Hey there, KMO here with episode number 9 of The KMO Show.
On this episode of the podcast, which is prepared for release on Wednesday, April 26th, 2023,
I'm going to share a conversation that I recorded just a few days ago with my old friend Marty.
Marty has a last name, but we don't use it on podcasts because he's a...
I can't say he's a normal person, as you'll hear, but he's not a public person in the
way that I am.
Anyway, Marty lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, and I used to live on the farm in Summertown,
Tennessee, which is just 90 minutes south of I-40, just south of Nashville.
My kids were living in Maryland, and I rented a place.
I had one room and a big house on the Ilk River in Chesapeake City, Maryland, or nearby.
It was basically a two-day drive to get from the farm to my place in Maryland.
Marty's house was at the halfway point of that drive.
I stayed at Marty's house.
I would drive to see my kids about every six weeks, so I stayed there many, many times.
Then other times, just passing through that part of the country, I'd stop in and say hi.
Then in the summer of 2017, Marty's employer has a seasonal warehouse position.
It's a summer position, and he invited me down to come stay at his place and just work
there.
We were good, and we hung out quite a bit.
When I'm at Marty's house, we drink a lot of alcohol and take other things, and we gorge
ourselves on food, and we watch lots and lots of media.
It's always what's known as genre media, sci-fi, horror, fantasy, some animation, but mostly
live action.
We play video games, sometimes tabletop board games.
I don't recall doing any role playing with Marty, but definitely tabletop games.
We just have a grand old time, and I haven't seen him in years because I don't have that
drive anymore.
When people talk to me about movies and TV shows, I'm much more focused on the behind-the-camera
talent, directors, writers, showrunners.
Lots of people I know, they just don't have any concept whatsoever of a director.
They maybe they've heard of Steven Spielberg or James Cameron, but aside from that, they
pay attention to stars.
Stars don't write the scripts, stars don't make the movies.
They just get up there and they act.
If they don't have a good script, there's not a lot they can do.
If there's a good script, but the direction is not good or the editing is not good, well,
the final product is not good.
Also being a creative type person myself, I'm just really tuned into that sort of stuff,
much more so than most people, but not as much as Marty.
Marty really, really knows his movie Trivia, and I won't even call it Trivia because Trivia
means something that is not connected to a larger body of knowledge, just random facts,
or Trivia means not important.
I am personally of the opinion that the mainstream entertainment, like the mid-brow entertainment
that is created for the masses, is really, it's going to be the lasting legacy of our
culture.
And I'm rather irritated with so-called fine arts in the late 20th and early 21st centuries,
and I'm utterly, utterly contemptuous of anybody who dismisses commercial art, illustration
or animation, or directing, live action, or any of the practical entertainment generating
crafts.
These get dismissed as commercial art or as craft, but not fine art.
Well, if that's the case, fine art can go to hell.
I'm not interested.
I'm of the opinion that fine art exists mainly as a tool for money laundering these days.
So I asked Marty to come and talk to me for the podcast because he and I used to do a
podcast together.
It was the Z-Realm or Zedrealm podcast.
And it was largely following The Walking Dead, but we reviewed all kinds of different zombie
movies.
And there's, I think, 124 episodes of that podcast.
So if you have fun listening to the coming conversation, there's a whole lot more of
it if you want to dig into it.
And Marty has his own podcast that he's been doing for years called Flickers from the Cave
with his friend Mike.
And the visibility of that show has taken a jump in recent months, so he's got a larger
audience than I do at this point.
So I invited Marty to come and talk about The Last of Us because, you know, while it's
not zombies in the George Romero, you know, cannibal corpse, animated cannibal corpse
sense, it's pretty much a zombie apocalypse story.
And I'd say TV show, but, you know, it started life as a video game or a computer game, which
I haven't played.
I've watched many a video about it, but I've never actually played the game.
And Marty hasn't played much of it.
So we were both pretty much not exactly naive, but certainly not steeped in the lore coming
into The Last of Us, the HBO adaptation of the video game.
And because we've talked about so many different zombie TV shows and movies and stuff in the
past, it just seemed like a natural justification to record a new conversation with Marty.
But if you haven't seen The Last of Us, don't worry.
We take so many detours and we jump around so much.
We talk about so many different media properties in the coming conversation that you will surely
have seen at least one or two of the things that we're going to be talking about.
And if you have watched The Last of Us, and particularly if you are an aficionado of the
game, we're not going to get that deep into it.
Really we're going to be talking big picture stuff and then we just zip around to pull
examples from different pieces of media that we've enjoyed recently.
So basically I just like talking to Marty about media and there's a number of people
who have enjoyed those conversations over the years.
If you are one of them, well, here's another.
And if you are not, well, here's a taste.
I should mention, I think most of you know, but over this past winter, I worked at a ski
resort in California, but it was barely in California.
It's like right on the California Nevada line, just north of Lake Tahoe.
I would walk from where I was living in company housing down to the lake shore.
It takes like three or four minutes to walk from door to beach.
And I shot many a YouTube video there on the beach in Kings Beach, Kings Beach, California.
So we're going to make a few references to that, you know, to my time in California.
All right.
Well, I guess that's all I need to say in order to introduce this conversation with
my friend Marty, so here we go.
Hey everybody.
Well, technically this is the KMO show.
It is actually an echo of the Zrealm podcast and I have my Zrealm co-host Marty here with
me.
Marty, it's good to see you and hear you.
It is great to see you and to hear you.
It's been a while.
We've stayed in touch, I would say limitedly through a different technical things, but
yeah, it's nice to reconnect.
Indeed.
Yeah, it's been, gosh, going on six years, I guess, since I lived at your place for a
summer.
It seems like yesterday.
You worked your ass off that summer.
You know, comparatively speaking, compared to this past winter, that was a vacation at
the warehouse.
Wow, okay.
Yeah.
It was mostly the altitude and the weather, you know, and just the physical conditions
being there that made it hard.
For several weeks, I mean, I was working at 8,000 feet and for several weeks, if I've
just, you know, when I bent over to lace up my boots, I would get lightheaded.
Just the atmosphere.
Yeah, just the low oxygen content in the air.
Yeah, I've never been that elevated, so I don't know what that's like.
I just hear people talk about it all the time.
Yeah, and you know, it's not funny.
I was going to say it's funny.
No, it's not funny.
Lake Tahoe, which is basically where I was, I could walk to the lake from, you know, just
a couple of minutes from where I was living.
It's up in the mountains.
It's very deep.
It's very cold.
And a lot of people drown in that lake because, you know, they fall in the water for whatever
reason.
Maybe they're paddleboarding, kayaking, whatever, or they're swimming, and they don't realize
how quickly they're going to get out of breath just because of the altitude.
And then the cold water just drains the energy right out of you.
And yeah, it's an easy place to lose one's life.
An idyllic, beautiful scene in which to drown, but you know, death nonetheless.
There's got to be some really morbid list of the best places to die, and that's probably
right up at the top.
Yeah, I bet.
It's that haunted forest in Japan.
Well, speaking of dying, lots of people die every time there's a zombie apocalypse, a
re-visioning of the zombie apocalypse.
And HBO recently, you know, they gave us season one of The Last of Us.
I never played the video game, did you?
I have played the intro level of the video game about four times, and it's heavy.
So the intro to the video game is basically that opening episode of the show, which is
very heavy.
So every time I played through it, when I got to the end of it, it sort of was like,
it hurts you.
So it's not something that pulled me back for more.
But after having watched the show, I had every intention of buying the video game on PC,
because it just came out on PC.
But apparently it's terribly buggy is what I keep hearing.
So I'm holding on.
So I will play it, but I haven't played it yet.
I never played it.
So every time I watch any episode of something now, I go to YouTube and I'll watch a recap
and analysis.
So I did that for every episode of The Last of Us.
And of course, for every episode, the people doing the reviews are talking about how the
game is or the show differs from the game.
But because one of the showrunners was the guy who originally wrote the story for the
game, I, you know, no complaints.
He wants to revise.
If he wants a second bite of the apple, that's okay.
And they had so many awesome crossovers with characters playing the same characters they
played in the show.
And the guy that did the voice for the main character on the video game came in later
as a different character.
So I mean, there was all this cool sort of synchronistic sort of combinations of things
just to keep it authentic.
I mean, they had the original like giant books that they had put together about the monsters
and the sort of different versions.
So they weren't starting from scratch.
Well, I suspect that three quarters of the people listening to this conversation have
either listened to an episode of The Zero Armor or certainly know who you are.
But for those who don't, maybe say a little bit about yourself, your background with media,
how you came to love movies and video games and how do you come to love these things?
Of course, you grew up in the same culture I did.
And about at the same time you did.
So yeah, we, yeah.
So I mean, it all comes down to Star Wars.
Let's be honest.
You know, you're a kid, you go see Star Wars at the right age and then your life changes.
You know, because suddenly you're interested in the thing a lot that you don't know anything
about.
So you're just hungry for more information.
And Star Wars sort of led me into everything movie because, you know, you start reading
about Star Wars, you realize that it's somewhat based on some Kurosawa movies.
You're like, who's Kurosawa?
So then you start looking into that and you're like, oh, wait, this other thing.
And these and you start learning about how all this stuff sort of feeds into and copies
and changes and improves or modifies.
And it's just all of a sudden this whole world has opened up to you.
So like at a very young age, you know, 77, I was 11.
So, you know, at that age, I started to just completely get into movies and things.
And that never really changed.
So I, you know, I currently have a job where I do video production and stuff.
That was a thing I've sort of fell backwards into, which was nice because that was always
my dream to sort of, you know, shoot and edit and do special effects and things like that.
And I'm able to do that now, which is great.
But you know, you and I connected through the credibly convoluted series of random events
and realized we had a lot of similar sort of touchstones and that we could that we enjoy
talking to each other.
So you know, then we just started.
So it's, you know, but it's cool that that has continued.
So like I said earlier, this is very nice to reconnect.
Well, and I also regularly would drive from basically Nashville, Tennessee, to the eastern
shore of the Chesapeake Bay.
And you live in Greensboro, North Carolina, which was just about the halfway point in
that journey.
So I've stayed at your place many, many times.
Yes.
On all sorts of trips back when you were traveling, you know, for just fun, you would stop in
occasionally.
I mean, your mom's been here, your kids have been here.
So yeah.
Olga's been there.
Mocha's been here many times.
Oh, I said Olga, but yes, Mocha the cat also.
Yes, Olga's been here.
Back then I was, I thought Olga was going to be staying here last month, but her trip
plans fell through.
Yeah.
You're right.
But, but yes.
When I, you know, when podcasting started and people were starting to listen to podcasts,
I found your C-ROM podcast and the house I'm in now, I was painting the walls and installing
lamps and, you know, plumbing fixtures and things in this house so that I could, you
know, get it ready to move into the whole time I'm listening to your podcast.
Wow.
And because of podcasts like yours and others and things that I enjoyed, like the, we, my
friend Mike that I work with, we, you know, we were big podcast fans, still are.
And we said, let's just, let's do one.
So we started our podcast called flickers from the cave, where we talk about strange
movies.
Sometimes not as strange, but you know, sometimes an interesting pairing.
And we've been doing that for 12, 12, 10, 12 years, a very long time.
And then, you know, met you and you came on our C-ROM podcast once or twice.
And then you and I decided to start the C-ROM thing when we heard that the walking dead
was coming to AMC.
Yeah.
So, and then we did that for a while until I literally just lost the taste for the show.
And I've never gone back to it.
Have you?
Nope.
No, I, I didn't quit with this episode, but like so many other people, the episode where
Negan killed Glenn and Abraham and Abraham, but you know, and Glenn died in exactly the
same way he did in the comics.
It's not like they did us dirty.
You know, it was, it was common.
Sure.
But yeah, something about that and just the foreknowledge that Negan sticks around forever,
you know, that he's not going to get his comeuppance for that.
I just, I don't know.
I lost, as I say, as you say, lost my pace for the show, never, never finished it.
Don't know how it ended.
Don't, I won't say I don't care, but I haven't cared enough to like watch a recap or anything
like that.
And there's a new spinoff coming.
You know, there was a spinoff.
It was a series.
It was like a vignette show, just a series of little, like an anthology, you know, little
one-off stories that take place in that universe.
And a few of them were free.
They, I think they were pimping a streaming service of some kind, but I don't remember
which one.
And you know, they were pretty good and there were some stars, you know, they had some interesting
guest stars, but it wasn't enough to draw me back into that universe.
Yeah.
And I gave up on Fear of the Walking Dead at about the same time.
It was just all kind of a slog.
But this, the new thing has Lauren Coleman, I think coming back as her Maggie character
as some sort of spin.
I could not care less.
I mean, there's better zombie stuff out there.
I'm going to focus on that.
Well, like The Last of Us.
Actually, before we jump into The Last of Us, let me ask you, have you seen Black Summer?
No, never even heard of it.
Oh my goodness.
So there's two seasons of it.
It's on Netflix.
It is a zombie apocalypse story and it is just straight up, you know, just there's no particular
twist to it.
It's just the zombie apocalypse.
But you know, it's brand new.
There are no stars on the show.
You don't know who's going to live and who's going to die and just about everybody dies.
So it's a really, really brutal show.
It was the exact opposite of The Walking Dead and The Walking Dead, you know, they got to
the point where there are several seasons in, they have an established cast, the characters
are very popular and nobody can die really.
You have to introduce side characters so that they can die just so you've got some perceived
threat in the show.
But your main characters are all bulletproof at this point.
And you know, Black Summer was just the exact reverse.
You didn't know anybody's name.
You didn't know anything about them.
You know, you just see them fighting for their lives and most of them don't make it.
I've never even heard of this.
It looks good.
It's really good.
One of the creators is a guy named John Hyams, who is Peter Hyams' son.
And Peter Hyams directed like 2010 and, you know, a bunch of things.
But John Hyams has actually done some really fun movies that we've done on the podcast.
Like Peter Hyams did Outland with Sean Connery.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
Nice.
I'm pretty sure it's Peter Hyams.
But anyway, and this has Jamie King in it, who I know, who plays Rose on the show.
So she's somebody I recognize.
But yeah, I'm watching it.
It looks bananas, the little trailer that's running.
So I'm going to look away from that.
So one thing I saw recently was this Indian movie.
It's a zombie theme thing and it's very funny.
It's called Go Goa Dawn.
I think I watched it on Tubi or something.
But it's sort of a zombie comedy, but it really works.
So these two guys who are sort of, they've reminded me very much of like Harold and Kumar.
Okay.
If you imagine Harold and Kumar, they're just, you know, sort of dead end dudes.
They have a friend who really striving to climb the corporate ladder.
And the two Harold and Kumar guys are like, we got to do something this weekend.
One guy's broken up with his girlfriend.
He's kind of feeling down.
So their friend who's the climber, he says, Hey, I've got, I'm going to Goa this weekend,
which is the resort area.
And he goes, it's going to be great.
I'm going there for this corporate thing.
And they go, Hey, well, we're coming along with you since you're driving.
And then we're going to go there and meet some chicks basically is what they did.
So they go there, they have no money.
But while they're there, they meet a really gorgeous girl who says, Hey, I'm going to
this Island across the Harbor where the Russian mob is having a big rave tonight.
Nothing can go wrong there.
Turns out the Russian mob has invented this drug that they're using this thing as a cover
for and they give it to the people.
The people then become ravenous zombies.
So now you've got all these goobers on this Island trying to get off the Island and it
is a hoot.
It's funny.
It's really good.
Sounds good.
So yeah, it's called Go Goa Gone.
And, um, very, very much worth your time.
All right.
Well, now to the last of us.
I have to say the pilot episode astounding, like one of the best zombie movies I've seen,
you know, one of the best depictions of the zombie apocalypse, because one of the frustrations
from The Walking Dead was that the first season, the show wasn't, you know, it wasn't a sensation.
It wasn't a hit necessarily.
They didn't have much money.
So, you know, our main character, as in the comic book, wakes up several weeks after the
zombie apocalypse.
So it's pretty much a done deal.
And so we don't get to see it.
And then they started the spinoff show, you know, fear The Walking Dead in Los Angeles.
And it's like, okay, now, now we get to see it.
And nope, it's still, you know, the characters are basically in hiding and peeking through
the blinds and, you know, we're seeing just what they're seeing, which is not much.
So it's really satisfying to see the zombie apocalypse unfold like in all its glory, which
I think, you know, if there's a runner up or another competing candidate for the best
depiction of the zombie apocalypse, I'm taking World War Z off the table.
It was just a little too pulled out.
The movie.
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, the effects were amazing, but it wasn't.
I mean, zombies like flooding through cities like water.
It's like, nah, it's not the zombie apocalypse.
That's not the George Romero zombie apocalypse that I've, you know, I come to love.
So I think the best depiction that we've seen of the actual zombie apocalypse was in Zack
Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead.
Yes.
Yeah.
That's a, that's a genius update of a movie that shouldn't have worked, but it did perfectly.
And that's beautiful because it starts small and then you slowly, the view expands as
the main character is leaving her house and she sees her neighborhood going to pieces
and the camera just is following her and it just keeps getting further and further back
and you see more and more of the destruction and the chaos.
It's just brilliant.
And this does that as well.
We start with Joel, our main character and his daughter, and you see a lot of their life
and how they live and what they're doing.
You get to know the daughter of the neighbor, all this stuff.
It sort of sets up the table and then they just sort of collapsed that little bit.
And then you see the rest collapsing, but they did the brilliant stuff where it was
showing different parts of the world and people investigating this stuff and talking about
these changes that were coming and how they'd seen these things.
And I don't know.
I just thought it was brilliantly told.
I loved, I think it was the pilot episode.
It starts like in the 1960s on a talk show and there's a scientist talking about how
this cordyceps fungus, you know, it takes over the brains of ants and things that could
do it to humans if there's any little, like if the climate started to warm and the fungus
had to, like right now it can't operate in humans because the heat of the human body
will kill it.
But in a climate change scenario where the fungus is under constant pressure to adapt
to higher temperatures, it might mutate in such a way that it could take over humans.
And that's the premise.
But I love that they set it up decades in advance, you know, just on a talk show.
That was great.
And as I understand it, that was unique to the show.
That was not from the video game.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Having not played it, I'm not sure exactly how much.
I mean, I've only read some stuff where they talk about things that were, you know, directly
sort of copied some of the conversations and stuff.
But it's just such a brilliant switch on the zombie sort of trope that we're all used to.
So like the idea of this fungal sort of growth being the cause of it, it's just brilliant.
There have been many attempts to sort of scientificize or rationalize the, you know, how could the
dead returning to life and attacking the living, how could that be squared scientifically?
And you know, the thing I love about like the Romero films is that you can't.
It's patently impossible.
There's no need to explain it.
It's just we have taboos about cannibalism, we have taboos about touching dead bodies.
You know, we have sort of free-floating fear of the collapse of civilization where all
the people around us suddenly become competitors for precious resources.
And the zombie apocalypse just, it brings all of that together very nicely.
And I don't need any scientific justification for it.
You know, just give me the, give me the danger.
It's essentially an alien invasion except without laser guns, you know, and UFOs.
Our world is being invaded by a force, an unstoppable force, a huge force.
I mean, I think the perfect like version of all that stuff is probably like the invasion
of the body snatchers because you're getting a little bit of zombie, you're getting a little
bit of alien invasion and all of the paranoia.
I mean, to me, that's the original sort of like epically sized version of that thing.
Because obviously Night of the Living Dead, the original movie in the Romero series was
just so small.
It's just in that small, you know, area around Pittsburgh.
And then obviously he expanded in Dawn of the Dead.
But it was, it's really, I think in the, in the middle there, you've got invasion of the
body snatchers really showing you how to do that sort of mass hysteria thing really well.
Wow.
And it's been remade so many times now.
I mean, for me, the one with Kiefer Sutherland, or not Kiefer Sutherland, it's the Donald
Sutherland that is the classic and Leonard Nimoy is in that.
That's in Veronica Cartwright is great in it.
So yeah, so many good people.
And yeah, obviously that thing at the end with him screaming and pointing is just as
iconic as it could be.
Yeah, that is as iconic, I think as Soylent Green as people, as a final image or you,
you know, you blew it up, you maniacs.
So I saw a video in which somebody was talking about apocalypse narratives in general.
And the, there's sort of a new version or a new prototype or archetype, which is the
green apocalypse.
And they cited the last of us as a, you know, an example of the green apocalypse where you
get all of these, these shots of cities and decay and, you know, nature reclaiming human
made world, but it's beautiful and characters in the narrative stop and appreciate the beauty
of it.
And that's, that's fairly new.
I mean, the image of the devastated civilization is decades old, but usually it's played for
shock.
It's like, here's this familiar thing and here it is, you know, laid waste.
Isn't it horrible?
And now it's like, Hey, once the human stopped all their busy silliness, nature takes over
and it's peaceful and green and nice to listen to.
And, you know, except for the zombies and the people looking to kill you, it's not,
it's not bad.
There's like 12 monkeys did that where you saw a future where the cities had been sort
of retaken by nature.
The original plan of the apes.
No, not plan of the apes.
I'm thinking Logan's run in Logan's run, when they escaped from the dumb cities and get
out into like Washington, there's all these images of like the Washington sit, Washington,
DC sort of overgrown.
That gives you an idea that existed before.
But I mean, honestly, like the, my favorite stuff, my entire life, I actually just bought
the commandee last boy on earth collected works from Jack Kirby, because that was all
post apocalyptic stuff that I read at a young age and it totally influenced me.
And it's full of those sort of images of like flooded cities and overgrown things.
And there's a, there's a great PlayStation and PC game called horizon forbidden, horizon
zero Dawn.
And it is set in a future where robotic dinosaurs are roaming the world and you are sort of
like a, like a tribal person, a female character who goes and hunts these dinosaurs and harvests
circuits and things off of them.
And it's sort of this cool combination of sci fi and fantasy and full on post apocalyptic.
It's really great.
I haven't played, but I've watched some lore videos.
I mean, that's a game where they've really worked out, you know, why, why are there robotic
zombie or robotic dinosaurs?
And they have a, you know, that pretty detailed reason and a pretty detailed cybernetic ecology
worked out and they are doing a show based on it too.
It's kind of cool.
Yeah.
I think their show is based on everything to watch the halo show.
So Kay had Paramount Plus and I went over there and watched the first episode and was
like, this is pretty good.
I'm probably going to watch more of this.
And I finally got Paramount Plus and I said, Oh, I'm going to rewatch that first episode
of the halo show and I have not gone back after watching it again, because I did not
think it was very good when I watched it the second time.
Well, I watched the whole season and it's not very good.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
It's not, I don't hate it because I never, I did play one halo game.
I played Reach and these characters are not in Reach.
Reach takes place later on.
You know, I wasn't attached to the characters.
I wasn't attached to the story, but I did know that master chief doesn't take off his
helmet and in this one he takes off his helmet in the first episode and rarely puts it back
on kind of like Stallone is just Judge Dredd.
Yeah.
I was shocked.
Now, speaking of something great, Judge Dredd, the Dredd movie, that.
Carl Rebitt.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Ready for more of that.
I know there's a mega city one series coming.
There's a mega city one, mega city one series that's been in development hell for years.
I don't know that it's any closer to actually shooting.
It's like, there's so many people who say, look at this movie.
This movie is great.
We need a sequel.
It has this very dedicated cult following and then somebody else says, yeah, but look
at the box office numbers for the original.
Right.
It just didn't do very well.
I didn't see it in the theater.
You didn't see it in the theater.
No, I wish I had.
The marketing just sucked.
Yeah.
I wish everybody had.
Yeah.
It holds up so much.
I bet I've seen that movie 10 times.
Yeah.
Yeah, me too.
It's one of those that it doesn't ask anything of you really.
Everything that needs doing, it provides.
You don't have to cut it slack in any dimension.
It is a just a straight ahead story.
It's the raid is what it is.
It's just, there's a building we got to get to the top floor.
Let's go.
Yeah.
There's two of us and unlimited number of bad guys go.
Yeah.
Oh, it's so good.
So good.
I love it.
So, yeah.
So I was like you, I watched that first episode and was blown away.
And then the show just kept impressing me.
It never really took his foot off the gas.
I didn't think there was a slow episode.
There were some things throughout that sort of that I'd never seen before.
And there were there was one episode in particular that we can talk about or not.
That was one of the hardest, most brutal things I might have ever seen on a show that wasn't
exploitational like in The Walking Dead.
Is it the third episode?
No, it was later when, when Ellie is held by that, that governor.
That or the mayor of that little town, the religious guy.
Okay.
I was in a knot through that entire thing.
Oh yeah.
It was heavy, heavy, heavy.
So I don't know.
It's real beautiful stuff.
And I have to say, it is great to have a show where Pedro Pascal can deliver well written
lines and be encouraged by the director to act well, because I am of the opinion that
what he was asked to say in The Mandalorian was a big pile of crap.
Not a big fan of that show.
Did you watch season three?
I did.
And what'd you think?
I would say I didn't so much watch it as I got through it.
I see.
There were, there were moments that I really liked.
I've described it constantly as a mixed bag.
I think there are definitely things in it that are worth seeing, but I think it overall
is just, I think they've lost their way.
The whole thing is this is the way.
And I don't believe anybody who's producing that show understands what the way is anymore.
Well, I'm sure Dave Filoni does, but yeah, The Mandalorian definitely started out as
a Western and it was definitely small scale.
It's this one guy and he's messing with these Imperial remnants who seem scattered and small.
And it's just, it's a very small stakes story, which is easily relatable.
And in the second and third seasons, they started to bring in these much larger story
arcs from the animated shows, from Star Wars, The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels.
And so we, now that's all just a buildup to the return of Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Which I'm excited about.
I'm not going to lie.
Yeah, but that's going to be great for the Ahsoka series because the Ahsoka series is
definitely going to be a continuation of where we left off in Star Wars Rebels.
And Thrawn was a big character in that show.
And the final episode of that show, the main character Ezra Bridger, who's this young,
would be Jedi Padawan, strong with the Force, but there is no Jedi tradition anymore.
His teacher is a guy who never got past the Padawan stage.
And he, Ezra and Grand Admiral Thrawn, end up basically jumping away at super light speed
via the help of these creatures, which we've kind of seen in The Mandalorian, just like
when they're in hyperspace.
We see these big tentacled whale type things sort of surfing along.
Yeah, those things.
Pull the Star Destroyer with Thrawn and Ezra Bridger off into this unknown sort of freaky
part of the galaxy, which I think is where most of Ahsoka is going to take place, at
least the first season.
So anyway, there's these big, big story arcs that didn't start in The Mandalorian, but
had sort of entered into The Mandalorian in order to set up these other shows.
And yeah, it totally comes at the cost of the dynamic that you had in the first season
of just this one guy with his small world.
He doesn't understand the larger universe and what was going on.
And he took a job that ended, it's kind of like, it's very much, I mean, the similarities
with The Last of Us are many.
But yeah, he takes a job which puts him in contact with this kid who at first is just
cargo and then he grows attached.
And then he's renouncing his former self and his former lifestyle in order to invest everything
in protecting this kid.
Which takes us back to The Last of Us.
I mean, we're not required to spend the most of our time on that show, but it's the excuse
that I used to lure you in.
I agree.
I would like to get back to Star Wars later.
But yeah, there's a couple of things I'd love to hear your opinion on.
But we can even do that after we stop recording if we want.
Oh, well, if it's media related, do it right here.
I loved Andor.
Oh my gosh.
Andor was perfect.
Yeah.
Andor was a grown up, perfect show that really dealt with things well.
And I was happy to see the ruler, what's her name?
Mon Mothma?
Mon Mothma.
I was happy to see her in the Ahsoka trailer.
So I'm happy she's coming back.
Because I love that actor and I love that character.
I think that's great.
I enjoyed the first half of Boba Fett.
Thought it was really interesting.
I loved all the stuff with him, with the Sand People and like learning about their sort
of culture.
I thought that was really great.
And then I just thought it was terrible for the second half.
And I didn't think there was maybe five minutes that I enjoyed out of Obi-Wan.
But I thought it was absolutely terrible and dumb.
Obi-Wan was absolutely terrible and dumb, as you say.
And the best parts of it were just stolen from other like they were stolen from Star
Wars Rebels, you know, animated series.
Like there's a fight between Ahsoka Tano and Darth Vader where she hits him in the head
and cuts off half his mask and you can see Anakin's face on one side and Darth Vader's
face.
It's they just lifted that entirely from Star Wars Rebels.
Yeah, the part where Vader destroys that starship just pulls it apart on the launch pad.
I was like, this is so awesome.
Like this dude is so powerful and I love seeing this.
And then when he's chasing down Obi-Wan on Tatooine, I think he's like they start a
little fire and he goes, well, well, I'll catch you later Obi-Wan and he just leaves.
And I was like, dude, just jump over it or put it out with your force powers or something.
Like you just did.
Like come on.
I don't know.
I gave up on that one.
Well, it's terrible.
That was a terrible show.
But yeah.
So that's all my Star Wars.
I could sit here and gush about Andor for the rest of our time together.
I won't.
So good.
I just think it was perfect.
But you know, that's Dan Gilroy.
That's the guy that did like...
Tony Gilroy.
Tony Gilroy who did like...
I mean, he's written so many things.
He and his brother.
I mean, they...
I think probably best known for The Bourne Identity and other movies in that series,
but also Bo Willimon, who was the major author of House of Cards.
The first couple of seasons of which was amazing.
He wrote several episodes in the first season of Andor, particularly in the prison season.
Which was so good.
That should not have worked for them to be in prison for so long, but it was great.
And Andy Serkis was amazing.
Just the setup of that thing was great.
And then when you find out what they're building at the end was so great.
That's the kind of fan service that's cool instead of having some robot make some funny
line.
It's like, this is adult filmmaking.
This is adult content creation.
And I just keep telling myself, when you watch Mandalorian season four, understand this is
a kid's movie, this kid's show.
Just enjoy it at that level.
Because that's, I think, what they're shooting for.
I'm not even sure there's going to be a Mandalorian season four.
Pedro Pascal is...
He's pretty ambivalent about it.
And they've got so many other shows in the works to keep their talent occupied.
And it really seemed to wrap up pretty well.
I mean, they set up his future activity, which will be being a bounty hunter for the New
Republic, basically.
But that can happen from time to time as a cameo in other shows.
That's a good point.
And it wouldn't even have to be Pedro Pascal.
It could just be somebody doing an impersonation of him since he's always...
He could phone in the voice performance.
I mean, literally phone in.
Literally, yeah.
It was cool to see Katie Sackhoff show up.
And I thought she was mostly very good as Bo Katan.
And she's been playing that character for years.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
She was the voice of Bo Katan in both Star Wars Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels.
Yeah.
She's a longstanding character in the Dave Filoni Star Wars universe.
It was very funny.
I was watching The Mandalorian and they were talking about the dark times on Mandalore.
And I was like, what happened to Mandalore?
So I Googled it and read a bunch of the history of what happened there and about the purging
and all that.
And it got into all the specifics and it was really cool.
I was like, oh, this show is actually following along with all this history that's been created.
And that actually impressed me very much.
So when Disney bought Star Wars from George Lucas, they decanonized all the extended universe,
all the novels, comic books, video games, all that became legends, which is to say just
other Star Wars stuff that isn't really part of the main continuity.
And so with the animated series that Dave Filoni was the executive producer of, he was
picking from all of the best of the extended universe and recanonizing it, bringing it
back and most notably, Admiral Thrawn.
Yeah.
Because Timothy Zahn created him for the book series.
Yes, for some novels, Heir to the Empire, which I haven't read, but I understand references
to it.
Yeah.
I read Splinter of a Mind's Eye when it came out when I was a kid because I just had to
have more Star Wars.
But other than that, the only other extended sort of universe stuff I've read are the Thrawn
novels and their graphic.
I've read a few comics that take place after Return of the Jedi, which all of that is forever
gone because unless they decide to just go ahead and say, you know what, the sequel trilogy,
it doesn't count.
That was practice.
I have actually heard that that was a push that somebody came up with.
Yeah.
But the Dave Filoni shows, including The Mandalorian, they're all setting up the First Order and
Return of the Emperor.
I mean, they're still supporting it.
The power struggle at Disney is ongoing.
We shouldn't talk about it.
I don't want to get sidetracked on that.
So let's do talk about like, I mean, how old spoilery do we want to get with The Last of
Us?
You know what?
If you haven't seen it, why are you watching or listening to a podcast about it?
Everything's on the table.
So I watched every episode without reading anything about what the episode would be.
So every episode just sort of hit me clean.
The episode with the two gay guys, that was just one of the most incredible episodes of
television I've ever seen.
And the way they handled that relationship, the way they handled that version of stuff
going south.
Oh, that's fine.
Okay.
But like all that stuff with him going to the hardware store and getting all the supplies
and building all of the stuff, already being a prepper and stuff, but like really getting
serious about it and just being chill.
That was awesome.
And then all the reveals of the character and who they are and what they are.
I just thought it was like a landmark episode.
Yeah.
My only criticism of it is that it was the third episode and I thought it was too early
to take an episode length break from the main characters.
We hadn't really established the whole Joel and Ellie dynamic yet.
But yeah, it's a standalone episode.
As I think you described it as such, you can watch that without having watched the first
two episodes and with no intention of watching anything after it.
And it is a complete story.
Don't they at the end though, Ellie and Joel get there and that's when Ellie gets her pistol?
It's not at the end.
It's the beginning of the fourth episode.
I think they show up there.
I thought it was in that same episode.
Okay.
Yeah.
They find the characters dead and yeah, there's the note.
And who was the prepper?
Was that Frank?
That was Frank.
Who is the other guy?
I know the actor is the guy that played the head guy at the hotel in the first season
of White Lotus, but I don't know the character's name.
Oh, that's right.
I have not watched the second season of White Lotus, but I did really enjoy that first season.
Yeah.
So gosh.
We got to have their names though.
Let's take a quick break and I will look that up.
Let's see.
Frank and Bill.
Oh, yep.
There it is.
Frank and Bill, the last of us.
My brain was like, get there quick.
Yeah.
So yeah, we have these two characters.
Before we get to that third episode though, I want to say I was really, really happy to
see Anna Torv playing Joel's partner and girlfriend in the first two episodes.
She was Olivia, Olivia Dunham on Fringe.
And I really enjoyed Fringe.
I never saw the final season, but I'm kind of okay.
I was like, I've never seen the final season of Lost and I don't need to.
I'm happy to watch seven seasons of an eight season show and then not see the end because
the end never really lives up.
Although, better call Saul season six just dropped to Netflix and I'm going to watch
all of it.
Still never done that one.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Oh, goodness.
Yeah, Breaking Bad is sort of like the TV show version of the last of us video game.
I've started it many times and I've never finished it.
Ah, I'll say that you can totally watch Better Call Saul without having seen Breaking Bad.
Yeah, that's what I hear.
But it's chock full of Easter eggs.
And I was just in Albuquerque, New Mexico and my friend drove me by the house where,
well, if you're not watching the show, you won't know, but Saul Goodman, the main character,
his name is real name.
I mean, the character's real name is Jimmy McGill and his brother, who is a famous respectable
lawyer.
A lot of the show takes place at the brother's house and we drove by the brother's house.
Oh, that's very cool.
It's just right there.
Yeah.
And lots of little locations that will be familiar to anybody who's watched the show
but just this little hole in the wall burger joint with some tables outside.
It looks really, really seedy, really run down and having been on TV hasn't changed
it.
It still looks that way.
That is why.
That's what people are coming there for.
They want that.
Yeah.
All right.
The last of us.
We are going to talk about it.
How did we get on to that?
Oh, we were talking about Bill being played by the guy from White Lotus, I think.
Yes.
Sorry.
Okay.
I could say a lot about White Lotus but there's nothing fantastical about it.
There's no zombies.
There's no aliens.
There's no AI.
I mean, it's just bad people.
Speaking of AI, have you seen the trailers for Mrs. Davis?
I have not.
Are you aware of it?
I'm not.
Okay.
It's on Peacock and it stars an actor named Betty Gilpin, who was in the show Glow.
Okay.
She was Liberty Bell on that.
In this show, she is a nun and she lives in a near future world where an AI has taken
away everybody's worry, concerns, needs, fears, and hassles.
She's not a big fan of this AI.
Everybody calls the AI Mrs. Davis and it wants to speak to her but she does not want to speak
to it.
She finally, and it's in the trailer, but what they finally do is they kind of force
her to speak to Mrs. Davis through an intermediary and she is tasked by the AI with finding the
Holy Grail.
It is wacky.
It is violent.
It is full of swears.
Damon Lindelof is one of the co-creators and it's very much got his sort of dance all over
it.
That's not a class of my book.
Well, I mean, I loved Westworld and I liked his HBO version of Watchmen I thought was
brilliant.
I did not watch it because Damon Lindelof was associated with it.
It's so good.
But anyway, we've watched the first episode and it's very good.
So that's an AI focused, sci-fi, weird comedy.
Is it dropping weekly?
I don't know.
I think there were three out maybe initially and it might all be out.
We sort of committed to watching it once a week.
So I haven't really looked.
I like what they did with Andor where they said, okay, here's three episodes because
we know the first one's a little slow.
So here's three and then we're going to dole them out one a week.
I think that's a good formula.
It was so good.
So satisfying and just so different from everything else and really anything else on TV.
Maybe not just the Star Wars content, but really anything else.
Just brilliant intrigue and it was all political and stuff.
It was just great.
It was very adult, not in the sexually explicit sense, but in the, this is not for kids.
Kids are going to get bored with this.
This is for adults.
This is for people who understand the bigger picture.
That thing where his mom on that planet was like, they had that hologram of her up over
the crowd, like getting everybody riled up to go fight against the empire.
It was phenomenal.
Yeah.
So many, so many speeches in that.
But so many great speeches.
It sort of reminded me of like, you know, the kind of old timey stuff where like you've
got like people writing things that are better than any human would ever actually say probably.
Right.
Yeah.
But that's why I'm there to hear the better version.
It's like watching Star Trek, the next generation and John Luke Picard's moral speeches.
Speaking of Star Trek, have you watched Lower Decks?
I love Lower Decks.
I didn't think I would.
And it took me a few episodes to warm up to it, but I really like it.
It's awesome.
Yeah.
I've, for those who haven't seen it, I'll say, you know, it's, it's Star Trek.
It's set, you know, basically in the next generation period or shortly thereafter.
It's Mike McMahon is the showrunner and he was a writer for Rick and Morty.
And it's kind of got a Rick and Morty sensibility.
And the first few episodes I thought were a little too much.
Hey, let's cross Rick and Morty with Star Trek.
But after like the second half of the first season and all of the second season, it just
gels.
It is its own thing.
It doesn't need to be compared to anything else.
And yeah, I really like it.
It does so many great references to even the original series and all the other sort of
spinoffs characters from all the various shows show up.
But like when they go into a bar and they find Kirk and Spock's initials scratched into
the bar, it's just like, that's, that's cool fan service stuff.
I liked that a lot.
I was very smart, a lot of weird characters and some really great story arcs.
Just really good stuff.
The guy with the visor who's sort of a cyborg is back.
Yeah, as you learn more about him, that's some fascinating stuff.
I just thought it was great.
I'm a big fan of the animation style too.
Yeah.
I mean, not, it's, it's probably, you know, 3D CGI, like everything else with an overlay
to make it look 2D, but it looks like 2D, you know, cell animation.
And I, I just, you know, I eat it up.
I can't wait.
I will resubscribe to Paramount Plus for Strange New Worlds.
Whenever it comes, I think that comes out in June.
So I'll only take a couple months off.
I guess just, I'll just take May off.
I am that guy though.
As soon as the show I'm watching is complete, I unsubscribe from the service.
Wow.
I always subscribe for a year.
So when they offer up these really cheap deals, so like I got Paramount Plus for a year for
like 50 bucks.
So I was like, yeah, I'll do that.
Then I don't have to worry about it.
I just dumped HBO because The Last of Us had ended.
Did you see Season, or Station 11?
Kay watched a little bit of it and told me about it, but I never watched any of it.
It's very good.
Okay.
It's my brother.
He has come to collect implements of destruction to go work in a neighbor's yard.
Yeah.
How long do you think you're going to be out there?
I don't know.
I mean, until the day that I decided, you know what?
I want this dog.
I was thinking this is a temporary way station, but the dog makes it semi-permanent.
Yeah.
So we'll see.
It could be, there are worse things.
Well, the gig in California was nice and I was going to go back and do it again next
year, but again, the dog complicates things.
The damn dog.
And she's a big dog.
Right now she's a medium sized dog, but she's only a puppy.
What are you driving these days?
All right.
That was my friend Marty.
And while it may have sounded like we had drifted away from the topic of media and we're
talking about just personal stuff, like, you know, what are you driving these days?
It's not the case.
There's still, we're really right at about the halfway point of this conversation.
The rest of it will be on Sea Realm Vault Podcast episode number 455, which I intend
to publish tomorrow.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, the Sea Realm Vault Podcast is a paywalled
podcast that I do.
And the only way for new subscribers to come on is through Patreon.
My Patreon account is patreon.com slash KMO.
And I post lots of stuff to Patreon.
Most of it is not paywalled.
You don't have to be a supporter.
You know, you don't have to be a patron to find material that I'm posting on Patreon.
So do check it out.
And if you wanted to join at the $1 a month level, I wouldn't complain.
I mean, I wouldn't complain if you were to join at the $7 a month level, which gets you
access to the Sea Realm Vault Podcast, but every little bit helps, as they say.
And I'm not going to go on at great length here at the end of the podcast.
I am just going to mention the curious phenomenon of the sorts of TV shows that I watch.
For every show that I watch, every episode that I watch, there are multiple YouTubers
who are doing very, very in-depth analysis and recaps of the show.
So I'll watch an episode of, say, The Mandalorian.
And then I'll go to YouTube and I'll watch a couple different videos from different YouTubers
who are also following that show, talking to other people about it, reading about it.
And sometimes I'll watch a show late at night.
Maybe I've done something to impair my memory.
And when I go back and I watch the recap and analysis videos, I'm basically cementing in
my head what I had seen before.
Now this lends itself to different types of storytelling which weren't really prominent
back in the 20th century when I started watching TV and movies and stuff.
If you're watching recap videos and if you know that there are online resources so that
you can refresh your memory, you can have very large casts.
You can have very complex story narratives.
You can have branching stories.
And you can have, and this happens in science fiction a lot, multiple instantiations of
a single character.
I think the ultimate example of this is probably Battlestar Galactica, actually, because there
were multiple copies of every Cylon character.
But when I think about it, when I think about this phenomenon of multiple instantiations
of the same character, I go back to Farscape.
Farscape if you've never seen it.
If you like Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardians of the Galaxy really, really ripped off Farscape.
The tone, the setting, the composition of the cast, it's all just warmed over Farscape.
Farscape was this sci-fi show from right around the turn of the century filmed entirely in
Australia.
So while the main character is an American astronaut played by Ben Browder, all of the
supporting cast are Australian and all of the aliens that they encounter in their weekly
adventures all have Australian accents.
So it's charming in that regard.
It's also a Jim Henson production company show.
So they bring all of the puppeteering, puppet building, and puppet operating talents to
this show to bring to life various characters who today would just be CGI characters.
But back then they were puppets.
And because they were puppets, or puppet is probably a bad term, it brings to mind a very
specific image of like Kermit the Frog or something, but these were very complex characters.
Full size, fully realized, not 3D in the sense of appearing 3D, but really being three dimensional
objects.
And the difference between a character that's really there, a non-human character that's
really there with the actor in frame, on camera, on set, such that the characters can touch
this thing, they can interact with it, they can see it.
First of all, they're not just imagining what's there.
They're not looking at a tennis ball on a stick.
They're looking at the actual entity.
It really made for a special sort of TV.
I just can't recommend Farscape highly enough.
But I bring all this up because in Farscape you had duplicates of different characters
and then you had mental clones of some characters in the heads of other characters and some
of those characters themselves would be duplicated and so the mental clone would be duplicated
and you had just many instantiations of different characters to keep track of.
And that was really before the internet was the, before it played the role that it does
now in helping people keep track of complicated stories and also helping people basically
pull all the relevant details out of a given story because I don't know how many different
narratives I'm following, how many very complex narratives with large casts.
If it weren't for YouTube and if it weren't for like wikis and blogs and things, I couldn't
possibly keep up with all the stories that I do.
So maybe that's a bad use of my brain being so occupied with pop culture entertainment.
If that's your position, well, you know, if you were here face to face, I would probably
smile and change the subject, but I'm really not very positively disposed to the highbrow
pretensions and despising people for appreciating forms of entertainment which are popular and
which have wide appeal.
I'm all about the wide appeal, even though the media that I make is very fringe, very
niche, very specific and also very esoteric, which is why for me it's nice to take a break
from the serious stuff from time to time and just have a fun chat with my old friend talking
about movies and TV shows that we've seen recently and really enjoyed.
All right.
I think that's probably a good place to lay down a call to action.
What are you watching?
Let me know.
All right.
So leave a comment.
Let me know what you're watching.
Most of the comments, most of the feedback I get are from the YouTube versions of these
podcasts if that's where you want to post, that's cool, I'll see it.
All right.
Well, that's all for this episode.
Thank you very much for listening.
There is more of it for those who are subscribed to the Sebrom Vaults podcast and for those
of you who aren't, well, come back here one week from today.
I'll have another free episode for you.
All right.
I'm out.
Stay well.