ongoing chronic condition.

[01:29:05] I don't know if you had any theories. I was thinking maybe schizophrenia, but I'm not sure. Yeah, maybe. I couldn't tell from what we saw. We're not psychiatrists. Only when we're trying to diagnose Joel Miller from The Last of Us. Exactly. He's a monster.

[01:29:25] I think the interesting thing about schizophrenia that made me interested in it was that it's not something that you can test for. You can't know until the symptoms start to occur. I would think that Jules is around the right age for those symptoms to start appearing.

[01:29:42] And then there's this question of, you've got to be good. It seemed to me to be like, make sure you take your medications kind of conversation. She was bracing her to take her medications.

[01:29:53] And then there's this conversation about regret for moving there and fears of becoming their mother. Just a lot more seeding mystery. I couldn't analyze this if I tried. Right, right. It's a lot of exposition. It's a lot of in-story exposition, I think is what's happening here.

[01:30:11] All right, back to the police station. The Younger Prior and the chief review the Salal funding sources when they're interrupted by Stacy screaming from the jail cell. And this is where we learn a little bit about the Elder Prior's potential past relationship with Stacy.

[01:30:28] And we learn about Natasha, who's coming from Vladivostok. And that Hank Prior has a whole bunch of case files at his house, which causes Peter to go later to steal some.

[01:30:41] So I think, I don't know if you picked up anything in here, but it just seemed more like character exposition stuff. And yeah, I mean, this was clearly I could analyze the cops all day because they're like the most interesting characters in the show for me.

[01:30:55] Which is just you can see that Hank Prior just does not want to do his job, just absolutely could not be bothered to do his job. And he's like, I'm doing us all a favor. I'm letting this woman go.

[01:31:09] And she obviously is not in her right mind and will be a menace to society if she goes out right now. But he just doesn't want to listen to her. He doesn't want to do his job.

[01:31:20] Right. And this weird thing about withholding the files, what is he doing with doing that? Yeah. Yeah. That's just very strange. He's a suspect now. Yeah. He's very sus, as the kids would say.

[01:31:33] All right. We get a little bit of a combined scene here. It's easier to talk about these two together where we meet the younger Prior's family, his wife Kayla and their son Darwin. Darwin has drawn an interesting picture of somebody whose eyes are bleeding.

[01:31:47] Chief Danvers interrupts an intimate moment between the two young folk. And then the younger Prior goes off to his father's house to acquire the missing files that Danvers was looking for. And then he takes them over to Danvers' house.

[01:32:01] So a lot of interrupting phone calls here, as I mentioned earlier. I know. I know. Again, who's who's picking up the phone in the middle of that? Seriously, right? Yeah. And Kayla was not happy. I think she was in the right. Like, dude, you're off the clock.

[01:32:21] Mm hmm. Just that's exactly what my wife would say to say to me. Like, I just like you are off the clock, sir. But I guess it's it's probably a different culture where you're like one of three police officers in this town.

[01:32:36] Mm hmm. OK. All right. Maybe we need to you know, she needs backup or something. Could be an emergency. But she does seem like she calls for anything.

[01:32:45] It's not just emergencies like she's calling him to look at a case file that he could very easily get the next day. Well, young Matt Damon here. I don't know that the actor has a lot of Matt Damon energy.

[01:32:58] I don't know if you you caught that at all, but he did. You look very much like how I like those apples. But yeah, exactly. That's exactly the scene that I was thinking of when when I saw him walk over there.

[01:33:08] She you know, and later on when he's at her house, she she's she's she's working with him to teach him and to show him the ropes and to include him in things.

[01:33:21] Even though she's being gruff about it or guilt tripping about it, she's not doing it without payoff. So I think that's where he does answer the call is because, well, if I didn't care about my job, I wouldn't.

[01:33:33] But I kind of do care about my job. And this boss is actually like learning me the ropes. Right. So he feels obligated in some way, which she's taking advantage of in a big way.

[01:33:43] So, yeah, I wonder if he's just so attracted to her leadership style the way I'm describing, like, you know, he wants to impress her. Like even you see, he kind of smirks when he goes, I will get you the information on their funding.

[01:33:59] Right. Like he right. He wants to win her approval maybe because he never got dads. Right. Right. And we don't know where his mom is or why she's no longer why Frank and Hank and her, wherever she is. It's Stacy.

[01:34:16] Oh, no. Even it's interesting, though, because when he's over at Hank's house and there's the scene of where he's like, let me see what you took. They're both very, they're both dressed very similarly in the sort of drab brown shirt and sort of drab brown pants.

[01:34:36] And they really are tall and skinny sort of. So, yeah, he's not cut far from Hank. Maybe Hank was clever like that, but he's become jaded and uninterested in his job, clearly. More interested in Natasha from Vladivostok. OK, all right. I'm buying.

[01:34:58] Do you think do you think he knew that Pete threw the box out the window? I think he thought I don't think so, actually, because I think you don't think so about it. OK, no, I don't think so. I think he did. Really?

[01:35:14] Yeah, I kind of think he did. But then that case file, that box of files, those were hidden. Yeah, that one box was put. All the other ones were stacked around. So what's Hank doing with putting that box of files there?

[01:35:30] He clearly knows something, right? Like he's this is going to be one where I would put money on that. He's not the killer, but he knows who did it. Or he's yeah, he's he's he's protecting some some other interest. Right. Either passively or indirectly.

[01:35:49] Yeah. And in trying to do it for the good of the community, just move on. Let that one bear. You know, let's just bury that one and just move on. Yeah. Well, she was protesting the mine, right? Which is probably run by a large business.

[01:36:00] And maybe he got some money to not look into the case very much. Interesting. Mess with some evidence. Right. Is, hey, she's causing us problems at this mine. We are going to make it go away. You're going to look the other way. Right.

[01:36:13] And he did not anticipate Captain Marvel coming in to solve the problem. Exactly. Or Navarro, you know, really not letting go of it either. Right. So and yeah, and he could use the flood and holding those case files back

[01:36:31] in a kind of smokescreen cover like, well, that's reasonably legitimate. Right. We got to move these files somewhere safe. And I'm just going to take this one and stick it somewhere extra where it's really out of the way. Everybody will just forget about this and we'll move on.

[01:36:45] How are they not digitized? You know, it's a lot of money to digitize documentation. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I feel like the smallest places have digital documents now. Yeah. Interesting. It's a good point. Yeah. All right.

[01:37:02] We're going to do a quick cut to Rose and Travis, and then we're going to go back to Peter bringing the files over to Danvers and some quick exposition over a bite to eat. I think I mentioned earlier that Pete babysat for Leah.

[01:37:16] So we've got some history there. And then we've got Annie Kaye, who's a midwife, activist and protester. Yeah. And also, I just want to say if Pete babysat for Leah, she's clearly not like 30 years old.

[01:37:30] So we're in the realm of a plausible relationship that arose in like high school. Exactly. Totally agree. Navarro was on the scene, was the first on the scene. And we learn a little bit about the murder, about the number of times

[01:37:47] Annie was stabbed an unidentified star shaped object that was like a sheriff's badge. Oh, what? Oh, like a sheriff's badge. Oh, I don't know. The tongue missing, never recovered. Now, something to note, and I haven't taken a photo. No, I did take a photo of this yet,

[01:38:06] but I wonder if I've posted it yet. That in one of the photos. Yeah. I don't have it on up yet. One of the photos that is seen there, there's a, it's a picture of a stab wound and just above it.

[01:38:24] And I don't know if you remember this, there looks like to be a tat, partial, a partial view of a tattoo of a line, possibly a spiral. I don't know if you caught that.

[01:38:35] I did not, but I believe you. Okay. Now I'm going to have to see the picture. Yeah. You know what? I have, I have not yet gotten around to posting that one or getting that photo overloaded. Anyway, this is for season one fans. If you know, you know,

[01:38:52] this is a, and again, I don't think it's going to be structural, but I think it's going to be something that adds to the overall mystique of the show itself. So we'll see how it works, but that's definitely a strong signal to season one fans of connectivity.

[01:39:09] That's cool. I like when shows do that little nods. Yeah. And we're definitely going to see that again later because in one of the publicity photos, they released something not the tattoo, but of something else. So the name Kate McKittrick is dropped.

[01:39:26] We don't know anything about who that person is. And Dan versus wearing a Minnesota Viking sweatshirt. I don't know if that means anything, but she gets a text message and she plays it off as a fantasy football league. Well, maybe, maybe I mean, look,

[01:39:40] people like football teams from places they aren't, but I think she's of the generation where you generally followed your geography. Maybe that's telling us she's from out of state. Yeah, I think that's a, I think that's kind of what I signaled it as,

[01:39:54] as well. So but then she plays off the text message saying that it was a fantasy football related, but there's some speculation that maybe Danvers doesn't always sleep alone at night. We could say maybe she uses some apps. She uses some apps to to share in the,

[01:40:19] in the wonder of human intimate relationships. I don't know. I'm trying to be silly. Am I glad I got married before the apps? Right. Or I rather I got together with my wife before the apps.

[01:40:30] I think Tinder had just come out right before I met my wife and I never had it. And I, I still, it's a flex to me that I can go on the app store, see Tinder on the front page and it says get instead of download.

[01:40:43] That's, that's a flex to me. Nice. Very cool. Horrible to use. Right, right, right. Not, I'm not, it's, it's not that I'm gloating. It's that I feel sorry that that is what dating seems to be, have been reduced to. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah.

[01:41:00] The human connection, the human connection is a hard thing to manufacture. It can be. Yeah, it was. Yeah. You're always out trying to beat new people, friends and restaurants and bars and concerts. And yeah,

[01:41:14] one time I wrote down my friend's number on the back of a CVS receipt and handed it to a woman for him. And you just don't get that anymore. Yeah, exactly. I don't think she called him, but yeah, you, you,

[01:41:25] I try random pictures on the subway. That was shocking. One time I like, I turned off my, my, my airdrop very quickly after that. Oh, is that what, Oh no. Yeah. Somebody airdropped me a photo on the subway. I was like, Whoa,

[01:41:37] my gosh. My gosh. It was pretty shocking. Anyway. Speaking of intimate relationships, Navarro stops in for a quickie with Eddie Kovac and the song rescue me by the unions plays while they well, I guess Kovac's homebrew brings all the boys to his yard.

[01:41:58] Yeah, this was one of those, like, I, I have no problem with sex position if it's done well. This was not done well. This was just, well, we're on HBO. We're going to have a sex scene. Right. And I was like, eh,

[01:42:12] I could do without like it didn't add anything. I thought, I think for me it added that Navarro intensity of character for Navarro. And I think that's what it added to the, to the, to me, not like we need to do much more of that.

[01:42:29] Cause they've really shown us that she's a strong capable person. Right. So she brought out the boxer a little bit. Exactly. We get to see some of her tats and she is fit and prime. She is, she looks like a boxer, which she sure does.

[01:42:44] And she makes that uniform look really good. Like when she walked in that first time in her uniform, I was like, dang, I would not want to mess with this person. Oh yeah. I don't, I will be very nice to her if I ever meet her. Absolutely.

[01:42:55] Because I don't want to get hit. All right. A quick scene with Danvers and Leah talking in the bathroom and then Navarro commits some criminal mischief on the shit bird from earlier. And this is where we learn about Danvers being not Leah's mom.

[01:43:13] Yeah. Yeah. It was really sad, honestly, of, of because Danvers didn't say like, no, you are my daughter. It was, she just kind of stayed silent and that's, that's where, so I I've known people in my life who were like this, you know,

[01:43:29] the strong silent tape who actually have a big heart, but they don't realize that their silence can often cause pain because it feels very withholding. Right. And that's, that's what I love about this character is that she's complex and she's

[01:43:43] you know, you have this, you have before where she, I think she calls the Stacy a fucking bitch when she, when she arrests her and like slamming. She really loses her cool with Stacy too on multiple.

[01:43:54] I kind of forgive her for it because she always almost killed and her daughter was almost killed and that she's a police officer. So you need to be able to in control of your emotions. I agree with that. I agree with that.

[01:44:06] I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I would say if she had showed up to the scene and active like that, I would be very angry with her. God. Okay.

[01:44:18] I'm willing to cut her a little bit of slack because her child was put in danger and that's a big deal. That's a big deal. And I don't think any of us can predict how we're going to react to that until we're in that situation.

[01:44:28] It's interesting too that you, you're mentioning this and this goes into this thing of Danvers caring but not showing that she cares because the first thing that she actually does is she not showing that she cares because the first thing that she asks Leah is like,

[01:44:39] are you okay? Yeah. And she checks in with Leah to make sure that she's settled before she gets out of the car. Right. And then here she says we're doing Christmas and I'm going to cook. So she's putting,

[01:44:49] she's trying to put on a lot of the motions and create a stable environment for Leah to grow up in. But at the same time she's not. So that's a really, like you said, it's there's a lot of nuance going on with this character.

[01:45:03] I think that that Christmas will go as well as the bears Christmas with fishes. Yeah. Go see, go, go watch the bear if you haven't watched the bear yet because that's the best Christmas episode ever. One of the best episodes of television ever produced,

[01:45:20] I would say ever goes in the top. I mean, there's a lot of good TV episodes, but it would definitely go in a, in a top whatever list, top 50 list. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Yeah. And then this is where we also learn about a drunk driver incident,

[01:45:34] which goes into my theory about that was her flashback. Yeah. But I thought one thing that was fun was when Navarro stole the sponge bomb toothbrush in the background, there's a sound of a toothbrush vibrating as the scene transitions from

[01:45:53] Navarro and Kravik over to Danvers brushing her teeth. So they directly connect the two characters and the two scenes by using the sound of the toothbrush. It doesn't matter that it's a toothbrush, that's just circumstantial to what happened,

[01:46:08] but that's how they are establishing the connectivity between these two characters and, and that there, you know, there are similarities in the differences, but yet they're, they're intimately connected nonetheless. Yeah. So cool. All right. Some spooky stuff happens.

[01:46:26] Danvers is woken up by a child's hand and we hear the, a child's voicing mommy and, and Danvers says something like hold in. I couldn't quite make it out. Yeah. We need those subtitles. Yeah. Maybe the name of the child.

[01:46:42] And then she wakes up and then she looks down and she picks up a one eyed polar bear stuffy. And then, um, uh, oh, I'm sorry. I've got Danvers here in the thing. It's actually Navarro. Navarro is driving and talking to somebody on the phone,

[01:47:00] working the case and the call is interrupted by static and a voice saying she's awake. And then Navarro slams on the brakes as she almost runs into a real one eyed polar bear. So do you think the man in black or Jacob is responsible?

[01:47:18] I was going with the terror with Jared Harris there cause there's a polar bear. Well, I shouldn't spoil that, but yeah, what the hell? It's a, it's a long over season. Um, there's a lot more to it than just that,

[01:47:28] but a polar bear figures in that one as well. So they're everywhere. They're for some reason, some reason for some reason. Okay. Uh, so yeah, more spooky stuff we get. Um, yeah. Danvers, a child who she seems to maybe know. And then the, the one eyed polar bear.

[01:47:46] So we're keeping an eye on those things. All right. We then move into a detective's montage set to state of the art. A E I O U by Jim James. And, um, we learn more about Annie Kaye through the photographs that we see.

[01:48:03] We get, there is a picture of a polar bear in this, uh, series of photographs. There's a lot of photographs from the Solol research station. And then we get the major clue that connects Annie Kaye to the Solol research station, which is the photo of a parka,

[01:48:23] an off colored parka, um, and that has a patch ripped off of it. So, uh, I'm going to put a pin in that and we'll come back right back to it. I just wanted to point out that, um,

[01:48:37] this is where Danvers uses her glasses to show us the clues. The camera uses her glasses. So we're sort of put in her point of view through her glasses. And remember at the beginning,

[01:48:47] they set up the thing where she couldn't find your glasses, but she had them all along. So interesting thing. Um, and then one other note is at the end when we get the final shot of this scene, did you notice how the photographs were arrayed below her?

[01:49:05] No, see, I wasn't looking for spirals. That's the problem. There was a spot. Yeah. They were a spiral of photographs. And that's a season. I seen in your outline. That's the only reason I used to work. Yeah. So that's a, that's a, yeah.

[01:49:17] So this spiral design thing is, is playing a part here. Um, so let's talk about the coat. Did you, are you all good with the coat? You're you're clear on the connection. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was the coat. That is at least the same one,

[01:49:35] the same model if you will, as a, as the, the Annie who died a few years ago. Now here's the two cool things that they've done in the show. First off at the very beginning when the guy's having the seizure,

[01:49:51] I'm pretty sure he's wearing that coat and I got a picture of it. We can't see the patch, but we can see him wearing the coat and it looks like it's the same color. And I'm pretty sure it's that's the same guy. Okay.

[01:50:03] Then when Danvers is doing the walk around in the Salal station, when she's in the lab, uh, after she looks at the ice cores or is it just before it's either before or after the ice cores on a whiteboard on in the room,

[01:50:22] there is a picture that is taped up onto the whiteboard and somebody has drawn with a marker and arrow. And on the whiteboard, they've wrote rare specimen and then the arrow points to somebody wearing a yellow pinkish colored parka that is different from the red parkas that

[01:50:45] everybody else is wearing. So they've, they've buried a two little clues into the, um, they've woven these two little clues into the overall, uh, show and they're there for people like me who have, what, what was the guy's name and foundation that I,

[01:51:03] when we were talking to Goyer about it, Markley. Markley. Yeah. I'm hunting Markleys here. You'll find them. You'll find them. I believe in you. I have, I have photographic evidence of my Markley here. I have no doubt in you, David,

[01:51:18] that you will find some random character in this season that is very clearly important to you that will disappear. And it will mean nothing whatsoever. All right. Well, we're closing in the end of the episode here. Uh,

[01:51:37] we jumped back to Tyler who leads Rose out onto the ice and then does some interpretive dance, which ultimately leads to the discovery of the missing men. Uh, I don't know if you made anything, uh, uh, from this scene here.

[01:51:49] It seems like they played him backwards in his dance to give them that weird motion. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Rose is in the middle of everything, so she's gotta be significant in some way. A hundred percent.

[01:52:04] I just have no idea how. And again, that's another one of those, like, you didn't give me any answers, but I guess we'll see. Yeah. Yeah. Spirit medium kind of thing here. All right. Uh, back at Sol,

[01:52:13] Danvers and Navarro confront each other and we learn more about Annie K and the possible connection between her and Sol or, you know, obviously with the coat as well as Danvers and Navarro's past. And here's the quote where I was looking for earlier.

[01:52:26] We carry them all in Danvers replies. No, we don't. And that's that key character difference between them. But in fact, really, I think what you're, what we've been talking about is how they're similar. They're more similar than they are different in a lot of ways. Yeah.

[01:52:40] So, um, the case didn't sink me. You asked me to transfer to troopers. We both know what happened. So more, more history there. And then, uh, when we get the news about the bodies being discovered, the lights flicker again. So more spooky stuff. Yeah.

[01:53:00] Clearly supernatural stuff. And I do like that. I think Danvers kind of saw like this woman is not here to improve. She has her own style. I don't want to work with her. That's what it sounds like. Interesting. I think she sees, uh,

[01:53:16] Peter, you know, young as her protege young boy. Yeah. I think she, well, not even her protégé necessarily, but just someone who is willing to improve. Right. And learn from who is willing to try. And that's all she asked for. If,

[01:53:31] if you make a mistake, she's fine with that, but it's gotta be, uh, while you were being diligent, you know, like you were, you were doing your job but you just made a mistake. That's okay with her.

[01:53:43] I think that, uh, what's the problem with Navarro is she probably didn't follow protocol. She, um, talked back all the time and didn't respect people. And she, she went to go talk to somebody that when Danvers mentioned the name,

[01:53:59] both her and Pete were like, like, that was like, you shouldn't have talked to that person. Right. Yeah. So yeah, I think that, I think that, uh, they just clasped, they have very different styles as you see. Uh, you know,

[01:54:12] Danvers is very buried with her emotion and Navarro is right there. She's in your face. She will tell you exactly how she feels. And those kinds of people don't always go well together. Right. Cause they end up frustrated with each other. Right.

[01:54:25] One is like, I can't get you to stop. The other one says, I can't get you to start. Hmm. Um, so we end the episode with Danvers and Navarro going out to the scene where they find the missing men. We get confirmation that Travis is dead. Um,

[01:54:39] and then the ending song is the, uh, song magpie by the unthinks, which is the song that was playing when they were touring the Salal station, when we were getting the first sort of montage with Danvers. So, um,

[01:54:55] they found the missing guys. They're all weirdly frozen in the ice. Yup. Which is very spooky. So at what point did they get out there when they were already dead or exactly? And I think that's where we're going to start working.

[01:55:09] I think what we have with Danvers in her deductive reasoning, Sherlock Holmesian skills is that she's going to be trying to figure out how they, she's going to be, um, dogged in her trying to figure out how they got out there and what happened and

[01:55:29] what the secrets of events were that happened for them to be there. Cause the guys were a couple of the, I mean, what we saw two bodies there, they're both clearly reacting to something, right?

[01:55:40] And one of them had their hands up sort of in a defensive horror position like, Oh my God, don't come at me. Right. So who knows? Who knows? We will learn when five episodes we'll know it all. Right.

[01:55:56] Right. All right. Well that ends the episode only two hours in. Hey, for a first off of a big episode, hopefully it'll go a little bit smoother. I mean we will, we'll have less uptake I think again like we said at the top that this episode

[01:56:13] was really about a world building and, and a character introduction. So. Yeah. And plus we had to introduce ourselves to the audience in case anyone is just searching for true detective stuff and finds us. Right. We are here. We are the lore hounds. Welcome to our community.

[01:56:29] Well let's talk a little bit about our community and what we do. As we mentioned at the top, we have a Patreon and if you're interested in subscribing us, check us out. Patrons get early and ad free access along with several other

[01:56:47] benefits. And one of the new benefits we have is our show tracker, which I mentioned earlier, which is a curated list of shows and movie and each show and movie has a informational page where we've got the synopsis and the log line and links to

[01:56:59] other sources. We post the trailers for our show on there. So like if you're interested, Hey, what's that show? I'm curious what it's about. You've got like a one stop page that you can go and you can just get basic

[01:57:11] information to see if that's something you want to, you want to maybe watch. And then on top of that, we're doing this detective journal thing where I'm going to be putting all these screenshots and clues and character guide stuff available. If you are interested in subscribing, I mean,

[01:57:26] one of the upsides is that you get to help us produce the content and you also get to help with our co-hosts because we have a number of co-hosts and they all get to sort of participate in the financial rewards of podcasting, which are,

[01:57:43] you know, we're not Spotify here. Yes, we're not Spotify here folks. But we do our best here and we like to take care of our co-hosts. You know, we exactly, we take on the risk and reward of will we, will we make money this year? And,

[01:57:56] and they are rewarded just for showing up, which is cool. We, we like to spread the love around a little bit. Exactly. And as we said earlier, if you want to come and go, it's all good.

[01:58:08] You know, if you just want to pop in and hang out and subscribe for a month or two for covering the show, that's totally fine. If you, you want to bounce, you want to bounce. Or if you want to do an annual membership, I mean like a 10%

[01:58:19] discount, I think, you know, it's, it's pretty inexpensive overall. You could go out for a night on the town and spend a lot more money than, than throwing us a few bucks. Three bucks a month minimum. That's crazy.

[01:58:29] I guess if you do the annual it's like 27 bucks for a year. That's crazy. Yeah. It's a month of Netflix nowadays. Exactly. And you get all this quality content. Speaking of which, maybe some updates from our affiliates. We do sponsor two other podcasts,

[01:58:46] a Woolshift Dust and Properly Howard Movie Review. Yeah, we love them. Then we've got a Woolshift Dust. I know Alicia was really busy over the holidays, but she's wrapping up Beacon 23, the Wolf, the Wolf, the Hugh Howie series.

[01:59:00] If you, if you watch Cylon like that, it's by the same author. So I'm sure you'll probably like this as well. I think she's doing one episode every two episodes of TV and people seem to be liking it. Yeah, I think they just wrapped up.

[01:59:12] I think they recorded the last episode the other day. Oh, cool. Cool. She's starting her Dune movie prep. I don't know her schedule for that, but that'll, that'll be going soon. So stay subscribed to her feed. She's got her Sala book club on her own Patreon.

[01:59:27] So you can follow the links in her show notes if you, if you want to get on that and she's going to be doing three body problems soon. So that's pretty exciting. That's coming out on Netflix. Yeah. New trailer just dropped today, the day that we recorded.

[01:59:38] So that's interesting. Yeah. Looks cool. Properly Howard movie review is on a break, but we will be covering severance with them in season two week by week. You can still get their severance coverage of season one on their feed and our

[01:59:54] joint feed severance. We've got, we've got our own severance feed. So check the show notes for links to all of these feeds. It's all in there. It's all a good time. And we've got a lot coming on the lore hounds. David, would you like to talk about that?

[02:00:08] We have obviously true detective. So we're going to do all six episodes and depending on what the feedback situation is and how impactful the show is. Well, you know, we might do a seventh episode with a season wrap but that all depends,

[02:00:21] but we're going to be doing this weekly. We're just out with what if season two, John Alicia and I on the MC universe show on the same feed, we recorded a, an episode talking about all nine of those vignettes.

[02:00:37] And then we're going to be doing a single episode to cover echo, which will be dropping on January. Well, we'll have dropped on January 9th. Then John, you and I are going to be doing a Fargo season wrap up. We're not doing a week to week on Fargo,

[02:00:52] but we're we did a mid season check in and we're doing a end season check in. Have you been keeping up with it? Where were you at? I have been keeping up. It's great. I mean, my, my heart was pounding the last episode. It wasn't like, gosh,

[02:01:05] it was like my heart didn't stop pounding from the moment that episode started. Yeah. You're like, I'm on blood pressure medication now. Anyway, it's very good. So check it out if you haven't. And that's another standalone show just like this one.

[02:01:20] So you could always hop in for this season. You and Brandon on the lore hounds play which is our video game content. You guys are going to be doing a, what's this FFVII Final Fantasy seven. Okay. We're doing the remake of it.

[02:01:36] So this was a game in the 1990s that like revolutionized 3d RPGs. It was like one of the first big 3d games and they remade it a couple years ago. They split it up into two games, which the second one is coming out on leap day this year.

[02:01:53] So it's, it's coming out very soon. So we're going to replay the first one. I'm actually playing it for the first time. I've only played a little bit of it and I've just started it a couple of days ago. I restarted it.

[02:02:03] And Brandon is a huge Final Fantasy seven fan. Final Fantasy is an anthology series. We're talking about that a lot tonight. So like each one of the games is separate. It has its own story and its own world. So you can jump right in just for this game.

[02:02:18] If you've never played a Final Fantasy before it's really good. It's a really great game. We did an amazing job remaking it. And just taking the story, but doing really interesting and new things with it. Cool. Sounds fun. And that's going to drop probably in February.

[02:02:34] Yeah. So we'll put that out sometime in the first half of February. So you have some time to digest it before the new game. Okay. Sounds good. We have an ongoing Star Wars film festival, or watching all of the Star Wars movies in story order.

[02:02:48] And next up is Rogue one. I think that's going to be a, that's a big fan favorite. A lot of people in the discord. We're doing a live watch on our discord on the 27th, I believe it was at the 20th

[02:02:59] or the 27th. I don't remember now. Anyway, it'll be on the discord. If you want to check that and then we'll record a podcast with our thoughts and feelings about Rogue one. That'll probably be out by the end of the month. We're also,

[02:03:14] Oh, it's the 20th. Sorry. It is where you move on. It's the 20th. Got it. Okay. I'm looking at my wall calendar across the room. And I can't quite make out where I wrote down, wrote that down.

[02:03:26] Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin. We've been reading all of those books. We're up through the first major four books. We are going to be picking those back up again in February with the short story Dragonfly and then the book, The Other Wind,

[02:03:43] which carries the story forward sort of after the main protagonists retire, I guess you could say. I don't know if that's the way to say it. So look for that in February, John, we just did a Silmarillion story.

[02:03:57] Yeah. On the sun and the moon. That's out on the feeds right now. It was, it was a really fun time. Marilyn came on for it. And our favorite Tolkien scholar. And if you want more Tolkien too,

[02:04:07] and you're on the Patreon, I just put out a Shireside chat this month and there's going to be another one early February as well. Nice. And what's up next for Silmarillion stories for next month? You're putting me on the spot here, David. Oh yeah.

[02:04:19] Of men. That's what it is. So we're going to talk about men. Of men. Then we have our second breakfast podcast, which is our Patreon exclusive. That's where John and I talk about our life and things we're playing

[02:04:33] and watching sort of on the side. We also do a movie of the month. This month, it's one of my old man movies. And it looks right now in our Patreon poll that Logan's run is winning.

[02:04:44] So that's going to be a really fun movie for us to discuss. It's cool. Yeah. We'll see. The poll has got a couple more days at the time of recording. So, but it's, it's definitely in the lead. And then we're tracking several shows.

[02:04:58] We'll see where we're at with coverage, but we're looking at masters of the air show gun, Mr. And Mrs. Smith constellation. Those are a handful of shows. So if you're a subscriber, check out the show tracker and you can look up information about all of those

[02:05:11] shows. And lastly, we like to give a shout out to our lore master patrons, our top tier patrons, John, would you like to do the honors? I would love to. So Martian Mark H. Michael G. Michelle E. David W.

[02:05:27] Brian P. Nick W. S. C. Peter O. H. Bettina W. Adam S. Nancy M. Dove 71. Brian 80 63. Frederick H. Sarah L. Gareth C. Eric F. Matthew M. Sarah M. DJ Miwa. Andra B. Kwang Yu. Dead Eye Jedi Bob, Nathan T. Alex V. Aaron T. Subzero. Aaron K. Dally V21,

[02:05:52] our newest lore master and Adrian who has requested to always be last on the list. And we're happy to oblige. Thank you all so very much for your support. It means a lot to us.

[02:06:04] It means a lot to our co-hosts. We have a lot of fun doing this podcast, John. It's been a year and more than we've, since we've been doing this. So it's pretty incredible that we have a great community that supports what we

[02:06:18] do. And we have a lot of fun covering these shows for you. We sure do. And to the first big show of 2024. What a day. Yes. I'm going to go get some tea or something from my throat. I know, right? I did a lot of talking.

[02:06:31] Over two hours. Crazy. David, it's been fun. I'll see you next week. Sounds good. Thanks, John. Okay, David, this is where we're supposed to choose a side green or black. John, my soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life. So we're not fighting.

[02:07:23] I thought this is where HBO wanted us to like pick sides and fight and stuff. Don't worry. I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod, but we seem to agree on one thing. We both really like this show.

[02:07:32] The politics, the drama, the lore. It was made for the Lorehounds. And since we just finished recapping season one, we couldn't be more ready to defend our black queen in the Dance of the Dragons. And with the season pass option in Supercast,

[02:07:47] listeners can get early ad-free access to each weekly scene by scene deep dive, plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections. See you in the Lorehounds podcast feed each week for our dragon fire hot, but probably positive takes.

[02:08:01] The Lorehounds House of the Dragon coverage is also safe for team green consumption. Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a heartened conflict with itself, and an inescapable urge to read the book, Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.