How ‘Poker Face’ Recaptures that 70s Spirit. Plus: Scott Adams self-immolates.

Welcome back to across the movie I presented Bulwark Plus. I am your host, Sunny Bunch, Culture Editor of Bulwark. I’m joined as always by Elizabeth Rosenberg of The Washington Post. Peter Zimmerman of Reason magazine. Alyssa Peter, how are you today?

Longwell.

I’m happy to be talking about movies with friends.

First up in controversies and controversies. Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Gilbert, has been canceled. Following an ill conceived online rant in which he suggested that white people should move away from black people following a poll in which percentage of black people said that they disagreed with the statement, it’s okay to be white. Fifty three percent of black respondents agreed with this, oddly inflammatory. Question.

Twenty one percent were not sure. That means that roughly one in four of the respondents disagreed with the statement that it’s again okay to be white. This this in turn, this twenty four percent or so, led Adams to suggest that the best solution, as you know, voluntary Secret Podcast least, that’s how I read the suggestion that white people should quote, get the hell away from black people end quote. I don’t know about you guys, but I generally find that it’s smart to avoid coming off as a neo segregationist in my writing and speaking. Videos, etcetera.

The response was fast and furious. Adam’s strip dropped him from, like, it was dropped from basically every newspaper. His publisher of books dropped him. His book agent dropped him and he’s now gonna have to find a new way to make money probably if I had to guess. Via a substack of some sort.

It feels like kind of a natural progression of from what we’ve seen from the Gilbert guy since the Trump era. The question for the class then? Is this? Does this constitute what we might generally refer to as quote, cancel Bulwark, end quote. Right?

And this is the question that some have snidely asked as a means of insinuating that cancel culture is not real, it doesn’t exist. If you’re okay with Adams losing his livelihood, you must be you must admit that this phenomenon that you have championed, you people out there, you cancel Bulwark. You, anti, cancel culture warriors as a sham. Or some such. And no.

No. No. No. No. It comes to reply.

The Adam situation is different. He has made an obvious transgression against a long held norm and reasonable people are reasonably scusted to buy it. Ergo, it’s not cancel Bulwark. It’s just, you know, for lack of a better phrase to use a a popular term that that people seem to like on the Internet. Fucking around and finding out.

The argument here is a semantic one, but it’s of some interest because I do think there’s a useful idea at the core that we need to wrestle with here, and it’s this. When we talk about cancel culture, what we’re talking about, right, is not whether or is is is basically whether or not a person deserved the consequences they suffered for whatever it is they did. In some cases, it’s pretty obvious. Right? Like your Justin Saco type situation.

You remember her? She’s a sad case. She made the she made an aids joke before boarding a flight. And by the time the plane landed, she had been fired and relegated to the Ashkeep of society. Obviously, bad cancel culture, run amok.

Right? Then you’ve got something like the Michael Richards case. Right? Where he exploded during a standup set and deployed the n word a bunch of times against a heckler since then he’s had trouble finding Bulwark. And I don’t think anyone is really surprised as to why the trickier questions come in the middle ground where norms are being settled and where commercial clout is still in some question.

And this is why Dave Chappell is routinely a flash point. Right? He keeps getting in trouble for talking about a contentious area, which is trans rights since, I mean, the New York Times is arguing about it with their contributors. This is like a thing that people are still hashing out. And he is also basically untouchable at least for the time being, thanks to his talent, the fact that he’s the biggest draw on standup, and the fact that Netflix is headed by a comedy junkie who simply isn’t going to give get rid of him.

Again, the questions here are of consequence and resilience. And I think it’s generally bad to quote, make someone famous, end quote, right, by highlighting the misdeeds of a non public individual pulling out a camera while somebody’s having their worst day and destroying their life in a matter of seconds. Even in like pretty grotesque situations, Like, I don’t know, man. I like, that’s that’s usually not a great thing. If you’re already famous however, if you’re using your platform, You have to be aware that the camera is on you at virtually all times, and you’ve always got to be primed for a fall.

If I can bastardize Uncle Ben Parker’s most famous line, with great visibility comes great responsibility. I think that is kind of the key here. Alyssa, is this a distinction without a difference? Or are we are we actually working through an important point here as we kind of figure out what our new social norms are.

It’s sort of weird to use Scott Adams as an example in some ways. Right? Because he’s someone who has been has may had sort of this second act as an Internet provocateur and, you know, was clearly I don’t know that he would it I think watching from the outside, it felt like he was looking for the line and then stepped over it. Quite clearly, I wouldn’t say, stumbled over it. Somebody

I saw somebody on Twitter described this as suicide by cop, and that feels about right.

Yeah.

Wait. No. No. No. No.

Suicide by by Twitter, Bob. Right? I

mean, way either way.

Yeah. Except, like, I’m not even sure the Twitter mob had to pull the trigger at this point. Right? I mean, it’s just — Right.

— I mean,

I feel like if

I don’t

think there’s anyone who defends this or think it’s it’s

You would think that you would be wrong. I mean, there are people there there are people on on Twitter, calm. Right now, we were arguing that Scott Adams is getting a a rough, an unfair shake that he was saying reasonable things about this poll. And that it is this is he has been unconscionably canceled.

I’m also just very curious about the survey methodology of this poll, you know, just it seems like the kind of thing that might have might be worth asking some questions about. Look, I think that part of what is challenging about these debates is that they’re adjudicated by, like, a couple of intersecting sliding scales. Right, the relative fame of the person, the extent to which the subjective question is Ron DeSantis, and you know, sort of the nature of the remark or action. And so I find it hard to find this sort of particularly controversial or even a two eastern extent, I think it’s just hilarious that we’re still talking about the Delbert guy. Right?

Did you guys read Delbert growing out? Yeah.

Yeah. Delbert. Delbert, funny strip.

I

don’t know if you know It was pretty fun. Bulwark sucks.

I mean, it was it was sort of a daily office space style joke. Right? It was it was just Mike Judge’s office space. Yep. But, like, more focused on engineers.

A a little less sharp and it’s kind of overall social critique and especially now that we can see office space kind of it’s in the context of judge’s career and realizing how smart it was at the time. But I was just like, ah, man managers, they’re pretty dumb

Yes. Exactly. And, I mean, it’s also just funny to look back at. It’s like that sort of corporate culture has, to a certain extent, become a historical artifact. Right?

And it’s like, why all the kids watch the office obsessively? They’re like, that seems kinda weird. Like, it but also like it might have been fun. So the fact that we’re still talking about the Gilbert guy is is pretty funny. I don’t think it’s I don’t think it’s a distinction with that difference.

I just think that any sort of social adjudication process that works with this many sliding scales is always going to be fairly satisfying to people because it’s possible to quibble with, you know, where you place the offense on you know, it’s like on the x and y and whatever other axes it’s possible to place this on. And so, you know, I think that Look, I think that adjudicating these questions is difficult when the community is constituted of of everyone. Right? I mean, it’s much easier to have social norms in smaller groups, and the Internet has made it so that everyone’s social group is whoever wants to participate or glock at a particular community. And so I would I really broadly hope we live in a world where most people can be like, well, if you wanna self segregate, like go buy yourself some land, somewhere or but, you know, that’s not gonna be a popular idea.

But because the community is everyone, we end up having debates that are, you know, sort of They’re just They’re insane. They’re not useful. But I think the fact that got Adams is suffering some consequences for beliefs that are broadly, really, I mean, broadly among normal humans. Just consider things you don’t say out loud and hopefully don’t think does not strike me as terribly controversial.

Yeah. I mean, Peter, this is Alissa Reyes is a very good point here. That is community used to mean one thing. Right? You you when we when we had let’s look back at film censorship.

Right? When we had community censorship boards that would, like, look at films and say, this movie is not appropriate for the audience of Atlanta, Georgia, as opposed to the censorship boards of Chicago or Los Angeles. Everyone making different cuts. Now this is not necessarily a good way to adjudicate what movie should be shown or how should be shown. But it was at least this idea that you had distinct communities where people had different norms and different standards and we could we could kind of hash things out region to region.

That is just not the case anymore. Right? I mean, like, on on Twitter, if you or on on the Internet more broadly, on I’ll need you more broadly. If you have transgressed wildly against any group, you are kind of transgressing against all of the groups at once.

Sure. I mean, if Scott Adams had merely said this to his group of I hate black people, you know, his I hate black people book club, we probably wouldn’t be hearing about this. On the other hand, if we’d found out that he had an I hate black people book club, they would probably end up being the same thing. That it’s true that the Internet has flattened the possibility of people maintaining kind of multiple identities and, you know, in different social contexts. Anything you put on on the Internet is available to anyone else.

I just don’t think that that’s actually, I mean, I I’m not sure that that’s super relevant in this case because it seems to me that the argument about cancel culture here is that the the people who are saying, well, canceled culture isn’t real or saying that because because offenses exist on a spectrum. Because anybody can and, like, Maybe I should Let let me see if I can summarize this a little better. They’re saying that because there is a line that we all agree or almost everyone agrees, maybe not some people on the Internet, but because most people agree. There is in fact a line that you can step over, that you can be fired from, that it that that just shows that we’re we all agree that this is that it’s fine to fire people for stuff they say. It’s just an argument about where the line is and I think that’s really wrong just because there is a spectrum in which some ideas are obviously on the wrong side and some are obviously not.

And then it’s hard to find the line. The fact that doesn’t change the fact that in some cases, it is a bad idea to let people go because of because they have expressed ideas, they’re difficult or controversial. So I I think that the test here is sort of threefold. One is the famousness of the person. You already raised this.

Right? Somebody with a much bigger platform who’s already in the public domain is a person who obviously has some more responsibility, not legally speaking, but culturally. Right? Like you just if you have a million followers on Twitter or if you have a television show, then that’s different than if you’re like an insurance salesman with five hundred followers who is not who doesn’t think of themselves as speaking to, you know, as speaking to the masses on a regular basis. That brings me to the second thing is I think the nature of the person’s job.

Right? And so I think it’s the the folks at the foundation for individual rights expression, which used to be foundation for individual rights and education and focused on Kinsale culture on campus, in part for a reason, partially that’s their organization. But because professors, researchers, academics, and journalists, I think, all in fact, have an obligation to some extent to deal in controversial and difficult ideas in a way that frankly like a Twitter provocateur whom writes a funny cartoon about office management. Draws one, I guess, draws and writes, creates authors. I guess he

states that. Pens. Right. Like,

in a way that like, that’s his job is not necessarily to interrogate the deep and difficult truths about I don’t know race in America or whatever. Now, on the other hand, he is somebody who is a cultural commentator. Like, that is part of his job, and you should factor that in. But it’s a somewhat different circumstance than, say, the, I I think, you know, a tenured faculty member. And then the other thing is the obviousness of the offense here.

And this goes back to that line and that spectrum that I was talking about. And in many ways, it’s what Alyssa said to. I think there’s a big difference in somebody getting get losing their losing their job or losing something having some sort of major cultural or social consequence that is akin to losing their job for something that maybe thirty or forty percent of the country actually thinks even if it’s not necessarily a a commonly expressed position on, say, opinion pages or in a humanities departments. And I think also that if if it was common to express this opinion out even out loud, even quite publicly say ten years ago, that’s difference. Than if it’s something that that, like, nobody in power who is like, we have all kind of there has been a stable agreement for many decades.

That this is that this is an offensive idea. And so the the the like, that that makes a difference here because this is In some ways, like, the cancel culture debate here is Moat Cat Rosenfield is a contributor to reason and a friend, like tweeted, I I think actually the thing that I think is clearest and and that I agree with most here, which is that asking if the Adam’s incident is gains of cultures beside the point because what he did was like running across an open field in the middle of an electrical storm while holding a giant giant metal pole. Whether what happened to him is was something that he deserved, it was totally predictable. He you have to have known that exactly this was going to happen, and that is when and that is I think the big distinction is that lots of people who this these sorts of things happen to, you wouldn’t they wouldn’t necessarily have known in part because of their sort of because that’s not the professional milieu in which they live. And even professionals might have said, well, that I guess this list could sort of go either way.

We don’t exactly know how this thing is gonna be treated. And when you don’t know and when people don’t necessarily have an obvious responsibility to know, then you probably shouldn’t lose your job for that. This was obvious. He absolutely had to know. And if he didn’t, if he really didn’t, if he was that naive and that innocent, and that unclear about the about the way the world Bulwark, then why are we listening to him about anything?

Now, I I also think this is a great illustration of one of the more unusual paths to self radicalization that can happen on social media. I mean, I think that when people talk about self radicalization, they normally think about, like, someone sitting down to watch YouTube and, like, six hours later, fly it off to join ISIS because the algorithm has fed them into some sort of crazy pathway. But I think that a sort of lesser acknowledged path is the extent to which people respond to bad incentives to their own content.

Right?

And Adams clearly, I think, was someone who got on Twitter, started expressing views that were not, you know, reflective of his, you know, his the comic strip that made him famous and presumably fairly well off. And sorta kept going and, you know, blew up not, you know, like, a busful of tourists and Prabhance, but himself. Right? And I you know, social media is just not real good for a lot of us, which is not to say that Adams is blameless or sort of a victim of the algorithm. But that he is a good example of why it’s useful for all of us to check-in periodically and be like, do I like what my use of this thing is doing to me?

And, you know, sort of speaking of to return to the point that I was making about sort of communities and community norms, I it’s one of the reasons that I haven’t of rush to find a Twitter alternative as a, you know, sort of life boat if the service goes down because I actually don’t know that I wanna replicate my addiction to Twitter if the ship sinks and I I think if social media goes down in, you know, the sort of mainstream sense of it, I probably won’t look for an alternative because you know, I don’t I don’t necessarily love how I I don’t love my brain on social media. And I think Scott Adams is one of like, one of the lessons to take away from this is not necessarily about the sort of cancel culture or the adjudication of nor but, you know, do I like the way that I behave on this service and the incentives it feeds me and what it does to my brain? And if not, should I be spending my time somewhere else?

I I mean, I think that’s a great I think that’s a very, very good point. And, you know, it’s one of the reasons I kind of like you know, where where I work now, which has a smaller, more self selected group of listeners and readers and is a little more temperamentally not crazy as opposed to Twitter as a whole, which is an nameplate. Okay. I’m glad Peter brought up that cat Rosenfeld tweet because I was gonna do the same thing because it’s it is this this is what it comes down Right? Is it like he he did the dumbest possible thing he could do?

Absent, like, showing up on a web pass wearing, like, an actual clan hood. I, like, I just don’t know what else he he could have done that would’ve been worse for him. So, I don’t know. Again, you you you mess round you find out. Alright.

Alright. So what do we think? Is it a controversy or an controversy? Not what Scott Adams did, but to describe his self emilation as quote unquote cancel culture Peter. That’s an

controversy.

Alyssa, it’s a nontrover say the term doesn’t matter in this context.

It’s probably It’s probably a controversy, though. I think it matters more than either of you too seem to think. And as host, I get to to force topics onto both of you. So answer me if you wanna cancel anyone for this. Alright.

Make sure swing by Boer plus for our bonus episode this Friday. Where we are gonna talking about some of our favorite TV and movie detectives speaking of which onto the main event, Poker Face. Streaming now on peacock, that that’s that’s a streaming channel. Lots of people have it apparently. Peacock.

The new series starring Natasha Leone, created by Ryan Johnson, is a critical darling. And one of the few original hits on the beleaguered streaming Bulwark. One reason for Poker Face’s success, it is Charlie Sykes old fashioned. The setup is pretty simple. Leone plays Charlie Sykes a one time poker player who couldn’t lose because she has this one neat trick.

She could always tell when someone is lying. As the series begins, she’s forced to go into hiding because she finds out that her boss at the casino she works at who’s played by Adrian Brody. Had her best friend killed. Now a fixer for the casino, who’s played by Benjamin Brett, is chasing her across country, wants to get revenge for the father of the deceased Adrian Brody who jumps out of a tower at the end of the first episode, spoiler alert. Sorry.

Every week, Charlie shows up in a new town where she takes some menial work to get some quick cash before moving on again. While there is a kind of a loose overarching sense of urgency, thanks her extra legal predicament. There’s nothing really connecting the stories. Each week, she shows up someplace new. Every week, she solves a murder.

Trump really seems to follow her. It’s a it’s if I were her, I’d be trying to figure out what is going on with my life. But, you know, the way it’s set up is really interesting. We see the murder happen, and then she kind of figures out who did it. This isn’t a who done it show.

It’s a how catch up. Right? Think Columbo. A crime happens. We watch as Charlie figures out what the deal is.

And it’s weirdly compelling given that in theory this format should destroy rather than heighten stakes and tension. But it’s great. It’s great in large part because the cast is so great every episode. Again, kind of like Columbus, the guest stars come pretty quickly every episode has a has a new fun person to see Chloe Seven Ye, one week Tim Meadows and X. In the most recent episode that was a Thursday, Nick Nulty of Luis Guzman, are are both in it.

Fantastic. Love to see them. But Lyon is just amazing in the in the show. She is delivering an incredibly funny defiantly memorable performance each and every week. And I remain that the show I remain convinced.

I am, like, positive of this on some level. That the show was initially called Bulwark. As this is what Charlie says every time she catches someone in a lie, it’s like a reflex. It’s almost automatic. Just something that pops out without her being able to stop it.

She’s not aware of it almost. And the best thing about perform but the best thing about her performance to my mind is when she actually is able to swallow that. When she’s able to, like, kind of know that somebody is lying and she’s trying to get her marks to keep lying, to, like, keep getting them to say things that aren’t true to give away the game. Her eyes get a little wider. You can see the wheels turning inside her head.

It’s really just a very nice performance all in all. One last thing in the show’s favor, the runtime of forty four minutes for most of the episodes after the first two or so is just about perfect. The old ways we’re better. The old ways we’re better. Look, I’m enjoying the last of us.

Just fine, but it’s got that HBO hour feel to it. You know, it’s you really feel the clock ticking away, not so with poker face. Peter, are you getting a kick out of Pokemon?

I am enjoying it. This is it’s it’s just good solid sort of not quite distraction television, but keep your company television in a way that I often don’t appreciate. But this this show manages a balance of being just having just enough texture and depth to each episode that I wanna keep watching. But also not like so much complexity and sort of narrative kind of sprawl that that, like, I I feel like I I really have to just like watch the next step one or I’m really like It feels and I mean this in a in a as a compliment. It doesn’t feel like as much of a commitment.

And often these days when I get to episode two or three of a show, you know, one of these kind of eight or ten episode, like, probably gonna be three or five season kinda like, sprawling narrative, epic things. I’m like, do I really wanna stick with this to see how it ends? Is this sort of, like, figure out all the wear of all these threads? This show has a little bit of a thread that is pulling pulling it Longwell it is not built around the idea that you have to stick with the whole thing in order it in order to enjoy it. Most of these episodes can be enjoyed by somebody who has never seen an episode before.

And if you don’t totally understand why Benjamin Brett’s showing up to Chase here for a scene, It’s fine. It’s just actually, it’s fine. Like, it’s four minutes of a forty four minute episode. The performances are really wonderful, and they’re a big part of what makes this show work. But since you are a single them out.

I will talk about two other aspects. One is the way this show is shot. And so that is the way that this is least throwbacky. This show is not shot like a classic, you know, network TV murder mystery. It has a kind of a grip to it.

A kind of a a digital video actually sort of look to some of the the the way the light works and you see some digital grain in in the way it’s shot. And I really like the way that this is shot. It’s much more it’s more cinematic. In some ways, it almost feels like a a sort of a sixteen millimeter kind of expensive Indy film from, you know, from about two thousand four or so or nineteen ninety six, I don’t know. In that phase where, like, six where, like, there was a type of filmmaker who was pretty good.

But honestly, they couldn’t afford a thirty five millimeter print. Like, film because if if you know anything about film developing and purchases, they’re much more expensive. And so you just had a different sort of low fi, low light look to some of those productions and you get that in poker face. Now obviously, it’s not quite as sort of janky as some of those sixteen millimeters were. But like it has some of that same five, and I I enjoy.

The other thing that’s really great about here is the texture of the places. And this show does such a great job even in a forty five minute format. Of building a little world, and then letting our detective knock around in that world and, like, see what makes that world tick. And the fact so I’ve only seen four episodes so far, but the fact that each episode is giving us a completely different little community and a completely different little self contained world that that seems that seems real and rich enough that it doesn’t just seem to have been entirely constructed for the purposes of delivering a mystery revelation even though, honestly, kinda is in every in every circumstance. It just There’s there’s a sort of

There’s

our it’s not quite realistic. Like, they it’s not like, oh, man. Now I’m learning about America. And, like, I and yet, you’re learning a little bit about America. You learn a little bit about, like, weird, like, has been musical culture at episode four, and you learn a little bit about brisket cooks at, like, Texas barbecue culture at episode three.

You’ll learn a little bit about, like, sort of off really off I I don’t know what we would wanna call it, but, like, off strip gambling in the, you know, in the the first episode. In a way that’s just like actually attuned to the details of the places that I’ve I’ve really enjoying, and it just a reminder that you don’t need ten episodes, ten full hours to explore and build out a world and build out interesting care who maybe even like some of these characters, I wouldn’t mind coming back and seeing again because their introductions and sort of their their arcs are are so nicely defined even if they are quickly sketched. And I I think that that is the actual lost art here, is to build a whole world and a whole set of characters and character relationships in the space of a single episode, and that’s enough. And we just haven’t seen that done this well for a very long time. No, totally.

I I I just wanna highlight one more thing you mentioned how the how the show looks. It really does look like little short movies. It helps that the first two were directed by Ryan Johnson. I think he’s directing another couple more through the season. But the thing is shot like a movie.

I mean, like, the second episode takes place in essentially in a strip of desert road where there are two little three little shops on on each side of it. But it feels huge and expansive because they they shoot so much of it with the horizon in mind. You get to see you get to see long stretches of road. There’s a wistful quality to it, but there’s also a sense of big open space. And simultaneously kind of tight clustrophobic nature of that sort of living.

The the the fact that you despite all this space around you, you still can find to these three, two, three, four little spaces in your town. It’s really it’s really a just a wonderfully

And they’re building a new place each episode, which also makes or cinematic because it doesn’t feel like, oh, we’re just back on the bridge of the enterprise yet again. I’ve seen this set a dozen times before. It doesn’t feel like we’re back in the offices of the law and order, you know, prosecutors, whatever. I’ve seen it as fast as yet again. No.

Right. It’s a totally different setup and location. Every single time, which makes each one feel like this clever little self contained contained short story.

Alyssa, one thing I I really like about the show is the way the the the mystery is kind of unfold. And it’s not it’s not about solving who committed the murder. It’s about trying to figure out through Charlie Sykes. Who is gonna lie and how are they gonna lie and what are they gonna lie about? It’s really more about people and what they value and how they try to hide the truth from themselves and other people more than it is the murders themselves.

Yeah. And I enjoy the extent to which that sort of interacts with the show’s sense of sort of skewed Americana, which is probably my favorite thing. About it. Right? I mean, I I have to say, I did not particularly like the pilot of this, and it did not really click with me until the second episode, I could actually do without the whole sort of frame narrative.

Although I like Benjamin Brad, I think he’s a good actor. But you know, once you start getting sort of out into these places a little bit more, you know, you see these motivations for murder as kind of non didactic arguments about you know, sort of place and people. Right? So the first murderer is this sort of mediocre guy who or sorry. The second murderer sorry.

This second episode. Is this kind of mediocre guy who is, you know, angry about his own inability to get out of town and kill someone who he per who he resents for being sort of a charming and entrepreneurial and optimistic in a way that he can’t be. And, you know, again, you what you have in that little sketch is not like, this is not really a story about, like, white guy grievance. Right? You know, it’s the murderer’s uncle is, like, a, you know, sort of kind, perceptive, you know, like, on incredibly honest garage owner, you have, you know, a black veteran working at this sandwich shop.

You have what appear to be, I think, like, Southeast Asian immigrants running a convenient store. You have, you know, sort of, this, you know, sort of, multiracial, interesting community. And the, like, the thing that is distinguishing for the murderer is you know, that sort of lack of optimism, that sense of resentment, that sort of closed offness to sort of wider experience or the possibility of the work that actually goes into self improvement. And so, you know, the episode doesn’t end up being kind of didactic. It just it feels very character driven even at the same time that you have you know, Johnson, like, remaking our sense of a truck stop with, like, a socially awkward lesbian Asian trucker.

Right? I mean, that’s the kind of thing that another show might make the mistake of kind of hammering. It’s like, look, what we’re doing for representation and, you know, Johnson just kinda treats it as color. In the same way, like, you have this great joke in the third episode about how the, you know, racist conservative talk show talk radio show that Charlie’s dog is addicted to is actually, like, voice acting work by a bored Bulwark theater major in Texas or, like, that’s, you know, I mean, it’s the, like, the joke ends up being about how that kind of content is often, you know, effectively like a commercial put on. Right?

That’s something that we’re seeing play out in Dominion lawsuits Dominion Building Systems lawsuit against Fox News, where you have all of these legal documents that revealed, this stuff is, like, essentially, performance, and people are very aware that they’re doing it for ratings. Right? I mean, it’s report Murdoch, put it. It’s not red or blue. It’s green.

And so, you know, you the show is It kinda is sly and,

you

know, it’s it’s gotten an ease to it. That I think works really well that makes it sort of substantive and politically interesting very individual and not sort of tense or too eager about the argument it’s sort of building about America. And I find that really impressive.

So I have a question for you guys, which is just about the the the kind of underlying detective format of this. The thing that bugs me at at this point four episode’s end is that Natalia Leon’s character keeps keeps finding murders and keeps then like stopping going out of her way despite herself being chased. And, like, in, you know, being under duress to some extent to to solve them. And I understand that that’s so built into the format, but it always just like slightly bugs me a little bit when there’s a when there’s a show built around a detect and the detectives doesn’t have a sort of job based responsibility or something like pushing them some sort of clearer motivation to do the detective work.

Just a little I I’m enjoying this to be clear. It’s called it’s called innate human decency, Peter. You should look into it. Yeah. We wanna she wants to help the world.

What do you think about that? Try try No. Out. No. I I totally I mean, look, this is this is the the the, like, nineteen seventies of it.

Right? This is like a thing happens You gotta solve the thing. That’s that’s the show.

But it’s also very character driven again. Right? I mean, right, you know, from the first scene we see with Charlie Sykes, you know, talking to this neighbor of hers, being like, I don’t wanna have to bail you out. She, you know, she gets involved because she’s worried about her friend. She, you know, she is someone who clearly connects to people very quickly.

And despite her sort of a sensible Bulwark of connection is someone who is setting down these little roots all the time. She doesn’t stay stay to see them. Developed, but she kind of can’t help herself. And that’s part of what’s very appealing about the character.

Alright. So what do we think up or thumbs down on poker face,

Peter? Thumbs up.

Alyssa. Thumbs up. It’s like a gourmet bag of chips.

Thumbs up. It’s it’s it’s literally the only reason I would suggest subscribing to peacock. It’s the it is the the, like, best the best argument for the network. We’ll see if that’s gonna be enough for them. Assuming you’re not, of course, a big fan of the WWE since it’s you get all w w w there too.

I don’t know. Alright. That’s it for this week’s show. Make sure to head over to Borr Plus for a bonus episode on Friday. Make sure to tell your friend strong recommendation a friend is basically the only way to grow podcast audiences.

If you don’t grow, we’ll die. If you did not love today’s episode, please complain to me on Twitter at sunny button. Shock him and chill that it is back the best show in your podcast feed. See you guys next week.