The 2025 Spring Mailbag
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This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever finish a movie and the next thing you know, you're totally obsessed? Like I'm talking about ordering a book about 70s film lighting or buying the soundtrack on vinyl. Kind of obsessed. Whatever it is, Prime helps you get more out of whatever passions you're into or getting into. Head to amazon.com slash prime and follow your obsession wherever it goes.

This episode is brought to you by Lionsgate. From the world of John Wick comes the movie Ballerina, only in theaters June 6th. The greatest action franchise of the past decade is back, starring Ana de Armas and Keanu Reeves, returning as John Wick. Everything you love is here, the mythology, the characters, the high-intensity action. But this time, the universe expands with new faces, new settings, and even higher stakes. Ballerina, only in theaters June 6th.

Hello, welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson. Joining me today, her eyes are shining, her hair is glossy. She's just my favorite person on this planet. It's Molly Rubin. It's mailbag time. Nothing I love more than being with you and the bad babies. Listen, hello. Welcome back to House of R. We've been covering a lot of very weighty, in-depth, wonderful television for the last few weeks. And we thought we would just take a

quick breather and do a mailbag episode. Yeah. Fun and breezy mailbag episodes. We have some lingering, the last of us, uh, thoughts and questions and ideas from, from you folks, the bad babies. Um, but then we also have just like some fun and random prompts from you as well.

uh, which you sent to us, hobbitsanddragons.gmail.com. So thank you so much for your mailbag prompts. We got a lot of great emails from you guys. Thank you so much as ever. Um, so yeah, we're just going to zip through some mailbags, thoughts and feelings and questions and comments and ideas. And I can't wait to, uh, go deep with you on book clubs and survivor and Buffy and all of our passions that we don't always get to dedicate a lot of time to here on a house. Um,

Quick programming reminders before we get into the mailbag. What is happening on our feed next week? I don't know. How much do we want to keep that a little bit of a mystery? I would think we're going to keep next week a little quiet. We've got some balls in the air. Genuinely exciting stuff, but I don't want to jinx it by announcing it. Some things cooking that we're hyped about that could definitely change due to a number of different travel schedules and other sorts of schedules. So...

We have, we are very excited. We're not just making this up. We have very exciting plans. I just don't like to jinx them. So keep your eye out for whatever it is we're going to do. Um, the midnight boys pew pew, uh, you know, did their mission impossible vinyl reckoning reactions. And, uh, next week they're doing a racist movies draft, which is going to be a totally fine and cool and normal episode. And I can't wait to hear it. Um, and,

Button Mash wrapping up their Last of Us coverage and also Elden Ring Night Rain instant reactions from Ben Jummin Limburg.

And of course, the ringer best recommends for May. So that's all the stuff, including some really fun, I think, mystery stuff from House of R. Once our schedule is set for next week, should we see if Jeff Probst is available to reveal our plans the way that he revealed the Survivor 50 cast? I think he'd absolutely do that for you, Mallory Rubin, and you alone. Do you want to explain to people who don't know how that happened, how it happened? Picture it. Jeff had a picture of it.

Picture it. You're at Final Tribal slash in a filming studio somewhere in there. Jeff Probst is. Dimples dimpling. I was about to say, firelight gleaming off the dimples. Yeah. Everything that you could hope and dream. And he's pulling out of the urn. It's not the vote. It's the reveal. One...

cast member at a time. All 24 of them, except not because two of them are mysteries at the end, because we have two season 49 participants in season 50. Interesting. Yeah, real interesting. Real interesting. We'll get to that later. And, you know, Jeff managed to make reading people's names for five minutes Oscar-worthy cinema. I was wrapped. Excellent. Okay. Okay.

Mallory Benn. Yes, ma'am. How can folks keep track of all the great content we have that they can both listen to on Spotify, the app of their choosing, or watch on Spotify app or on YouTube at Ringverse? Thanks.

Thanks for asking. Here's what I would recommend. It's simple. Follow the pod. Follow House of R. Follow the Ring of Verse on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. As Joe noted, we are on video. You can watch full video episodes of House of R and Midnight Boys, pew pew, on Spotify and on the Ring of Verse YouTube channel. So subscribe there as well. If you're like, what are you guys doing on video? Well, just a couple minutes ago while Joanna was doing our intro.

There was about, I'd say, a 27-second period where I was trying to catch in midair a cat hair that was floating in front of my eyes. If you're not watching on video, you missed that.

Something to think about. Okay, great. We're also on the social media platform of your choosing. There are other things that happen on video. Sometimes Mallory does dance moves. That's true. Yeah, that's true. I often will gesticulate wildly and then pull a muscle. There's that to look forward to as well. No, our video team is...

fucking killing it as always and working incredibly hard to bring this show and so many other Ringer shows to you on video. So check them out on video if you haven't yet. You can watch it right in the Spotify app or on YouTube. Follow the Ringerverse on social media as well. The Ringerverse is on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and for episodes such as this one, but just in general, send us your emails. The inbox is open. Hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com. Keep them coming. Is it too late to start emailing us about Superman?

Or is it too early? I should say. It's definitely not too late. It's never too early. No. Did you see the clip of Nick Holtz and David Kordeswett on Instagram talking about how David's like number one flaw is the way that he likes to correct people's grammatical errors and syntax? And then Nick Holtz, our favorite, says that's very pernickety of you. And he's like, it's persnickety. And Nick's like, see? Yeah.

Wow. Whether that was genuine or a bit incredible either way. Absolutely love it. A great bit from our guy, Nick Holtz. Love it. Just top tier. Really good stuff. So, you know, the press tour has already started. Please, please keep us involved in, in your minds and your thoughts and your prayers. And we are going to, at some point, maybe not next week, maybe sometime soon, I'm going to do a hype meter for the summer in which, you know, we'll certainly be thinking about Superman. Anything else? Spoiler warning.

I don't really know what the spoiler warning should be for today. I mean, we'll obviously be talking about Last of Us. We have multiple Last of Us questions. And we'll be hitting... If you haven't watched Andor on Last of Us, that's a spoiler warning you should take seriously. Other than that, I think it's pretty loose, pretty open today. Yeah. We'll talk about the topic and then you can be like, oh, I don't want to know anything about who's on Survivor 50 or whatever it is. So, you know. All right. Should we get right into it? Let's fucking do it, dude. Let's do it, baby. Okay.

I'm not going in any order that you can predict. It's just what Joanna feels like reading first. So here we go. Here we go. Wow, what a twist. Well, right now it's like alphabetical by topic and that's not really necessarily what we need to do. Okay, our listener Elizabeth wrote in to let us know that the Washington Nationals, which is a baseball team, has a Tolkien book club. Yes. Ironically, there are only eight of them on the journey through Middle Earth. If you were to have a book club, I don't get that. Okay, if you were to have a book club with a professional baseball team,

Which team would you pick and what would you read? This is, as I texted you last night when we received this prompt and we're considering including it today, a real life version of the worst person you know just made a great point meme for me because the Washington Nationals are the regional Washington sports teams. I am a Baltimore sports fan, so Washington is the enemy. The Nats are the enemy. Mm-hmm.

And learning that the Nats not only have a book club, but are reading Tolkien, are reading Lord of the Rings is so charming that I am enraged that I have to find something the Nats are doing winning and charming. I do like this little nugget from Elizabeth that they could not figure out how to get a real Fellowship of Nine going and had to stop at eight. Great stuff.

If we were to have a book club with a professional baseball team, I mean, I know my choice. It's the Baltimore Orioles. God damn it. Obviously. Obviously. I'm going to read a little quote to you from the WAPO, the Washington Post article about this book club, though, before I reveal what I'll be picking to read with the Orioles. Okay.

Finnegan and Williams have been joined by Irvin, Soroka, and fellow starter Mackenzie Gore. Wild to learn that Mackenzie Gore is in this book club. Designated hitter Josh Bell, outfielder Alex Call, and first baseman Nathaniel Lowe represent the position players. Though Bell said he didn't intend to join, someone just put the books in his locker. Ha ha ha!

just a remarkable nugget inside of this article about the Nats talking should I leave a book for you inside of like the mail room lockers just to let you know that we're doing that would be like no you should leave the book inside of the bowl of haichu in the pit stop yeah when you fish around to the bottom of the bowl of haichu then you get it's not actually not going to be a book it's going to be the DVD collection of Buffy season one waiting for you at the bottom of a bowl of haichu

Fantastic stuff. I feel like I know what mailbag question we're going to next after that little tease. By the way, I will be texting you later. My new order has arrived because yes, I have finished these six bags of Hi-Chew that

It came just a couple weeks ago, and now I've gotten an eight-pack, and I will be texting you a photo later. And I think the next time I see you— Like new flavors? Couple new flavors, couple new variety pack offerings. I don't know at this point how I have teeth. I also don't know. Or a stomach lining. And I'm not sure I do. I was just at the dentist, and they were like—

Your teeth are looking pretty good. I'm like, thanks so much. But also, I don't think they should because whenever I go to LA, the Hi-Chew situation is not a good one. I think it's a great one. This is how Spotify keeps us coming back to the office. I mean, first of all, there's our paycheck, which is one thing. But also, there are bowls of Hi-Chew everywhere. Delicious. No free ads. So many flavors. No free ads. But Hi-Chew, if you're listening. Yeah, sponsor us. Yeah.

And LaCroix if you're out there. So I will be starting a book club with the Baltimore Orioles, my favorite team. And we will perhaps unsurprisingly be selecting a Star Wars book to read in our Baltimore Oriole book club because the current Orioles roster is full, full of Star Wars obsessives. Full of Star Wars obsessives. Not just casual Star Wars fans. Like these guys are watching Rebels. They're in deep. When Tony Gilroy calls Rebels the cartoon, they're like,

Excuse me, sir. You mean Star Wars Rebels. We will be picking a Star Wars book that I think is a necessary way to process what is happening this season. Because, Joanna, it breaks my heart to tell you, you, a person who loves, supports, and encourages me and will ask me every now and then,

you know, is it their year? Can I just, can I just tell you something really quickly, just really, really quickly. Do you know what the Orioles record is right now? Is that what you're about to tell me? I don't need to ask you because here's what happens to me on social media. People are constantly asking me to check in on your wellbeing given what is going on with the Orioles this year. The,

The Orioles so far to this point in the season have been one of the worst teams in baseball. They are 19-36. They are in last place in the American League East. This was not what was supposed to happen. Here's what was supposed to happen this year. They were supposed to win the World Series. So it's been tough. But

All that means is that we have a rich reading and learning experience ahead of us because we will be reading Claudia Gray's Master and Apprentice. And in doing that, we will not only share a great Star Wars story together, but we will learn about and reflect on phases of life, trials and tribulations, perspective, expectations, the journey from student to teacher, pupil to master, and specifically what is required to overcome.

this is a great book for the obi-wan and qui-gon heads like the two hosts of house of art it's just an incredible like incredible reading experience a lot of dooku in this book real avaros one of my uh the favorite star wars characters and i won't get into the plot particulars here spoiler for anyone who hasn't read but like a lot of the book is about moving through the perspective of

understanding where a person was when they were a Padawan and then when they become a master, what happens if you are a Padawan and you think you're supposed to get something from the relationship with your master and then that is lacking or it is different than what you expect it to be. When you move to a certain point and you think the next thing that's supposed to happen is thing X and then it's thing Y and you have to adapt in real time, how do you confront that circumstance? And I believe that this would be a rich experience

and necessary reading experience for the 2025 Baltimore Orioles, who, again, are in last place. This sounds very healthy and a very therapeutic exercise for your boys over there. What about you? What are you going with? My pursuit is not quite as pure, and it's this. I am using this prompt to

as a sneaky backdoor way to forward my agenda of befriending my favorite

um, baseball player, uh, which is Hunter Pence. Um, so Hunter Pence and I will be co-running. Okay. The book club for the San Francisco giants. Obviously it's the San Francisco giants. Okay. And, um, or orange recognize orange across, across the board here at Mallory. Okay. So, uh,

And here's some things I know about Hunter Pence. He's a gamer. He loves Magic the Gathering. He loves D&D. He Twitch streams playing D&D sometimes. He and his wife opened up like a gaming themed coffee shop in Houston. But they are like doubling down, you know, bouncing back and forth between Bay Area and Texas has been a thing in Hunter Pence's career, but they are anchored in the Bay Area. They are all in on, you know,

being part of the community, all this sort of stuff like that. So I really do feel like Hunter Pence would want to run a book club with me for the San Francisco Giants. And in order to make sure that he wants to do that, we can either read Magic the Gathering novelizations, which do exist.

Or to sort of feed... Because that is, like, I think his chief passion is Magic the Gathering. Of which I know nothing about, really. So, like, this could be very quite educational for me of a new, like, lore and universe. The Magic the Gathering, as far as my research has determined, the Magic the Gathering novelizations are not, like...

The top tier novelizations that have ever existed of an IP property. Okay. So alternatively, we could turn to books that I loved and mentioned on this podcast, which is the Dragonlance series, which is for the D&D heads and have some actually like exquisite novels that exist inside of that series. So if Hunter Pence is listening to me, listening to this, which he's not, but if he is,

And he has ever seen me like shyly look at him from across the room at like various movie press greetings that I've attended with him. But I've never spoken to him because it's Hunter Pence. I would like to run...

a Dragonlance book club for the San Francisco Giants with you. And I think there are a lot of, like, to your point, in genre storytelling, there's a lot of lessons to be learned for, you know, our heroes. You know, you can swing a sword, you can swing a baseball bat, you know, go down swinging either way, which is a phrase that I learned has to do with baseball. So...

This is what I brought to the table. Here's my follow-up question for you. I love this. Love this. Will the Joanna Robinson Hunter Pence book club have official merch, and will that merch be knee-high socks? Obviously. Okay. I assumed it wasn't given, but I did want to confirm. Of course.

We're wearing our book club uniform pants tucked into knee-high socks that will be themed for the book that we are reading. And I just want to make this really clear about Hunter Pence. I have like a friendship crush. Hunter Pence is like a classic wife guy and it's one of my favorite things about him. So this is nothing...

like weird. This is like, I love that Hunter Pence loves kale. I love that he loves being part of community service. I love that he's a nerd. I'm a big Hunter Pence fan as a person and I just want to be pals and run a book club with him. So fantastic. A real listener, Elizabeth wrote this email, but if she, if she has helped me get a step closer to my dream, what a, what a, I will take the opportunity, you know, I'll grab on with both hands. So that's my plan. It's beautiful. Call me.

service go giants okay um where do you want to go next wherever you want to take me baby okay baby let's go countdowns this comes from brian this one made me laugh brian says he appreciates all the great and deep reflective content one thing that he's lost track of over time are all of the countdowns that are going on in the house of r could the ringer what a great website great website

House of Arpage have a bunch of countdowns. And if not, can we get occasional cross-the-board countdown updates? The ones I can think of so far are for Shimmer the Horse from The Last of Us, the Loth-Cat from Ahsoka. Sweet Merly, yeah. Merly. Cobb Banff, the icon, the legend, the original. We're still counting. That's awesome.

Does Timothy Olyphant in the Apple TV Plus show Stick count? No. Does Timothy Olyphant in Alien Earth count? No. It's Cobb Van Thuris, get the fuck out, okay? And I don't know that we've ever done a countdown for Mephisto, but certainly we've said, hey, where is Mephisto? So certainly we could do. It's been this many days since we started speculating where is Mephisto and we haven't seen him. But listen, Mephisto.

So that might be... Ironheart is coming soon and rumors abound. Okay. So Mallory, I mean, in terms of topics for what could go on a House of Art countdown, do you have anything you want to add to this illustrious list? So the interesting thing about Brian's email, which really made me chuckle, was the...

I've lost track of part. You know, one thing I've lost track of over time, and I'd like to say Brian's same. You know, I wish we could claim to have perfect recall of all of the countdowns, but we can commit moving forward to tracking this with the diligence and intent that we pride ourselves on here at the House of R, whether we are doing serious literary criticism or just wondering why.

the state of Cobb-Vance's skin and wounds inside of a bacta tank, whatever the case may be. How long can one marinate in a bacta tank? It's a great question. It's a great question. So maintaining these countdowns in the future sounds like a delightful idea here. There are the two other things this made me think of. So I was like, what have we in the past? Like, how many days has it been since X? It made me think about if we had been covering

Game of Thrones together. In real time. Oh. Brand? A brand counter? A brand counter, but a ghost counter. A ghost counter? Between... A Jorah counter? A Jorah. Between season six, episode three, and season eight, episode two, the anguish-inducing wait for Ghost...

Boy, that would have been something to track. This is not a countdown, but I'd like to throw out one other idea for formal tracking moving forward. Yeah. It's a lot of stuff that we're saying here on the record we're going to track and then neither of us is going to do. But if any of the bad babies are data nerds and they want to do this, we love an infographic. It's true. It's true, we do. I would like to suggest a formal maintained list of all of the times that we have said

I'm not an ex. All of the professions that we have gone out of our way to make sure it is abundantly clear we are not professionally capable of or participating in. We're not doctors. We're not scientists. We are not mathematicians. On and on the list goes. I believe recently we said we are not meteorologists. We're not meteorologists. How long could this be? We're not religious. We're not parents. We're not a lot of things, you know, but we are here.

We are podcasters. We are people who eat a lot of high chew, you know? It's true. It's true. How many days since we last, how many days since Mallory last went to the optometrist? How many days since Mallory last went to the dentist? You know, like these are questions that her mom texts me sometimes, but I would like to add a couple other suggestions. What do you got? They're mostly Mallory based because I just spend a lot of time observing you. Okay. Uh,

Number of times that Mallory hits us with the Dave Matthews band acolyte drop. It's gone way down, but it was abundant. There it is. There's another one. Okay.

Number of beverages that any one of us has. This is video based. You got to watch the videos to know this. Because at any given time, Mallory usually has like a reasonable two, like a hot and a cold sometimes or a cold brew and water. Like that's the sort of thing. I often have upwards of like four on my desk and you will see me take a sip of a Topo Chico, a LaCroix, a coffee, you know, any other given things. So beverage counter. Great one.

Lip bomb swipes. We recently, no free ads on this podcast. We recently had a bad baby email to ask what kind of lip balm Mallory uses. Yeah. No free ads, but it's Aquaphor. Okay. If you want to be like Mallory, you got to get the Aquaphor lip balm. So a running counter of lip balm swipes. A complete list of things that Mallory Rubin finds iconic.

Oh, my God. These are going to be really long lists. Chapstick applications and uses of iconic. Geez. A complete list of the most important moments that have ever existed on television. Yeah. That ever have and ever will ever exist on television, according to Mallory Rubin. The 947 examples of the times I've said that these 100 things are the top five versions of that thing. Yeah.

Last but not least. Almost as clear and easy to follow as the plot of Mission Impossible Final Reckoning. Last but not least, this is for me, some sort of wig infographic. A wig-based sort of... Maybe we need to come up with a taxonomy a la a classic Jodie Walker sort of four-quadrant infographic. I think this is a great idea. I think that it's easy also to see the evolution of the project. How long...

until we build toward a 3D digital rendering. You know, like think about if you're shopping for some furniture and you can like tear a shoe, you can, you know, rotate, place it in your living room, rotate it, really get the full effect. Imagine doing that for wigs, but with your commentary. Yeah, it's color, it's texture. It's like, can you see the lace?

You know, there's a lot of things we need to consider when we consider wigs. Is it an abomination? Is it a ringing success? Luthen's flashback brush cut goes down here. Captain America's blonde wiglet is a rousing success. You love a wiglet. That's another thing we can formally keep track of is how many TMs do we have? You know, how many TKTM with TKTM?

Joanna Robinson, TM. Do we have? Luthier Corner TM with Joanna Robinson, TM. It's an expanding canon at this point. I kind of biffed that one, but we'd love to see it. Okay. Are you referring to the time that you thought they put a human bone on the guitar? Is that what you mean? I stand by it. Okay. It's a zombie. It's a zombie show. Who cares? All right.

I think we did it. But anyway, this is not something we will track. It's not something our beleaguered producers who have to edit down multiple hours of content from us a week will track. But, you know, listen, if anyone is out there and they love a spreadsheet, let us know. Okay. This one comes from Neaton. I'm going back to Star Wars. Ryan Reynolds wants to make an R-rated Star Wars movie. Mm-hmm.

Dave Filoni has said, maybe if the idea is good, we're making our rated Star Wars movie. So what would your top five R-rated Star Wars plotlines look like? And Neaton is guessing that Mallory's would involve Obi-Wan and Satine. So Mallory, what do you got for us here? What a thrilling prospect this is.

Boy, did the imagination run wild. Though also not. I was like, I think everything we're about to say is incredibly predictable and nobody will be surprised by any of it. Can we go back and forth? Let's do it. I'm going to just say, because I agree, I think the question from Neaton

yes, Obi-Wan and Satine, as discussed many times on prior podcasts with spinoff ideas and dream story ideas in Star Wars, it's so clearly my number one and obviously I would want it to be R-rated and very explicit that I'm not even going to put it in this. Why haven't I mentioned it? Yeah, let's just assume it's a lock, it's a given, and let's talk about other ideas. So instead of that, which again is a given and a lock and a thing I believe we deserve, my R-rated romance will be

An Asajj Ventress, Quinlan Vos story. This is for the Dark Disciple heads. This is for the Tales of the Underworld heads. I think this would be electric and that it is frankly outrageous that we haven't gotten it yet.

Great pick. I think what has been really fun about this exercise is like trying to consider what could get us an R rating because there's sexual content, there's language, there's violence that, you know, like, like what are, what are the things? Three of my five involve sex. To be clear, I don't know that we need R rated Star Wars, but it's fun to think about. Like, it was actually kind of challenging to me to think about, like, where would I put the sex, the violence, the language or whatever. Yeah. Did all of the ones you ended up coming up with involve incest inside of the Skywalker family?

No. None. Just four of the five? No. None. Interesting. Okay. Same. Is that a preview? Okay. I'll put, I have two, I have two sex-based ones. Tell me. Here's my top. My number one pitch. The one we really deserved. And it's season two of The Acolyte. This is my next one as well. And it's Kymer and Osha and their master and apprentice training that will also, of course, involve copious sexual content. Um,

Acolyte season two are rated. Give it to us. We deserve it. So this is my next one too, though. I will say I have, I'm, I'm, I don't need it to be the Acolyte season two, but I do need it to be a Chimera. Chimera and Osha movie. Yes. I don't even really need Osha to be there. I just need, I'm sorry. I don't, I need it. I, that would be great if that was the form it took, but if it took place elsewhere in the life of the stranger, like earlier, I,

But later, I'm open to all sorts of permutations of this as long as we got managers into playing Chimera again in an erotic thriller in Star Wars. That is the thing that we need. Okay. What if, and I know you're going to be like, but what about the timeline? Don't worry about timelines. Okay. No. I assume that time travel is a given for the exercise. We replace Osha with House Hottie, Shin Hottie from The Acolyte.

Oh, Chimera and House Honey having evil sex together and probably killing people. My God. You've got a pitch that you should ship to Lucasfilm. She might need a new master. You know, like we don't know what's going on in her master apprentice set up here. So all I could think about and reflect on.

A lot of what we do here, we try to reflect. Yeah. Was the moment in episode six of The Acolyte when Chimere said, feels good, doesn't it, to hold one in your hand again? And it is unfair that we are being deprived of more of that. I actually think our top countdown of the sexual innuendos from Chimere is maybe one of our best reforming social media assets we've ever put out in the world. So...

Listen, people come to House of R for a lot of different things, and one of them is your trademark horniness. Okay, since we shared a wish for Chimere, is it my turn again? It is. Okay. Should I get all of my sex out of the way, or should I veer towards violence? That's each person's personal preference. Okay. This doesn't need to be a whole movie. It's just a deleted scene from The Last Jedi, and it's the way in which...

Kylo Ren and Rey definitely had sex. Whether or not they had it, like, in the throne room next to the smoking remains of Snoke's body with a Praetorian guard sort of, like, in pieces all around them. Or they ducked into, like, a corridor and then, you know. But something between, you know, their breakup and that they really deserve to have sex.

Just extremely vigorously athletic sex after the throne room fight scene, which is itself one of the best sex scenes that's ever existed in cinematic history. So, yeah. Sparks were flying there. Love that one. I have no notes. Thank you. I would also accept as an alternate version of that lingering in the Rey-Kylo-

Forced Skype? Forced timing? And, you know, a little phone sex? A little mutual masturbation? That would be wonderful. Would it come in that scene when Kylo sees a drop of Acto moisture on his glove and he closes his fist and the leather creaks? Is that when we would go right into what you're envisioning? Yes. Okay, great.

And I can't believe you didn't say phrasing after starting that sentence with, would it come in that scene? I would. I leave that up to you. When I'm talking, it's your job to say phrasing. That's the whole dance. All right. What do you got? Okay.

I'm going to save my final sex one for last. So I'll hit my violence picks here. Great. Or one of them. This is not an idea that I have come up with. It is just a way to talk about something that we very briefly talked about with Chris the other day on our Rogue One Revisited post-Andor pod. I actually genuinely can't stop thinking about the K2SO episode that we didn't get. This should be a true horror movie. Yes. Like,

They should do this. If everybody needs a little bit of a break and a little time away and then they rediscover their excitement for it, cool. But the psychological, like, body horror and terror of what it sounded like awaited inside of the story, we need. Absolutely. K2SO horror movie, 100% on my list. Yeah. My last two are language and violence. Here's my language one. Okay. Okay.

We're not bringing Lars Mikkelsen. My apologies. We are doing a Thrawn story, but it is a Thrawn story from Armando Iannucci. And we are doing the in the loop, the thick of it level story.

political infighting, backfighting, maneuvering with creative and excessively British insults thrown around. Fantastic. And that is what I would like a fuckity bye from Thrawn. I would like all sorts of things. I would just like him eviscerating people around him with the most

creative, foul language. And if they want to make it like dang ferric, like if they want to make it galactic, that's fine. But we need some actual F-bombs in there too, to earn our, our rating. So that's what I would like from this world. I love it. I'm,

Quite captivated by the idea of how Thrawn would respond to and process other people speaking that way. That's like a really fun thing to think about. Yeah, I wanted to get a Thrawn idea on my list. I'm glad that you have one. I love that. We deserve it. Once again, Disney, get on it. I'm going to stick with violence for my next one. I want a hard-R hitman story.

And I'm calling it Meatbag. And it is a Knights of the Old Republic adjacent adaptation starring HK-47 as a Jedi assassin. Love it. But savagely violent. Love it. Yeah. I really want that one. I want that one. My last one is...

I'm I'm optimized about this I could go either way I'm excited well I think the one that most people go to and they think about a lot is an idea of a Vader an R-rated Vader like do we want to see as we saw at the end of Rogue One as we saw in the Obi-Wan uh TV show like Vader at his most violent just tearing through people like is that something we want to see or does that make it harder than for us to stomach the redemption arc in Return of the Jedi if we go too dark you

you know, as certainly some of the supplemental material has, like, is that, is that something we want to see on screen and then think about Luke and Humpty Dumpty, Anakin, like having their moment and return to the Jedi, you know, like that's a question I have. What do you think? I want it. I also thought about this. I was, I was contemplating,

contemplating adapting in r-rated fashion some of the vader comics which i think is probably the move there's just so much compelling rich story in there and a lot of it is very dark and some of it is like outward darkness the violence the heart but a lot of it is just the maturity of the introspection which i think is like a really interesting thing to consider mining with vader the only reason i didn't put this on my list i was not quite so disciplined elsewhere obviously was um

you know, our, our, our vow to try to work outside of the Skywalkers for a bit. But when I say no to an R rated Vader movie, I would not. If we want to not do R rated Vader.

then might I suggest we actually use the fucking Knights of Ren for something useful and cool. And cool as shit looking. So, you know, a Knights of Ren sort of story. What's their origin? Who are they? And what are all the things that they're capable of with their very cool looking costumes and weaponry that we never got the full potential of inside of the saga? Also just the kind of like inherent violence of the

The visuals from some of like the Kylo comics canon, the burns and the, yeah, that would be great. I love that. Here's my last one I think you're going to be in. I'm ready. It's a crossover event. It is the White Lotus season four where two of the guests on a rare, rare getaway

are Deirdre Miro and Cyril Karn. Can you imagine a week of Turn Out the Lights with Deirdre and Cyril trying to enjoy themselves on vacation and not only having to interact with each other, face themselves, this is always a central proposition in White Lotus,

But like be next to people at breakfast at the resort. And Edie definitely shows up like midway through the season. We get the season one mom crashing from Edie. Exactly. And I will say once again that I believe this is something we deserve.

We are owed, frankly. On the dead refront, I will take this excuse to read this email we got from Michael, who sent a really long, beautiful email about this idea of an Andor spinoff. And I've referenced it a couple times in podcasts. And I just want to make sure that everyone knows this is not my idea. This is definitely Michael's idea, and it's so good. Yeah.

So this is the pitch and I'm not reading it in full, but I'm reading it in length. Okay. The bulk of the first season is set a few years after Return of the Jedi and Mons last year as chancellor. She fights for the soul of the Republic with an ascendant Senate faction that wants to make peace with the remnant with her now Senator daughter as a key figure. Basically Mons conflict is whether to do the right thing and step aside like Washington or succumb to the temptation to stick around to keep things quote on the right track and risk becoming what she fought against.

Pause. We've talked about this a lot, about this idea of wanting to spend time inside of how did Mon fumble the bag so excruciatingly? And Genevieve O'Reilly watching Mon's later post-rebellion later years, I think would be incredibly fascinating. More or less interesting than a spinoff that just stars Perrin.

Perrin's here, though. Perrin's obviously in this show. Like, obviously Perrin... Then I've heard all I need to hear. ...is kicking around. Okay. Resuming from Michael's email. Vel and Clea are now the leads of a unit dedicated to hunting down key Imperial leaders, both in the Remnant and hiding in the Republic. Pause. This is Joanna again. So basically, as I think I've mentioned elsewhere, this is basically...

Michael Fassbender as Magneto Nazi hunting around the globe, but make it Velenclair resuming. The twist is that their primary boss is Deirdre Miro.

Due to her being officially blamed for leaking the Death Star plans and the general Luthan erasure by feckless Alliance leaders, she was freed and promptly made herself useful in tracking down some key imps before Clea could get back to set the record straight. Dedra is, of course, playing a double game, and I love this, where she's steering the unit to pick off her enemies while maintaining enough deniability that Clea can't build the case to arrest her.

pause this is amazing bring people like blevin back in you know like what is loving up to dead was gonna find him and take him off the board she's gonna use masquerading as a hero of the rebellion dead ramiro like exacting her petty vengeances on people sounds delightful to me thrilling okay resuming last last paragraph

Michael writes, in my head, it would broadly follow the contours of Hannibal, wherein the season one Dedra is nearly perfectly hidden to all but Clea. Season two, Vel and Clea go rogue while the appeasers continue to back Dedra and season three scenes Dedra openly defect and take over a segment of the remnant, allowing our heroes to return to the fold and lead the effort to bring her down for good.

stunning her immediately gloating once she's back in prison. End of email, essentially, from Michael. This is just top-tier shit. It's amazing. It's so good that, like, Michael, can you get thee to a copyright? I just want to make sure that this idea is not stolen from you. It is so delicious. And we deserve it. I agree. So this is the Amon...

political show, a Deirdre hidden villain show, a Killing Nazis, aka Imperial show, which I love, and Vel and Clea as like, you know, be they girlfriends or not, planet hopping and, you know, bringing justice to an unjust galaxy. I'm in. Will Will? Does Will get to make an appearance? Will will. I mean, this is a question. Do you want him to stay true?

or is he just like effing his way through the galaxy? Okay. Yeah. That'll get us our R rating. Will will get us our R rating. I think it's really great that...

Will has found love and has proven loyal inside of this beautiful romance. But I really liked the idea of Will having a girl in every port. So I think that would be great. I think that this is absolutely, genuinely inspired, this idea. And the prospect, you know, in general, we talked about this a lot during like Mando season three,

Love to fuck around with the Imperial Remnant. Love a Remnant. Love to understand more about that time period. Anything about the path toward the First Order. Still interesting to me as canon that I think would be very useful to explore and expand and flesh out as we bridge toward the sequel trilogy. But now I'm going to say to you something specific that we would potentially get inside of that. And I think you were already in. I don't think you could be more in. But if you could, this would be the sentence that got you there. And here it is. Dejah Miro.

interacting with Brendal Hux. I just like flushed. It's like, and his pet cat. It's just incredible to contemplate. Yeah. Oh my God. Bring the Hux family into the mix. I would love to see every generation of the Huxes involved. And I just care a lot about,

about this idea. Tony, take a break. You deserve it. And the good news is you need these characters to age up a little bit because we've got some time to get through. So let these, you know, let these ladies get, you know, a little bit more time on the clock and then we'll come back. We're not trying to de-age anyone. We're trying to move forward. We're moving ever forward. Love this. Okay. Great idea, Michael. You just like channeled Stannis Baratheon. Moving ever forward. Only forward.

We march toward victory or we march toward defeat, but we go forward only forward. Worked out fine for him. Mallory, I have this to say to you. Go on. Do your duty. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Earning daily cash back is simple. Use Apple Card right away with Apple Pay and earn up to 3% daily cash back on everyday purchases. Pretty straightforward, right?

Check out the Apple Card Daily Cash Calculator to see how much daily cash you can earn. Visit apple.co slash card calculator today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com. We got a totally real email from a totally real listener named Jeff P. Yeah. Jeff P. asks,

Mallory, the world demands to know your Survivor 50 casting thoughts. Mike White? Seri? The shambling corpses of Coach, Ozzy, and Colby? Nerd Queen Aubrey? Tell us everything we need to know about why we should be losing our shit about the 50th season of Survivor and the cast that they have assembled here.

Dude, first of all, I'd like to thank Jeff P. for writing in today. He said, he said, dimplingly, comma, Jeff P.

Just before this very podcast, we were both recording other podcasts. You were recording Prestige TV with the icon legend, Luminary Rob Mahoney. And I was recording an episode of The Pod Has Spoken with our colleague Riley Maxey and my all-time favorite Survivor player, Tyson. Riley and Tyson have a wonderful Survivor podcast here. Would you not say Tyson is the Hunter Pence of Survivor? Oh my God. Wow. Wow. I think the energy is similar. Holy shit. Uh,

So we broke down the entire season 50 cast. We went person by person and it was fucking fun. We had a blast. So we obviously only have a few minutes here to linger on Survivor. If anybody wants to hear more, check out The Pod Has Spoken, which should be, I think, up by the time you're listening to this mailbag. I'll give you my quick takeaways here.

Everybody should read Riley McAtee's piece on this on TheRinger.com. What a great website. He wrote a wonderful column on this. I think his takeaway was exactly right. I think he nailed it. I will summarize what Riley wrote, which is basically a lot of thrilling player inclusions. 24 castaways is just astonishing. A lot of thrilling players to see on the list and a lot of interesting players and a lot of players who will probably play a really interesting game together.

However, there is so undeniably no core theme across the cast that I'm a little bit confounded by it. You don't think it's like, and as you know, I am far from an expert and most of my takes come from a, uh,

Instagram reel I saw from Kelly Wentworth and her thoughts on this, but you don't think it's like half new era, half old guard? I think they said it was going to be a spanning tapestry across time. And then we had season one and season two and then skipped season

more than a handful of seasons before the next pick. And then we jumped from seasons eight, eight season 18 to 32. I think they're just huge swaths of like missing seasons. So that I think the, it, it way over indexes on recent players to me. So that's just a little bit, I think of like a, a, that dilutes the, this is a survivor across time. I do think inside we still have the, the prospect of many interesting, like, uh,

playing styles across eras and the extra ingredient then of the in the hands of the fans element

element of this where people have gotten to vote on different aspects of the game do you want fire making at the end do you want idols etc that's this fun extra i have lots of thoughts on in the hands of the fans and whether or not it's a good idea i don't believe that i should be trusted to decide how a survivor season is structured um though i do believe that season 51 should start with a cast people who have never seen the game before you know how i feel about it do that do it like a jury um

that's an extra kind of fun element because you have not only playing styles from across time, but then like people don't even know what they're about to confront. They can't count for sure. I'm like, I'll be where advantage will be here, et cetera. So that's interesting. The thing that is missing to me, like this, just, I believe you look at season 40, which was all winners, obviously winners at war. One of the great, one of the great seasons in survivor history, iconic added to the fucking counter. Just said it iconic, genuinely iconic players. Like it was almost going to be impossible. I think to, to match that,

I believe that the move would have been the best who never won. And I think that's close to what happened here, but undermined by the inclusion of two winners. I just don't understand it. I thought Kyle just played like an incredible... I love Kyle. I thought that was incredible. Putting a couple winners in, I don't know why we did that and there was a chance to do something. And then you don't have...

I think undeniably one of the fan favorites from recent seasons and also a great embodiment of the can the best player actually win their season anymore? If not, what does that mean?

So that's a little weird to me. However, Mike White is here and that is just astonishing beyond belief and amazing to me. I can't believe it. And not only that, but we're heavily indexing on David vs. Goliath, which is one of my favorite Survivor seasons. The single most exciting thing to me here. Other than just I got roasted by Tyson and Riley for being as excited as I was about Colby, but as I said to them and will say again to you here now, Colby is a very formative part of my awakening. Colby is...

as a sexual being. Kolde is very nice, but also just like the most deeply boring. Also, I just don't need like that first Outback season though. Ozzy and Coach again. Like I just don't need... Coach, I'm excited about it. I don't need Ozzy. Coach, I'm excited about it. I don't need this. Christian is the single most exciting player on the list to me though. He is my... He is my... I just think he was an extraordinary... He's one of the reasons I love David versus Goliath so much and I just thought he was like a genuinely extraordinary player. And him...

getting eliminated where he did is like one of the great what ifs and oh man, I can't wait to see him get another shot in Survivor history to me. And I think that a lot of players in the modern era who are like, I'm a scholar, I study, I can crunch the numbers, I can do the math, I'm a genius in addition to a fan,

I said this on the other podcast. Basically, they think they're Christian and only Christian is Christian. He's just like the archetype of a specific type of player to me. And I really hope he wins. Like I will be rooting hard for him. So yeah, it's an interesting, I think like just anecdotally talking to people in my life, I think most people saw the cast and they were like,

oh okay like but also it's season 50 so how could you be anything other than extremely excited i think people are really excited for i think mike white and siri are like the two people that people are kind of like most excited to see right i think um your mileage may vary and again re-winning would be amazing amazing yeah um and uh but but you know there are some people um

Like I would take Jerry apparently was like on the long list and I would take Jerry over Colby any day of the week. You know, I would take Rob, Rob's or, you know, I like, there are like people that I'm not being Rob not being here. I think quite weird. I think there's like just like a lot of people that I would take over. And the fact that it's like,

quite heavily loaded in, like, such recent seasons. Again, I really am robbing a bunch of Kelly's takes, but I, like, I really like how she talks about Survivor. So, anyway. No Carolyn. No Jessie. Just very, very, very odd if we're going this heavy on recent seasons. Very odd. Okay. So that is, uh...

The thing I worry about with Mike White is that he was such like a killer that he's going to be voted out really early. And I just hope that. That would be my expectation. Anything other than that would be a thrill. I know. Keep Mike White around, please. Okay.

All right. So that has been Survivor Corner. But please do check out the full podcast. Tell folks where they can find that again. Molly Rubin. The pod has spoken on the Ringer Reality TV podcast feed and YouTube channel. And just listen in general. If you love Survivor, Tyson and Riley make a great pod. It's so fun. That's just Tyson was really on one on this episode. He had takes. Yeah.

I like how unfiltered he is. It's incredible. It's very special. He's the best. There are certain people who are like, I don't need to go back to Survivor, so I will say whatever I want to about Survivor. And also there's some people like Tyson who are like, I can say whatever I want and they might still ask me back because I'm that good, that fun to watch on the show. My teaser for the pod is that he referred to multiple selected players as Jeff Probst's nepo babies. Wow.

It was incredible. Was Colby one of them? He shared a really interesting Colby Probst story, actually. Great. Can't wait. Okay.

We got several, and I only put two in the doc, but we got several questions. Survivor is a deep passion of Mallory's and one that she has brought me into. You know, my very, like, basic bitch, shallow takes of Survivor, I only have by virtue of the fact that Mallory's, like, watched these seasons. I've tried to watch as much as I could. Had a great time with all the Survivor I've watched. My really good friend...

This is actually really, this is a great bridge. My really good friend, Jenny Owen Youngs, who co-hosts the Buffy Vampire Slayer podcast, Buffering, won her Survivor, like, league, like, fantasy league, which comes with, like, a physical cup that she showed me on Zoom earlier this week. So, like, are you mad that you're not in a Survivor fantasy league and should we start one? Or are you already in one? Yeah.

I'm not, but I like that you thought I might be. That makes me happy. I...

I would do it. I don't know if I should be allowed to do it. Oh, you're too good. No, I just think I become unbearable. Yeah. More so than usual. That genuinely sounds fun to me. As you know, I'm no longer invited to participate in fantasy football leagues with dear friends of mine I used to play with. So, yeah. But I would give it a try. I would give it a try. Sounds like a blast. Okay. Speaking of my pal Jenny. Mm-hmm.

We got a lot of Buffy Vampire Slayer questions from folks. And I will read this one from Alexandra, who said, In a very touching video released this week, Sarah Michelle Gellar, well, this is, Emile was sent a little while ago. Sarah Michelle Gellar told our beloved fern from Skeleton Crew, Ryan Kira Armstrong, that she will be the new Slayer on the Buffy Vampire Slayer reboot. Quick pause.

Mallory, what does knowing that Fern from Skeleton Crew is going to be the lead of the new Buffy show do to you, someone who has heretofore never seen any Buffy Vampire Slayer? I thought this was... I have obviously no frame of reference for any aspect of assessing this, but I was like, that seems sick. That seems great. Because I thought she was really excellent in Skeleton Crew. And...

I got, yeah, I got really excited. I was like, oh, how interesting. How neat. How cool. Delightful. Did you happen to see this video or you just like read a news story? I did not. I read a news story. I mean, sorry, is that a weird thing to say? Did you read a news story? Do we not read news stories anymore? Okay. I read a news story. Did you read it in the trades? Okay. Yeah.

For fans of Buffy Vampire Slayer or fans of crying, this is just a really beautiful video to watch a young actress get a really, really cool part and to watch Sarah Michelle Gellar, who played Buffy originally, well, actually secondarily, get to be the one to tell her. I cried. And then I told Rob to watch it and Rob Mahoney cried. It's really good. Anyway, resuming.

uh alexander says speaking of my favorite show of all time buffy uh will we finally get a doctor who asked house of our podcast series with joe introducing mal to the slayer verse in 2025 2025 it's 2025 right now i know oh there's some there's some blank spots on the schedule when does when does the show uh when does the show come out

Oh, probably 2027 would be my guess. So we've got time. Yeah, we've got time. Yeah. I'm in. I'm in, man. I definitely, I've long, as you know, considered this a real hole, a real absence in my television education. And in general, I've always thought this is probably the thing I should see. But knowing how much it means to you, knowing how much you love it, the prospect of

getting to share it with you and you getting to like guide and accompany me through a journey. I mean, should we do what we do did with Dr. Who and spend months and months and months watching rewatching Buffy and then never record about the current season. It sounds great. Okay. I mean, we, we talked about the specials. Okay. So yeah,

That's on my 2025 bingo card is to do a bucket list is to like start. We don't, we're not going to finish, but we, I would like us to dip a toe before. I'm plugging in dude. That sounds great. And the first season.

Ordinarily, I would have a skip the first season, but you're not going to let me do that. I know. Not capable of that constitutionally. The first season is a shorty. It was a mid-season replacement show. So it's a shorty first season. So that's just something to think about. Yeah. How many episodes are we talking? Ish. The first season is only 12 episodes. Oh. Oh. Okay. Light work. Oh, yeah. We can do that. Okay. We can do that. Season one before the end of 2025. I'm...

I'm in. Okay. Lock it in, baby. As we promised, we're going to get to a lot of the last, a few, or I will say a few, the last of us questions from you guys. Before we do that, we have one last question. It's kind of the classic house of our mailbag question. We've gotten versions of it over the years.

because Mallory's dad is such an icon and a legend. And there's maybe like a slight twist on it this time around. So we're going to do what we can to answer this in a fresh and exciting way. Maggie said, my question is about a story Mal mentioned a while ago about her dad filling a bookshelf with books for her to discover on her own as a kid. I love this idea and think about it often and hope to do this for my daughter when she's old enough to be reading on her own.

Can you recommend some deep cuts outside the obvious or some, just some must haves need to make sure I'm covering all the bases on my quest to raise a kid on the right side of the rebellion. All right. Love it. So that's from Maggie. So, um, what a lovely email, Maggie. I mean, Molly, do you want to tell the story about your dad? Just in case folks,

are new to the pod. I've been getting a lot of emails recently from people who are like, I've been listening to you since the latest season of Yellow Jackets. I'm like, that's so recent. So welcome. Welcome to our home. Welcome to all of the people who had a... Wait, didn't you cover the show on another Feed Once experience with us? Welcome. Anything you want to say? Sure. Yeah. So I will quickly...

recap something I have shared many times before and usually end up weeping about. My dad's the fucking best. Barry Rubin, legend icon. The two people who got the legend icon on this episode were Rob Mahoney and Barry Rubin. Feels right. Feels right to me. And I would say Tyson and Hunter Pence. Exactly. I mean, talk about a murder's row. Talk about a murder's row, yeah. And Al Rushmore. So,

My parents divorced. They split when I was very young. I promise the story's not going to be as long as that starting point makes it seem. I was born at a hospital. And at my dad's house,

My dad has books everywhere. You know, he's got the kinds of bookcases that are just like stuff, right? Like how do you manage books on the side, on top of the book? Exactly. It's wonderful. And in my room at my dad's house when I was very young, he put just a little shelf.

filled it with books and it was just there. And it was filled with a lot of, a lot of genre books, but not exclusively genre fiction. I'll stick with genre stuff today or will I? And I,

It was always because I was a very late developing reader, like really struggled to read when I was in elementary school. I was like not till fifth grade that I became a confident reader. I was slow to learn. And but I always loved stories and loved talking about them. And my dad put this bookshelf in my room and put a bunch of his favorites and things that he he loved there for me, but never like fully.

forced him on me, never said, this is one you have to read now. They were just always there waiting for me to crack open. And I always used to, like, love looking at them and seeing all of the different veins and lines and the spines and thinking about all the times that clearly he had read them, you know? And...

One of the fun things getting this question I was thinking about is just like that my dad, my dad is like still doing this. It's just so incredible to me. I love him. He's the best. Like he still is just sending me and giving me books all the time. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, he knows about my book club with my college pal. So every now and then he's like, what are you guys going to read? Like Sotweed Factor. Every now and then he's like, I've got an actual recommendation. But mostly it's just like he'll come visit and I'll just like leave a book.

You know? Like, the last time he was here, it was just like, there was just a little stack of books waiting when he left. It's the best. He's great. And I've told you the story before about my, the copy of Dune that has his inscription in it that, like, I just opened, like, a box of my stuff when I was unpacking at my college dorm. And, like, there it was.

There was. He's the best. So I decided to answer this by giving three actual examples of books that were on the Barry Rubin bookshelf that I want to be clear, I do not think fill the...

deep cuts outside the obvious parts of the prompt, but I do think, Phil, the must-haves part of the prompt and are ones that I, you know, talk about on the pods, I think, a little bit less frequently than the Dunes and Watership Downs and Hobbits and Cat's Cradles of the Worlds, all of which were also on the show. Cat's Cradle was on the show?

It was. There's a lot of Vonnegut on the shelf. I would say an outsized portion of Vonnegut compared to how many other authors are represented. I'm so sorry. Can you remind me how old you were when he gave you that shelf? I would have to ask him if he knew the year. I would say it probably popped up late in middle school. Okay. Probably. Okay. Um...

And I think I was really like beginning to spend time with it in high school, which was when I became like a serious reader. Like high school was when we would go on Outer Banks vacation. So I would be like, I'm staying home today to finish this book. Like that did not start happening for me until high school, really. Yeah, I was looking at a picture of it. I was like, there's The Hobbit. There's Watership Down. Like this is just, this is great. All right, so here are the three I'm going with.

Again, not deep cuts, but definitely must-haves that are not doing Watership Down, things I talk about all the time. I do talk about this one actually quite a bit. Nightfall and Other Stories, the Isaac Asimov collection. This is a collection of 20 short stories. It's one of the first things I pulled off the shelf. And I cannot overstate just for me personally the significance of reading Nightfall for the first time and how that...

unlocked something in my mind about what science fiction can do and the way to explore it's just it's a masterwork uh when it comes to exploring perspective um and scale it's fantastic my next nomination is the left hand of darkness ursula k leguin my stepmom debbie

Legend icon. There you go. We have our fifth. I think she would probably sub in Earthsea here, but Left Hand of Darkness was on the shelf and Earthsea wasn't, so here we are. You know, this is just, this is obviously a masterwork, but as

as we talked about on another mailbag recently, I think we talk about the Ursula masterworks maybe a little less frequently than some of the masterworks. And this is just one of the most stylistically inventive stories. You know, the guidebook structure, it will unlock a lot for like the creative mind of a young reader. And in terms of the theme, the themes that it explores, just like,

You know, the way that this novel examines exposure to different cultures that one might consider alien, the role of sex and gender in our lives, how we come to understand and connect to each other. It is exquisite and timeless. So that would be that would be my second. And then again, I would like to be clear. These are not deep cuts. These are all real.

titanic tomes of consequence but I don't actually talk about this when I talk about the dad book recommendations as much and this is probably the single most important like thing in my formative years as a reader other than Tolkien with my dad the Canterbury Tales like

My dad is such a Chaucer obsessive and will just recite verse from memory kind of routinely for fun. But this as like a study in language, I think if you have a kiddo who is interested in reading and writing and storytelling and the way that stories are like passed out and shared, this just has to be there. It has to be. Have I done my party trick for you where I can recite the prologue in Middle English?

Of the Canterbury Tales? Okay. You've been holding out on me. That's something that my high school English teacher offered as like extra credit if we could come in and recite the prologue in Middle English, we got extra credit. So I learned it in Middle English. Yeah. I'm waiting.

I want to do it for your dad. That's who I want to impress with that. Let me tell you, I feel like this has all been building up to me. He's already an admirer, but that would really impress your dad. I don't really feel it. Can do the prologue to Canterbury Tales. Canterbury Tales is a really fun one too. Canterbury Tales, actually everything you mentioned really feeds into Canterbury Tales.

sort of what I want to address here, which is not necessarily specific titles, though I have a few, but like sort of my twin, as I was thinking about this prompt, my twin ideas about

the kind of books, kinds of book I think are good to give to children. Yeah. And this might be just like my, my, I grew up in the eighties mentality sort of thing. But like, I think a lot of parents these days, and again, I'm not a parent. I don't know if you know this, but I'm not a parent and I'm not judging any parent who does this. But from what I've noticed, parents are certainly more afraid than the,

we raised them feral parents of the 80s of like allowing their children to spend time in darker stories. Yeah. So I think not being afraid to let your kid experience like darkness and danger inside of the stories that they consume.

So something like the fairy tale book collections that I had growing up were like the original Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, the unsanitized, there's like blood dripping out of the shoe, like, you know, and Cinderella sort of version of those stories. And I think like, I think it's good to expose children to like, you know,

and darkness and mature themes and stuff like that. Like, I was asking your age because I was like, Cat's Cradle, I wouldn't like give to like a small child, but like middle school kid, yeah, maybe I'd give Cat's Cradle. But like, you know, people are always asking like, is my child the right age for X? And I would just say that like,

your child often knows, you know, like your child often knows, you know, if, if something is too scary for them or if something is too, the language is too mature, I feel like they will, you know, again, I'm not a parent, but like, that's been my experience. Um, like, you know, with my nephews and other people and something I will say about my nephews, something my sister has done so well is I don't remember if I told you the story, but we were at this like,

Hot Springs. I did tell you a story, but I'm not sure if I told on the pod. We were at this Hot Springs over the summer or like a couple months ago. And my sister and her husband had like gone to get massages and I was watching the boys and they were just sitting there reading. And this woman walked up to me. She's like, Oh my God, this is my dream. She thought I was their mom. She's like, good job, mama. Like, I can't believe this is my dream. My kids reading at the pool. And I was just like, I get no credit for this, but I do think it's really sick that my nephews just want to like read wherever they are. I think it's very cool. Um,

And so this part I will give credit to my sister. In addition to that sort of like darkness and danger, which I do think like kids are more capable of experiencing than we give them credit for. And it's different from like some of the actual like nasty shit that exists on the internet that I think kids should be protected from in ways that they often are not, is point of view. And we talked about this when we talked, you know, this will help us bridge over to the last of us in a second. But like we talked about this a lot when we talked about

um, POV, like, yeah, something my sister has done a really good job with. She is too, you know, like brought up to white boys in, in, you know, modern America. And she gave them a ton of books, uh, with girl main characters and non-white main characters. And this is just like a concentrated effort to just be like, Hey man, like,

why don't you spend time? The biggest gift that stories can give us is empathy. And if you're talking about like being on the right side of the rebellion, I think empathy is so key to that. Caring about the perspective of the people around you who are not like you and trying to think of how can I, uh, think about their perspective? How can I help? How can we all help each other? And I think empathy is so key to that. And so I think, you know, um,

This idea, this idea I hear a lot of like, my kid won't be interested in that it's too old fashioned or my kid won't be interested in that it's a girl book and they're a boy. A lot, again, I'm not a parent. You can, you can disregard me. I'm not a parent, but like a lot of, a lot of that I think is parental dependent. Cause I've seen, I've seen parents who, who said that to me and they're like, well, this is not, none of their peers are reading this. So why would they read this? And then I've seen parents like my sister and a few other people who are like,

Yeah, it's important to me. So to do it with your kid, you can sort of guide your kid along that path. It just depends like how active you want to be on that front. And there's no judgment on that because like,

We don't all have the same number of hours in the day in terms of like our time that we can dedicate to, you know, doing exactly what we want to do as parents and stuff like that. So all that's to say, here are some titles I would recommend. I would say something like Bridge to Terabithia, which like traumatized me when I read it, but was like really, really important for me to read at a young age.

The aforementioned classic fairy tales that are unsanitized, I think are a really, really good idea. There's a graphic novel called Bone that I love that is like so fun and exciting, but also a little scary and dangerous. I would say Mouse by Art Spiegelman is an incredible graphic novel that is about the Holocaust, but also about mice and

So, maybe not like the smallest children among you, but like that is like a really, really good text. I think also it's always worth thinking about when you're looking for deep cuts, it's always like, what are the classics? Everyone will give you

good night moon or where the wild things are these other like children's books. Um, but like, okay. Uh, my kid loved where the wild things are. What else did Maury Sendak do? Uh, should I get them in the night kitchen? Should I get them outside over there? Like, there's just like a, like what are the deeper cuts on a, on an author? My child already responds to that I can get and to sort of fill out the bookshelf that way. Um, and,

Something fun like Edward Gorey. So like the Gashly Crum Tinies or like, you know, all that like sort of gory gothic, but like make it fun and childlike murdery stuff, I think is really fun to think about. And then in terms of like House of Arcor. Right.

A fantasy epic that does not get the love it deserves is The Chronicles of Predame by Lloyd Alexander, which includes The Black Cauldron, which was turned into a famously floppy Disney movie. But this is like, it doesn't get talked about the way that, you know,

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe or like a number of other fantasy series. But I think it's like right up there in terms of like quality. So it is something that I would recommend. But like, yeah, don't be afraid to, you know,

Watching my nephews get really into Little House on the Prairie or Anna Green Gables or all these other female POV stories was just really exciting to me. And it's just like, you can do that. Girls read boy books all the time. And all of this is sort of messy and whatever we decide we want it to be. So that's what I would say about that. Love it.

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let's just touch on like a few uh mostly ones that made us laugh uh because we spent a long time talking about the last one finale but um we sure did i think i want to talk first about the most important one which comes from lindsey lindsey says where have all the good bras gone and where is all the goss did bras survive the mushroom apocalypse

Ellie has no bra on when Dina checks her wounds in the dressing room, unless Dina knows a graceful way to get a bra off with a t-shirt. And I watched a playthrough part two and I'm not going to say what happens, but there's an, there's a, an iconic moment from the game that certainly does not seem to feature a bra either. How is Ellie fighting infected and avenging Joel with her girls flying free? On another note,

Jesse is obviously not a fucking doctor and obviously has no fucking sense about wound care because why else would he wrap Dina's wound on the outside of her pants? I am not a doctor or medical worker, but I am a human who has wounds to care for. And that deplorable bit of bandaging looks almost useless.

This is one of my favorite emails I've ever gotten. Yeah. Where have all the good bras gone? Where have all the good bras gone? And where is all the gauze? But like set to like... Yeah. Where have all the flowers gone? Where have all the flowers... Where have all the good bras gone? Yeah. Long time ago. Love it. Okay. Bras. The first thing that I would do in the apocalypse, mushroom or otherwise...

is stop wearing a bra. The first thing that I would do. So my response is not the same as Lindsay's. I'm not like, where have all the bras gone? I'm like, thank the old gods and the new alike that we are free.

of clasps and underwires. Not everyone has this luxury, Mallory, I will say. Totally fair. Totally fair. The first thing I do when I get home, bras off. Not that I go out that much, but on the days that I do, bras off. So I would be... Hard pants and bras gone. Exactly. Anything with like a tight waistband or an underwire, it's done. A hook or a button, gone. Yes. No hooks or buttons while I'm home. None. So I would be thrilled...

Here's what I assume actually happens, though. A bra is not a wax trucker jacket. A bra is not a sturdy denim pant. I believe that all of the underwire in bras the worldwide probably need it, like take it as a supply for some... Joanna, how did they get the fucking metal they needed to restore the fence in Jackson? They melted down all the underwire from all the bras. They melted down all of the bras! That's how! Yeah.

simply use a sports bra that has no underwire. And that I might be open to personally, actually. I actually find sports bras terrible. That's a whole other podcast. But, you know, I don't exercise, so it's also not really a part of my life. The

The bra is an interesting, we're on a couple extremes here, because on the one hand, you have the metal, like the precious material that would probably be needed for other aspects of apocalyptic living. And then you have, you know, a lot of like delicate materials that maybe 25 plus years into the apocalypse just haven't lasted. So I'm sure there are plenty of people who are like, God damn it, where's my bra? I need that support.

But I'm not surprised that the bras are hard to come by. How about you? Where are you on bra watch in 2029 in the Cordyceps apocalypse? I have questions about a lot of things in terms of clothing and what clothing has survived and stuff like that. Like, there's some stuff. And this has been a critique this season is that, like, yes, everything looks a little worn, but, like,

Everything's a bit more fashion forward this season than it was in season one where everything was a bit more utilitarian. And I talked to the costume designer about this a little bit, but the idea of what is Gale wearing? Gale is like a fashion plate inside of Jackson. So what fashion has survived and what are undergarments? I'm actually more concerned about the underwear supply. We got to be like sewing new underwear in the mushroom apocalypse. I suspect so. Yeah, I suspect so.

On the supply front. Using, like, old cloths as, like, adult diapers or something? Thanks for that. I don't know. I, um...

Yeah, there was a critique this season of like, everyone's hair looks too good. I saw an Instagram reel the other day of three women on a podcast spinning out because Caitlin Dever's Abby is wearing lip gloss in the finale. And they were like, what the fuck is Abby doing wearing lip gloss?

At the end of the finale. And I was like, okay, yeah, fair point. Okay, everyone be less groomed. But isn't a lot of lip gloss? I'm not a lip gloss maker, a scientist, a chemist, a cosmetician. Isn't a lot of lip gloss made of like a natural...

You know, like wax and like beeswax and stuff like that. I went to look. Of course you did. It's not quite a Mally Rubin, I have Aquaphor on situation. It is like...

pink and borderline sparkly uh you know what i mean it's a little like okay you know bubble gummy um and i don't begrudge abby that but you know listen we'll we'll have to spend more time with that in season three okay speaking of supplies do you have wait do we talk about the gauze the the good jesse gauze enough do we have any further commentary on jesse's ability to wrap a wound

I mean, I have to just simply guess that they didn't want to take the pants off of, you know, their actress or they could have done the tremors route, which is like you sort of like rip up the pant leg and sort of like keep the other one intact. But like, you know, in the vein of where have all the good genes gone? Maybe you just like.

Only we need to like sew one arrow slit versus like, you know, slit up the entire pant leg. Yeah, because he did. Yes, he tore the pant. I'm thinking back in this role, as you noted, to connect to our next question in terms of just what supplies were taken and what they have. Not a lot of clothing that they packed, right? They're like, you know, winter coats will be blankets and everything's multipurpose. So that pair of pants is precious. Completely destroying it would probably be very damp. Right.

I was glad that there was some commentary on the morning breath and trying to correct it, but everyone fucking stinks for sure. So like at that point, but I was, I kind of, I also found it utterly perplexing that Jesse put the bandage in the outside of the pant, though. I wonder if, um,

It's strategy. It's tactics. Like, I cut into this precious pair of pants. So in addition to tending to your wound, I need to bind the garment that I have compromised. Mostly, I just think it is really great, actually, that Captain Wyoming, St. Jesse, is not good at warping. Bad at field medicine. Yeah.

On the one hand, you can think of it like, oh, it's just a temporary fix. But as we're about to talk about, it takes a long time to get from Jackson to Seattle. So like, Jessie's like, we need to take her back. She needs actual medical care. Yes, it's going to take us like a month to get there. Okay, so this is what John wrote. My biggest question these latest Seattle episodes of Ellie and Dina is what are they doing for food? In Jackson, the food issue is understandable. There are crops, livestock, and a full kitchen.

Human bones if you want them for arts and crafts. Whatever you might want. A delicious compost made from the dead infected. Roasted mushrooms galore. You know? Okay. Now that you've left Jackson with not much more than a backpack, I don't understand what the food options are. I think at one point in the theater, they opened up a small supply of some jerky. That makes sense. But how much jerky did they pack? Are they living off just jerky at this point? Pause. When I read this first time, I was like...

They're more jerky than men now. Okay, resuming. Google Maps has a walk from Jackson to Seattle taking about 40 days. Let's say Lonely Shimmer horseback cuts that in half. That's 20 days of travel where you need to eat each day, which cuts into whatever food you've managed to pack.

Cuts into, I would say, lemonades, but sure. Okay. Even assuming you can forge your way to Seattle, somehow picking wild berries and mushrooms along the way. Once you get to... I'm not eating a mushroom. Once you get to Seattle... Not in the fucking mushroom apocalypse, you're not. No. No.

Once you get to Seattle, I'm not seeing a lot of food options. The Wolves, WLF, Seraphites, they presumably all have infrastructure for farming, etc. We already saw the kitchen that Isaac is familiar with. Yep. Why did we? Ellie and Dina have none of them. What are they eating? They have a lot of energy. They are burning off every day trying to elude multiple groups trying to kill them. Plus, Dina is eating for two. Malibu revenge.

What a thoughtful question. Thank you, John. Welcome to 4-H Corner with our bad baby, John. Boy, this is a great question. Yeah, the energy, they have a lot of energy there burning off every day trying to elude multiple groups, trying to kill them, plus Dina's eating for two. Also, the energy required for post-apocalyptic sex. They need calories. This is just a great question. Okay. When they are readying, when Dina and Ellie are readying to hit the road in episode three, food was...

a focus, a light focus, but a focus. Cannabines, a couple of cannabines. Of discussion, right. We noted that Ellie had a few,

that I can't imagine were safe to eat at that point. Sneeze must. Three-ish cans on the ground. Okay. Dina's provisions list. Because Dina is, of course, there to say, you haven't really packed properly or thought about what you need at all. So I went back and I paused on the provisions list. You look at the list. I look at the provisions list. We can only be who we are. And here is what it says. Quote, food. Food.

Parentheses. High protein, non-perishable, end parentheses. Actually, those are both in their own parentheticals, high protein and then non-perishable. Beef jerky, which we will come back to. Trail mix. Trail mix is listed. Huge. Which I love. I have said many times, I love trail mix and I love jerky, so I feel that I could survive in the apocalypse based on that alone.

You have told me you don't think I would last a day in response to that. What would you do without your candy supply? Probably worry a little bit less often about needing a root canal, honestly. Honestly, I'd love to see you in a life where you don't have as much access to caffeine. I think that would be interesting to know. It would be a... Caffeine and sugar, it would be a struggle. It would really be tough. Okay. Then on the provisions list right after that, after trail mix, there are three words that

that I cannot read. I do not know if that is because they are actually like illegible, they're a little too blurry or because I need glasses and they're only blurry and illegible to me.

It looks to me like it's possible. There are vague shapes that seem like it could say oats, turnip, and berries, but I don't think that can possibly be right because they're not taking berries. There's just no way. Those aren't turnips? That doesn't fit the non- I don't know. It looks like it could be the word turnip. I don't know. I don't know what those three words are. I'm sorry. But there are three more words there, so presumably that means there are other food items that they packed. It also says on the provisions list, quote, frying pan, cup, bowl,

spork, which means clearly based on that, they are preparing to acquire game, meat in the field, right? And cook it. Okay. So there's a little bit more of a strategy here for finding food on the road than maybe we had gotten to see. Also, we must note, of course, that Seth, Joanna's

Favorite character. The one I most identify with. The one where I'm like, that's me on screen. In the saddlebags that he loaded with supplies, he noted specifically, granted, he did say two weeks worth, so only two weeks worth, but hard tack. So they have more food there from Seth. Okay. However, despite all of that, two things are still true. One,

In the show, we have established canon of how hard how hungry you are after a road trip. When Ellie and Joel got to Jackson in the first place in season one, remember the way that Ellie was housing that meal and said, it's been a while since we had a proper meal. Actually, I don't think I've ever had a proper meal. This is fucking amazing. And Joel's like, we do. All right. It was very sad.

You're hungry on the road when you're traveling at that distance over that many days. You are. So they should be ravenous. And the tin of beef jerky that they are noshing on Dina's grate in the music store, like, I'll go make us a beef jerky. The beef jerky covering the morning breath. The important follow-up question of is that better? Personally, I would say yes, it is. But, you know, to each their own. A little peppery. Exactly. I mean, well, if you've got a peppery jerky, you're...

You're thriving. The fact that they are not more actively pursuing food in Seattle is a puzzler. It is. We know, obviously, that it's not just that Isaac is a culinary enthusiast with his preferred saucepan. As we discussed on our finale pod, our guy has Johnny Walker Blue just sitting there on his desk. They're stocked. I don't think this is a spoiler because it's very clear that

From everything in the setup of season two and just things the creators have said that we'll be spending a lot of time with the wolves and the Seraphites alike in season three and clearly spending time in their respective dwellings. So without going into any detail, I will just say a detail about the plot around it. I will just say like when we get to glimpse some of the food that the Seraphites are working with in the game looks fucking delicious.

And also organic lifestyle. I would say the question of the question of supplies and who has them and who gets them and who, you know, blah, blah is key to the story of season three as well. So, yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

I actually don't know. What is hardtack? It's like a cracker. Yeah. I always think of it as Lembas bread, even though it's not. But that's what I always think of hardtack as. Me too. It's like one bite will fill the stomach of a man. How many of you have it? Whenever I've ever seen hardtack bread, I'm like, oh, Lembas bread. Okay.

Yeah. Cool. Okay. I'm not going to read the last question specifically. I just want to actually do a, you know, we're almost out of here. I just want to do like a sort of blanket question for you because, so the Last of Us finale aired Sunday. Yes. We didn't have a chance to listen to the official pod beforehand. We didn't have a chance to like see what people thought of it beforehand because we pre-recorded. Have you, what,

have the finale reactions that you've been able to absorb in the last few days. How are they sort of sitting with you? Do you have any like rebuttals that you would like to make to people who might have put out thoughts that you disagree with or, or have, have, have you heard some POVs that changed your opinion of the finale in any way or sort of like, how has that discourse been hitting you?

Yeah, no, I mean, I just, you know, as a general rule, I'm like not interested in trying to convince people to agree with me about a thing. I think that I would say that the finale seems divisive, right? And that there, I would say even more, it feels divisive.

genuinely with love unpopular and, and less, certainly people seem to like it way less than we liked it. Yeah. I have a number of people in my life who seemed quite high on it and, and fond of it who, um, pals or family members who I talked to about the show who seemed to like it a lot. So my personal experience has not been that like everybody is down on it, but certainly it's certainly, I've also confronted plenty of people who are not, um,

as you said, not as high on it as we were. I think the interesting thing that really seems to be central to the discussion at the end of the season is the structure. The structure for the adaptation, timing, the length, the volume of time we spent with Ellie and Dina in Seattle. Yeah.

The decision to ultimately... Obviously, tons of adaptive changes still inside of the season, but broadly to adhere to the structure of the game and then go back to Abby's days with Seattle Day One. You know, it's funny because you mentioned on our finale pod that you got a text from our dude, the Crank Daddy, like, wait, what? And I did get some texts like that from people when they watched. When we get...

to be clear, when we get like Abby day one, people are like, when is this day one of what, what am I watching here? Yeah. I don't know if you've heard that from more people, but I had a couple of people text me about that. Just a couple. But yeah. So I think the question of structure and like, it's interesting because I don't know. I think, um,

I've seen some discussions and some comps to the House of the Dragon season two conclusion in terms of where we end. A lot of build up to what... Yeah, and what we then are left for a long time waiting for. And I...

I think that debating whether maintaining the game structure made sense for TV is an interesting discussion. And, you know, I think people obviously can disagree on that and interpret that differently. And I think that's a fascinating thing to consider and assess. It doesn't feel the same to me as what happened with House of the Dragon, though, I will say that. Because, like, I think that the...

In general, yes, we are in an era, the streaming wars peak TV era, where television shows take a really long time to make. And where we are waiting. The seasons are shorter and shorter and shorter. The seasons are shorter. We're waiting longer. And so...

without question that has a bearing on how they're received. How could it not, right? If you're waiting two, two and a half, three years to be back with those characters, and obviously that was something that was on the Last of Us creative team's mind in terms of something like, as we discussed a lot at the time earlier in the season, moving up the clarity about Abby's backstory and motivation, for example. Dragon...

A show that I broadly, as you know, enjoy quite a bit, but certainly we both had some notes on how the season concluded, was just so clearly a, we are building up to a thing that actually happens next. Like right away in the story, and it's just not going to happen.

for a long time because there weren't enough episodes and we wait two to three years for it. That's different to me than this. You can, again, I think it's totally valid to debate whether sticking to the, we do day one, day two, day three in Seattle from Ellie's perspective and now we go run it back day one, day two, day three from Abby's perspective makes as much sense in Seattle

The TV world, I think, to be clear, if that had not been the choice they made, just as many people would be unhappy about not doing that, right? That's just kind of, like, the world we live in, I think, undeniably. Genuinely damned if you didn't. It's really tough. 100%. But I think this is, like, not the same as we now have to wait two years for Gullet. It's like...

this is the way the story was originally structured to then go back to Abby and that is what we're doing. So I think the questions about how much like the story was compressed to your point are a little bit different than that. I mostly agree with you, but I think a slight nuance I would put to it is that like in both cases, there is a

though I don't even know if it's majority, percentage of the viewership that knows where the story goes next. And so has their own thoughts and opinions about where was the right place to end the season. You know, this is a somewhat natural breaking point in the story, of course. But, you know, something that Rob and I talked about a lot on the Prestige episode that we recorded this week was sort of about this idea of like,

When was the right place to end it? Would this, would it have eased some of this tension to have a longer season and more space? Like, could you have done...

some more of that Abby stuff if you had more room to work with or even just inside of that last episode did it feel a bit bam bam bam bam bam rushed because we were only dealing with a seven episode season um so you know like in terms of structure in terms of a place for an ending and then everyone at home has their own opinions about like well they should have just given us gullet or they should have just given us this or you know like because they know what comes next um

Versus like when you think about Thrones, I was actually, I was talking to Sepulow about this because he was asking me for the piece that he was writing. Alan Sepulow, what a genius, will ask me anytime he has a question about Game of Thrones, will text me. And so he's like, would it be accurate to say it was one season, one book for Thrones? And I was like, up to a point it was. And then it got messy because of not just like adaptive changes, but also like the way in which George splits the story. And that's a similar thing where like George's

George and his book series splits his characters across books and that's something simply the HBO adaptation could do. You couldn't adapt feast and then dance because you would be too long without certain characters. Um, and so, um, they had to start like mishing and mashing, uh, the story in order to make sure that like, you know, we know what Amelia Clark is up to or whatever. So, um,

So these are adaptive choices that need to be made. And so I really liked this season a lot. I really like talking to you about it. I'm much higher on it than some of our colleagues seem to be. And I am actually quite optimistic for season three. Oh, yeah. It bums me out to...

what has happened with some of the discourse around the show. Um, and this to your point, sense of consensus that, that it was disappointing when I don't think that's actually the case. Anecdotally, uh, from what I've experienced in the world anyway. Yeah. Um,

Highs, highs. High, high highs in this season. I don't think the finale was the best episode of the season by kind of a sizable stretch for me, but I am impatient and excited for season three of The Last of Us. Same. Well, impatient is a tough thing to be with these properties, obviously, because it takes a while. I'm definitely interested in the alternate history where...

The Abby and Ellie days are just mixed and told at the same time. Yeah. And we talked about this. I can't honestly remember. Probably in the spoiler section at the time, like at the beginning of the season when the Abby, some of that Abby clarity about her father was moved up.

My assumption at the time was that that meant that would be what was happening. Right, right, right. Actually. That we would get a ton of Caitlin Dever. Yeah, exactly. And it was the fact that Caitlin Dever was listed as a guest star that made us wonder, like, oh, is she not a lead this season? Yeah. So I think that version is potentially a really great one. I think that the bold, inventive...

of how the game is structured, I certainly understand the impulse to try to do that here too. What does it mean for season three in terms of like, I think that the stuff we'll get with...

the people who we know will be featured is probably going to be great. I have very high hopes for it as well. You know, what does it mean for how long we're waiting to be back with certain other characters? No idea. So that's an interesting thing to think about too. We're not just talking about, well, the wait to season three, like maybe we're talking about the wait till like season four for certain things. And so that's where people, I think like, yeah, I get it. It can be, it can be really, it can be really hard. And I don't, I'm not implying it's only about like, oh, well, how long are we, we waiting for things that people have notes on? Obviously that's not the case, but, um,

But it's part of it. It's tricky. It's part of it because, you know, and again, Rob brought up a really good thing because, you know, an end of a season that doesn't feel like an end of a season or feels like you're like, oh, is that where we're ending sort of question that we talked about recently that really frustrated us was Squid Game. But as Rob pointed out, like we're getting the conclusion of that story just a few months later. Like if season two and three had been shot concurrently and we were getting season three, The Last of Us, like,

But, you know, again, like budgetarily, logistically, digital effects wise, people's schedules, like there's, you know, we're living in a different era, but it does present challenges on the storytelling front. And audiences are just so like...

you know, it's our luxury that because this is our job, as part of our job, we're like, let's rewatch everything before every season. And it is our job to help people reorient themselves as we remind them what happened in previous seasons. So like, you know, the job security, I guess, in this new TV model, but like, it can be disorienting for people who are like, are used to watching, taking their stories a bit more casually. So.

The Last of Us, Star Wars, Buffy, books, Survivor, baseball. What more could you ask for? It's the house of our spring mailbag. Love it. We'll be back next week with a smorgasbord. Some stuff. Of content. I'm hoping it all pans out. I'm quite excited for everything. Thank you to Molly Rubin.

Thank you to Joanna Robinson. You're welcome. Thank you to the whole team that's working on the show today. Arjuna Rangapal, our bud, the best. John Richter is here. Jesse Lopez is here. Joe Mia Dinara on the social. And if I missed anyone else who touched this pod and helped it be what it is, I apologize. I will thank you next time. Thank you to the bad babies for your great emails. And we will see you soon. Bye. Bye.