'Lanterns' Episode 7 Deep Dive

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Visit HomeDepot.com slash price match for details. Hello and welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson and joining me today to defend the use of red apples as nightmare fuel. It's Mallory Rubin. Oh boy, that hot but possibly evil sheriff's going to be back after her brunch. We better get to it. Do you think that's you? The hot yet evil sheriff of House of R? Certainly not. Back from the brunch that was your vacation? Yeah. Did I stretch that too thin? Yeah. What do you mean summon? I'm not your genie. That could have also worked, you know, upon the return. Lantern stuff go. Let's do it. We're here to talk about lanterns. Have you heard of it? Episode seven. Guess what? A phenomenal episode of television. We're going to get into that. A deep dive, if you will, right after this. All right, before we dive into those red apple infested waters, quick programming reminders. Program, the program's a little in flux right now. We are doing the lanterns finale next week, that we do know. For sure. Yeah. Vision Quest is coming up pretty soon. It sure is. A couple, only a couple weeks away. A couple weeks away. Like two and a half weeks. Sheesh. And then we have some thoughts about what we're going to do in between, and you get to find out in real time what those are. We're having a great time. Yeah. How can folks figure out what all of those ambiguous clues mean, Mallory Rubin? Here's what I'd recommend. Follow along. Why not? Follow the pod on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can watch full video episodes of House of R and the Midnight Boys on Spotify, Incredible, and on the Ringerverse YouTube channel while you're at it. Follow our new-ish social handle at- Outhouse of R? Outhouse of R pod is also thriving on Instagram right now. At House of R pod on Instagram, on TikTok, of course, follow the Ringerverse, and send us your emails. The inbox is open. We don't know yet exactly when we'll be recording the finale pods, but keep the Lanterns emails coming for sure. They've been wonderful so far. And send us your Vision Quest emails. Like Jo said, that's just around the bend. Send us your Wicker emails. Please continue to send your book recommendations. That's right. We are going to do some sort of House of Reads, just shifted slightly. One of us is going to do it. Okay. The one who's been promoting it. I've been preparing to do it. I will be- Sorry. I'm so sorry. I will be doing House of Reads. It is still happening. And I will not be absent because I don't like reading. No. I love to read. I'm not prepared for that podcast at all. She loves reading. We just did not give her any prep when it was supposed to happen when she was gone and it didn't. Now it's going to happen when she's in town. I can't wait to listen. Genuinely. Spoiler warning for today. Yes. Everything's going fine. Lanterns, episode seven. Everything up through- Yeah. Did you watch this episode? You should have. It's great. Up through episode seven. No finale spoilers. We haven't seen it. I've not seen the finale. We don't know what's happened in the finale. We have no clue. Maybe at some point today we'll mention the teaser for the finale that they showed at the end of this episode. Sure. Rich text. Boy, there were some interesting glimpses in there. Some speculation time for sure. And anything in the comics, anything in the DCU. That's right. Anything in the MCU. If we want to talk about Einstein, Rose, and Bridges or anything like that, we can. Yeah. Stranger Things. Stranger Things. That's right. Naturally. You know. And that's about that. The Great Gatsby, possibly. I have certainly some, yeah. Some Harry Potter once again. I think both of those will come up as we look across and see a blinking light. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah? Okay. Sounds good. As we sail toward an island in the center of a lake. As we beat, you know, Ceaselessly against the past. Sounds great. That's our spoiler warning for classic literature. Let's go now to our opening snapshot. Home Depot. And we've got just the tree for your style, space, and budget. Exclusions apply. Are you ever shopping online? And suddenly a discount that helps you save pops up? It makes your day. Sometimes even your week. Want that feeling month after month? Well, new customers who save by switching their home and auto insurance to Progressive save hundreds. Cue your happy dance. Get your quote today at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers not available in all states. I hope I don't have to cancel again tonight. Chronic migraine means 15 or more headache days a month. Each lasting four hours or more. Botox, on a botulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It is not approved for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. 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Ask your doctor. Visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. okay we are here to talk about episode seven the jordan boys legacy obviously yeah but mallory uh-huh you're on a much deserved vacation for episode six podcast i was i was sick we were gonna pre-record anyway long story short yeah you're not here yeah thank you rob mahoney for filling in shout out mahoney always what a legend but the bad babies are devastated to not get your takes on a couple things number one yeah earl jordan finding out that hal jordan has has died and his devastation how was your devastation when you saw that crushing yeah genuinely as i have said before on this very podcast um i mean everybody knows how i feel about the connection with a pet in general i don't want to start sobbing at the beginning of the pod so i'll leave it there but as i have said before on the pod one of my great fears throughout my life has been obviously losing your pet. That's just a horrible thing that I would die and that my cat would not understand what had happened to me. That was something that used to torment me every time I left the house. So it was very sad to see Earl learn about Hal's passing in that manner. I was glad that John and Earl were able to rediscover their spark pretty quickly. You know, that's a lovely thing to see yeah um you and rob went through it but i also was thinking about the location of earl's perch bedside it's intimate it's intimate uh i was glad that you know you and rob discussed the fridge meat situation given your respective culinary pursuits and that you guys had a chance to uh work through that with each other i wouldn't say we worked through anything i would say the battle yeah how do you feel i mean i don't i know you don't keep a ton of yeah we don't really we're not like cook yeah like well so as you know i am i am very paranoid about all sorts of like health and safety issues so i mean you're on my side i i see what both of you were saying on my side i i think that the like i i think that rob's let's cook the meat while it's nice and fresh sure of course preferable obviously wonderful i would like my meat to not be rotten rotten same but i don't feel equipped to comment on when that happens as somebody who is mostly ordering my food so i don't know um wow they're good people on both sides of this argument um the other thing the bad babies want you to weigh on is so we find out it's canonical this thing that you had been hoping for, the hot yet possibly evil sheriff, Carrie and Hal. Yeah, they've been fucking. They had a relationship, an intimate, emotionally intimate. Well, and a cheat and a fresh in the sheets. And hopefully quite physically intimate relationship. We did not get to see it on screen. It happened off screen. How do you feel about that? Listen, on the one hand, I'll take implied sex over no sex. the season and I am holding out for flashbacks. Oh, flashbacks. Okay, great. Follow up? Yeah. Now that we know that the hologram is corporeal, which was a big question I had, he can touch things. That's right. Would you settle for a hologram 20 years earlier on the old back muscles, you know, on the old, like, limber situation? I think that until the second Hal Jordan left this mortal coil, those hips were ready to thrust. Okay. You know, so any. I missed you. I missed you, too. There's a lot that Rob can do, but he can't do that, you know? You know, I was sad, really sad to miss that pod. It was wonderful to listen to you guys talk about it. I had a great time on vacation. I am jet-lagged as fuck and barely hanging on. My eyelids are sunburned, but wasn't going to miss talking about this episode. There was no way we were going to have this episode happen without you. Like, zero chance. No, there's so much to get to. And I want to say, I want to thank you for commenting on the jacket, the new jacket, as well. You're welcome. I do that for you. When you feel seen and known and understood. Yeah. It makes a difference. You want to talk about Martin Jordan's jacket? Well, that was really. Actually, genuinely, that was kind of clarifying, because as you know, I've been very hung up on the hologram jacket, and that felt like, even though they're different, that's a very like a matching leather hue, and yes, that felt like a connection to Martin, to dad. So that was clarifying. My favorite Hal jacket is still the primary 2016 double RL jacket, which is simply iconic, but they've all been great. Yeah, I hope that we get to see some actual sex, whether it's with the hologram or in a flashback. I'll accept either. I'll accept them gladly. I'm glad to know that those two really connected. We have a lot of opportunities in this episode to talk about that. My favorite thing in episode six, though, was the eulogy. Oh, yeah. And I thought that I hope it mattered. I hope I mattered was just gobsmacking and gorgeous and absolutely wrenching and really, really just incredible. And there were a lot of things that I didn't like about it. There were a lot of incredible things in this episode, which I thought was absolutely wonderful. Episode seven was my favorite of the season so far. Episode seven is by far my favorite of the season so far. So this is the Jordan Boys Legacy, directed by Alec Sakharoff, who is a Thrones guy. Mm-hmm. He did The Climb and Mockingbird, among other episodes. An Ozark guy, so he knows Chris Muddy from his work on Ozark. He worked on Rome, Dexter, Boardwalk. I love Rome. You know, sort of like, he was like Alan Taylor's DP before he was a director. So, like, I always loved him. I love when people make the move from cinematography to directing, and then they always have, like, a very distinctive visual style. And I think visually this episode was quite special. And in addition to all the other things, Chris Muddy, if you listen to the official podcast, Chris Muddy was, like, very clear that when they get to the yellow planet that we have at the end of the episode, he's like, that was not in the volume. We were out in a desert somewhere. Obviously, CGI enhanced. But I think the visuals of this, you know, because we've been off world to go to, you know, a prison, but to go to another planet and sort of see what another world would look like inside of this grounded, you know, universe that they're trying to give us was really exciting. An apocalyptic hellscape that happens to be yellow. Yellow. Not at all. Could be, could be interesting. Written by Tom King, have you heard of him? Yeah. Damon Lindelof, have you heard of him? And I got to say. Power squad. This is not surprising to me that this was my favorite episode of the season. This is the Lindelof-iest episode of the series so far. It is daddy issues all the way down. Yep. Could not be more. What's the greatest answer to a mystery? A person. What's in the box? It's Sinestro. It's a planet, but it's also Sinestro. What's in the hatch? It's Desmond. What's in the box? It's Sinestro. There's just like a lot of like incredible therapy speak that works for me. You know, how do we break, you know? You know, cycles, generational cycles, just like all this stuff was such a rich text for me. And the way in which we got to see this relationship between Hal and John, the one they couldn't have in life that comes through here in the afterlife, to watch this Hal, even though he is like a kinder, gentler Hal, but still a quite damaged Hal, to watch him grapple with finding out, A, what a terrible, finding out again, what a terrible man he is. What a terrible mentor he was to John, but also, you know, I was in jail. I was in love. Oh, my God. You know, finding out that he was capable of having a relationship with a woman and capable. And then it was over so quickly, like just at the end of his life, you know, and then what that unscrews, you know, that lid unscrewed on sort of his shame and trauma and how that allows him to then share with John inside this episode. I just thought this was phenomenal, phenomenal episode of television. Yeah. I really, really adored this one. I think this one will, the whole season has been great, but I think this episode will really stand the test of time and stick with us. I can't wait to see, you know, knowing there's only an hour left, it feels like we're on the brink of a really strong conclusion to this season. And also there are a lot of questions to answer and mysteries that remain, but we have made such thematic and emotional progress. And it's a hard balancing act to be able to continue to propel the plot forward in this way while really. Really allowing us to feel that we have made that individual and collective growth for our characters. I really obviously agree on the, on the Linda law front. You know, you feel all of those hallmarks here and in such a satisfying way. And again, like to be able to do that, you know, lost as one of our shared favorites in a show that we just, we adore and we'd love to think about, and we'd love to revisit and we'd love to spot connections to across shows that are clearly influenced by it, whether or not people who helped to make loss or run loss were involved. Can I just tell you that Adam Scott in the New York times, like top, top 100 shows, Adam Scott being like, I'm going to do this. Like, you know, I watched, I rewatched lost as we were making severance season one. And I'm like, I know, I know you did. Guess what? I know. It's a wonderful rewatch. Um, you know, there were so many episodes of lost and nothing can, it can touch lost. It's, it's just a, it's a, it's a Pantheon show, but yeah. When are we getting the tattoo episode of lanterns? I know. I know. Oh man. I think about those Jack tattoos a lot, but yeah, I mean, even the fact that like, you know, it's different contexts, but the word fail safe is invoked here. You, you know, you mentioned the hatch when we get that framing of Hal and John looking into the box is so Jack and John looking down into the hatch in a way that really just invites those, those, um, parallels. But as you said, the daddy issues, the question of what we inherit and what we pass down and what we feel we can or can't escape what we're defined by what path we can try to chart for ourselves. It's also present. I think, you know, Tom, you know, you've talked about this a lot, but I think it's also present. It was really great to hear Tom King talk on the official pod about the trauma that is so present in his work and why he loves to mine that and explore that. And even how he thinks about continuity. And that of course is connected to the idea that is right there in the title of this episode and very present thematically in this episode and this season, which is like legacy, right? And some of that is inside of your family or inside your core. And some of that is something that you build over time. And some of it is something that a version of you realizes you couldn't build over time and how hard that is to confront. I thought that this episode is an example of that. Examination of like missed connections, brief connections, lost connections, and then second chances in surprising forms was just really, really lovely. And I just am so delighted to be back to talk about it with you. Jet lag and all. Let's just get right into the deep dive, shall we? Let's do it. All right. All right. So we open with a Hal Jordan flashback, cold open. This is obviously not our first flashback of the season, but again, I think it is the lostiest that we've gotten so far. We're in 1975. Could have easily been 1976, but we did 1975. We broke the shifted the decades pattern just as we did with Carrie. That was a fun little wrinkle. It's true. Well, I kind of like that idea that like, you know, those those 10 year increments are sort of John's path. And then like Carrie. Hal are on a different path, something like that. But you and I had talked about this earlier in the season of like whether or not we would get a Hal flashback episode and we got the John flashback episode. And I think we both agreed. I mean, I certainly think this was your stance was sort of like if we got a whole health Hal flashback episode, it would depend when they would deploy it. It might sort of halt the momentum of the season. So instead of getting a full flashback episode, we get a sort of like lengthy open and then a, you know, bookend inside of this episode. Yeah. So how did that sort of parceling of the story? Work for you? I thought this was the perfect choice. You know, as we discussed a lot when we dove into episode three, it is tricky to figure out the right way and place to do this. As we also talked about at that time, you know, the lost approach to flashbacks where you are in the primary contemporary timeline and the thing that you're glimpsing from the past allows you to understand or unlock something and, you know, a different degree of context from what the characters is going through. But there's no real way to do that without literally doing that, right? It's just it's just true. Yeah. And so to distill this down in such a fashion, and of course, we have moved through time. We have moved through different structures in some capacity in every episode, right? We're not always just rooted in one moment to give us this moment with Hal, I think, especially because, like, you know, thinking about episode six, that diner scene, right? The cafe scene. John goes led by Bernadette he has this one conversation with Hal and then instantly Hal it's gone it's gone it's over right and the proximity of those things the interaction the thing we glimpsed and then the realization that there would never be another opportunity for it at least in that form you know to to open this episode with young Hal and like some of it is what has happened inside of the season but some of it is just lanterns Hal Jordan's father has died and that is a seismic defining thing in his life and we know the very first episode of this season yeah and we know that from the film and we know that from comics canon and we know it's just in the air and so there is this even though I found so much of what we witnessed in this opening stretch which I'm excited to talk about like every part of this opening I thought it was amazing so like affirming and heartening even though there are little warning bells inside of it right uh yeah you would say many starting a fight with yourself you not or like brother or tell them about it or you know like telling your child the the story of the mental health history in your family and saying don't tell your mom don't tell your mom we've you've got to care she can't carry it you a child have to carry it we have some things to work through I have notes but also then there's this glimpse of this bond and to know and we hear you know later just a couple months a couple months later right we know how close it is but before we even know we know we know we are watching this one thing and that it's going to be all we see because Martin's gone and that's just hanging over that whole interaction the finality of it and the loss and the voice that we have from the beginning of the season how saying well like once the kid loses their parent that's the worst thing that can happen what else is there to be afraid of and the clarity that comes from what we witness in this flashback but also then what we hear the hologram share with John right on the lake on the boat what he can't do is he can't carried with him and the way that his uh navigation of his assessment of his own fear and his own feelings and this idea of his inheritance led him to this life of a mask in many forms like it was just so so so sad i found it absolutely heartbreaking also some incredible needle drops in this episode oh yeah i mean very mallory core to hit you yeah i mean we got a dylan cover and queen like come on very it's for you it really felt like it was um for you to bring up the structure of lost which is inside of an episode of lost as we mentioned before we get flashbacks that help illuminate the the plot that's unfolding in front of us we get a version of that inside of this series but it's it's uh done less directly and it what it does is it rewards rewatches oh yes and so as we're peeling back the onion of understanding on first john and carrie a bit um and now on on hal when you go back and rewatch it just like all these lines take on different meaning you know and so every time that hal has talked about his father uh throughout the season you can go and rewatch those or every time he talks about not being afraid and then we find out that like you know he's one of the most fearful people alive right i know from experience in my own family like anytime there is like mental health or dementia or all this sort of stuff that feels like a ticking time bomb inside of you This idea that like his father tells him like, you know, it's in the blood, which is like curse language. You are cursed. And this came from my father and it's coming for me and it's going to come for you. And so for for young Hal on the TV to say like you lose your father, what else is there to be afraid of? Yeah. But he's in a full body clench of fear. Yes, absolutely. He is going to become his father. And there are many ways in which he like ran towards becoming his father from the jacket to, you know, the charm and the swag, you know, like and this depiction of Martin Jordan. And again, this is just like what incredibly good writers can do with very little screen time and a great and a great performance. Yes. Like Jake Miller as Martin Jordan. We only get a few minutes of screen time with him. Yeah. But you just like he's it's just the perfect encapsulation of the kind of dad. Yes. That a young kid who doesn't really fully understand the scope of what's happening, the damaging thing that his father is doing to him in his moment would just hero worship. His dad is cool and handsome and and nice to him, you know, and like tender, funny and like kind and says it's OK to be afraid. But also here's some lifelong damage that I'm just about to hang around your neck via a key, you know, like all this sort of stuff. So like all of that looming over Hal and informing who he becomes. Who he doesn't want to be informing why why he might never make a connection with Carol, let alone anyone else. If he's like, if I make a connection with people and then I become what my father became, what my grandfather became, then I'm going to devastate them the way that my father devastated me and devastated my mother. Yes. You know, and so like I cannot have people around me because I am a bomb. It makes it easier. No ties. Yeah. Keep people at a distance for their own safety. It's a lonely fucking job. And it's like something that he positions to John in episode four. He says those things is for their safety, but also there's a self-preservation aspect to it. I think to your question about like, how did this work as the moment and the way to get this? I think that this show, any good show, any nuanced assessment of a human being would say that there are. Infinite moments in your life that determine who you are and that inform who you are. Right. But I think also there is an aspect of this that is an acknowledgment that there are certain things in your life that are bigger than other things. Right. And that. Cast a shadow. They are there forever. And that part of the way that you can try to understand them or look at them in a different way is. With the help of other people and that if you shut yourself off of that, I mean, I think what we saw in this was like. I love what you're saying about that. This would be the guy that how would worship. And of course, and they're even just something about, you know, how Jordan baseball guy is like canon. But. It means even more to me in the Kyle Chandler verse, obviously, something so perfect about the story we get in the idea of the picture. This question, you know, I thought you were a team player. Are you a team player, son, that that was there before even Martin's death. This question of like, how are you a guy who's going to end up being friends with the other members of the Lantern Corps? You know, there's something there already. Yeah. And then there's something that deepens and calcifies and concretizes the fact that how looks at his father and sees so much love and pride and belief and encouragement. And the loss of that, that he would want to live his life in that person's image. Right. He said he was fearless. He told me my grandpa said he was fearless and that that's what he's going to project and tell himself and that he will understand that whole time. There is something underneath that. That is very different indeed. And that everybody carries. And the fact that Martin primed hell for this, but didn't actually tell him like that's how finds that in a piece of paper. Right. That clarity. That he's like something that stay between your father and me and you won't understand. Exactly. Yeah, it's it's it's so good. The the team aspect that you raise, I think, is fascinating because we get two scenes inside of this episode where we we rattle off the names of several teammates. We get the names of the of the boys on the Tigers with Al here. And then later we'll get the names of Noah's offensive linemen. And so and the way the contrast between Noah, we've decided on this podcast. Is some flavor a villain? I think when we talked about it in episode five, I think we were like ninety eight. Now the whole world is like we just it's like a hundred percent. Ninety nine point nine nine nine percent that he is a manhunter. I think we were there already, but it's just it's it feels like a lock. No, definitely a manhunter. What what he did. Yes. Is still, I think, a question. But I think no matter what the manhunter quality of him is. It carries with it a sinister implication. Sure. And so the idea that like Noah, who is some flavor of villain inside of the story, is like the team player, is the guy who like won't do his hat ceremony without his without his guys there. Yep. His offensive lineman, his defense, you know, like his his protection. Yeah. Look at you. For sure. You know what I mean? But like I understand this sort of like manhunter impulse for protection. Yes. But, you know, so like I need to have my like guys around me in case. Yes. Sniper comes. So they'll like throw their body in front of me or something like that. Like all of that is in the mix with this manhunt. Are the aliens sending you any different from the edge rushers trying to sack you at the end of the day? I was going to say the same thing. Something to think about. Question for our time. It's a great question. But but nonetheless, if if we were to look at these two guys and say like, yeah, one of them wants all of his guys at his ceremony and the other one wants to punch all of them. And you would say, who's the hero? Who's the villain? That's the muddy question that this show is absolutely. Yes, which I really love. All right. Oh, and he says his defense. And so I really love the title of this episode. Right. The Jordan boys legacy will hit it a bunch of times. Yeah. The Jordan boys, first of all, just like really hits at this arrested development aspect that is true of Martin and is true of how I like them both. But they are boys and not men in many regards. Right. It reminds me of like Germany has declared war on the Jones. Boys like thinking about like, which is another one of my favorite stories of all times, a great father and son story. But like the Jordan boys, the Jones boys thinking about Jon Stewart as one of the Jordan boys, essentially, like, you know, given given the key. that he receives you know um that's a great arm kid coming back as an echo at the end from hal to john like yeah that's a great arm kid but another repeated line is here in this in his defense young hal in his tiger's uniform just says come on which is the same exact thing that hal jordan said in court in rushville yeah when the judge is talking to him he's just like in my defense come on you know and it's just sort of like same as it ever was no question for hal jordan um he's still he's still that kid in many regards um i would like to know what we mean by almost no hitter just throwing that out there okay well what is it almost no we talked about one hit hmm you have a three hits okay you know i i would have some i would have some follow-up questions would you if you were the coach would you let hal jordan finish the game oh yeah i saw i side with martin and hal at the end of the day here i don't know little league is sort of about like let's let all the boys play i mean of course as always it's in a good tale it's complex yeah you know and you feel a little bit ashamed of of but you're like brother it's all that matters how many chances do you get to complete another danny bockner slander from hal here was so funny like danny fucking bockner i'm gonna hand the ball danny fucking bockner how good is danny bockner stuff this was just this killed me it was so clarifying it really did just cement so much for us in a really really great way you fought your whole team like you said same as it ever was right with who this the bar fight that we watch you know we watch hal take on the entire bar to you know to to land his ass in jail but still you know like the more things change yeah glimpse of the past even though so much will change and does change for hal and there are these progressions and that feels very true too to me about human nature that there are like things that are there forever and then there are things that evolve right um i i thought also just like on the same as it ever was front you know uh coach saying to to martin and to how you can still fix this just apologize well if there's one thing we know how jordan like doesn't like to do now halogram will wind up in a different in a different place but our primary hal like drove all the way for sorry you're not gonna get yeah right and so that's there too and in general even something like okay whether it's the mogo or the squirrel uh okay were people really at my funeral why are you lying to me test later i think that the show has been very very deft like even expert at forging these connections and bits of very few things have been tossed we've been saying this the whole season like it feels like everything is purposeful very few things have been tossed out that are just like they're here and they're not gonna matter and you're not gonna feel the ripple or the parallel in some other point of the season there's just been a very satisfying aspect of watching it um it makes it a tight weave on the tapestry of the story or very like sturdy puzzle um and i feel that way about many turns of the plot here like the the the tidiness of hal coming back halogram appearing uh wondering if john's the one who killed him insisting on seeing the sheriff yeah and the sheriff just happens to be the love interest who he needs to like have this very tender scene with but like that's such tidy storytelling you know what i mean like this is a uh on the shorter side of runtime episode and there's just like there's just like 47 minutes just so lean so lean um okay brother it's all that fucking matters to just the turn this is great because there are layers like it's comic this is so ringer this is so ringer core brother it's all that matters it's all the fuckers i do you're right like i actually feel we will be quoting that pretty regularly moving forward we'll have them really tender i hope we'll have them really tender i hope i mattered references and then we'll have the brother it's all that fucking matters brother it's all that fucking matters is like so ringer and it's so like why sometimes i am like should i be here stop stop it father to son by queen plays uh the like there's the picture but there's like the there's the test pilot like fighter pilot aspect of this there's the lantern there's the earth's first hero the fact that you have there's like something on there's a an underbelly of that right brother it's all the fucking matters that's bad and like dangerous and reckless no question right undeniably and then there's a little bit of that what level of that do you need in you to be able to like say that ring is mine and then if you have it but you're terrified to lose it because it's the only thing that defines you but what's so great i mean we've been talking about this one from the beginning but like what's so great about 2016 how versus 2016 how is like you know as again as we address the daddy issues all the way down they're like pre-sinestro betrayal post-sinestro betrayal watching how say you've got my ring like and being upset and then being like kind of genuinely like all the pride congratulations yeah you know what i mean like i trained you and now you're the green lantern and it's just sort of like that's amazing that's incredible when he realizes john can keep keep him activated when he takes the ring off like that's all it is all so shocking and yeah so the fact that you can see this martin defending his son moment and feel a level of like oh boy that kid had a father who stood up for him and that's like there's something heartening about that but it's almost like there's the it's almost like jordan like it's almost like jordan retreated even more into the martin jordan that's all that fucking matters sort of sentiment and just clutch the baseball that much tighter that's right what i was going to say about like sort of where this comes versus where it would come inside of an episode of loss is if it were an episode of lost with 22 episodes a season how clutching the baseball and how grasping the ring in a fight with john would be in the side of the same episode and there would just be like a whooshing cut from one to the other you know what i mean the the lines that they drew would be like a bit more overt because we would have time to just like be in that moment right and that's not really the time that they're working with here but the parallels are could not be clear it's not like it's hard to draw those yourself father to son a great needle drop a very on the nose needle drop but i'm not mad about it um when it comes back at the end of the episode boy there's a bunch of uh lyrics that we could get into inside of this uh song um but here's a section uh won't you hear us sing our family song our family song really feels like our family curse sort of thing like this is this is this is our legacy right now we hand it on uh-huh but i've heard it all before take this letter that i give you obviously like that's the most on the nose part about all this take it sunny hold it high you won't understand a word that's in it but you'll write it all again before you die again there's like a um you know we got some emails about this this song and people saying like i never thought of it as like a negative it was always very much like uh you don't understand what your parents are going through until you become an adult yourself like they're and that's all true yeah but like you won't understand where that's in it but you'll write it all again before you die is so to me once again sort of like fatalistic curse language of just sort of like here's this letter that i'm giving my son that explains the mental health uh you know strain that runs in our family of depression um you know it's not named but that's what i would say maybe maybe it's something else but like you will write it all again before you die is like you're gonna write your own letter to someone else and it's gonna say the same thing that mine said that my father said and that's not what happened i hope i hope that how the holograms theory inside this episode that how took his own life is not what is not what happened but it is a theory we need to like consider it's certainly in play i think it i agree it's something we have to consider and it's it feels possible i think the fact that we move through a series of theories from hologram as you noted the john question is real he's really like she killed me about carrie and and then what he says about himself and it's such a you know a heart-wrenching sequence i you know there's a a moment where hal says the hologram says to john about his life and he's like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know why he's doing this to me i don't know why he's doing this to me i don't know why he's doing this to me i don't know why he's doing this to me i don't know why he's doing this to me when they're like talking through the manhunter stuff oh how killed her and that's why you hate him the gut the gut the gut the hologram's gut is not right in this episode and that feels he's catching up he doesn't have the same i would say how's any version of how's gut has not been right plenty of times that's part of that brother it's all that matters bravado right like i'm gonna say i'm always right i'm gonna think i'm always right because that's what i have to project to myself into the world but it felt like like a way inside of just this episode to kind of remind us of that so that we're like okay probably noah killed this i mean kill this guy maybe billy yeah welcome to theory corner uh hologram we're happy to have you here i know we're happy to put john and carrie and yourself on the board but yeah you're missing noah and you're missing billy which i think for sure they are contenders one and two i thought that the how much does jason ritter being on the official pod this week make you think that billy is the killer i'm still leaning i think i'm if i had to just put down like my firm bet i still lean noah i think noah is still the safest bet but billy has risen up billy is like i think would be like actually at this point yeah the most surprising answer which makes it kind of fun yeah and it wouldn't but it wouldn't be surprising in that like really annoying rug pull kind of way no no i think it would feel very well again supported to our like jason ritter casting spoiler almost like why is jason ritter here because he's the killer he's the killer he's the killer he's the killer he's the in this role. Like, sure. And he's just shown he showed up last week. He showed up this week. you know like he's talking about his dip he's he's starting fights with lanterns he's feeling threatened by them like yeah you know i think the like keep my son's name out of your mouth like i need to come i i i'm saying to i'm i billy in this scenario i'm saying to carrie like i made our dip at our house this like i haven't let go of this thing and i'm finding my way to like glimpse and access and charge over there's a not to jump ahead and too far around but there's you know that really gorgeous moment where the hologram asked carrie like you know did i open up to you did i tell you things like we told each other everything feels like that is leading toward i told you noah is a manhunter and then you a former lantern had to kind of spring into action so that could mean that noah took action or it could mean that billy in an effort to defend billy watching or carrie in an effort in an effort to and what was sure and what though i gotta say on the like the trailer for noah's next week front that lit i'm mostly moving off of carrie did at corner just in general after this episode because and i still think it's all still in the brew of like the pain could be i loved you and i had to do this thing and that's all possible but there's a little i i mostly i'm like i don't i kind of don't want that to be the outcome honestly that's more that was just not necessarily a great way to watch tv but like i there's that little glimpse in the in the preview for next week of her like the shock on her face as she walks up those bleachers you i don't know i here's here's my current theory yeah noah and or billy probably no but maybe billy yeah did it carrie is covering found discovered the truth yeah because there's that line about maybe she cast you know found me and put the gun away to protect me but that that logic would apply to there's like she wants to be there when they open the vault that was you know what i mean like so suspicious yes but that could also just be the noah it was a manhunter reveal info in there but not necessarily true and then also the like the the loaded look yeah that noah and carrie share during the the hat ceremony yeah where it was to me it's hard to read that exchange but to me if i had to guess right now having not seen the finale yeah i would say like he told her he was leaving you know what i mean like she's like he's gotta leave he's gonna leave town yeah and go to college and that's like a deal they struck and he like went back on the it almost feels like she was surprised she was surprised and there's like ways you can be surprised we're like a bunch of people have to come to my house now and we were all like said you were gonna do this but there seemed to be like more something more loaded in the in the looks exchanged between them where it's just almost like i'll cover for you but you got to get out of town or something like that but i don't know he's like we got to play this game and certainly it feels like something will happen at that football game much as something happened at the football game that kicked off the season i was curious about that because so because some a line that the hologram has in this episode is he's like i'll be gone before sunrise so uh you know are they making it back for the game tonight i think they have to if we if you mention yeah uh in a kyle chandler show that there's a friday night football game like i think we have to be there go there no question we also have to have a showdown at the house with the shotgun and earl yes a lot of checkoffs uh x still waiting for us um the game is in the in the preview for the there for it or not something meaningful feels like it'll happen there i can't wait to talk through the hats that were on display when we get to that scene i i think the other thing on the front is just like that you know when we we talked a lot about what did zoe say to noah right remember all the lessons but there was also the like the thing to billy was you're here to protect him and so that's more billy fodder as well with like the he felt like you know protecting his son but also part of the mission you know jason ridder did it it's just like an answer i'd happily have and honestly like billy was on on my like list yeah him being on the official pod this week like feels like a real indicator bumped it up a little bit because i'm just sort of like they just want to remind us yeah that there's nothing that jason ridder did in this episode that you would be like we have to have him on the pod this week yeah other than to be like he's gonna be important next week yeah i'm like putting it at like 51 49 percent split between noah and billy at this point either feels completely inbounds i was doing some real freeze frame mahoney on the the the like you know it's a 50 second minute teaser for next week but then going back to the mid-season trailer which i don't think we ever talked about because it came out after episode five there's a lot of stuff we haven't seen that's in that tons most most meaningfully of all of course the the missing flesh uh on our on our guy there but in that same sequence you know hal is on on the ground and he's looking up and we don't see the face we don't see the torso but we see the legs and i was like whose jeans are those whose boots whose belt like it feels to me like it's most likely noah is walking in that room but i was like are those billy's legs like i was like those are some thick thighs you know all state quarterback is that noah or are those i don't know or has jason ridder been winning the squats you know it's possible it's a good question on the billy front yes and then we will get back to this 1975 but um on the billy front yeah yeah and this is my most important question of the week okay i'm excited what do you think his dip is um i'm thinking it's some sort of like seven layer dip but it could be like a spinach artichoke dip what do you think buffalo chicken yeah that seems that seems likely that's yeah that's my like number one guess yeah something with meat something with cheese yeah yeah but i mean again it could be like a like a like a like a taco dip or something but taco absolutely could be a taco dip yeah that feels like too many steps i feel like i've watched men make buffalo chicken dip and it's really just dump like a few things in a crock pot and said and forget it so that seems like amazing and very like cheesy, sort of like Midwestern-y. I mean, we know that Billy was, you know, pulling double duty at the bar. So who knows how many delicious snacks he's whipped up in addition to his delicious cocktails. Do you have a favorite dip? Like what would Billy, if Billy were trying to dazzle his way back into the house that you shared once upon a time, what would be the most successful dip he could bring? It's a good question. I like like a spinach dip. I like an artichoke dip. Obviously, I'm from Maryland, so I like a crab dip. That's probably number one. You know, a good crab dip, but a bad crab dip. If someone fucks it up, that's tough. They're not doing crab dip in Nebraska. They're certainly not doing that in landlocked Nebraska, Rushville, Nebraska. That would be wonderful. Yeah. Like a soft pretzel and some crab dip. That's a great one. Really love that. Here's what I would say. Baba Ghanoush. Baba Ghanoush me. I mean, I love a Baba Ghanoush. I had some great Baba Ghanoush the other day. But I don't think that Billy's smoking eggplant. So, you know, maybe not. So in this like memory-soaked golden light, or is that fear? Golden light of nostalgia or golden light of fear on the airfield. We see the Jordan boys enjoying red, white, and blue popsicles. Love a rocket pop. Hal still in his Tiger's uniform. I'm much more Astro Pop than I am rocket pop. I love all sorts of popsicles. I was a big chase down the ice cream truck kid. You know what I love? The baseball glove with the bubble gum ball. Do you ever have those? No. Oh, it's like the ice cream pop is like a mitt, kind of a pinky brown. And then there's a bubble gum ball that looks like a baseball right in the middle. That sounds good. Now Jordan would have loved it. With love to you? Delicious. Disgusting. Fucking great. The gum is so, now I haven't had one in like 30. Like hard and horrible? Two years probably. Is it like Bazooka Joe style bubble gum? No, it's like, it is. Yeah, rock hard. No, not even close to as like velvety when you finally break through the, a couple chews in to a hard piece of bazooka. No, Bazooka Joe is forever like. I mean, it's a piece of concrete when you're taking that first bite. But then you get, you soften it up. You can't really do that with the baseball gum in the middle of the popsicle, but it's still delicious. On the, is it the light of fear, the golden light? I, this felt very, to me, again, there's a lot of really heavy, intense stuff to parse here. This still did feel to me ultimately like a show us the shire, you know, show us the bond and the heart of this connection that is lost because we have to understand how much this person meant to hell. And we do, obviously. I also just really like the fact that like, you know, he's in his base, still in his baseball uniform. Yeah. His dad's in his flyboy jacket, you know, all face all bruised up from fighting his literal coach. Great choice. Incredible. You know, eating, eating red, white and blue popsicles. Like Norman Rockwell wept. Like this is the most Americana sort of thing you could think of. And then contrast that with the sort of like pageantry of Americana that we get at the hat ceremony when it's like, we, you know, it's just sort of like the caption is like patriotic music plays, you know, it's just so much more like performative than this sort of like honey dipped, uh, Shire, the thing, the thing worth defending. Yeah. And this idea that like, so I, you know, I'll have, again, more thoughts on the hat ceremony as a college football enthusiast and someone who's been through my share of, uh, national signing day ceremonies and just in general, like the, what the hat ceremony and that choice represents and the way that it really, I thought in general, the Noah stuff did a great job of striking the balance of like, there's something very authentic about how this stuff actually goes. It's all credit to my offensive line. The whole town is like, you're this, we have gotten, we've gotten to gather and watch you excel and also that it felt undeniably connected to everything we've been primed for on the, this is how the Manhunter operates inside of the community that he is nurturing to put on his Noah's arc. Um, all great. There was something about what we saw here with Hal and Martin. That was just like this, how they spend their time. Right. To your point, like the just authentic glimpse that they're at the airfield. So this is like where Martin does his work. This is where Hal will end up spending so much of his life, but just, just the idea that they pop out the cooler and they pop out the chairs and they look across the way and they, they, they sit and they sit, and maybe they sit in their silence and maybe they sit in some sort of thing that they share with each other. You scared? No, it's okay. if you are, I'm not, then put it on. Like, what a perfect little moment for us to see because there's a little bit of something in Martin there when he's like, put it on, you know? But also the, like, it's okay if you are feels like. I know, which is more than, like, John Sr. or Bernadette ever gave John, I will just say. The most important thing that a father could say to a kid or a mother, that a parent could say to their child. That's what's so interesting about Martin. He's just such, like, an interesting, like, contradictory cocktail of just sort of, like, let it go. It's exhausting to hold on to it. But also. Don't carry it, but then you have to carry it. But carry this. I know. Carry this key, which is much heavier, honestly. Yeah. The way in which this, you know, bequeathing of the key, which comes with this, are you afraid? Which is just the same thing as what happens when you get the ring, right? Like, you know, are you afraid? Here's this ring. Are you afraid? Here's this key. Like, here's this exchange of jewelry of some kind. And, like, here's what you get to carry. And here's the burden. And what it represents. Yeah. That thing we heard. Hal say to John in episode four when they were tunneling in, you know, to the Macon Ranch of, like, you know, what was he like? Fearless. And there's the smirk and the side smile when Hal says that. But then right away, at least that's what he wanted people to think. Which was a great, like, early half seed for us that there was more to Martin's story that we would get. We get this whole story about the safe. The preparation. A man's job. Right. A man's job is to make preparations. And his were locked up in a safe. In the back of his closet. Akita is fail safe. Literal guy. Your grandpa. What preparations did Hal make for his two sons, John and Earl? Right. Exactly. I mean, how much meat is there for Earl? Not enough. The Jordan boys. John and Earl. How are they being prepared for? I loved this. Because, again, a very complicated, rich texter. There were only two outcomes. He would either succeed or he would fail. Something that we've talked about since the beginning of the season with the fear and, you know, will and, like, the Jedi. Council comp that you invoked in the first episode when you have, like, when you exist. You're saying, like, do or do not. There is no try. When you exist in a binary. It's all that fucking matters. It's all that fucking matters, brother. That's all that fucking matters. It's great. It's hard to reduce a life to an either or. And so when you compare that framing. It's not hard. It's stupid. It's impossible. And, again, I think there's such tenderness and love from Martin here. No, the intentions are good. Yeah, there's the shame. But the messaging is bad and old-fashioned. This is also an episode in a show about. Is that a man's job? Well, the man's responsibility. And that idea of responsibility, too. And then how Hal thinks about being a hero and what is, what are you responsible for? And, like, don't tell your mom. Don't tell your mom. The toxic modeling of romantic relationships that happens here from Martin Jordan, who's just sort of like, I'm not going to tell your mom and you can't tell your mom. And by the way, by the way. Yeah. We know his mom's name is Jessica Jordan. There's an actress cast as Jessica Jordan. We do see the back of her head at the funeral. But, like, it's a very Tolkien family tree. It doesn't really matter who the mom was. We're in daddy issues territory. Now, we have Bernadette pulling out for mommy issues. We might have some Carrie. We might have some Zoe grandmommy issues sort of stuff in the mix. But this is at its core a daddy issue story right now. And Jessica Jordan doesn't much matter to the conversation. I think that is, like, very emblematic of. You know, how do you think how did Martin, Hal, any of the characters, John, John Senior, how did these characters think about their own shame and insecurity and, of course, fear? Right. That's the word that is invoked most often. But those things are all connected to each other. They're doubt. And what do you want to or feel compelled to shield or protect somebody from? And so I think there's a version of this where you could look at what Martin does and say that he didn't want his wife. To have to carry that and know that. But also then there's the like, but you make your son do it for his entire life. Oh, and think he had and think he has to do it alone. And also, I mean, like, you know, if I'm being so generous to Martin, who I want, who I like and want to be generous to, like, it is lovely to say I don't want my wife to have to carry this. But like, you know what you really don't want your wife to have to do? Live without you. And maybe if you had had some conversations with her about what you were struggling with, you know, maybe this all could have gone. Differently, if you were allowing yourself to be vulnerable, which is the cycle. Yeah. Ultimately, he dies soon thereafter. But the cycle that how Jordan breaks when he allows himself to be vulnerable with Carrie. Now, maybe the message is don't tell the mother of a manhunter all of your deepest, darkest secrets. It might not work out well for you. But that's not that's not the message, because the fact that he found love at all and that kind of intimacy, intimacy and that kind of vulnerability, I think, is endlessly important to how that allows him. Then the hologram to open up. To John is so important. I was thinking back to the question you asked earlier in the season when we were starting really to speculate about Carrie and like she was a suspect from day one in some capacity. But the like, well, what would the message be if we want them to get together and form this connection? And then she's the one who kills them. Is that what would that say to us about you open up? And then what? And that just simply doesn't feel like what the show is trying to say. Oh, no, no, no. I don't I don't think I definitely don't think that's like don't open up to. No, of course not. So that feels like it. Part of the why I've really moved carried down the suspect list, because I think I do think there is still a way to do it. That is very much like their connection was genuine and sincere, and it was devastating that she had to do this to protect her son. That would work, actually. You don't like my it's OK, buttercup. I did like I did. I really did like it's OK, buttercup is the theory and something that you guys returned to appropriately many times in the episode three pod. You know, on the lake, either succeed or he would fail. First of all, that's a lot of pressure to put on yourself, right? There's so much in between. Just simply not true. No. And then you say, but you see, so what I do, I would also try because sometimes it's OK, you know, greatest teacher failure is we are what they move beyond. I was thinking about last year a lot, actually watching this episode and how like we often are, we often are and often because that emotional nuance and assessment of growth, growth and how you're understanding of a relationship. Who the things that define you changes over time felt so important, actually. Right. And I think that like either succeed or he would fail in contrast to but through the lens of I hope I mattered. There are so many different ways that you can matter and so many different people you can matter to and so many different capacities that you can matter in. And that's a that to me feels like a truer way to live your life right now. Like, you know, like Hal failed many times and he did not ultimately make the right decisions in the primary time that we spent with him. Right. This was a character who was very, very lost and very, very lonely. And in that loneliness and isolation further shut himself off from the path to progress. This is so much, you know, so much to show about what your parents teach you, what you inherit from them, the path, what you think you have to move toward all of it. And like, I hope I mattered. You know, it is a way to live your life and it is a thing to strive for. And it's really devastating to hear that line read when we look out and see that there are only three total people there. Well, but what's so great about that is like that Hal who wrote that I hope that mattered eulogy is the Hal who's still thinking about like all the luminaries will come to his funeral. Exactly. And I like Rob and I were talking about and we both agree and, you know, I think the show wants us to agree that it is sad for Hal who showed up to his funeral. And I think the show wants us to agree that it is sad for Hal who showed up to his funeral. But who showed up to his funeral? Carrie who like genuinely loved him and John who genuinely loved him and Carol who genuinely loved him. You know, like those are three authentic connections that, you know, all the, you know, celebrity photos that are on the floor of his house would not be able to convey. There is still a contrast, though, of the Martin funeral glimpses with right like the jets flying over and the crowds assembled in the back of his mom's head. OK, exactly. So we get fucking exhausting. Let her rip. As far as you can go, go on. That's a great arm, kid. This line that will come up again at the end of the episode. Very Mikey Brazado core. Very the bear. Let her rip. No question. No question. OK. So, yeah, like responsibility to make preparations. You know, the idea of the shotgun, the warning to John, you know, don't tell anyone you were here. The safe, the key point A, point B. He was making preparations. Exactly. Certainly. Do you think I mean, just thinking about how going on Etsy and finding a. A bird key chain for John. What if. I don't think you can go to like whatever the version of Ace is in. In Rushville. In Rushville and find a bird key chain. What if it was already there? You know, as you and Rob talked about last pod, there are a lot of a lot of tchotchkes, a lot of little things in that house that, you know, I like the went to home goods once possibility that you guys floated. But the little like the framed testimonial about hope. It's not something that Jordan picked up at home. But what else was sitting around from whoever he's he's renting from? Maybe the bird key chain was one of those things. No, he he he sourced that he definitely had to go get that poncho. We know that he sourced that we know that that pod told you that poncho was important. That was great. Wonderful stuff. OK. Do you think the reason. So one thing that Rob and I were wondering about, I was really confused by last week was why this vault was so much bigger than the vault that was back in house house that we saw. that we saw in episode two. And so like, you know, we were like, what's what's in it that's so big that you need, you know, a bigger box in the storage unit. So an option is you need a thing big enough for like Sinestro. Like if he's involved, we'll just go spiraling to theory corner about how Sinestro get on that planet and whether or not Hal's involved in that or whatever. Sinestro in, Sinestro out like a or is it like a trap for a Noah? Like I can put a Manhunter in here. Yeah. And then lock him up. Like, do you need to be able to fit a person, which the sort of like wall safe size version of the vault at home would not be able to do? Yeah, because the pocket dimension inside is ample. But as you guys noted, the entryway creates a just like John's arm and shoulder to get in there. You know, if you're trying to shove a whole, you know, quarterback in there, you need you need more room. And I'll stay on for those six. Oh, man. Yeah. Hold it. It's exhausting. The clutch of the ball at the end of the episode. The clutch of the ring. Geez. Good stuff. On the interesting song choice front, you know, we talked about Queen already. But the shift here is we cut. So the American flag transitions us to Martin's funeral and we get Don't Think Twice. It's all right. Not not not Dylan. We get a cover of it. This gave me instant chills. This is one of my favorite Dylan songs. One of my favorite songs ever. I just fucking I was thinking about it a lot. I just love this song. It's had a real holy shit moment. But this is, I would say, definitely like a nontraditional context for it. Because that is a very that's a song about romance and lost romance and relationships. So obviously that's a thing that shows and movies do is recontextualize songs. But it was just a boy. It really, really hit. And it gave me that, like, good feeling in my spine when the music kicked in. Endless to see young Hal fixing his tie. I was never taught how to tie a tie, but I think he's doing it incorrectly. Well, I mean, that's the thing is, like, I think, yeah, I think he has. He doesn't learn how to tie a tie because he's like he's doing it in like a knot, like you would just tie a knot. Like what I know from watching movies is it's like a this and a fold around of the thing. You know, it's not like a tie it like that, which is what he does because he doesn't know how to tie a tie. Young kid figuring out on his own, getting ready for his dad's funeral. How to tie a tie is a great instant shorthand for like. Could be a moment for Jessica Dorden, but we don't have time for her, so that's fine. The cover of Don't Think Twice is All Right is by Melanie. We did Brand New Key, which is the song that Hal puts on at the bar. We also get a second Casey in the Sunshine needle drop inside of this episode. So to your point about sort of like these very neat and tidy echoes across the season, Outkast is back. But like, I like this idea that like perhaps Melanie, like Martin Jordan was a real Melanie guy. And it's like we get this version of not that this is like playing at the funeral, but like we get this version. And like when he puts Brand New Key on later, it's because like it's something that he listened to. With his dad, maybe Casey in the Sunshine. I mean, that's something that that John puts on. But like maybe Casey in the Sunshine band was like something that he listened to with his dad. Yeah, because Hal's like, that's my jam. Yeah. I love it. Little Hal looking down into the grave. And we know we're thinking about the hologram looking down on his own body and Martin and Hal in those in those coffins. Also very like. And then we literally cut to the hologram. Perfect. Also very. Sad. Very Jack and John, you know, at the hatch. Sort of like any time. Honestly, someone's looking down into something. Literally any time. I'm just like, I'm like, oh, it's Jack and John. Just some sort of open space or depth. Yeah. But yeah, the way it's shot where we pan down, we're expecting what we're primed for as people who have watched film and television is like we're expecting that shot that you get of like the shovel full of dirt that like goes on the camera. And we don't get that because then we just like go. It's this like cold cut to. Hal across time. Where we left Hal at the end of last week's episode. And now we get to hear that. God. I'm with that different context. And this is what I'm talking about in terms of like what what these flashbacks are supposed to do. I like I love that you brought up this word shame earlier because I do think that like when you watch lost, a lot of those flashbacks exist to like unearth a shame that that a character that we like and admire or don't like cannot tell the people around them their secret shame and how it is fueling their decisions and stuff like that. And so to hear how last week kind of hilariously go like, God. Damn it. Like it was it was like a funny kind of button. The hologram at the end of last week's episode. Again, a sort of payoff of like the first time John interacts with him and he's like, am I dead? Like, yeah, here we go again. So there's there's like that humor of repetition to it. But like the God damn it now seeing himself in the in the coffin is I can't help but wonder like is not I'm dead. But did it finally get me? Did I kill myself? Did the thing that came from my dad and came from my grandma? Come for me like and I lost the battle with with my own head like that's that's that's my read. And again, it's just like sort of the narrative, the juicy, delicious narrative feeling of getting a line again and understanding it differently. This time. Yeah, is really impactful. We get the trainee interaction instead of junior. I train you now. You're Earth Green Lantern. Shit. And this is where we get the reveal and we already mentioned it, but that he's corporeal. That's right. Lift just reaches. I mean, obviously, later when. Yeah. Yeah. He touches his cheek. I'm just like, how am I supposed to cope with this? This is like unbearable in the best possible way. But when he reached out and lifted John's arm, I was like, OK, he's corporeal. Let's fucking go. He could do all sorts of stuff. What can't that hologram do? I mean, is he going to like show up in the nick of time and shove Billy into Earl's open mall? You know, that would be picked up wherever they've dropped that gun. Can I'll pick it up? Yeah. You know, like that's right. He's got a lot of options. Dive down into the lake. Now that we know John can kind of project him also because John has to come. Right. I mean, but probably does it does it bob as well as a red apple does? It's a great. That's a good question. I don't even fire if it's been dropped in the water. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe you got to try the powder. I don't. I can't. I'm not sure. You know, because John can take the ring off and the hologram continues to exist as we know. Helpfully, that means that the hologram and Carrie can fuck without John needing to just be right there activating the construct. That's useful. I was thinking a lot about Anya and like two Zanders. Poor Carrie. She could have had two Howls at one point. I thought about it, too, now that I had that wonderful double Zander Anya moment as context. What a great episode of TV that was. Loved it. All right. So John claims he's trying to solve Howl's mind. Murder. Oh, oh, yeah. On the corporeal. So we get the corporeal, but also that's where we get the like, so you can feel things. Yes, I can feel things. And there's the kind of like, yeah, I can feel like, come on. Yeah, I can feel things. Right. He's. But like, that's important for us to understand that. This digital imprint, this backup of Howl's consciousness, and we see this in this episode, he will learn. He will absorb information and he will have an emotional. Capacity. Like. He's a digital print, so that's not quite the same as an actual person, obviously, but. But Kyle Tamler could be in this story for as long as we wanted him to. I know, it's so good. And just the differences in the performance. Obviously, the tone. You miss the salt and pepper, though. I do. Do you think his hair can salt and pepper out? He always looks great. The hologram. Can the hologram age? That's a really great question. And can he change his outfit? He looks wonderful. He does. But can he change his outfit? Could he put on the other jacket? Great question. Inquiring minds want to know. Yeah. I mean, like, Rob and I were talking about this. You and I have talked about this, where it's like, I want Jon Stewart to be the Green Lantern going forward in the DCU. Like, that's not a question for me. But like, and, you know, we know he's going to show up in the films. We know that they are thinking of doing a second. They want to do a second season. It's been such a success that I can't imagine it doesn't get the, forgive the phrase, green light. But like. But also weird shit is happening at Warner Brothers that I like. It's hard to predict what's going to happen right now. It might have nothing to do with the success of the show. But. But I would want the hologram in a lantern season two. Now, whether or not Kyle Chandler wants to do that, I don't know. But like, that's what I want. As a viewer. Obviously. I think Aaron Pierre is great. I love Jon Stewart. I think Jon and Hal is so much better than either of them alone. But they're just absolutely wonderful together. And that was obviously such a satisfying thing inside of this episode. You know, you mentioned that's the first time you've called me Hal moment. But the smile on Jon's face in response to that, you know, the absolutely incredible in the science lab sequence, the Carrie Hal conversation is the. We were primarily thinking about Carrie and Hal in that sequence. But the like, well, what about Jon? What did Hal think about Jon? Like, you know, the big fan moment, like the shift on Jon's face from like a football team. Come on. I'm a ringer. I know. Get on the pod. Let's go. Hot yet possibly evil Sheriff Carrie. Who's constantly making football references. Speaks ringeries with ease. Jon's face was like the big fan. And just the way that he when Hal praises him that that's incredible. And Jon saying like he never complimented me. Like what we get to watch. They are they are existing in this space in this hour that we wanted to see them inhabit. And so the idea that that would be potentially ripped away from us on the one hand feels to me like kind of. 12 apiece with. part of the thesis of the show which is like these things don't stay in your life forever i'm not ready to say goodbye i think the more narratively mature thing is for me to say yeah it should be over at the end of the season but i don't want it i don't want it i think that's the more that there should be stakes to a death yeah you know i rail against this all the time that like if someone dies it should matter and and they should stay dead you know what i mean but if he's like not only here but also corporeal so like could fuck or eat or whatever he wants to do then it's like that he's not really dead and so then it's not even really that that big of a swing when you say eat yeah all versions whatever you need baby but but here's the deal here's the deal yeah what i do love about this episode and what they've done so well all season long is give us all of these ticking clocks we have this much time to figure it out right so the ticking clock of we juiced up the ring we don't have a lantern yeah to to recharge the the ring by is there a why wasn't there in the one in the vault like why wasn't it wrapped yeah i guess when they took the suit and they took yeah no no i know i mean i understand get it back yeah guy gardner can you do one more thing for us please like fire up that that guy gardner signal and get him into town um so like the the the countdown on how much time we have with the hologram i know because he probably has to go because you know as as i mentioned uh to rob when you and i had talked to damon about the hologram and he mentioned the ghost so like this idea that we're gonna like yeah lose how the hologram in that very like patrick swayze end of ghost sorry for spoilers the end of the ghost the ghost does not stay around forever like that's gonna be potentially very very good it will be but then just bring him back for season two it's fine exactly make him non-corporeal just like make it a make it a cost i don't know um all right we finally are here at the opening credit opening logo of the episode i double checked this opening logo and it's i don't think it's any yellower than it was in episode one this is a question we have is like is it gonna get yellower and yellower and every week i'm like is this yellower but i went and looked back at episode one it's the same same thing um i was in jail i was in love okay so before we get to the storage unit john has a fraught convo with his brothers about needing three hundred thousand dollars to pay to buy off maggie yeah this is really here just so that the the hologram can like overhear this yes so that he can know that he's in jail and he can know that he's in jail that john was in nebraska and like all this all that sort of stuff so like the maggie blackmail plot line i mean we'll see if it like yeah winds up mattering the finale but like it's not really feels like a weaker plot but it is a second ticking clock on the and i like her hair but it's a second like ticking clock on the on the plot like right yeah for sure how i measure that time that was really good pretty slick that was pretty good um i will say right before she said that poor aaron pierre it's not his fault but he was like instructing her to do something to like hold the watch into frame but he was just sort of like yeah in frame yeah i mean you know makes sense they've got their connection uh handing handing her the watch the yes i agree mostly there so that hologram could eavesdrop also though you know and you and rob talked about this with episode six even across that episode this became apparent but this question of just like what is the limit of the rekindling that john has done with his he's trying to transactional with his brothers you know with with obviously it seemed like there was more of a gap right away still with with with aaron but with marcus marcus it feels it feels conditional marcus was like much more his brother when he was like we you know the stewart brothers are going to like have this big project now like him him being pissed that john like for sure this big deal like yeah absolutely that's fine that's justifiable but like it does then put him closer to the like what can you do for me uh sort of transition transactional relationship yeah well and i think it also it tells us but it also tells john that there is still the voice of like we're always thinking john and hal are there are protagonists so we're primarily viewing every interaction through the lens of what they are carrying but there's also like the question of what is marcus feeling what is aaron feeling and there's that that doubt for them right for marcus like you're saying when marcus says you know at the end of last episode like is that just a story you tell right and this question then for us and for john of like being reminded of what's going on and what's going on and what's going on and what's going on and what's going on and what's going on and what's going on and what's going on and what's seen in episode six then saying like you know oh not only not only the i'm not the only killer at this table but like when he when he says to to john oh is the thing that bothers you that your mom doesn't care about the killing right it's all here and connected still uh can i tell you i just think one of the funniest moments this episode is when bernadette is calling on the phone is that your wife no not that that is funny bernadette calling on the phone and that's what makes john think about hal so now like when he sees bernadette he's thinking about what were my mom and hal up to when i was uh you and rob had some theories those are mostly rob theories questions those are just mostly rob theories um and something i did i i pretty 89 sure i brought up in a in a previous episode when we were talking about this is like this idea of like all good stories are love stories right yes and like um the hacks comp of just sort of like you did yes the older mentor and the younger trainee and just sort of like the way in which that story even stories they're not a romantic love stories when they are love stories and they are about not only falling in love with each other so like um deborah vance and ava like falling in love with each other in the way that they do which is can be romantic if you choose to read it that way but does not have to be romantic um and and how falling in love with someone is related to love stories falling in love with yourself like believing that you are worthy of love so like the way in which that's related to like uh i was in love right like i was worthy of love someone loved me i i fell in love with someone someone loved me back i was vulnerable with them they still loved me like i told carrie everything carrie i told carrie about my dad and carrie still loved me and looks at me like this she might have killed me but like looks at me like she loves me you know like nonetheless like that's amazing but that that hacks comp thinking about jordan hal inside of this episode and the way in which they're like peeling back the layers for each other finding out about each other learning about each other and by the end of the episode they're playing our song you know what i mean like that's that's a love story and like yeah so for the linda loftiness of this of this episode again every linda loft story is a love story in its own way and there are overt ways in which that is true you know like inside of of watchmen you have like a beautiful love story um inside of leftovers of that is like ultimately one of the most beautiful love stories of all time and like inside of lost you've got a bunch of minor ones but i do think that like jack and john love story of like these two men who were on who had such radically different points of view but none yet nonetheless nonetheless corresponding daddy issues like and trauma yeah finding understanding and and like common cause with each other at the end of the day is like the most beautiful thing inside of that show i really agree man of science man of faith really where we start with john and how and part of the joy of the journey is how we will how our thinking of those positions will change but also how theirs will right and something like in this uh you know the arrival at the fortress incredible really good so fucking uh you know when john says like look this is the key we found on your dead body birds are like my thing hal knew that he wanted me to find this to open the box so just talk there's conflict in this moment in real time but like we can think of that through hal and john's eyes john is able to identify yeah there's the like we're doing true detective we're solving a crime this is a clue an indicator i'm following the breadcrumb aspect of it right there's a lot of that logic yeah but there is an emotional aspect to john clocking that hal knew this thing about him and it wasn't just oh when you were able to construct that bird and i i was threatened by it it stuck with me there's like i knew something about who you were right even though there were parts of that that you didn't tell me and like i also just like just it's a way in which he's chosen by how yeah oh my of course the the fact that the jordan boys legacy that the the leaning into the part of like i choose to think of you not as a threat the trainee who was going to usurp me who was going to take away the thing that i held on to but like i there's an embrace there when it comes to like totems you know what i mean it's like the the the ring right didn't choose him right like the guardians chose him or whatever but like hal chose him and is giving him this object yeah and saying you're my successor like i choose you exactly it's just like so beautiful to shift to an embrace there and maybe it's, there's a- - Would have been two on the nose of the bird had been, like, on a green background instead of a blue background. Yeah, it needs to be for, it needs to be something everyone else could miss, you know? But, like, yeah, I like the hex comp because it's, like, I don't know if Ava found something, like, she found a pair of Adidas shorts and a note on it that said, like, you can't only eat bread. She would know it was from Debra! Yeah. You know? And that it could only have been from Debra. Yeah. Because it was a thing that Debra would know Ava would recognize. And, like, I just really, really loved that part of it. And, like, the, you know, great arm kid and playing our song and all of those aspects. There's the Hal-specific part of it, too, where he says on the boat, like, you said I gave you a key. Did you find this from the box? Like, maybe it will lead me to my note where Hal is on his own journey, too. Well, and, like, his fear of that. Yeah, yes, what's in there? What truth is in there? But, like, my note, like, yeah, this truth of, like, what happened to me? Did I kill myself? Yeah, and the fact that Did I succumb to this? We don't know the answer to that yet, but the fact that Hal is wondering what that truth is, and he is on that journey of discovery, self-discovery still, but, like, the fact that Hal, our primary Hal, whatever is waiting in there, Noah Manhunter secrets or something deep and personal about Hal or all of the above, turns out it's a poncho. Ponchos are useful. We got them at the Oriole game. It was great. Also a planet. Moe goes to the fucking planet! Wonderful stuff. The fact that he was Did we get ponchos? We did. We got a bunch. We didn't put them on, but we had them for us there because of the rain. Yeah. The fact that. He's willing to show John whatever that truth is, you know? And, like, especially because we got the, like, did I. Was I open with you? Did I open up to you? Did I tell you about my dad? Moment between the Halogram and Carrie, and we know, not just because of that exchange, but everything we've seen about Hal, who's so withholding and guarded, what it means for him to show a piece of himself to somebody, like, to make that choice, not only to say to John, I no longer am thinking of you just as a person who was trying to take from me the thing that I needed to understand who I am, that I clutched the My Precious, you know, ring comp that you guys were talking about last week, like, but to say also, like, you're worthy of this too is just, like, a really lovely journey for those characters to be on together. It's great. We get the charades bit. Very good. Yeah. I think it's a bad fucking idea. Shocking take from the guy who probably murdered me. Absolutely killed me. That was really funny. Listen, you ignorant copy of an ignorant asshole. Some real singers in this structure. Yeah, really good. This was super funny. A little less than an hour of talk time left on the ring, so let's not, like, you know, let's not waste it. That's right. You know, you're even worse dead was also very good. Really, really great. And this was where you mentioned that I was in jail. Yeah, I was in love. Yes. And, like, what Kyle Chandler is doing with his face and with his voice and the quieting, gentling dip. I think, I do think Aaron Pierre is tremendous in this episode. Yeah, he's amazing. Especially, like, the fear flashback sequence. I thought, you know, you know I love a fear toxin. Where's my guy, Crane? I don't know. But I do think that the way that Kyle Chandler says, I was in jail, I was in love. Oh, man. And the way that Kelly McDonnell performs, you're real. Or just even her face when we see her face when she hears his voice for the first time. Yeah. Is just some knockout stuff. Yeah. And then Jason Britter when he's like, I'll bring the dip. Those three, just top tier acting. Kelly McDonnell's face in that science, it reminded me of, I mean, this is a sincere compliment. You know, in the Daredevil opening, the way that the statues, like, crumble. Just the crumbling of her face as all of those emotions are playing. It was really, really hard. Real Boardwalk Empire. There's something, oh, my God. I love Boardwalk. The, Charlie Cox. Charlie Cox. It really does all connect to Daredevil. I was thinking about her reaction around Charlie Cox in Boardwalk in this episode. Dude, talk about a shredding, heart-wrenching moment. Oh, my God. And also a what's-in-the-box moment. Guys, spoilers for Boardwalk Empire. Stuff. Really bad. All right. The local radio crackles through some country and Bible music. Yeah. This is classic. I'm driving somewhere and I can't, I can't get anything good on the radio, including we get a reference to John 1613. Our listener, Kat, wrote in to let us know that John 1613 reads thusly, but when he, the spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own. He will speak only what he hears and he will tell you what is yet to come. Kat says, then the hologram reappears soon thereafter. I thought that was a nice touch on what he could be able to offer. So, also, I really like that. It's interesting, too, that this is when Bernadette calls because it did make me think just on the, like, making preparations front and the fact that Hal and Bernadette were in touch, just like, what might Bernadette know? Mm-hmm. What, what information is it possible that she's in possession of? How much of the, obviously, we've, you know, we see all the voicemails, like, last episode and everything. We know that John Sr. has escaped from, from the care facility. All of that is going on. But Bernadette led John to Rushville. She did, right? What other, is it possible that she has something to reveal to John still that could help him in the, in the finale? I found myself wondering about that. How long is this finale? I know. Are we getting, so Hal shows up. Oh, man. John's like, I made you go away, like, and summon you, right? And this is where he gets the, like, summon I'm not your genie sort of lamp stuff go moment. But, I love, I do really love this trope, this comedic haunting trope. You know, again, in Ghost, Whoopi Goldberg won an Oscar being annoyed that a ghost would not leave her alone. One of my favorite TV shows of all time, Slings and Arrows, has, has this, like, it's even better because in this version, everyone else can see the hologram. But I think it's even better when, like, you can't see the ghost and then, like, people think you're crazy because you're talking to yourself and stuff like that. I think that's, like, always sort of hits with me. But anyway, this just sort of, like, leave me alone energy from John. But then Hal being like, you don't really want me gone. If I'm here, it's because you're thinking of me. And honestly, who can blame him? To that I say, honestly, who can blame him who would not be thinking about Hal Jordan? They go to the sheriff, to the hot, yet possibly evil sheriff's department, and they're like, Yeah. Guess what? Whole town is closed again on Manhunter business. Last time it was town hall for Zoe protection. Now it's everyone's at the hat ceremony. Obviously very worrying on the Manhunter front. Also, though, sign saying we're closed football, like, could not be more FNL. Could not be more Friday Night Lights, so that was also very great. All right, then we get the, like, sort of the memorial for the Battle of Rushville. We get the conversation about her name was Zoe. Yeah. Talking about Manhunters being deceptive, manipulative. On the other hand, on the gut front. So he's wrong about the sort of, like, I killed her and that's why you hate me. Yeah. But he does immediately say, looks like I'm not the only person who fell for a Rushville girl. Like, he gets that one right away. Clash that with the quickness. So the gut is, like, 50-50, maybe? I still say 70-30. Okay. I still say 70-40. 70-30. I don't know. There was one left. Her name was Zoe. There was one left I heard with blaring sirens. Sure. Yeah. Only one. Definitely. Uh-huh. Yeah. One of my only notes on this episode was that it felt like the Halogram knew more about Manhunters than R. Hal did when he went on a fact-finding mission to Sinestro. I bumped on that just a tiny, tiny, tiny, Well, I don't think he, I think when he went to go to the fact-finding mission from Sinestro, he wasn't like, what's a Manhunter at all? Yeah. But he was like, tell me all about the Manhunters. Yeah. I guess so. The Manhunters are extinct. Yeah. Right? Which is just sort of like, I know they exist. Manhunters are very deceptive, very manipulative. Oh, yeah, I guess that's true. Like, even knowing that. I don't know. I feel like there's a tiny, tiny, but I totally buy that Hal would be like, here's an excuse to go see Sinestro and work through my shit. Like, that makes sense. My guy. Because I don't know how to work through my shit. If I could close down a town for Sinestro, I would. All right. Oh, man. Listen, I don't know what happened after Jordan last updated me, but I don't kill not even a Manhunter. Whatever he did to these people that died, whatever I am, I'm not him. So we'll help find out in the finale, maybe via Sinestro, what happened to him in 2006 and 2016 to change him so dramatically. Yeah. There's a couple options here in the finale when, like, John knows what happened with Sinestro. So Sinestro can't let it John. Right. But, like, Hal doesn't know yet about the Sinestro coup. So, like, there is a potential. Again, how long is the finale? But there is a potential for Sinestro to tell John, like, I'm on your side. Like, you know what I mean? Yes, it feels like that will be. And what, I mean, what if it comes. Again, this is just me. I haven't seen the finale. I don't know. If it comes down between Hal believing John and believing Sinestro and he chooses to believe John, that would be, like, a really beautiful moment. That would be great. Yeah. I was interested that, because, right, I mean, we have the reinforcement here. I don't know what happened after Jordan last updated me, which we knew, we understood, but felt like it was clarified for kind of a reason. Like, he's not been absorbing all of this information about what's happening in Rushville, but also the Sinestro stuff. I did have a moment at the very end where I was like, why isn't Hal like, oh, Sinestro then? You know, when he, when they, like, look down and see him at the end, it didn't seem like he was, like, surprised to find him cloaked on this apocalyptic hellscape. I think I'd have to rewatch, like, how much time he had to, like, look at him. Literally looked for, like, half a second at his face, and then he was like, great arm kid. But I would have been like, Sinestro, is that you? By the way, great arm kid. I was like, "Oh, is he not surprised to see him there? interesting pink dad's here maybe he doesn't recognize him it's been 20 years it's i mean and he and and you know he had his version of the poncho on he did he was like it was very spike season four yeah totally it was 100 spike season four core it's the exact same brown blanket that spike would wear yeah absolutely um i found the like the i'm not i'm not him line hit really hard obviously just a smart ass not only does the hologram allow us to still spend time with hal and kyle chandler but it's just like a great way and we feel those differences so keenly as we've been talking about from the first you know the first episode but like how to pass judgment on himself it's very loki you know what i mean sure just sort of like we get to redo the character arc yeah you know what i mean yes um absolutely all right they see guy got a new signal right next to the battle of rushville memorial i do i agree with what john said earlier is very tacky the proximity um how let's talk about why the ring chose guy over john i still remain baffled with this guy really a lot of questions uh you didn't get to talk about this tell me about your experience having guy inside of this world um you know i just was delighted by it i thought yeah i was i had been similarly maybe not quite as concerned as you but i was a little bit concerned about the tonal mashup and whether it would whether it would mesh but uh i thought the the you know the tight pants and the goofy hair and all that the those contrast played actually like kind of heightened what what we were going for you know and the the multiple mentions in this exchange between hal and john like gold tooth could not possibly come up more often than it does etc um the oh because you're like a a gym teacher um no because like he's an asshole yeah i'm paraphrasing that's not exactly how but that was just great it was great and then john gets uh to sing some outcast to try to drown that's right how out spotty outie double licious um not the outcast song he sang with his brothers but just sort of like a link to yes uh his past so they pull up to the hat ceremony we've already talked about this maggie uh interaction um but she does say this thing about it being the biggest thing to happen in this town since you and your pal yeah uh destroyed it so great yeah and again that felt to me very like that is i think that's credible and believable that in a small town a huge football star like what would have that hold on the town but also it works as noah has the whole town in his thrall as potentially mini manhunter it works both ways i have i mean even and i say this is love because i don't think chris ryan is like a huge theorizer but even like when i was on the watch last week and i asked chris ryan who we thought did he was like oh the quarterback kid like you know what i mean like everyone's on noah watch everyone's on baby manhunter watch like everyone's on it at the same time inside of the script there are a couple things that are sort of like cover for that one is sort of like maggie saying this is the biggest thing that happened to our town and then noah saying this isn't about me we all need a reason to celebrate so like inside of the like let's try to hide the ball on baby manhunter noah have they done a great job i don't know how hard they're trying right frankly at the end of the day you know yeah but that's there to say like uh to know for noah to give a reason why everyone would close downtown to be at one kid's hat ceremony it's like it's not because i am a specially seductive alien from outer space and this entire town wants to fuck me it's because we need something to uplift us because we're depressed and we forgot to rebuild and we're just sort of like you know fema did what a little it could do you know sort of noah's letter as you guys said like the interest in politics and declaration of a desire to be president not worrying at all um similarly so now this is fall it's football season so this is not actually the february national signing day but there's a an earlier period you can you can um you can commit at a number of different times the hat ceremony this is a big thing in college football recruiting and uh i just want to say i'm i want to comment on one of the hats which i my real like antenna went up but uh i i like didn't bother honestly i didn't bother to freeze frame mahoney the hats because i was like this won't mean anything to me and molly will come through so um and i'm like i'll bring the gas but you also brought the gasby so what am i even doing here there's a running back years ago who committed to isaiah karl and he announced not with the georgia hat but with an actual bulldog puppy and that that's a hard one to top in terms of the bar that that set but i would like to say that i'm relieved that noah only went with hats given the hats now i couldn't quite tell i was looking at color i think maybe the fourth in the distant based on the exact kind of shade i was like oh is that minnesota for sure we saw a michigan hat and for for sure we saw a nebraska hat navy folks we saw a navy yeah which i was concerned by because mini manhunter wanting to go to annapolis and gain access potentially to the naval arsenal yeah gave me serious fucking pause so that and we lingered on that navy hat like that felt super super even i noticed it and then i was like why is no one not making his choice what why what what needs to happen at the game because everyone i'm like oh he wants to have the game because everybody needs to be at the game but as you noted everyone's going to have a ceremony the other team is it because he still needs the recruiters to be there the recruiters who are trying to get him to commit is now they're we're in the last fucking episode i don't know that they have time to introduce somebody from the naval academy but we do have this whole thread of like john's on the line with the colonel there's like a little bit of a military thing in the background of this show so far that has it's not top of my theory corner i do think the colonel that's interesting that is interesting um that's interesting i was thinking it's because he like he's like there's still a green lantern here in town yeah and i i i haven't like i gotta neutralize the the local threat probably just that probably just that i like gotta bring him a suit check in on the house is the shotgun still there what's up with earl okay i'll play the game i'll buy my time could also just be folks that the navy hat was there to explain how noah who could not throw a ball through a tire when he was a kid has become an all-state quarterback he's a dual threat quarterback he's a running quarterback now it all makes sense to me okay so that was helpful why what navy famous for deploying uh option techniques in their offense so if you're if you're playing quarterback at navy you're you're a run first quarterback everyone wants him to to pick nebraska yeah they want him to stay home yeah oscars skurs didn't like skurs skurs do people not say no i know but like do people not say that i it's it was fine but i was like we're trying too hard not on the show but in the in the on how do skurs uh i guess yeah sure i they say huskers much more often i think that they say guys i don't feel equipped to comment i'm not from nebraska i don't know if this is two of the co-creators are but i don't know if this is like when people say frisco inside of movies and i'm like you're not from here yeah well like when the orioles from around here when the orioles came out with their new city connected said be more a lot of people were like there's no way people from baltimore say be more and i was like actually like they do like i i saw that i was like this is this these are great okay see how other people would think it would i would have gone with huskers skurs certainly acceptable it's fine all right billy uh i liked the make and love to football sign in the audience by the way incredible also all the all of the assembled who are like noah be my boyfriend noah be my fiance noah marry me but make and love to football was pretty funny i think that like um we talked about this rob and i talked about this last week this like throw sort of like in the background line where he's like mentioning the name of all these girls and so it's like how many of these girls all of them possibly um there were more people there than i thought there would be by the way oh left in the town yeah only 100 people coming to carrie's house though i mean i hope i hope billy made enough dip um oh god billion is dip what's that mean he's with you carrie's like give me a fucking break uh okay then we get the the science lab conversation that you're real uh moment right first we get john on the phone sort of trying to hush like so that carrie doesn't overhear him withdrawing 315 000 an extra 15 000 and i think this is smart he's drawing 300 000 for maggie and then an extra 15k for incidentals who knows you never know what you're gonna need yeah i gotta say i more more raw meat for earl i mean yeah bison is it can't be cheap right um the man hunters have some of john's dna and now this bank has his voice print i've got concerns it did seem like a bit fishy did it yeah my phishing uh scam oh yeah there's one off there for sure something seemed on the one hand yes but on the other hand like maybe not because so much of john's relationship with like that whole plot line has just been conducted via phone call so like i wouldn't just say it over the phone if it were me but like narratively he did send his brothers to the bank so it's like something that he's been like he has some play you know what i mean yeah all right um we get this science lab scene i mean i think it's so beautiful we've already talked about a lot of this here's here's one part that i really loved the ever charming ever suave hal jordan becomes a stammering mess in front of carrie right tranny's right i'm i'm not your him i'm not your hal i mean i i would have been but i'm i guess uh well and what it used to be i just wanted to meet you that's all we were we were close dude i mean i would have been destroyed me destroyed me i read a germany fan fiction about this by the way this is a classic fan fiction plot by the way alternate version of you meets the one who yeah or like you or the person that you love has like forgotten you and you have all these memories of your time together with them and they have no memory of you And then they have to like, this is not only a classic fan fiction plot, it's kind of like a classic romance novel plot, but it's just sort of like the amnesia plot of just sort of like, I, you meet someone, they have all this history with you and you're just sort of like, who was I with this person? And like, and so for Hal to be like, who were we? I mean, I want, I want the hologram to hear the buttercup voice note. Like, I want him to know that he was just like getting pizzas and snuggling under a blanket and watching The Scurrs. The Scurrs, maybe that's why she started calling him Tex, even though he's canonically from the DC version of San Francisco. I lost my mind about this. Okay. Tex versus Buttercup, like Tex and Buttercup forever. Love it. But wait, let's assign them to each of us. Are you Tex or Buttercup? Oh, you're Tex. And you're Buttercup? Yeah, clearly. It's canon. But like, Tex is such a good name for him, but I'm like, let's not underline the fact that he's got this bizarre voice. He's got this bizarre accent that has nothing to do with where he's from, nor did young Hal have it. Like, let's not, let's not put too fine a point on it. But Coach Taylor is inescapable and frankly, I'm okay with it. You know something? So I did a Q&A with some of the Friday Night Lights cast when they were doing this sort of like roadshow thing earlier this year. And something that Adrian Palicki said on that panel was that Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton used to meet for like breakfast every day on this one like place in South Congress and talk about their characters. Like that they would just like go. Go over their characters like at breakfast every morning. I just love knowing this. I love knowing it too. But like in an interview, well, well, Monday and Tom King talked about this on the official pod. I think Kelly McDonald said something similar in Collider, but just sort of like the work that Kyle Chandler does to seem so effortless and the work that he did. And Kelly McDonald was like sort of calling out this scene in particular where she was just sort of like, I was preparing myself. So for like how I had to like convince myself that this is not the same guy. She's like, but then I walked in and Kyle had like done all this work that like it was so clearly not the same. Yeah. How Jordan not just because of the hair dye, but just sort of like character wise, eyes wise, face wise. Like this was just a different guy. And it felt like a different guy to me. And like, that's just like Kyle Chandler is so just like we compliment him all the time. Very handsome. All the things that you're thinking of right now, all the things that you want to say. Like a great guy, like all this sort of stuff like that. But I think he works tremendously hard. He's just so good. To look like he can just do it in his sleep. Yeah. You know? Yes. I absolutely. I think that the, you know, they talked a lot in the official pod and just in general about, and we can feel it so keenly watching the episode, the, the how our primary how that this hologram is not yet as cynical and jaded. Those were the words that they were using. And that's true. We could feel actually that the cynicism emerging even just right here when he goes into theory corner, he's like on watch. He's like, you kill me. You kill me. Yeah. Like you're paranoid. He's like, oh, your brain is like, has a bullet in it. Yeah. And like, I think being murdered like allows for some paranoia. Like that was all so good. The way that we can feel this how while different and not in the dark place are how wound up in. Well, it's because he's still the same person. Yes. And you can see him getting there, but there's like a couple of things that I want to say about this. One is like the way in which this how hologram thousand six how is so much better at being John's mentor. And so much more open in so many ways. But then like we have to give twenty twenty six how the credit of like for sure being the one to tell Carrie about his dad, which is something two thousand six how can't even conceive of and leaving the key for John and inviting him and inviting him to be a part of this, a partner, a partner from beyond the grave. But that damage that's done to to the older how from like the Sinestro betrayal. Yeah. So here we have this right. Two thousand six how sees himself in a coffin and there's a couple of things that he's going on. There's like somebody betrayed me. Was it my trainee, John? Was it this hot sheriff, Carrie? Like who betrayed me? So that that's sort of like I've been betrayed, like batten down the hatches, like put your armor up sort of response. But the fact that like all of that fear based response is really a reaction to the shame question, which is, did I do this to myself? Am I the person who betrayed me at the end of the day? Guess what? The show is so good. It's fucking great. It's great. I thought the ability in this particular sequence, I'm not your him. I'm not your how. I mean, I would have been, but I'm I guess I'm what he used to be. The gentleness, the kind of longing, the hope of like, oh, a version of me found this with somebody, the tenderness, the sexiness, obviously pretty romantic, pretty romantic, huh? Like Carrie's response. This is a great Carrie episode. Carrie's response. That was amazing. This is also, though, where his face changes because the suspicion mounts. So the fact that he is conveying. All of that. And then we're watching everything playing out on Carrie's face as well. Like that right there. I'm what he used to be. That seemed to me to be where he came to some sort of deduction. Like he's watching her. He's gauging something. And his face changed a little bit. Like before we even get to the very end where she's like, I'll go with you that you already mentioned, which was like. We're not even being subtle about it. She's like very afraid of something clearly, but she's like, come to my house, hide so that no one sees you, but stay there and then we'll all go together. Make sure my. My son, who is a manhunter. And by the way, I told you about that. Doesn't see you there. Also, Jason Ritter, who was on the official podcast. Yeah. Finish making the dip by then. It's just cooking in the crockpot. The fact that Billy, by the way, was like with. Yeah. It's like he's with me with John. She's like, come the fuck on. That was just so good. Jealousy. Really great. But so Carrie here, when when Hal says. And I was open. I was open with you. And she says, we told each other everything. The. Little look on her face there. I mean, wiping away the tears, that question that we already mentioned of like, well, what did she tell? Oh, yeah. That maybe she came to regret telling him because we told each other everything. Giant sirens blaring in my head of like she told about Noah and that's what led to his death. Like all of that. But also just like. What's lost. Yeah. And this and to stare into again, to stare into the face that you have like loved and been so vulnerable to. And as far as you know, like, you know. You know, Carrie, when we meet her with her like mini bangs fresh from Gotham, like, did not strike me as someone who's like had had opened herself to like some great love. Certainly didn't have with Billy has has this with her hairdresser. Wow. Well, it's a shots fired at the wigs. With her son has some sort of version of that, but it's like almost programmed into her and it's its own thing. But like, so maybe this like this is the first great love of her life that she only got a little bit of time with. of him and he doesn't remember any of it because he's not that guy would you say that this is a show about how we're programmed and then the little thing that we can finally find for ourselves before it is ripped away really tough boy to listen to the official pod being like john was programmed just like the manhunter's program i'm like tough tough to hear it we talked about my father and she nods how he died and she nods so there's again functioning in multiple ways very deft like that's a test right yeah where were we really what did we have but then yeah to your point like what that tells us because we know how shielded hal has been like what we won't know and we won't fully know until the end of the episode which again is like what rewards a rewatch for this show it's like you know we've gotten these hints and we can sort of extrapolate some things here but then we get the full truth of it at the end of the episode and so when you rewatch that scene with that knowledge with the full part of that episode it's like it's like it's like it's and the full kyle chandler performance of of what that did to them and how hard it is for him to share that with john and then carrie too because maybe she leading contender still she revealed that noah was a manhunter hal is like i do love you buttercup but i've got to get back to work a man's responsibility is to make preparations right and then carrie is confronting the the guilt and horror of maybe what noah or billy did but there's also and then there's also a lot of this moment in particular right the we talked about my father how he died that she knows this thing and so if she finds hal's dead body she's gonna be wondering if hal killed himself how could she not be wondering that unless she watched noah shoot him in the head or billy shoot him in the head if the gun isn't there you know but if the gun is there i don't know okay i ever teach you about einstein rose and bridges uh hal and john walk back into the storage uh unit and i i say hey look it's a metaphor for hal's intimacy issues what if i wasn't trying to keep people out i was trying to keep something in that was amazing um we need to go right from using football as a comp for their relationship like he likes to yell at you on the tv but you know big fan into keep them out or keep them in like what am i willing to show somebody was just really like the show and miniature fly away then stay on earth you know what i mean um yeah all right paper bag and backpack containing a canteen a poncho protein bars a gun and oh yeah a portal to another planet point a and point b you know we just saw a coyote versus acme very reminiscent of like i was thinking about that visually that was great um it's weird to me that john's like what the hell is this when he already went through one earlier in the season right for his interview yeah he fell through that yeah i guess to get into the derelict mall so he's like what the hell i'm like you that did just sort of open and he was like you literally went to faith yeah yeah yeah i mean this is a different planet it's like a a bigger situation but it's not like what is this because you've already been he has been through a tunnel portal you're you're you're right but he's also the character who mere moments before in the car ride over when hal was like she definitely killed me you know uh i know guilt when i see it and john said do you know love when you see it so we're always we're always thinking can you recognize the thing right in front of you including a portal that you have traveled through a version of you know what you're good at what you do um all right oh my god stranger things fans rejoice yeah the einstein rosen bridge gets a mention or mcu fans if you're thinking about the bifrost that's fine too no labored explanation of you slinky or paper plate we just said it moved on with our day yeah how space space is space is fine something to think about something to learn all right um oh man you taught me two things jack and shit pretty funny comes back really quickly thereafter it's another planet air seems breathable trainee and then we we get a satisfying answer here why the fear toxin impacts john but not hal of course technically i'm not sure if i am breathing yes i was glad that he said that right away because i was like wait you're a bifrost how would you know if it's breathable it's pronounced hallow graham hallow graham uh hallow graham has been so useful as uh he really helped us i mean i did start i i wrote in our notes i'm gonna stop doing the ogram and just called him how but it's helpful to distinguish yeah i did hologram pretty much throughout with the with the occasional lapse into how that's helpful i got lazy though so um how that's calling carrie the hot but possibly evil sheriff which you've already mentioned great stuff this is a question kind of in general with hell after prison going back to rushville writing carry the letters all of it like i think that they're the most emotionally rewarding version of this is that hal has been in love with this person the whole time which was apparent in the 2016 timeline right minute one you were on it he wanted to fuck this person and the yearning tendrils were there yeah okay but as we talked about a lot in episode five in particular there's this aspect of the relationship between john and carrie hal and carrie where it's like wait you were withholding you were lying you were covering so to go back and be like i want to be together great but also like surely some part of the relationship was and what else did you keep from me or why did you keep those things in the first place what are the other layers here oh by the way is your son a manhunter that that gut it depends it depends how high that percentage is on that gut you know indeed i'm still saying 70 30 i know you are so 30 is like a lot of time i'm not like you could be wrong a lot if it's 70 30 but yeah so and like i'm i don't think that hal went back just to keep true detecting i think but i think that like what we've heard about he can help himself exactly i think what we and that that connects then to like what zoe said right about like you know the conversation in episode five between zoe and john about like when does your nature just take over and so you do make progress and you do hal has to be a character who find who is in a place where he wants to connect to someone that feels i would say is a would say like essential in this show yeah but that doesn't it's not mutually exclusive from the other the investigating and like the idea that hal who has lost the ring and the the mantle of green lantern has to learn to live his life without it is like growth and progress of a different sort the idea that he would just stop thinking about that mission or that quote responsibility like doesn't really feel true to the character but it's almost one of those like well i mean listen i don't want manhunter noah to be president of the united states like it certainly doesn't seem great to me but then there's a part of you where you're like what if you could have just turned it off because you've just turned off that true detecting then had your happily ever after with carrie i know you know well and like what is there any chance that noah you know because there was that moment with john and noah in episode six the when he brings him the suit you know in the conversation about like but you're happy now like i you know i wanted to like i want you to john's counseled him about what's going on and what's going on and what's going on and what's going on and what's going on and what's going on and what's going on about like the idea of being able to have like a maybe an easier or a better or a different time like how much of what zoe programmed into noah oh 100 right still is there a potential de-escalation like let's say billy did it let's say jason ridder did it and noah innocent can can this young manhunter like find a different path can he just go put in a few years with the scurs or maybe at michigan not don't let noah go to the naval again do you think we have to just like and just like have sex with every girl on campus or guy whatever you prefer no yeah like and both why not exactly but like i think that like it feels like there has to be some sort of de-escalation possibility yeah or a teenager is going to be eaten by a carnivorous plant one of the two i'm actually leaning more towards jason ridder going in the plant at this point that would be great but i did like the idea of earl eating him and then spitting out the crystal heart you know what i mean that would be amazing that would be amazing he could instead just spit out the crystal heart and then spit out the crystal heart and then spit out the crystal heart and then spit out some buffalo dip that billy's still digesting all right cooked meat not part of earl's diet so you'd have to get rid of that the uh the harry potter references have been coming fast and furious all season but what is the half-blood prince is this i mean mallory rubin yeah so you know we met you mentioned gatsby and i think in general i i love the the the born back ceaselessly into the past line the end of gatsby that you already quoted obviously just when you when we when we actually reach the in the middle of that mechanical against the current but yeah the light we can't escape who we are that light on the island looks very very green light at the end of the dog right and like what you're striving for and thinking of and longing for and it's more blue in color but like it ended up not being green but it looked green at first i agree i was 100 i was like yes daisy light then her voice sounds like money guys it's the american dream by the way what do we think that is is in the middle could that be a spaceship the thing that they sail toward uh there's like a seat there's some glass or a lab it looks like like smokestack you know mechanical infrastructure but i was like could that be a spaceship yeah maybe a lab so that's interesting but yeah could one forge a lantern there could there be a lantern there dinklage there i mean he needs the light cable usbc what version is your phone oh my god oh boy um i went so quickly from from gatsby to half blood prince so i think probably many people watching this had that exact same experience i honestly would have you would have blood first first and then i got to get once we were sailing across a poison lake i was like looking for the inferi over the edge at bobbing apples instead but ghosts of uh you know you know they said the official tom king i think said in a sort of throwaway that it was like a poltergeist reference which it definitely is it's definitely poltergeist but it's definitely also half blood prince like i would be so i would not be surprised if someone had to like drink something until it was gone once they got to the center of the island you know i mean like the the potion yeah and the the fear and the the idea of your trauma and the mistakes of your past and what we watch with dumbledore and a young trainee and a mentor and like all the sort of stuff like that like i was also thinking a lot definitely like all that sort of stuff it's inescapable yes it's just as they said like salt and sea on the inside the episode and you know poisoned sure sure this was like fear toxin and your own trauma rooting yeah try to thwart you from reaching some sort of goal that it was it was jewelry based goal perhaps um yeah i uh if sinestro had walked out with a locket i wouldn't have been shocked um the cloak may be engraved with rib i was also thinking a lot about dr who like this is a very dr who sort of opening of an episode of dr who where like the doctor and his companion land on a planet and something has happened there's a mystery and like maybe everyone's dead sometimes that that's what's happened um and they have to figure out what happened there right you know so for like when john finds this like pile of ash and there's a skull in there man that's like so classic yeah who to me there's like literally an episode where everyone's like fertilizer you know what i mean like um so like what happened here on this planet uh that we've arrived on we gotta true detect our way through this the way that anton's like memory implantation comes back uh for john here the way that he's like i didn't understand that the city was in the sky that's like that was such a cool fantastical imagery i thought it looked so cool i didn't understand what they were like jumping down from um how i can't remember if he's been there before all these planets they blend blend together tasted too many pleasures in the galaxy huh you know it's hazard of the occupation that gave me a little chill though when john was like like weird it feels like i have and this just all connected very satisfyingly this was good it was really good but i like before he was like oh my god i'm not gonna do this again i'm not gonna do this again i'm not gonna do this again i'm not gonna do this again i'm not gonna do this again i was like oh anton's memories i had a real like has john been like brainwashed and been you know like yeah yeah yeah intergalactic traveling last 10 years and didn't know it or something like that and then and then they're like no dummy it's the thing from earlier the season got it okay um i was in this city and there was this gas and when they breathe the gas they got so fucking scared they were terrified they started killing each other and themselves i just didn't know the city was in the sky i didn't understand what they were jumping off now i do So good, and then for us to go from there, that description to the like you know conversation they're having in the boat and then how this appears in a way that like we're used to the hologram disappearing but it's actually like john has disappeared from reality yeah and then the like then we get the apple the first apple and then all the apples um john senior young john we can save this for theory corner at the end if that's a better place to do it but what is your current read on like so obviously we just we come to understand from what john says and connecting to the anton memory from episode two as you noted like the the fear gas seriously dr jonathan crane yeah scarecrow come on in yeah the yellow so like okay i went i started really going like wait is what we understand about zoe and the manhunt like we know that the relationship between the manhunter and anton was real but i was like was this sinestro is this parallax like what actually happened here question is how much time do we have in the finale to just be like and everything we knew about manhunters is wrong and everything we knew about anton was wrong and everything and sinestro was behind it all along i think because of that so to a couple things sinestro and also who killed hal and then like also how did sinestro get there and who broke sinestro out of prison and how many sex flashbacks can we get how was liana involved and like what you know are what does bernadette know like there's so much stuff and what does billy macon's dip taste like and that's among the more important questions and so there are a lot of them that's high up on the list okay so sinestro when we find him at the end of this is like get me off this dead godforsaken planet i didn't get i have chosen this as my base well so that's what that's why i was like did hal put him there yeah or didn't know so thank you so much because you know i really felt like rob scoffed off my theory that noah might have been involved in this but like yeah did noah put him on the planet yeah it did someone has it seems maybe stashed sinestro and hal found the the bridge in a bag in a bag in the back of noah's closet or something like that because hal's like i know something about looking around the back of the closet somewhere because of his grandpa yeah it all connects as you noted it's not playboys under noah's bed because he doesn't need it because he's just having sex all the time constantly it's just a bag of a portal to a poison planet where master evil noah could have broken sinestro out still not ready to totally retire the liana theory obviously that's in the mix how for sure possible well how did hal do it because it could happen when he was in prison but i'll have one of those portals in his prison cell or did somebody take was the prison some cover for whatever manhunter experiments they were running on hal like because of that chunk that's missing because that chunk that's missing from his arm in the preview like how had some manhunter shit done to him at some point where did that happen how long is this finale i so the fact that's my current i think my lean and and then on the inside the episode little like you know two or three minutes at the end damon said this planet was basically engaged in an unending civil war and a manhunter came to this planet the weapon that the manhunter designed basically led to the death of an entire species of people so if we are sticking with zoe actually did this thing right maybe this is what sparks like sinestro and now sinestro has already obviously killed a guardian attempted a coup that's all happened it's not like the bloom of sinestro's break is just gonna be introduced in the finale this is already here but maybe this is where the like parallax sinestro core fear can be our superpower maybe what he's exposed to on this planet is part of what spins forward into the sinestro plot that they're going to set up right because he's been like marinating in the sphere toxin how i gotta say how porous is that cloak he's wearing pretty porous it protected a vampire from the sun on both the vampire slayer so i have some questions about it but canonically in the comics there is a yellow fear planet whereupon uh a yellow ring was forged you know what i mean so like this could be that or some version of that um again that seems sort of like lab like where they were you know um again if peter dinklage wants to show up and forge a yellow lantern ring then he could do it uh if anyone can do it he can do it it's true anything you want to say that we haven't said already i mean like we kind of skip past the dad reveal stuff but we've been talking about that i will say the the um my old man he was convinced me but better off without him he said he had that pain his whole life said it was getting worse he couldn't hide it he couldn't bear to let us see it couldn't bear to let us see him yeah how look in the mirror right uh he told me all this because my grandfather left it a note to him had the same pain passed down generation to generation father to son i'm broken he says the broken line was boy very intense i mean i think that the you know the fact that we go from this john junior john senior younger version junior younger version of john um fear toxin solo ride into what hal will share about martin was just so powerful like to watch that back to back i thought that this the pan the wide shot should we go on a fear toxin boat ride together and see what we what we expose sorry buttercup we have a come on text we have a chance to deepen our relationship um if there was anyone i'd do it with it would be you it would be you you know a lot about me already i show you a lot of who i am it's more than i'm not ready you can see but i'm not ready to look at myself that way it's more that i i have it's more that too many boundaries up to get on a fear toxin boat ride with anyone but like i was so struck by so there you know a lot of it is we're looking at john we're cutting from john jr to john jr from john to young john but that wide shot of john sailing into the the the cloud the plume and he just looked so i mean it's a great kind of comic book splash page visual right we always like that but he just looked so alone alone and that's very purposeful heading into you know this this really massive seismic reveal from hal i mean obviously we also get a little bit of the comedy of john going through yeah i actually do have a list of all the shit you've done to me and like here it is but there's catharsis in there double double car crash the double that was the double car crash that was really interesting and then the sorry yeah i thought it was really interesting when he said like he betrayed like what is it disrespected me disrespected the institution yes yeah yeah yeah it's interesting because like john by the end of it like seems so out on the institution himself well but like and but i i kind of liked that because that feels like true to the show's um desire to say that it's not actually the either or it's not you succeeded or you failed you let go completely or you embraced in full it's like what is john's relationship to this thing and it has to be something that he forges on his own so like the way that he's screaming at his younger self when he's saying like you didn't want this at all you didn't want it at all and he's like that's not true like there is like john actually does have you think he's right i i know i think that there's like there's truth and there's deception and there's the the heightened anything that the fear one of my reads from this scene is that the thing that the fear toxin is playing on you all playing on is in you already right like super soldier super very super soldier good becomes great great like this is why you were chosen so the idea that there is like a truth to the thing that is voiced that of course is what would be the most painful thing i don't think john ever like truly wanted this for himself this is what you're saying like i don't think young john or young adult john or any of these people you just want to draw your little pictures right like i don't think he wanted this for himself but this is something that we've been talking about you you particularly been very eloquent on this but like there's this option here for like what does he want to do this like what is he going to learn in the finale that's gonna that's gonna say to him actually i want to defend people i want to protect people i want to be able to do these things right and so i choose that for me and how can i use my creativity yeah and like these things that matter to me in order to accomplish that so like i i do believe little fear toxin john when he's like you never wanted this i think definitely like you didn't want it that it has to be true like 70 30. 70 30 like you didn't want the thing that they made you think you had to want and that you had no choice for anything else like you didn't want to like version of it and it only shot off your head yeah and in that way but that doesn't mean that there's not a part of what the ring represents that john admires or that he thinks would allow him like even when you know in episode six the the arc pitch like you know you and rob did a great job of breaking down that scene and all of the intricacies there like the fact that john has okay i wanted to be an architect and i'm creative right i'm creative like but also he is still trying to figure out a way to help people and like yeah and you know like well why don't the great carrie noah johnson like well why don't you call it like something else like yeah that was all really interesting and so i think that there is something that the and just you know john is a marine and john is a soldier and john is somebody who is a part of in many respects a core you know john is john like was told by so many people by parents like you have to go take this from someone else take the ball take the ball right i just think it's interesting for him to become so disenchanted with those institutions and then still say you You disrespected the institution. And I like that he can be a character who doesn't have to shut himself off from what that could represent for him and his version of the thing in order to, like, prove that to somebody else. It's just that he has to find his own path to it. I thought that the, like, you know, that kind of, like, okay, you're alone in that boat sailing into the toxin. It's all around you. It's in the air. It's in the water. It's in the rain. Loneliness as vulnerability. Isolation as vulnerability. Shutting yourself off from other people's vulnerability. Getting a glimpse of how it's when Hal pops back, he is able to pull John out, as we hear him say, pull the gun away from his head. My point is, like, I don't even think Hal ever left. Yeah. Because he's like, all of a sudden, you lost your marbles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's, like, absorbing it all. Yeah. But the fact that, like, John thinks that he is, like, I'm sailing forward alone. Yeah. And that's when he is vulnerable to that. Well, that's part of the fear, too, right? Yeah. He's just sort of like, you're all alone here on this boat. Yeah. All right. Just very harrowing. And then, yeah, like, I thought that everything, the Jordan boys legacy thing, I mean, like you said, we've talked about it a lot. Very good. Really, really, really, really, really great. And I think that, like, we've talked about it from the first minute of the pod. Just the show's thesis on fear really coming fully into light here, you know, with the broken line, like, I'm not fearless because I'm brave. I'm fearless because I'm broken. That that is what this show was interested in exploring, that working through your fear with other people and not feeling like you have to tell everybody that you're fearless, that you have to put in a box, that internal box, all of the things that you're scared to examine. Right. It's such a badass moment when he's like, ask me if I'm afraid, you know, like, fuck no. Yeah. And then minutes later, it's just like drowning in a swamp of fear toxin. All right. How could you not be? It's new survivor season. It's outweighed outplay outlast. Here are three castaways. It's the hologram. Yeah. With mere minutes left on his his ring time. I know this. The charge has lasted longer this time than the last five percent reupted. But I'm not. I'm not mad about it. Yes. But how did like fly with it on and then immediately fell out of the sky because it was out of charge. I'm wondering if like project and we'll also John is better at everything than how is more efficient energy. Yeah, I believe it. So, like, I wonder if projecting someone just takes way less energy than it's like asking your phone to just sort of like sit there versus asking it to like run five apps at once. Yeah. The hologram mere minutes left on his lifespan. It seems like John freshly ponchoed and Sinestro. Sinestro is here. Very exciting. It's great to have Sinestro here. In the finale. The greatest answer to a mystery is a person. Trini, they're playing our song. The two of them are now, you know, they've been at odds. You know, you did this great job earlier in the season of tracking sort of like Hal and John together, Hal and John separately, Hal and John in different timelines, blah, blah, blah. And this is just like finally at long last, Hal and John working together the way that they should in perfect synchronicity. Great arm kid. Like, I think, you know, you are like a son to me. And this is our family and all of that, like really wonderful. Let her rip. The idea that progress for primary Hal and John was not possible in the way that we hoped it was. But that doesn't mean progress in a form is not possible. It's like such an empowering and really beautiful message. All it takes is like you just have to die. And then like a projection of yourself from 20 years ago can heal the rifts inside the various relations. This is a lesson at the end of the day that we all need Guy Gardner. Because would this have been possible without him? He had to go get the ring. It's something to think about. I'll think about it. Father to son plays again. And in the flashback, Hal goes to get that ball. Anything we haven't talked about? I feel like we've done all the Theory Corner stuff that I wanted to do throughout. Oh, let's see. Who killed Hal? How'd Sinestro get there? Yeah. Did Carrie and Hal fuck? I mean. And how often? Constantly. What else is there to do? Will Earl eat someone? Will that shotgun go off? Yes. I actually think maybe the shotgun won't. Like the shotgun will fail, but Earl will succeed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Will we find out what Billy's dip is? I don't know if there's time for that. Of all the things that we have. What happens at the game? Right? We got the game. Are they winning the game against Chadron or whatever they're called? Are the Scurs getting a new quarterback? Yes. These are all great. Great questions. So in the little, like at the end of the episode, you know, the little preview for the finale. Why do they have a chunk of Hal's arm? Right. So we get Sinestro basically making. It seems like John is basically going to like tie up Sinestro, interrogate him, and Sinestro is going to make like a fear pitch. That's kind of the beginning of this like teaser for the finale. Ben Linus, we miss you. This could not be more our shit. Honestly. A little Manhunter arm divot for Hal. Obviously, it's worrying. When in the imprisonment did that happen? What does that mean? Does that mean that? Because I think we are both like still feeling that it would be less satisfying if the Hal who died was revealed to be a Manhunter. But does that mean that a Manhunter version of Hal is going to be deployed in the finale? Like a recreation of Hal? Or that they used his DNA for something else? Like what do they do with that if they have it? It feels to me unlikely that we would learn that they took part of Hal's flesh and did nothing with it. What would be the point of that? Huh. I guess it could just be to get him in a Manhunter lair so he learned about Noah. Maybe. Do you think you're real? Uh, has anything to do with that? Carrie being like, you're real? Maybe. Is there like a Manhunter version of him around somewhere? Yeah. She's like, you're real. You're not my Manhunter Hal sex bot that I've been keeping for myself. You could 3D print Kyle Chandler, would you? Well, it's like, um, Be Right Back, the Great Black Mirror episode, like AI Ash. Yeah. You know, they had so much sex because he never tired, but like it wasn't the same at the end of the day. But maybe worth a try. Just to find out for sure. Um, there's a lot of Kyle Chandler. In the preview for the finale. A lot. So how, my question is like, how much of that is Halogram with the remaining charge or can we re-up the charge? How much of that is flashbacks? Were you tracking the assault and pep? And, and what he's wearing and there's some different stuff in the mix. Like some of it certainly, I mean, we see how, what would you do? John says, don't be afraid to be afraid. Feels like, like, here we go. Boom. Real like thesis of the show. That felt like Halogram had to be right. But there's like a firebomb in his Chekhov's house. Oh, is that a, that house didn't look like it had previously burned. So is it, and he's, is that the Halogram or is that a Manhunter Hal deployed to, to what end? I honestly, I don't really have a good theory for that, but like, I feel like there's a possibility that we see a Manhunter Hal in the finale. Um, and certainly I don't want it. I don't know what, how it would feel. I take the pinch from his arm. I think what you and Rob talked about last week, though, feels like a lock that we have to get one more version of. The bleacher scene. Again, there's a quick glimpse of Carrie walking up the bleachers. So the, not only because of the reveal of who killed Hal, that of course that has to happen in the finale, but more so like the emotion behind it for the characters and where they are at that point. Um, and then, yeah, how much of the setup is about John for the future, but how much of it is like, what are we setting up with Sinestro and maybe the Sinestro core and like fear and parallax? I don't know that it does feel like a lot to do in an hour. But it could be a longer run time. We don't know yet. It could be that it's maybe, yeah, maybe this is like a 20 finale or something. That's possible. Um, because all of them have been south of an hour, but yeah, maybe that one's a little bit, a little bit meatier. I don't know. Or maybe they're just going to do a lot with a little, which is what they did in this episode. Thank you, Mallory Rubin. Thank you, Joanna Robinson. Great to be back with you talking about the show. I'll be sad when it's over. One more episode, but then we'll have other things to talk about vision quest rings of power. Uh, Dune. Sheesh. Yeah. Doomsday. Doomsday. Avengers endgame re-release wicker made a gajillion dollars. Did you go? Didn't mean either. I was in Hawaii, but I do know what the, uh, extra scenes were. Oh, really? Do they sound worth it? Sure. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Exciting. Um, thank you. Thank you. Thank you to our lantern core here today. Jake Cornett, Scott Lee, Demi Ogich, Aaliyah. Is working on this episode. I don't know what Aaliyah is doing on this episode, but very excited to find out. Thank you to our squad. Show me a dinner on our junior, our junior Rick Powell, Molly Rubin, Joanna Robinson. See you soon. Bye. Bye. Shop Black Friday appliance savings and get up to an extra $1,250 off select appliance purchases. Like GE profile plus free delivery on appliance purchases of $398 or more. 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