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May 16, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:13:40
1356 Freedomain Radio Date Night -- Star Trek -- the Movie Review Conference

Well, that was loud...

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Time Text
Alright, so thanks everybody for joining us.
It is 10.22 on the erotically charged Star Trek call of a Saturday night from Free Domain Radio.
And I'm going to just give a very short review of the film.
I'm going to try and capture the essence of the film.
And then you can give me your thoughts on it.
So basically the film goes like this.
End credits.
Thank you.
And if you sort of put that on a loop for about two hours, and put enough electrical impulses to your eye sockets to cause seizures throughout the coast of Japan, you pretty much have the Star Trek experience of, I guess this one is Star Trek 11.
And the 11 are too vertical, they're like too...
Two index fingers being held up in the classic gesture from J.J. Abrams, who actually I think has done some...
I quite enjoyed the Alias television series that he did.
Lost to me is okay.
He does that as well. I just find that Lost is a pretty good description of where my brain is while watching the show.
But it is...
Yeah, it's...
It's pretty rough. And I mean, I went in trying to, you know, I can find meaning in a coconut hair, right?
And I was sitting there and I could feel my metaphor brain, right?
My metaphor brain was doing something like this, you know?
My metaphor brain was like, oh, this shows how people who are misfits and rebels end up joining a hierarchy because they're rebels, because they're so afraid of authority that then when they become the authority, they become dictators and So I tried that, and then it was like, oh, so the tattoo-faced Romulan bald head, he wants to kill the Federation because he thinks the Federation killed his homeworld.
That's a metaphor for how America has this destructive foreign policy which destroys other people's lives, so then they want to come back and destroy us, and that even includes the torture scene and so on, right?
And I was really striving to put this stuff together, and at some point, You know, the entire metaphor center in my brain just went, oh, fuck it, it's too noisy.
So I'm not even going to try.
And that was pretty much the experience for me.
So that was it for me.
If anybody else has thoughts, I have a few more thoughts, but that was for those who've seen it.
I mean, the logic!
The logic! I mean, dear God in heaven.
I mean, if Spock is supposed to be so superiously logical, then the script should have touched his hands and blown it right off or hacked it off like Darth Vader with Luke Skywalker's digits.
I mean, sweet mother of all that's heaven, as soon as you throw time travel in, nothing makes any sense, clearly.
And that's true of Lost and that's true of Star Trek.
But even this mining ship, right?
This... This mining ship.
Because the Romulans, I can't remember, Nemo or Nero, whatever, finding Nemo.
The Romulan was supposed to...
It was a mining ship, right?
And it mines from space by dropping this big mosquito proboscis down to the Earth's core or whatever, right?
And it just makes no sense.
Why, oh why, is a mining ship armed to the teeth of With every conceivable weapon and defensive thing, they can take on an entire Starfleet, right?
That's like sort of saying that the Somali pirate vessels, quote, pirate vessels should be able to take on the entire U.S. Navy or some tanker shipping oil or some oil derrick should be able to take on the entire navies of the world, right? I mean, it's just a little mining ship or a big mining ship.
Why on earth would it have all this weaponry?
Why do they need to fly down to this?
Because they jump out of the...
Oh yeah, I love that, right?
So they jump out of the spaceship.
The guy from Sulu and Kirk and some guy who goes splat and then burn, they jump out of a spaceship and they're rocketing down in little spacesuits.
Isn't that the kind of re-entry that caused the entirely sealed shuttle to rip off its tiles and blow up and smoke and all that?
I mean, I'm sort of waiting for that to happen.
You know, like, hey, they're kind of coming in pretty quickly here.
And why wouldn't they just shoot the mining proboscis, right?
I mean, Spock did that later anyway, so why not just shoot it?
Why do you have to go down and have a sword fight of all things?
Anyway, it's just all too silly for words.
And yeah, I just found it...
It was basically just like having tasers applied directly to my neocortex as far as the stimulation went.
I went and just put stuff in my ears, which was...
Early on, I was like, oh, okay, I'm going to put this stuff in my ears, like some padding in my ears, because the movie is so loud.
And then I was like, oh, but now here's a quiet bit.
I'm missing the dialogue because I can't hear it as well with that stuff in my ears.
And then later it was like, hey, it's really good that I can't hear the dialogue because, I mean, it was pretty much ripped off from earlier Star Trek movies.
Everybody yelled all the time.
Spock's nose is enormous.
I was just looking at details like that.
Leonard Nimoy is looking more and more, and I think it's actually eerily like one of those Easter Island statues, if you've ever seen them.
It really is quite astounding.
He makes Lance Hendrickson look like Zac Efron.
Anyway, as far as aging goes.
To me, the best part was...
You just know the writers are just like, oh, fuck the logic.
How the hell do we get Leonard Nimoy in?
Because we need to get the diehards in, right?
I know... Let's have him wait in an ice cave for no reason whatsoever.
Let's have him wait in an ice cave with a brand, a flaming stick, to scare off something that looks like your lower intestines trying to eat you that's going after Kirk.
And I just thought that was hilarious.
Oh, I've just been hanging around in this ice cave.
Why? I don't know. It's just what I do.
And... Last but not least, we did have a very effective view of government because as the planet Vulcan was being completely destroyed, the entire government of Vulcan was just standing in a circle.
I don't know if it was a circle jerk or what the hell they were doing, but they were just standing in a circle doing absolutely nothing whatsoever until Spock comes in and yanks them by their ear to get them out.
And I thought that was a pretty effective metaphor for what government does in terms of a crisis or just about any other time.
But... Yeah, I just thought, and the other thing too is like, how did they get past Vulcan defenses, right?
I mean, they didn't, you know, Vulcan just sits there and lets people drill to the core of its planet with no defenses whatsoever, where they're supposed to be this amazingly logical and warlike race.
Anyway, so it was basically, it had all of the intellectual and artistic sensitivity of a roller coaster on acid.
And I, it's just like, as soon as it was over, it was just like, I felt like it was just being pummeled by fists of light and CGI for two hours and everybody was just yelling all the time.
Anyway, that's my two cents worth, but what did you guys think?
Oh, we couldn't agree with you more.
It was just like the plot just hinged on unbelievable coincidence after unbelievable coincidence.
Like, Captain Kirk just happened to be marooned on this planet right next to where future Spock was.
Oh man, yeah.
I just, I can't for the life of me understand why this movie is so well received.
I don't know.
I don't know. I really, I couldn't tell you.
I mean, how was the audience when you were watching it?
They were cheering afterwards, like louder than I've ever heard anybody cheer for a movie.
It was like... Is that right?
Yeah. Wow.
Was Spock topless in your version?
Maybe we saw a different version.
I don't know.
I just don't get it.
And... I mean, Kirk is...
I don't know if they were parodying him or whatever, but...
The guy's hair didn't move the entire film.
It's like a chia pet that's been fossilized.
I mean, even after he's been beaten up, thrown off spaceship platforms and so on, right?
He comes back and does like...
Perfect gel, you know?
I just thought that was very strange.
Now, because I don't remember the original Star Trek too well, did Spock and Uhuru have a thing?
No, that was completely new.
That was new, right? Seriously, the dialogue was so bad, I was literally waiting for him to say something like, our ears aren't the only thing that's pointy.
Like, that's where I was expecting the movie to go.
But, unfortunately, it didn't quite go that low.
There was one of the iconic scenes, supposedly iconic scenes, in the original series Star Trek is where Kirk and Uhura have, you know, share an on-screen kiss.
It was supposed to be this big thing, you know, back in the 60s.
Oh, the first interracial kiss, right?
Yeah, on screen television, right?
So, I mean, that was like, I don't know if that has anything to do with it, or what, but...
Or is it because Spock is supposed to represent all the engineering geeks who don't get out of Mama's basement that, you know, the exotic club girl falls for them, and that's supposed to draw them into that fantasy life?
I don't know. Very strange.
I don't know. But at least we got to see Kirk getting it on with a green alien.
I mean, that was...
That's also another...
Yeah, it seemed like it was...
A lot of the film was just, like, really constructed on having all these, like, fan-pleasing moments.
Yeah, and it's become a little too self-referential for my tastes.
That's the problem with this stuff.
Sorry? I'm sorry.
I was going to say, all these nods to the original series, basically.
Yeah. We didn't have applause at the theater I was at.
Sorry, we didn't have cheering at the theater I was at.
There was some applause at the end of it.
There was one person next to me who kept laughing every single time they made a reference.
It's like, oh boy. I vividly remember when I went to go and see the very first Star Trek film.
I got there kind of late with a friend of mine.
And we were sitting down in front, and I can't remember why, but I turned around at one point, and it literally was, you know, back before contacts became big, it was literally an entire sea of glasses all the way up to the projection room, which I thought was kind of funny.
That wasn't the case so much here.
Although some mom brought her, like, five-year-old to come and see this film, which I thought was not particularly a great idea, because, you know, it's kind of intense, right?
Yeah. That wouldn't be my first choice for a movie with a five-year-old.
No, no, indeed. And I couldn't follow the plot very well.
So can I just step through it and you all can let me know if I got it or not?
Because I kind of gave up a little while through just going, okay, so they need some excuse for some people to get slammed into a wall again, so let's go with that.
But was it that in the future, Spock was supposed to stop a supernova that was going to blow up the galaxy?
Yes, sort of.
Now, supernovas, of course, can't travel faster than the speed of light.
The galaxies are hundreds of thousands of light years across, so they'd have some time, right?
Right, but it's the planet Romulus in particular, right?
I think it was just supposed to be the Romulan Sun and he was supposed to prevent that from happening and he got there too late.
So the same as the planet Vulcan not having any defenses, it would mean that that Romulus doesn't have any spaceship or any technology to do anything useful.
But it wasn't the Romulan Sun, right?
It was just a supernova, right?
It was the Romulan Sun was about to go supernova.
That's what I got at least.
Okay. No, I don't think it was the – sorry to interrupt.
I don't – because he just said a supernova.
A star went supernova and was going to consume the galaxy.
I'm pretty sure it was the Romulan sun.
Well, even if it wasn't – Even if it wasn't, these people are advanced space travelers and explorers and all this business.
They do, right? They would know if a sun near a planet was going to go supernova probably 200-300 years before it even happened.
Oh, more. And also, before a sun goes supernova, it collapses in on itself, right?
They'd kind of noticed that the lights went out, right?
They'd notice. And that takes quite some time, right?
So the supernova thing just seemed kind of silly.
And Spock, they just sent one guy, like one guy, to go and deal with this supernova that's going to consume the galaxy.
What, did everyone else have a tea party to go to?
Sorry, I'm busy that night.
I've got some other stuff on the go.
I got some pasta in the oven.
I mean, one guy.
In a spaceship goes with this red matter and doesn't get there in time.
A freaking huge ball of red matter, too!
But it's not that he doesn't get there in time, it's that the red matter consumes the Romulan planet.
No, it's a supernova that consumed, because he was supposed to put his big red balls in the supernova.
Let me rephrase that.
The supermanova was exploding, and he was supposed to use the red ball to make it not so bad, right?
But then he didn't get there in time, and it consumed the Romulan planet, right?
You notice he used the same amount of red matter that was used to basically destroy the planet.
Why the hell did he have a sphere over a meter in diameter of this stuff that was so highly destructive?
I don't know. So there are sequels?
I don't know. No, it all got consumed.
So then the mining ship of the Romulan guy, who didn't age, right?
So the Romulan guy came back and said, hey, there's no planet here.
And Spock is zipping away in his little revolving Zippo lighter thing, right?
And so he said, oh, Spock must have destroyed the planet because maybe he didn't notice that there was a huge frickin' supernova a little to the left of him, right?
Something like that, yeah.
Tell me if I'm wrong.
And then Spock sort of is like, oh, you know, it was my fault, Jim, I did not save the The planets, right?
But he knew that there was a supernova, right?
That's kind of hard to miss.
Yeah. And if you're close enough to see Spock zipping away, you're close enough to see this supernova, right?
Yeah, no, of course.
So somebody just quoted from Wikipedia, in the year 2387, the galaxy is threatened by a supernova.
Ambassador Spock pilots a ship carrying red matter that can create a gravitational singularity.
I love this stuff. They just make it up.
Drawing a supernova into a black hole before Spock completes his mission, the planet Romulus is destroyed, destroyed, destroyed.
So I don't think it was the Romulan supernova.
It doesn't...
Whether it was or wasn't, it's not particularly important because if it's close enough to Romulus, I think we already covered this, Close enough to Romulus to destroy the planet when it goes supernova?
They'd know. Yeah, they would know.
So how did the Romulan end up going back in time?
I missed that part. He went through a black hole.
Oh, so Spock's matter, his red matter produced a black hole, right?
Mm-hmm. I guess he was stopping the supernova from consuming even more.
Right. Okay.
And so then he went back 25 years in time.
And then he started looking for Spock.
Is that right? No, he went back further in time than that.
He went back because, you know, Spock was like way old, you know?
Oh, yeah, yeah. Way older than he would have been.
And Vulcan still has like a 200-year lifespan or something.
That's like the, I think, something like that.
Yeah. And he, so he, they went back to in time to basically when Kirk was 25.
You know, before, you know, way, way, way before the original series ever started.
Right, okay. Actually, no, no, they went back in time when Kirk was born, right?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
Then Nero, then this Nero guy waits around for 25 years.
You know? Well, he's not waiting, he's looking for Spock, right?
Right, no, you're right.
Well, he's waiting for Spock, but yeah, yeah, that's true.
Yeah, because Spock went in several seconds after Nero, but because of this time dilation thing, it only came 25 years after Nero.
But Spock was in Nero's universe because he was a kid who was beating up other kids, right?
That would have been after the time travel in a plot.
Right, right. Okay, but the guy is around when Kirk is born, and Kirk and Spock are born roughly the same time, right?
Yeah, looks like it. More or less.
So I guess another thing that's confusing to me is that if this crazy Romulan guy is looking for a fellow named Spock, and Spock's dad is on the planetary council, his mom and his dad are on the planetary council of elders of the Vulcans, isn't that like wondering if there's some person called Jenna Bush out there?
I think he wanted the, and this is just speculation, but I think he wanted the elder Spock to be the one to suffer, because, you know?
But the elder Spock is easy to find, because he's not hiding in a cave, like in an ice cave waiting for Kirk to come along, because he's like the planet leader, right?
Or he's on the planetary council, so he'd be very easy to find, right?
I'm sorry, I meant the time travel older Spock, not his dad.
No, I'm talking about the Romulan who's looking to find Spock.
Oh, gosh. Okay, so...
Because the Romulan says, like, do you know where Spock is, right?
He says that to the bald guy who goes over at the very beginning.
He says, do you know where Spock is, right?
And it's like, yeah, Spock runs Vulcan, right?
Oh, I see what you're saying.
I see what you're saying. Okay, sorry.
It's easy to find, right?
Yeah, yeah. The way I understood what happened is he wasn't out there looking for Spock.
He was waiting for his ship to pass through in the black hole.
Like, he was just sitting there for 25 years waiting for him.
And it took, like, his ship...
He said... It took my ship about, like, three seconds to come through, but it took him 25 years of waiting for me.
But he was looking for...
I thought the whole bit at the beginning was he got the captain, the bald captain that he then killed, he got him over there to say, where's Spock, right?
I thought that was him kind of hanging out waiting for Spock to come through the black hole.
Oh yeah, then he asked what the stardate was, right?
So he may not even have known that he went into the past at that point?
But sorry, this is where the time travel stuff always gets confusing, but Spock did live in the time that the Romulan had come back in time to see, and his father lived, and his father was the president of Vulcan, right?
Right, but I think that Spock is the first name, not the family name.
If it makes a little, a minor bit amount more sense.
You mean that every six billion Vulcans, there's only one...
Oh, it's like James or Bob or something, it's the first name?
Yeah, I think so.
Ah, okay. I mean, I could be wrong on that.
It could just be this movie retconned it, but...
Well, but if he knew...
And how did he know it was Spock running away?
From the planet that blew up.
Oh, okay. Well, I don't have an answer to that.
Oh, sorry. I'm just going to have to check on Izzy.
I'll be back in just a flash.
Talk about yourselves. Anyone have...
I had an emotional response after the film.
I actually walked out of the theater feeling pretty depressed.
I'm not sure if it's because the film itself was depressing or something else.
Anyone else have a similar sort of experience or?
No.
I think I just kind of fogged when I saw it because everyone around me really liked it and I didn't so.
So I just self-erased so I wouldn't be the one guy like, that movie sucked.
You guys are all wrong.
Huh. Hmm.
I mean, I thought there were a couple of kind of funny bits, but, you know, for the most part, it was...
Like, the first, the very beginning, it was like just this ball-peen hammer to the emotional aspect with the father dying and, you know...
Was that Kirsten Dunst who played the mom?
Somebody... Somebody...
I couldn't place the face.
I didn't recognize the name.
That was Winona Ryder.
That was Spock's mother, right?
Oh. Sorry, Steph.
Were you talking about Spock's or Kirk's mother?
Kirk's mom. I don't know.
Someone I've recognized, though.
All right. I'm going to just find it here.
Who was the actress who made the...
Kirk's mom.
Oh, it's the woman who plays Cameron on House.
Oh, that's why she was so familiar.
Yeah, okay. Thank God for the internet.
Yes. But yeah, I must say that I was a little disappointed in the movie.
I just thought, oh man.
Although I will say one thing.
I will say one thing that I thought was good about the film and actually quite interesting.
Which was that you could really see how acting standards have changed even in the past couple of decades.
Like, if you look at movies that were made in the...
You know, like the 1940s and the 1950s.
I can't... Christina can't watch them because she...
You know, the actress... The actress are all like...
You know, and the women are all like...
They're not natural at all, right?
It seems very mannered or very affected.
And that's true even up until the sort of 50s, early 60s.
Brando comes along and the whole mumbling and naturalism comes in.
But looking at the...
I thought the acting, you know, given what they had to work with, I thought the actors were actually pretty good.
And I thought it was actually quite naturalistic.
Like he stammered and he was sort of, the guy who played Couric was pretty naturalistic.
And I thought that was actually good.
I thought it was very interesting to see how the acting standards had changed since the first series came out.
It's better acting. Yeah, I would agree.
I think that was the only thing I thought of that was...
It was sort of weird to see miniskirts in a movie because you just don't see them that much anymore, right?
Like all the nurses and they all had miniskirts in.
It's like, last time I was at a hospital, it didn't quite look like that.
Yeah, I noticed that part too when all the cadets were being deployed.
Yeah. You saw a lot of legs.
That's right. A lot of legs.
Yeah, and you know what that is?
Some casting director's like, well, this movie's going to be shit to make because it's so bad, but hey, let's have some fun legs casting calls, you know?
Miniskirts. I thought that was a nod to the 60s as well.
Yeah, I think it was. I think it was.
I just thought it was pretty funny.
Nod. It was more like, you know, shaking their head back and forth until it fell off.
That was quite the nod. Right.
No, I was waiting for people to break into the Watusi at one point.
I really did have that 60s feel to it.
And I also thought it was interesting how, I mean, Kirk just left, right?
I mean, he's got this, I guess his mom, right, was there and his mom had raised him and so on.
And he's like, go to outer space tomorrow morning at 8 a.m.
And he's like, sure. Right?
I mean, there's no mom driving him goodbye.
He's just on the invisible wheel motorcycle cruising up, right?
And I thought that was a pretty undeveloped bit.
I mean, they could have a little bit of something, you know, like, bye mom or whatever.
I mean, she opened up the whole film.
This is true. Although, his mom disappeared.
Like, his mom is, quote, off-planet, right?
Oh, which... Well, not in that scene, but in the scene before when he was 15 years old driving the, quote, antique.
Yeah. And what was up with that cop?
I've never seen that, and to the best of my knowledge, in any Star Trek, the faceless, one-eyed cop.
Martin says he's a robot, but it was just...
That was creepy.
Yeah, it was a little creepy, for sure.
I don't know. I don't know.
I guess they just...
I don't know.
Is this the Ritalin generation? I mean, I hate to sound all kind of old cadre and all that, but what...
I mean, is this the Ritalin generation?
Like, can they just not go three minutes without some hyperkinetic speedball of a chase scene or a fight scene or something like that?
Yeah, I mean, it kind of like...
It really loses its impact, you know, after the first 20 minutes or so.
I mean, like... There were so many scenes that were just like, oh no, are they going to make it or not?
Like, narrow escape.
But it just, I mean, the suspense is gone after, like, the second time that you do that, you know?
Well, it's hard to keep the suspense up when you know that they're alive 30 years down the road, right?
Is he going to make it?
Gosh, I wonder, right?
It's like, the Titanic, don't sink, right?
It's like Apollo 13, don't blow up!
Whatever you do, right? Right.
It really felt like I was put in a dark room and whacked repeatedly with lightsabers, you know, as far as the CGI and all that went.
And CGI can be really beautiful if it's used with some delicacy.
But everything was just so...
I could barely figure out what was going on on the screen before they cut to something else.
And they also had this, you know, shine the bright lights in your eyes thing.
Like half the scenes, you'd get this just weird bright light showing up that would obscure people's faces.
And it was just like... Man, that's just really annoying.
I didn't pay to have somebody poke lights in my eyes.
And who was it who plays Spock's dad?
He also seemed familiar, but he wasn't the guy who played Spock's dad originally.
I guess he'd be too old if he's even alive.
You know, it wasn't Spock's father.
I assume they used the same actor or similar actor for The Next Generation, because I had Spock's father come on that show once.
But yeah, I think it would be different.
Right, right. And yeah, I mean, other than that, I just...
It just felt kind of hysterical.
And not in a good way, you know?
It's like... The problem...
I mean, I thought what was good about the early Star Treks is that it wasn't...
It wasn't so grandiose.
I mean, the problem with the latest Star Trek has always occurred when, you know, Earth is threatened, you know, the galaxy is going to explode, time will come to an end, and they started doing that with the next generation as well, you know.
Q would be like, if you don't answer this question, the universe as you know it will come to it.
Like, it's just, it's too big, you know.
Whatever happened to the problems with Tribbles, you know?
You know, like, I mean, there was something that you could actually sort of, that wasn't so hysterical and planet busting and all that kind of stuff.
They have to have the stakes so high, right?
Sorry, go on. Well, yeah, that is something.
Now that you bring it up, I mean, yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
It's like, why is it that the stakes are so high, right?
Sorry, go ahead. I was just saying, I don't know if there's like a room for metaphor here, but, you know, don't we get the same sort of thing Like with the environmentalists who say, oh, the planet's in danger, you know?
Yes. Yes.
Yes. No, that's absolutely right.
It just feels so, so big.
It just feels too big.
And just ridiculous.
Like, it's just hard to take it seriously.
And I don't know if I just become more cynical about this kind of stuff.
But, you know, the Earth is going to get blown up and the universe is going to come to an end, you know, like...
It just seems kind of weird.
Also, where did the Romulan guy get the red matter from?
Did he just have it hanging around his mining vessel in case he needed to end the universe or something?
No, he grabbed it from Spock.
Yeah, he intercepted Spock's ship that time.
Which time? When he was waiting for him.
You know, he, like, waited for him and then Spock arrived and then he buried him on that planet so he could, you know, watch him.
Oh, right. That's where he got the red matter from, right?
Right. Okay, got it, got it. Sorry.
So they did put that one together fairly well, so...
Excellent. The whole fleet is in the Laurentian system.
No defenses on the planet.
No defenses. Well, no, they had some subspace thing that they had to use the brain slug to get out of the guy.
Oh, yeah, yeah, but that doesn't matter, right?
I mean, where are the standby patrols?
Where's the Coast Guard, so to speak?
Oh, yeah, I know, of course. And, you know, it's the whole defense system has no redundancy whatsoever, so the code that one guy gives you, you know, it's like, Shave and a haircut.
Then what? Two bits.
You're in, right? And now you can blow up the whole world.
Every system has multiple layers, redundancies.
It's not just one guy.
You put a brain slug in him.
If you're going to make the stakes so high, at least make the people who are defending the planet not completely retarded.
And I think it's possible to care...
About people and not just planets.
And I think I was just being asked to care only about planets and not people.
Because there really were no people really in the film.
You know, like, if Spock or Kirk was trying to save his family or, you know, his friends, you know, that to me is something that I could really get into because we all have friends or whatever who we do a lot to save.
But, you know, just...
Anonymous planet people, you know, it just seems kind of, you know, the stakes are so high, but the personal involvement is so low that it just hit me emotionally.
I mean, the film did not hit me at all emotionally, which was a real shame.
Yeah, they like didn't establish any genuine emotional connection between any of the characters that I can remember.
No, no, that's very true.
And I certainly didn't buy, you know, Uhuru's love of old stone-faced Spock, you know?
No way. Yeah, that just totally was completely weird and awkward.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, it just felt like her sorority sisters had dared her to kiss him or something.
Like, it didn't really feel like anything particularly organic.
Like, oh, she's kissing Spock.
Okay. Dear Star Trek penthouse, I never thought this would happen to me, but...
Yeah, during that dorm room scene when the girls were all getting into their underwear and stuff, I turned to Rich and I was like, girls don't actually do this.
What? That sort of reminds me, there's a great bit in Seinfeld where Elaine becomes friends with George's fiancé and he's like, no, so we're going to hang out together, she says.
Oh, it's like, oh, so you're going to You're going to go home and strip down to your brown panties and have a tickle fight?
Is that what you think female friends do?
Yes. Yes, I do.
Yeah, I just, I can't imagine that the female roommates, you know, one of them's just lounging around in a bikini and the other one just comes home and starts stripping while chatting away about Romulan defenses or whatever the hell she was babbling on about.
It just seems kind of like...
And, you know, it must be tough for actresses because, you know, they're not dumb, right?
And it must just be like, oh, okay, so I guess this is the audition.
I can drop my pants.
Right. Yeah.
You know, could they not say, look, I mean, I know this is a bit of a guy film and, you know, this, that, and the other, but, you know, can we just do a little bit of something about the women?
Yeah. But I don't think that's really the...
That's really the point. Yeah, it was kind of weird.
I thought, like, the original idea of Star Trek was to have, like, all this equality among the races and the genders, but, like, none of the principal players are female or of a different race, you know?
Yeah, yeah, no, it's a tidy-whitey section, right?
And the guy...
Why did the guy promote...
Like... Basically, Kirk went from a guy who was facing disciplinary action for cheating, right?
to being promoted to second in command.
Right?
Because then he could take over after he got Spock to punch his lights out, right?
Right?
Yeah, that's a cricket-worthy moment.
Wow. Isn't that going from, like, Congressional Page, who's been banned for stealing, to Vice President?
But it gets even worse because later on he basically beams himself on a moving spaceship, then that's fine, then basically trapped him with court-martial, and yet again promoted to captain because Spock resigns, and, I mean, that's even more ridiculous.
Right, because he was actually, yeah, he was kicked off the vessel, basically told to walk the plank, right?
Yeah. For mutiny, and then he's, you know, promoted, right?
Well, because he's Captain Kirk's son.
Yeah, Pike knew his father, but I still don't think that gets you from congressional page to president, you know, in three seconds, right?
I think there is a kind of, you have to work your way up, right?
Right, I'm just saying that was like the film logic.
Film logic, okay.
You have the potential, son.
That was the very beginning with Enlist and all that business.
You know, that was like...
Kirk's 25 in this film, right?
And he's in his early 20s because he's in three years he's in the Academy, right?
Well, not even early 20s.
He's in his mid-20s from the very beginning.
Oh, so he's like almost 30 when he takes command?
Yeah. I mean, I don't know the statistics, but you don't get mid-twenties going into the army very rarely, right?
I mean, that just doesn't happen.
Right, right, right, right.
And, okay, we've got a bunch of people on the call here.
I'm just sort of curious. Have you guys ever seen a bar fight?
No. No.
No. Anyone?
No. Nope.
Rich said yes. Sorry, I was actually going to bet that Rich hadn't, but you, Colleen, had started a few, but that's not what's happened?
Yeah, I've seen a couple. Colleen ends them.
Colleen ends them, right. Because she strips down to her bra and panties and starts a tickle fight.
Absolutely. You completely understand that.
And that actually is my way of fighting.
I always go out of the house with bra and panties on underneath just in case something like that breaks out at the sorority.
But sorry, go on. I have seen a couple, but it was in San Diego, and there's a lot of Army and Marines out there, and it was always between Army guys and Marine guys.
Ah, right, right. Surprise, surprise.
And anyone else has seen a bar fight?
No. It's just amazing, because it's such a staple.
In movies, right?
That whenever there's a problem, right?
Some guy is chatting up some woman in a bar, and then some other guy comes up and says, is there a problem?
And then there's a big fight, right?
And I just believe that that actually happens in real life.
I'm sure it does in some places, maybe, you know, like some bars where, I don't know, Hell's Angels hang out a lot, but it just seems...
I mean, personally, frankly, it just seems kind of homoerotic to me, like a bunch of guys just wanting to touch each other but not knowing how to, so let's punch.
I mean, that's all I can come up with as far as all of that goes.
Right. Well, they are military guys.
They are military guys, that's right, so they want to bunk down together, right?
Yeah. Steph, you're forgetting?
They want to get in their foxholes.
Yeah. Because on the one hand, these are, well, cadets on a military academy, which maybe doesn't have that many women.
And secondly, who knows how far the political correctness laws have gone by the 23rd century.
So maybe it's illegal to jet up women or something.
Right, but then they would arrest, right, rather than start a fight, right?
At least that would be my first guess.
But it just, yeah, it seems like a very...
It just seemed like a very...
So many people get involved, like literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people are involved in the making of this movie, right?
In the costume. I mean, obviously I've got no experience with anything like that, but having made even a tiny little film that I did, we had like 30 or 40 or 50 people involved in just making a tiny film.
There were hundreds and hundreds of people involved in this film.
And it is to me always amazing the degree to which people don't just say, You know, this script, you know, let's send it to a physicist.
You know, physicists love Star Trek.
They'd love to be a consultant on a Star Trek film.
Let's just send this to a physicist so we're not just pulling stuff out of the Wikipedia article on quantum physics and jamming it together as if it makes some sense.
You know, send this, let's send this to an astronomer and say, you know, we've got a supernova, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
It amazes me the degree, because this is supposed to be science fiction.
This is not fantasy, right?
I understand that they're not going, but even Tolkien worked on the Elven language, right?
It always amazes me the degree to which they won't even try to bother to get any of the science right.
And I think that was a little less the case in the older Star Treks.
But in this one, it was just, I mean, it was really comic book stuff as far as the science went.
And that to me was, this was just more, it was fantasy that had nothing to do with science whatsoever.
Right. And I think that's part of making it so incredibly commercial that they just don't care about details like that.
Well, it's more than a detail.
I mean, because it's supposed to be science fiction, right?
So I think it's more than a detail if it's sort of a plot hinger thing, you know, like that Romulan didn't know their sun was exploding or some sun was exploding and coming towards them creeping slowly, right?
Oh, right. Good point.
Yeah, I mean, just, you know, raise the bar a little bit, you know, work just a little bit harder to make it a little bit more believable so that anybody who knows a little bit about science isn't just going, you what?
You what? Like, okay, so basically what they did was, and also to get out of this gravity well, they basically detonated a series of nuclear bombs underneath them.
Yeah. I mean, I tried that with a rocket launcher in Unreal Tournament.
It didn't work so well. No, but it's weird because, I mean, if the gravity well is so strong that it's literally cracking the ship apart, I've got to think that nuclear weapons going off, or these dilithium explosions going off, you know, a mile or two behind them, is going to do a little bit more than giving them a gentle push out of the gravity well.
Right now. Anyway, it just seems sort of a...
You know, it's just like...
To me, it's like throwing a couple of hand grenades if you're caught in a bear trap, you know, under your foot.
It's like, hey, I'm out of the bear trap and out of this world.
They had to do something to make that quote-unquote suspenseful moment.
Right, right. I think that was another nod to another plot device in another show...
Because you know when they said they had the whole thing where this is something you invented.
This is your theory that you discovered.
That's ripped off from Star Trek, I think, IV, where they went to save the whales.
Which is, by the by, that's actually the only one that I really liked.
I thought that was kind of cute.
It's not so bad in that movie, but to have it ripped off, it's kind of like, ugh.
Because they ripped off so many other things by that point.
It became less of a nod than it just became like, here we go again.
Here's another goddamn reference.
Right, right. And is it really...
I mean, black holes are not something you pass through.
It's the ultimate something you don't pass through, right?
It's the most incredibly compressed matter there is.
It's not a gate. It's not a hole, right?
People are like, oh, black hole.
Well, you can pass through it. Like, you can, you know, pass through a hole, right?
But it's the exact opposite of a hole, right?
I mean, it's only a hole because light can't escape the gravity well if the matter is so compact.
But the idea... You can fly into a gravity well or fly into a black hole and come out somewhere else.
You can't even do that with a tree knot.
Try running at a tree knot and see if you go back in time.
You really won't. You actually go forward in time because you've been unconscious for a while.
But anyway. And that's a really old science fiction plot device.
Just basically go through a black hole and go back in time.
I guess it means that they don't have to strap more expensive stuff To themselves to make it look like time travel.
Yeah, I mean, usually, I mean, nowadays, I think even in like the television series, like just science fiction television series now, you know, they use a black hole, but they use like the energy or something they can draw off of it in order to create the black hole, you know, to create this time travel thing or something, you know?
Someone has just written, actually, some scientists do claim that black holes can result in wormholes in time travel.
I've read some of that sort of speculative stuff.
I don't know that there's been a whole bunch of peer-reviewed journals on that.
That's just, you know, like a bunch of weird mathematical LSD shit.
But anyway, I'm obviously no scientist, so I've just never seen it anywhere.
But they don't even say they're going through a wormhole.
They just say they're going through a black hole.
Right. Right.
Right. They barely even say it.
They just show the pictures. Right.
Right. Right.
That's the first spaceship I've seen that really needs to see a dentist.
That mining ship.
It's just these monster teeth, you know?
Looks like something out of it.
I was disappointed. Sorry, sorry.
Go ahead. No, I was just going to say, I was disappointed that it was Romulans.
It just didn't make any sense to me.
Oh, why is that? Well, I mean, I'm not like a huge fan.
Obviously, I know too many details, probably for my own good, but...
Romulans always seem to be the, you know, yeah, they're the bitter enemies of all things that live, but it just seemed to be, kind of like you said earlier, too grandiose, too much.
Like, this ship that's, compared to the starship, like the size of a planet, practically, right?
It's the size of a small moon, this mining ship.
Right. Right. It didn't make any sense to me at all, even throughout the movie as this thing was flying around.
It just didn't make any sense.
Lucas already did that.
Did what? Sorry, what?
Lucas already did the spaceship the size of a moon.
Right, right. Yes, he already did that.
But I actually think, just as James was talking, though, the idea struck me that I think I have gotten the emotional message of the movie.
And I'm going to share it with you so that we can all hug.
The emotional message of the movie, I do believe, is this.
A failure to mourn results in aggression.
Oh, interesting.
And I think that's probably what they started with.
We'd like to make a movie about the failure to mourn resulting in aggression.
Let's go with Star Trek.
Because the Romulan guy didn't mourn the death of his wife, right?
Right. And so he ends up...
Destroying planets.
...doing some horribly phallic thing to Vulcan, right?
Right. If that guy's not compensating for something, I don't know if anyone is compensating for anything.
Because, my God, that was a hell of a long drill bit.
And so he ends up going all kinds of nutty crazy, right?
Right. Let me show you my power tools.
Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. Kirk doesn't seem to mourn his dad, and he's very aggressive, right?
He certainly doesn't mourn leaving his mom.
He doesn't even seem to notice that she was there.
Right. Now, Spark doesn't mourn the passing of his mother, right?
Right. And then he ends up getting all kinds of crazy on Kirk, right?
After Kirk approached his buttons, but yeah.
Yeah, but no, because the two times that he blew up was about his mother, right?
As a kid, right? That she's a whore, I think they called him.
And then you never even loved her, right?
Yeah, right. And then he had his Norman Bates moment on Kirk, right?
Yeah. Failure to mourn, right?
See? Failure to mourn.
Uhuru failed to mourn the demise of her acting career in this movie.
And so she kissed Spock.
I'm telling you, yes.
You're with me. You're with me.
You see it, right? I'm with you with everything else, at least.
Right. Yeah, that is a really common thread in the movie.
And why is it that in space you need nine-foot eyelashes?
Thrusters. Right.
Maybe they... You know, they allow you to turn corners more quickly by banking.
I'm not sure exactly. Man, I couldn't stop watching Spock's nose and Uhuru's eyelashes.
She had the 60s faux Egyptian thing going on, too, with her eye shadow.
That was crazy. You know what?
That was a nod to Amy Winehouse, who also has a problem with mourning and aggression.
The layers in this movie are deep, deep, deep, baby.
I'm going to go back and see it again, but backwards.
You turn on The Wizard of Oz?
Right. I kept thinking early on in the film, when is the best time to start Dark Side of the Moon?
Since there's all that time travel, watching it in either direction should result in exactly the same plotline, right?
Exactly. Actually, I think that watching it randomly scrambled would result in exactly the same plotline fundamentally.
Well, I feel vindicated now.
Go on. I was mulling all day whether to bother going or not, and I was really leaning towards not, and then I finally decided not.
Now I'm glad I didn't.
I would say that...
You know, even with the CGI eye candy, when you're like, okay, is this thing done?
Is this thing done? Now?
Now? Now? Then, yeah, you're definitely, you know, it's like when you're watching fireworks and it's been going on for three days and it's like, okay, come on.
Like, I mean, it's light out, it's sun.
Let's just stop this stuff and go home.
Right. My eardrums are bleeding.
Can we stop now? I am weeping for the death of my culture.
Have you won? Can we stop now?
Now, do you think this is going to revive the franchise?
It's been doing really well, hasn't it?
It made like $75 million in a week or whatever?
Yeah, Rich's whole theory was that they specifically made this movie to revive the franchise.
And I think that's why they used the alternate reality plot, because now they can kind of go on any direction they want with it.
Oh, you mean... And they also needed that to bring Spock back, didn't they?
Yeah, they did. They needed...
Because they couldn't get Spock back unless...
And they probably didn't want Shatner back because they'd need a fisheye lens and you'd need IMAX to...
But they needed Spock back and they couldn't do that without time travel, right?
Or they wanted... Because is he...
James Doohan has died, right?
Yes. Doohan's died.
DeForest Kelly died like decades ago, right?
Because he was pretty old when the series was going on.
Yeah. Yeah. Who is still alive, right?
Right, yeah, but she's not going to be showing up in any movies, I don't think.
Why? Oh, I'm just saying...
I saw the roast, and she's not as far gone as Shatner, but she's not that far behind.
Oh, you mean just in terms of age-taking-its-all kind of thing?
I think so. I could be wrong about that, but that's sort of my opinion.
Yeah, so I think Spock's the only one That could come back.
And he, of course, is the most popular character, I think.
And he also, he still looks, I mean, he looks great overall.
I mean, he still looks pretty much like he did in the 60s, just a bit more etched, right?
Yeah, yeah. Still, same haircut.
But yeah, so yeah, I'm sure it will.
But I think I'm done.
I don't think it'll lure me out to see another one.
I was pretty tired of the movies, you know, of the Star Trek movies in general, you know, even with the New Generation cast.
I gotta say, and I don't know why this is, though, it seems to me that television is so much smarter than movies these days.
Totally agree, yeah.
Like, the stuff that I'm watching on TV... House is intelligent and psychologically insightful, and I'm all over it because of the Mika system references, right?
So I like it from that standpoint.
But it's intelligent, and it's got very witty and thoughtful lines to it.
I'm trying to think what else.
Have you seen the show Lie to Me yet?
Yeah, yeah, that's a clever show.
I like the details, and it's also quite instructive on facial expressions, and it's clever and so on.
So I've seen a couple of those.
Those were enjoyable. Christine is a big Lost fan.
So we watch that and I go, what?
What? I'm Lost.
Anyway. But...
I almost said there was a joke that said...
I can't remember who some comedian made this joke.
I said, yeah, Lost has apparently been renewed for a fifth season.
And the writers are all like, fuck.
But... But Lost is, you know, I don't know, Lost is a bit more sort of brain candy, but House is a pretty good show, for sure.
And other stuff that I've been watching, I can't sort of remember it now, but...
Big Bang Theory? The last four or five episodes of House have been infuriating to me.
Oh, why's that?
Well, with the, with the, uh, suicide of Kuttner and everything, uh, that whole episode just to me was, um, uh, uh, completely, um, I can't put a word to it, but, I can't put a word to it, but, um, I just found, uh, the way that they disposed of him, uh, to be completely, That was stupid. That was completely ridiculous.
And all the characters completely slip into this sort of Self-indulgent narcissism.
And after that, I was just...
I was so disgusted I wasn't even going to watch the show anymore after that.
Yeah, what happened to the actor?
Did he just ask for too much money and they're like, fuck you, we can bump you off like you wouldn't believe.
No, he actually left the show to work on the Obama campaign.
Oh, that's a good move.
Yeah, that's good. I think he's actually part of the administration to some extent, isn't he?
He's Kumar from Harold and Kumar, by the way.
I can't believe that somebody's working on the Obama campaign who had the line when somebody told him that he should go to medical school because he was so smart.
He said, just because you have a big dick doesn't mean you have to do porn.
I mean, if that guy's working for Obama, I'm pretty impressed because that's a pretty long way to travel.
I thought, not to get too far into house or anything, but I thought that it was interesting that he was sort of Like, disposed of in that way on the House, because it's kind of, you know, not that going to politics is a definite career killer, but it kind of, you know, I think it's going to be a hard time for anyone else to actually get used to seeing him on screen, if he ever does want to come back.
It certainly could be, yeah.
I mean, it would be a little weird.
And it's such a shame, too.
Like, what the hell has Schwarzenegger done with the last couple of years of his life, other than fight with unions and wave his broadsword around in meetings?
It's ridiculous, right? Right.
I mean, the fiscal bullshit that is California is just going to fade into history, but he could have made some very entertaining films.
I mean, he usually made quite enjoyable films, and that could have actually done something useful for the planet in terms of people's enjoyment rather than, you know, people always want to go and do big things when they should just, in my opinion, stick with what actually gives people the most pleasure.
But anyway. True Lies was pretty good, but since then I can't remember a single film of his that I enjoyed.
He's been the governor for a decade now, hasn't he?
I thought Terminator 3 was enjoyable.
I mean, to me, that kind of action stuff is enjoyable because I kind of care about the characters.
At least I actually sort of cared about the characters.
But yeah, I think he hasn't done anything.
Is it 10 years he's been doing that now?
It was in the early aughts, wasn't it?
I mean, 2002, 2003?
Not quite 10 years, but it's getting there.
It's getting on. Which means they keep re-electing him.
Yeah, well, I guess he'll stick around as long as he can.
But yeah, I've just sort of noticed that the stuff that's on television, even Grey's Anatomy, it's another show that Christina likes more than I do, but even that has some, again, good ecosystem stuff, some good psychological insights, although the relationships are obviously highly dysfunctional.
But it's smarter and more satisfying than just about anything that I see in the movies.
We saw, when we went to the Mommies and Me, we saw the Matthew McConaughey film that just came out.
What was it called?
Jennifer Garner, Matthew McConaughey, he gets visited by...
It goes to Girlfriends Past.
I don't laugh at...
I mean, I get more laughs in one episode of Scrubs than I do in just about every mainstream comedy I've seen over the past...
I don't even know how long.
Scrubs, fantastic.
I mean, that's a very funny show because it's very unpredictable, right?
And it does a very fine line between realism and fantasy.
Oh, yeah. So I just find the comedy is funnier, the drama is usually deeper, and the dialogue is better, the acting is better.
And I think it's partly because they can't do all this CGI, right?
They were doing House before House was doing House.
Huh? The older doctor on Scrubs, a lot of his sarcasm is very similar to House.
I watch those two shows now, and it's like, oh, I've heard that before.
Yeah. Yeah, no, he's a great actor, that guy.
He's really, that's a fantastic role.
He'll probably never get a role that good again in his career.
But yeah, so I mean, I just, I gravitate a little bit more towards television.
Well, obviously, since having Isabella, but I gravitate a lot more towards TV in terms of quality than...
And TV has the additional problems of commercials, right?
And it's still... Usually funnier and better.
Two and a half men is usually a lot funnier than just about any main...
I certainly laugh more in the 20 minutes of that show than I do in an entire Matthew McConaughey film, which may not be too shocking, but that was supposed to be the big budget comedy.
Go ahead, sorry.
I think there are some pretty good reasons why TV is getting so much better because, well, you know your audience better, you have more time to build your characters, you can try weird stuff, and it's easier to run a pilot and see how it goes than to make a mainstream movie who costs so much more money and can just go for a niche audience but has to please more people.
So I guess it's a bit...
Yeah, I think you're right.
I think there's a lowest common denominator in films.
And I really felt this was the case with the Star Trek film, that it was just a lowest common denominator thing.
Everything seemed predictable.
Everything seemed cliched.
Even the quieter bits where the characters were talking just seemed kind of stupid.
Nothing meaningful. You should forget your logic, and you should trust your instincts.
There was no insight, no meaning, or no depth.
And I think it's just the lowest common denominator.
And at TV, you're right, it can go more towards a higher IQ demographic.
I mean, I would imagine, like, you have to write for a particular age group, right?
And you have to not use words that they can't understand.
Unless they're science words which they're not supposed to understand because they make no sense, right?
But I think you, like, literally have to, you have to write to a grade six level when you're aiming for this kind of Star Trek film.
Well, who's my demographic? Well, who goes to the movies most?
It's young men or whatever people who are in their early to mid-teens on dates.
And they have, you know, for the most part, you've got to aim for grade six or grade seven vocabulary and nothing overly taxing in terms of complexity.
And... And they may not notice the logic holes of the plot or whatever.
It's just like, you know, it's because all it is is an excuse to put one action scene together to the next.
Sorry, someone said...
I was just going to say, now I understand the, like, cheering at our theater because, you know, we're in the South.
Ah, well, was it cheering and gunshots or just cheering?
Cheering and gunshots is Australia.
Well, it's a few shots in the air.
Right. Right. A little square dancing.
Right, right.
Also, there's a great deal more competition in the television arena these days with a lot of the private cable networks doing their own shows now and also with internet video outlets now and video distributions.
There's just a lot more competition for eyeballs.
So I think that tends to I think that's true.
And television shows, because they now have the internet rentals and DVD rentals of the seasons...
They can pay writers more, which usually you hope would attract better writers than it seems to be.
Certainly the comedies that are around now seem to be funnier and wittier than the comedies that were around when I was younger.
So I think that's partly the economics of it as well, that they can get many more residuals out of a television show than they used to be able to, which is guess what the writer's strike was all about last year.
The writers are not that well-paid, but there are so many writers that it's basically, as in good capitalism, the best will get filtered out.
One thing, I recently heard a lecture about the change in quality and this guy actually used Lost as an example and basically showed how the different generations have now different viewing expectations.
So in the 80s you had like 18 MacGyver and just One guy or a few guys doing stuff and simple to follow episodes and these days you have lost in Battlestar Galactica which have so complicated plots that it's really difficult to grasp but the current generation gets through and kind of expects that.
That's very interesting. Yeah, I mean, certainly generations keep getting smarter, so that would make sense.
I think also because the way that these shows are consumed now, they can aim for them to be consumed in a more compressed way.
Like if you get a DVD, you can watch it through and not get as confused.
So they also have to aim for it a little bit in the future.
If they go over too much of the previous plot every time, then they lose out on future sales, I think, because people will find it more redundant.
But yeah, I think that the plots are much more complicated than...
Than they used to be, which I think is a good testament to people's intelligence, but certainly helps me understand how the younger generation is smarter than me because I lose a little track of what's going on.
But what I do find is that there doesn't seem to be a lot of drama in these shows except for gunplay, right?
And that's what I don't like about Lost and I don't like about Prison Break, which is...
I thought that the first season of Last I thought was great because you had all of these stories about how people got to the island and there was a lot of human interest in that and I thought that was really interesting.
But now it's just about, you know, who's now going to hold a gun to your head?
And that seems to me, again, it just has to keep escalating, keep escalating, keep escalating to the point where now it's just a whole series of, you know, people shooting at each other and guns to the heads and so on.
And I just find for me that I just lose interest very quickly when that sort of stuff occurs.
And I always wish they'd sort of keep their restraint going.
You know, it's like when you listen to some garage band or some grunge band and they have a really pretty melody and a really complicated bit of music at the beginning that's quite pleasing.
And then you just know they're going to unleash this mudslide of guitar sound at it and start pounding away from this early ballad.
And you're like, don't do it, don't do it.
Oh, you went and did it. And that's the way that this seems to escalate with art so often, is that they just can't...
It's like they just have to overstimulate everyone.
Which is, you know, as Nietzsche said, it's kind of the hallmark of decadence when you need that level of stimulation to feel something.
That's one of the reasons why I appreciate the Lie to Me show.
Because there's so much...
Psychological intrigue in the plots.
They don't need a lot of gunplay.
In fact, I don't think there's been any gunplay in the shows that I've seen.
Yeah, there have been a couple of rough prison scenes and things like that, but nothing serious like OK Corral shootouts.
Right, right. That really seems to be the...
Yeah, and it was true.
For a prison break, I thought the first season was very good.
I mean, there was a lot of violence in the prison, but it was more the threat of violence, and it was more the sort of maneuvering to get out of prison.
And then when they're out of prison, they're just running around getting shot.
And it just seemed kind of less interesting, less complex, less rich.
Yeah, the second season became about...
Evading the Predator as opposed to...
Yeah, and the second season wasn't bad either.
I can't remember when they started getting...
Oh yeah, then they were in some prisons in Mexico.
I lost interest sort of there, and then this new one is about trying to get this Scylla thing, and it's just running around and getting shot and stuff, and it just seems kind of dumb.
And usually a show is on its last legs when that stuff starts to happen.
Yeah, they probably should have left it off at...
After the second season, because of where they went.
Well, but, you know, I mean, they made the money they wanted, right?
Well, should have. Ideally, you know, the audience would have not had it go on for, I don't know how many seasons it's been going on for now, but five?
Isn't it his fourth?
Fourth?
I think it's his fourth right now.
But yeah, I'm certainly looking forward to, I mean, in the fall, I mean, I have no idea what shows are coming up, but it certainly would be nice if there's something really, you know, smart and complex to follow, because I certainly have enjoyed some of the more complex shows that have been coming out lately.
Challenging, though they may be.
I watched a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory today, and I'm going to be Well, that's a masterpiece of a niche show because, I mean, it can only apply to geeks or to people who live as geeks or something, but there's so many science jokes in there that I guess many, many people just wouldn't get it.
Right, right. No, I think that is true.
I find the show a little bit depressing to be really funny because you just know these lives aren't going to change.
So I do find that a bit depressing to be really funny, but definitely I find that the Sheldon character is really well done.
I think we've all known someone like that at one time or another.
Don't believe I've ever seen an episode.
Oh yeah, it's worth having a look.
Sure, cool. Alright.
Sorry, go on. It's a great show.
I mean, I heard it after Steph recommended it basically, but for one, the science jokes they make make sense.
And it's the same brighter, Chuck Law is the same brighter as on Two and a Half Men, but it's like they really dug out all the trivia knowledge they had regarding to science, and there's so much stuff in it.
I sometimes have to look it up.
I have to look up new words.
I guess most of us will find it pretty entertaining just from the jokes they make.
Well, I mean, I don't understand half the science references, but those that I do make sense.
And that's because they've got someone, you know, helping them with the show, which, you know, it's great, you know, because, you know, it's like when you're in computers and anytime they show anything to do with computers on a show, it's just like eye-rollingly not even close to accurate.
And it's real nice to be able to do it more quickly.
It's the graphical interface to the virus installation.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, like, yeah, that's right.
You insert the USB key and you take over the network, right?
And it's just like, oh, man, I hurt inside.
What I don't understand is all the whizzing and the beeping and the squealing that's going on on the screen when text is coming up.
Does anybody have a computer that does that?
No. That is a big answer.
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. It's probably a Mac or something.
Actually, I think it's a Sinclair ZX80. It was the last computer to do that.
The aliens in ID.4 used Mac-compatible computers, so I guess they're pretty universal.
That's right, that's right.
All right, well, I'm going to get ready for bed.
I had another one of these early dead mornings, so I'm going to...
But I really do appreciate the chat.
It was good to vent about the track.
So thanks everybody. Have a great night.
It's about time they put a bullet into that whole series, I think.
Yeah, let's open up some new brain cells.
I think, you know, this combing over old stuff is really starting to get old itself.
I think we need some new myths, right?
Yeah. That was an excellent reference.
And what was? Combing over.
All right, you're on my list.
What? The list of infamy.
Oh, sorry. I thought you were talking about Kirk.
Oh, comb-overs. Oh.
Yes. Yeah, that's it.
I was. That's it. I'm going to leave on that.
Thanks, guys.
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