‘Alien: Earth’ Episode 6 Deep Dive

Summary

House of R: ‘Alien: Earth’ Episode 6 Deep Dive

Podcast: House of R, The Ringer
Date: September 10, 2025
Hosts: Joanna Robinson, Rob Mahoney (Mallory Rubin out sick)
Subject: Detailed discussion of Alien: Earth Episode 6

---

Episode Overview

In this episode, Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney sit in for a deep dive recap and analysis of Alien: Earth Episode 6, titled The Fly. With Mallory Rubin absent due to a migraine, Joanna and Rob cover all the key plot events, thematic undercurrents, Peter Pan parallels, and franchise canon questions driving Noah Hawley’s latest entry into the Alien universe. The conversation highlights the emotional and narrative consequences of major character deaths, the ethical problems of scientific hubris, and the ongoing reinvention (and complication) of the Alien lore.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Host Line-up and Podcast Housekeeping

• Mallory is out (“There was an eyeball with a bunch of tentacles headed her way and I'm sure she's fine.” – Joanna, 01:32)
• Rob and Joanna preview additional coverage on the Ringerverse, including Task, Buffy, and upcoming Prestige episodes.

---

2. Scope of the Deep Dive

• Spoilers for Alien: Earth up through Episode 6;
• All other mainline Alien franchise entities are fair game for reference (06:24).

---

3. Initial Reactions to Episode 6: “The Fly”

Joanna:

• Big questions about narrative choices, particularly the marginalization of character relationships.
• Feels Arthur’s fate lacked emotional punch due to narrative ellipses:
  “I want to feel this more, but I don't feel like I've gotten inside of his heart and his mind enough to like be devastated by his death.” (11:40)
• Criticizes show for “yada yada”ing over key human connections.

Rob:

• Enjoys “creepy crawlies, potential for body horror, humans being dumb in alien spaces.”
• Feels the absence of Morrow is a minus, but elevator scene was a standout.
• “I find that this season and this show in general has thrived the more Morrow is involved… this might have been the least he's had to do basically all season.” (07:15)

---

4. Human Connection and Character Deaths (08:41 – 15:14)

• Both hosts lament the rushed separation and thin exploration of Arthur and Dame Sylvia’s relationship.
• Strong performances wasted by lack of emotional context in writing.
• Rob prefers “humanity oozing out of every pore at all times” when you have so few humans on the board.
• The show succeeds more when it delves into the cost of trading away humanity in favor of scientific or corporate goals (see Morrow and synth/child brain dilemmas).

---

5. The Eyeball “Jockey” (Eyeball-Tentacle Creature) Fandom (15:14 – 18:16)

• A breakout monster, referenced lovingly as “the ijockie” and “the tentacled eyeball.”
• Joanna: “This tentacled eyeball has sort of stolen the entire show from everything else that's going on.” (15:48)
• Rob: Its horror comes from “the pure, unsettling, skin crawling nature” and “a kind of stillness that is very different from the xenomorph.”
• Now, fans sometimes “pull focus from the xenomorph to be sometimes even more scared of the eyeball jockey.” (18:16)

---

6. Visual & Audio Language of the Show (19:45 – 21:37)

• Praise for Jeff Russo’s dark cover of “Strange Brew” as the opening cue.
• The show's signature use of montage, image cross-fading, and emotional overlays enhance the “hypnotic” tension.
• Rob: “Everything feels like you're being kept at a slight remove in a way that is also very true to Alien.” (20:30)

---

7. Canon Clarity and Franchise “Barroom Canon” (25:02 – 34:31)

• The hosts discuss the tangled legacy of Alien canon, referencing statements from Noah Hawley about which films he’s honoring (Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Resurrection) and which (Prometheus, Covenant, Romulus) he’s not.
• Introduction of “barroom canon” (from franchise consultant) as “stories overheard in a bar… that may or may not have some truth,” giving flexibility to divergent timelines and creators.
• “Have your cake and eat it too.” – Joanna (31:56)
• Rob: “A wonderful and elegant solution to… managing a franchise with so many distinct creators.” (31:56)

---

8. The Peter Pan Framework & Thematic Overload (34:52 – 39:55)

• Noted heavy-handedness with Peter Pan references in this episode.
• “This was a lot, even for me, a little overloaded. I thought we leaned on it too much.” – Rob (35:35)
• Still, the metaphor of Neverland as an island prison, and the exploration of childhood vs. forced maturation (especially with Wendy/Marcy) remains resonant.

Notable Quote:

“That one I like. The more we keep going back to the well, it's like, okay, we're getting the bit...” – Rob (36:52)

---

9. Humanity, Trauma, and Ethics of Memory Erasure (45:53 – 54:54)

• The show grapples with the ethics of removing pain from child hybrids (wiping Nibs' memory).
• “The idea of eternal sunshining some of your own memories away is a huge, unwieldy… one to deal with.” – Rob (48:44)
• Joanna critiques the “supreme incompetency” of these scientists, as in:
  “For a character like Dame Sylvia to make so many moves without considering the repercussions is frustrating to me.” (45:53)
• The lack of protocol for reintegrating Nibs after her wipe becomes fodder for critique.

---

10. Thematic Parallels: Replacement Bodies and Synthetic Identities

• Robo-human nuances (Morrow as cyborg, Kirsch as synth, Boy Cavalier as tech god).
• Conversations about what “makes a human,” especially when child brains inhabit synthetic bodies.
• “Even someone who is above human or past human, like Wendy, from the Xenomorphs, is the exact thing that she is explaining to him and he is kind of not quite hearing.” – (56:55)

---

11. Arbitration: The Corporate Showdown and Boy Cavalier's Power Play (63:24 – 73:03)

• The big “arbitration” scene: Boy Cavalier faces down Yutani’s red-lipped rep, wipes the floor with her.
• Samuel Blenkin’s acting choices: barefoot, feet on table, climbing atop table with iPad (“stirrups” stance), described as “slapping your dick on the table essentially.”
• Direct references to Facebook’s “move fast and break things” ethos.
• “He says and does whatever he wants, doesn't even wear shoes.” – Noah Hawley, per Joanna (66:58)
• “Move fast, break children” as the latest, darkest iteration.

---

12. Synthetic vs. Cyborg: Kirsch & Morrow’s Animus (75:25 – 85:45)

• Elevator “showdown” between Morrow and Kirsch filled with “bitchy” quips and mutual resentment.
• Notable Quote:

  “Yesterday's model, the incredibly irrelevant robot. What's it like working for a company that made you obsolete?” – Morrow (82:11)

• Both actors’ performances lauded, especially as they channel classic cinematic villains (Heath Ledger, Daniel Day-Lewis influences).
• Kirsch’s motives remain ambiguous—possibly more curiosity than corporate espionage.

---

13. Highlight: Tootles' Death (98:28 – 108:24)

• Tootles (Isaac) is the first major Lost Boy casualty after blundering into the fly nest.
• Death is horrifying, body dissolving into synthe-milk and mechanical scrap.
• His fate is framed with dark comedy—he realizes “I'm food” looking down at the robot spare parts on his tray.
• “Great death. Great twitching and glitching and gurgling and dying. Good job.” – Joanna (107:02)
• The hosts ponder the show’s tendency to distance viewers from child death by sci-fi means.

---

14. Wendy/Marcy's Radicalization and Name Rejection (113:02 – 120:20)

• Wendy (now vehemently Marcy) breaks from Dame Sylvia, denounces “this is a yes place,” and rejects her human name.
• Her empathy has pivoted from the human team to the aliens she’s bonded with.
• “Is this what we're gonna watch from her for the rest of the season? The inhuman synth?” – Joanna (117:52)
• “She is absorbing the Kirsch... She is now repeating the things that Kirsch has been murmuring at her since the beginning, which is like, you're not human. Why would you try to be one?” (117:05)

---

15. Horror Mechanics, Hypnosis, and the ‘Yes Place’

• Horror film grammar: slightly following Arthur with strings, mimicking iconic tropes (“My whole body is saying, this is a yes space.” – Joanna, 125:31)
• Noah Hawley views TV as “hypnosis”—harder in episodic TV than film, due to ad breaks.
• Joanna and Rob admit to being compulsively drawn to “humans making bad decisions in horror spaces.”

---

16. Franchise Logistics and Worldbuilding

• Discussion of the “mold guys” constantly spraying the walls (inspired by Alien's eternal leaks and climate disaster future).
• Wondering about hybrid physicality: “How much does a hybrid body weigh? Like, is this feel like dragging a car?” – Rob (130:06)

---

Memorable Quotes & Moments

Peter Pan vs. Alien Parallels

• “An onion asking, how do I take care of a star? Is elite God chair stuff.” – Rob (41:42)
• “This one was a lot, even for me, a little overloaded. I thought we leaned on [Peter Pan] too much.” – Rob (35:35)

On Franchise Flexibility

• “Barroom canon ... stories overheard in a bar or read in a comic ... that may or may not have some truth to them…” – Joanna (31:56)

Character Summations

• “I'm a little worried that if I did tell you someone was trapped under a bookcase, you wouldn't go help them because you'd be like, listen, we all die alone.” – Joanna to Rob (108:13)

Samuel Blenkin (Boy) Hall of Fame Acting Moments

• “The foot acting from Blenkin this season. Tremendous.” – Rob (63:46)
• “It just feels like like. Like slapping your dick on the table essentially.” – Joanna (64:06)

On the Alien Franchise Vibe

• “Everything feels like you're being kept at a slight remove in a way that is also very true to Alien.” – Rob (20:30)

---

Notable Segment Timestamps

• 05:39–06:26: Spoiler and content warnings.
• 07:15–11:40: First reactions and issues with the main character beats.
• 15:14–18:23: Deep praise for the Eyeball Jockey monster.
• 19:45–21:37: Opening credit/visual style discussion.
• 25:02–34:31: Deep dive into Alien franchise canon and “barroom canon.”
• 35:35–39:55: Peter Pan intertextual analysis.
• 45:53–54:54: Ethics of memory erasure, comparison to Westworld and sci-fi themes.
• 63:24–73:03: Arbitration scene and Boy’s “move fast, break things” moment.
• 75:25–85:45: Elevator banter, synth vs. cyborg rivalry.
• 98:28–108:24: Tootles’ death scene and science fiction distancing of child death.

---

Flow and Style Notes

• The hosts maintain their signature blend of sharp analysis and irreverent, highly referential banter.
• Comedic asides (e.g., comparing Kirsch’s “bitchiness” quotient settings), pop culture deep cuts (Twilight Zone, Jurassic Park, Westworld, Hobbs & Shaw), and meta-podcasting moments abound.
• They frequently cite direct quotes from the show, Noah Hawley, and official Alien sources to ground their observations.

---

Final Thoughts & Lookahead

• Both hosts express excitement for the upcoming climax of Alien: Earth, hoping the emotional highs and narrative coherence can match the series’ ambitious imagery and philosophical underpinnings.
• Next up: Coverage of “The Prestige” (Christopher Nolan’s film), Hooked miniseries, and the final two Alien: Earth episodes—with Mallory Rubin’s anticipated return.

---

Summary Compiled by: House of R Podcast Summarizer
(Contact: hobbitsanddragonsmail.com)

Transcript

[Joanna Robinson]

This episode is brought to you by Happy Egg. The recipe for a better egg starts with how the hen lives. Happy Egg Hens spend their days outside.

[Rob Mahoney]

On pasture, running, stretching and flapping their.

[Joanna Robinson]

Wings in the sunshine. That freedom leads to rich, tasty orange yolks and a difference you can see and taste. Happy Egg makes every plate happier. The proof? It's inside the shell. Visit happyag.com Spotify to crack open Happy Starting a business can seem like a daunting task unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond. Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com specialoffer. Hello, welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson and no, this is not an episode of the Prestige TV podcast. This is an episode of House of R. But joining me today, as he has with every alien episode that we've covered on this feed, it is Rob Mahoney. Hey Rob, how you doing?

[Rob Mahoney]

Joe? I'm doing fine, but I'm looking at my monitor. Have you gotten a signal for the tracker or the AV feed on Mal today?

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, listen, last I saw there was an eyeball with a bunch of tentacles headed her way and I'm sure she's fine. No, Mallory. Mallory has a bit of a migraine today, so we are doing our best to soldier on without her. We will miss her dearly. She wanted to give her fond regards to Toodles via me. But the good news is Rob and I know how to talk about television together. So that is what we've done. We've done it a couple times, a few times. So that's what we're here to do today. We're here to talk about episode six of Alien Earth. Really excited to talk to you about this, Rob. I have a lot of thoughts and opinions and takes. The hottest of takes ready and available, I would hope here today. Program reminders before we get into that, just to let folks know that over on the aforementioned Prestige TV feed, Rob and I have started covering week to week the HBO Sunday series Task with Bill Zimmons. So it's a great show. Really, really good show.

[Rob Mahoney]

Completely.

[Joanna Robinson]

And of course by that I mean our podcast. And then the TV show is also pretty good.

[Rob Mahoney]

So question for you, Joe, if in the finale of task.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

Mark Ruffalo goes to Wawa.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

And mayor from Mayor of Easttown shows up. Is it the level of cinematic universe that would then qualify it to be on House of R, or is it. Does it need a genre component?

[Joanna Robinson]

It depends who scores the, like, dun, dun, dun, dun. Sound of them meeting. You know what I mean?

[Rob Mahoney]

That'd be tremendous.

[Joanna Robinson]

I would love that. We deserve that. All right, so we're doing that. Also. Rob and I are. We've got a couple more weeks to go on the Hooked miniseries that we're doing in the Prestige Feed this week for genre fans. Rob got to watch Lost for the first time. The first two episodes of Lost.

[Rob Mahoney]

I had the privilege.

[Joanna Robinson]

The honor, truly. We'll be talking about what it takes to get hooked on the TV show Lost over on the Prestige Feed. And then.

[Rob Mahoney]

Let me. Let me just say, Joe, you know, Mal has shared in this experience with me lately. High. High marks all around for watching one of Joanna Robinson's favorite shows and then getting to talk to Joe about said show. Great experience. Would recommend it for anyone out there.

[Joanna Robinson]

I had. I had a great week last week because I got to show you Lost and I got to show Mallory Buffy Vampire Slayer and what could be better? So, yeah, if you haven't checked that out already, last week, Mal and I covered Buffy Vampire Slayer season one somehow in a single podcast episode. So that is. That is ready and waiting for you.

[Rob Mahoney]

I'm sorry to keep interrupting you. Can I pick one? Nid? Regarding the Buffy podcast, I. I would.

[Joanna Robinson]

Be surprised if you didn't, Rob.

[Rob Mahoney]

I just think the Bronze took some straight.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay. All right.

[Rob Mahoney]

Who are you to tear down a successful small business? Okay, you know what? Who cares if they cater to everybody who. Clearly they have their demographic. And yes, it includes teenagers, and yes, it includes full ass adults who are all hanging in the same spaces in slightly creepy ways, but they're bringing that money in.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. Okay, so Rob is on record as being in favor of this institution that is just infested with vampires and has, speaking of infestations, has as an occasional extermination party.

[Rob Mahoney]

Look, that is a citywide problem. Talk to the mayor. Talk to the principal of the school. Like, look, there are authority figures that are not as. As head of Bronze pr. This is not my problem.

[Joanna Robinson]

You know, it is too bad we never met. Like, wouldn't it have been great if one of the season's big bads was, like, the manager of the Bronze or the owner of the Bronze, the guy.

[Rob Mahoney]

Booking talent for the performances?

[Joanna Robinson]

All right, so that that is happening. Then also later this week, speaking of prestige in general, Mallory and I are wrapping up Hot Nolan Summer with my favorite Christopher Nolan film, the Prestige. We'll be talking about that incredible, incredible cinematic classic. Mallory will be back to chat about that. And then over on the Ringerverse, the Midnight Boys, Pew Pew. Are talking about Alien Earth and also Peacemaker. So that is what is happening here and elsewhere. You can follow us on the social media platform of your choice. There's a lot of options. Who are we to tell you which one to choose? You make your own decisions and we will be there for you.

[Rob Mahoney]

Wow.

[Joanna Robinson]

You can subscribe to the Pod. You can watch us on YouTube. You can watch us in the Spotify app. I gotta say, the Spotify app comment section popping off. Quite a pleasant and somewhat busy place to be. I was.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, now. Now you've cursed it.

[Joanna Robinson]

I have. Don't go there if you suck, but for the most part, just really lovely people having nice things to say over in the Spotify comments. And that is in hobbitsanddragonsmail.com of course, if you have any questions, comments or concerns. We do have a couple emails to address. We haven't been like up on top of the emails for this show, but we've got a couple to check in with today. And then last but not least, spoiler warning. Alien Earth up through episode six. That's what we're talking about today. Yep.

[Rob Mahoney]

Plus all the other alien stuff.

[Joanna Robinson]

Plus all the other alien stuff.

[Rob Mahoney]

At least you know we'll get into what that means. Exactly. I think a little bit. But the mainline alien entities. But maybe touched upon, maybe brushed upon.

[Joanna Robinson]

The mainline alien entities may be touched on or brushed upon. That is your parental guidance warning for this episode.

[Rob Mahoney]

Truly.

[Joanna Robinson]

Let's go now to our opening snapshot. All right. This episode, the Fly. Not to be confused with the Breaking Bad episode. Not to be confused with the Cronenberg film, not to be confused with a Nick Drake song, but. But surely in reference to the things that dissolved. Toodles. Ramahoney, what do you think of episode six?

[Rob Mahoney]

I liked it. Okay, I liked. I liked this episode for the reason, many of the reasons I enjoyed this show overall. Creepy crawlies, potential for body horror. A lot of humans being very dumb in alien spaces, which is a hallmark of this franchise. I. I will say the one caveat to that. I find that this season and this show in general has thrived. The more Morrow is involved and has more to do. And this might have been the least he's had to do basically all season so far.

[Joanna Robinson]

Right. He did get a banger scene and an elevator. We love an elevator scene. A very Mad Men moment, if you will.

[Rob Mahoney]

But, yeah, who was telling who? That's what the money is for.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think it's Kirsch. I think that's how Kirsch feels. I think that maybe that's how they both feel. I did not dislike this episode necessarily. I just have so many questions about so many choices that so many people and synths and hybrids and cyborgs made inside of this episode. My main critique is it's picking up on something that you and Mal talked about in the couple episodes before I joined. The way in which the show is skipping some of the important human connections and the way in which that then impairs for me the way certain things land. So we should say again, spoilers for episode six of Alien Earth. Not only do we lose our guy, Tootles, AKA Isaac Kit Young, you deserve better. I'm sorry Shadow and Bo got canceled. And I'm sorry you were the first. Last boy to go.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, he was named Toodles. What are you gonna do?

[Joanna Robinson]

Bye. Bye. But our guy, David Rysdal, who plays Arthur.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Who we loved on Fargo, got hit in the face with a facehugger. And even though all of us agreed last week that Arthur seemed like a likely candidate to get his face hugged.

[Rob Mahoney]

Maybe first in line and I guess second in line.

[Joanna Robinson]

I. I feel like that would have hit harder for me if they hadn't, weirdly, in this episode, yada yada, over the dissolution of his marriage. Question mark. Seriously, really bizarre choices. I have to imagine there was a scene or two that was cut, but the Dame. Sylvia. Arthur, Sylvia. Scientific disagreement that leads to him getting fired and exiled from the island. And there not even being a single conversation between the two of them about that is.

[Rob Mahoney]

You're absolutely right about this.

[Joanna Robinson]

Absolutely confounding to me. And the fact that we don't. We have, you know, Arthur is visibly distressed as he's packing when Hermit comes in to talk to him. He's looking lovingly at their vacation photos, which I hope those actors had a fun time posing for and like, all that sort of stuff like that. But like, so he's distressed and sort of talking about her a little bit. But Dame Sylvia herself is not really sort of engaging in that as we see her continue, you know, do what she does to Nibs and then get confronted by Wendy slash Marcy. And, like, wouldn't all of that. The face hugging and Sylvia and Nibs and Sylvia and I mean Dame, I guess Dame and Nibs, Dame and Wendy slash. Marcy hit harder. If we really felt for their connection in the first place beyond their dinner plans last, last time. And did they ever make the dumplings?

[Rob Mahoney]

I mean, do we know?

[Joanna Robinson]

This is the question. Is she making doublings for one now? Like, I have a lot of questions about that.

[Rob Mahoney]

That's a lot of labor for one. You know, we love these.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I gotta say, Dame Sylvia, with love and respect, I really think she's buying the pre made wrappers. I don't think she's making the dopamine.

[Rob Mahoney]

Oh, she's buying, she's buying frozen dumplings. Like at this point, let's just start skipping. Let's optimize.

[Joanna Robinson]

Got it. We love those actors. David Rizdal is incredible. Essie Davis, you know, if you love the Babadook, if you love Game of Thrones, whatever it is, like incredible performers. They could have torn up a scene between a married couple who disagree or one who has compromised their morals or whatever the case may be and we just don't get it. And so then without that, then him getting hit in the face of the facehugger, I was just like, I want to feel this more, but I don't feel like I've gotten inside of his heart and his mind enough to like be devastated by his death.

[Rob Mahoney]

You know, you're completely right. I think omitting that scene and I'm with you, that I feel like they must have shot something right. And must have cut it for time because this is already quite a long episode.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

Not having it is inexcusable. Ending their relationship to the extent we were supposed to be invested in it at all on her ups, like upending his job. I think somewhat accidentally, I don't think she anticipated he would get fired, but more said he won't do it, but I will.

[Joanna Robinson]

But she doesn't protest very much.

[Rob Mahoney]

Not at all. Like who, who is more fussed Dame Sylvia over the dissolution of her marriage, getting her husband fired and crossing every ethical line that she probably thought she had in this profession. Or Kirsch sitting on the dropship at the end, watching bit by bit the, you know, the, the crew and the hybrids get picked off by these aliens.

[Joanna Robinson]

I have a lot of Kirsch questions, but that feels like the Kirsch questions I have feel more like the plot wants me to have those questions right.

[Rob Mahoney]

What is this guy actually after? What is he invested in? I mean, who knows? And I like not knowing I've been.

[Joanna Robinson]

Sort of digging into. I hadn't been listening to the official Alien on Earth podcast, but I went back and listened to a bunch of, you know, they're doing incredible work over there of cramming like 5 interviews per 30 minute episodes. Couldn't be us here on House of R. Really incredible stuff. But, like, so there's just, like, great little interviews with, like, our, you know, I listened to Samuel Blinken talk about Boy Cavalier. I listened to Bob Assisi talk about Morrow. And a lot of both our wunderkind, like Tech Trillionaire and our cyborg and a number of other characters are talking about cutting off your humanity. So even if you're a human character or even if you're a human character with a. With a, you know, cyborg arm, packing your humanity away and putting it in a box and what does it mean to be human? And I think that's a question that the Alien franchise always wants to ask. And it's certainly a question that when you're putting little kid brains in synthetic bodies, you want to ask, like, what makes a human? If you're going to do that, which is super interesting, Noah Hawley. You have to have human characters whose, like, rank humanity is really working. And you and Mal talked about sort of the Hermit Wendy or Hermit Marcy, like, scenes and how you kind of wanted, you know, more of that connection, feeling Hermit's humanity inside of all of that. And I feel the same as imperative for something like Arthur and Sylvia, where I just. Like, you have so few human characters, I really need to, like, have their humanity oozing out of every pore at all times, you know, so.

[Rob Mahoney]

And I mean, that's what makes Moro so compelling, is he is like, you know, at his core human, even though he has robotic parts in it's also, I thought what made. If we're talking about kind of the two deaths of a kind that we get in this episode, we'll see what happens with Isaac. I don't know if you can just, like, boot him up in a new body. Is that, like, who knows what the potential for all that is? His death, in a lot of ways felt even more human than Arthur's death did. Because it was born of the ambition, like the wanting of the credit, the wanting of the responsibility of being the special boy. Exactly. I am being the one asked to the point that I'm gonna tell Kirsch that Curley is not here. Curley's gonna ask me if she can come. I'm gonna tell her not to come. Could have been avoided. And the combination of ambition and negligence being what is ultimately his undoing. Very alien ideas, but also very human ideas within this universe for a character that is only kind of, or maybe as this episode kind of suggests, kind of evolved beyond being human in some ways.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, I think that's a great point. And then just to do a complete 180 from the humanity question, I just want to say. Sure. You know, from the start, you identified our pal the Ijockie as like a standout, just standout creation, having spent a good amount of time on the Reddit boards and then just sort of like in and around the fandom online the last couple weeks. This is true throughout the viewership.

[Rob Mahoney]

Oh, yeah. How could it not be?

[Joanna Robinson]

This tentacled eyeball has sort of stolen the entire show from everything else that's going on. And I, I think my favorite is the eyeball in sheep form. I think the eyeball and sheep form there. There's something so malevolent about that sheep face that I just have to stand up and applaud. I do want to give Mallory her, her due and say, Noah. Holly confirmed in the official podcast that the eyeball was working in. In with the blood slug or, you know, saw an opportunity to help the blood slug on, on the Maginot. And once again we see the eyeball help the flies get their meal. And it's, I think, less about. It's just all about learning. What can I learn from this? How can I bend any of this to my opportunity? It's not an altruistic, like, let's band together. It's more of a, like, you know, that Oscar Isaac as apocalypse, like, learning moment for the eyeball. So what do you think it is about? I know you sung her praises, but what do you think it is about the eyeball that has really captured enraptured people?

[Rob Mahoney]

I think some of it is the pure, unsettling, skin crawling nature of that creation of something that is literally worming its way into your body. Again, as alien as it gets. And specifically eyes, which people always have a hard time with. Anything that is involving eye violence is like, particularly violating. So you have that on this very physical level. It also represents, especially with the context that's being used in this show, a kind of stillness that is very different from the xenomorph, for example, what makes the xenomorph terrifying is that they could be anywhere, but they're moving, right? They're in the vents, they're in the rafters, they're under. Under the ground, they're going to pop up at any moment. The eyeball jockey mostly has been behind plexiglass and kind of, you know, quarantined away from the humans. And it's just watching you with all of its eyes, at all of its angles, with its sheep Mona Lisa smile thing happening. Very, very disconcerting for a creature that we know to be terrifying. And I think, again, the sequencing of all this is so important. Like, you see the creature, you kind of get what it might be. You see it in the cat, you see attack nibs. And now it's like anytime there is any potential daylight, it's fucking terrifying. To the point that on the alien show, we are pulling focus from the xenomorph to be sometimes even more scared of the eyeball jockey.

[Joanna Robinson]

Exactly. We've got synths and we've got xenomorphs. We've got. All the hallmark of an alien story. And I'm like, give me where that eyeball, please.

[Rob Mahoney]

Seriously. But it's, it's plan, as you alluded to, whether it was helping the blood slugs or not, whether it has the beef with the xenomorph, which it certainly seems to based on the flashback, its plan, to the extent it has one, is not so different from Morrow's plan, which is destabilize all of this shit. Get out.

[Joanna Robinson]

Chaos. Yeah, it worked on the Maginot. Okay, before we get into our deep dive, and we'll do our best to dive as deep as we can without Mallory here, we have some mailbag business that we want to get to really quickly. Alyssa wrote in to mention the audio that we hear at the top of every episode. I can't remember if you and Mel talked about this, but the audio cue that we hear at the top of every episode when we get this sort of previously on Ish moment is Jeff Russo, who's the composer of the series, covering the Cream song Strange Brew. And it's a banger. Like, it is like I get when there's a couple things that I'm absolutely loving about Alien. The way the intro gets me so ready and amped to watch an episode of alien Earth is 10 out of 10, no notes. And also the what is now signature sort of like image fade, cross fading thing that they do, whether it's, you know, that hilarious freeze frame that's been memeified and going around of Ice Age over.

[Rob Mahoney]

It gets me every single time.

[Joanna Robinson]

Really good. But you know, when we see slightly sort of thinking about his plan and we get, you know, sort of superimposed over his face. The eggs opening. Like that's just incredibly good stuff. It's not. And it's so artistically done that it doesn't annoy me. I'm not like I wasn't wondering what he was thinking about. I knew what he was thinking about. It's not telling me something, but it's evoking something. And it' just done like really in a, in a very like signature to this series way that just like you could now re edit something in the style of Alien Earth and I would recognize it if that makes sense so completely.

[Rob Mahoney]

I think a lot of it is. It doesn't feel handholdy at all in that way. It feels. Everything feels like you're being kept at a slight remove in a way that is also very true to Alien. This is always a franchise that's like a little warm blooded in terms of humans making human decisions, but also a little bit cold, a little antiseptic. Like there is a quality of that to a lot of the alien stuff. And so the idea of we're going to use these overlays and these dissolves and these flashbacks and even these reflections sometimes. Like I thought, you know, some of Arthur's best moments in this episode and David Rizdal's best acting in this episode was in the reflection as he's trying to convince Slightly to open the door.

[Joanna Robinson]

I have a family too.

[Rob Mahoney]

I, I mean horrifying. And like the moment of recognition in that performance in that character, in that actor when he goes from, please open the door, I'm locked from inside. To realizing what Slightly is telling him and the way that is then reflected in a literal reflection. I think all that stuff works so well. The visual language of the show, the blend of like opening a montage previously on plus Flash Forward plus like, is this something we saw before? Is this something that's about to happen? The ambiguity of that is what makes all of those visual cues so fun.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think it's really good. Something that I saw on Reddit that I just thought that I would flag for people is like as we mentioned as they excavate some of the critters from the what. What is referred to as the broken zoo. The crashed spaceship.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

In the earlier episodes we were like, they couldn't have possibly gotten all the blood ticks, right?

[Rob Mahoney]

No chance.

[Joanna Robinson]

And I saw a post on Reddit that said if, if the blood slugs make it to the ocean, millions will die. Oh, right. Like containment folk. Especially essential for those critters who can proliferate, like, quite quickly and, you know, at volume. So the season two, the hunt for the blood ticks, who knows?

[Rob Mahoney]

I mean, that's the whole season that. That becomes like a Starship Troopers level event in terms of, like, quantity infestation.

[Joanna Robinson]

What is Jake doing? Do you think he's ready come back?

[Rob Mahoney]

I really hope so. I do wonder with. With the blood slugs and their little, you know, minnow versions that they're pooping out into the water are. How amphibious are these guys? Like, can they live in the water indefinitely? Do they at some point need to crawl their way out to find out? They're like, could a blood slug latch onto a blue whale and just go to town? Is that a thing that it has the capacity to do?

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay, well, I know what I'll be dreaming of tonight. Thank you ever so much. Another thing I learned while perusing Reddit, and this is just linked to some Noah Hawley's interview that Tang, the character that we were sort of curious about on the Maginot, who was standing over his shipmate's cryo chamber in decidedly like, call HR immediately fashion, was not a synth.

[Rob Mahoney]

This is. This is an amazing reveal. I. I just did not fully realize.

[Joanna Robinson]

In watching it, we all thought he was a sin.

[Rob Mahoney]

I just maybe. And look, what does that say about us, Joe? That we are assuming that the creep must be the robot and not just a normal creepy ass human?

[Joanna Robinson]

So something that Noah Hawley has said in a couple different interviews is that, you know, at this time, the way he envisions it is that at this time, it's like if you were a creep, you could either go to jail or go hunt space bugs. Was sort of. This is a sort of like, this.

[Rob Mahoney]

Is like the wall.

[Joanna Robinson]

Sure. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Take the black. And by take the glass black, I mean stand over a young boy cryo chamber. So it makes sense to me in terms of why Tang was like screaming when he died. I was like, confused by that. If he's just like a creepy dude, then I guess that's why.

[Rob Mahoney]

I mean, synths can experience fear.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, but it was just like such a human scream, you know? And I was like, why did they describe deprive us of the milk moment? You know, like, it just all seems. This is a great point, very strange to me.

[Rob Mahoney]

Never look, everyone out there, filmmakers, never deprive us of the milk moment.

[Joanna Robinson]

It does a body good.

[Rob Mahoney]

We need it.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay, so listen, this to me, what Noah Hawley says is like, what some of the. One of the joys of Alien since the Ian Holm reveal is this idea of you don't know who is a synth and who is not. And so this is like someone we were talking about when we were talking about Adam as potentially, I was like, secret synth. And you and Mallory were like, go to hell and die. That's a bad idea.

[Rob Mahoney]

It was more. I really hope not.

[Joanna Robinson]

But Noah Hawley's, like, talking about how Tang is kind of the reverse of that. Like the opposite of a secret synth, secret, creepy human Tang. So that is. What does that mean?

[Rob Mahoney]

Honestly, I love the way that plays in both respects. Right. The characters within the world are all operating under the assumption that he's human, both because of the timeline and because why would they ever think otherwise? But for the audience, we are interpreting everything he does so differently, to the point of being catastrophically wrong on multiple podcasts.

[Joanna Robinson]

And then another thing that we want to clear up thanks to, imparted a great email we got from a listener who wishes to remain anonymous, is this idea of canon. Because this is something that sort of like all three of us to a certain degree, have been tying ourselves up in knots about to try to make all of the timeline work. And so the question of, is Alien Earth in the canon? Or how much is Noah Hawley paying attention to all the things that came before, etc. Etc. So these are a couple things that I learned some fascinating things about. Oh yeah, Alien and canon and how it works from our. Our listeners. So thank you so much. So a couple quotes from Noah Hawley on this in the south by Southwest panel. He said, Ridley. Ridley Scott made Prometheus and engaged with another idea in terms of the origin of these creatures. It just wasn't part of my DNA of how these movies worked. So I chose not to engage with that part of the story and to just sort of speak to the alien that I had encoded. Very human language.

[Rob Mahoney]

Very, very human. Of course, if I can just say on this front, and in some ways I understand that what I'm about to say is a little antithetical to the project of House of our Check. I kind of also operate this way with Aliens, specifically. Like, it never once occurred to me in watching Alien or Aliens. Where did these motherfuckers come from?

[Joanna Robinson]

Right.

[Rob Mahoney]

I'm just so terrified of them in the present. Like, my fear and my adrenaline in the case of Aliens kind of overwhelms the cognitive process of wondering the backstory of how all this came to be. To the point that I like Prometheus, I like Covenant, but the Kind of like more anchored in the present iterations of the series, I think are just more successful overall. But also like, that's kind of where I am in terms of my interest in the longer term canon and lore is wanting to be in that fear and not in the explanation.

[Joanna Robinson]

I agree with you. And I would say it is a. It can be like a disease inside of the IP properties that we cover. This desire to give us the origin story of everything. I don't want to know how Han Solo got his blaster. Like, I don't care about that sort of stuff.

[Rob Mahoney]

I don't want to see Boba Fett crawl out of the sarlacc pit. I don't want to see it.

[Joanna Robinson]

Sometimes it works and sometimes it's great, you know what I mean? But that's more story dependent than it is like my desire to know the lore. We are a lore, you know, of course, based podcast. And so I really understand Mallory's impulse to always try to, like, figure out the timelines and make all the. Connect all the dots. That's part of our job here. And in certain, like in texts like Game of Thrones and stuff like that, like with one singular author behind it, George R.R. martin, that's the thing that is often rewarded. And then with an IP like this, where you've got not only different hands playing in the. In the world, but Disney purchasing Fox at a certain point. So what does that do to who gets. Has a say in what the. The IP means and what is canon, what is not? So let's get a little bit more into that, please. Holly talked about, and I, I like this for him because we love Fargo and we love that Fargo is like, it's Fargo ish. And so if no, Holly's like, I'm making alien ish. Like, I don't have a problem with that. And so I think that, like he said, he told the Radio Times, it's got to be its own thing. There's touchstones, there's references. It's the same on Fargo saying, all right, I take a little Lebowski, take a little of this tone of voice or this element, et cetera, et cetera. So he was talking about how an aliens. Your favorite alien movie, I think, right? He was like, Newt is kind of an adult ish personality in a child body, and Bill Paxton's character is a child brain and an adult body. And he was sort of playing with those ideas in order to get the hybrids that we get in this show. So that's the kind of like, way he just is deciding to engage with the canon rather than like, I need all of my. My timelines to match up all of my company mergers to match up all of my. Who know, who knew what net when to match up. Does that make sense?

[Rob Mahoney]

I mean, who can keep track of all the M and A's at this point? Like, it is a complicated corporate legacy.

[Joanna Robinson]

On his, on the official plot, he said Prometheus and Covenant aren't really his things, didn't even bother to recognize Romulus, and he took the chance to make the Alien movie of his dreams in Episode five. So that's, that's sort of the stance here. In terms of the listener email that we got, those are all Noah Hawley quotes. In terms of the listener email we got, we learned a lot about sort of. And it's funny because I've been thinking as we all have been, about Peter Pan and how sort of like, there have been so many iterations of Peter Pan. There's Hook, there's, you know, Pan. There's like all these different ideas, like just spinning out Peter.

[Rob Mahoney]

You know, there's all of them out there.

[Joanna Robinson]

There's Peter Pan syndrome. But. But it, It's a fertile concept that so many people have had fun playing with. And so if we think of the Alien franchise as a similar thing, we. We got an email from a listener who has some inside information about sort of like what is considered canon, what isn't inside of the universe. They pointed us to a. A blog that sort of is. It's by rogue reviewer and it's called Defining Canon in an Alien World. And this person who was hired by Fox to do work inside of the Alien IP world was talking about what is considered canon, what isn't. So like, if there's a Predator in it, it's not considered canon. Anything that is Alien v Predator or Predator at all or anything like that, not canon.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, it's considered Alien versus Predator canon, which is its own canonical book.

[Joanna Robinson]

So it does not has no beari preying on this. And then there's like so many novelizations, so many comic books, and you and I, you and I encounter this in, in the Buffy world, Mallory and I certainly encounter this in the Star wars world where things are divided into like, legends and canon and sort of stuff like that. So. But there was this concept that he wrote about in his blog that I thought was so interesting. And then I swear we will talk about this episode in more detail. But he called it barroom canon, which I really love. Quote, as a franchise consultant to 20th Century Fox and Alien, Predator and Planet of the Apes. I had often. I often had to take a long, hard look at a number of long beloved franchise stories and try to figure out how exactly they could still fit into canon. If I couldn't, I'd recommend they be tossed. I propose a third option, what I've come to call barroom canon. These are stories overheard in a bar or read in a comic or played in a video game or even posted on Facebook that may or may not have some truth to them. This allows canon to have some flex in regards to including stories that otherwise could no longer count in a franchise's development. This is. This is fantastic. Have your. Have your cake and eat it too. You know, like.

[Rob Mahoney]

And a wonderful and elegant solution to specifically what you mentioned, Joe, which is managing a franchise with so many distinct creators in it and distinct voices and distinct tones and distinct genres, and it's like you're just not going to keep every date straight, every character straight, every company merger straight. You need to give some room to fudge around those things. And I think this is a really smart way to do it, to just say, yes, there are these big tent pole things we all agree happened roughly at these times, but give yourself a little maneuverability to the point that you're not just creating corners that you then have to write your way out of.

[Joanna Robinson]

And, you know, Star wars has just continually found itself back into this corner. So this is tough. So just this blog post was made in 2021. So pre Romulus. So Romulus is not even mentioned here. But no, the things that are considered canon according to Fox, Prometheus, Alien Covenant, Alien Aliens, Alien three, Alien Resurrection. That's canon. And then everything else, maybe including Romulus, I'm not sure, but definitely including Alien Earth. Alien Earth is considered Byron canon. And Noah Hawley has made no, you know, made no bones about this. Like, this is just what he's decided to do. So that is what we are here to talk about today, something we overheard in a bar room somewhere about a boy genius in an island of monsters. So.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, I should say too, there's a couple additions to the canon beyond those films as well. Like, sorry, Alien isolation is included in that. Like the series of other short films and stuff they released around Prometheus and Covenant very specifically, like, some of the supplemental material is still considered tier one canon, but.

[Joanna Robinson]

But not all of it. Which is fascinating because, like, some of the Prometheus short films were and some weren't.

[Rob Mahoney]

Oh yeah, those are shit. We don't like those. We're throwing those out or at least demoting them within the bar room.

[Joanna Robinson]

And then it was like David's drawings maybe. Like, it's fascinating. It's many, many tiers. And then I love how we got to the bottom and it was like, these will never be canon but are considered similar. Ish. So like Blade Runner was in, you know, there were like these other movies that are considered like imaginatively similar but have nothing to do with the canon but are somehow on this chart anyway. So fascinating read. Once again. The blog is called Rogue Reviewer and the blog post is called Defining Canon in an Alien World.

[Rob Mahoney]

I would highly recommend it.

[Joanna Robinson]

Really good.

[Rob Mahoney]

If you're at all interested in how all this stuff squares up. Very, very interesting to check.

[Joanna Robinson]

Really good read. All right. Well, I mean, doing Mallory Rubin proud several minutes, many, many minutes into this podcast. Should we go to the now, into the deep dive?

[Rob Mahoney]

Let's cook. Joe. Well, the holidays have come and gone once again, but if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift. Well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year. What do you have to lose? Give it a [e-mail] Switch limited time.

[Joanna Robinson]

50% off regular price for new customers. Upfront payment required $45 for three months, $90 for six month or $180 for 12 month plan taxes and fees. Extra speeds may slow after 50 gigabytes per month when network is busy. See Terms. All right, so this episode opens with a lengthy Peter and Wendy quote about growing up. And we have multiple Peter. This is the highest rate of Peter Pan quotage in an episode so far. So I just wanted to quickly ask you, sort of like on the Peter Pan front, how is all of that working for you, Rob? And how is it working maybe specifically inside of this episode? Episode?

[Rob Mahoney]

This one was a lot, even for me, a little overloaded. I thought we leaned on it too much. And I think especially it was not just the quantity but the way that those excerpts were deployed. The first of which, as you alluded to this idea of like all kids needing to grow up over time. And we're kind of juxtaposing that with Wendy, who's stretching her legs and learning how to be a different kind of and in some ways more adult person, also juxtaposed with little toddler Zeno, you know, crawling out of its little corner of its cage like that one. I actually really and I think with Wendy's part of that specifically, you know, learning to express herself in new ways. Pushing on all these rules and boundaries around her as we see her do over the course of this episode. Kind of carving out a sense of identity beyond what the surrogate parents in her life have told her she's allowed to be is kind of her journey through the course of this episode. That one I like. The more we keep going back to the. Well, it's like, okay, we're getting the bit about Peter Pan calling off the Lost Boys, but the metaphor is getting really strained because of who those people are supposed to represent. The one that's like more of an interstitial about a strange boy and like the piercing of the veil into Neverland. It's like we're just stretching the metaphor a little too far for my taste personally. The more we're going back to it within one episode.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, throughout this series it's not been one to one. And I think it's especially confusing in that Tootles moment about the sort of culling of the Lost Boys because it's not Petyr who's doing the culling here. Right.

[Rob Mahoney]

It's the flies. The flies.

[Joanna Robinson]

Also the eye. And also maybe Kirsch if you want to like make that point. But it's not Peter himself. So. And by Peter I mean boy cavalier. So I also agree. I think a couple of these passages struck me as Noah Hawley went through with his high letter and was like, what is the creepiest sounding passage?

[Rob Mahoney]

I think especially the one credit where it's due. There's some creepy ass passages in Peter Pan I am learning. As someone who has not read that particular.

[Joanna Robinson]

I have also been going through the text with my highlighter, like finding, you know, the creepiest ones. I read one of those passages last week about Peter killing the Lost Boys. So like lived up, very relatable. But. But yeah, in some, in some moments it felt a little like doing it to do its sake, you know, sort of thing. But I do think the idea of Neverland as it relates to the most obvious, like tech trillionaires in search of immortality. Tech trillionaire, the immaturity, the impetuous immaturity, the flighty immaturity of the tech trillionaire class inside of this world or our world, et cetera, I do think is interesting. And this idea of like, I think it's actually most interesting inside of this episode, inside of this moment between Jo Hermit and Wendy Marcy, like that idea of like, you're my younger sister and her being like, you can't keep me in that box, actually, because I'm something else entirely now. You have to let me grow up. Even though you're still thinking me as your little sister. I'm a completely different critter. And my life cycle is different than what you would expect.

[Rob Mahoney]

It lasts much longer, apparently potentially thousands of years of interstellar travel ahead for.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay, exciting. Can't wait for that. Okay. Alien Earth could run for eons on.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah, well, it depends. And I think as far as the Neverland comp of this goes and like kind of transporting that idea to this compound island, I think is a really good creation within the world of the show because you're both creating one. The potential for these aliens to get out in the world on Earth. But for now, they are contained in a lab that is contained on an island. And you effectively turn Neverland into a prison for somebody. And right now it's a prison for like the eyeball jockey. But pretty soon it's going to be a prison for all the humans who are trying to survive with all these critters.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

While they don't know the boat code. You know, it's like the, the access to getting off the island, I think is going to get restricted very quickly. And that's an exciting twist on the Neverland ideas, is being trapped there.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. Which is, you know, and, and who leaves when and what things that feel like an exciting adventure then become a life threatening peril. And this idea, you know, I was sort of poking around the way in which J.R. tolkien had some strong opinions about Peter Pan, a play that he saw when he was a young man. And not all of them are positive, but this idea of Neverland as like a fairy realm sort of that you go to, and this idea that like fairy stories should be scary and fairy stories should be dark and that's what makes them so exciting. So, yeah, here we are. Okay. Speaking of, you know, toddlers, xenomorphs and brothers who are uncertain about their sister growing up, we've got Hermit and Kirsch watching Wendy as she watches the alien. This sort of like layers upon layers upon layers. And we've got a lot of this happens throughout the episode. We've got, you know, the surveillance cam moments that we've been getting throughout the series of like, okay, what this interaction is happening and who is watching this interaction happen? Who's. Who's in a zoo at any given time inside of this story. So Herman is talking to Kirsch and he's saying like, you know, should we be Worried about her, you know, and. And Kirsch is like, her physical, you know, and he's like, you're worried about what? Her intellect, her emotions? He scoffs, like, scoffing. And then Herman is like, no, I just want to know how to take care of her when we get to leave. And it's like, lol, guy. This is Hotel California. You could check out any time you like. You could never leave. That's like an onion asking, how do I take care of a star? You think he's going to let you take her with you? To do what? And he's like, just, like, live, be a family. I don't know. What did you think of his interaction?

[Rob Mahoney]

An onion asking, how do I take care of a star? Is elite God chair stuff. And I. I appreciate it. Specifically, like, Hermit is for all of his strengths and clearly, like, you know, he's a medical professional who's successful to some degree. He seems to be able to keep his wits about him in emergency sit situations. Like, he has good qualities, can sketch out a map, severance style, and try to extricate somebody.

[Joanna Robinson]

All.

[Rob Mahoney]

All, you know, has many things going for him. Also kind of a dummy. And I think in this case, like, her shredding his naivety about this whole situation. Like, in what universe would this make sense for anybody here, especially the trillionaire who calls all the shots? Why would he ever let you leave here with Wendy? And even if he did, why would Wendy, a creature of now basically limitless potential, ever be satisfied going home and watching old baseball highlights with you?

[Joanna Robinson]

And Ice Age? Don't forget.

[Rob Mahoney]

Okay.

[Joanna Robinson]

There's other things on the roster. No, I mean, I think it's really interesting that this would be an idea. Like, it's one thing for him to be naive in the first place. Like, I'm coming back to this island with you, and then we'll go, right?

[Rob Mahoney]

Of course.

[Joanna Robinson]

But I feel like he's had a couple versions of this conversation. Certainly Adam. The Adam conversation that he had certainly should have disabused him of this idea that he just gets to waltz out with Wendy anytime that he wants. So I was sort of confused why we were coming back to this conversation, but Kirsch gets a lot of quips in this episode. A very quippy episode for Kirsch.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

Kind of rail and Givens style to a certain degree.

[Rob Mahoney]

So I was delighted. I was also left wondering, where do Synthetics get their personalities, you know, we're meant to confront in this episode? Nibs is getting her mind wiped. We're Changing, like, very core formative memories for her. What does that do to her as a person? Who is it that went in the code and is like, okay, Kirsch, all right, I'd maybe, like, 80% bitchy, you know, just like, let's just ramp it up a little bit.

[Joanna Robinson]

Who.

[Rob Mahoney]

Who made that decision? And how do I shake their hand?

[Joanna Robinson]

I like to think that, like, someone at Prodigy is, like, just occasionally bumping it up and bumping it up. Like, the quip, the quit factor, just every. Every so often. Yeah. Especially, like, the implication is that Boy Cavalier made Kirsch, Right?

[Rob Mahoney]

Maybe. But he is an older model, so he could be coming from a different country. I don't know.

[Joanna Robinson]

In his pursuit of that intelligent conversation, like, does he bump the bitchiness up and all that sort of stuff because he just, like, really wants someone to, like, push back on him and meet him where he is?

[Rob Mahoney]

You know, I hadn't really. I honestly was just operating under the assumption that some other company, Weyland Yutani or whoever, was churning out all of the normal synths and that this was an acquisition. But honestly, the idea that Boy would have, at some point made him, I think, gives a whole different kind of hue to their relationship. Right. Then it would be Boy is sort of disappointed in the fact that Kirsch couldn't live up to what he wanted him to be. Kirsch is resentful in some ways, maybe, of, you know, people like Tootle Isaac, who he's just kind of watching melt and seems generally indifferent by, despite all of the maybe affection we had attributed to him in previous episodes in that relationship. So. So I think that's a great. That would be a great kind of angle to take within that relationship. But I honestly have no idea where Kirsch came from.

[Joanna Robinson]

And, I mean, it certainly seems like that might be what Morrow was hinting at in the elevator. We'll get to that exchange. But this idea of, like, you were. You were made obsolete by your own company, so you're the iPhone 6.

[Rob Mahoney]

Like, why are you talking shit to me?

[Joanna Robinson]

All right, you referenced. Let's talk about resetting Nibs. Okay. Okay. Here's. Here's my most profound question. And I. I don't think we got a straight answer from Noah Hawley on this, but, like. Like, in terms of the idiocy and the incompetency of the scientists, this is quite admittedly a hallmark of the Alien franchise. Yes, we have talked about this in the DNA, and you and Mel made the great point of, does it make it feel A little bit better that some of the dumb dumbs making choices inside of this are literal children. But for a character like Dame Sylvia to make so many moves without considering the repercussions is frustrating to me.

[Rob Mahoney]

In a way this one was.

[Joanna Robinson]

That is a little different from. And don't get me wrong, it's frustrating. The scientists in Prometheus just like, sort of like, what are you? Alien python thing. I'll stick my face closer.

[Rob Mahoney]

Sometimes you just have to get a very, very, very close look at an alien species.

[Joanna Robinson]

But, like, when it's your project that you've been designing from the start. And in the case of Nibs, let's just isolate Nibs. You pick a girl with, quote, trauma in her past. We knew that when we chose her. What makes her a good candidate for this program in that case? Or if it's like, let's pick a kind of funky wired one just to see what that. That. How that plays out. I'm gonna need you to monitor her a lot, a lot more closely. And then also this act of wiping her, which again, we already discussed the Arthur and Sylvia disagreement. The fact that Dame Sylvia wipes her and then just sends her back into a room where anyone can visit her. And then Wendy waltzes in and is like, hey, why are all your memories missing? Which pisses Wendy off and freaks Nibs out. And I'm like, why was there no plan for this? You're gonna wipe her memory and then just reintroduce her without maybe talking to the other children and saying, like, hey, we had to do this thing with Nibs. Please don't bring it up. It will trigger her. You know, it was for this reason or another.

[Rob Mahoney]

They just, like, even that would be a bad plan. These are children who. It's gonna come up. What you needed to do was cut, like, cut the cord. Nibs is gone. Like, we just gotta pull the plug on this human life. Granted, I'm not saying I would do this. I'm saying within the world of damage control, you and Arthur are getting a.

[Joanna Robinson]

Divorce for sure, Rob.

[Rob Mahoney]

Oh, but here's the thing. If you're gonna. If you're gonna keep Nibs alive and wipe her memory, she needs to go into a separate part of the island in which you have a full Truman show style production, assuring her that nothing has happened since she went offline. You cannot put her around other human beings who are not on the payroll. You cannot put her around kids who are gonna say whatever. Absolutely. Blundering stuff from them on. On even just the what happens literally next?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yes.

[Rob Mahoney]

Not five steps down the line. Like, literally, when she wakes up, what happens?

[Joanna Robinson]

Because, like, when she flipped out in counseling, at least Dame Sylvia was like, lock her in her room and keep all the kids away from her.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yep.

[Joanna Robinson]

And in this, they just put her in an unlocked room. Also. I just have so many notes about all the rooms that the kids have access to in general.

[Rob Mahoney]

They go wherever they are.

[Joanna Robinson]

They're just, like, wandering in and out of rooms. I'm so confused by this. Why. Why would you. Why would you do this? Okay. Anyway.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, look, can we. I don't want to flash forward too much. Can we talk about some of this stuff with Nibs juxtaposed with her kind of future scenes with Dame Sylvia in this episode where they.

[Joanna Robinson]

Let's do it.

[Rob Mahoney]

I. I will say on a conceptual level, the idea of eternal sun shining some of your own memories away is a huge, unwieldy, like, mentally and emotionally challenging one to deal with. That I love when Sci Fi dives into that stuff, of the idea to take it a step further, where you could live in a world where other people are making that decision for you is especially terrifying.

[Joanna Robinson]

No.

[Rob Mahoney]

And the idea that you are going to remove. You're going to attempt to save someone from their trauma and not think that you are then creating a trauma of absence and the dissociation and the distrust that would come from that. That is. That is alien level naivety in terms of Dame Sylvia and the entire operation. I think that core idea is really, really juicy stuff that I'm glad that the show is mining.

[Joanna Robinson]

Absolutely. And I think, you know, in the case of Morrow, listening to some Babu Sisse interviews. No, Holly interviews. Talking about, like, the trauma that Morrow experienced in losing his daughter.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

And so the desire to put that pain, you know, to his eternal sunshine, that pain somehow. So he has sort of put it in a box inside of his own mind. But also this idea of, can I get a synthetic body? You know, Kirsch makes a joke about this as an elevator. Like, you know, he's like, I gotta get me one of those. And he's like a new kid or a body that isn't a piece of trash. That's not what he says. We'll get to it.

[Rob Mahoney]

Come on, man.

[Joanna Robinson]

Said 80, as you said, maybe even 110 in that moment. But so that idea, right, to not only, like, put a stopper on death, but get to this sort of, like, control what has, you know, erase what has traumatized you, what has dismayed you like that that is a great product to sell to Tom Wilkinson in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. You know, like, great idea, but yeah, there needs to be consent around it and pretty important. I brought up Westworld before, but this idea in Westworld of, you know, having control over things, this human consciousness that you've created there. There is this thing that they did in Westworld where it was like, it was just freeze all motor functions is just something they would say which just. This is like just drives home this horrific moment of you can just freeze a person, freeze all motor functions. You're frozen.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, having, having not delved into that world, Joe, is that the kind of situation where their cognitive mind is still active but they just cannot move at all? They're just prisoners within their own bodies.

[Joanna Robinson]

Erase this interaction. Bring yourself back online, reset. Like all of these things that, you know, tell me this story again, but without any emotion attached to it. Like these are, these are these horrific puppet mastery things that we saw a lot on, on a show like Westworld, Westworld, Jurassic Park. All of these crate and Y ideas are definitely like in the, in the, in the. Hopefully not blood tick infested water here. But like this nibs move is just like. It goes beyond sticking your face inside of a, of a slimy egg, which is a bad idea no matter what. It's just like. And I want. So I don't know how to understand the Dame Sylvia character because I'm just like, are you smart? You don't seem smart at all to me. So I don't understand at all, you.

[Rob Mahoney]

Know, well, let's, let's kind of draw a dividing line between her and Arthur because Arthur, I would say he doesn't necessarily intend to get fired. He is not. I don't want to give him too much credit in his principled does say I'm not going to do that.

[Joanna Robinson]

Right. Against everybody.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yes. With the expectation that I will be heard, we're not going to do this. I'm going to get to maintain my position. And then once it's the rug is pulled, it's like, okay, you're insubordinate. You are now fired. Leave the grounds immediately or you will be shot. All of that seems to come as a bit of a surprise to him that that's the way that would unfold. Dame Sylvia to me is expressing equally naive to some other characters this idea that like, okay, I am still going to be as a person of empathy, as a person who cares about the well being of these hybrids, I am still the one moving the Dials adjusting everything. And maybe my agency within this completely fucked equation is worth something in protecting these kids. I don't think that's a smart assumption to make, but it's one that lots of people do as they are co opted within difficult and challenging systems. It's also one that I think even that character may not fully believe, but it's kind of. You could. I think it's especially clear when she does get down to nuts and bolts if, apologies to Nibs and starts moving the dials around and kind of is like talking to Nibs, but also to herself. And I think kind of isn't this nice? Convincing herself?

[Joanna Robinson]

Isn't this good to be able to do this?

[Rob Mahoney]

Absolutely. We're just gonna, we're just gonna wipe the trauma away. And that, that seems like she is trying to talk herself into this being.

[Joanna Robinson]

A viable option 100%. And like, you're right that in, in, in terms of the compromises we make, the moral compromises we make and maybe the exposure of someone like this is, you know, a, you know, superficial little gender reversal where you would expect inside of the married scientist couple that the like female character would be the more, you know, empathic one, the one in defense of the kids, all this sort of stuff like that. And is Arthur really, who's taking that principal stand and Sylvia, who is being a bit more career minded inside of this or you know, so caught up in the experiment and, and the, the rush of that and so her. I think what could be interesting, you know, to see how this all plays out is her very like hippie dippy, soft scarf, like therapist vibe mode.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

And I say this someone is who loves the hippie dippy aesthetic but like, and a soft scarf, not a hard scarf certainly, but like that maybe that like the, the rank hypocrisy of that is, is intentional inside of this. So I'll be curious to see, you.

[Rob Mahoney]

Know, but it sure sounds like we would have loved to have a conversation between Arthur and Dame Sylvia at some point before his unfortunate demise.

[Joanna Robinson]

It would have been nice. Okay.

[Rob Mahoney]

Really nice.

[Joanna Robinson]

Let's go back to Herman and Wendy. They have this conversation walking down the hall. I just need to note, just has to be said that Sidney Chandler's arms look amazing. She has not been skipping arm day.

[Rob Mahoney]

No, the definition.

[Joanna Robinson]

I cannot wait for her to start punching people. It's going to be very fun. But this is our, our clearest sense that Wendy has. And you know, she's been cooing and clicking at this alien for a lot of scenes. Now, and I gotta say, Sydney Chandler's doing a great job. The close ups on the purse lips, all really good.

[Rob Mahoney]

It's true. Really getting a lot of good, like, teeth. Teeth and tongue flicking action happening, you know, There's a lot happening.

[Joanna Robinson]

Although phrasing, fairness, huh?

[Rob Mahoney]

You know, it did seem like she may have offended the zito at one point, you know, when it was still a toddler. Like, she said the wrong thing. Like, the pronunciation for I love you and fuck you were like, a little similar tonally. And she just, like, aired a little in the wrong direction.

[Joanna Robinson]

But she wasn't flustered when she was just sort of like, oh, how cute. It's slamming itself against this plexi with its acid blood body.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

Adorable, unbothered. But she has this. This. She's created this bond. And this is perhaps. Is this a mistake I would think that boy Cavalier has made where he's like, great, they can talk to each other. Let's let them talk to each other.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

So now she has bonded with the aliens and she feels more akin to them. I am a subject. You are studying me the way that you are subject. You know, you are studying them. They didn't ask to come here. She is a child. You know, I'm sure there were some conversations that her dad, played by Noah Hawley, had with her, like, what they were gonna do. There is. But can you actually give consent if you're a child? Is unclear. So it's like. And Jo, again, a bit naively being, like, what do you mean? You associate with them. They're predators. They're animals. They're beings. And we are human. And she's like, am I, though? I don't know. Have you seen my arms? These arms aren't human. What do you think? Well.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, I would say Joe does make inadvertently a decent point about what is. What actually separates human beings from the xenomorphs as we know them. Everything that Wendy slash Marcy is saying is well founded. Like, they have a lot in common with things like answer bees, that kind of hive mindset. They are operating for something bigger than themselves. But what they don't do, and the thing that Wendy is practicing in this moment is the level of deep empathy and projection of, like, trying to put herself into this alien's shoes or carapace or whatever and say, like, it didn't, you know, as you said, it didn't ask to come here. It didn't ask to be brought. It didn't ask to come to this place.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

And a xenomorph is not asking itself that before it rips you apart, at least based on our canonical knowledge of what these creatures are. And maybe that will change now that we have a translator, now that we're. We're duolingo. Ing Xenovian. Xenoese.

[Joanna Robinson]

Nope, Xenovian is it. You got it in one.

[Rob Mahoney]

Zenovia. All right, Zenovian. Now that we have a direction, now that we're just going to Google Translate Zenovian right here, maybe that will change. But in the moment, it does seem like one of the things that is separating even someone who is above human or Pat or post human, like Wendy from the Xenomorphs, is the exact thing that she is explaining to him and he is kind of not quite hearing.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think it's interesting to think about this idea of community inside of these alien species, to think, you know, this is something that Mal was bringing up last week. This idea of like. Like the aliens that are working in common cause with each other, even if that common cause is just like, let's fuck up these. These people who put us in boxes and. And let's see how the doors work and let's see what advantage we can take of the chaos, all that sort of stuff. So there's that. And then. But in terms of alien community, now, if people have read all of the novelizations that are may or may not be canon, you might know much more than I do about the alien community. But the idea that there's like a mother, you know, like an alien queen, there's definitely queen. Like there is culture of some kind inside of the alien world, you know.

[Rob Mahoney]

I mean, they're making art in there. Haven't you seen that? Haven't you seen the hives? You know, if that's not artistry, I don't know what is. I did think it was interesting earlier during the scene where Kirsch and Hermit are observing Wendy talking with the xenomorph. Kirsch refers to the xenomorph she killed as an adult male. Yeah, which I don't. I don't know that I've heard often, if at all, a lot of gendered or. Or like biological sex conversation about the xenomorphs beyond. Just like queen and normal run of the mill kind of.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, I think because there is a queen and because maybe of Jurassic Park, I kind of assumed they were all female. The future is female. And that's what I thought. But, yeah, I thought that was interesting too.

[Rob Mahoney]

It does seem if this is. If we're Playing by Jurassic park rules. And we should say Hermit did refer to her as a her earlier in the season. So like we're on different pages here as far as how all this stuff is playing out. Wendy's argument is basically this one. Xenomorph hashtag, not all xenomorphs is good, maybe not bad. He's like my blue. You know, maybe we're in Jurassic World. We have moved past just the part.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'm like pretty upset that you're making me think about Jurassic World, but it's a pretty good comp.

[Rob Mahoney]

Okay, blame the show.

[Joanna Robinson]

Something that she says is this is a yes place, not a no place. Here we say yes, obviously repeating something that Boy Cavalier has said. Right. And I. In the Samuel Blinken interview on the official podcast, he talked about, you know, something that Noah Hawley gave him as a reference was this Twilight Zone episode, It's a Good Life, which I've actually seen. I've not seen all the Twilight Zone episodes, but I have seen this one where there's a six year old boy who has like telekinet kinetic powers and, and can. Has all these adults cowering around him and if they have an unhappy thought or something that bothers him, he can just instantly banish them to this like purgatorial cornfield. And so that, that, that idea of like adults fearful of a child, the temperamental nature of a child, and the enormous power that that child wields. And so thinking about that here in this moment, like this is a yes place, not a no place. If you say no, you might get, you know, Arthur Esque shipped off the island, except, you know, without the facehugger included and that you think about that inside of something like the arbitration which we'll talk about next, where it's just sort of like, like he's just like, let me see, let me push the boundaries. Let me see how many times I could touch my feet inside of this.

[Rob Mahoney]

You know, one is too many in that context. One is definitely too many.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, I, I thought that was a really interesting comp and I think it's a great show. Before we go to arbitration, we should just wrap up this Hermit and, and scene. Herman and Wendy scene. And say he's like, I want to rescue you. And she's like, what if I don't.

[Rob Mahoney]

Want to go like, cue the alt J.

[Joanna Robinson]

Dial that, dial that music you up tessellate arbitration.

[Rob Mahoney]

Okay, I was into it. One last thing on that note. I mean, for one, as far as the court, like the cornfield, Twilight Zone influence here. Like everything you're describing also sounds very X Men to me. It sounds like people being terrified of Jean Gray. It sounds like, you know, we're dialing up the puberty in that sense. And like a different kind of chemical reaction happening within those kids bodies. But the idea of incredible power that you have no means to control the way you do control it. And this is where there's been so much in the show that feels so predatory towards children. That feels like what someone would say if they were an abusive parent, if they were an abusive uncle, if they were a kidnapper. This is a yes place and not a no place. Maybe the most overt version of that yet. And is like it just as soon as the words came out of her mouth as something that she has internalized and accepted that makes it that much more insidious. Right. Like this is something that she. She genuinely believes of this place. That the key to tapping into her potential is saying yes to anything. Boy cavalier.

[Joanna Robinson]

It is interesting though, inside of this episode. She goes from like, this is a yes place, not a no place, to one conversation with Nibs and then she seems out by the time she's radicalized. Yeah, one, listen. Nibs an influencer. Okay. So arbitration.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

The shot we get is boy with his bare feet and his fucking pants tassels just slapping their way into the room. Just incredible stuff. Something that Samuel Blinken said. Was that a reason why he. He said he was the one who pushed for boy to be barefoot in every scene and also was an improv of his to hold the iPad with his feet. Like that was like his idea.

[Rob Mahoney]

The foot acting from Blinken this season. Tremendous. There's. There's some moments in this exchange where he's doing some gesturing, but my favorite has to be previously the very dramatic toe point we get from him as he's having a conversation with Wendy.

[Joanna Robinson]

Is he a trained dancer? I need to look it up. I know he was in the Harry Potter. He was in Cursed Child. But like, I don't.

[Rob Mahoney]

At least. Yeah, I don't know if he hits his marks. That's for sure.

[Joanna Robinson]

Just like Dexterous. Okay. So he said like Neverland is where he lives. That whole thing is his home. He owns everything. So why would he not be barefooted in his own home? But to extend that to this arbitration moment. This just feels like like. Like slapping your dick on the table essentially. Like. Like that's what. That's what it is. I. I'm gonna pull a no Holly and. And hit you with a Peter and Wendy, quote, right, okay. Adventures, of course, as we shall see, were of daily occurrence. But about this time, Peter invented, with Wendy's help, a new game that fascinated him enormously until he suddenly had no more interest in it. Which, as you have been told, was what always happened with his game. So this idea that like Boy Cavaliers, like, what's the next game? What can we play? What's most excited, what's shiniest? And this is what arbitration feels. This is a game for him to win. And sadly for the Yutani fans out there, for admirers of a bold red lip, he absolutely.

[Rob Mahoney]

Of an asymmetrical haircut, questionable wig, he.

[Joanna Robinson]

Wipes the floor with her in this.

[Rob Mahoney]

Army, not even compelling.

[Joanna Robinson]

It was. Was tough to watch. I had a problem with it. I was really interested to hear, you know, we got this Twilight Zone comp, but sort of similar to the way that Tony Gilroy would talk about. Andor they have been pretty careful in this alien various press cycles to not say, oh yeah, we're sending up this tech billionaire. Like, that's what we're doing here. Right. They're sort of like, it's a. It's a thing that happens. However, when Boy Cavalier says in the future where I live, we move fast and we make trillions.

[Rob Mahoney]

How are we, especially in arbitration, how.

[Joanna Robinson]

Are we not thinking about Mark Zuckerberg's move fast and break things?

[Rob Mahoney]

If you just transpose this dialogue from some of the arbitration scenes in the Social Network, would they just play one to one? They honestly might.

[Joanna Robinson]

Do you think Jesse Eisenberg would be bold enough to put his bare feet on a table in a scene though? Could he go toe to toe with Samuel Blinken in the foot acting Olympics?

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, there's levels to this stuff. There's putting your feet on Maine or at a major commercial product. There's also, I would say, many ways to put your feet on the table in a way that conveys power and indifference and kind of like the casual nature of how you are taking this arbitration. And then there is the very specific stance that Boy Cavalier takes upon sitting, which I would describe as stirrups, like just full on.

[Joanna Robinson]

He's going to lock you up to the obgyn.

[Rob Mahoney]

You know, it was a very particular choice.

[Joanna Robinson]

Horrifying is what I would call it. Noah.

[Rob Mahoney]

Holly bottoms of the feet too.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. And not even very pristinely clean, I should say. They looked a bit grubby, which is.

[Rob Mahoney]

That's what I'm saying.

[Joanna Robinson]

Noah Hawley has called Boy Cavalier a quote, wish fulfillment character that he Says and does whatever he wants, doesn't even wear shoes. And that Noah Holly's like. There's an allure to that in terms of, like, when you like to go into a room, slap your feet on bare feet on the table and just say and do whatever you want. It's not a wish that I've ever had, but no, you know, if that's something you've dreamed of, it's interesting to see in terms of Move Fast, Break things, the infamous Mark Zuckerberg Facebook motto, which they pivoted away from in 2014. The things in this case, among many other things, we've got Move Fast, Break aliens, Move Fast, break whatever. Move Fast Break rules when in this. Inside of this episode where we watch Tootles dissolve into milky goo. Did not skip on the milk in this. In this case.

[Rob Mahoney]

Oh, no.

[Joanna Robinson]

The thing we're breaking in this case is literal children. And there's this interesting room. And again, to your point. You make a good point. We don't know that Toodles is dead. Dead. Right. It would feel a little narratively cheaty.

[Rob Mahoney]

To undo it, but I. I would agree.

[Joanna Robinson]

People narratively cheat all the time in TV shows. But.

[Rob Mahoney]

But I also think to whatever degree you could put him in another body or whatever, the people who could do that, one of them, maybe the one, is now dead. So maybe the potential would have existed, but they don't have the ability to do it.

[Joanna Robinson]

You're talking about Arthur just getting a nice little face hug right now. Do you consider them dead as soon as the face hugger attaches to their body? What about that little period after where they go and have a hearty spaghetti meal at the dinner table?

[Rob Mahoney]

Is that life?

[Joanna Robinson]

Is that truly life?

[Rob Mahoney]

That's what I ask you, Joe.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay. The idea that, like, we watch Tootles die, I'm not totally skipping ahead. We'll spend plenty of time on that. But. And. And white goo come out. And it's this remove from the fact that this is just a literal child that has been killed by the negligence. Yes, a terminally ill child, but child who has been killed by the negligence of and disinterest of this tech company. You know, and I feel like this is something that happens where we figure out ways in which to put layers between the horrific act and, you know, the results. And putting the child brain in an adult body and watching that dissolve like it's just synth and it's not an actual person that we've lost is a really interesting sort of way to grapple with that.

[Rob Mahoney]

I Think that it's kind of a narrative magic trick, because if this were a literal child being dissolved by an alien bug, it would feel, as you're saying, as horrific as it probably should. But you and I can marvel at this episode a little bit. Talk about the ins and outs and not. We're not operating under the shadow of a kid was just murdered because of corporate negligence because of the way that the show creates that veil and then these characters within the world are creating that veil. And I think you see that a lot in the arbitration from Yutani and. And Boy Cavalier, both hiding behind the trappings of thoughts and prayers of, like, what. What they should say in this moment and using all of those. Those particular veils and those particular pleasantries to do what they actually want to do, which is not give a. About any of these people, any of these kids push further, faster, harder, whatever will make the most money and the most acclaim and give them the most personal satisfaction. To them, it doesn't matter that it's a kid. To us it should, and I think it does. But it mutes the kind of, like, blunt force impact of a child getting murdered when you do see them in an adult body.

[Joanna Robinson]

And then something that Wendy might say inside of this episode is, what's the difference between that kid and a xenomorph kid? You know? So anyway, not deep thoughts, but shallow thoughts from me, Joanna Robinson. Okay, so, like, well, from.

[Rob Mahoney]

From Wendy, who is 12, Yutani saying.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'll compare our earnings to yours any day is her own sort of like, attempt to slap a barefoot on the table or he'll send you to bed without supper, little boy. And then like, oh, for his pain and suffering. Like, she got a few little tiny shots in, it's true, but mostly got completely bulldozed. And you hate to see it for women in Stem, you really do so well.

[Rob Mahoney]

She's a Nepo baby of stem. You know, she did not come by it honestly.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's true. What did you. Okay, so we. You've already talked about the stirrup stance that he takes to the table. How did you feel about the crawling on top of the table moment?

[Rob Mahoney]

Oh, very good. I really liked. I mean, I love basically everything that Samuel Blinken is doing with this character, and in particular, crawling on the table as he is talking about the invasive alien species that have been brought here. Yeah, great bit of flourish. And one of those bits of flourish that I would guess is also probably not necessarily in the script, but is him interpreting that character, understanding the. The power dynamic of this Long table with the arbiter in between and sort of encroaching into territory that, you know, if he were being as professional and corporate as everyone would like, then he certainly wouldn't be doing.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'll be interested to see sort of what the legacy of Alien Earth winds up being. But if I had to like, like look into the Hollywood tea leaves, I would say we might remember this as much as anything else as when we first really understood what Samuel Blinken could do and where we first understood what Bob Sise could do. And as you know, if you're a filmmaker or someone who makes television watching this, you're going to want. This happens a lot in Noah Hawley seasons that those actors then get snapped up and put in to something else. And so this scenes, like, feels like one of those moments where it's just like, I can see this, you know, I actually think Sidney Chandler is doing a great job with the role she's being asked to play. But it's a. It's a different prospect because she's being asked to play a bit of like, emotional remove inside of this, which is different from what Samuel Blinken and Babu Sise are doing here so completely.

[Rob Mahoney]

I. You know, the Holly stuff does lend itself to that. Not just as you're saying, Joe, because we've seen it happen before, but when you think about the meat of what those parts offer. A lot of big monologues, a lot of huge dramatic turns, a lot of opportunities and I think encouragement for artistic flourish where it's not just like, we gotta shoot this today to get this scene of exposition, like, jut, like jutted in here to make all this other stuff make sense. It's like the monologue is the point. Like, this is what we are here for, this is what we are clearing out for, is to give these actors room to really do their thing. And the result when you get the right actor is exactly this sort of performance.

[Joanna Robinson]

One of my famous, like one of my favorite eras in prestige television was when Damon Lindelof and Noah Hawley were almost playing like Battleship with their cast members. Like Noah Hawley puts Jean Smart in Fargo and then Damon Lindelof puts Jean Smart in Watchmen, or Damon Lindelof puts Carrie Coon in the Leftovers. And then Noah Hawley puts Carrie Coon in Fargo. You know, it's just like this sort of back and forth trade of these incredible actors. It was really fun to watch. Okay, one last thing before we leave arbitration. You know, Morrow says we'll destabilize the Facility in Exfil. In the chaos, I learned what Exville. I mean, Exville is just short for Exfil trait. But I didn't know and I had to look it up.

[Rob Mahoney]

So.

[Joanna Robinson]

Good. Good stuff.

[Rob Mahoney]

You gotta watch some more. Like, lioness, I guess. We gotta. We gotta get you up on it.

[Joanna Robinson]

Mel felt sure that we would see all five of the companies here, but we only get the two that we've met. Were you disappointed that we didn't see the other folks? Is that something you're interested in seeing in future seasons? Do you care at all? How do you feel about it?

[Rob Mahoney]

I actually like it as an opportunity to leave that for future seasons. Leave some stuff that we don't quite know. And frankly, for a show like this, some opportunity for maybe fun stunt casting or whatever you want to do in terms of the interpretation of those other CEOs, I like leaving that out there. And plus the idea that, like, this really is a concentrated beef. Right. This is one ship crashing into one city that is owned by one company and being assholes about it. And do we need to involve everyone else beyond, like, a designated appointee to oversee the process? Who would those other CEOs really be bothered?

[Joanna Robinson]

I have notes for the arbitrator, by the way, but he's not very good.

[Rob Mahoney]

Very good at his job.

[Joanna Robinson]

Job. Okay, let's go now. Not since the diner scene in Heat have we had no we're inside of an elevator moral Kersher here. It did make me think of Heat, and it did make me think of Raylan and Boyd in Justified. We've got Kirsch and Morrow. This is a. This is sort of a repeat because it feels like they were sizing each other up on the other. Each side of the arbitration table. Right?

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yes. We had their interaction in episode three.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yep.

[Joanna Robinson]

Which was already full of, like, little zingers between them. Episode three, I don't talk to Aaron, boys, is how Morrow greeted Kirsch. Kirsch says, which country are you king of again? You know, and if you're not careful, you're going to belong to them. Is what Kirsch says tomorrow about the eggs that are sort of like, opening right next tomorrow. So that's how they met. This is round two. And I have to imagine this is just sort of like, leading up to another.

[Rob Mahoney]

But we need one more but the.

[Joanna Robinson]

But the. The game before the game, the pregame that happens in the elevator here.

[Rob Mahoney]

This is like the way in before the heavyweight fight where the two boxers get really close and almost kiss. That's kind of what we get here. And it really is it. Look, Morrow versus Kirsch. Like, whoever wins, we win. I just want to see them on screen together as much as possible.

[Joanna Robinson]

Is your set. So, like, this animosity between cyborg and Synth. Yeah, you know, for Morrow, and we talked to Babu Sise about this, but for Morrow, there is this deep sense of loyalty to Yutani. Right.

[Rob Mahoney]

Like, for sure.

[Joanna Robinson]

Not just like, I lost my daughter, so I have to make my mission worth it, but, like, I am grateful to have been plucked off the street and given this replacement army and all this sort of stuff like that. Kirsch, who lies to Boy Cavalier by the end of this episode and says, everything's fine back home. Don't worry about it, doesn't.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, from a certain point of view.

[Joanna Robinson]

Doesn'T seem to have any corporate loyalty. So where do you think his, like, side of this, of this Face off comes from?

[Rob Mahoney]

I don't know. Yeah, I think there is something happening in general between clearly synthetics and humans. We know that from Alien and the cyborgs being the. The men in the middle of this. If you think about it from Kirsch's perspective, he was created into servitude effectively. Right. Like, he is under the employ of a corporation. He didn't ask to be born. He didn't ask to be created. He was given no agency in any of this stuff. It's like you work for Prodigy now. By contrast, if you're a cyborg, you are at least making elective choices. And so I would think if you're synthetic and looking at both sides of the aisle, feeling a sense of resentment towards the humans who are fallible and emotional, and you just kind of sneer and look down on. And also the cyborgs who are those same humans, but think they're like you. Like, think that they have bought or acquired some capacity for mechanical life in the vein that you have it, but also they're still dumb little humans. And so how would you not look down on someone like. Like Moro if you're in Kirsch's position and. And vice versa, if you're Moro. Why would you not look at this as a freaking toaster?

[Joanna Robinson]

I think it's interesting. Great ad work from you in advance for our upcoming Hooked episodes. It's true about Battlestar. Okay, so we get this shot. So something that Bob Bousisse said in the official podcast I thought was so interesting is that what he watched in order to prepare for this role was just a few little films you might have heard of There Will Be Blood, no Country for Old Men, and the Dark Knight. And he was studying Daniel Day Lewis, Javier Bardem, and Heath Ledger in playing Jesus Christ. Just a couple of, you know, actors you might have heard of, all of.

[Rob Mahoney]

Whom featured quite prominently at our recent Best Movie performances of the 21st century list at the ringer.com, which maybe explains why Bob Boucisis is coming in here throwing heat every single time he's on the mountain.

[Joanna Robinson]

So he was like, okay, so the challenge that they had Heath Ledger's like, Heath Ledger to play the. The. The joke, like, how do I play a Daniel Plainview? How do I play this character who is so repugnant in so many ways and keep you just eating it up, eating up every single minute of screen time? What are the physical choices that were like, he. He talks about it in an almost just like, analytical, you know, studying the way that Heath Ledger. In a room full of still people. Heath Ledger is constantly moving, like, all of these things. He was just like, really? Just what is the sports crushing tape? In order to sort of.

[Rob Mahoney]

He is crunching tape or crunching tape. Both are viable.

[Joanna Robinson]

I just think it's really interesting. And so, like, the choice that he made, especially inside of, like, chaotic situations, is that Morrow would always be, like, slow and methodical. When we meet him first at the very beginning and people are dying via xenomorph, outside of he's going slow and he's humming a tune, and that's just sort of like. That's a very sort of Javier Bardem sort of way through the conversation. But I just thought that was really interesting. He's just absolutely smashed it. And I wouldn't say that he is imitating any one of them, but he has captured the thing that they have captured, which is us pulling for a guy who is, like, grooming a child and threatening kidnapped his mother and all.

[Rob Mahoney]

These other things, you know, on paper, there is no reason we should want that character to succeed or win in doing. I mean, even if he does succeed, it is in bringing an alien, a xenomorph, to the general population of the Earth, basically, or at least the continental part of the Earth where actual people would live who do not work for Prodigy. And yet sometimes I kind of want him to win. Sometimes I just kind of want him to succeed because of that beautiful, complicated, magnetic, sweaty performance that Bob Usi says has brought out here.

[Joanna Robinson]

Sweat is doing a lot of work for me. We get this over the shoulder shot back, you know, where we're on the back of them. We open on the back of them. They're wearing almost matching jackets. They've got shoulder. Shoulder straps on, both different shades. But, you know, very like, we're not so different, you and I sort of silhouette to their costume, which I thought that was really interesting. Curse says tomorrow. The self hating machine, the almost human. Right. Bitchiness all the way up. Right. And then Maro says to Curse yesterday's model, the incredibly irrelevant robot. What's it like working for a company that made you obsolete? They're cute, your kids. I gotta get me one of those, right? A child or a body that isn't so sad.

[Rob Mahoney]

Tough.

[Joanna Robinson]

Deeply, deeply tough. Given Morrow's backstory, this was like the.

[Rob Mahoney]

Polar opposite for me, Joe, of the film that I personally revile Hobbs and Shaw. Normally I have some time for the Fast and Furious franchise, but something about the forced attempted banter in that movie between the Rock and Jason Stam was like, I just had a. A bodily allergic reaction to. I was like, oh, Jesus.

[Joanna Robinson]

You weren't doing the haka when you were watching it?

[Rob Mahoney]

No, it was so uncomfortable and so bad. I was basically dry heaving while watching it. And this is the opposite. This is like I would watch a whole show that is just these two guys on a collision course to. To borrow the heat kind of formulation here. But we're kind of getting that while also getting eight other shows packed within this season of Alien Earth. To the extent that this season has, like an architectural flaw, there's like a lot happening that you need to track thematically, emotionally, literally. And sometimes there's going to be dropped beats in that as a result of how much they're trying to put in. But this is the sort of payoff is like, this is the F plot of this episode and it is must watch television.

[Joanna Robinson]

Absolutely. I did pull out a JM Berry Peter Wendy quote about Hook, even though Bob said in our interview last week that this is not something that he was thinking about at all when he made his character great. He was thinking about Javier Bardem, and that's fine.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

But in this scene between Smee and Hook inside of Peter and Wendy, Smee's like, you like your hook hand better than your hand hand, don't you? Right. You think it's better for combing your hair. You think it does. I wouldn't comb my hair with a hook, but what do I know?

[Rob Mahoney]

Seems like a recipe for a scalp injury.

[Joanna Robinson]

I. The captain answered, if I was a mother, I would pray to have my children born with this Instead of that. And he cast a look of pride upon his iron hand and one of scorn upon the other. And then again he frowned. So, like this idea that, like. But with Morrow, I can't pin it down. Like. Like. And I like that I can't pin it down. If he takes pride in the cyborg nature, but he doesn't because he's like the worst part of a man. But then he wants a full synth body. So, like, what is. You know, and how much has that emotional reality changed for him with the loss of his daughter, you know, and the 65 years he spent in space and all that sort of stuff like that? I just think it's really just I. And I'm. And it doesn't feel like a character inconsistency to me. It just feels like an incredibly nuanced, complicated person who has a complicated relationship with their own body, which is just fascinating.

[Rob Mahoney]

So feels like a dude who put robot parts in himself and now has to reckon with that on a daily basis while all of his family is dead.

[Joanna Robinson]

Dead.

[Rob Mahoney]

You know, I. And I think that in itself it's very relatable circumstances. That in itself is a kind of magic trick as well. In terms of the writing, I think this is a problem that lots of shows, especially these sorts of universe expanding ones, fall into. We talked about the lore problems with that of like just going down the wrong alley of trying to explain too much. There's also the character part of that, which is you explain too much of a character's backstory, you give us too much flashback, and it takes out all the mystery of who they are and kind of what makes them intriguing on screen. We've seen extended flashbacks with Morrow. We've seen him explain what happened to his family, where he now finds himself in the world. He hasn't been like the villain who's been off screen the whole time. He's having phone calls explaining this shit. And yet we're still there with him because of that internal divide, because he is a man who is rebelling against his robotic parts and in active pain when he plugs himself into a hard drive. Like, that's a very captivating character to watch.

[Joanna Robinson]

Some people say conflict inside of the human heart is the only thing worth writing about. That's a house of our truism. I want to say that. Oh, something I was so excited to talk to you about because you just watched Lost for the first time is when Noah Hawley was talking about episode five. He's like, oh, this is in TV speak this is the Morrow episode. This is the flashback Morrow episode. And I was like, oh, that's a lost ism. Good job. Okay, great.

[Rob Mahoney]

I know that reference.

[Joanna Robinson]

I get it. Okay, so we've already talked about Sylvia wiping Nibs and Nibs talking to Wendy and how all of that was deeply dumb. Okay.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yep.

[Joanna Robinson]

Slightly gets an upgrade in his zoom background. He is no longer in Nega space. He is now in an actual. They actually put trees around this actor when he was doing this.

[Rob Mahoney]

Do you think? You know, we were, we were giving them grief for the zoom background before. What if he, he was just on a blur setting and we didn't realize it?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. Yeah. Do you like the blur setting, Rob? You've used the blur setting before. I've seen you have.

[Rob Mahoney]

I've used a blur setting previously. I've, I, I myself have used a like CGI foresty background on many that.

[Joanna Robinson]

Used to be your go to. It depends on before la Rob. It's a different.

[Rob Mahoney]

It's a different, different world before. We are a full time video company, Rob. Look, there's just some concessions that we all have to make within our various machines. Arthur has to come to peace with his. I have to come to peace with the fact that I can't just throw up a zoom background. You know, I need to be a physical person in the physical world now.

[Joanna Robinson]

You have full, full blown set deck behind you. Okay.

[Rob Mahoney]

Look at that.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's slightly. It's slightly, you know, talking tomorrow, but it's Smee and slightly. And these two. I've been really missing these two together. I have too. You know, Smee has been. These two are the two most convincing were kids inside of adult bodies performances.

[Rob Mahoney]

I would say especially Jonathan Ajayi as Smee is the one that like he's. He. That character hasn't been given a ton to do within the.

[Joanna Robinson]

Deeply sidelined.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah, deeply sidelined. But every time he pops up, he's doing some physical thing.

[Joanna Robinson]

His facial expression, the way he, the.

[Rob Mahoney]

Way he crosses his arms like in Humph. The way he sort of like half falls over when he's with Curly on the dock and like gives her a little scare. Like all of that stuff is really, really working for him.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's incredible. So the two of them, two of them together, back together since like episode three. Making me really excited when Smee hugs slightly from the side and says this is a grown up hug. And he's like sort of suppressing his smile, like trying to be grown up but also smiling same time, like he's so cute. I'm so worried about these two having just watched Tootle slash Isaac, who I would say is the. Is the kid we like. Maybe we're the least. I mean, I don't know. Oh, well, I'll say this for Toodles, but if anything happens to these two, if these two, if the fly gets to these two, I'm gonna have a really hard time with it. I. I love these kids together and I. I love their constant concentration, conversations about what it means to be an adult and what it means to be a kid. It's really, really good. And especially since we've seen slightly arush, like in. In deep emotional agitation inside of this episode all season, to have this lightness that Smee sort of brings to him and to the scene is really great.

[Rob Mahoney]

So, yeah, it's not an easy performance style. And I can understand why some people watching it will see these adults acting as children. And it just like. It just might not work for everybody, but this version of it does work for me really well. And I think it's the combination of that, you know, to take the grown up hug moment again. There's like a timidness to the way he kind of approaches him and there's also like a brashness to being a kid and somehow know, walking the line of both of those things at once really, really delicate. But I think very, very successful within the exact thing they are trying to.

[Joanna Robinson]

Hit slightly might be learning how to hug people sideways like a grown up. But in terms of like luring someone into a lab to their death. I have some notes.

[Rob Mahoney]

Just what would you do, Joe?

[Joanna Robinson]

I. I would be better at lying.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay. Children. Children have learned yet to lie very well. That's great, Rob, if I had to lure you into a lab. Oh, yeah. I would not say, I have something I want to show you. I'd be like, oh, my God, someone's in peril. I would pick someone you care about and I would say, you have to help me help them. Right?

[Rob Mahoney]

And there's. Look, there's one very easy plug here.

[Joanna Robinson]

You walk in, the room is in peril.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, I was not saying for me, but for hermit, like slightly walks in the room. Hermit's like, where's Wendy? You need to come with me. She's in trouble and needs.

[Joanna Robinson]

Wendy's in trouble.

[Rob Mahoney]

Boom. We're off to the races.

[Joanna Robinson]

We gotta go. Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

Also, I would go save my dog. Of course. Come on.

[Joanna Robinson]

I know. Or like, you know, any, any number of our beloved colleagues at the ringer. And I'd be like, you gotta help me. A bookcase has fallen on some set. Deck has fallen on someone.

[Rob Mahoney]

If you were like, rob, Mal is suffering from a migraine and she needs to be saved, I would be like, absolutely. Let me record a two and a half hour house of art first and then I will bring her over, you know, some Advil and some soup or something.

[Joanna Robinson]

Very nice of you. Okay, we get, as I mentioned earlier, that superimposition of the opening egg on Slightly's face as he talks about wanting to show Hermit something. And I do. I have to say, we have notes for Joe. We have notes for our guy, Hermit, in terms of his being quick on the uptake or not in this moment, he's like, no, I don't think so.

[Rob Mahoney]

I really don't.

[Joanna Robinson]

No.

[Rob Mahoney]

This doesn't quite sound right.

[Joanna Robinson]

I don't think so. No. No.

[Rob Mahoney]

Thank you. Even it'll be fun doesn't do it for him.

[Joanna Robinson]

I don't think so. Instead, Herman goes on patrol with his old pals. They're beefing up island security, which is something that Morrow referenced earlier, Right. Like they're expecting an infiltration and invasion. And so the troops are walking around and they have to drag Joe back into service, which gives him a convenient excuse to grill his soldier pals about the security on the island. I do appreciate that his. His friend was like, whatever you think you're gonna do, stop it right now.

[Rob Mahoney]

This is a bad idea.

[Joanna Robinson]

She's like, you're not being subtle at all. You're barely a step above Slightly just now in your room. In terms of your subtle machinations here.

[Rob Mahoney]

Look, all that is true and they're right to call him out. This isn't those characters fault, but this scene is not good. Like the, the bluntness of the exposition dub of exactly what you just laid out of the like, oh, that's why we are on this patrol, because we're worried about people coming to the island. Like, it's just as, as wooden as wooden gets. And they might as well be talking directly to the camera.

[Joanna Robinson]

Did. Did it soften the wood for you to have such an overt Jurassic park reference when he says, go down this path and you'll see a sign for the boat docks and it's raining in the jungle. Was Dennis Nedry here in your heart and your mind? And you're like, I can get over the stiltedness here.

[Rob Mahoney]

I think the potential is there. I'm still gonna need some jeeps. I'm gonna need a can of Barbasol somewhere. It can be anywhere. It can Be in one of the dorm rooms, that's fine, but it needs to, at some point, roll down a rainy hill where someone has to then go find it.

[Joanna Robinson]

The dilophosaurus, by the way, is my number one, like, scariest dinosaur.

[Rob Mahoney]

Oh, terrifying. Would be right at home in the critter Zoo here.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's not. We get the closed captioning here is screeching and clicking in the distance right after, you know, this conversation. So the dilophosaurus is like a. It's a chitter, A chitter hop creature, which I. And a purr. There's a purr and then the. The hissing and the rattling.

[Rob Mahoney]

It's a whole thing underutilized, I would say. In the Jurassic park universe, this really has become a backdoor Jurassic park podcast somehow. It's come up almost every episode, but clearly there's just something in the DNA of these two universes and projects that speak to.

[Joanna Robinson]

Talking about billionaires and critters and IP and like, you know, smuggling things off islands. Like, how can we not.

[Rob Mahoney]

That's fair.

[Joanna Robinson]

Death watch for Hermit's pals.

[Rob Mahoney]

Oh, they're. They're so dead.

[Joanna Robinson]

But are they. Do they make it to the finale? Are they dead next week? What kills them? Is it Morrow? Is it the xenomorph? Like, what's. What's gonna happen, do you think?

[Rob Mahoney]

There's so many candidates now. I think one of the exciting things about this episode, and we'll get into a little later, is there's now a threat here that is a threat to everybody in the way that a xenomorph would be. But a face hugger, like a synthetic, doesn't really give a shit about a face hug. The hybrids aren't really threatened by the face hugger.

[Joanna Robinson]

Fly.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah, the fly. That acid splooge is gonna work on anybody. So I think everyone should be very afraid. Even though in theory the idea of being a soldier on this island is that you know where the monsters are. Guess what? They're very close to you. That's not where you want them to be.

[Joanna Robinson]

Say, I would just simply leave. I would just simply not be there. Rob, I have to say this is.

[Rob Mahoney]

You know, as we get this conversation about, like, oh, we got such a good thing going here. We're paid, we're alive. What are you using your money for?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, what?

[Rob Mahoney]

If you live on this island, what are. What does the money. What does it do?

[Joanna Robinson]

What are your benefits? Do you get stock options in Prodigy? Like, what are we.

[Rob Mahoney]

I haven't seen a dentist here, you.

[Joanna Robinson]

Know, like, yeah, you got it, boy. Cavalier really needs to take a tip from like Google or whatever and have like, you know, all the amenities on. On the property. Where's the volleyball court? Where's, you know, where's Friday, Barbecue Fridays? You know what I mean? Like, what's happening here?

[Rob Mahoney]

Very easily solvable. But in some ways he is, you know, reading the. The founder. The tech founder playbook.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

And I think this is a. Yes place is very tech founder bullshit for sure. In this way, he's got a lot of room to catch up.

[Joanna Robinson]

It is an accurate though, depiction of where we're going because Google and all the other companies have seen started stripping those amenities away. So, you know, well, you get the.

[Rob Mahoney]

Reputation for having them and then you just remove them and turns out the reputation still kind of sticks.

[Joanna Robinson]

We used to do Taco Tuesdays. Used to care, but we don't anymore. Before we get to Toodles, we should just really quickly say that Wendy is talking to her alien pal who is fully grown now. I think it's the same.

[Rob Mahoney]

I would say, like preteen.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay. It's this. Well, it's a guy in a suit now and no longer cgi. Right. Is what we would say.

[Rob Mahoney]

That is true. True.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's a day. And I'm not confused by that because the xenomorph life cycle seems to be pretty fast accelerated, no matter how you slice it. But this is the same day, right, that we're watching.

[Rob Mahoney]

This is the same day that Nib's.

[Joanna Robinson]

Got a race that we go, you know, Adam, Adam, Adam fires Arthur, gets on the jet, goes to arbitration, they're away at arbitration. Nibs gets a race. All of this happens. Kirsch is watching on his iPad dispassionately as his protege Toodles, AKA Isaac and then Arthur get got by various aliens. It's just 24 hours in the life of Monster Island.

[Rob Mahoney]

Not even 24 hours because Arthur was supposed to be off the island by nighttime or else he would be shot. And so even if we say everything that happens at the beginning of the episode happens at least like 6 o' clock in the morning, we're not even to nightfall yet.

[Joanna Robinson]

Dame Sylvia is not even making dumpling dumplings for one yet, right?

[Rob Mahoney]

No.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay. All right, Wendy.

[Rob Mahoney]

Given, given that life cycle, how many days or hours is it until now? Awkward Pre Teen Zeno tells Wendy, you're not my real mom and slams its door shut.

[Joanna Robinson]

I don't think this is happening. I think Wendy is mother. Wendy is.

[Rob Mahoney]

She is.

[Joanna Robinson]

She is mother. She is queen she is. It's very Wendy Darling coded, right? She comes and she reads to the boys. And now they're like, peter who? So.

[Rob Mahoney]

But the rebellion has to be coming at some point. Maybe it's not. You're not my real mom. Maybe it's. I learned it by watching.

[Joanna Robinson]

This is sort of coming Teen Groot. Wish fulfillment that you're going for here maybe. So you want to get that teen Xeno, like a video game so that he can.

[Rob Mahoney]

I mean, she. You gotta satisfy it. So, you know, what else are you gonna do?

[Joanna Robinson]

We do see the Xenomorph, sort of Spider man down from the ceiling at one point. Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

Did not like it. Did not like it.

[Joanna Robinson]

All right. The Ballad of Toodles, AKA Isaac. So given how much Kirsch does not give a. That Tootles dies inside of this episode.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

What do you make of the earlier part when he's like, step by step, follow the protocols to the letter. Like, you know, the scientific method is not a suggestion. Like, all this sort of stuff like that. Like, do you feel like he actually cares? If he actually cared, like, would he risk sending this child into a lab with all these monsters? Or did he lure Tootles in there with just this idea of. Of can't wait to see which one of these things eats you?

[Rob Mahoney]

I was left to at least entertain the latter by the ambiguity of Kirsch's intentions. And, like, we're just reading so much into that character right now. The way he is already proactively watching the lab on tape and again has not alerted anybody. It's like he knows. He knows both of these things. He knows who Tootle Isaac is and kind of what he's after and what. What strings to pull to get him to be motivated. In this case, it's like a little more responsibility. I trust you to do this stuff. Go down, you know, next down the list. In terms of the experiments, he also knows what slightly and more are up to. And so the idea that. Yeah, like, he has no. He has all the motivation to tell lots of people about lots of things and doesn't do any of it to the point that it kind of does feel like he's setting up Toodles a little bit.

[Joanna Robinson]

Is it like a. And then, I mean, I guess this is something we will hopefully get to ask someone about. But, like, is it a. This is. My question is, like, when we watch Ash do things, we understand that this is corporate mandate. We watch David do things. It's a little.

[Rob Mahoney]

How would you interpret that?

[Joanna Robinson]

It's different Right. It is different, but it's sort of like dispassionate scientific exploration meets fanaticism and cultism. I don't, I don't quite. Which I love. I don't quite. I can't quite get my arms around David, though. I'd love to try, but like, it's, it's confusing. And with Kirsch, I think he would.

[Rob Mahoney]

Love to get his arms around himself too.

[Joanna Robinson]

He certainly did try. And I think that with Kirsch it's like similarly con. I'm, I'm interested to see more about, like, what is the agenda here? Is it corporate espionage? Is it, you know, is he working for the other side clandestinely? Or is it just curiosity? What's going to happen? I'm curious to see. I, I don't, I don't know.

[Rob Mahoney]

I think there is a baseline curiosity in it. The other things could also be true. Maybe it is corporate espionage. Maybe he has been, you know, hired or co opted or incentivized or reprogrammed by whoever. Wouldn't be necessary to do that. But some of what we saw earlier in the season when he first encounters all these aliens is he's like, he seems genuinely sort of intrigued by what they are and what their potential is and getting the info download and is kind of fascinated at every step of the process. I think part of him just kind of wants to see. Like, do you feel like, yeah, what happens when this eyeball monster goes into an alien or goes into a human?

[Joanna Robinson]

Do you feel like if he saw the blood slug put all of the little minnows into the water bottle, he would just keep his mouth shut and wait for someone to drink that water and then see what happens?

[Rob Mahoney]

I think he would pass him the hot sauce. That's where we are with Kirsch.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay, Tootles, I just want to say, Tootles is our first to go here again. Kit Young, I. You know how you and Bill have been giving me a hard time on the Task podcast that we've recorded so far about my IMDb spoilage?

[Rob Mahoney]

I will say it's not a hard time. Like, this is genuinely a talent of yours.

[Joanna Robinson]

I will say Kit Young being the lowest, lowest builds. Lost Boy made me worry that Toodles was the first to go. And then when he named himself Isaac, I was like, I don't think this is gonna go well for you. Here's a passage from Peter and Wendy. Poor to poor kind. Toodles, there is danger in the air for you tonight. Take care. Lest an adventure is now offered. You which, if accepted, will plunge you in deepest woe. Tootles, the fairy Tink, who is bent on mischief this night, is looking for a tool, and she thinks you the most easily tricked of the boys. Beware, Tinkerbell. Does that mean your best friend, the eye jockey is the Tinkerbell in this scenario?

[Rob Mahoney]

You know, we did float this idea. I think she might be okay. She's the most whimsical of all the creatures. Also the most horrifying in some ways, and particularly in sheep form. Look, every time that sheep goes up on its hind legs, I. It makes me deeply upset.

[Joanna Robinson]

Just the dead stare into camera is just because I feel like there's so much going on behind that eye. That one eye. That is many eyes.

[Rob Mahoney]

Not to get ahead of ourselves, but the sheep snort into camera with God smack queuing up, is easily my favorite of the ending cues so far.

[Joanna Robinson]

I have to say, my favorite. What was your favorite moment of all this? For me, it was when Isaac looked down at his tray and saw the, like, rocks and robot parts and went, oh, I'm food. And I don't understand why there wasn't, like, better security on the. Like, given that the synths are not afraid of all the other aliens. Yes, and here's one that is interested in them. Why isn't there, you know, why are the hinges on the meal tray door not more secure? Like, what's happening here? Also, does Tootles not have a comm device behind his ear? They all have these little things behind their ear that I think are comm devices. Like, it's what. It's what Kirsch uses. I mean, Kirsch talks to, like, talk to them. So, like, does that not work the other way? Can they not come and, like.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, I think the first part of that is. Is obviously a little hubris of, like, oh, this thing is broken. But, like, I don't want to let Kirsch down. I'm gonna find a way to do this. I'm gonna wedge open the door and do all that once. Eyeball jockey headbutts.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

The window all of a sudden falls. Everything's going to shit. That is when you. That is the moment you calm and. But he's taken the scene scene. He's looking up at the nest. He's trying to find the bugs, and before you know it, like, that acid barf is just all over his face, I assume, melting those communicators.

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, yes, well, once the. Once the acid barf comes out to play. But I would say there's Like a. A good, like 30 seconds where he was just sort of banging on that door, trying to get out. That I would be like, you have a cell phone embedded inside of you. I did. Like how at first, when the fly landed in his arm, he looked like a. A kid at, like a. You and I were both actually separately recently in Hawaii. You know those, like, parrot photo ops where you can, like, go get your photo taken with a parrot? Have you ever seen a small child do one of those things? Like this giant parrot lands on their arm, and they're, like, excited and scared at the same time.

[Rob Mahoney]

Disconcerted. Holding their arm as far as they can away from their face.

[Joanna Robinson]

They were friends, right?

[Rob Mahoney]

Man, this is very normal.

[Joanna Robinson]

And then the bottom vomit. The acid vomit happens.

[Rob Mahoney]

The acid vomit. I mean, it's not. It's not fun to watch the nest itself. Honestly, we. Of all the creatures.

[Joanna Robinson]

You don't like it? It kind of looks like wisteria to me.

[Rob Mahoney]

I don't like it. No, I do not. I do not want any part of it. We had spent the least time with the flies because they were kind of in containment in some, you know, behind some windows that were, like, fogged up or kind of gunked up a little bit. We hadn't really seen them up close that much this season.

[Joanna Robinson]

Did we know that they ate robot parts?

[Rob Mahoney]

I did not. Until all of a sudden, as you said, the metal and the rocks were on the tray. The feeding process, very interesting. The sheep with the eyeball jockey just gets like, hay. And so I guess the eyeball jockey can subsist on whatever. Whatever its host subsists on. I. I guess is the assumption it's at least keeping it alive well enough to do its little tricks. The flora, fauna, plan. Plant gets a tray of water. I mean, very important, obviously.

[Joanna Robinson]

And then.

[Rob Mahoney]

Which looks like just like, slabs of meat.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yep. And.

[Rob Mahoney]

And a nice little knock from Isaac. You know, a little. Little moment of affection between them. Completely pals. Yeah. Rocks and. And scrap metal did make me a little nervous. The wedged open door certainly made me nervous. The nest, overall, a hideous concoction that I just hate.

[Joanna Robinson]

All right, well, you don't love a gently climbing flower. I'd love to know that about you. Okay. Anything else you want to say about. And I will say this.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Beloved Kit Young, who, again, so good on Shadow and bone. Justice for Shadow and bone that they never got to do a six of crows season. Great death. Great twitching and. And glitching and. And gurgling and dying. Good job. I thought so.

[Rob Mahoney]

I think in terms of the death very. Look, it's. It's notable and kind of its own symbolic moment and visual moment. Anytime anything with a synth body dies, right, it is just this explosion of the milk. It's like. It's so inhuman and it's alternatively also so human. And the idea of taking a hybrid in this role, where he is dying in a way that only a synthetic can, like having his face melted to expose the robot skeleton underneath, and also dying in a way that every human does, which is like deeply, deeply alone and where you can't be helped by anybody. Just. If we want to stare into the void together, Joe, I'm sorry. This is the truth. This is what we all face down, whether there's acid bugs involved or not.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'm a little worried that if I did tell you someone was trapped under a bookcase, you wouldn't go help them because you'd be like, listen, we all die alone.

[Rob Mahoney]

That is not what I would say. Anyone trapped under a bookcase. I want us to stave off that sense of loneliness and isolation as much as possible.

[Joanna Robinson]

That's the darkest thing you've ever said to me. And we. I'm sorry, We've studied a lot of dark texts. Interesting.

[Rob Mahoney]

Look, if you want to disagree, I'm open to your interpretations of human death, but to me, that's kind of. Seems like we all end up.

[Joanna Robinson]

I don't know if they'll be able to revive. Toodles. But I have to say, if it's child brain and a synth body, it's tough luck that the acid vomit went right into the face and at. Into the face. And then the flies, as they were feasting, were really feasting on fe face stuff that seems like you were compromising whatever it is that it represents the brain inside of that thing so.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, now that we've seen what four of the five aliens can do, we still haven't seen the flora fauna really go to town on somebody.

[Joanna Robinson]

I don't think it's great that it likes slabs of meat, though, I'll tell you that much right now.

[Rob Mahoney]

No, nor. Yeah, that affectionate knock feels real different when that tentacle can just kind of grab you or spray you or whatever it does. What. What's your, like, power ranking of which aliens you would like to help you meet your untimely demise. You got your xenomorphs. I guess if you want to include the face hugger too, that's kind of a separate category. But the face hugger, the xenomorph, the Eyeball jockey. The blood slugs.

[Joanna Robinson]

Great.

[Rob Mahoney]

And now the flies.

[Joanna Robinson]

Great question. Well, we don't know what the flora fauna does. Right? Okay.

[Rob Mahoney]

No. So we're gonna. We're gonna put that in a different category for now.

[Joanna Robinson]

And. And then we have not seen the eyeball jockey kill anything. Right. Crimes of opportunity.

[Rob Mahoney]

So far, yeah, we've seen it all like lunge at nibs, but not worm its way in. And then we've seen after the fact what it looks like.

[Joanna Robinson]

Right. So I don't.

[Rob Mahoney]

I mean, yeah, one can infer the way it's using its little tentacles to pluck out that eyeball.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, it's tough. Okay. Flora fauna, A different category. Eyeball jockey. None of this is good. Blood slugs. No. Might be xenomorph. Honestly, it seems faster. Acid burns you, but it'll be over fast, so that's what I would say.

[Rob Mahoney]

I don't blame you. I think it might be the way to go.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. Just rip me apart, have and call it a day, you know?

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah. Go down in glory.

[Joanna Robinson]

That xenomorph made fast work of like an entire banquet it full of rich dummies in like mere minutes. So. No, like mere seconds, honestly. So, yeah, stab me with your. With your scorpion tail. Take me out. How about you? That.

[Rob Mahoney]

That seems pretty painful. I. I am. Look, we're gonna have to figure out with the xenomorph why it killed the banquet so quickly, but then was just like playing with the crew of the Magino, as if it just needed some sport. I don't really understand what's going on.

[Joanna Robinson]

Weird relationship with these guys. I have questions.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, I mean, it's. It's a little love hate with them. They're still figuring a lot out. And especially now that there's a separate xenomorph that's born of his lung. What's their relationship gonna be?

[Joanna Robinson]

Great question. Well, you just evaded the. The. The question that I asked you.

[Rob Mahoney]

I. I would choose under these circumstances. Blood slug is a hard pass for me.

[Joanna Robinson]

Absolutely.

[Rob Mahoney]

Acid bug. Hell no. Eyeball jockey. Absolutely not. I think I. I would take face hugger if. If I get the promise from Joe. I need you to promise me. If the face hugger gets me, you just got to let me go. You just got. You just got to.

[Joanna Robinson]

Slicing and incinerator. Acid blood.

[Rob Mahoney]

That's fine too. We just got to make it. We got to make it fast.

[Joanna Robinson]

No.

[Rob Mahoney]

Just some way. Absolutely no chest bursting or. If it happens.

[Joanna Robinson]

I don't want to be face hugger, though. Is Like a suffocation death.

[Rob Mahoney]

Right, but that's kind of. That's kind of quiet and peaceful, I guess, by contrast.

[Joanna Robinson]

Is that. Did it look quiet and peaceful for Arthur as he was. Like, it did not. Like, stumbling around the lab?

[Rob Mahoney]

Like, like, no, look, it wasn't great, but contrast that with, like, the xenomorph clawing you apart.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay, here's. Here's. Here's my final answer. I want the xenomorph to kill me in a way that my body is still, like, somewhat functional. And then I want the eye jockey to. To take over my body and become a. A podcaster or whatever it wants to do.

[Rob Mahoney]

But, like, this is the conservationist approach. Like, you want all the matter recycled.

[Joanna Robinson]

I want to be of use to her. I support her and all of her crimes and schemes, and if I can help her, I will.

[Rob Mahoney]

So, yeah, support the eyeball Jockey. Continue to be of use to Waylon Yutani or whatever company you work for. The ringer in this case, like, we support you and your life of alienated, indentured servitude.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's not about the corporations. It's about supporting women. I support.

[Rob Mahoney]

I thought it was about shareholder value.

[Joanna Robinson]

I support other women, and that's. That's what I would like. Okay. So, all right. Speaking of women not supporting other women, Wendy confronts Dame Sylvia about Nibs. And we already talked about this a little bit. Anything you want to say about this particular interaction?

[Rob Mahoney]

I have a lot to say about this particular interaction. I think, especially at this point. We talked about the growth even within this episode, you see from Wendy and her shift in perspective as she has talked to Nibs, as she's understood what happened, as she's bonding even more with the xenomorph. All that stuff is happening sort of in the background underlying all of these interactions. There's also, like, the idea that telling these kids they are special has met its useful end. You can tell kids they're special over and over and over. There's a diminishing return that's going to happen with that on the 50th time, and it's clear, like, that's not enough for Wendy anymore. There's also the side effect, which is you tell someone they're special over and over and over, and they are going to operate as a special person, and they're going to think, well, if I'm special, why are your rules applying to me? If I'm special, why are you not the problem?

[Joanna Robinson]

Right.

[Rob Mahoney]

Why am I not the one who is inherently right? Because I am the more evolved life form form. And we're starting to see that come through specifically with Wendy. But I imagine it'll come through with a lot of the. The hybrids as well.

[Joanna Robinson]

We get the I'm not stupid. No, of course not, darling. Like, moment, which I thought was really interesting, the rejection. I told him this was a yes place. So she's like, within this day is decided to reject this. This old Facebook maxim of move fast, break things. This is a yes place. Right. Rejecting the Wendy name. Right. Like, this is just a real hard pivot for this character. It is, and it's interesting. I. I almost wish we had seen a bit more maybe special connection between Nibs and Wendy so we can understand why this, like, violation of Nibs. Because it's almost like, like Wendy felt removed and more special than the other kids, you know, and not, like, really as protective of them, but more just sort of like, secure in her status as favorite and leader. And so this felt like a very like, you hurt one of mine moment, which, you know, tribalism can sort of like, rear its head whenever it wants to. Also wondering if the alien is whispering sweet nothings into her. That helps radicalize her. Right? Like, she's murmuring to the alien. But what is the alien murmuring? Back. Back, you know, Wow.

[Rob Mahoney]

I mean, that. That's an existential question. I think we're going to have to dig into with. With incredible.

[Joanna Robinson]

We thinking about a lot as I die alone, apparently, Rob.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, what is it? What is a childish alien have to offer? Like, I think something to wonder about. Just their general hive mind mindset is like, yes, they have a sense of community. Yes, they have this cooperative nature. Yes, they are obeyant to a, like, a kind of structure and hierarchy within their little alien society. But, like, what. Where does that programming come from? And is it a conscious kind of programming? Is that something an alien can articulate its place within its, like, societal role? Or is that something that's just kind of baked into its nature? I. I would. I would love to hear, like, literally what the alien is saying. I also don't want to know it too much, but I also do want to know it, and that's the show being successful.

[Joanna Robinson]

So what I'm hearing is, you hope next week is a flashback origin story of alien language. And so that I want to go.

[Rob Mahoney]

All the way back to the roots of Xenovian. Yeah. Etymologically speaking, what kind of language is this?

[Joanna Robinson]

Whereas, you know, like, given your desire to have, like, a solid teenage xenomorph.

[Rob Mahoney]

Not a desire, that is a tinomorph.

[Joanna Robinson]

Like, do you feel like the answer wouldn't just be like, look what I can do and it's Spider Man's down from the ceiling.

[Rob Mahoney]

Like that was literally what it did. That was literally like the xenomorph went to school and got clowned a little bit by someone on the football team for not being strong enough. And it was doing pull ups up there. That's what happened.

[Joanna Robinson]

All right, so in this moment when Marcy rejects the name Wendy.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah, I want to talk about that a little bit too.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, well, okay.

[Rob Mahoney]

I think just within the context of within this scene, Wendy is saying, I don't want to be people anymore.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, that's what it going to talk about. She is absorbing the Kirsch. Never mind what the alien has been murmuring at her. She is now repeating the things that Kirsch has been murmuring at her since the beginning, which is like, you're not human. Why would you try to be one? And also this idea of like, which we talked about with Morrow earlier. So like that put the hard emotions away. What Dame Silvia was saying about Nibs, like, isn't it nice to be able to just erase these things? And so she's like, if being human, like we can get rid of it all the sadness, all the madness. See the world for what it really is, not how it feels. Like all of this sort of idea is. Is this what we're gonna watch from her for the rest of the season? The inhuman synth?

[Rob Mahoney]

I mean, I just got like a deep pit of despair in my stomach at the idea of literally every product that will be made from now until the end of time that is geared to doing some version of this thing of removing your despair, of removing your trauma, of smoothing over the sharp edges that make you a human being and a person. And a lot of kind of the short sightedness of all these like sci fi creators. It's like we're seeing so many things out in the world today that are. That have, that have you ever seen a sci fi movie before? Sort of subtext to all of these creations. But maybe the most important one is that we are our traumas, that we are the darkness in us, that we, we need all of these things to feel literally anything. Like if your existence is purely happy and special and sometimes all the time, like you are going to be a hollow person. Like you need the contrast of those things. You need to be able to feel the full range of what it is to be human. And if you're just, you know, every time you encounter an eyeball jockey trying to, like, copy paste over that memory, I think you're going to be left not just wanting for it, but, like, deeply broken for that. And yet that is what we want to do as people.

[Joanna Robinson]

I will mostly agree with you with the asterisk of.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Not wanting to sound too like Maha and say, like, we do believe in antidepressants and other things that people need to hear. Yeah. I don't know. I know. But, like. But that more surgical removal of. Of certain things. Yeah. Is. Is perturbing. Again. There's.

[Rob Mahoney]

It's a. It's a good disclosure again.

[Joanna Robinson]

There is that, like, makes me think of Westworld in this moment when they say cognition only. No emotional effect. Like, just turn off your emotions and just be. But then she's got this tether to her brother. Like, how strong is that tether? I think it'll be. Be really, really interesting.

[Rob Mahoney]

It hasn't really been tested yet, honestly. Like, that's kind of one of the other threads that we're waiting to sort of pay off is, you know, Wendy's allegiances to her brother and allegiance, in a sense, to Boy Cavalier. We've seen them kind of pushing and pulling back and forth in terms of how that's shaping who she is as a person, but she hasn't actually had to pick and choose between them yet. And I think her insisting in this moment that her name is Marcus, which. Fair enough. But also at the same time saying, I kind of don't want to be a human being while assuming her human name. I don't really know what to do with that.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Okay, we already mentioned the Arthur packing up scene again. I really wish we could see the montage of them trying on various, like, vacation outfit outfits.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

As they posed for these photos. This. This Jurassic park idea of someone turn the gates off in the rain. Right. Like, just to turn off tracking of one synth. We have now turned off tracking of all of the synths, which I would say is probably going to be bad. You think so the rest of the season. Yeah. What could go wrong?

[Rob Mahoney]

Not for who, though. What could go wrong for eyeball jockey?

[Joanna Robinson]

Sure. Depends on your perspective if you want to join.

[Rob Mahoney]

Good for Morrow. Potentially.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. You know what? These are people we're rooting for. Okay, one last thing I want to say before we get to, like, slightly and Arthur and all of that, which we talked about a little bit already, but the mold guys, this is something that, like, you know, we've seen these guys in the hallway sort of constantly spraying down the walls. We got some email questions about it. What do we think these guys are? Noah Hawley said an interview to ign. You've moved up from the grunt space trucker, engine room feel of it. Now we're with the Trillionaire. But even so, they're still fighting the mo. They're still fighting off the water intrusion, the fungus and the mold scrubber characters that we brought in. All that stuff is in order to bring the identity of Alien when. When some. There's something always dripping into the Neverland world. So the. The oceans have risen, you know, we're in a climate change crisis world and things are damp, I guess. So there's perpetually, you know, you can create your perfect ideal island of monsters and still have some rot in the walls. So there's that.

[Rob Mahoney]

It's disappointing. I was really hoping that Boy Cavalier would be able to have his ideal island of monsters.

[Joanna Robinson]

But, you know, I know you're classically bootlicker and love that for people. Okay, thank you, Joe. Anything you want to say about Slightly and Arthur and their ending that we haven't covered already?

[Rob Mahoney]

I mean, this is another pretty intense scene. I think this scene reflected back to me yet again, another opportunity to look inward. This is a very introspective episode of this podcast about a very introspective episode of television. What is it about us that I. Let's take the first part of this where Arthur and Hermit are meeting and having their conversation. He's kind of giving him the heads up about the boat notes. We see Arthur not notice the security footage of Tootles being melted down in the lab, but it cycles off. Then that is sort of underpinning that whole scene. That whole sequence is like, is he gonna look back at the monitor? Is he gonna look at something that tells him that Tootles is in danger, that he's dying, that he is acid baked, whatever it is. And there's a part of you that wants that because, like, on some level I care about Toodles and I want to see like, is. Is he. Can he survive in some way? There's also the part of me that just wants the human to go in the face hugger lab where everything is up. And the really the core of these stories, and I would say more broadly like horror movies and any kind of storytelling along those lines, is like, I want that thing to happen. I want the human to go into the up space and make the dumb decision. I want them to do the Thing that no one should do, even though I know that Arthur is probably going to die as a result of that. And what. I don't know what that says about us, that we want that or at least want to see that. But. But, boy, do I.

[Joanna Robinson]

Something interesting that I heard, no Holly say was this idea that, like, television is hypnosis and that, you know, so you're. You're watching this in. In. In the meat space, like at home with your dog or alone. Alone, the way you will die or whatever it is. You're watching this, and then you're transported inside of this other world. If they're doing their job correctly. If there are people, like, yammering, if you're not on your cell phone, you're just sort of, like, sucked into the thing. And he didn't talk about this, but I would say the two genres that are the most hypnotic inside of something like that are horror and comedy. Because especially, like, in communal movie theater spaces, right? The palpable fear that you share with other people and then the palpable joy that you share with other people. There is this, like, emotional soup that you're swimming in and this world that you've sort of sucked yourself into as you're experiencing the story. Story. And he was talking about how hard it is to do horror on television because there's commercial breaks. And so it just like, breaks the hypnotic spell if you're. If you're. Don't have the ad free FX on Hulu option or something like that. Okay.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

So that trance space that we go into with. With horror particularly, is the most sort of narcotic hypnotic. In those moments where someone walks down the staircase into the basement where they shouldn't go or whatever, you were just sort of like, almost physically pulled into with your. Like, maybe your brain is like, don't, don't, don't. But kind of your entire body is like, do, do, do. Because, like, this is.

[Rob Mahoney]

My whole body is saying, this is a yes space.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, this is a yes space. And so that classic horror movie tropes that the sequence is playing with when you get. You get horror strings for slightly as he walks behind Arthur, an iconic horror movie move. So I think that's what it is. Like, we want to feel that sort of visceral excitement and dread and, you know, don't stop, but also do, because, you know, it alights something inside of us.

[Rob Mahoney]

It does.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. So I think that idea of hypnotism is really interesting. And. And, I mean, Arthur I liked Fine as a character I really think we should have been given more of him to really feel this. David Risdal, though, has so much, like, you know, credit in my bank from Fargo this last season of Fargo that I was just like, oh, man, I'm gonna miss you.

[Rob Mahoney]

It's. I. I think it's still a great performance, honestly. I don't think that character has a lot going on. And as we said, like, it feels like some stuff has just been trimmed out or cut for time or whatever it is. I still feel that whether it's drafted off a Fargo or even just distilled within this performance, like a. A great deal of connection to Arthur, even as he is doing foolish things. Even as he's doing things I don't agree with. I think there is something to the idea, too, of what ultimately lulls him into the lab here is the fact that he has a heart.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. That he wants to save Toodles.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah, well, he wants to save Toodles, but also he's trying to help Hermit save Wendy too. Right. It's like him being willing to stay on the computer and show him this stuff and tell him this stuff and disable the trackers is what then alerts him and sends him on this, like, death spiral, you know, via. Via face hugger, unfortunately.

[Joanna Robinson]

How do you feel of Slightly's impression of Hal saying, I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid. I'm afraid I can't do that. Open the lab doors, pal.

[Rob Mahoney]

Just.

[Joanna Robinson]

All right. And then, as we mentioned, you know, while Boy Cavalier is doing his best Peter Pan impression with. With his like. Or Titanic maybe, you know, if we're watching that along with Ice Age in the future.

[Rob Mahoney]

That one at least would make sense to survive the test of time.

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, yeah. Titanic's eternal ice age. We have questions. I did like Noah. Holly's answer. It was what I actually kind of suspected, which is that, no, Holly watched a lot of Ice Age because his kids were that age.

[Rob Mahoney]

I believe if you were.

[Joanna Robinson]

I don't know if you've had experience, like, babysitting or anything like. Like, is there a cartoon movie that you've had to watch a ton, somewhat against your will, or is that not. Is that experience not come to you yet in your life?

[Rob Mahoney]

It has not come as an. As a non parent and as a younger sibling with no other younger siblings. I've dodged that particular bullet, though it seems. I would say the only situation has been in small doses of life, like babysitting someone who's obsessed with the movie Cars, and I'm just like, absolutely that's what I'm saying.

[Joanna Robinson]

Where it's like you would put cars in because you're like, that thing is just going to stand the test of time. For me, it was. I babys had a kid who, like, was obsessed with the Lion King, which is a great. It's way better than Cars and Ice Age in terms of movies to be obsessed with. But I would be like, occasionally I would show up and I'd be like, Aladdin. And he was like, y King. And I was like, literally anything else. And he's like, y King. And I was like, all right, here we go. Okay, I guess what was the.

[Rob Mahoney]

What was the movie or project at the end of the pit when Dr. King has picked up her sister and her sister wants to watch the same movie over and over and over. I can't remember what it was.

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, my God.

[Rob Mahoney]

But it's the same kind of idea.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's just a couple more months till we're back with Mel King and the rest of the crew of the Pit. I'm very excited.

[Rob Mahoney]

What a delight that will be.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

Joe, I would. I would like you to consider, I don't know, 51 hundreds of years into the future when people are still churning out content and the new version of Alien Earth comes out. Not literally Alien Earth, but some IP driven property. And instead of Ice Age or instead of Peter Pan as the stand in, that is the framing device. What if it's just Ice Age at that point? What if it's even more literalized and canonical within the structure of the show?

[Joanna Robinson]

Actually, I'm going to be really honest with you.

[Rob Mahoney]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

I've never seen an Ice Age movie.

[Rob Mahoney]

You're good. It's fine. Like, again, is that the worst. Is that the worst thing that exists? It's not.

[Joanna Robinson]

Objection alone. Some of us with the war memories of Ice Age and some of us without even that to keep us company as we go. Anything else you want to say before we go?

[Rob Mahoney]

One final practical question, Joe. As we are watching Arthur try to drag Tootle's body out of the nest.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Rob Mahoney]

Very unsuccessfully. How much does a hybrid body weigh? Like, is this feel like dragging a car? Like, does it feel like driving a. Dragging a piece of heavy machine?

[Joanna Robinson]

And I mean, you might ask the question, like, then slightly drags Arthur pretty quickly, but slightly has super strength strength. And Arthur has been, unlike Wendy has been skipping arm day. I think it's.

[Rob Mahoney]

Can you skip what you've never done?

[Joanna Robinson]

I think it's human weight. I think they probably weighed it. Like, want to make it human weight, right?

[Rob Mahoney]

I think it's a fair question. It's also something that as we consider the end of this season, I would expect that most of the hybrids, if not all of the hybrids, are wiped out. I guess that depends on how they figure into the multi arc kind of structure that they're apparently trying to attempt with Alien Earth. But beyond the scope of this show. I don't know how many of these kids actually survive. Maybe one would be my guess. And can that one successfully blend into normal human society and not like crush every metal grate that they step on?

[Joanna Robinson]

It's just Westworld all over again. I've seen this story before. I think that. Well, the good news is that per our opening conversation, Noah Hawley doesn't have to worry about canon. So like the world could be sense in his idea of alien. It doesn't much matter.

[Rob Mahoney]

So the real barroom canon is the shit that we argue about. One or two beers deep. That's the real bar room cannon.

[Joanna Robinson]

They can all go to space and then we don't. You know, in space, no one cares if you're a synth. I guess. I don't know.

[Rob Mahoney]

In space, no one cares about canon.

[Joanna Robinson]

I promise to deeply. All right, so that does it for episode six of Alien Earth. We'll be back with Mallory for episodes seven and eight, which, as I said, I've been told absolutely rule. I'm really excited for that. This middle bit has been a bit wobbly for me, but I'm really excited to see these final two episodes. We'll be back with the Prestige, an incredible Christopher Nolan film. Where are you in the. You love the Prestige, right?

[Rob Mahoney]

Fucking love it.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. What's your. What's your favorite Nolan? Have you told me?

[Rob Mahoney]

I mean, it's up there. I think it depends on what day you ask me, the Prestige is a candidate. I think the Dark Knight is a candidate. It's probably one of those two. But the Prestige, I would say is probably his most human movie, which, you.

[Joanna Robinson]

Know, the bar is in hell.

[Rob Mahoney]

But here we are, another filmmaker who can come off a little cold sometimes, but something like deeply warm blooded about that movie in particular.

[Joanna Robinson]

And actually that's a spoiler. I'll save it for the Prestige pod. Okay. And then we will be back on the Prestige TV podcast feed with more hooked episodes. Hooked Lost coming this week, More task, et cetera, et cetera. Thank you to everyone who worked on the show today. Thank you to Carlos Cheraboga, to John Richter, to Arjuna Renka Powell. Thank you to Mallory for being herself. Thank you to Rob for just showing up and doing two hours of a podcast with me. Or the best. And.

[Rob Mahoney]

Well, I. I like cursed. Just work here, you know, I am. I am but a synthetic employee.

[Joanna Robinson]

Once again, more evidence that you would just dispassionately watch a co worker die under a bookcase all alone on your iPad.

[Rob Mahoney]

I don't like this impression. I don't like it.

[Joanna Robinson]

We'll see you soon. Bye.