transcript

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
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Speaker 3:
[01:01] Welcome to The Ringer-Verse. This is, of course, The Ringer's next podcast feed for all things fandom. We are Steve, the architect Ahlman, the builder and taker of things. Jomi, the algorithm Adeniran. Yes, sir. You've got questions? He's got stuff to show you. Old Man Van, he of the receding resurgent hairline, Coke Baby Chuck, the 24-karat closer. Together, we are known as The Midnight Boys. All right, we're gonna be right back after this.

Speaker 4:
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Speaker 5:
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Speaker 2:
[03:30] It's time to throw your lash curler away. Seriously, Lancome's new Curl Goddess Mascara keeps your lashes curled and volumized from the pregame to the after party. This fast-setting curl and volume mascara gives you up to 30 hours of wear with no way down. You know what? Curls really do have more fun. Shop Lancome Curl Goddess Mascara now on Amazon.

Speaker 3:
[04:04] Okay, so follow us on socials, at The Midnight Boys, pod on Insta, and TikTok and all that stuff. At RingerVerse on Insta, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok as well. We're also on YouTube, like, comment, subscribe, share. You can watch every Midnight Boys and House of R episode on youtube.com, backslash, at RingerVerse, and also on Spotify, Jomi.

Speaker 6:
[04:21] Guys, the algorithm is loving us, man. We out there getting, keep following, keep liking, but they loving our content right now.

Speaker 7:
[04:28] Hell yeah, we're up, we're up.

Speaker 3:
[04:29] Fantastic, fantastic. How do you, before we move on, how do you game the algorithm? How do you get them, cause like, what's happening? Why are they liking us so much? What's going on? Tell us.

Speaker 6:
[04:37] Well, I don't want to bring up Bald Wounds, but you know, on the socials, we doing invincible stuff. You know what I'm saying? People rocking with the invincible stuff. You know, especially on RingerVerse. But for us, the Midnight Boys specifically, they're also rocking with the boys in our coverage of the boys. You know what I'm saying? And so that, especially with the new account, is getting the followers up, bringing the numbers up. We love to see it.

Speaker 3:
[04:56] Is Thrag in this season?

Speaker 6:
[04:58] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[04:59] So Thrag is in this season. I've heard that maybe people are going crazy because this season features Thrag, Mr. Thrag.

Speaker 6:
[05:07] You know, look, we gotta do like Joel, man. We gotta raise the numbers like he was raising the roof, man. You know?

Speaker 3:
[05:14] We like that.

Speaker 8:
[05:15] I've taken off Van's cause.

Speaker 7:
[05:18] Oh?

Speaker 8:
[05:18] The fans have gotten to me. The entitlement has gotten to me.

Speaker 6:
[05:21] You can't do this, man. Come on, man. There you go.

Speaker 3:
[05:23] Hey, I wanna let the fans know that we love you guys. It's you.

Speaker 6:
[05:28] Thank you.

Speaker 3:
[05:29] It's more than love.

Speaker 7:
[05:30] Stop. No, it's not.

Speaker 6:
[05:30] No, no, no, it's not.

Speaker 3:
[05:31] It's a deep, deep connection that we've had from the beginning, but I'm just letting people know right now, and they're examples of this. If you come at me cross, I'm straight blocking you. I'm not even, I'm not going back and forth no more. And there are people out there that have been blocked. And there are people that have been blocked and have written to my business account email asking to be unblocked. And I will unblock you, by the way.

Speaker 6:
[05:54] For a fee?

Speaker 3:
[05:54] No, no, no, no.

Speaker 8:
[05:56] Wait, what was the, what was the final?

Speaker 6:
[05:57] For a fee.

Speaker 7:
[05:57] Yeah, unblock fee.

Speaker 6:
[05:59] Unblock fee.

Speaker 3:
[06:00] Block it.

Speaker 7:
[06:01] Have you not heard of the unblock fee?

Speaker 3:
[06:03] Y'all are freaks.

Speaker 6:
[06:04] Yeah, too, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[06:05] Hold on, wait, wait. Do you know, do you know who charges the unblock fee?

Speaker 6:
[06:10] Who charges the unblock fee?

Speaker 7:
[06:11] Not, no, stop, stop, stop.

Speaker 6:
[06:13] No! Freaks!

Speaker 7:
[06:15] Stop, that's not no.

Speaker 3:
[06:17] Do you know who charges the unblock fee? The only fans like, shout out to all the women out there that are working.

Speaker 6:
[06:23] I didn't even know that was a thing.

Speaker 3:
[06:25] No, the only fans, the ones that charge the unblock fee are the ladies that can leverage. There's nothing wrong with it at all. I just want this moment. No, fuck all this.

Speaker 7:
[06:35] No shame then.

Speaker 3:
[06:36] I'm dead ass right now. I want this moment to be minted and etched in the Midnight Boys.

Speaker 8:
[06:42] The freaky Mint Boys.

Speaker 3:
[06:43] The freaky Mint Boys. The people that charge the unblock fee are the ladies that charge the fee to unblock guys who have been getting on their nerves, right? And these are normally the ladies that have the goods. Shout out to them. Love, all of that. Don't judge me whatsoever. No, don't try to fucking turn this around on me, bro. Because when you guys both said unblock fee at the same time, that lets me know, what's up?

Speaker 8:
[07:08] Why don't y'all just embrace it? Y'all paid the fee. Damn, why y'all annoying these women?

Speaker 7:
[07:13] We are aware of practices online.

Speaker 3:
[07:15] Yeah. OK.

Speaker 8:
[07:16] Damn. No, really, because Van for years has been the freaky n***a who, like, Van, you know Van, relax.

Speaker 3:
[07:28] You know how I know. I'm on the road to recovery. I'm changing.

Speaker 7:
[07:35] I'm on the road to recovery.

Speaker 3:
[07:37] But this type of shit, my question is, and then we can get into the boys and to Daredevil, my question is, why hide it? Why not just embrace it? Y'all know what the unblocked fee is. You know what that means.

Speaker 6:
[07:49] Let the freak flag block. I had no idea that was a thing.

Speaker 3:
[07:51] Okay, cool.

Speaker 6:
[07:51] I didn't know that was easy to them.

Speaker 3:
[07:53] Programmer reminders.

Speaker 6:
[07:55] I thought that was a thing people did.

Speaker 3:
[07:57] No, no, hell no. This Thursday, there's no unblocked fee for anybody that's there.

Speaker 6:
[08:02] You can Venmo me and I will unblock you for that.

Speaker 3:
[08:04] Venmo Jomi. If you pay Jomi, I'll do it, but the one guy wrote a very nice email and I think that I'll unblock him. I just gotta get around to it. But if you come at me and cross over a show, how about this, how about I just admit this. You guys are really loving the show. And the show does seem to be in a renaissance, right? But it's just a bad set of circumstances where we didn't cover the show. It was not an intentional thing to fuck the fans. You know what I mean? So I don't want to be totally petty and like granted about this, but if you come at me, there's so much going on in my life, if you come at me cross about a fucking cartoon, I'm going to straight block you, just straight like that. So chill out.

Speaker 6:
[08:43] It's also going to be a crazy summer in terms of the stuff that we have to do. So we got to take it easy, you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 8:
[08:49] Take it easy, we can't be doing two episodes this week.

Speaker 6:
[08:51] Brother, but once June come along, once May, June, July come along, is we going to be doing two, maybe even three times a week. It's going to be insane.

Speaker 3:
[09:03] I do appreciate the passion that you guys have for the things that you love. That makes this podcast possible, but just please, I know that we're not real people. I know that we're not real people.

Speaker 7:
[09:15] I know we're not real people.

Speaker 3:
[09:19] This Thursday, the House of R will be giving you their Daredevil deep dive, and I think this show deserves a deep dive. I will talk about us covering Daredevil in the check-in sort of circumstance, and maybe some opportunities that were missed there. We might have to talk about that, because this show is fucking cooking to me right now. And on Friday, though, what you guys really asked for, which I know that you're really going to love, considering everything else that we're doing, we're gonna give our reactions to the music biopic, Michael.

Speaker 8:
[09:48] No, we got you.

Speaker 3:
[09:50] We gotta do it. We got you.

Speaker 8:
[09:51] I've never been in a movie theater that quiet, and the only sound is us talking.

Speaker 3:
[09:57] The Midnight Boys almost ruined the screening.

Speaker 7:
[10:00] It was incredible.

Speaker 3:
[10:01] By the way, we should start screening movies as The Midnight Boys. Because a lot of times when we go to a movie, we're in the back, we're doing the thing.

Speaker 7:
[10:13] These are all like press professionals around.

Speaker 3:
[10:16] Going crazy, like the Michael movie was...

Speaker 7:
[10:20] I broke Van.

Speaker 8:
[10:21] At one point, I was like, yeah, man.

Speaker 3:
[10:23] I couldn't believe what I was watching.

Speaker 6:
[10:24] So I saw Charles sitting there, man, look at it, never been more focused, and I was like, oh, he hate this thing.

Speaker 3:
[10:29] On today's show, Midnight Boys react to the latest episode of The Boys, and we check in on the latest episodes of Daredevil Born Again. I think we are up to episode six. Six or five?

Speaker 8:
[10:41] So we're covering four episodes?

Speaker 3:
[10:43] Four episodes. We can talk about where the season has gone, how our perception has either changed or not changed from the beginning of the season to where it is now, and where the narrative of Daredevil Born Again is right now in its second season. This is going to be a spoiler-filled episode for The Boys and Daredevil Born Again. Play the spoiler warning, please.

Speaker 6:
[11:05] We're getting ready to talk about Daredevil Born Again.

Speaker 3:
[11:09] You're listening to a reaction podcast. The spoilers are coming. All right, to begin our reactions, we once again bring you The Midnight Manifest, telling you all the needs to know. That's Chuck's department.

Speaker 8:
[11:27] All right, this is The Midnight Manifest for The Boys, King of Hell, directed by Karen Gaviola, written by Jeff Ahl. Homelander puts Firecracker and the rest of his Valkoons in charge of convincing Americans that he's the Messiah. But sure, The Boys, Homelander, and Soulja Boy go to Fort Harmony to chase after V1. But Frenchie realizes there's a toxin in the air that raises the group's aggression. The Boys fight it out. Soulja Boy traps Homelander into a vault filled with enriched uranium to slow him down. To save The Boys, Frenchie tricks Soulja Boy into killing one of the old V1 test subjects who's been controlling the spores. Also, Starlight visits her father, gets some resolution, and reunites with Huey by episodes end. That's been your very short Midnight Manifest for The Boys. Start with you, Van. Where do you want to go with this episode of TV?

Speaker 3:
[12:07] Let's start right now. I'm interested in what you think. Because I thought this was a pretty solid episode as we get through it. I thought it was really good. I think The Boys is actually, it's one of the more serious episodes of The Boys I think I've ever seen, to see characters wrestle with some of the things that they're wrestling with. But it starts where we put this in the situation. I realize that of all the superhero tropes we've seen from The Boys, we've never seen this one. They always exist in such friction with each other. We've never seen the superhero episode where some force comes from outside of them and makes them turn on each other.

Speaker 8:
[12:40] Really? Because I had the opposite where I was like, oh, I felt like I've seen this episode of The Boys before. Where I thought that, because I think it is a very TV trope or cliché at this point where it's like there's some type of magic or serum or something that turns the group against each other. And then everything that they haven't been saying either all season or the whole time they know each other boils over. And I guess maybe the deja vu that I've gotten in the past is I'm like, oh, no, this is actually the core of what The Boys is. Is that like there is going to be an episode every season where finally all of them start attacking each other and then realize they're a family and get back together. And I even thought with the Starlight situation, I was like, I feel like I've seen this, like this storyline on The Boys where one of them runs away from the group, goes back to their family. Their family is like, we love Vaught now. One of them calls somebody and then there's a traitor. And I was like, I can't tell if this is a TV trope or it's The Boys maybe kind of repeating some of the other stuff that we've seen before. Because even Mother's Milk, remember when his wife was married to the fan, the Homelander and the fan, I was like, oh, this is very similar to that storyline. And I was wondering, I'm like, are you looking too close or is it something where it's like, this has been a series that's been going on a long time?

Speaker 3:
[14:13] And they're playing the hits a little bit.

Speaker 8:
[14:15] They're playing some of the hits.

Speaker 3:
[14:16] Guys, what do you think?

Speaker 7:
[14:18] I think it's a little bit of column A and B. And my B column is, it's kind of a reinforcement of the broader world of The Boys, knowing that maybe convincing the world that Homelander is Jesus or God or whatever isn't that crazy because they've been hashing out how to pitch that idea or how to sell it. And I think my biggest struggle with the world of The Boys is the broader world of The Boys because we have all of these things about social media and the perception of the greater country and how the world sees all of these supers and the ideas of The Boys. I don't really think that it's too much to the show's detriment that it might be playing the hits again, but you're right that it does feel a little familiar.

Speaker 6:
[15:01] I don't know, man. I really enjoyed this episode. I really enjoyed what they did at Fort Harmony with The Boys. A lot of the conversations that they had plainly were finally subtext mate text. There was a lot of, in the whole five seasons of The Boys, Huey's always talking to MM about, I don't know, man, Butcher's going too crazy. Or, MM., man, you can step up, you can be a leader. Or Huey talking to Annie or whoever it may be, I don't know, man, we can save Butcher. And finally, we're seeing all these things that we've mentioned on the fringes with The Boys throughout the entire run finally come to root. They're finally saying their truth. And with, I think, this is halfway, really halfway to the end of the season, they're finally at a place where we all know everything, we all know everything about each other. Now we can finally lock in, we can finally get the job done. I liked it. I thought it was a great narrative device.

Speaker 7:
[15:53] Does it feel different, though, this time around?

Speaker 6:
[15:55] Well, yeah, because they're actually talking to each other about the problems now. It's because some dude and some captain keys from Halos in the basement make everybody mad, right? But it's like they're finally having honest conversations.

Speaker 8:
[16:09] But they had these honest conversations because it's like Butcher's been out of the group before, like the boys have had their own spinoff.

Speaker 6:
[16:15] But he's never talked to Butcher about it, right? Q, we will talk to MM and be like, Yo, MM man, I think Butcher might have gone too crazy. M.M.'s like, yo man, maybe, but we need him, you know what I'm saying? We got to do this. And then they table it until maybe like the season finale, and then we don't hear it again until like the next season finale. And then it's Huey talking to Annie. For the first time, Huey looked at Butcher in the eyes, again, under the whole spell and was like, you suck, you're gonna get us all killed. I've been telling everybody for years, we can fix Butcher, it's gonna be okay. I was wrong. If you don't kill me, I'm gonna kill you. That's what we gotta do.

Speaker 3:
[16:51] Couple things from my perspective. Number one, I think the dynamics of the group are always going to be a part of the show. I think everybody is right about that. Specifically with them, one always goes back to the genesis of their life, where they're from, their journey, and they kind of have to get recalibrated about what's making them do what they want to do. They have done that in the show, they do it a lot. But what I'm talking about is them being in the situation where Kimiko is trying to kill Huey, and he has to seek refuge from her. Or like, MM and Huey are fighting each other. They're shooting bullets at one another. The evil superhero team situation, why are we doing this to one another? Like, they do that in Ghostbusters 2. Yeah, it's very comic book-y. But I think, narratively, it works here for two reasons. Number one, this is the OG team of the boys. So this episode, to me, almost restarted the journey of these specific characters. But them in their new positions. Kimiko, talking, which gives her more of kind of a POV, at least a POV that we can understand. So she has complaints about Huey, excuse me, about Frenchie. She has a future. She has a way that she wants things to go. And that is not working out with her relationship with Frenchie, and we get into the dialogue of it. Huey and MM kind of wrestling over who the actual number two is. That's always been the thing that's underlined in the series to me. Like, MM has been with Butcher for a long, long time, right? And he was, I guess, the tactical number two, but like, almost the heart of the boys is Huey, and watching them go back and forth and kind of seeing some of their underlying animus or resentment for each other get played out and how they were shooting at each other is very, very funny.

Speaker 8:
[18:43] Can I ask that really quick while we're on Huey and MM.? This is, I think part of this is maybe like the outside structure of Hollywood and then the internal structure of the show, where it's like I've been noticing that they've almost turned Huey, it's like James Bond. There was a moment where I'm like, damn, how's Huey holding his own against MM.? Like, MM is a trained fucking soldier.

Speaker 6:
[19:05] He was doing it for a minute. And I don't think he held against MM quite well, especially that first, when they're playing with guns a little bit even, when they were giving hands, MM was giving them the beats.

Speaker 7:
[19:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 8:
[19:15] There was moments where I was like, damn, Huey should have been laid out a little quicker.

Speaker 3:
[19:19] Yeah, I was like...

Speaker 6:
[19:21] It's been five seasons.

Speaker 3:
[19:22] If that's the case, then he should have already been dead.

Speaker 7:
[19:25] He's been with them for a long time. Sure, sure, sure.

Speaker 3:
[19:27] And so even going back to just one more thing, and then I'll finish up, like the episode then comes back to what the real purpose of all this is narratively, which is for Frenchie to save the day. For Frenchie's, you know, one of his big weaknesses has been his addiction, but his addiction is actually what saves him, and actually his addiction and him figuring out what's going on is what saves the whole group. Then the group is almost rebooted, we see where the series goes from here.

Speaker 6:
[19:55] Exactly. That's why I really loved it. To your hierarchy point, I think that's an interesting thing, and I just thought about this now, it's kind of like Ocean's, like those top three, Butcher, MM and Huey, where Butcher's obviously Danny Ocean. MM is Rusty, Huey's Matt Damon.

Speaker 3:
[20:14] Right.

Speaker 6:
[20:15] Like that's the thing. And so like that Rusty and Matt Damon relationship, Linus, that relationship is always interesting because it's like, you're not in charge, but that's the person you go to whenever you have a problem, right?

Speaker 3:
[20:29] You're right. Them at the Fort, what was it called again? Fort Harmony. That was the stuff that like was the action-y part of it. To me, one of the most fascinating parts of the episode is everything that's happening back at Vaught.

Speaker 6:
[20:47] Really? Oh yeah. I mean, I liked it. I mean, I thought though, like we'll talk about that, but the Homelander soldier boy stuff was, especially like him locking him in the nuclear bunker was like, and that conversation that he has with him and the conversation that he has with Butcher was like really good stuff. I'm really enjoying the season, especially the stuff they're doing with Homelander, trying to make him God to his point.

Speaker 3:
[21:09] To me, that's interesting, because what the show is, Homelander is pushing everything that he believes further. He's escalating in every single way. And the only place for him to escalate would be to call himself God. And now we're kind of seeing whether or not, who is like willing to go along with that and who is framed at the seams. That's why the firecracker to me, having a crisis of faith over Homelander's God complex is interesting because once again, and I don't know how the show's doing this, I really don't, like we're seeing that play out right now. We're seeing a lot of people go, okay, we blindly believe you, we blindly follow you, we blindly do all of this stuff, but like we're doing it because you make us stronger. Just to get into it, the whole Trump thing, the reason why people can get into what the president does is because he gives them something for it. Like Pete Hex would never be the Secretary of Defense. These people would never have these posts. But Trump can give you prestige that only the president could give you, but in return for that, you literally have to give him your soul. You have to give him all your critical thinking, you have to give him like relentless adulation and loyalty. But then what happens if he goes, I'm not just the guy that gave you this post that you would have never have, I'm your God. Like I'm Jesus in the picture. Who would say no to that? And it was fascinating to watch that happen in real life, but it was also fascinating to watch it happen in this show for the parts of that that we got.

Speaker 7:
[22:39] Yeah, I think that the actress who plays Firecracker does an incredible job in this episode because when she's in that pitch meeting, she's really trying to struggle with the actual sell of it. And then there's a moment when she finally convinces herself of it and they make a new Democratic Church of America. And the way that she fully kind of like sells that belief to the rest of that room is exactly the things that you would probably see from the likes of a, I don't know, Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson or all of like the sycophants that would sell that message. And I think that the idea that that is fraying at the seams at the highest level is also very true to life right now. It's really haunting and scary, but I think it's something that the show does immaculately well almost every single season.

Speaker 8:
[23:31] No, I think the interesting thing at Vaught is the characters are now talking about the difficulties of a final season. Like there's the joke that the TV writer makes that is quite literally like, I'm like, yeah, I had to carry over all these characters.

Speaker 6:
[23:47] I had to have joked with 14 characters.

Speaker 7:
[23:48] You make a good finale out of that.

Speaker 6:
[23:49] I had to service the characters from the prequel. I'm like, all right, see, I...

Speaker 8:
[23:53] It was funny because I was like, this was an episode, probably, by issues with some of the episodes, I'm like, oh, there's so many storylines that need to be served where it's like, even Soldier Boy, I'm like, oh, this in a weird way almost seems, not like a backdoor pilot for the Soldier Boy season that we're about to get, but they did a lot of work in this episode being like, okay, we're gonna tell you a little bit more about Soldier Boy's history, his makeup, his insecurities, where he comes from. And I'm just like, oh, Soldier Boy is far more fascinating now to me as someone where I'm like, okay, there's something here that's clicking emotionally. But then I just, as you guys were talking, I was like, oh yeah, Ryan was in this episode. Like there's still, like Ryan ran away. So it's like, that joke was very, that joke I did laugh at, cause I'm just like, oh no, like if I was a writer on this show, I would be like, dog, we have so much, even Kimiko and Frenchie's relationship and the coming together and the dissolution of it and what's gonna happen. I'm like, yo, there's so many balls.

Speaker 6:
[24:57] Did you like the Mendo Farms joke?

Speaker 7:
[25:00] I love a Mendo Farms joke. I love a Mendo Farms joke.

Speaker 3:
[25:03] Why are we doing this?

Speaker 8:
[25:05] What, Mendo?

Speaker 3:
[25:05] Wonder Man, by the way, shout out to Yab, Dua Mateen II, shout out to Stephen Capel Jr, shout out to Rachel Lindsay. We hosted, last night, the Man on Fire premiere screening over at Netflix to Dumb Theater. It was fantastic. Hang out with everyone. That'll be up on Higher Learning on the Feed later on this week. But that made me think about Wonder Man and the Mendo Cino Farms joke.

Speaker 6:
[25:28] Two for two, baby. Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[25:29] And then there's another Mendo Cino Farms joke that's in this. Can I say something? Mendo Cino Farms might be getting to the point now where it's underrated. I've never had a bad Mendo Cino Farms.

Speaker 7:
[25:42] Enemy for life over here, I'm sorry, it's terrible. And you want to know, I got the worst food poisoning of my life. The first live show we ever did, worst food poisoning of my life.

Speaker 6:
[25:53] You got a salad.

Speaker 7:
[25:53] The couscous salad, I can't get it. Sorry, I don't want to slander it.

Speaker 6:
[25:57] It's got to be heated, come on man, you know what I'm saying? You got the couscous salad, and they were like, yo, Steve was like, I'm dead.

Speaker 7:
[26:03] I'm out.

Speaker 8:
[26:04] But can I pitch you on this? The reason I think we're getting so many Mendo Cino Farms jokes is I feel like these writers are like Hollywood, y'all are hollowing this shit out. We used to get the perks, we used to get this.

Speaker 7:
[26:14] And now it's just all Mendo Cino Farms.

Speaker 8:
[26:15] And now it's all Mendo Cino Farms. You know what I mean? Shit, that's what they was doing here. We had to be like, hey, yo, can we get some tartines? Can we get some more food, bruh?

Speaker 6:
[26:30] Can you move some on the chain a little bit?

Speaker 3:
[26:33] I'm looking at right here, the Farm Club, the Not-So-Fried Chicken, the Turkey AVO, Salsa Verde.

Speaker 7:
[26:39] They just gotta have really good catering rates.

Speaker 3:
[26:41] They have to. The prosciutto and chicken, all of this stuff is fired to me.

Speaker 6:
[26:44] These are good sandwiches.

Speaker 8:
[26:45] You know full well when they bring some Mendo Cino Farms to the Spotify offices, everybody's kind of like...

Speaker 3:
[26:51] Just because, but I feel like the reason why that happens is because of familiarity, not because of quality.

Speaker 6:
[26:58] Exactly.

Speaker 7:
[26:59] Well, I mean, you wouldn't be complaining if it was a higher quality?

Speaker 3:
[27:04] No, that's not... I don't complain. By the way, there's something else about this, just period. This is very Hollywood, because I know places back in Baton Rouge, where if I came to them and said that we had Mendo Cino Farms for lunch, they would eat that shit like it was Manna from the fucking gods.

Speaker 6:
[27:22] Sure, Raul Palenka.

Speaker 3:
[27:23] I'm just being for real. I'm just being for real. So a lot of this is Hollywood a little bit. It is kind of a bit of...

Speaker 8:
[27:28] All right, well, I'll say this. If gas is almost $6 a gallon and it takes me fucking 45 minutes to get to the fucking work and they're like, all right, we got medicinal farms. I can see TV writers being a little bit like... Come on, man.

Speaker 3:
[27:43] Boy, boy, boy, boy, boy. I just remember, just remember, like I get called bougie because I like to fly first class when I'm fucking like a gigantic person and I get bougie because of all of this. Y'all trying to say y'all can't eat high quality farm-fresh sandwiches because it's not good enough for you guys.

Speaker 6:
[28:02] Those two things do not equate, man.

Speaker 3:
[28:04] Yes, they do.

Speaker 7:
[28:06] Flying first- First class and Mendocino farms.

Speaker 8:
[28:08] First class and Mendocino farms are not even on the same level.

Speaker 7:
[28:11] They're not the same.

Speaker 3:
[28:12] Guys, guys, as a matter of fact, I can make, hold on, can I be honest with you? I can make an argument that my shit is actually more understandable. I'm on a plane for fucking five fucking hours. I'm six foot four, I'm 270 pounds. And you're asking me to like sit like, that's super fucking uncomfortable.

Speaker 7:
[28:31] Gold medal mental gymnastics right here.

Speaker 3:
[28:33] Hold on, that's...

Speaker 8:
[28:34] But economically, it cost you fly first class versus a Mendocino farm.

Speaker 3:
[28:41] Both ways. Okay, this is the problem that I have. What? Can y'all stop me in outrage and let me make the face?

Speaker 6:
[28:48] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[28:49] Okay.

Speaker 6:
[28:50] The floor is yours, big dog.

Speaker 3:
[28:51] Economically is one thing. Things are expensive. But that's relative to number one, how much money you have. And number two, whether or not you're paying for it. For example, I am going to DC on Friday. I am not paying for the flight. Okay. I have to fly out to DC. That's a five hour flight. I have to do a job and then I have to fly back out Sunday morning, very early so I can get back here, do a whole bunch of stuff. They need to fly me first class. That's a long flight and I need to be able to stretch out. That's a long flight, right? Complaining about Mendocino Farms. Just to me, sustenance food, when it's good food, it is a problem that you're having because of all the choices that you have. Me flying first class, because I'll be honest with you, at this point, if you are a brand, or if you are a group of people and you want me to come somewhere, unless it's for the kids, either you're gonna fly me first class or I'm not going.

Speaker 7:
[29:53] Okay, so calories are calories and comfort is essential.

Speaker 6:
[29:56] Guys, guys, he's right. We should enjoy our gray slop, no matter what they feed us, regardless. And you should fly first class.

Speaker 3:
[30:03] That's what you're saying to me.

Speaker 6:
[30:05] That's what we should do. My fault. That's on us.

Speaker 8:
[30:07] I'm just saying it's different. It's not the same thing.

Speaker 6:
[30:10] It's absolutely not the same thing.

Speaker 3:
[30:11] No, no, no, no, no. It is the same thing. It's the same thing. It's just that it's the same thing with love for where we are at the respective points in this shit that we're doing.

Speaker 6:
[30:24] Sure, sure.

Speaker 7:
[30:25] It scales up a bit.

Speaker 3:
[30:27] I flew coach forever and I got to a point to where I'm flying so much, I'm doing so much, if I'm flying to New York, Miami, whatever, I gotta have the leg room because I'm fucking when I get off the goddamn plane. And you guys are to the point in your lives where you have said a sandwich from Mendocino Farms is not good enough for me, you're going to blink. And when you are on the other side of that blink, you're gonna be looking at something and you're gonna go, if you don't fly me first class, I'm not coming.

Speaker 7:
[30:59] But I'm not going to compare it to you.

Speaker 8:
[31:02] I'm not going to compare it to you.

Speaker 3:
[31:03] It's the same thing though.

Speaker 8:
[31:05] I do agree with you. When I was an intern and they had K-cups at the fucking shit, I was like, oh, I got free coffee or I got cheese at school.

Speaker 3:
[31:13] Now you need a little something more.

Speaker 8:
[31:16] If there was an intern in here, I wouldn't be looking at them like.

Speaker 3:
[31:19] We got to get back to the show. We got to get back to the show. But I've been around The Ringer for a long time and I've been listening. All y'all do is complain. Y'all complain about the food. Y'all complain about the convenience. All y'all do, the least motherfucker, let's be real. Let's be honest. The least amount of complaining on any of this stuff gets done by me.

Speaker 8:
[31:43] That's true. All right. We got to move on.

Speaker 3:
[31:45] That's a fact.

Speaker 8:
[31:46] We can't, we got to, we have to.

Speaker 3:
[31:48] That's a fact.

Speaker 6:
[31:49] Man, so, Starlight, man. So mother's milk.

Speaker 3:
[31:52] So back to the, so.

Speaker 8:
[31:54] Do you think Starlight's brother was gooning to her?

Speaker 6:
[31:56] Nah.

Speaker 8:
[31:56] What?

Speaker 7:
[31:57] No.

Speaker 6:
[31:57] Nah.

Speaker 7:
[31:59] That's too much.

Speaker 6:
[32:00] That's a fair question.

Speaker 8:
[32:01] She was looking.

Speaker 6:
[32:02] Literally.

Speaker 8:
[32:02] She literally was like.

Speaker 6:
[32:04] She's like, he was literally like, you've never been on the wall. And then she notices the lotion and the, and the napkins. She's like, good.

Speaker 8:
[32:10] Also, kids, I will be like, that did seem like some 90s shit. What child is like fucking gooning to posters hanging up on a wall?

Speaker 7:
[32:20] I think it's more of a parenting thing. I think the parents just let the kid do whatever he wants.

Speaker 8:
[32:23] But why, who's hanging up posters still?

Speaker 3:
[32:26] I mean, I don't know. I mean, that seems like something. Like, I talk about this with, like, young people I know, my nephews I know and stuff like that. They tell me that they have gooning problems. They don't really have a gooning problem. They have access problems. They have access. Yeah, it's too easy for them to goon. Oh, okay. Oh. For me to goon back in my day, I had to fucking be James Bond. I had to, like, sneak the tape, sneak the room, VCR, all of that stuff. It's too easy. You got all the porn that's ever been invented on the world on one phone. It's too easy. That's why you're gooning so much, because you've got too much fucking access to goon materials. That's what's happening. So with this guy, maybe his parents took away that access and he's gooning to posters, but I'll be honest with you, that is very 1993 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, which was taken from me at school.

Speaker 8:
[33:08] Victoria, the model, the cattle, you got the little cattle all covered.

Speaker 3:
[33:11] The Tyra Banks fucking calendar, shout out to her. The Tyra Banks calendar, all of that stuff. Y'all don't even know anything about it.

Speaker 8:
[33:18] No.

Speaker 3:
[33:18] Don't even talk to me about this. You know what I mean? Once again, why I don't complain, because the bounty that exists in my eyes is different.

Speaker 8:
[33:25] You're comparing gooning to Mendocino Farms.

Speaker 3:
[33:28] That's why you can't complain about it. If somebody right now was complaining about the fact that they are gooning and they got too much goon, I'm like, you know, you're living in a world that is just-

Speaker 8:
[33:37] Of abundance.

Speaker 7:
[33:38] Of abundance. It's an embarrassment of riches when it comes to this stuff.

Speaker 3:
[33:41] Yeah, it's an embarrassment of riches. And so I like living in this situation.

Speaker 8:
[33:45] I will say it is crazy, we gonna have to cut this. If like as a teenager, just like at one point you will have access to all your favorite porn stars. Like they will have their own shit. You can get in contact with them, any fucking point.

Speaker 3:
[33:59] Not only that, you can get in contact with them, but you can also go back, like you can go back in the well. It's not just stuff, rewatchables. You can go back, go time, fish in a rocker, the entire run. You can go back and look.

Speaker 7:
[34:14] Half of them have podcasts now.

Speaker 3:
[34:15] The whole deal. It's just too much. I don't even blame this little man.

Speaker 6:
[34:18] The poor rewatchable is crazy.

Speaker 8:
[34:20] What do you mean?

Speaker 3:
[34:20] That's a good fucking pot. I don't know.

Speaker 8:
[34:23] You see the growth. You see when they strain the hammy.

Speaker 3:
[34:27] You see the growth all right. So with the Starlight situation, back to the show. With the Starlight situation, I enjoyed seeing Starlight, to Charles' point, I enjoyed seeing Starlight go back to her roots and figure out how to be with her family. Hopefully, it's the last time we do that in the show.

Speaker 6:
[34:47] I mean, I can't imagine that there's anybody else to do that with.

Speaker 8:
[34:51] Wait, can I be honest? Are there any other parents left? Because we've done this version with Huey, Butcher brings it up, killed his father. Butcher killed his father. I guess Starlight, in terms of, we're talking about kind of like the main protagonist, this also kind of seemed like a door closing, where it's just like, I'm interested now, what else is there to dig up in these characters' lives? Like, Mother's Milk has to reunite with his family.

Speaker 3:
[35:20] Yeah, we can see that.

Speaker 8:
[35:21] And Kimiko have to figure it out. But kind of they've like salted the rest. It's like, I'm expecting the next episodes to just be like...

Speaker 3:
[35:29] So I guess this, but from a storytelling standpoint, that kind of makes sense, right? Yeah. You want all of that, you want that boil lanced, everything out there, so we can just focus on the future of the world, or at least the near present, near future of the world that we're in right now, and all of the characters living in the now with all of their trauma kind of resolved.

Speaker 8:
[35:50] Do we think that like characters maybe like The Deep especially, this episode was a good example. I was like, oh yeah, when you have this many balls in the air, The Deep to me feels a little bit underserved, where him and Noir are kind of doing this podcast, and they kind of have this moment, and it was interesting. I'm like, oh, there really aren't that many members of The Seven anymore that can really go toe to toe with Homelander that aren't Soulja Boy.

Speaker 3:
[36:19] I want to hear Steve on this, because this is really interesting, and Steve was, of course, the Deep of The Midnight Boys.

Speaker 7:
[36:28] Am I? Yeah, you definitely are. Do I say Bro V. Wade a lot?

Speaker 3:
[36:31] You're one step away from me. I'm just joking, but this is sort of a thing. We are running to a point here, where they've actually introduced new Vaught characters that are more interesting than some of the ones that we started with. K-Train is dead. The Deep is purely comic relief right now. He has no real arc, no real anything that's going on.

Speaker 8:
[36:54] Same thing Black Noir.

Speaker 3:
[36:55] Black Noir, with all the fan theories about whether or not he was going to be a Homelander clone like he was in the comic books, or whether he was a clone of Sam, or all of that stuff, just turns out to be a guy who's like an actor who's doing that whole thing. So, is the deep kind of being shuffled to the side and just made into a joke for the purposes of finishing off the show?

Speaker 7:
[37:23] If that were the case, I feel like the show is at least smart enough to not only do that. I think the reason that the show is kind of getting distracted of where to push the ball or to move the needle forward with certain characters is because they kind of want to keep them on screen just to know, just for the audience to know that they're there. And when this final revelation comes to know that everybody is here for a reason, it's not exactly the best storytelling when it comes to the sake of servicing the characters like the Deep and Black Noir. But like the reveal that Black Noir is an actor is like kind of unceremonious in this season. And I'm like, wait a minute, like shouldn't we have interrogated that a little bit more of like, where do we get this guy? Like why is there dynamic actually like that of friendship that is now fractured? And they had to like at the end of the day, hang it up, sigh, and do this podcast?

Speaker 6:
[38:15] Well, we've seen it before in like the earlier seasons, like their friendship, but also like Noir being different, right? Black Noir is the second Black Noir, right? The thing that we're missing is why he's gone silent, why he's been like acting like the first Black Noir.

Speaker 7:
[38:32] Right, and he's chosen to be method or like keep it up.

Speaker 6:
[38:35] But they, and I saw this online the other day, they cut a thing from season four where like Homelander comes and is talking to Black Noir, the new one, and he's like, I miss my old friend, I miss my, like, I missed the first Black Noir. Thing with the new Black Noir was he was talkative, he was like very much different. So Homelander's like, hey man, I miss my friend, he died, this and this, he goes, oh, I need to start acting like the first one, so he doesn't stick his hand in my chest and kill me. Right. Like, so, but we didn't see that in season four. And so that's something that they carried on. It's a deleted scene that, like, informs, like, oh, okay, he's acting like the first Black Noir so he can stay alive. Right.

Speaker 8:
[39:22] Are we, are we barreling towards, narratively, the boys teaming up with, like, the remaining members of The Seven and some of the villains to take down Homelander? Because I noticed also in the last couple episodes, they are giving everybody an arc where it's like, they're starting to question, wait, how much longer can I actually stand next to Homelander and be safe, where it's like, I think Sister Sage is not at that point, but Firecracker this episode, she's having a crisis of faith being like.

Speaker 3:
[39:59] Sister Sage is definitely at that point. Sister Sage activated Soldier Boy to go deal with Homelander.

Speaker 8:
[40:06] Soldier Boy is now at that point when he realizes that Homelander killed, whatchamacallit?

Speaker 6:
[40:12] Storfer killed herself, right? She bit her off her own tongue to kill herself. So he was, cause I haven't thought about it too, I was like, I don't seem like something that she would do. You might be right. Then I went back and I looked it up. I was like, no, she bit off her own tongue.

Speaker 8:
[40:25] But Soldier Boy, it gives him now a reason where he's just like, he's losing it a little bit. And I was just like, oh, are we heading to a point where the only way to stop Homelander is for all of these people to band together?

Speaker 6:
[40:39] Kinda, yeah, in their own unique way, cause they all have their own agendas, right? I don't think there's not going to be some big meeting at, you know, Vaat Tower or wherever there are in Pennsylvania. We're like, okay, guys, Sister Sage, Firecracker, Soulja Boy, let's find a way to work together. I think the writers are smart enough to, like, interweave those things where you come up on an opportunity where Soulja Boy can help, where Sister Sage can help, where Ashley can help, right? Cause she's having the same thing. The back of her head is crazy and she's talking like, yo, you gotta do something. This is crazy. She knows that Firecracker does not believe in what she's selling, right? So how do you interweave these characters and their motivations together without it being hokey, to your point? I'm interested to see where that goes in the story.

Speaker 3:
[41:23] Also, how do you create scenarios for them that are so important to them, so central to them, that it makes them break? I think exploring what these characters' breaking points are with Homelander is kind of the most important and interesting point of the next couple episodes before we get towards the finale.

Speaker 8:
[41:42] And it seems like at least they keep ending on this, where Homelander starts to disassociate. And each time, I'm just like, all right, is this the time that he's going to go atomic? Is he going to kill everyone? And I'm just like, oh, is that going to be the thing that unites them all? Where it is just like he's either in a church, he's at a rally, and one of those times where he's disassociating, it's ringing, you can tell he's not there, and he snaps. Is that the moment when the seven and the boys are just like, oh, he's unstoppable? Like, he is going on a rampage? It's not even he can't, he's such a child, and he's causing such a tantrum, that this is like a mash casualty event that's being broadcasted around the world.

Speaker 3:
[42:25] Right. About Homelander. Is he less evil now that he's deluded?

Speaker 8:
[42:33] Less evil.

Speaker 7:
[42:34] Less evil that he's a lunatic.

Speaker 3:
[42:36] Now that he's deluded, his intentionality before, to me, was one of the most sort of evil things about him. And now that he's deluded, he seems a little more misguided than he does like super cynical and evil.

Speaker 7:
[42:52] I don't exactly want to make that like a redeeming quality about him. I don't think that his lunacy is something that is ultimately gonna make me feel less bad when he hopefully does bite it. And I think that it's probably just a culmination about his entire mentality and then this just kind of folds in on itself and he's kind of just believing in high on his own supply. I think that is kind of that. I don't really think that there's really anything that I could, that Homelander could do at this point that makes it less evil of him because of all of the things that we've seen so far in this series, I don't think that Homelander is at all sympathetic.

Speaker 6:
[43:32] Yeah, well, for me, it's not even the sympathetic nature of the character. I think there is a level of, like, he did feel bad for him. But intentionality was never the scary thing about me. It was the unpredictability, right? Is that he's literally a walking nuclear bomb and at any point could go crazy and kill as many people as he wanted to kill. But in terms of the story and the people we care about, he could just fly up one day, find Huey, snap Huey's neck and go, right? It was almost for me, at least in the earlier seasons, scarier when Homelander wasn't on camera because he could just show up at any time, ruin your day and fly off, right? When he was on camera, I could see him. I'm like, I can get a vibe from the scene like, all right, he's talking to, you know, Stilwell or he's talking to whoever it may be. He's not going to, like, murder this person. This person is like, you know, like close to him or whatever. But especially in this season, I think there is a level of like, with his decreasing mental stability, I kind of feel like we, not losing it per se, but there is a level of, is this like, can this guy go nuclear at any point? Like, it was less likely then and I was still scared. But now with everything going on, like there is a chance that he could just snap and lose it.

Speaker 8:
[44:44] It seems like they're keeping the powder dry a little bit this season for that big explosion. That's at least what I feel like with Homelander, it's like, it's still interesting, but there is a level where I'm like, oh, you guys are building to a crescendo and are almost, like you are keeping some things close to the chest. That's how it feels to me.

Speaker 3:
[45:02] All right, I put the button in the boys, okay? Not the Midnight Boys, because we're here.

Speaker 6:
[45:08] Not going nowhere.

Speaker 3:
[45:09] Not going anywhere. Except to Hell's Kitchen in New York. Transition Master.

Speaker 6:
[45:20] That's the lower third.

Speaker 3:
[45:22] Except to Hell's Kitchen in New York, where, I gotta be honest with you, Daredevil Born Again is fucking cooking. All right, do we need a spoiler warning or a midnight manifest? I guess we don't.

Speaker 8:
[45:35] I don't have a manifest. You have a spoiler warning for everything. Netflix, Marvel, Adjacent, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, do not come at us. We are spoiling everything.

Speaker 3:
[45:45] Let's check in real quick. I'll start. We covered the first two episodes.

Speaker 8:
[45:51] Yep.

Speaker 3:
[45:53] Or was it just the premiere?

Speaker 8:
[45:54] No, the premiere was two episodes.

Speaker 3:
[45:56] The premiere was two episodes.

Speaker 8:
[45:57] And since then, really quick, we don't have to give a midnight manifest, but Daredevil, I think, has been on a long journey this season to, honestly, this was until I started watching later into the season, to kind of come to grips with him almost killing Bullseye. So a lot of what we've seen now is, like, Bullseye on a mission to kill Vanessa, Daredevil trying to not only stop Bullseye, but to keep him alive, and then Kingpin unraveling. And on this most recent episode, we get a defender arriving, which is Jessica Jones' back. And spoiler alert, spoiler alert. It seems like she now has a child, comic book accurate, with Luke Cage.

Speaker 3:
[46:39] With Luke Cage. It looks like she has a little, biracial child.

Speaker 6:
[46:42] Not Tom, not the Tom.

Speaker 3:
[46:43] Who in the future will get cast and everything that is on cable. Stop. So look, a couple of things here. When we first talked about the Daredevil premiere, there was, I had reservations about their ability to accomplish certain aspects of the narrative that I thought that they needed to. They've accomplished all of them in such a profound way. Number one, it sometimes seemed like this version of Daredevil couldn't quite deliver the dangerous and destabilizing feeling that darkness and mystery and calamity could happen any place and you need Daredevil that the first show did. The first show had this sticky atmospheric feeling of like, oh my God, things are so bad, Daredevil has to exist. This show has been able to do that to me. Crazy. Number one, number two, making use of all of these characters. The BB and Daniel Blake situation, that is working. Like, that narrative right now is working. Her doing her job, him being in a situation where he is struggling with what's the right thing to do. Their actual chemistry is starting to become something that really works for the show. It is something that really works for the show now. The stuff that happened in the last episode with her going to his mother's house for his birthday, all of that worked. And last thing I'll say, Bullseye might have saved the season.

Speaker 8:
[48:18] Oh, he's right.

Speaker 6:
[48:20] It really, really is.

Speaker 3:
[48:21] I don't mean that to say that, like, he had to save the season, but things got so much more desperate when Bullseye, that character, came into this season. Just changed the complexion of the show, oriented Daredevil in a way that showed us exactly what he's up against, and then repositioned Daredevil as someone who doesn't want to kill Bullseye, but doesn't want to relent to Fisk, and kind of put New York. It showed how dangerous things are. But the show is fucking phenomenal right now to me.

Speaker 6:
[48:57] The Daniel Blake stuff, that's tough. I'm not going to lie. It's hard to watch, man. You ever, I don't know if y'all, your early 20s, find a little thing, you know what I'm saying? Little like situation ship little thing where you know it's not going nowhere, but you're still spending your money. You saw after a while.

Speaker 3:
[49:14] The Simpon? Yeah.

Speaker 6:
[49:16] Yeah. It's okay.

Speaker 3:
[49:17] It's happened.

Speaker 6:
[49:18] It's happened and you see it's like, and it was crazy too because when she's like, when you're like, I was like, you bringing her to your mom's house, man?

Speaker 3:
[49:25] Like she asked to go.

Speaker 6:
[49:27] I know.

Speaker 7:
[49:28] That's really tough.

Speaker 3:
[49:28] She like him.

Speaker 6:
[49:31] He turned her down. This was the first time in the series where they're about to kiss. I'm like, brother, you got to take that, man. I'm sorry. For you to finally have a conscience in that moment, that's tough.

Speaker 7:
[49:45] He didn't have to kill her.

Speaker 3:
[49:46] Yeah, he did.

Speaker 6:
[49:46] I know. I'm not saying that.

Speaker 3:
[49:49] Buck going crazy.

Speaker 7:
[49:50] Buck is nuts.

Speaker 6:
[49:53] I mean, we're going to talk about this scene with him and Heather. That was wild.

Speaker 7:
[49:56] But he's into it.

Speaker 6:
[49:58] You like that you went to it?

Speaker 3:
[49:59] I thought that was how it was going to go down.

Speaker 7:
[50:01] Buck was into it.

Speaker 6:
[50:01] I mean, I don't think Shane...

Speaker 7:
[50:03] They didn't show the waist down, but he was clearly rocking something.

Speaker 3:
[50:05] Hold on. Heather's something else, bro.

Speaker 6:
[50:07] I mean, look.

Speaker 3:
[50:08] Heather wanted him once, bro. Shout out to that.

Speaker 7:
[50:10] Shout out to that.

Speaker 3:
[50:11] I don't keep Shane, man.

Speaker 6:
[50:13] But what I wrote, like, we're going to ask, in the last episode, there's this big fight between Karen and Daredevil that they pretty much have every season. But I thought this was, like, really well executed in the sense of, like, brother, you've been choosing them over us, like, the people of New York, like, every single time. People are dying, dog. You got to make a call, man. Something has to give at this point. And I thought it was really well executed. What do you guys feel? Like, was she right in that moment? Like, brother, we can't keep doing this. We can't keep letting them go out, kill people, come back and be like, oh man, we'll get them next time.

Speaker 7:
[50:48] It's that same Jason Todd red hood argument that he gives Batman of why you keep the Joker alive. And it's not his call to do it. And it really feels like the show has an identity now. And it's not just emulating the Netflix era. It's actually evolving past or through that Netflix era to know that like, yes, the mythos of me having a no kill order is actually the thing that is to my friends and the closest to me holding me back and actually keeping things more dangerous. But to me, I cannot absolve myself and will not do that. And it's a line that I don't cross. That taken to its logical conclusion with a conflict that will ultimately like bring him in fist together again, that has a lynchpin between Karen and Bullseye of this argument of just like, just leave the room, let me carry this. This is really, really good stuff. I like really, really like that. Daniel Blake, I'm still having a tough time with. I understand that.

Speaker 8:
[51:47] I can't give you all that. Daniel Blake and BB's stuff is weak. I love it.

Speaker 7:
[51:52] It's getting a little better, but it's still the real part of it.

Speaker 3:
[51:55] No, I love it for two reasons. Number one, the Daniel Blake stuff, when he had to go along with Buck, first of all, that was right out of Sopranos, shout out to me.

Speaker 7:
[52:03] It definitely is.

Speaker 8:
[52:03] I was just like, this is like diet Sopranos.

Speaker 3:
[52:05] Yeah, but like what, doesn't mean it's not good, but like the Blake stuff where he realized the stakes, that to me is what had to happen. Because he seemed like somebody who was eating around the edges of what it meant to be him. And now this is life or death.

Speaker 7:
[52:21] This is are you in or out?

Speaker 3:
[52:23] Your friend is going to be this. It's not just about career advancement. It's not just about, it made it more desperate for him. And that to me was the thing that wasn't resonating about that. It just seemed like some shit happening. And now I see that was purposeful from a story perspective because you wanted that to feel sort of ancillary until it wasn't anymore. You wanted his world to be like changed right away. Now when he looks at her, I can, great job by Michael and Perioli, not Gandolfini. Michael Gandolfini, Perioli is Christopher. Great job by him as well. You see him stressing out over every decision. The decision to send her the fake news, to send her breathing to his parents. The decision when he's used, there's just more there there now. And that's to me with every character. That's with Heather. The Heather stuff wasn't working at first for me. Now her trauma is pretty pronounced. Fisk, everybody is going through it at the same time. And the question is, does mission accomplishment for any one of these characters deliver them salvation? I think that's like super dope. That's the question that you want to ask in any of this superhero stuff.

Speaker 6:
[53:34] Jessica Jones showed up.

Speaker 3:
[53:36] By the way, real quick, I'll say this. One other thing I want to say about, I know I'm doing what I promised I wouldn't do, which is talking too much, but I used to look at this joker kill bullseye stuff differently, but then I thought about history. So a question throughout history is whether or not revolutionaries can rule. If you overthrow the oppressive government that is oppressing you, there's going to be blood when you do it, right? But after you do it, can you then rule? Can you govern? Can you then come back from the links that you had to go through to rule in a pragmatic way that works for a society? Now we could talk about propaganda and where revolutionaries are ruling better than people say that they are, and maybe if the United States wasn't imposing vicious embargoes on them, then maybe things would be going better. We could talk about that, right? We could talk about that. But if you gave the slave owners and the really crazy, brutally, brutally racist men that started this country one thing, is that after their revolution, they went, okay, there has to be something larger than us that makes the rules here. Whether or not it makes the rules for everybody right now in this situation, there has to be something bigger than us that we adhere to. It can't be even the people that are, it has to be the thing. It has to be constitutionality. Daredevil and Batman, them not killing their foes is their constitutionality. It is the thing that would stop them from being oppressive if they were to rule.

Speaker 7:
[55:19] Because when they cross that line, they will not go back.

Speaker 3:
[55:21] It's like Superman and Injustice. Superman and Injustice goes, you know what, everybody is safer. If they kill Lois Lane, my code is dead. Everybody is safer if you just allow, and then what happens? He becomes a megalomaniac, oppressive, dictatorial ruler. So I always thought, yeah, you should kill the Joker, but if you kill the Joker or if you kill Fisk or if you kill them, you're saying that you'll do anything, that you'll go, and you can't do it that way. It won't last. You'll end up becoming that thing that you'll hate. You'll find somebody else to kill and a reason to kill someone else that you don't agree with. I think that the show is illustrating this to me right now.

Speaker 8:
[55:59] Well, I think the irony of Daredevil and Batman's pursuits, but if we're talking about Daredevil Born Again, is that Matt wants to save New York, but he is terrible at saving everyone else around him. And I put Karen in this, where I'm just like, dog, every single time y'all slip an SD card to somebody, y'all put somebody on video, y'all like, hey, I'll protect you. They end up dying.

Speaker 7:
[56:26] That never works.

Speaker 8:
[56:27] Which is why I do think it's like, I get why Karen is a little bit like, Karen A should not be talking, because I'm just like, Karen, you cannot protect your sources. I have never met anybody.

Speaker 6:
[56:38] Any journalists?

Speaker 8:
[56:39] Who's just like, if you talk to Karen in an episode, you are dying.

Speaker 7:
[56:43] Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 8:
[56:43] You are getting got. If my person be checking for 48 hours, I'm like, Karen, we already know what fucking happened. Oh, so Bibi, like, all right, Bibi, I gotta be real. Why are you keeping an S, first of all, why are you keeping an SD card in your pocket? It's about to get dusty. It's about to get bent. There's a lot of shit.

Speaker 7:
[57:00] You know how small that is? You could lose that easily.

Speaker 8:
[57:03] Well, like Bibi's an idiot. Maybe that's why I'm not buying.

Speaker 3:
[57:06] You can't call a black woman an idiot.

Speaker 8:
[57:08] I'm calling it the fictional woman who keeps an SD card for the revolution.

Speaker 6:
[57:11] She's still black though.

Speaker 8:
[57:14] I'm like, girl, you're going into the same thing when she goes to the hospital and she's talking to Blake.

Speaker 7:
[57:22] Oh, yeah, that was a lot.

Speaker 8:
[57:23] And then a nurse goes, Vanessa's in critical condition. I'm like, damn.

Speaker 3:
[57:31] But Bibi, that's what you got to do. I actually relate to Bibi's character. To me, she's starting to become an actual useful journalist. And you're starting to see all of that stuff is working for me. Now look, Fisk, killing Vanessa, big swing, big swing.

Speaker 6:
[57:49] Finally.

Speaker 3:
[57:50] That worked, though.

Speaker 7:
[57:51] I mean, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[57:52] That worked. Like, I'm not saying that-

Speaker 6:
[57:54] If you're gonna kill her, let Bullseye kill her, man. Not let some freaking pineapple juice allergic reaction kill her.

Speaker 8:
[58:00] Wait, was it the allergic reaction to the pineapple juice that killed her?

Speaker 6:
[58:04] Some like, I mean, bitch, she survived the Bullseye attack, is my thing. Like, if she gonna die, let Bullseye kill her.

Speaker 8:
[58:11] I thought it was more so the doctor was like, ay, go, it went, this whole operation was successful, but we're not out of the woods yet.

Speaker 3:
[58:20] Right, that she couldn't recover. That happens sometimes. You feel like the pineapple juice killed her?

Speaker 6:
[58:24] That's what it seemed like. She had the pineapple juice, and she's like, I don't like pineapple juice.

Speaker 8:
[58:27] I don't think the pineapple juice got her.

Speaker 3:
[58:28] I don't know if the pineapple juice killed her. Maybe it did.

Speaker 6:
[58:30] I don't know. I would have preferred it if, like-

Speaker 7:
[58:33] We need an autopsy on the pineapple juice.

Speaker 6:
[58:34] I didn't need her alive for a whole episode or whatever. It'd be one thing if she was like touch and go. I guess technically, I would have preferred it if she died in that ring in episode four.

Speaker 8:
[58:45] I strongly agree because I felt like this was the complication of binge watching where I was like, damn, when they went, when they did the flashback and Foggy was back, and it was the old show- They had the wigs on. Everybody looked old as shit. That was crazy, but I was like, yeah, this is the problem with the show where I'm just like, oh, my friends are back. The Netflix are- When Wesley was back, I was like, oh, what's-

Speaker 7:
[59:14] Wesley coming back was great.

Speaker 3:
[59:16] I loved to see Wesley. Wesley was the man.

Speaker 8:
[59:18] I just missed the old show more. I was just like, damn.

Speaker 6:
[59:21] They had the old aspect ratio now.

Speaker 3:
[59:23] Something to say, okay, so look, according to ElGerardo Vilda, his name is at Gerardo V1 alt on Twitter. This is what he says. The pineapple juice is relevant because asking for something she doesn't like should have been a red flag. Her brain is bleeding. So confusion, memory loss, things like that. He was unable to process the possibility of losing her. He didn't allow them to check on her until it was too late. He actually killed her because the nurse walks in and goes, we need to check her. And he goes, no, go get her a pineapple juice. If they would have checked her, then maybe, I don't know, they probably wouldn't need a CAT scan or something like that. If they would have checked her, maybe you could have seen.

Speaker 8:
[60:08] Maybe there's some bleeding.

Speaker 3:
[60:09] There was still a brain bleed. You could put her under, you can try to save her. But the confusion of her asking for something that she doesn't like, that's kind of what, according to this guy, it's a good observation with the pineapple juice represented.

Speaker 8:
[60:20] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[60:20] So look, the opening scene with Jessica Jones, to me, told me that this show was in a creative groove right now. Perfect way to introduce her.

Speaker 8:
[60:31] Perfect.

Speaker 3:
[60:32] Perfect way. When I say that's a perfect scene, that's a perfect scene. I also like when Special Forces guys make signals.

Speaker 8:
[60:39] The little...

Speaker 3:
[60:39] When he did like this, I want to learn the signals of the Special Forces. The little... I want us to be able to like... Let's say that we're walking into Comic-Con. I want you to be able to go.

Speaker 7:
[60:51] You want like tactical hand moves?

Speaker 8:
[60:54] You want three black men and Steve to walk into a convention hall and start making like...

Speaker 3:
[61:01] Into the room. That's no reason to shoot them down.

Speaker 8:
[61:04] They're going to start tackling us.

Speaker 3:
[61:06] I just want to be able... Okay, let's say we go to the club. I want to be able to go to the club and have Jomi go... And half of us know that we're going to the... You two go to the bar, you two go get the table.

Speaker 7:
[61:19] We gotta hit the paintball range, get some tackle training.

Speaker 6:
[61:21] Those exist, right? Well, this, that means it's time to wrap it up, you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 8:
[61:25] I've had that sometimes, like when I'm at a bar or a club and my homie's like, hey, yo, so-and-so's gonna be there, you know how we get... If you see... I'm gonna give you the signal, just come grab me, we're out. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 3:
[61:37] Ian tried to do that one time and we made fun of him. We were at Subway or McDonald's on Perkins Road, this had to be like 99, 2000 and we all trying to get our food and Ian went, I've told this story before, Ian went, hey, let's ride. And the rest of the crew looked at him like, what the fuck? Like, what you doing?

Speaker 6:
[62:00] Totally fine thing to do.

Speaker 3:
[62:01] Like, hey, let's ride, like you fucking Billy the Kid and we the Regulators.

Speaker 7:
[62:05] You don't tell us.

Speaker 3:
[62:07] Shout out to Ian. Like, you don't tell us.

Speaker 8:
[62:09] That was the Captain America move. Like, it's just like, damn, we're not the rest of the Avengers.

Speaker 3:
[62:13] But when they come in there, you see a couple of things. Number one, you see Nice biracial daughter. So you know that.

Speaker 8:
[62:19] Do you have any, are you gonna add this actress?

Speaker 6:
[62:23] Leave that child alone.

Speaker 3:
[62:25] And then you see that Jessica still has, like you see all these people. So she's still powerful. Her powers are intact. It's a scene.

Speaker 6:
[62:33] Well, they're not.

Speaker 3:
[62:33] Well, they're not intact, but we didn't know that till later. It's a scene that furthers that character while introducing them in a visually creative way. Like I went back and watched it a couple of times. And then the scene itself is filled with so much stress because the kid has the grenade and you do not know who the kid is, who her mother is, whether or not the grenade's gonna go off in her hands. You're waiting for someone to come in and save her. And then her mom, Pulse, slash Jessica Jones, comes in and save her with the reveal. It's a great scene.

Speaker 6:
[63:06] I like it. I also love when they kill people off, well not kill people, she's not gonna kill her. But when they hurt people off screen to save on the budget, that's really smart.

Speaker 7:
[63:14] You just see dudes flying in different directions.

Speaker 6:
[63:16] Blood splattering, people falling. You're like, ah.

Speaker 3:
[63:18] Did she kill those guys?

Speaker 7:
[63:19] Probably.

Speaker 8:
[63:20] Well, they came to her house.

Speaker 3:
[63:22] I don't think she killed them because when she saw them, she was gonna kill them because they know where she stay.

Speaker 6:
[63:25] That's what I'm thinking, but she's like, better or worse off than me. I'm like, I don't know, man. I kind of feel like you murdered those guys.

Speaker 3:
[63:32] You might have murdered them.

Speaker 6:
[63:32] You might have murdered them. I would.

Speaker 8:
[63:34] Where was Luke, cause she says that she was basically like hinting when she's talking to Matt that he took the deal from Lillard's character.

Speaker 6:
[63:43] Not everybody I know did. You can just say Luke did.

Speaker 7:
[63:45] You can just say Luke did.

Speaker 8:
[63:46] So what did Luke do? Like, so what do we think Luke did?

Speaker 6:
[63:49] Well, what did, I mean. When you say Charles came, asked about people, they needed people for some.

Speaker 8:
[63:54] Like a Thunderbolts type team.

Speaker 7:
[63:57] I mean, it could have been a vigilante roundup of certain things.

Speaker 3:
[63:58] Hold on for a second, man. We gotta talk about this. Shout out to my man, Mike, all right? The guy who plays Luke Cage.

Speaker 6:
[64:03] Mike Colter?

Speaker 3:
[64:03] Great guy, Mike Colter. Yeah, Mike Colter. Well, we can't have a situation where Luke Cage both kept the deal, then left the woman to be a single mom raising a about-racial young girl. Okay, we can't let them do Luke Cage like this. We can't let them do Luke Cage like this.

Speaker 6:
[64:17] That's not what happened, bro.

Speaker 3:
[64:17] We need a backstory about Luke Cage that doesn't make him, number one, somebody that's working with the government and somebody that abandons his family.

Speaker 6:
[64:26] We gotta pay him, it's expensive, you feel me?

Speaker 3:
[64:28] Be back on the next season.

Speaker 6:
[64:29] We gotta, you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 7:
[64:30] They'll probably show up in the videos.

Speaker 6:
[64:31] It's probably a better way to write it, you know?

Speaker 7:
[64:33] Right.

Speaker 6:
[64:34] We can't, you know.

Speaker 8:
[64:35] It was a little bit, I'm like, damn, so Luke Cage is a fed and a deadbeat dad, it's great.

Speaker 6:
[64:42] Nah, you're not a deadbeat dad, bro.

Speaker 7:
[64:43] Too close to call yet, too close to call.

Speaker 6:
[64:45] What if there was like, yo, we know your family's at, dog. You know, your wife didn't take the deal, somebody gotta take the deal, we coming after all y'all. He's like, hey, baby, I gotta do this for us. She's like, nah, we can fight these guys, bro. He's like, nah, nah, nah. They said they would leave y'all alone.

Speaker 7:
[64:59] It's the only way to keep him away forever.

Speaker 8:
[65:01] Luke Cage was imprisoned by his government. Why the fuck would he sell his camera to no one?

Speaker 6:
[65:06] All I'm saying is, I called her for, how many episodes are left? This is episode six.

Speaker 7:
[65:11] Like four to six, I think.

Speaker 6:
[65:13] Yeah, I think there's like, what, two, three episodes left?

Speaker 3:
[65:14] Two, three episodes left, yeah.

Speaker 6:
[65:15] It's expensive.

Speaker 7:
[65:16] Yeah.

Speaker 6:
[65:16] We can't have him out there.

Speaker 7:
[65:17] We can't have him out there.

Speaker 3:
[65:18] How about this? What if that's not Luke's kid? What if Luke opened up the doorway to chocolate and now she can't close that bitch? That happens. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 8:
[65:28] Wait, wait, wait, can we see what you mean by opening the doorway of chocolate?

Speaker 6:
[65:33] Well, so remember when she showed up in his season or whatever they first meet and they just start having crazy sex?

Speaker 8:
[65:40] Yeah, every woman was doing that with Luke Cage in every episode.

Speaker 6:
[65:44] That's what I'm saying, but think about it. If you're Jessica Jones, that's the best sex of your life and you're trying to replicate that formula, you know what I'm saying? You're trying to chase that high.

Speaker 3:
[65:52] So...

Speaker 6:
[65:54] So...

Speaker 7:
[65:58] You just get in the weeds on that one.

Speaker 8:
[66:00] Jomi, how was the birthday party, right?

Speaker 3:
[66:04] I'm trying to save you. So when your doorway to milk was opened up, I was trying to save you. Were you able to close it?

Speaker 6:
[66:14] I mean, you never closed any of those doors.

Speaker 7:
[66:17] The doors never closed.

Speaker 6:
[66:18] The doors never closed.

Speaker 3:
[66:18] The doors never closed. You open up the doorway to chocolate, the Hershey keeps flowing through. Maybe there's a different black guy.

Speaker 8:
[66:25] Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, dude.

Speaker 6:
[66:26] Yeah, come on now.

Speaker 3:
[66:27] Jomi, you wouldn't turn her down.

Speaker 6:
[66:30] Under no circumstances.

Speaker 3:
[66:30] She's crazy. She looked good. She's still got it, by the way. Gene Stilford, the same way.

Speaker 6:
[66:34] Yeah, Christian Ritter. Come on, man.

Speaker 3:
[66:35] Shout out to her. She's still got it. Still was a great character. Still has a handle on the character.

Speaker 8:
[66:41] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6:
[66:42] I mean, she's like... I mean, we can argue about Iron Fest all you want, but that Defenders casting was like, you know, Matt Murdock, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, nailed it. Like, perfect.

Speaker 7:
[66:52] I'll hit you so hard you see.

Speaker 8:
[66:54] I will say, also, it is so funny, just like the retcon we've had on this show, where it was like the first season is very much like, eh, that Netflix shit kind of happened, but it really didn't happen. And yo, this is just batch of these last four episodes. Just like, oh no, you guys are just continuing the same stuff.

Speaker 7:
[67:12] And you actually kind of need to know a little bit more on the Netflix stuff than most.

Speaker 8:
[67:16] Even the flashback did a lot of like, oh, we are tying Buck to this to show you how he showed up. We are making sure that you know like, even these other characters were a part of this world. I was like, oh, this is actually like fascinating, where it's not just that you are resurrecting the Daredevil show. This was a moment where I'm like, oh, you're resurrecting all of these shows.

Speaker 3:
[67:37] It didn't make any sense in the first place, in my opinion, to not do that. If you're gonna cast all of the same people to not do that, it doesn't.

Speaker 7:
[67:43] Decanonize, soft decanonize the Netflix show.

Speaker 3:
[67:46] It's too confusing to the audience. Same city, same Fisk, same Daredevil, different universe, different theme. And why would you do it in the first place? All of that stuff is such amazing story bed to lay on. Just deepen it, and they have. By the end, the task force fully feels scary. They feel like a bunch of, they feel like, at first, they look like a bunch of slap dicks to me, I'm not gonna lie. But they fully feel scary. Your lead task force guy is a great villain at this point.

Speaker 6:
[68:18] I hate him so much. Oh, he sucks.

Speaker 3:
[68:19] He is, though, a great villain at this point.

Speaker 7:
[68:20] It's a great performance, it really is. It takes a lot of good acting to make a hateable character work.

Speaker 3:
[68:25] Right, and the city really feels like it's fraying at the seams now.

Speaker 7:
[68:30] Oh yeah.

Speaker 3:
[68:30] Particularly with the decision to have Vanessa's vigil turn into a protest. Think about this thing that's supposed to be something that the entire city can agree on, which is the fact that the death of the mayor's wife is a tremendous tragedy, ends up becoming an opportunity for all of these people that are oppressed, have been imprisoned and have been squashed to come out and say, we don't really care about the tragedy. The tragedy of our lives is a bigger deal than that. At the same time, you have what I thought was a phenomenal fight. A great action between Daredevil and Kingpin. I know why they don't let Daredevil and Kingpin fight more often. You can't do it every show because then you lose it. But any time they get to scrapping, I love it.

Speaker 6:
[69:18] I hope they fight again because, again, this is episode six. And this is something that you would see in the season finale. And so I'm kind of like, hopefully they didn't just blow their load on that aspect of the show. But maybe this is me being silly when they're having that conversation. I leave New York, you leave New York, whatever. And then he mentions Vanessa.

Speaker 7:
[69:39] He's like, nope, you did it wrong.

Speaker 6:
[69:40] And then he goes, no. And then Daredevil goes, I guess we got to scrap now.

Speaker 3:
[69:45] Yeah.

Speaker 6:
[69:46] That's like, again, that is... I can't believe I'm blanking on this name. Hello, RingerVerse fans. I regret to inform you that due to the initiation of Deep Shadow Protocol, this bit had to be edited out of the pod. I know, I'm just as disappointed as you are. Things is always for listening, and The Midnight Boys, pew pew, will get back to you shortly. When Charlie Cox makes that face, like, we got to fight, like, I really want to do this. Again, that's like, he's the perfect Daredevil cast. It's like, I don't want to do this. We could talk this out. We, like, I can give you the hands. I can knee you in the face in slow motion and have it look all cool, whatever. I can take all the punches and bleed on the artwork, do the whole thing, but at the end of the day, all I want to do is stop this. And when he has to fight him, he's like, oh, God, not this again. It's just perfect.

Speaker 8:
[70:39] Do you think for the future of this show in the third season, like, if a character like Bullseye can inject so much adrenaline into the show, they should be pulling in back people like Elektra or other characters, where it's like, I think a lot of the show, what it needs is, I'm like, who are the characters that when they're in the room with Daredevil, not only can they go toe to toe with him, arguing or whatever, but just like also as a threat. And I'm like, I was like, oh, we need more characters where Daredevil has shit to do, where it's like he's in peril or other people around him are in peril. You know what I mean?

Speaker 3:
[71:16] He needs to feel overwhelmed. I think earlier on, it seemed like he was running some side solo missions. You're right. He needs to feel overwhelmed. We need to think, even more so than Batman, we need to feel like he can't win. He can't win. It's too much.

Speaker 8:
[71:32] Because I think the problem with the task force is, while the task force is scary if you are just like a regular person in New York, the hand is scary if you're Daredevil. Like in like this version of Daredevil, the reason he always felt overwhelmed is I'm just like, hey, it doesn't matter how fucking good you are, you can still get killed with a fucking sword. Same thing when they were like referencing in this season when Daredevil first met Bullseye and Karen was like, do you remember what state you were in? I'm like, oh, we need some more of the characters from that original Netflix run who can really be like, hey, yo, you are still just a fucking man running around in Hell's Kitchen. You can be brought down.

Speaker 3:
[72:16] Yeah, I mean, I agree. Also, just like, well, we talked about it before, Bullseye's just terrifying. Bullseye's just terrifying. Bullseye, take a penny, throw it down your throat, you choke. Bullseye, I thought he was going to kill that dog. I was very, very...

Speaker 6:
[72:34] He's not going to kill the dog.

Speaker 8:
[72:34] I didn't think he was going to kill the dog.

Speaker 3:
[72:36] I thought he was going to kill the dog. But he's so dangerous.

Speaker 6:
[72:40] He's a villain, not a monster.

Speaker 3:
[72:41] True, but he's so dangerous and so unstable. I liked Colin Farrell's Bullseye, by the way. He's so... He's a great villain to me.

Speaker 8:
[72:51] But I also want to know what Karen was going to do, because I was also like, hey, yo, Daredevil, I'm going to be real. You're being dumb as shit. We all know when you fucking arrest Bullseye, you strap all of the arms, the legs down.

Speaker 7:
[73:04] You think just handcuffs is going to do it?

Speaker 8:
[73:05] Just handcuffs. You got to put something in his mouth because he'll rip out his teeth, split that shit. When Karen had the gun in front of him, I'm like, get the gun away from fucking Bullseye. What are you going to do, Karen?

Speaker 7:
[73:15] You can stand away from him and shoot him.

Speaker 6:
[73:17] You got to make the call, bro. Once you got the gun up to the head, man, you got to pull the trigger, man. You just know you can't think about it. You already got to be in emotion, bro.

Speaker 8:
[73:25] But also Daredevil got to stop popping in places. It got, pow!

Speaker 3:
[73:30] First of all, don't hit her Daredevil.

Speaker 7:
[73:33] It's so true. Easy.

Speaker 6:
[73:34] It's so true. Okay?

Speaker 3:
[73:35] Daredevil, don't throw a baton at your girlfriend. Yeah, don't do that. I was like, hey, what are you doing? I'm like, Daredevil, come on, man. Don't make me. I'll call somebody on you, Daredevil. I'll dial you. I don't feel like you're the city. You say Daredevil, like, you know. Come on, now. It's EJ's girl. Don't throw your baton at her. But he did. And they were on the other side of each other after that. She gets captured at the end. Karen gets captured. And even that great scene. Karen fucking paid.

Speaker 6:
[74:06] It's like, that guy, I hate that guy, but he's cooking that line.

Speaker 3:
[74:09] He's cooking.

Speaker 6:
[74:10] And then-

Speaker 7:
[74:10] I'm gonna enjoy this.

Speaker 6:
[74:11] The Fredo joint when he-

Speaker 3:
[74:12] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6:
[74:14] You Fredo-

Speaker 8:
[74:15] Once again, once again, if I'm in the resistance, I'm telling these, stay away from me. Actually, stay away from me, Karen. They're like, you'll be safe. Cause also, I was wondering, I was just like, he's like, yo, here's my card, Daredevil. It works until 12. I'm like, if they swipe that card, they gon know that it was you. There was just like, yeah, Daredevil popped in.

Speaker 6:
[74:39] Saunders, whatever his name is, zero survival instincts. Cause as soon as someone's like, yeah, man, I'm gonna ride with you, brother, it's over.

Speaker 7:
[74:46] Done.

Speaker 6:
[74:46] They know.

Speaker 7:
[74:47] Smiling like a mother.

Speaker 3:
[74:49] I have a tip for everybody that's in the situation that Saunders is in. Sure, dime the people out. They're bad people. Do you know what you do? You go to Maine, you go to Mass, you get the fuck out.

Speaker 6:
[75:03] You got to have an extra status.

Speaker 3:
[75:05] Once you do that, if you stay around in the middle of the task force, those guys might not be geniuses, but they're cunning. You're dead meat. Okay? He stuck around and in every scene, I was just waiting for somebody to dome him. And then he eventually got domed. Right there, which by the way, another interesting thing, because that might have been too much for the black Uncle Tom Task Force guy, who he also, not the actor, shout out to the actor.

Speaker 5:
[75:34] Uncle Tom Task Force, Uncle Tom Task Force guy.

Speaker 7:
[75:37] He's like, whoa, you're out of line, buddy.

Speaker 6:
[75:41] Y'all been rounding up people, man, taking people out of their homes and all that. You kill one of the homes, it's like, whoa, hey, that's a bridge too far, brother, come on. You're already in the mud, man.

Speaker 3:
[75:49] But now, but he looked at that now, everything is on shaky footing. Like Fisk, I don't know what, Fisk is a fucking wreck. He ruined the painting. His entire world with Vanessa was disintegrated. The painting's gone, Vanessa's gone, everything.

Speaker 8:
[76:03] He killed the doctor, and that was the moment where I was a little bit like, hey, Fisk could kill anybody else. If I have a former fucking drug kingpin-turned-mayor in my hospital who just tried to save my wife and then she died and he goes missing, I will be a little bit like, yo, can we check the camera?

Speaker 7:
[76:27] Yeah, maybe we gotta-

Speaker 3:
[76:28] How do you cover that one up?

Speaker 6:
[76:29] Yeah, like how, yeah.

Speaker 7:
[76:30] I mean, Buck'll figure it out.

Speaker 3:
[76:32] Buck came in, but like, what do you say? The guy went in to say whatever.

Speaker 7:
[76:35] He fell, it was the pineapple juice.

Speaker 3:
[76:37] He fell, every bone in his body is cracked up.

Speaker 7:
[76:40] Right, yeah, no, he folded in half.

Speaker 8:
[76:41] We just saw Fisk at a boxing match almost kill a man with his bare hands. I'm gonna have some questions, but also, if I'm the doctor, I would be a little bit like, I'm not putting my hand, like the man put his hand on me, I was like, all right.

Speaker 6:
[76:56] As soon as he put his hand on the shoulder, I was like, all right, it's over.

Speaker 3:
[76:59] We gotta finish up, but the doctor was kind of asking for it, man. Like the doctor comes in, the doctor said, she's now there for the beautiful darkness that awaits us all.

Speaker 7:
[77:15] What the fuck are you saying? He said that, like, what poetry are you writing right now?

Speaker 3:
[77:19] Like, who the are you? Can you Charles her? Like, you're coming in there now. My wife just died. What the fuck are you talking about?

Speaker 7:
[77:27] That beautiful darkness.

Speaker 3:
[77:27] The beautiful darkness that awaits us all. What the are you?

Speaker 6:
[77:30] He should have went with the stock response. Hey, man, we did everything we could. I'm sorry for your loss. Bill's accounts payable.

Speaker 7:
[77:37] Dr. Robbie would have handled that way better.

Speaker 8:
[77:39] Probably. Also, and maybe I'm just not a true lover like that, but I don't know if my girl, if I meet her, she's selling it to Payton. She sells that shit to me for three times what it's worth. And that's our love story. I'm like, damn, I don't know if I'm going out like that.

Speaker 3:
[77:55] He paid three times what it's worth because that's what she was worth. That's how I know you don't have respect for women. Now, what you're talking about...

Speaker 8:
[78:04] It seems like you're a little bit under the price of the capitalist machine. Why our love gotta be wrapped up in the dollar.

Speaker 3:
[78:09] It's a good comeback. Don't ask me, though, as the flower industry, as the diamond industry, as the unblocked fee industry. Wow. You know what I'm saying? Like, ask all of that stuff. Callback. Callback master. Look, we gotta go. I'll say this. The show, I haven't watched Invisible, so Thrag is on it? Is Thrag on this one?

Speaker 6:
[78:33] Oh, Thrag is on it. No, this was the season finale.

Speaker 3:
[78:36] Was it the Thrag?

Speaker 6:
[78:36] Was Thrag there? I think this was...

Speaker 3:
[78:39] Was Conqueror on there?

Speaker 6:
[78:40] Conquest? Yes, it was. This is one of the best seasons of Invisible, probably since like season one. Like, they really took off.

Speaker 3:
[78:48] Is it better than season one?

Speaker 6:
[78:49] No, when it's... No, no, no, no. Like, the threads that they thread in season one are some of the best. I remember watching episode seven, and they're like, calling my homies, like, yo, this is crazy, right? But this episode, or this season of Invisible was excellent. I thought they really brought back the show, like, we know and we love, and they're growing these characters, and we're seeing elements. They're changing stuff from the comics. By the end of the day, man, we are in a great place with Invisible. I can't wait for season five, man.

Speaker 3:
[79:16] You can't wait.

Speaker 6:
[79:16] I can't wait.

Speaker 3:
[79:17] You can't wait.

Speaker 6:
[79:18] We're gonna get next year, man. We're back. We're making TV each year, man. We're here.

Speaker 3:
[79:22] Is Thrive there? Remember Sailor Moon?

Speaker 6:
[79:25] Oh my God.

Speaker 8:
[79:25] Don't, don't, don't. Stop.

Speaker 7:
[79:27] I'm still scarred by that.

Speaker 6:
[79:29] Stop.

Speaker 8:
[79:29] For real.

Speaker 6:
[79:30] Eva's thick now. Eva's thick now.

Speaker 3:
[79:33] Oh, oh, I know I wanted to bring up to you guys before we go.

Speaker 6:
[79:35] You gotta see that?

Speaker 3:
[79:37] Before we go, I know I wanted to bring up with you guys before we go, you know what I mean? You looked at Sailor Moon again. I don't know what I was, hey, what happened with, we can't spend too much time on it, but what happened with the last Avatar Bender movie?

Speaker 6:
[79:49] Oh, gosh.

Speaker 8:
[79:50] So the whole thing was leaked. The whole movie was leaked.

Speaker 3:
[79:53] Tough.

Speaker 8:
[79:54] Online.

Speaker 6:
[79:55] Bad news spares.

Speaker 8:
[79:56] I think the hacker, when he was interviewed, basically was just like, well, it wasn't going to theaters. I didn't think it was that big of a deal.

Speaker 7:
[80:02] They interviewed a hacker?

Speaker 8:
[80:03] Maybe, I don't know. I saw it on Twitter. I'm not, you know what I'm saying? I'm not deep in that story, so apologies if it's wrong. Anyway, basically the whole fucking movie is now up online. People are in an uproar because there's just like, we've been waiting for this all along. You guys have shit the bed.

Speaker 7:
[80:20] And it comes out in six months.

Speaker 6:
[80:22] Comes out in six months on Paramount Plus. It's not coming out on theaters. It's coming out on streaming service. And the worst part is, at least for me, is that people don't really care. Like, nobody's like, oh, no.

Speaker 7:
[80:36] They're linking it in Twitter threads.

Speaker 6:
[80:37] They're linking it in Twitter threads. I'm sure you go online and find it immediately. And it's not like it's like...

Speaker 8:
[80:43] They're giving Toph big titties.

Speaker 6:
[80:45] They're just like, it's completely un-serious. Somebody who loves this world and loves these characters, I'm like, man, it might be over.

Speaker 8:
[80:55] Can I be honest? After Invincible Gate and Avatar the Last Airbender, do we need to talk about the cartoon niggas?

Speaker 6:
[81:04] So here's...

Speaker 8:
[81:07] Why are they acting up so much? Why can't they just be a little bit more respectful?

Speaker 6:
[81:12] So here's the problem, right? Because you're not incorrect. You're completely not incorrect. However, we can't talk about Invincible and we can't talk about Avatar the Last Airbender because of y'all two. You, Avatar, and you, Invincible. Y'all remember, y'all remember, people were like, man, we used to talk about Invincible. It'd be like X-Plane 97. We'd be here like, hey, the show's cool.

Speaker 3:
[81:30] Hold on, hold on, wait. You'd be there like, no, hold on, hold on.

Speaker 6:
[81:33] Wait, I said Invincible. I wasn't talking about Avatar.

Speaker 3:
[81:35] Can't say something else?

Speaker 6:
[81:36] What's up?

Speaker 3:
[81:36] Can't say something? Number one, no. Number two, fuck you. And let me tell you why.

Speaker 7:
[81:42] You said you couldn't get into Avatar.

Speaker 3:
[81:43] Okay, I said I couldn't get into Avatar, but I have proof that if you guys say that you want to cover Avatar, that not only will I watch Avatar, I'll do my homework on Avatar and indulge into Avatar.

Speaker 7:
[81:57] I do vaguely remember that.

Speaker 3:
[81:58] And I have done that before. I did that with Demon Slayer, Izumiaki, Saban Number Five. I did that. No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 6:
[82:13] I didn't even try.

Speaker 3:
[82:14] Because for all of the things, for all of the things that have been said about me, you guys have said, this is the biggest thing in the world, man, we have to check it out, we have to do it, and I've done it. Okay, don't put me in the standpoint, the only thing about Invincible is this. This was the thing about Invincible.

Speaker 6:
[82:33] I wasn't talking about you.

Speaker 3:
[82:34] I understand that, but you did brought me up with the Avatar thing. If it was said that the people want the Avatar movie, Van, watch the Avatar movie, come in and have it. I went to the movies to see Izzy Miyake, right? David Slayer. So I went to the movies to see it. And not only that, I watched Mucus Train. I watched all of the other shit. By the way, that shit was kind of cooking. I'm not gonna lie. I watched the Entertainment District arc.

Speaker 6:
[83:07] Oh, you got that one right.

Speaker 3:
[83:08] So I watched that shit. So don't, don't, they, people that's mad now, don't say that about me.

Speaker 6:
[83:15] You go back and watch, you're gonna watch the 61 episodes. You're gonna finish the 61 episodes.

Speaker 3:
[83:20] No, but what I will do is if we were gonna do-

Speaker 7:
[83:23] You do recap videos.

Speaker 3:
[83:24] If we were gonna do the Avatar stuff, I would have done enough research on what I need to know about the story going forward to be able to come on here and talk about the show. And I'll try to have fun with it. I have no problem with that. Invincible shit is different. I was blamed for something that we all made a decision about. I was blamed and then I feel like the shit was unfair and really was trying to pull my card a little bit. That's the wrong fucking card to pull.

Speaker 8:
[83:55] And all I'm saying is why can't- Because I watch a lot of anime, I watch a lot of cartoons. I'm like, why can't the community be a little bit more inviting, a little bit more understanding? We leaking movies six months out. We bullying people for not watching Invincible.

Speaker 7:
[84:07] Well, that could be an access problem. The fact that this person got a hold of that movie and was able to leak it, there's a lot of people online that are like, no, I'm not watching it until it comes out.

Speaker 6:
[84:16] Yeah, that's where I'm at. I'm avoiding all the conversations around it, all the stuff, because not only do I want to watch the movie, hopefully in theaters, but I also want to support the people who make the stuff. You can't do that if you're watching it on Twitter in like four-minute bytes, or actually just like the whole movie in a tweet. But at the end of the day, man, it sucks for all the people who worked really hard on the movie to see their work just like... Because how do you promote a movie that everybody's already seen? Right. It's hard.

Speaker 3:
[84:44] Oh, we're going to let you guys know that the Clayface trailer is dropping a little bit, but at the time that we're recording this, the trailer is not out yet. So, when we do our Michael...

Speaker 6:
[84:55] Michael. Shamo!

Speaker 7:
[84:59] Unfortunate pairing of Clayface and Michael Jackson.

Speaker 3:
[85:03] That's why they've been on your ass.

Speaker 6:
[85:04] What?

Speaker 3:
[85:05] Okay. That's why they've been on your ass.

Speaker 7:
[85:07] Why?

Speaker 6:
[85:08] All right.

Speaker 3:
[85:08] Because the black community is none too pleased about some of your reactions and things that you've said about the Michael movie.

Speaker 7:
[85:14] I haven't said anything about the Michael movie. I have not publicly said anything about the Michael movie.

Speaker 6:
[85:17] No, no, no.

Speaker 8:
[85:17] We're shaking some tables. The black community got to stand up. I'm done. I'm done. We doing all this for Michael? All right.

Speaker 7:
[85:27] We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time, everybody.

Speaker 3:
[85:31] Yo, this is out.

Speaker 6:
[85:32] It's out tomorrow. We go get trouble, man. We go get a trouble on Friday, man. We can't lie. We can't lie to y'all. We'll never lie.

Speaker 8:
[85:48] Van's going to get a trouble. He gets all the trouble.

Speaker 6:
[85:50] It's like, they're just going to filter right to Van.

Speaker 3:
[85:54] What happened happened.

Speaker 6:
[85:55] They're going to be like, yo, Van, tell Charles. I'm like, why?

Speaker 3:
[85:58] Hey, man, what happened happened. Come to the fucking podcast on Friday, and we're keeping it real about what we thought about the movie. That shit, like, like. That's a wrap. Programming reminders. This Thursday, the House of R will be giving you their Daredevil deep dive. And Friday, The Midnight Boys will be giving you their reactions to music biopic, Michael. Our producers today are Aleya Zenieris, Devon Baroldi, Jomi Adeniran on social has had Jomi Unblock Fee. You know about that. An additional production from Arjuna Ramgopowell. Chuck, take us out.

Speaker 8:
[86:34] Kristen Ritter is a joy. We can't wait to see more. Always be careful before you open that chocolate door.