Pusher Media Club: Better Call Saul

Transcriber: anachilles

0:00:01.0        

Interviewer:        

Ali:        Hi everybody, and welcome to —

Keith:        Hi.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        Oh, you meant them. You meant the listeners. Sorry. [chuckling]

Ali:        And welcome to Pusher Media Club. Uh, the last time I introduced this as that, everybody dragged me, because they were like, “are you... that sounds like a paramilitary —“ but I don't know what the C is? Court?

Keith:        Pusher media — oh, PMC?

Ali:        Yeah.

Keith:        Okay, got it.

Jack:        Oh, uh-huh.

Keith:        That's just some online shit, Ali, don't worry about it.

Ali:        [chuckling] Okay. Yeah, it's fine. I, you know, it's not books, it's not movies. There's also TV shows here, so we have to say media.

Jack:        It's TV shows today!

Keith:        Watch... watch club?

Jack:        One day it might be video games.

Ali:        One day it might be video games. Yeah I really do want to do —

Keith:        One day it might be video games.

Ali:        Uh, like a small LP for one of those one day. But for now [laughing] hi, this is the, the third of this, this trio, uh, and today I've been joined by Keith J Carberry, and Jack de Quidt, to talk about, uh, Season 2, Episode 1, of Better Call Saul. Uh... yeah.

Jack:        Hell yeah.

Keith:        Which... I've seen before.

Ali:        Oh! Oh.

Jack:        Me too.

Keith:        I saw this one.

Ali:        Oh, okay. I wasn't sure —

Keith:        I didn't remember that I had seen it, because we've talked about Better Call Saul, because you've been trying to get me to watch it. And I was like — I've seen some of it, and I do want to get back to it, but I haven't. And I thought that I had only watched most of Season 1. But I think I actually watched most of Season 2, even.

Ali:        Oh, sure.

Keith:        Because I saw — as soon, as soon as it started up and I heard the song, and I saw the cinnabuns, I was like, “I've seen this.”

Jack:        [chuckling]

Ali:        [chuckling] Yeah, the, the cinnabun thing is usually, it's only the first episode of the new season, I think. So like, if you've seen it, you know you've seen it. Uh...

Keith:        Yeah, yeah.

Ali:        Jack, I didn't realize that you had seen it too, or were familiar with the show.

Jack:        So, yeah. I, I, I have only ever seen season one of Better Call Saul, and I liked it a lot. And I do this sometimes when I watch a television show that I enjoy a great deal —

Keith:        Mmm.

Jack:        And I finish season one, and kind of go, “and, and, and now I'm done.” [chuckling]

Ali:        [chuckling]

Keith:        Mmm.

Jack:        I can't really explain it. I think it might just be that in my brain, I'm like, “I can only experience so much media —“ but, I had always sort of meant to go back to Better Call Saul. And I had remembered watching the beginning of season two, and it not vibing with me, and not enjoying it very much. Which is really weird, because when I watched this episode today, I thought it was great, and I had a fantastic time. So maybe I was just —

Keith:        Yeah, this was a really good ep.

Jack:        Maybe I was just burned out on season one when I started season two, and I should have taken a longer break of like [chuckling] four and a half years. Uh...

Ali:        [chuckling]

Keith:        Well, I don't know about you, Jack, uh, or you, Ali. Actually, I do think I have a little bit better of an idea for Ali. Something that was happening during me watching season two of Better Call Saul was that Breaking Bad was still on, a show that I pretty majorly did not like.

Ali:        Oh, I didn't realize there was like an overlap in airing, there.

Keith:        Yes.

Jack:        Oh, well, I also did not know there was an overlap.

Keith:        I'm pretty sure. I could be, I could be wrong. I'm pretty sure that this came out, that season two of Better Call Saul was on during the last season or two of, of Breaking Bad.

Jack:        Hm.

Ali:        I can believe that. Uh... just —

Jack:        So I don't think I've seen more than this episode, that's what I was going to say, sorry.

Ali:        [chuckling]. Okay. Yeah. Uh, yeah. I just wanted to kind of talk, before we get into the nitty-gritty of this episode, just to kind of like talk, do the like, we'll talk about Better Call Saul in general up top, just to give people some context —

Keith:        I'm wrong. Ignore everything that I said. [laughing] I'm adjusting. I'm adjusting to say —

Ali:        [laughing] Okay.

Keith:        The, the, the taste of Breaking Bad was still in the air.

Ali:        Oh, yes.

Keith:        It was the, it was still like, it was like, Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad were still like, the two biggest things of all time, even two years after Better Call — or, Breaking Bad had ended, and Better Call Saul started. So, that's, I'm adjusting to that.

Ali:        Yeah, this could have even been, or did that just come out recently, the like, Breaking Bad movie?

Jack:        Oh, that was recently. That was like, last year.

Keith:        That was more recent, yeah, yeah.

Jack:        [chuckling] Or this year, who the fuck knows?

Keith:        I, I, I think that the, my least favorite thing about Better Call Saul was always that it was extremely closely tied to Breaking Bad, a show I did not enjoy.

Ali:        Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's one of the things that I wanted to take up at the top here, is like, I picked out this episode because I do think it like encapsulated, as a really interesting thing to talk about —

Keith:        Yeah.

Ali:        With regards to Bluff City. Uh...

Keith:        Mmm, it's a great standalone.

Ali:        [chuckling] It's such a good standalone. But like, just to talk about Better Call Saul at all, I do think that like, it's a really good show. I think it's a really interesting show. I think it's way better than Breaking Bad is. But like —

Keith:        Yeah.

Ali:        Liking it does require a little bit of like, how much tolerance you have for like, the Breaking Bad type thing?

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        Yeah.

Ali:        The, the, it's really tough with Better Call Saul because it starts as being like, a, uh, like a Breaking Bad gag show, and you [chuckling] have to get through those first, like, 3 or 4 episodes for it to like, sort of stand on its own. And at its best, the further it can get away from its home there —

Jack:        Right.

Keith:        I totally agree, yeah.

0:05:24.5        

Ali:        Yeah. And then like, sort of gets worse as the seasons go further —

Jack:        [chuckles]

Ali:        Because it has to get closer to that storyline. So, just to preface that.

Keith:        Okay.

Ali:        [laughing] I do think it's worth checking out. And I do think, like, if you're, you know, just listening to this and you have a Netflix account and just want to watch the one episode that we're talking about, you will certainly enjoy it.

Jack:        Yeah.

Ali:        I guess —

Keith:        I will —

Jack:        Oh, go on, Keith.

Keith:        I, I would be — I guess it's not important. Never mind.

Ali:        [laughing] Why, did you want to disagree with me there?

Keith:        No, no. I haven't seen the later seasons, so I don't know if it gets worse. I, I was going to say about, I don't know how we all feel about Better Call Saul, uh, sorry, Breaking Bad. I know a lot of people really liked it. I guess, no judgment, I guess. No, no adjustment actually, I'm just being an asshole. But, uh, you know, I did really like, I remember really liking, and again, it's been like 7 years or something, 8, 9 years since I saw it. But, the pilot episode of Breaking Bad, I thought was like, also a really strong standalone thing, that also gets worse as it goes on. I don't know. Like, I feel like, maybe, maybe it's the better, the Vince, what's his name?

Ali:        Vince Gilligan.

Jack:        Gilligan.

Keith:        Vince Gilligan. The Vince Gilligan thing, maybe he just, maybe he just needs to do standalone, like —

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        TV specials. Because taking a few episodes here and there from either Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul may be the best way —

Jack:        You have a great time, yeah.

Keith:        To watch these things.

Jack:        Yeah, so, like, at the, at the top, I know when we did Tampopo we kind of gave like a one-sentence pitch and said, “if this sounds interesting to you, go watch Tampopo and then come back and listen.” If you are interested in kind of following along with us, this is, this is, as Ali has said, season two, episode one, it's called “Switch.” Uh, and it is about, and I don't know if you will agree with me here — a man experiencing a very small crisis.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        But crisis of the self.

Ali:        Yes.

Jack:        And then it resolving in an interesting way, and resolving with the implication that it is not fully resolved, and that there are —

Keith:        Right.

Jack:        Going to be, that, you know, there is unfinished business here, but it is, it really is like —

Keith:        Uh, I think I would disagree that this is a small crisis.

Jack:        It's a very, it's a small crisis in terms of episode length. Like —

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        Sure. A short crisis.

Jack:        What was interesting to me is that like — it's a short crisis. I feel like this episode is the most interesting version of me going into the kitchen, standing in the kitchen, and saying, “why did I come in here? And then remembering.”

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        [laughing]

Jack:        That was this episode for me. So, so if a sort of bizarre, like, like, it's not even really a crime episode — there's a bit of crime that happens.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Keith:        Oh, it is such a tempting crime, too. What a —

Jack:        Well, there are two really funny — three really funny crimes in this episode. [chuckling]

Ali:        [chuckling]

Keith:        Yeah, I think, I think that the first crime alluded to is the, is the one I think we're all thinking of the same thing. But, and we'll, I think, maybe now or maybe later describe what it is, but —

Jack:        Chapter one: the first crime. [chuckling]

Keith:        But — [laughing] you know, you know when something is a good crime show, when you watch the crime and you go, “god, I would love to commit that crime.”

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        [laughing]

Keith:        What a, what a phenomenal crime —

Jack:        This is opposite of [unintelligible] for me.

Keith:        To have committed.

Ali:        Wait, I — [laughing]

Keith:        What's that, Jack?

Jack:        I said, this is the opposite of a lot of Fargo for me. When I watch the Fargo TV show, I go —

Ali:        Oh god.

Jack:        This is the absolute pit of human iniquity, and I [chuckling] feel terrible to watch anybody involved with this nightmare.

Keith:        Yeah.

Ali:        [chuckling] Let's just, because we've mentioned three crimes here, let's just make sure we'll all on the same page, and say what the three crimes that show up in this episode are.

Jack:        Okay, so my guess is, crime one is a, is a, is a, is a fraud scam, is a tequila fraud —

Ali:        [chuckling]

Keith:        Tequila fraud, yeah.

Jack:        This is the crime that we're talking about —

Keith:        This is a classic, uh, this is a classic tequila swindle.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Classic tequila swindle. Crime two is the illicit sale of, I think —

Keith:        Box.

Jack:        Prescription drugs. [chuckling] Of box.

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        I, in — as a standalone episode, this is very funny, because it's just box that he sells, but —

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        If I remember right, it's [chuckling] prescription drugs.

Keith:        Which I do, I know that, I know that we talked about Harold Pinter in the Tampopo thing, but if I had to, if I had to pin the Pinter tab on anything in here, it would be, the illicit sale of a box full of, “I don't know.”

Jack:        Of something.

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        Of something.

Jack:        [chuckling] And then crime three is an extremely belabored theft of some baseball cards, which I'm sure we will come to later in the episode.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        Because it's very funny to talk about. Uh, but as far as, are there any other crimes that you're thinking of, Ali, or do you think those are the three?

Ali:        I think those are the three. I just, because of the placement of them in the episode, I wasn't sure of like the order, of when they are —

Keith:        Sure.

Jack:        The crime order.

Ali:        Yeah.

Keith:        I want to — and I could be wrong, Ali will know, I want to disagree on what that third crime actually is.

Ali:        Oh yeah.

Keith:        Because I don't think that it's stealing a bunch of baseball cards, I think it's filing a false police report.

Ali:        It's — yes.

Jack:        Ah, I'm so interested in the read of this, right?

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        It's like, god, are we just going to jump and talk about this stupid scene at the end of the episode?

Keith:        [laughing]

Ali:        I — there, there's an A plot here and a B plot here, and I really think that the B plot is worth discussing, which —

Jack:        Yes.

Keith:        Right.

Ali:        Which is one of, uh —

Keith:        [laughing]

Ali:        We have Mark Po... Povich?

Keith:        Pra... Praschk.

Ali:        Praschk. [laughing] [unintelligible]

Jack:        A phenomenal character actor

Ali:        I'm, I'm — yes.

Jack:        Like, a character actor's character actor.

Ali:        He's so good, uh, —

Keith:        He's hysterically funny. I, I love him.

Ali:        Enjoy him in What We Do in the Shadows.

Keith:        Oh yeah! Has anyone seen –

Ali:        Please enjoy him in On Cinema.

Keith:        Has anyone seen his yo-yo thing?

Ali:        [laughing] I think, I think I actually have.

Jack:        [chuckling] I think you linked me this, like years ago, before I even knew who this guy was. When I saw this in Better Call Saul, I didn't know who this man was, I just thought he was a funny weirdo.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        But since then I've seen a lot of What We Do in the Shadows, so it was really exciting. This is Colin, the energy vampire, from What We Do in the Shadows.

Ali:        Yeah.

Jack:        Uh, shows up. Uh, and he shows up in...

Keith:        He gave me one of thing biggest laughs I've had this whole year, in that show, by the way.

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        He shows up, driving from a distance, in a gigantic Hummer, that is painted red and white, uh, to meet our —

Keith:        Oh, it's yellow with flames.

Jack:        Oh yeah, sorry, yellow and red.

Ali:        Yeah. [chuckling]

Keith:        It's got the flame decal. Yellow and red, yeah.

Jack:        Uh, and the, uh, license plate says Player, which is really funny.

Ali:        [laughing] PLAUH.

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        Uh...

Keith:        And he is, if anyone is wondering, he does have a matching wrist band and sneakers.

Ali:        Mm-hm.

Jack:        He does have a matching wrist band! I was — so I hadn't realized that the sneakers matched, even though they absolutely do.

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        I had wondered, for a second, if that wrist band was like [chuckling] I don't fucking know, something to do with the key to the car or something.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        But I think he's just accessorizing. Uh...

Keith:        He is.

Ali:        He's just accessorizing, yeah. In fact, the, the sneakers really take center stage in like a very good —

Jack:        A great shot.

Ali:        Vince Gilligan camera trick, yeah —

Keith:        Yeah.

Ali:        Where, after there's the scene of him pulling up with this car, intending to take it to like a drug meet, and the, the more professional person that he's been hiring for assistance is like, “we're not fucking doing that. Like, I'm not getting in this car —“

Keith:        Right. The grumpy man from Community —

Ali:        You can't do this — [laughing] Yeah.

Keith:        Has been helping him deal drugs, I guess.

Jack:        My favorite character in the show is Mike, and always has been.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        Mike is that, that guy? The grumpy guy?

Ali:        Yes. Yeah, that's his — yeah, yeah.

Keith:        The sort of honorable thief who's just, he just, all he wants to do is the job, and, you know.

Jack:        Get a paycheck. But he does have a soft — he has a, correct me if I'm wrong, but he has like a family in Breaking Bad and everything, right? He's like a... he's like a nice grandpa.

Ali:        Oh yeah, for sure. And that comes up more, you see more of that family in this show, in fact, because I think the thing is that like, his son passed away, so he's been supporting, uh, his daughter-in-law and her daughter.

Jack:        Oh, sure. He's great. And this actor just, the, the amount of like, little, uh, like, like voice and face work that this actor manages to do to convey just how exhausted he is with —

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        Absolutely fucking everything. There was a moment —

Keith:        He's great with contempt.

Jack:         Yes. There was a moment that I watched where he like, literally picks up a, a lunch bag, and he looks angry that he has had to do that. And I was like —

Keith:        [laughing]

Jack:        This is so great. Because the script would not say, “Mike picks up the lunch bag and looks angry.” This is just this actor knowing this character and going like, “the fucking... okay, here's what we're doing.”

Keith:        Oh, now we're picking this up?

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        Uh-huh. Yep here we go. So, so, our man — what is this character's name, Ali?

Ali:        Oh, uh...

Jack:        Is it Dave? Is it — what's this guy called?

Ali:        Uh, I have to look it up. Because it's like, it rarely comes up.

Jack:        This fucking loser in the Hummer shows up and fires Mike, who is, who is working for him as security. And fires him in the funniest possible way, right? Because he, he colossally misunders what a security person is supposed to be there for? Where he's like, “all you do is stand behind he and say nothing, therefore” [laughing] “You are useless.” And he fires him.

Keith:        Yeah, yeah.

Ali:        His name is Daniel Werwauld.

Jack:        Wirmauld?

Ali:        [chuckling] W-O-R-M-A-L-D.

Keith:         Oh, that's the guy whose name — not Mike's name.

Jack:        Some fantastic names in this show.

Ali:        Yes, oh, no, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Keith:        I thought you were looking for Mike's last name, yeah. I remembered Wormald because I heard, because they said it a couple times, and I was like, that's very funny.

Jack:        Mr. Wormald.

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        Uh, yeah. I, I want to point out specifically, there is, there's a conflict here, which is that Wormald will decline to fire Mike, if Mike will drive in the Hummer.

Jack:        [laughing]

Keith:        And Mike says, “the Hummer is going to cause you so many problems. If you don't drive with me in my car, I'm not going with you.”

Ali:        Yeah, this is definitely like, an attempt to like, big-time him, when he makes this big thing —

Jack:        But then it's such a mistake!

Ali:        It's like, “I'm, I'm definitely going to fire you. This is your last —“ like, [chuckling] he almost goes into the like —

Jack:        I'm going to give you 10 seconds!

Ali:        Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think he literally does the like, parent counting down to their child thing.

Keith:        He, he totally does, yeah.

Ali:        Yeah. [chuckling]

Keith:        Or at least threatens to, and then the camera cuts, yeah.

Jack:        And Mike is basically like, “yeah, okay.”

Keith:        Yeah, yeah. We're not, yeah. I, it's not worth, it's literally not worth it to him —

Jack:        [laughing]

Keith:        The amount of trouble that he thinks this car could cause. And then [chuckling] was totally right. [laughing] It caused a lot of trouble.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        In two different, very specific ways.

Jack:        [chuckling]

Ali:        Yeah, yeah. Again, the, the classic Vince Gilligan camera trick of, you seeing him later, at the drug meet, and the, uh, the scene starts on his matching shoes, [chuckling] and then widens to this like, abandoned warehouse or whatever, uh, where like, in his, in his exuberance to finally like, be able to give somebody the like, “oh, this is all of the things that the salesperson told me about [unintelligible]”

Jack:        Oh, it's so good. He tries to sell the car!

Ali:        [laughing] He's like, he's like, uh, bragging about like the engine, and that it has like, he like opens the door for this person that he's doing a drug deal —

Jack:        He keeps saying, “sit in it.”

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        He tells him, he tells him at least two times to get in, to like check it out.

Ali:        Yeah. It's incredible. Uh, and he has this person get —

Jack:        There's, he has —

Ali:        Into his car, and then walks away. [chuckling]

Jack:        Walks away!

Keith:        Walks away to count the money for the box.

Jack:        He has this —

Keith:        And then —

Jack:        He has this horrible brilliant line where he says like, “you could have a girl in a bikini in one seat, and a girl in a parka in the other, and they'd, they'd both feel fine.” [chuckling] Because he's talking about like the temperature control.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        Oh, the tri-climate zones, yeah.

Jack:        And it's like, it's like, it is a line so monumentally tasteless, that it just sounds incredible coming out of this man's mouth, in this place, in this moment... it has, I'll tell you what it really has. Do you remember that — [chuckles] — do you remember that guy in Bluff City who is like, exclusively a horse doctor, operating out of a boat?

Keith:        [laughing]

Jack:        Or maybe he's not a —

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        I, I might be misremembering here.

Ali:        [laughing] [snorts]

Jack:        He's, he's like —

Keith:        I think he was a horse baby-sitter.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        But he's on like a riverboat, right?

Keith:        Yeah.

Ali:        [laughing] He was someone that me and Keith's Bluff City Hard Luck characters had hired to hide that horse for a little bit. And then once we went to the exchange, or went to go, like, check up on the horse, like got really mad at us about horse care.

Jack:        Yes!

Ali:        [snorts]

Jack:        This to me, see, this to me has some real, “you could have a girl in a bikini in one seat and a...”

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        Just like, some absolute weirdo showing up and talking bullshit for 15 minutes. Uh, but then the meet to goes really badly, in like the most tragic, mundane way, right? Which is that nacho, who is the guy who he's meeting with, who is —

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        Played by Michael Mando, uh, just reaches inside the glove box and gets this man's address. [chuckling]

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        And it's just like, “okay, got it.”

Keith:        And there's two threats here, too. The first threat is that, without Mike there, he's going to beat him up and take the money.

Jack:        He's going to kill him, right? Or, yeah.

Keith:        And then the second threat is that, oh, he's going to let him get in the car, he's going to like, take the new car. But no, this guy is a better — much better criminal than that.

Jack:        Like a good criminal.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Keith:        He's a good criminal. Wow, a good criminal in a show [chuckling] about Bluff City. I mean, not about Bluff City. But as a reference for Bluff City, uh, uh, yeah, finds, gets his like vehicle title and gets his address. Uh...

Jack:        Which is so, it's so, something I think Vince Gilligan does really well, in, to his credit, both in Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad is like, establish a scene where the stakes are so nightmarish, and the potential consequences are so huge, that you the viewer are watching it almost like a comedy of manners, where you're just like, like desperately hoping that the conversation moves in one way, or avoids something, or touches on something else. And so, I was really surprised at how this scene with, uh, Wormald and Nacho is robbed of any kind of tension really fast.

0:20:04.8        First, by Wormald's insistence to try and sell this [chuckling] man his car.

Keith:        [laughing]

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        And, and then by how economically Nacho screws him over, and then just leaves.

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        Because it's just like, we know what — like, he doesn't need to beat up the guy or anything. He — the, the cost of this is so easy for Nacho.

Ali:        Yeah, it's the same thing. Like, it's, it's, identifying a mark, which is what Saul does —

Jack:        Oh, yeah, I hadn't thought of these sitting together. Right.

Ali:        In the other car [laughing]

Keith:        Oh, yeah. Yeah, great point.

Ali:        Because it's just, it's just like, you can just, you can see a person and know how to take advantage of them, and how easy it would be. Uh, and Nacho of course —

Keith:        He's literally begging to be taken advantage of.

Ali:        [laughing] A big red and yellow sign that says, “I'm very stupid.”

Jack:        Rob me.

Ali:        Figure it out.

Keith:        A plain, decalled sign.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Yeah. Uh, because this is the other thing, right? Because if Mike was there, he would just say, “no, don't get in the car.”

Keith:        Right.

Jack:        Or like, you can't — or he'd just block him with an arm or something.

Keith:        Because at the, at, Mike as a criminal, right, is a guy who knows how things go, and that's his value. Not just that he will protect you if something goes bad, but that he can tell you when you're being stupid, and will, because he doesn't care about you.

Jack:        Yeah.

Keith:        And he doesn't care about that it might not be nice to be like, “don't let this guy get into your car, you're a moron.”

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        He ultimately doesn't want you to get swindled, because if you get swindled, he gets swindled.

Keith:        Right, yeah.

Ali:        Yeah.

Jack:        This is a real fun archetype, I think.

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        Yeah. And, uh, do we want to double back and talk about the first crime of the show, or —

Jack:        Or should we just finish off the B plot at this point?

Keith:        Finish off the B plot?

Ali:        Yeah, we can finish off the B plot because it's, it's very simple, there's only one more scene that we [laughing] see this character.

0:21:57.4        

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        I know! It's, it's three scenes. He appears in three excellent scenes.

Ali:        Oh yeah. There's, there's him, quote/unquote “firing” Mike. And then there's the tradeoff. And then we see him —

Jack:        [laughing]

Ali:        Needing to call the police.

Keith:        Yeah.

Ali:        Because there's been a break-in, in his home.

Keith:        Did they steal a bunch of boxes?

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        They steal — [chuckles] they trash everything.

Keith:        No. They trash everything. Well, they — no. They specifically don't trash everything. They trash the living room and the area around —

Jack:        Oh, it's so good.

Keith:        The TV and the desk. But they don't trash the desk —

Jack:        [chuckling]

Keith:        They don't trash the TV, and they don't trash the couch.

Ali:        Uh, yeah. So Wormald's, uh, complaint to the police, and something that he seems like, legitimately stressed about, I actually don't know, I, I saw Better Call Saul a while ago, so I don't know if this is like a call back of him like, talking about these baseball cards at a different drug meet and then like... this is something that's important to him, so they steal the drugs that he had in his house, and those?

Jack:        And — [chuckles]

Ali:        Or, if it's really just an elaborate — I don't think that the like, I don't have my baseball cards anymore, is a lie. Because as he's saying it, he's like [chuckling] willing, totally —

Jack:        He is. He's not happy.

Ali:        To print — no, no, no, no. He's willing to print out like an encyclopedia of what he had with like, what the value are, attached, with like different categories of how valuable they are. And he's also saying this with the backdrop of a poster that [chuckling] looks like a baseball, like, scoreboard.

Keith:        Yeah, yeah.

Ali:        But with no scores put in, and one of the, the [laughing] the, the corners is coming off of the wall, which I thought was also a really great —

Jack:        I love this prop. It is a star piece of set dressing in this scene.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Also, I think for people, for people who haven't seen this episode, it is probably worth briefly mentioning that this man's entire color scheme is beige, expect his car —

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        His, [chuckling] his hi-tops, and his wrist band.

Keith:        It's... Mark Praschk is sort of like, uh, he's sort of like, uh, uh, typecast as beige characters.

Jack:        Yes.

Ali:        Yeah.

Jack:        Uh, and so his, his, his front room is really defined by this, like, there are lots of shots that are just this balding man dressed in beige against a beige wall, with a huge green [chuckling]

Keith:        [laughing]

Jack:        Like, tarpaulin poster.

Keith:        But not so huge —

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        It's such a good prop.

Keith:        It's big and dumb, but not so gigantic. Like it's just small enough where it's like, almost too small for what it's trying to be.

Jack:        There's something kind of sad about it. It's so good.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Keith:        [chuckling]

Jack:        Uh, yeah. And, and look, I, I make no habit of, of siding with, with any cops in any television show, or broadly. I like these two cops in this scene. They have an energy about them that I think [chuckling] is very funny, which is two men who have absolutely no time for the person they are visiting, and are 100 percent sure that more is going on than this man is letting on.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Keith:        Yeah. Well, I did, I did notice, how quickly they start treating this guy who called them to help as if he is a criminal himself.

Jack:        Yes.

Ali:        Yeah.

Keith:        Before they had any right to do so. And it —

Jack:        They are straight away like, and there's a degree of dramatic irony here, because this man is a criminal. Uh...

Keith:        Right, right. They did happen to get it right. Uh...

Jack:        [chuckling] Yes, but that seems to be an accident.

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        I, yeah, I do think it was an accident. I think that they would have been suspicious of anyone who called them to help with anything. Uh, and it just happens that Mark Praschk is kind of a dumbass. Well, his character, Wormald.

Jack:        Oh, there's this — the moment that this scene turns for me is, is — and I know you've been watching the Fargo TV show recently, Ali. And that show does —

Keith:        I've got to watch that.

Jack:        Oh, it's wonderful. That show does this a lot, as well, which is a character suddenly realizes that something they are saying is incriminating, as they are saying it.

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        And there's this, there's this brilliant moment where Wormald says, “and they took a lot of cash.”

Keith:        Oh yeah. [laughing]

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        And the police officer says, “how much cash did they take?” And Wormald's entire body collapses into a, like a singularity of confusion and embarrassment as he realizes there is no way he can answer this question in a way that doesn't incriminate him. Uh...

Keith:        Yeah, they say, “how much cash?” He don't even, I don't even think he finishes saying the word cash —

Jack:        No. No.

Keith:        And they're like, “how much cash did they take?”

Jack:        He — [laughing] yes —

Keith:        And he's like, “can we please just focus on the baseball cards?”

Jack:        [laughing] Focus on the baseball cards.

Keith:        [laughing]

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Which is so good because like, at this point he's fucked, right? Like there's no way back from that moment.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Oh, it's great.

Keith:        But, but that's the other thing. It shouldn't be incriminating to have someone steal cash from your home.

Jack:        No! [chuckling] Not at all.

Ali:        No.

Keith:        But you can tell that it is, because, to these, to, to these cops who come in the thing, anything that make, anything that a criminal might also say, makes you a criminal.

Jack:        They're like, “ah, right, he's,” [chuckling], “he's going and doing it.”

Keith:        Right.

Jack:        And they —

Keith:        And so he has to be careful, because he actually is a criminal.

Jack:        [chuckling] Yes.

Keith:        But like, if he was just a normal guy, who had cash stolen from him, and then had to report that —

Jack:        Oh, yeah.

Keith:        And then all of a sudden they're like, searching the house for, for secret panels... [laughing]

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        The way they discover the secret panel is good. Which is that they notice that there is an area on the floor — so, the floor is fucking covered in debris.

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        Uh, sort of a comedy amount of stuff.

Keith:        Right.

Jack:        Uh, and they notice that there's this —

Keith:        More paper than I have in my whole house is covering the floor.

Jack:        Yes. There's this area in front of the couch that like, it's sort of a right angle that has no paper on it. And when the cops notice this, I was like, “what have they seen? I don't get it.”

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        I can see how this is suspicious, but I don't know what's going on. And then, in this great overhead shot, they just pick up one corner of the sofa and swing it out from the wall, revealing that like, it fits like a jigsaw piece into the clean area of the floor. It was such a nice moment of like, not — me as the viewer, not quite spotting the thing before the characters did.

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        And then it just suddenly clicking into place, in a way that felt really good. Uh, and yeah, they find that there is a little, a little storage zone behind the, the sofa, uh, that is empty. They shine — oh, it's a great shot where they shine a torch into it. And we get like a — we are suddenly in the crawlspace watching this guy bend down and shine the torch in.

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        I thought that was a really nice — Vince Gilligan does that stuff a lot too, right Ali? With these, putting the camera in a place that is absolutely impossible, or...

Ali:        Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of camera tricks is, is the, the —

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        I'm going to put the camera on a ceiling fan, or —

Keith:        As —

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        As a — I don't know that he directed this episode, but as a, as a creator, or producer, or whatever it is that Vince Gilligan technically does, uh, he's, he's a very, let me just literally show you, kind of guy.

Jack:        [chuckling] Sure.

Keith:        Let me just show you that — let me show you the sticker on the tape that says, don't flip this switch, four times, and show —

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        And show, uh, Saul glancing at it three times.

Jack:        Like, look, look, we've only got so many minutes, I need you to know that this is here.

Keith:        Yeah. I don't know if anyone's seen, uh, the other, uh, I can't even remember his name now, Bryan Cranston, the other Vince Gilligan Bryan Cranston thing, which was the episode of the X-files that he wrote.

Ali:        Oh, I do want to see that.

Jack:        Right, I heard that he did some work on the X-files. I've never seen it.

Keith:        Oh, such a fantastic episode. It was, it was, I almost mentioned it earlier, Jack, when you said, uh, uh, like — when, when you referenced, uh, Gilligan creating these like, these stakes that are, you were talking conversationally, but —

Jack:        So awful.

Keith:        Right? Yeah, these awful stakes. And this is more, the, the plot of the episode is, “drive west or someone dies horribly.”

Jack:        Oh, sick! That's a great pitch, honestly.

Keith:        Yeah. [laughing] It's such a good.

Jack:        I, yeah, I'm in.

Keith:        I'll, yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll, yeah, and you, it's, it's great. It's a really good episode. But, uh, I can't remember how it, how it relates to this. But maybe it was just a side thing, of, that that's also a very intentional thing. There's nothing hidden.

Jack:        Uh...

Keith:        Like, it's, it's only hidden insofar as, it's a thing that they're going to, you know, do a, a, there's, I guess there's no subtlety. It's really like, it's, “come on, it's TV, we've got 40 minutes. We've really got to do this.”

Jack:        [chuckles]

Ali:        [laughs]

Jack:        Well, this is what we're coming back to in Tampopo, right? Which is like, and in a lot of, a lot of the media that I've been enjoying recently, they've been doing interesting things with their themes and with their, uh, uh, with their subtext. But, also, there is like a real recognition in a lot of media I'm enjoying of just like, sometimes you just, just say the thing. Uh...

Keith:        Right.

Jack:        Get off the boat thematically. There was a, there's a moment at, this scene ends early, in a way that is really fun, which is that the cops swing the couch back, before, uh, uh, the idiot comes back from the other room, uh, with his tabulated list of what has been stolen, I guess?

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        Uh, and I, I — I'm in — it's so rough, right? Because like, I wanted to see that confrontation so bad, just because I wanted to see this guy try and accidentally get himself into more trouble in a conversation or something. Uh, but I'm thinking about sometimes, when you know, when we are making scenes, and Austin makes a decision as to like, “oh, we don't need to see this now.” Like, people know what is going to happen here. Or, it's, it's tough because it's like —

Keith:        And —

Jack:        What, as the creator, generates that call? Why don't we, why doesn't the scene continue? Why does it end at this point?

Keith:        I, I think that, that's like the sort of, the, the best and worst thing about, like, serialized drama, like TV, specifically, where the, you know, your TV show goes on long enough, and eventually you've just got to answer every question, show everything that happens.

0:32:40.0        Uh, which is one of my favorite things about Bluff City, because you end an episode of Bluff City, and we probably don't go back to that moment, where like, you, you can get a very good, like, whole, imagined version of this thing in your head, of watching that thing that never actually makes it onto the show.

Jack:        Yeah.

Keith:        But, I don't know. Did they, I assume there is a confrontation scene, in another episode.

Ali:        No. There's, uh, when we see this character again, he is already arrested. Uh, —

Jack:        Ha!

Keith:        Okay that's —

Jack:        That's so good.

Ali:        [chuckling] yeah.

Jack:        That's really funny.

Ali:        Yeah, I wasn't sure if, I wasn't sure if we needed to assign it, because I feel like this is a good enough capsule episode, but like, the next episode is Saul helping him, uh, in that, in that legal, uh, little kerfuffle that he's in.

Jack:        Oh, that's such a funny cut, though, right?

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        To just go straight from this guy having an absolutely disastrous —

Keith:        Yeah, that's great.

Jack:        Police call, and then getting arrested. Actually, something that I was going to ask, while we're, while we're kind of on the topic of where you begin and end scenes, uh, and I think this is good because now we've sort of wrapped up the B plot and we can move on to the A plot is that, uh, the episode begins in a sort of really extended, there's like a 6-minute long black and white sequence of Saul closing down the, the mall cinnabun where he works.

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        And, as this song plays, as — I don't know the exact — it's like a 50s sort of —

Keith:        Yeah. It's the sort of thing where, when, when you hear it, I don't know about anybody else, I have to sort of suppress my thing that goes like, “oh, they're doing a Fallout —“

Jack:        Sure. [laughing]

Ali:        [laughing] Mm-hm.

Keith:        They're showing something —

Keith:        This is, this is our generation, though, right? Like —

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        This is what we would think about that.

Keith:        Yeah, and so I've got to suppress. Because I'm like, this is, this is a good song. And I can't let the fact that it's Fallout 3 commercial ruin —

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        [chuckling] Yes, no, sure.

Keith:        That I, that, that if I didn't know about that, I would like this more.

Jack:        So, the — something really interesting happens at the end of this scene for me, which is that the music, the song ends and the sequence continues, which I think is really lovely piece of editing, where, you know, you're sort of baited into thinking that we're going to move on from this scene as the song concludes, and then the scene just continues, as Saul accidentally locks himself in a garbage room for —

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        3 hours. Uh...

Keith:        My memory is maybe even that the camera helps with that trick, that there's a cut that —

Ali:        Yeah.

Keith:        Reinforces that there's going to be a scene change, and then there isn't.

Ali:        I'm not sure if the, I'm not sure if the song turning off also is at the same time you hear the door close.

Jack:        Oh, that's great.

Keith:        I — that's exactly what I had in my head, Ali. So I think maybe you're right.

Jack:        And so as viewers, we anticipate that we're going to be, we're going to be going somewhere else, and then we're like, “no, he is literally trapped in this scene, and so are we?”

Keith:        Right.

Ali:        Yeah.

Jack:        But it's, it's such a, it was such a distinctive, like, opening. And it made me, I'm always very curious about what the process of editing something like this, specifically these openings and closings, uh, is, is, like, from a sort of narrative perspective. And I'm curious about like, when you are bringing us into episodes, Ali, is there sort of — how does your decision making work, in terms of where to leave a scene or where to come in, or, or, or that kind of thing?

Ali:        Yeah, definitely. I think with, uh, the, with this specifically, is such an interesting thing, because it's the start of a season.

Jack:        Yeah.

Ali:        So it's like a special hat that the [chuckling] season wears, where it's like, “oh, we get to see, we get see Saul like, years in the future, in this context that's so divorced from what the show is, but that we as the audience know he's reaching for.” So like, as he's working through his like ambitions or whatever, we know that this is the end of his road. Which feels more to me like sort of the intros that Austin does, which is like, here's this character, divorced from, you know, the context of what the —

Jack:        The broader —

Ali:        Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of what the like, actual, actual play is. Uh, whereas, yeah, with like, ending episodes, or with like coming back from a last time on or whatever, I think because it's so audio-based, the way that I've been thinking about it mostly lately is like, where the best parts to come in from, based off of the clips that I've been able to put before it, like what can a contextualize —

Jack:        Huh.

Ali:        And then have it be like recontextualized as we're coming back into the episode, whether it's like, we're talking about a plan or like a specific location, or like a character being like, “oh, we have to go to the left office,” and then, you know, Austin comes in and is like, “here's the left office, and here's my description of this place.” Uh, I also try to be really careful about like, the description of places, or entering a new thing as you're going into it, because like, that's a lot to, like, retain [chuckling]

Jack:        Sure.

Ali:        For an entire week and then have to like —

Jack:        Yeah.

Ali:        Listen to people. Uh, like, talk about being in a place without knowing it. Uh, there's a lot of like, there tends to be overlap sometimes, because like, Austin saying a really good narration about a thing is usually a good outro, and then it's also a good intro —

Jack:        Oh, right.

Ali:        Because you can just repeat that like 3 minutes or whatever, so people are like, “okay, I'm back on the train.” Uh...

Keith:        Especially when something is long as Friends at the Table is —

Ali:         [chuckling] Yes. Yes.

Keith:        It's nice to have, it's nice to have repeat information sometimes.

Ali:        Yeah, yeah, yes, yeah. For sure. Uh...

Jack:        Do you and Austin ever, like, record new stuff to ease those transitions? Or are you generally working with, with like, files that you already have?

Ali:        We have in the past. I think that there's like, definitely outros for sure. And we've done it, it's usually around like, uh, uh, around big arcs or like, as we're going in and out of a holiday special. But I feel like the thing that helped you the most is like, there was this big mission — it's happened a bunch in Partizan, too, where it's like, there was this big mission, there were consequences of that mission. But, in describing the outro, he wants to be able to like, describe a little bit more about what's happening to other people that we didn't like think of at the time, or whatever.

Jack:        Right.

Ali:        Uh, I think the most recent example is probably around the outro of the Morning Bride escape, or taxed, uh, the, uh, is that Noon Crown, is that where we were from? No.

Jack:        Of, uh, — it's not Obel, right?

Ali:        It's not Obel. [chuckling] It's like —

Jack:        It's, it's, uh, Ox — uh...

Ali:        Oxbridge, yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes. It's —

Jack:        Is it Oxbridge?

Ali:        Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, whereas that was like a very definitive ending, with like this big, uh, you know, event happening, and it's like this big, violent thing that happens to a lot of people at once, right?

0:39:35.8        And after we've been recording for 4 hours, but we're not really thinking about —

Jack:        [chuckling]

Ali:        Like, every angle that like, you might want to see those things from. So, uh, yeah.

Jack:        Sure.

Ali:        That's usually when we —

Jack:        We took —

Ali:        Oh, go ahead.

Jack:        We talk a lot, we like daydream a lot about like, what if we could record an entire short-run little show.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        And then, and then work on that, right? Do you think that if we did that, you would be more tempted to edit like they do in these kind of shows, where you're editing with very specific knowledge about what happens? Or do you think that you —

Keith:        Do you, do you mean short run as in shorter episodes? Or short run as in like, 10 episodes.

Jack:        The latter, right?

Ali:        Yeah.

Keith:        Okay.

Ali:        Just this like, [chuckling] specifically, this is also tied to the like, “what if we just sold a Friends at the Table CD box set.”

Jack:        God, I think about this all the fucking time.

Ali:        And it was 6 CDs, and [chuckling] each episode, each CD had one endless, and it was a self-contained 6-episode story.

Jack:        Wait, can it be 7 CDs, because the 7th CD is the soundtrack to the 6 —

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Episodes? [chuckling]

Ali:        I mean, I —

Keith:        Can it be on a cassette instead of a CD?

Ali:        I —

Jack:        We can, we can — we can figure out the [laughing] the details.

Ali:        I think we have a cassette hookup, so I think we could do it either way. But like just —

Keith:        Oh, do we have a cassette hookup?

Ali:        We'll talk about it later. Uh... [laughing]

Keith:        Oh my god.

Ali:        But like, the, thinking of like, those amazing, like Playstation JRPGs that would have 5 or 6 discs, and then they're just like, yeah.

Jack:        You fold them out.

Keith:        Yeah.

Ali:        Ugh, I want that, but as our show. Uh, yeah, it's tough, it, it feels like, it feels like if I, if we had the opportunity to like, really record that much stuff, have it be a full thing, but also know that it was like, coming out all at once, like if we just dropped it in the night like a Beyonce album or whatever [chuckling] it feels like we would have more... uh, more wiggle room to do that sort of thing, to like do that fast editing or like, have less audio clues or audio context than the way that we do it weekly. But at the same time, like —

0:41:38.4        

Jack:        Oh, it's so dangerous.

Ali:        Yeah, like, it, you know, just because we're releasing it that way don't make the, the, the like internalizing or understanding that audio any easier for the audience. [chuckling]

Jack:        No.

Ali:        Because it's —

Jack:        And might weirdly —

Ali:        Yeah.

Jack:        It might end up being more work for us, right? Where, if we're like, “oh, man, we, we can now make this, uh, we can now make this story knowing everything that happens in it,” then we're like, “well, we have fucking 50 hours of audio to deal with all at once.”

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        And it's like, how do we begin to like, tease that out?

Keith:        Oh, I was thinking, I was thinking that it would still... it would still, I know this is a hypothetical, but that we would still record it in order.

Jack:        Oh yeah, no. But like, I'm talking about in terms of like, Ali as an editor, being like, what does it look like when you have access to a whole season, to inform your editing, rather than just like —

Keith:        Oh, okay, record everything and then started editing.

Ali:        Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Keith:        That makes sense. Okay, now I get it, okay.

Ali:        Uh, yeah, I mean, I, it's tough because like, you know, we're able to already do like, callbacks to certain motifs or stuff, when we're doing things the organic way that we do. And I would say like the, the idea of this is not so outside of the way that I try to edit, and like, will be at my best editing, which is when I am like, able to listen to an entire arc at once, an entire session.

Keith:        Right.

Ali:        So to speak, which would be like, one whole part of the mission, instead of just like, you know, a recording, which is 4 hours, where the entire session might be like, 12, or 9, or whatever. Which is like, I can listen to the whole thing [laughing] at once, and then be like, oh, okay, where are the episode cuts here? Uh, what are, what are these episodes even about? Like [chuckling] in their own, being a 2-hour thing? And things like that. Uh, so, I don't think that like, if we made our dream CD box set, instead of being 12 hours long, one thing to kind of comprehend and put out at once, it would be like, you know, the 6-episode thing [laughing] or whatever.

Jack:        Right.

Ali:        Uh, but, yeah, I, I, I don't know that that would be so divorced from the way that we do it now. There just wouldn't be like, the time constraints.

Jack:        Yeah. This is the dream where we can just —

Keith:        We should do that. Let's do that.

Ali:        I want to do it so fucking bad. [laughing]

Jack:        We just — ah, man. Every, like every 6 months, Ali and I will message each other and be like —

Keith:        We've got to do 2, though. We've got to do, we have to — I think, I, I mean, that would have to be, it would have to be 2 —

Jack:        Wait, Keith.

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        You mean, uh, you mean Mystery on the Moon, and then Mystery on the Moon: Dark Edition. [chuckling] The second version.

Ali:        [chuckling] [snorts]

Keith:        Yes. Yeah.

Ali:        Wait, how, yeah — elaborate on how you mean we should do two.

Keith:        Friends at the Table's a show with a lot of people, and one of the main things that creates, like, extremely long episodes and extremely long arcs is having to do a 7-person thing, and have it all fit together.

Jack:        Oh, sure.

Ali:        Oh, sure sure sure. Yeah.

Keith:        So we, so, we should do two separate things, instead of —

Jack:        [chuckling]

Ali:        I think that we could —

Keith:        A bouncing back and forth thing.

Ali:        I really feel like we could, in the Hieron style, or really big-picture Bluff City style —

Jack:        Oh, sure, with like a university.

Ali:        Yeah. Be able to still do one contained story, the full cast, but two separate groups.

Jack:        Can I pitch something really stupid that I'm pitching mostly as a joke?

Ali:        Yes. Please?

Jack:        On this podcast that's about Better Call Saul?

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        So, in the dream where we do Mystery on the Moon and then Mystery on the Moon: Dark Edition —

Ali:        Yeah.

Jack:        Which, uh, which is printed on black CDs rather than silver CDs [chuckling] you know. Their art is color-flipped or whatever. That is the second group, adapting the first story, having only read a Wikipedia synopsis of it.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        I was, I, I, I was thinking, when you said Mystery on the Moon, Mystery on the Moon: Dark Edition, I was thinking almost the exact same thing, which was that, just have two separate groups play the exact same campaign.

Jack:        The same story?

Ali:        Yeah.

Jack:        Yeah.

Keith:        And just put them out as like —

Jack:        Watch, watch it fall apart.

Keith:        Yeah, yeah, put them out as —

Ali:        Oh my god, if we were even doing character overlaps, but it was like —

Jack:        Have we ever done this?

Keith:        Yes! Two people create one character to then share, in two separate campaigns, but the second people don't listen to the first one, they just get the same —

Ali:        Yeah.

Keith:        They just get the same company thing.

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        And who knows how fast that could go off the rails, right?

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        [chuckling] Austin throwing out bread left and right.

Ali:        Well it would just be like, okay, here's 4 people who need to rob this bank. Play the person —

Jack:        Here are the beats you need to hit, right?

Ali:        Yeah. Or not even —

Jack:        Yeah.

Ali:        Quite here's the beats you'd need to hit, because I feel like part of the interesting there would be like, okay, I'm playing Jen, who's like the informant or whatever, and then in the opposite side, Art is playing Jen, who's like the informant or whatever, and then we both take completely different actions with completely different characterizations of this person, because — [laughing]

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        God, this is such a strong —

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        And, and and —

Jack:        It's great.

Keith:        There's nothing stopping, there's nothing stopping one side from having a, like, are they ghost pirates moment.

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        Yeah.

Keith:        And just like, totally changing the DNA of half of it.

Ali:        Yeah, absolutely. The, the version of this that we've created is actually probably too much of a nightmare to do this way, because it would make for too much comparison —

Jack:        Yes. Uh-huh. Sure.

Ali:        [chuckling] Of like, which one was better or more interesting. So...

Jack:        Well, personally, I prefer disc 3 of Trouble on the Moon: Dark Edition.

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        I think that that, I think that's totally true, but that, that, I, that happens already. It's already the worst. I think maybe it would encourage it, but —

Ali:        Fair, fair fair fair.

Keith:        It's, you know.

Jack:        Uh...

Ali:        This is a big-time aside, but while we're talking about this [laughing]

Jack:        I know, it's a fun one though, isn't it?

Ali:        A thing that we're already not talking about, there's one specific trick that I would use if I was doing this, and it's, one thing that really disappointed me about Silent Hill...

Keith:        One weird trick that disappoints Ali Acampora's —

Ali:         [giggling] [snorts] It's not Silent Hill Homecoming — actually, it might be Silent Hill Homecoming. Or the Vita game where you're playing as a truck driver?

Keith:        Oh, Silent Hill Homecome, the best Silent Hill game?

Ali:        [chuckling] Or the, or the other Vita one where you're playing as a truck driver, where there is, there's like, so you're going to the hospital to go see your —

Keith:        Wait, is this going to be a, is this going to be, is this going to contain spoilers? Because I am currently doing a Silent Hill Homecoming let'splay on Runbutton.

Ali:        I don't think it's Homecoming. I think it's a different game. I think it's a different Silent Hill.

Keith:        Okay.

Ali:        But specifically, you're going to the hospital because your, like, mom is there, uh, and she's been in the psychiatric ward because she's like hearing voices or whatever.

0:48:36.2        And the like, in-game context there is like, she's going to Dark Silent Hill and interacting with these things other people aren't interact with. And [chuckling] in the process of you doing that or like going to the hospital, you're supposed to get recordings of her. And the recording that you get is just her talking to herself. And when I heard that, I was like, “oh my fucking god, me as a video game character. I'm going to go to Dark Silent Hill, I'm going to listen to this tape again, and I'm going to hear both sides of this conversation.”

Jack:        [gasps] Ugh!

Ali:        [laughing] And that never fucking happened.

Keith:        Oh, come on.

Ali:        I know! That would be like, the coolest shit to put into a horror game.

Jack:        God, that would be so good.

Ali:        Uh, yeah. Look forward to that specific trick happening in — [chuckling]

Keith:        Yeah.

Ali:        Sometime in Friends at the Table.

Jack:        Right, because we'd have all the footage basically, right? Like, we would know everything that happened when we started editing that scene together, right?

Ali:        Right, yeah, exactly. And we would know well enough to know that would be [chuckling] fucking cool as shit. Like, the entire point of it is that like, you're traveling between these two different versions of this place. Like, let other things change around it besides like, oh, —

Jack:         Trouble on the Moon: Dark Edition!

Keith:        Yeah.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        I'm saying!

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        Because here's the thing, right?

Keith:        Chain link, everywhere.

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        Like, listen —

Keith:        [laughing]

Jack:        You hear the moon siren go off, and — [laughing] here's the thing, there's already trouble on the moon.

Ali:        Uh-huh.

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        What's it going to be in the Dark Edition?

Ali:        [laughing] Exactly.

Keith:        It's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be Moon Pyramid Head.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Right. [chuckling] That's [Yoka Terra], please.

Keith:        [laughing]

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Uh, anyway, god, it's —

Ali:        Yeah, to get, [laughing] to —

Jack:        It is actually, it is enjoyable to do fun pipe dreams of the show we make, rather than the show we make every day.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Keith:        Well, I mean, there's some new, different work involved, but that's still largely the same work.

Ali:        Yeah. It's, it's just such a different version of, of what we do, and the thought of like, you know, the thought of having the like gold pile of, here's “everything in this show,” quote/unquote, [unintelligible]

Jack:        Yikes.

Ali:        Before anybody can hear it... [laughing]

Jack:        It just needs editing and music and then it's good. Oh, wow.

Ali:        Uh, yeah. There's something that feels appealing and different about that, and maybe one day we'll make it on this idea. I apologize to the like, 20 [unintelligible]

Keith:        I'm endorsing.

Ali:        [giggling] I want to so badly. And to —

Keith:        Let's just do it. Let's do it right now.

Ali:        Mmm... I mean, we —

Jack:        I'm calling Austin. Austin! [chuckling]

Ali:        We have the opportunity to between seasons, but we have so much shit to do. Like, we have —

Jack:        I have so much to do. We have so much —

Ali:        [laughing] So much to do.

Jack:        To do.

Keith:        I, I know that every, it's been a really bad year and everyone has been busy, but it would be so, it would be so nice to right now already be caught up with all of the Patreon shit that we're backed up on.

Ali:        I know, I know.

Jack:        Ugh...

Ali:        We're getting close, we're really, the, the —

Jack:        We're getting close right now, as we make this.

Keith:        Yeah. As we get — actually, as we keep talking about it, we're getting further and [chuckling] further. [laughing]

Ali:        [giggling] Back onto going through our Patreon backlog, let's get back to the [laughing] subject at hand.

Jack:        Let's talk about the tequila crime.

Ali:        Yeah, we have not even spoken about what's going on with Saul.

Keith:        We have not been talking about Saul for, for more than — we, all that we have said about the titular character —

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        Is that he's in the cinnabun and got locked in a room.

Jack:        He's in crisis. Yeah.

Keith:        An, an almost inconsequential scene. A lovely scene. But a totally, totally, almost totally meaningless scene.

Ali:        Something completely divorced from who he is when we see him in Better Call Saul, which I'm just going to give like a very short synopsis, which is like, Saul, as in Saul Goodman, which is in, “it's all good, man.” It's all, it's all. [giggling]

Jack:        Fuck up, Vince.

Ali:        A name that he like, you know, chooses purposely to be a fucking scammer, and also [chuckling] to separate himself from his brother that he has all of this tension with, has been working really hard for a really long time to be a lawyer.

Keith:        Doing, doing like, extremely poorly-paid public defender work, right?

Ali:        Yeah, uh, yeah. Things like that, and then also, sort of trying to cut the corners in terms of like, in season one, there's this bit where he like, puts up a billboard that is gesturing towards his brother's law firm that refuses to fire —

Jack:        Oh, it's so good.

Ali:        Refuses to hire him, because his brother doesn't want them to, to like, get customers his way so he can like prove to himself and to everybody else that he is like, capable of being a good lawyer. And we, we, when we start is this episode, he is finally, like, at the tips of that dream, where he's being offered a job from like a legitimate law firm.

Keith:        They seemed — I don't know them, but they seem like a pretty, uh, a pretty good one, with a lot of money.

Ali:        Yeah. Yeah.

Keith:        Or at least, uh, uh, at least, I don't know about pretty good one, but at least they have a lot of money.

Ali:        Yeah, by all means. Uh, yeah. This is like, you know, instead of being like an independent lawyer, who works out of an office in a nail salon [chuckling] and has like a car that's —

Keith:        What is the, what does the paper sign on his door say?

Ali:        [chuckling] I think it says, uh...

Keith:        What's, what's his, uh, what's his, his, Jimmy, what's his last name?

Jack:        James McGill.

Keith:        I think it says Jimmy McGill: a law corporation, in paper.

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        So good — another great prop.

Ali:        Yeah, just clearly, it's like fax paper with the like, holes on the side that you're supposed to tear off.

Keith:        Yeah, yeah. What is that, a mimeograph?

Ali:        Yeah.

Keith:        Is that what that's called? Yeah.

Ali:        One fourth of it is, in fact [chuckling] pulled off on one side, where it's like very shittily taped to this door, fantastic prop. But, yeah. So we see him getting this job offer, uh, and instead he pulls aside his, I guess now coworker/, you know, friend/, you know, potential love interest, uh, and is like, “hey, does me getting this job depend on what's going to happen with us?” And she's clearly annoyed, and is like, “one thing has nothing to do with the other.” And so he [chuckling]

Keith:        Right.

Ali:        He valiantly, I guess, or just like a —

Keith:        Dodging the implication that she is a love interest, I think, very —

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        Uncomfortably dodging —

Jack:        I want to like, really briefly bring up a great bit of business in this scene, which is that he's gesturing with his hands like a, he's clearly very nervous, and he's gesturing with his hands like a lawyer, you know, making all of these sort of formal hand gestures. And she says, “what are you doing, why are you making all these gestures?” And as she says to him, you know, “these two things are not connected, they're completely unrelated things,” she falls into making exactly the same gestures as him.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Keith:        [laughing] Ha-ha, I didn't even notice that.

Jack:        It's such this, just this brilliant little moment of these two characters kind of crashing into each other.

Ali:        Uh... yeah. It's —

Keith:        What is her name? Kim? Is it Kim?

Ali:        Kim, Kim Wexlar.

Jack:        My favorite name in the show. Kim Wexlar. Absolutely stunning name.

Keith:        That's funny, that seems like such a —

Jack:        That's a Bluff City name.

Keith:        Normal name, to me.

Jack:        Wexlar, I think is a very good name.

Ali:        Yeah...

Keith:        Oh, I know —

Jack:        Combined with Kim.

Keith:        I've heard, I know, I know people named Wexlar. So maybe that's why.

Jack:        I know no Wexlars.

Keith:        Mmm.

Ali:        As a standalone, like, anyday name, it has a great sound.

Keith:        Oh yeah, sure, there's something, nothing wrong with it.

Ali:        Yeah. Uh, anyway, so he, he declines the job, excuses himself very quickly, and —

Jack:        Very politely, I think.

Keith:        It seemed like he was about to accept it.

Ali:        Yeah. Yeah.

Jack:        But no.

Keith:        And then he's like, “actually, no, I'm not taking it. And also I quit as a lawyer. I'm done being a lawyer, right now.”

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        I'm going to go be in a lazy river.

Ali:        Yeah.

Keith:        Right, a lazy — I really thought that there was a current to that, at first, and I was like, “what opulence. What —“ [laughing]

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        Absolutely perfect thing. There's nothing, if I had a stupid amount of money, and I was, and I was just like, I was, I just had to use it. The thing that I would do is give myself a lazy river. I just would have to.

Jack:        I love lazy rivers. I've never been in [chuckling], I've never been in one.

Ali:        Oh...

Keith:        You've never been in one?

Jack:        No! So I've only ever been in a really small one, like a, like, you know, sometimes in like an indoor pool there's like a tiny one that just goes around one end of the pool or something.

Keith:        Sure. I've never seen that, but I, I can picture it.

Jack:        I have heard people talk about lazy rivers, and they sound to me like, like the height of indulgence.

Keith:        Oh, it's so good. Well, because there's two things you do. You, you, you have your feet in the water, your arms in the water, you lay back in your tube and you have fun. And the other thing you do is you play around in the current. Because it's very rare that you just swim in something with a current —

Ali:        Mm-hm.

Keith:        At least for me, because I'm, I'm afraid of swimming in natural water, because —

Jack:         That's fair, it's —

Keith:        I don't know, it's just my one fear.

Jack:        It's nature's water.

Keith:        It's my one real phobia, is like swimming in oceans and lakes and rivers. Uh, and then getting sort of told, “no,” by the life guards, and just kind of ignoring them. And that's its own little joy.

Jack:        [chuckling]

Keith:        You have to, you have to stop for a second. But then... it's so long. There's like 12 different life guards. By the time you loop back around, it's probably shift change.

Jack:        And you just go round and round. Friend of the show, Jess Martinez-Tebbel has said that when the world is safe and I am able to be in America again, we shall go to a lazy river, and anybody is invited.

Ali:        Oh, yeah.

Keith:        That's the best.

Jack:        Not if you're listening. I mean everybody I'm talking to right now.

Ali:        [laughing] Well thank you, I'll be there.

Keith:        Thank you, yeah.

Ali:        Uh, but yeah, we, we see him floating in this pool, you know, deciding what the right quote/unquote, “life,” is for him. And it is, uh... you know.

Keith:        That lazy river life.

Jack:        Vibing?

Ali:        Getting by, yeah. Vibing.

Keith:        Sitting, phone in a bag —

Jack:        Oh, before that, we get this — we get a [laughing] phone in a bag. We get a tiny scene where he drives out of the parking lot and says to Mike, uh, that he had a, that he had a million dollars on his desk but nobody knew where it was, and he gave it back to the authorities, I guess, because he wanted to do the right thing. Uh, and, and he says, “why didn't we just, why didn't we just keep it?” And Mike basically says, “you tell me.” Uh, and, and uh, Jimmy says, uh, “I didn't know what kind of a person I was, and I'm not going to let that person stop me again.”

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        Cut to him in a, in a lazy river.

Ali:        Yeah, he, he specifically says, “I know the thing that stopped me, and I won't let it stop me again.”

Jack:        Great line.

Ali:        And then we see what his version of freedom looks like immediately, which is — [chuckling]

Jack:        It's a lazy river!

0:59:31.0        

Keith:        So, is — and Ali, you, you have, you've seen more of the show than me, might have a better idea of what that thing that stopped him was. And I guess, I wasn't sure if the thing was, was, uh, some sort of sense of right and wrongs or sort of morality, or if it was just fear of getting caught, because that also seemed like maybe it could have been the thing that stopped him.

Ali:        Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of things, and I like the way that it's sort of open to interpretation in this episode. I think when you have the context of the rest of the show, it's like, is it his, is it the fact that he's been trying to live up to his brother's, uh, you know, version of what success is? That he's been trying to prove things to people. Or is it the fact that he like, knows he has been able to be really successful as a criminal, by just like scheming and shit like that.

Keith:        And only barely successful as a lawyer.

Ali:        Right, yeah. Like, why am I trying to do the right thing instead of the thing that I'm good at. Uh...

Keith:        Which is presumably much harder, and much more actual work.

Ali:        [laughing] You know, he — that's the interesting thing of this episode is, because like, it's something that he's, he's very skilled at. Uh, he immediately sees this mark, uh, —

Keith:        Right.

Ali:        And is able to take advantage of them in the right way and get the thing that he wants.

Keith:        Right before that, when he was trying to convince Kim why she should stop being mad at him for wanting to be a criminal instead of a lawyer, uh, he had a great line about like, uh, the thing that he liked about being a lawyer was like, convincing people of things and like, talking to people and making people do what he wanted, and he doesn't have to be a lawyer to do that.

Ali:        Yeah. That's a great line in this episode. A little bit of context here, too, which I think is interesting without the context is, there's also the, the ring that she calls attention to, and the camera does a bunch of times.

1:01:29.1        

Jack:        Mmm. I didn't know what this was about.

Ali:        Uh, yeah. So, a friend of his, in the episode prior to this, he goes to a different town to a funeral of a friend of his, and has this like, one last night out with his friend, where they're like talking about all of the like, best schemes that they've had, where they've been able to like, talk people out of their money, or out of their cars or whatever. I don't know that it's cars, why did I say that? But like [chuckling] things of that nature, where he like —

Keith:        Sure, you can get in.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        [laughing]

Jack:        [laughing]

Ali:        He does a very similar —

Jack:        Climb right in.

Ali:        Yeah. There's, uh, I think the scam that he pulls in the previous episode is this thing where he's like, he hears somebody being really loud and annoying at a bar, and like, convinces them that, like the change that he's giving them is like a nickel that's worth like thousands of dollars, and then — yeah.

Jack:        Oh, I remember this! It's a beautiful scene.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        I don't remember this.

Ali:        Uh, yeah. It's a sort of back and forth of being like, “oh, this is really valuable, yadda-yadda-yadda.” And then being like, uh, “well,” but like trying to keep it, but then obviously the other person is, is hooked at that point, and is willing to give up, like a small amount of money for the like, large amount of money that they think that they're going to get, because it's this lie.

Keith:        Classic scam.

Ali:        [laughing] It's so, it's really good.

Jack:        Great scam.

Ali:        It's really good. Uh, but yeah, these are the sort of things that are like, fresh in his mind, as we see him going through this. Uh... but —

Jack:        And so the ring is from his friend who has, who has passed?

Ali:        Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jack:        Uh, this scene fits into a genre that you see a lot in kind of capery-adjacent movies —

Keith:        Ah.

Jack:        Which I like to call, “person messes with somebody else in a restaurant or a bar.”

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        Uh, we saw this in Tampopo, when she goes and does the clever to scheme to learn, the, uh, how to make the noodles, where she goes and criticizes that guy's, uh, sushi. And I feel like —

Keith:        That was also a good scam.

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        Uh, the, the, yeah. Criticizes the ramen, I said sushi. That was also a good scam. And I feel like these are the same scene, and for me, the biggest hallmark is that you, the viewer, [chuckling] in order for these to be good, you, the viewer need to know roughly what is going to happen before it happens. So you need to see Saul get up and approach — you need to see the loser talking on the phone and think, “this kind of scene is about to happen.”

Keith:        Right.

Jack:        And then, and this is important for me, you as the viewer need to resent it for about 40 seconds, until the scam —

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Really kicks off [chuckling] in earnest, at which point you are on board, watching this happen.

Keith:        Mmm.

Jack:        Because whenever I see these things start, I'm like, “fucking... are we doing this again? We're going to do the whole, I'm much better at talking than the other person?” And then it kicks off and I'm like, “oh yeah, here we go, this is great.” [laughing]

Ali:        Yeah, I... there's something really interesting about how this scene feels for me, in that like —

Jack:        It's so good.

Ali:        It's initially this really tense conversation about these people who care about each other. And Kim is trying to understand why Saul would make this decision at all. And the — the thing, yeah.

Jack:        She just can't! She, she — there's this gulf, she can't understand it at all.

Ali:        And the more that he tries to explain himself, the more he gets away from a reasonable argument. Uh... [laughing]

Jack:        It's so good.

Ali:        He, he initially is just like, “oh, you know, I've seen my life for the, the full perspective of it, and I've decided that I should turn away from these things and I should, you know, just reach out to any opportunity that comes to me.” And she's immediately like, “yeah, this job offer is an opportunity.”

Jack:        I gave it to you.

Ali:        [laughing] I don't remember exactly what he says to like, brush that off. But it's like, so small and so stupid that it like, isn't...

Keith:        I think he don't. I think that that — I think there's a moment of silence, and that's when the scam starts.

Ali:        Yeah.

Keith:        He's like, “look, watch.” I think.

Jack:        There's another bit where he says something that is so, like, hurtful without realizing that it's hurtful, and she initially takes it in, and then suddenly realizes that it's actually struck, which is that, uh, they're talking about the opportunity that Kim kind of gave him. And he just outright says, “that's not important to me.” And Kim, in much the say way as Wormald suddenly realizes he's incriminating himself, Kim sort of begins to like, mockingly say, “oh, that's not important.” And then she just like, pauses, as she realizes what the implications of that are for their relationship, or for what, uh, Jimmy might think of, of Kim. And I think, like Ali said, yeah, it's this great moment of this person wanting to make an argument but not actually really knowing what they're arguing, and so just sort of like, splashing around in this pool of like, “I'm feeling it out.” And it doesn't go anywhere and it doesn't work.

Ali:        Yeah. Another good peak of this argument is when, like, she's explaining to him, like, “I, I was there with you when you worked so hard. I saw you spending all of the —“ yeah.

Jack:        Oh, you took all those exams.

Ali:        Yeah, “I saw how hard you studied to pass the bar.” And then he immediately launches into this like, “oh, well people, that's the, that's the —“

Keith:        The sunk cost fallacy, yeah.

Ali:        The sunken cost [laughing] thing.

Jack:        Ugh.

Ali:        I've already put all of this time into it. [chuckling]

Keith:        What a great little marker to know when someone's wrong, when they, is when they start, like, speaking about meta argument tactics.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        The other thing is like, Kim is like a, like a top-flight lawyer. And there's something so funny to me about this like, confused man in a bar trying to explain to her why she shouldn't care about the fact that he's abandoning things.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        It's like, the fact that Saul decides to burst out sunk cost fallacy. And Kim just says, “what?” Because she's confused. And Saul is like, “now it's time for me to describe to you what the sunk cost fallacy is.”

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        And it's like, she works for Davis and Bane. It's like, what do you think you're doing here, Saul? Uh, but then — oh, sorry, go on.

1:07:16.1        

Ali:        Yeah. I... the, the reason why this scene lands, I think, and why the scene is so satisfying to watch, is because there is this moment of silence in this conversation, where both of them are too, like, uncomfortable to say any more than they've already said. And, the like, the just nonsense talk from this other person at the bar, like sort of far away from them —

Jack:        [chuckling]

Keith:        Oh, you're hearing him through this whole conversation...

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        Being a total jackass.

Ali:        It's so funny, and it's so good, especially just like, with these two characters like, just exchanging these awkward looks, and having this be the background to it. Which is such a conversation with your almost-partner in a fucking hotel bar to have happen to you.

Jack:        Yeah.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        It's wonderful.

Keith:        There's this moment, and Jack, you, you earlier was like, “you have to have a moment of,” where you resent that they're like —

Jack:        You resent, you as the viewer resent that we're doing this.

Keith:        Oh, we're going to do the talking good scam?

Jack:        Yeah.

Keith:        So I, I was like, I was, I almost disagreed, and then realized that I had the same thing but in a different place.

Jack:        [chuckling]

Keith:        Which was when, the second that that guy opened his mouth — first of all, I recognized the actor there, so I was like, “well, they're not going to just have him unless he becomes something.” But that's, that's another part of it. Uh, but like, oh, they're doing the, there's a jackass here, and that guy's going to be the mark because he's an asshole, great, yeah. Another, another guy — so it's just the same resentment in a different spot.

Jack:        That's like a critical part of the, the scene.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Keith:        Right.

Jack:        Uh, I think it's worth setting up the ultimate punchline of this scene, which we'll get to in a second, which is that Jimmy decides that he is going to show off by trying to order a 50-dollar shot of tequila, with his reasoning being consistent with this absolute bullshit he's spouting, which is kind of just like, “well, you've got to try it someday. I'm going to try it.”

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        Uh, and Kim just says, “no, I'm paying.”

Keith:        Yeah, well — and the other reasoning, that he's going to charge it to someone else's room.

Jack:        Yes, he's going to — yes. He is fully prepared to just sort of, like, like, write this off as a, as a... [chuckling] as a small crime. But then Kim says, “I'm paying,” and then orders drinks the most perfunctorily I have ever seen anybody order anything.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        [laughing]

Jack:        She says, “give him a shot of tequila.”

Keith:        [laughing]

Jack:        Or something, and then she says, “and a glass of the house red.” And the waiter says, “we have these four wines,” and he lists them, and Kim just says, “I don't know, give me one. Dealer's choice.” And then she looks away from him as if to end the [chuckling] conversation immediately. It's a — she —

Keith:        Oh, and then says something, “as long as it's got alcohol in it.”

Ali:        Yes. [laughing]

Jack:        Yeah, she says, “as long as it has alcohol in it.”

Keith:        She, she might as well have gone to a restaurant and ordered something with calories.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Oh god, it's so funny. So, so that's what you need to know, is that Jimmy has tried and failed to order [laughing] a 50-dollar shot of tequila.

Keith:        Oh, no, he gets it. He got it.

Ali:        No.

Jack:        No, no. He doesn't get —

Keith:        No? Is that not what that was?

Ali:        No, she says, she says, “he's going to have a shot of your well,” whatever, well tequila, which well is —

Jack:        Yeah, like some like, 14-dollar or like —

Ali:        Yeah.

Keith:        You know what it, what it is? I, I also thought that he didn't get it —

Jack:        14-dollar?

Keith:        And then later on, when they do drink some of this tequila, it's, it is in the same preparation, it's like —

Jack:        Oh, sure.

Ali:        Oh, sure.

Keith:        It's in the same glass with the same lime slice, and I was like, “oh, 50-dollar whiskey has gotta have its own —“ or, “50-dollar tequila has got to have its own glass that they put it in, so I think maybe he did have one earlier.” I guess I was wrong.

Ali:        No, yeah, she specifically orders him a well drink, which is so funny, because that's just the like, you know what a well, you've worked at a bar and know what a well is, which is like, here's the cheapest of whatever.

Keith:        I've never, I never heard that.

Jack:        Is that bar lingo?

Ali:        Really? Yeah. That's, that's big-time.

Keith:        I've never — as a bartender, never heard that.

1:11:01.6        

Ali:        Oh, wow, yeah. That's, that's, uh, maybe it's just in New York.

Jack:        What does it mean?

Ali:        It's just like, you know, the, the bargain alcohol. Like you can, you can either —

Jack:        Oh, sure. Like house brand.

Ali:        Yeah, you can either order whiskey and say, “I want this specific brand,” or you can just say, “the well is,” whatever the place decides to use as their —

Jack:        Oh, so you order this. This isn't —

Keith:        Yeah. So you go out back and you pull it out from the bucket, the tequila trough —

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        From — you're the luckiest bar in the world. This isn't —

Keith:        [laughing]

Jack:        This isn't, uh, this isn't revealing that Kim used to be a bartender or something, right? This is just that she knows the — what does this tells us? It tells us that she tends to drink this stuff, and holds Jimmy in low enough regard in this moment to just order —

Ali:        No, it's her ordering off of, it's like her being like, “he's going to get the dollar menu tequila, and I'm going to get a [chuckling] glass of house wine.”

Jack:        [chuckling] Just a glass of house wine.

Keith:        This isn't jargon, it just is something that Jack and I don't know.

Ali:        Yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughing]

Jack:        Uh, so they begin this scheme, and, and, and they begin by playing a brother and sister. Uh...

Ali:        Yeah, it's, it's —

Keith:        Viktor with a K.

Jack:        Viktor with a K, and Jiselle.

Keith:        And Jiselle.

Ali:        [laughing] It's really an incredible moment when he starts the scheme, because it's like, him not being able to like, communicate with her what he means about his otherwise potential. And instead just like, “hey, here, follow me.” And walks up to this person, and starts saying this absolutely obvious lie, which is like [laughing] actually, it starts off so well. It's like a perfect hook for somebody, because he says, “I have a question, can you settle a bet between me and my sister?”

Jack:        Can you settle a bet!

Keith:        Yeah.

Ali:        Uh, I'm sorry to bother you, but is there like a limit to how much money [laughing]

Keith:        [laughing]

Ali:        A person can invest?

Jack:        How much money you can invest?

Keith:        It's so funny.

Ali:        [snorts]

Keith:        Well, so this is perfect, because this is the thing, this is the thing, and this is, this is the resent thing that I was talking about earlier, where it's like, they're just going to do the way that scams go, they're not going to do a twist on it. But then they do it so well that you don't care. Which is that, like, the good, the, — and I think it's part of the way that like, at least in movies that they get you to be on the side of the con artist, is that all of these cons depend on a little, at least a little bit of like, selfishness and selfcenteredness from the victim.

Jack:        Yeah.

Keith:        Where they have to, they have to think that they're getting something from you, so that you can then take from them.

Ali:        Yeah.

Keith:        Which is the same thing with the, with the nickel thing, the, uh, it's the violin scam? Have you heard of —

Jack:        Yes.

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        It's that. That's the nickel thing. Where you trade, you basically trade someone a violin that you say, “I don't know, I'm pretty sure it's worth a lot, but I just need some cash.” And then they're like, “oh, sure.” It's more complicated than that. But, uh, this guy wants them as clients, immediately thinks, thinks people are stupid. You can tell that he's annoyed that they're even talking to him, even though he was just shouting across the restaurant about stocks and like, “that stock's so bad, you should smother it with a pillow until it's dead.”

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        And like, “that stock's so bad, it's literally a piss sandwich,” or whatever fucking gross weird shit he was saying. Uh...

Ali:        It's so good, though. His like, slow warm-up to them, as Jimmy is like, slowly feeding him the right information of being like —

Keith:        Yeah.

Ali:        Oh, our uncle left us a bunch of money, and how he's like initially sort of sheepish about like, saying the amount of money, while this is guy is like, slowly, blossoming to his [chuckling] —

Jack:        It's wonderful. And, Jimmy is playing the stupidest man in the world at this point.

Ali:        Yeah.

Keith:        Yeah. [laughing]

Jack:        And he's doing it so gleefully, that like, I've seen season one, so I knew Jimmy was really, is really good at this. And I knew he was, I knew that the outcome of this scene was like, Jimmy showing Kim that he's really good at this. But he was playing this idiot so flawlessly —

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        That I was like, there was a moment that I was like, “oh god, has this gotten out of his hands?” And, nope. He's just doing really well.

Ali:        Yeah.

Keith:        And, and part of it, not just that he's good at it, but look how fun it is to do this.

Ali:        [laughing] Yeah.

Keith:        It's so much fun. It's as fun to do as it is to watch, or more fun. Uh...

Jack:        So they all sit down in a booth —

Ali:        Yeah, before we move past —

Jack:        And then he's —

Ali:        The, sorry. Because my other favorite thing about that scene is because she's also not in on the plan as he's starting it, her like hesitance, or like trepidation about this —

Keith:        Her eyes get so wide.

Ali:        Yeah, it only like, impacts his performance for this person. Because he can be the person who's like, “oh, my sister doesn't want me to ask you this, we're settling like a bet.”

Jack:        It's so good.

Ali:        But, you know, “let's just talk with this guy, let's just get some numbers. He's going to, you know, you know, we don't have to sign anything.” And then initially, she does go along with it and sits down with them.

Keith:         And you know, you know what else is kind of funny about this?

Ali:        What?

Keith:        Is, you know, it, it sounds wild to say — but I, a part of it to me was also when he leans in and whispers the amount they were looking to invest was 1. 4 million dollars, and I was like, “that's not even that much.”

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Right. Uh-huh.

Keith:        That is not, that's not even so much that you would even think, “is that more than is, you're allowed to invest?”

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        [laughing]

Jack:        This poor guy.

Keith:        [chuckling] This guy is talking about like, making millions of dollars, and is like, “I don't know, am I allowed to invest 1. 4 whole million dollars?”

Ali:        [laughing] But it's like —

Jack:        What do I do —

Ali:        An amount just high enough where the, the person on the other side of it could think, “oh, this person has never interacted with this amount of money before in the way that I have —“

Keith:        Yes, exactly.

Jack:        Wonderful.

Ali:        And now, I can dedicate my time to this and take it from them. [chuckling]

Keith:        Right.

Jack:        But — off they go to the booth, and Jimmy says, “hey, have you ever, uh, have you ever tried this kind of tequila before?”

Ali:        No, no, no it's even better, [unintelligible] [laughing]

Jack:        It's like — no, no, no, please. I was, as I was saying it, I was like, “I can't remember how he does this, and it is so sly.” And for me it's really funny, because as soon as he says this, I realized what the scam was, which is like, they're not even doing a big fucking money scam. He just wants to drink this tequila as much as possible.

Ali:        It's even better because, uh, Jimmy's looking at the menu and he's like, “hey, let's get some tequila.” And the guy that they're scamming, uh, is like, “yeah, let's get three shots.” And then he looks to Kim and is like, “oh yeah? Are you okay with that? Do you drink tequila?” And she's like, “yeah, have you ever tried blank brand?”

Keith:        [laughing]

Jack:        [chuckling]

Keith:        Uh, it was Zafira Anejo. Was the brand.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Great fake tequila name.

Ali:        And he, obviously not recognizing the name, is like, “oh, no, let's just get that.” And, you know, it's ordered. The waiter walks away, not, you know, giving this guy a heads-up that it's 50 dollars a shot.

Jack:        [chuckling] 50 dollars a shot.

Ali:        Uh, and it's tremendous. It's a great flip, because I, I love her seeing the opportunity and then taking it.

Jack:        Yeah.

Ali:        She slides so well into what Jimmy is doing, that it's like, a very satisfying thing to watch, in my opinion. Uh...

Jack:        It's wonderful. It's so good. And then, and then —

Keith:        Sorry, I — frankly, I just totally spaced. Ali, could you please repeat what you just said? I'm really sorry. [laughing]

Ali:        Oh, sure sure sure. Yeah. [giggling] The way that that scene goes, is that he mentions tequila, but Kim is the one who like, sees the opportunity —

Keith:        Yes.

Ali:        Has this person be sort of condescending to her, and is like, oh, we should — she just mentions the brand. She just says, “hey, have you had this type before?” And he's like, “yeah.” And the way that she's like, so easily able to slide in as someone who's like, willing to do this, and also seeing those opportunities, is like a really, I had a great time viewing it.

Keith:        Yeah.

1:18:56.0        So this was the crime, by the way.

Jack:        Tequila montage begins.

Keith:        That while watching it, you go — or at least I went, “god, this, what a great crime, I would love to commit this crime.”

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        Yes. Uh, and they just —

Keith:        This guy sucks. The tequila is —

Jack:        Sucks so bad.

Keith:        More expensive than anything you'd ever want to buy yourself.

Jack:        Yes.

Keith:        He doesn't even know the price.

Jack:        No. This tequila is more expensive than most of the things on my desk right now.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        And it's, and it's one shot of tequila. Uh, there's, so, so they drink tequila, the waiter gives them the stopper. I wanted to try this entirely fake tequila, this whole scene, and I don't much like tequila. But —

Keith:        Same. Also both —

Jack:        Jimmy also sold me the tequila. Uh, and then they leave, and it's just really cute. They're like, they're like running away, and Jimmy is holding the piece of paper, and he, he like crumples it up and throws it into a pool. Into, into a bin, and says like, “oh, no, I didn't read the fine print!” And Kim is like, laughing.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Keith:        [chuckling]

Jack:        And they kiss next to the pool, and it's like, so corny. And it is, it is the corniness of this like, absolute delight of having had to have been, I don't know, thinking so much about what they were saying, and, and then realizing that they were getting away with it, and now just being able to like, run, in, in like high heels out of the, out of the restaurant next to the pool, and like throw the contract away, and kiss Jimmy and everything. It was like, it's a really sweet end to the scene, I thought.

Ali:        Yeah, it's, it's wonderful. I really love the cut of her, them ordering the tequila, and then it cuts to them pouring the tequila, and we see them hours later, and the implication is, they've ordered so many shots that they finished the bottle.

Jack:        They finished the bottle of —

Keith:        They finished the bottle.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        Which, which —

Jack:        Ugh.

Keith:        This is, this is now hundreds and hundreds of dollars to drink that tequila.

Ali:        Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jack:        Hundreds of dollars! We never see the amount, but we do see the waiter, we do, we see the poor man, the mark, read the bill, and look at a waiter and say, “is this right?” And the waiter just nods, as though like —

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        “Yeah-huh? That's right.”

Keith:        What are you gonna do?

Jack:        Uh-huh!

Ali:        He says it with such, like, obvious tension that I was able to recognize as, uh, someone who's worked in the service industry. But he —

Keith:        Yeah. I've said, I've said things like that before. Never, never someone who was concerned about their bill, but, yeah.

Ali:        Yeah. But he says it so matter-of-factly, and then walks away after being like, “yeah, that's the correct price.”

Keith:        Walks away.

Ali:        That it was such a win for that guy, that I was very glad that we got it.

Jack:        Oh, god. Yeah.

Keith:        Uh, there's, oh, there's another just small great moment of, at the beginning, when the check, or when the, when the check first comes, and uh, Jimmy goes to grab the check.

Ali:        Oh yeah.

Jack:        Oh, yes!

Keith:        He's like, he's like, “I'll get it.”

Jack:        And he says, “nope, can't let you do that!”

Keith:        And Ken — I think it's Ken —

Ali:        [giggling] Yeah.

Keith:        Is the, is the shithead, uh, broker.

Ali:        Mm-hm.

Keith:        Grabs it and is like, “oh, no, I've got it.” And Jimmy's like, “oh, really? Are you sure you got it?”

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Oh, thanks, Ken!

Keith:        Oh, thanks, gosh, I really was going to, because I have that 1.4 mil.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        [chuckling]

Jack:        Phew! At this moment, I feel it would be, I, I want to bring up the, the funniest scam that has ever been pulled on one of my characters in Bluff City, which is when [chuckles] Ali attempted to scam her way into a gala, in —

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        I think in Blue City.

Ali:        Yeah.

Jack:        Do you remember this, Ali?

Ali:        Yeah, this is, this is Chris Andrews, uh, in, it wasn't Hard Luck, it was from the season one finale, where we're investigate for Hector Hu.

Jack:        Yeah. We get scammed, and scam each other, on Friends at the Table all the fucking time. [chuckling]

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        But this is the one in Bluff City that I think about the most, which is that I am playing like a pickup NPC, like some stupid police officer trying to guard, uh, uh, an entrance to something at a gala. And Al you needs to get into the gala. And, I don't know if you immediately melt down? But [laughing] you just —

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        She, Chris comes up and starts trying to get in, and I don't know whether or not it happens immediately, but like bursts into tears, and just completely melts down in front of this guard, who kind of has [chuckles] no idea what to do?

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        I don't remember what your goal was in this scene, but I remember playing it and just, like, on the other side of the microphone, increasingly losing it as you were trying to [unintelligible]

Keith:        [laughing]

Ali:        [chuckling] It was, oh god, I actually do remember this, because it was her trying to get into the gala, which was like a police gala, and specifically —

Jack:        Oh, sure.

Ali:        There was like a security booth which, within the party, where I was trying to get, like, it was like a, like a, like a roped-off like Starbucks in a hotel lobby or whatever, but they, the security was using it as like, sort of like, their, their, uh, base.

Jack:        Like every Hitman level has.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        That little area that the —

Ali:        Uh, so I think initially she was trying to lie and saying that she needed to get in there for some sort of like, uh, like panic reason, like, “oh, I need to use your bathroom,” or like something like that. And then your character, Keith, is pushing her in such a way that I think you eventually say like, “are you scamming me? Or are you lying to me?” Or whatever, and at this point she's already been crying, so I was just like —

Jack:        So offended.

Ali:        “Yes, I am, but I still have to get in there!” It's so [laughing]

Keith:        [laughing] Oh, I do remember that now!

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Just like, admitting to the scam through tears and trying to frame it as a different scam, or something. That was it, right? Like, you started claiming that you had been lying to me, but you were lying about something way more harmless?

1:24:27.7        

Ali:        [laughing] I think so.

Jack:        Ugh, it's so good.

Keith:        Yeah. I remember that.

Ali:        Yeah.

Jack:        That was a great arc.

Ali:        Oh yeah. I really —

Keith:        Yeah, that was a great, uh, that was, I like that game, too. I didn't at first, but I ended up really liking it.

Ali:        Oh...

Jack:        I don't really remember how it worked. [chuckling] But I, I remember having fun.

Keith:        Uh, it was, there was like a stress level, where you became less effective —

Jack:        Oh yeah.

Keith:        The more you used your moves.

Jack:        And like, the world got increasingly dangerous, right?

Keith:        Bizarre and, and harmful, yeah.

Jack:        And Austin was like, counting a clock up, constantly.

Ali:        Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jack:        Which he does all the time, but in a more particular context.

Keith:        Right. It reminded me of, it reminded me sort of, like, in Lord of the Rings, when he, uh, when Frodo puts on the ring, and then all of a sudden like, all of the evil in the world —

Jack:        Oh yeah, [chuckling] everything gets worse.

Keith:        Can see you.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Keith:         Like, it reminded me of that, where it's like, every once in a while, you've got to put on the ring, even though it's really bad to do. Uh...

Jack:        You kill that guy, Keith, and we have to [chuckling] dispose of his body midway through a scene —

Ali:        Oh, my god, that's right.

Keith:        [laughing] Yeah. No one wanted to kill that guy, either.

Ali:        No, I remember that —

Jack:        But he, he did die.

Ali:        Yeah. I remember that being both a character and a player argument, and then you just pulling the trigger.

Jack:        Yes, we — [laughing] were all fighting.

Keith:        Yeah. Yeah.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Then you call Finnegan Hands to [unintelligible]

Keith:        Got to make a move. Sometimes you've got to shoot the boat.

Ali:        Mm-hm.

Jack:        Sometimes you've got to shoot the boat. Yeah.

Ali:        God, I really, really love that arc.

Jack:        Aw, man. Did you kill — you kill Leslie Strata at the end, too, right?

Ali:        I do, yeah. I really —

Jack:        On the roof.

Ali:        Yeah, that was, I, I love Chris Andrews. She's really one of my, like, favorite Bluff City characters to play. And I was, this was my second time playing her. And I really think like, the decision to not be in the presence of her hero anymore, to stay in the city —

Jack:        Yeah.

Ali:        And do the thing that she thinks he would have done, to like, go save, uh, your... original fiasco character, right? That's what she goes back to do, helps him —

Jack:        He implicates himself. You call him to try and hide the, the boxer that we are trying to look after.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        And Finnegan basically just immediately says, “oh, you have a way out of the city? Get me out.” [chuckling] But, yeah, you go back and save him, down that really cool staircase, that really horrible, narrow staircase down from the roof.

Ali:        Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, and then I shoot the person who recruited me to the like, evil investigators that —

Jack:        Is Chris Andrews still alive? Where did we leave her?

Ali:        Uh, we left her on that rooftop.

Jack:        Damn. Cool.

Ali:        Yeah. Yeah! Well, I...

Keith:        Not, wait — did Chris — so Chris Andrews didn't go to —

Jack:        No.

Keith:        Uh, Bluffington.

Jack:        No, I don't think so.

Ali:        No. Yeah, no, she gets out of the car on the way there.

Keith:        Okay.

Ali:        And is instead like, “oh, I have to go keep my promises.”

Keith:        Yeah. I was always slightly, I still am slightly, uh, ambivalent about the herd ending to that. But —

Ali:        Oh yeah?

Jack:        I thought you did great.

Keith:        Well, I always felt like the sort of turn to being like, uh, I don't know, the implication that Heard was kind of like, like deep cover on Hu's side, still, or that like, seeing Hu again changed something for him, that, changed the calculus on how much he's for the agency. I always sort of thought that was pulling a punch, but —

Jack:        I thought it was a great beat, and, and at the same time, you know, this is like what we were talking about earlier where it's like —

Keith:        I couldn't, that's what it was, I couldn't tell if it was a twist or pulling a punch. That's sort of what it was, where I'm like, I want this to come across as a twist, but I don't want it to come across as pulling a punch.

Ali:        I think it landed, because I think, like, uh, so much of the, so much of the tension of playing that was like, you being the veteran who seemed so much more by the book —

Jack:        Yeah.

Ali:        Than these two people who like, sometimes were actively working against you, or like —

Keith:        Yeah.

Ali:        Very suspicious —

Keith:        Mostly were actively working against me. [laughing]

Ali:        [giggling] Yeah. Like, very suspicious that your intentions didn't line up with theirs. And I remember specifically, like when Hector Hu, like finally enters that campaign at all, at any point when the characters are able to interact with them, like, me and Jack's characters immediately moving to like, try to protect this person that we assume that you were going to, to act against in some way.

Keith:        Right. Right.

Ali:        And like, also those characters assume that they care about that person more than your character did, when that isn't true. You in fact had the most history with Hector Hu than we did.

Keith:        Yeah, yeah.

Ali:        That like, and, it ends up being this really tense seen that deflates because there's this different tension, this like, interpersonal tension, is like, a very good reversal that I think a lot of people really enjoyed. I think Agent Heard was like, one of your most particular characters —

Keith:        Right.

Ali:        So don't... [laughing]

Keith:        Okay. Yeah, that's good.

Jack:        Yeah. I like, I think —

Ali:        Feel, rest assured that you did a great job.

Jack:        I think about it a lot.

Keith:        I think about it every few months and just be, just be like, “did I do that right?”

Ali:        Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jack:        The other thing is that, like, we're improvising this stuff. And, like you were saying earlier, we, sometimes you just have to, you have to, you have to make the scene happen. Uh...

1:29:25.5        

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        [chuckling]

Jack:        I think it went really well. I like that episode a lot. Remember when we go to the bureau, like the research area, and I immediately try and lose you among the stacks?

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        Do you remember, Ali, I think it was with your character, we have basically a staring contest, to try to figure, to see, to see if I can see if you're lying to me or something?

Jack:         Ha!

Ali:        Oh, my fucking god, yeah.

Keith:        And we almost died, we both almost died.

Ali:        We almost died. [laughing]

Keith:        From the stress, from the [laughing]

Ali:        That, I mean, that, that was such an interesting recording, because it was like, so much of us playing chicken with the mechanics in that way.

Keith:        Yeah, yeah.

Jack:        Yes, definitely.

Ali:        Because it was a lot of like, player tension, because we were all trying to act on these like, different vectors of, of, you know, intention.

Keith:        Right.

Jack:        It was quite nicely set up. I think we, I think our character creation there was good enough, like, I think we'd done well to get us into —

Keith:        Yeah.

Ali:        Yeah.

Jack:        To get us into that mess in the first place.

Keith:        Yeah. And then eventually it was just like, I had to blink, because —

Jack:        Yep.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        It stopped making sense that I would be still trying to do this.

Ali:        Yeah, it was, it was... yeah.

Keith:        And, and like, the world is slowly crumbling, and it's like, like, we can tell that something's happening, and we both know that we're both resisting each other, or I'm resist, or you're resisting me, but I'm acting, and it's like, “well, we can tell that something's happening, but we just have to stop, because it's dangerous. It's literally dangerous.”

Jack:        [laughing]

Ali:        Yeah, it's a classic, like, uh, tabletop RPG thing of like, okay, the characters can still disagree, but we at the table have to agree somehow, and we have to figure it out.

Keith:        Right.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Yes, because it was 6:30 and we — [chuckling]

Keith:        But it was an interesting moment, if I remember correctly how it went, or how the game works, really it was an interesting moment of like, the mechanics of the game, sort of interpreting the player disagreement as, because the failure, both of our failures, you, you stop, you not being able to stop me from keeping, trying to stop you, which I think is how it was happening, what was happening —

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        Was literally changing the world. [chuckles]

Ali:        Yeah. It was, it was definitely like, mechanicizing — I don't know if that's a word, who cares.

Keith:        Mechanizing?

Jack:        Mechanizing?

Ali:        [laughing] The like, game of chicken that we were literally having.

Keith:        Yeah. Very cool game.

Ali:        I remember, what was the lie about? It was, uh, telling you who was on the other end of the phone, or like, not...

Jack:        Oh, what a great thing to have to lie about.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        Yeah. And it's just, eventually it's like, I know you're wrong and I can't prove it.

Ali:        Yeah, well, uh...

Keith:        I can't approve it.

Ali:        Well...

Jack:        Where do we... [sighs] I want to talk about kind of like, the remaining scene in Jimmy's arc here, which, there's two, really, there's —

Keith:        Two, yeah, there's the morning scene.

Jack:        We see him, we see him back on the, uh, in the lazy river, after he's — well, oh, right. There's a really cute scene with Kim, where, uh, they're just like fooling around —

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        As they, as they wake up in the morning. And then the tension of the scene shifts really beautifully as Kim has to —

Keith:        It's the —

Jack:        Oh, go on.

Keith:        It's the first time they, they seem like friends. In the —

Ali:        In this... yeah.

Keith:        It's the — in this episode, at least.

Ali:        Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Keith:        Like, it's the first time you see them having a good time in each other's company, besides when they were drunk.

Ali:        [laughing] Yeah.

Keith:        There's a brief time when they're drunk where they seem like they're having a good time, after the scam goes down. And then the next morning, they're not drunk, and they're still having fun. Uh...

Ali:        Which is a relief, I think, seeing it in this, in this small version of them. I like their relationship over time —

Jack:        Totally.

Ali:        Throughout the, the, the show itself. But like, if there hadn't been that, that scene, or like, if this, if that scene had been her, like, weirdly regretting being with him because she was drunk, that would have like really tanked, the, the —

Keith:        Yeah.

Ali:        The perception of this episode for sure.

Keith:        Yeah.

Ali:        But [unintelligible] they seem to like each other, yeah —

Jack:        We get this really goofy moment where he, he puts toothpaste on her finger and tries to brush his teeth, because she won't let him use the toothpaste. I, it's like, it's so corny, like so much of this good stuff with Jimmy and Kim is like, Jimmy is being really corny, or Kim is being really corny, but there's a real affection in the joke, that they are both, that they're both finding. I think that's a kind of, that's a really warm comedy, where like, the writers don't need to show us that these people are really, really clever, or really funny. They just need to show us that these two people, uh, feel that humor with each other, right? Or, or, or are able to sit in that space together, that I really like. And then Kim has to go to work, and says, “I'm going to be late, do you have anywhere to go?” And Jimmy says, “yes.” And he's not wearing a shirt. Uh, and, uh, then Kim literally, opening the door, says, “do you have somewhere to go?” No, she says, “are you all right?” And Jimmy puts on a shirt and says, “yes,” and leaves, and goes right back to the lazy river again. [chuckling]

Ali:        [chuckling]

Keith:        I like, I love the phone in a bag, because I do that.

Ali:        Oh yeah?

Jack:        What, when you're in the pool?

Keith:        Not when I'm in the pool, but, uh, sometimes when I'm listening to a podcast or some music and I don't want to stop, but I do have to take a shower, I'll put my phone in a bag and like, keep listening.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Mmm.

Keith:        Because it's too quiet to hear if it's next to the shower.

Jack:        It's very cute.

Ali:        It, it works so well in that episode, because of the structure of the place that he's in. He's like, in this floating chair that has...

Keith:        [chuckling]

Ali:        Two cup holders. Only one of the cup, one of the cup holders has a red drink in it, same drink both days.

Jack:        Red drink. It's his favorite.

Ali:        There's another cup holder that you could put a phone in. Not there.

Keith:        Even a phone in a bag.

Jack:        No, no.

Keith:        Could go in there.

Ali:        Even a phone in a bag, yeah, just to be careful.

Jack:        The phone must float.

Ali:        But he doesn't do that. He also has, attached to floating chair with a rope —

Jack:        [chuckling]

Ali:        A like, wave board that is half his size, with a floating thing of crab dip and chips, just like —

Keith:        You've got to try the crab dip.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        So good. Because he has to sort of — go on.

Ali:        I, it's just, it's such an amazing thing to look at, because the, like, the wave board is rectangular, and the, the circular bowl...

Keith:        [chuckling]

Ali:        Is the width of the thing, but there's so much like, extra room around it, it's like, [laughing] it's just a sight to behold, anyway, Jack, go on.

Keith:        There's so much — you're saying there's so many places for this phone to go that isn't —

Ali:        Yeah. Yes, yes. Yeah.

Jack:        And every —

Keith:        In the water.

Jack:        Because everything is independent to everything else, rather than all being connected —

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        Any time he wants to interact with the phone, or the wave board, he has to sort of —

Ali:        [wheezes]

Jack:        Flap impotently in the water —

Keith:        [laughing]

Jack:        To like —

Keith:        It's also, it's also a flip phone. And so he's got to —

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        Open the flip of the phone, without taking it out of the bag, and that's also very funny.

Jack:        Like, I feel like the, the, this must have been one of those moments in the writers room where someone pitches that image, and everybody goes, like, “yes, but,” and adds one increasing element of stupidity to it.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        Yeah. It's, it's almost —

Jack:        So we end up with this —

Keith:        Like a Rube Goldberg machine, of like, you know, you build this precarious —

Jack:        Of like, lazy, comfortable —

Keith:        Thing to make your toast — yeah. And it's like, look, all I have to do is press this one button and I have toast, and just hope that nothing really bad goes —

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        Nothing, nothing really bad happens. I hope nothing falls over. And, I do still have to like, pull this lever, and reload the marbles, and — [laughing]

Jack:        Also, also, I want to be real. I would love, like, if you said, put — do you want to be in that setup, no changes, I would say, absolutely.

Ali:        [giggling] Yes.

Keith:        Absolutely, yeah.

Jack:        [chuckling] Put me right in.

1:36:48.3        

Keith:        It's, yeah. Because it's still better than not that.

Ali:        Right.

Jack:        What, than being at my desk?

Keith:        Yeah, yeah.

Ali:        Yeah.

Keith:        Or whatever.

Jack:        Uh, and —

Ali:        Yeah, imagine somebody says to you, “you can be in the lazy river, but your phone has to be in a bag, you can't put it in the cup holder.”

Jack:        [laughing]

Ali:        I'd be like, “sure. What's weird. I don't know why you care, but sure.”

Jack:        Let's go.

Keith:        [chuckling]

Jack:        The lazy river's so fun, let's go.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Uh, Jimmy identifies two potential marks. Which I love, these, these are non-speaking parts, these, these two actors who have been hired, and have been set up to look like the most easy people to scam in the universe.

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        Uh, and Jimmy calls Kim like 5 times basically, saying, leaving messages each time, saying, “look —“ increasingly awkward messages, saying, look —

Ali:        Yeah, it, it, it's a great build up because he first calls her, a woman at work in the middle of the day, while he's in a pool, just to be like, “hi, just wanted to talk, call me.”

Jack:        [chuckling]

Ali:        [laughing] And then he hangs up the phone, and then he views these two people and he like, absorbs their whole deal, and he, he sees the potential. And then immediately calls her back, and is like, “oh, I'm looking at the best mark right now. It's somebody who was made to be,” he doesn't say taken advantage of, but that's the thing. Uh, you know, “meet me at the pool now, bye.” And then hangs up. And then this scene only, instead of going back to the, the camera on these two people who he thinks that he can get something out of, just is on him and his like, quiet realization of what he's doing, which is, calling his girlfriend over and over again while she's at work, because it's fucking like, probably 12AM on a Thursday. [chuckling] Uh...

Keith:        [chuckling]

Jack:        And he does it again!

Keith:        [laughing] He does.

Jack:        He calls with a, he calls with a, there's this great bit where he says that he is a lioness, and he is going to —

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Begin the hunt. Come, Kim, come and join the Pride. And then he does a really bad lion's roar and hangs up. And then he immediately calls back again and says, “I called myself a lioness because those are the ones that tend to hunt in their situations.” Which is just like, he, he is just —

Keith:        He's being species accurate, it's a national geographic thing, is what he says.

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        I love this against watching Jimmy scam the tequila man, and being so confident that he's going to be able to scam these two people, just having a series of increasingly ham-fisted and awkward phone calls with a woman whose not picking up the phone is so good.

Keith:        Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, great point.

Ali:        [chuckling] Really —

Keith:        Yeah, it is like the second major scene where he has like, not really known what to say to her, when, at the same time, trying convince her that he should not be a lawyer because he's so good at making people just do what he wants that he, uh, doesn't need to do the work of being an actual lawyer to do that.

Ali:        [chuckling] Or have a job, or like the work of what people do to get through their lives and like, have food, or, you know, a house.

Jack:        It's so absurd. It would be like if you said to me, “why are you giving up your law job,” and I said, “I just, you want to see what the universe can give me.” And then I look over at the corner of the bar and there's a saxophone.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        And then I just pick it up, and play an absolutely stellar saxophone solo. And you're just like, “yes? Uh-huh? How is that going to help you, Jack?” [laughing]

Ali:         Yeah, that's the — that's —

Jack:        This is not your law job.

Ali:        Yeah. That's the other thing that's like, really interesting about like the particular crime that he played, and like, the things that he thinks that he's getting out of it, because like, getting a person to buy you a bunch of tequila is not going to pay your rent. Uh...

Jack:        Nope.

Ali:        [laughing] He specifically, I think, when he, in the morning scene, he's like, “it'd be great if we could do that every night.” And she's like, “ha-ha, I bet.” And it's like, sure, that would be great, but you can't get like, fucking, that... you can't drink that much every single — like there's not —

Jack:        No.

Ali:        That isn't an actual reality. Uh...

Jack:        She talks him into saying that, even.

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        It's so good. He, she says, he says, “I wish we could do that every night,” and she says, “no, but you can't.” And he says, “yes, I know that we can't, that we can't do that. But I do wish we could do it every night, even though I know that we can't.” And it's like, oh, Jimmy.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        So then he calls, he, he, he doesn't even know the number of Davis and Mane, this law firm. He, he, he calls the operator, right?

Ali:        [giggling] Yes.

Jack:        And asks to be connected or something.

Ali:        [giggling] Yes. Uh... yeah, he, he picks up the phone again and it's this fear of being like, “is he really going to call her a fourth time to say something?” And instead, in this quiet moment where he's like, I guess sort of realizing, you know, what am I actually doing, why am I reaching out to this person who I know is going to be disappointed in me if I continue doing it, yadda-yadda-yadda, he instead decides to accept this job. Uh... and then [chuckling] we see him in his, his, uh, now-office. Uh...

Keith:        God, this scene is so funny.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        I love this scene.

Keith:        Because —

Jack:        Also —

Keith:        There's this assistant, or intern or something, it seemed sort of like an office assistant or some, something like that.

Jack:        Yeah. The weird vibe I got was concierge, but I know offices don't have it that.

Keith:        Right. And so —

Ali:        Yeah, definitely, like a, a... oh, I guess it doesn't matter. But this is very much like an executive assistant sort of thing, the sort of like —

Jack:        Oh, sure.

Ali:        The sort of, I don't want to say secretary, but like the, the position that you're in, but when you're working for someone in such a way that you're expected to pick up their dry cleaning, or like [chuckling] you know.

Keith:        Right. It's, I mean, it's frankly, it's worse than a secretary, because you have to do chores.

1:42:47.1        

Ali:        Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh... but, just such a nice and accommodating person —

Keith:        Well, more chores.

Ali:        Going over his like, options. He's like, the, the scene enters with him like explaining that he'll be able to get a company car, but if he doesn't like the car, they'll be able to switch it out, and like —

Keith:        And he goes through like, 5 different versions of that.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        Like, if anything you don't like, tell me and we can change it —

Jack:        It you want change art out —

Ali:        Yeah.

Keith:        The art on the walls, do you need a humidifier because it gets kind of dry in here. And —

Jack:        Also, this, this room is a little, it's, it's bland and corporate, but it is a gorgeous set. There's like, it's like this adobe building, there's like an incredible L-shaped executive desk. There's a frankly weird piece of art on the walls that they use for a joke.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        There's what seems to be —

Keith:        That he lies about liking.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        [laughing]

Jack:        Yes. Just because he wants to be amenable — there's like, wood panel, there's like uh, uh, exposed wood on the ceiling. The fact that this conversation is happening in a room this, like, uh, traditionally well-appointed is so funny. But he's just like, we can change literally everything about this beautiful room, just, uh, you just say.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Keith:        So, example is, we can, we can get you a new company car, we can change the art on the wall, we can put food that you want specifically in the fridge, we can do the humidifier, and then, and then — this is one of my favorite setups for a joke in the whole thing, and Jimmy goes, “don't worry, I'm low maintenance, you don't have to worry about me.”

Jack:        [wheezes] And then —

Keith:        And then he goes — he waits a beat and he goes, “mmm, there is one thing.”

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        And he looks at this gorgeous desk —

Jack:        Beautiful desk!

Keith:        And he's like — absolutely beautiful. I mean, this is like a 3 or 4 thousand dollar desk, wouldn't doubt.

Ali:        Yeah, it's this like beautiful —

Jack:        At least.

Ali:        Dark wood in like a nice L shape, very roomy.

Keith:        Could we maybe get — and almost like, it is exactly like the next thing that happens, which is, I just want to see — he, it's almost like he just wants to see what they'll say —

Jack:        Yep.

Keith:        When he says, “could I get a cocobolo desk?”

Jack:        [laughing] That's [unintelligible]

Keith:        Which is just a different exotic wood.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        It's like [laughing]

Ali:        [snorts]

Jack:        And the man just goes like, “a cocobolo desk, we got you.”

Keith:        Yeah, “you got it.” Smiles at him.

Jack:        I'll get right on it.

Keith:        I'll get right on it. Like it's, like it's the easiest problem to solve in the world, to get a different, probably identical 4 thousand dollar desk, in a differently — different dark wood.

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        Uh... and then, which then leads to him noticing on the wall, and this is the, this is the last scene, the last shot, really —

Ali:        Mm-hm.

Keith:        The, the light switch on the wall that's taped over, that says, “always leave on.”

Jack:        [chuckling] “Never turn off.”

Keith:        “Never turn off.” And he, he, it, it shows us this like 4 times. He keeps glancing at it. He goes over just to look out the window. Nothing else.

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        Notices it again. Takes the tape off. And just like, just like, for me, seeing if he can get a cocobolo desk, just seeing what this light switch does —

Ali:        Yeah.

Jack:        Brilliant instant wide shot where absolutely nothing has changed —

Ali:        It's so good.

Keith:        Nothing changes.

Jack:        And we get Jimmy just looking around this room like, “I don't know.” But then, switching it back just in case.

Ali:        Yeah, it's so good.

Keith:        Switching it back, and then putting the tape back.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        And —

Ali:        I, I really, truly love that wide shot of him flipping it, there's absolute silence. Or, like, I think, and it's, I'm, I'm familiar with this anxiety, because now that I live in an apartment, or when I've been in like, shared living spaces in that way, like, there's nothing more terrifying than like, doing a thing and then suddenly hearing muffled voices [chuckling] somewhere else.

Jack:        [chuckling]

Ali:        But they're not like, panicked voices. It doesn't seem at all like this is happening in reaction to what he's done. But it's like, it's such a quiet shot, and it's him like, glancing towards the door just to see if there's been a reaction to this thing. And like, nothing in the room changes, but in that silence, there's that moment of like, being like, “are they talking about me?” And [laughing] I don't know if that crosses his mind in that moment, but I do really love the way —

Jack:        That's so wonderful.

Ali:        Enter the scene in that moment, because it definitely feels like that sort of thing where like, if you have that anxiety you can think that you created it.

1:47:05.8        

Jack:        Right.

Ali:        [chuckling] Anyway.

Jack:        And then smash cut to credits, just, just like —

Keith:        That's it.

Jack:        Black screen, credits.

Ali:        [giggling] Yeah.

Keith:        He's still a shit, guess what. Jimmy –

Jack:        Beautiful, beautiful way to end an episode.

Keith:        Deciding to be a lawyer didn't make him not a guy that just wants to see what happens if you break the rules.

Ali:        Yeah.

Jack:        Ugh... great episode. Really fun. It did make me want to...

Keith:        Yeah.

Jack:        I'm not in a place right now where I can watch more than one television show at once — [chuckling]

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        I'm watching the Mandalorian right now, so like —

Ali:        Sure.

Jack:        I've, I finished this episode and I was like, “aw man, I should, I should put Better Call Saul back on my list, I should watch this again.”

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        I had a great time.

Ali:        Yeah. I remember — yeah, I remember specifically watching this episode and then starting to give Keith the like, harder push on it, because it seemed like, such like a Keith character sort of [laughing] thing specifically.

Jack:        Yeah, uh-huh, me too.

Ali:        Where you were like, you —

Keith:        Which one, Mark, or, or, uh, —

Ali:        Oh, no, Saul in this moment, because I —

Jack:        Saul.

Ali:        I, I do think that the most interesting thing this about this is like, seeing someone come really close to, to something that they, they think that they've, that they've been working towards, and they've been, you know, that was really hard to attain. And to also like, see the like, picture of what luxury or success is, and seeing it so like, boring and bland, but like, still so like outside of what most people can have, right?

Jack:        Yeah.

Ali:        Where it's like, “oh, of course you can have this 4,000 dollar desk. Of course we're just going to give you a car. And like, you think so yourself, yeah, just fucking, just fucking eat it. Just fucking have a car for free. Like just fucking do the thing! [laughing] But like —

Keith:        [laughing]

Jack:        Yeah.

Ali:        Seeing him like pull a —

Keith:        Who do I got to trick to get the nice car? No one, just ask!

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        You want a cocobolo desk? [chuckles]

Ali:        Yeah. Seeing him like, pull away from like, the impulse to just accept what he can have for 40 minutes, to try to prove to himself this other thing, and do it so spectacularly, is like, a very interesting episode of television, I think. [laughing]

Keith:        Yeah. Yeah.

Ali:        Yeah.

Jack:        It was really fun watching, uh, a character's internal conflict play out so transparently and discreetly, as well. Like, I think we're used to watching these big, uh, television prestige shows. And, and also, I think on Friends at the Table as well, where we're like, “we're going to be working on a character arc, along a long series of episodes.” It was so interesting for me to watch these series of decisions play out in front of Jimmy over 40 minutes of television.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        And, while they don't, while they clearly don't get resolved flawlessly, we, we do come to a kind of resting state at the end of the episode. Uh, and sort of watching that all happen in front of me was, was really interesting.

Ali:        Yeah, I, I —

Keith:        I think what we've learned is that we need more, we need, just need more one-act plays.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:         Yeah. 6 discs, one act — oh-ho. 6 discs, one act!

Keith:        [laughing]

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        It's, so what, what we also didn't tell you about [chuckling] Trouble On the Moon is that it's bad.

Ali:        [giggling] You're not going to enjoy it. I know we, we spoke very highly of it, uh, for a long time, but no, it's going to be really bad.

Keith:        Yeah.

Ali:        Uh, sorry.

Keith:        But you have to say it's good, or people will think you're not so smart.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Maybe? Yeah. We're not, we're not sure how we're planning that yet. [chuckling] We'll, we'll let you know.

Keith:        Yeah.

1:50:40.9        

Jack:        Uh, is there anything, is there anything that we have missed or that we want to touch on?

Keith:        Uh, oh, during the cinnabun thing, it zooms in on a little clue for 2020. It said 5G was here.

Ali:        [laughing] Oh my god, does it?

Jack:        Oh.

Keith:        [laughing]

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Sick. Thanks, Keith. [chuckling] I missed that.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        [laughing]

Ali:        The okay, so I — oh, god. So the, the thing that we know about Saul Goodman from watching Breaking Bad is that we know what he eventually has to completely wipe away his life. He ends up getting like a new passport and a fake identity because he gets so deep into it that it is a problem. So really, the tension of —

Keith:        I did not watch that deep into Breaking Bad, so that's news to me.

Ali:        Oh, well... yeah.

Keith:        I mean, I knew this from the cinnabun stuff, but I didn't know what that was about —

Ali:        Right, yeah, yeah. Uh, so the really, I guess the thing that we didn't mention in that scene, the crux of it is that he traps himself in this room, but there's another door in the room, but if he touches it, the police will come. It'll, it'll set off an alarm. Uh... yeah.

Jack:        Great stakes.

Ali:        And because he, he's so afraid of interacting with law, law enforcement now, uh, because he's afraid of making himself, he traps himself in this room, but I guess in this like, moment of pride, or moment of like, despair, or just having this, this, wanting to be the person that he was again, he writes “SG was here,” which is, Saul Goodman was here, a version of himself so distant from [chuckling] who he is in current day. Uh, and cannot interact with at all.

Jack:        Do we know what his — do we know what his new name is at this point? Or like, should we?

Ali:        I don't think so. I'm not sure if they, because they only, like I said, they only show this part of him at the very start of each season. It's like a 5-minute scene each time. Uh, so, if they say it, they maybe say it in the, the first one? I don't know if like another employee is interacting with him and saying like, “hey Mister Yadda-yadda.” But like, it's, yeah. It's protective service. Protective custody, but not protective custody because —

Jack:        But like fake protect, protective custody.

Ali:        Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jack:        Criminal protective custody, right?

Ali:        [chuckling] Yeah.

Keith:        Uh, one more funny thing that I, that I noticed, or not, yeah, didn't, didn't have to notice it. They showed it to me. Uh... uh, at the, at the very beginning of his sort of crisis here, he's driving away in his shitty car from the job that he's declined, uh, and just very intensely humming Smoke on the Water to himself.

Jack:        [chuckling] Yeah, it's so good.

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        Uh, and he does it twice. They cut away and cut back to him, and he's still humming it.

Jack:        He's still doing it.

Keith:        Yeah. [chuckling] So presumably, he hummed the riff to Smoke on the Water —

Jack:        All the way [chuckling] home.

Keith:        All the way home. [laughing]

Jack:        And we've all been there. Uh, there's another line that I really love, is when, uh, Wormald, uh, drives up in his Hummer, in a very long scene. You know, we see the Hummer approach very slowly down the parking lot, and then we get a reaction shot from Mike, and then it gets closer, and we see how fucking awful it is.

1:53:54.4        And, uh, he dries up, and he winds the window down, and he says, “I've got a new car.” And I just [chuckling] thought that was a really good joke.

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        This really long intro of an obviously bad car, and then someone being like, “hey, look at my car.” Uh, that, that, I found that very pleasurable. Oh, also when we get that great, uh, Gilligan close-up on his shoes, you can hear that they're squeaking? The sound mixing in this episode was really lovely. You can hear that they're just like, they're new — the read I got was like, these are new shoes that he hasn't even worn in yet.

Ali:        [chuckling] I missed that, but that's fantastic. Uh, god.

Jack:        Yeah. It was a good episode. I had real fun.

Ali:        Yeah. Yeah. I do overall recommend Better Call Saul. I think that like, especially some of the relationship stuff around him and his brother, and like, sort of the big-time like, when it gets into like, why his brother has this opinion of him, versus how his family has this opinion of him, versus their opinions of their family overall, and like, all of the tension around that is super good. Uh, but yeah, again, you need to sort of have the, the tolerance for a Breaking- Bad-esque story. Uh, again, the, really the only person of color that we see in this episode is Nacho, who is a drug dealer who sees an opportunity and immediately steals from this person, and is —

Jack:        Mm-hm.

Ali:        You know, a part of this drug cartel. That's not always the best way, uh, that's a pitfall of Breaking Bad, [chuckling] I would say. You sort of need to be invested in like, white dude feelings to — [laughing] it's the price of admission. But if you're wiling to get past that, it's, it's, I enjoy it.

1:55:41.5        Uh, for some of the stuff that we've set up here, the tension between Jimmy and his, like, executive assistant, and like, his [chuckling] not knowing how to pull on that, or not — it, it ends up being so funny that like, his, his assistant like, is obviously feeling the tension of not being utilized enough, and that's a really fun arc. Jimmy just going through his life of being this person who, who knows that he can lie and cheat and steal is, continues to be interesting. But again, he eventually has to be the person that he is and [unintelligible] what is it, god — in Breaking Bad, so —

Keith:        [laughing]

Ali:        [laughing]

Jack:        Woah.

Ali:        You know, there's going to be a mix of satisfaction of, of how that goes. But yeah, uh, Better Call Saul, I believe, is streaming on definitely Netflix. I believe it might also be available on Amazon Prime. I'm not 100 percent sure. But, yeah. If people want to check it out, again, this episode on its own is, is enjoyable.

Keith:        Uh, just a totally random recommendation for, uh, the, some of the Vince Gilligan episodes of the X-files. He wrote a bunch of them —

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        And the one that has Bryan Cranston in it is better than Breaking Bad, so —

Jack:        What's that episode called?

Keith:        Gosh, I would love to tell you. Bryan Cranston... uh, it was called... ugh. He portrayed Patrick Garland Crump, that's his name in the —

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        Great name.

Keith:        It's Drive, the show is called Drive.

Ali:        Ah...

Keith:        Oh, sorry, the episode is called Drive. And just randomly, another of my — uh, probably my favorite Vince Gilligan episode that he wrote, was his first one that he wrote, called, uh, Soft Light, with, uh, with the guy from Monk. Why am I forgetting his name? Uh, Tony Shalub.

Ali:        Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jack:        Huh.

Keith:        Sorry, yeah, guest-starring Tony Shalub. A fantastic episode. Has nothing to do with this, but —

Ali:        [giggling]

Jack:        [laughing]

Keith:        Just a, just a wonderful episode with some wonderful acting from Tony Shalub, and a great sort of light Sci-Fi story.

Ali:        Wonderful. Uh, and also, just before we go out, we mentioned Vince Gilligan a bunch in this episode, but the person who actually, uh, wrote and directed this episode —

Jack:        Oh yeah.

Ali:        Is Thomas Schnauz. Uh, so shoutout to you, Thomas. You did a great job.

Jack:        Thanks, Thomas.

Ali:        Good job with that shoe thing.

Jack:        I had — yeah, that was great.

Ali:        [chuckling]

Jack:        That was really funny.

Keith:        God. Maybe we should watch some X-files episodes for, for one of these.

Ali:        Yeah.

Jack:        Yeah, when we do the next round — that would be really fun.

Ali:        Mmm, yeah, I —

Keith:        Yeah.

Ali:        We, this is our second time doing this little, like, trio of, of episodes. And I, I hope people enjoy them, because they're really fun to do. I mentioned this, I think I mentioned this in another episode, but I'd really love for us to continue them, and somebody else to do the assignments.

Jack:        Yeah.

Ali:        This time it was me, and I did Tampopo, Fargo, and this episode of Better Call Saul.

1:58:44.5        Uh, but, yeah. I think it'll be really fun. For the future, Pusher Partizan episodes, I think this is, I think I'm going to release these as we recorded them. So this is now your finale — and then we're going to be going — did I say the future of Partizan and not the future Pusher episodes? [chuckling]

Jack:        You did, yes. I think you actually said the future of Partizan Pusher episodes, which really confused me.

Ali:        [laughing] Okay, well then, perfect. Because, after this, uh, hopefully weekly, uh, hopefully these will be coming out weekly, and I will draft them the way that I am hoping to. Shoutouts to you, future Ali. The next couple of weeks on your Pusher update day, you will start seeing, uh, Partizan character-focused episodes, where it is one character per post, going into a little bit about the, the character themselves. Uh, and some information about their mech and their mech design, and the accompanying postcard. So, look forward to that. Uh, and I think after that run of episodes, we might have some sort of like, music blog from our very own Jack de Quidt. Uh, so —

Jack:        Oh, cool!

Ali:        [giggling] So, keep out a lookout on that. And thank you so much for supporting us, like, big-time thank you. Uh, the people that are, are Pusher tier are very generous and very, very patient, and we very, very, very much —

Jack:        It means the world.

Ali:        Yeah, like —

Keith:        Yeah.

Ali:        For real. Uh, so thank you, and I hope that you liked this. We had a blast recording them. Uh, you all want to talk yourselves out? Say who you are and what you like to plug? [chuckling] Instead of me doing it for us? [chuckling]

Jack:        Yeah, I — when you said talk yourselves out, I just sort of thought that Keith and I would have a nice conversation while we faded, I — [chuckling]

Ali:        [laughing]

Keith:        I can do that. I have more to say about X-files.

Jack:        Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what. You can find me on Twitter at @notquitereal, you can buy any of the music featured on the show, and I'm going to throw to my good friend Keith to talk about, uh, who he is, where he's from, and then some stuff about X-files as we, as we [chuckling] come to a close.

Keith:        Yeah, sure. Uh, yeah, my name is Keith J. Carberry, you can find me on Twitter at @keithjcarberry, you can find the let'splays that I do at YouTube.com/runbutton and it's accompanying Patreon, at contentburger.biz. Uh, and, I don't know — X-files is really good. Uh, I think one of the most interesting things about it is that it shows you Mulder, it shows you like the best-case scenario of sort of like, guy who's working on the inside to try and change things. He's an FBI agent, he's, he's uncovered this conspiracy about the US government, and the entire show is like, obsessed with him as a guy. Like, the show is in love with him. He's a genius. He is the only person in the whole show who's ever allowed to see the world as it really is, except for the villains, who are controlling and shaping how the world really is.

2:01:34.9        

Jack:         Ugh.

Keith:        He like, he is like the guy who can see through the darkness. And even then, he loses at every turn.

Jack:        [laughing]

Ali:        [chuckling]

Keith:        He's never allowed to win. Even once. He has this, the perfect vision of, of this world and how it is and how it's wrong. And even from his high position as an FBI — a special agent for the FBI, with all of these resources, allowed to investigate all these wild things, he's never — he never pulls one single thing over on the government, even once.

Ali:        [giggling]

Keith:        It's crazy. [laughing] It's so good.