Talking Twisted for Week of 9 1 23

Back, motherfuckers, to twisted talking the metal the talking of twisting, twisted metal talk. Talk twist metal talking twisted.

Hell, yeah.

Because we twist it.

We're very twisted.

You know what else is twisted? This fucking series is so bad.

So bad.

This so bad.

This is the worst episode.

It's not getting better.

It got worse.

It did get worse.

Yeah. Last week, I mistakenly called that a bottle episode, and you corrected me in that. It wasn't in one location. This is an actual bottle episode.

And it's a bad one.

It's really bad. Where did we leave off last week? Oh, yeah. Cut to black. Quiet.

Quiet. Well, first, the episode title of this.

Oh, yes, of course.

Episode is drive through. D-R-V-T-H-R-U which the restaurant in which this episode takes place. The entire episode. Is there a drive through? I didn't see a drive through.

He crawls in the window.

Got it. This episode melted my brain.

Should have.

I remember very little about it.

Yeah, it's the least memorable. But also memorable only how bad it is. So again, we get the thing where we don't resolve what happened last week. There's a huge jump, and clearly a lot happens that I'm guessing was cut right? Because I think we start with the flashback of Quiet and Louder brother. In happier times, budy.

Happier times. Working in the fields in the OC.

It says specifically they live in the OC. They're picking oranges. And she's like, I signed us to a contract. We have to fucking work for four years and then they're going to give us a beachfront estate.

Now, is the implication here that there's slavery?

Yes.

There's just straight up slate. They just went back to slavery.

They did. And it's weird because are they so it's like it's more indentured servitude. Right. It's not chattel slavery. Although we'll get into it. But they're already working in a field, so they're working and who's to stop anyone in this apocalypse from just taking a house on the beach?

So this show takes effort to it puts in effort to try to, like, build this world out. Yeah, but it leaves so many just obvious questions.

Yeah.

Like, it's kind of insane.

Yeah.

It just doesn't make any sense.

After the shackles sorry, everyone, but after the shackles of capitalism have been thrown off by apocalypse, how do you get people to pick oranges for rich people? How does that process work here? It was a slow grind. And we could probably talk the whole episode about this. A slow grind of taking things away and making things harder and harder to live so that people don't realize that they're completely under the thumb of oligarchs right. In our country currently. So imagine all that went away. There's no credit. There's no fucking banking. All food is technically free because there's roving gangs. How do you wind up picking oranges for someone?

Yeah, well, this could have been interesting. Right? There's an interesting idea buried in this that of all places, that would just immediately revert to antebellum slavery style. Right? It would be Orange County.

Of course.

Absolutely.

I will give them credit for that.

There is something interesting there. And boy, howdy do they fucking whiff it? Goddamn, they sure is this not interesting? And so hollow of a thing.

Yeah. It's just not there. So brother is resistance and it says, fine, whatever. But first you have to it doesn't matter. He's like, first you have to finish my orange tree. And she just cuts all the oranges with a hatchet.

And he's like, which is implying that every fucking other person picking oranges is like a moron.

Yeah, that no one thought of that. And none of the machinery.

But it's her trusty.

Yeah. Yeah. Remember she threw it to the tire.

Last weapon of the this episode is the origin story of her axe.

Yes.

Of her Coleman camping hatchet.

So we're going to be cutting between that flashback storyline and present day. So we've done our first cut back to present day. Quiet is waking up, seemingly from last week, but they're in a fast food restaurant called Astral Burger. And the first thing she sees is like a guy wrapped in tinfoil. And he's got like a note on him that's like, my name is Zach and I'm going to the mothership and I'm going to a better course.

Of course, the obvious joke they go for here is they go to Uranus, right?

Yeah.

They're going to uranus. Again, the germ of a good idea here that in the apocalypse there would be that there absolutely would be random cults who have, like they've lost all hope and everything. And then they just make up stuff to try to make themselves feel better about their plight. Again, an interesting idea here. Completely shoved in here to make a bad joke about Uranus, right?

Of course. Which no one's pronounced it that way. That's outside of 6th grade. It's Uranus.

Uranus.

Uranus. So they get to talking. They imply something happened, but also acknowledge that she was passed out the whole time. So it's just super fucking confusing. And then she's like, well, I'm going back to kill Stone. He's like, oh, I found you all fucked up. He's going to kill you.

She wants to go back and kill Stone. Yes. That's her plan.

Yes.

Now, don't forget from last week's episode that she had decided to not do that.

Yes, correct.

She was trying to sorry.

Yes.

Because the ghost of her dead brother told her it wasn't worth it. And now she escaped the Grim Reaper.

Yes.

Thanks to John Doe. And immediately forgets that. This is what I'm saying. When these characters are just poorly written, they don't follow their own internal logic.

In no way, shape or form.

And I'm starting to blame the actors less. Right. Because me too.

Me too.

I think it's about. It's impossible to act out this type of writing in a convincing, meaningful way.

Well, you can always tell. At least I can. My wife and I always talk about this when you're watching something. You can tell when an actor doesn't fucking buy it, no matter what they do. And they're just like, this is bullshit. But I have to do it. It's my job. And I feel like that's the entire series for these actors, except for Nev Campbell. She's just having such a good time working two days.

Her performance is the best. Just because she's playing a person that doesn't care about anyone. And she really doesn't care about this.

But yeah, these two don't buy just they're not there.

And yeah, God bless Anthony Mackey. He is trying so hard.

So hard.

He is trying so hard with this just dog shit.

Dog shit.

He's got to fire his agent for this, right?

It depends. Captain America still, technically but I don't know. Maybe they'll be like, we're good. We'll figure out something else to do.

With this show is going to make them kill off Captain America. Yeah.

He's going to die in the opening fucking 12 seconds of the next Captain America. And then Sebastian Stan is going to take it over like everyone wanted anything.

Yeah, because Sebastian Stan would never do this.

No, he did the Scammer movie with Julianne Moore. Anyway, that's a different podcast.

Yeah. So they're getting into an argument and they are so mad at each other.

You can feel it, the heat.

And you know what? There's a thin line between arguing and fucking. Hell. Yeah.

Everyone knows that.

The good kind. Good kind of fucking.

So of course they start just going after each other, tearing off clothes, and eventually wind up in the ball pit of this fast food restaurant fucking their brains out in the ball pit, which.

I mean, you would never catch me dead in a ball pit. Ball pits are disgusting.

How much fucking kids urine and feces there's in that? It's for kids who aren't clean. They're fucking dirty little fucks. And plus, it's been like plus, you know, the cult was shitting and pissing in there because what else are they going to use it for?

Or they were fucking in it.

Yeah. That was their sacred space. They went under the ball.

So no, the splooge pit.

Yeah. And the needle drop during this fuck fest is what's it called. Tipsy.

Yeah. Everybody in the club getting tipsy by Jaequan.

Yeah, I put the notes and I am sure of it. They wanted to use Hot in Here, but could never secure it. It's getting hot in here. Let's take off all our clothes because this song makes no sense. The Nellie jam. I forgot it was Nelly. Because this song makes no fucking sense in this scene.

Getting this fucking whole show doesn't make.

It well, but at least there's some internal logic. Anyhow, so then we cut back to the flashback as after during their fuck. And we see that things really changed for Quiet and Loud. She is now a slave. Yeah. And it's like an attentive to the sorry, but master slave, this awful Orange County white woman. And Quiet like, has a uniform. And this is key. She's not allowed to talk, buddy. So now we're explaining that she doesn't talk earlier in the series. Doesn't make sense. And they go into fast food the same well, I guess technically it's the same chain, but it's also the same set. Fast food restaurant. It's another Astral Burger, but you could tell it's just redressed set, of course, because it's a bottle episode. And she's like, go get me a Black Hole Burger and don't be an asshole. And quiet. Just nods. And we see that she's missing her finger. And all the people wear necklaces of fingers and ears. And all the other slaves are missing body parts.

Again, the germ of an interesting idea here.

Yes, mutilation. Again, if you took all these elements and you handed them to smart writers, there'd be a good idea. There's something good here. But they don't know what to do. So she goes to the counter to order it's. Loud, her brother, he doesn't talk either. So they fucking stare at each other for a while. And then the manager comes out, and he's going to be a character. And he's like, guys, there's an active shooter. We got to lock down the restaurant. So they shut the lights and lock the door, and that's the end of that flashback.

Again, this could be something, right?

Exactly.

That might be. The most infuriating thing about this show is this show presents you with something that is constantly presenting you with something that could be interesting, right? And then they do the hard work of saying, but what if it wasn't?

Yes.

What if this interesting thing wasn't nothing?

What if it was just nothing?

Yeah.

What if it just crap? Yeah. Cut back to the present. There's some postcoidal regret on quiet space. They're both in the ball pit. For some reason, they're in different areas of the ball pit, but whatever. And she's kind of gone back again and is like, I got to get out of here. So again, the germ of a good, funny, bit funny gag here is she's trying to get dressed and get out of the ball pit without waking John Doe up. That's impossible. So it is funny. And what's her name is a good comedic physical actress. She's moving in a way to not make noise. But of course she's going to make noise. It's a good gag. She does get outside. That's the bell. The ding ding wakes up John Doe, the bell on the door of the Astro Burger. She gets out. He's like, where you going? I'm going to kill Stone. We're back to the same the fucking show laps itself at this point, they're having the same exact discussion they had before, but this time it's not interrupted by banging. It's interrupted by a Sci-Fi special effect.

Storm on the Sammy Watkins storm.

Sammy Watkins storm, which is apparently its defining characteristic, is non fatal lightning. We'll get to that. So they run back inside. At some point, they had thrown the dead body that was wrapped in tinfoil outside, and the lightning hits, it catches on fire. That's an ongoing gag. And then they're dodging lightning strikes in the Pot parking lot. And, boy, you talked about the funeral car scene in the last episode as the worst possible special effect ever. And I think this might be a winner. Them running through a clearly sunny day on location in a fucking Carl's Jr. Parking lot, dodging fake lightning.

Yeah. Color corrected to make it look like a stormy day, which is fucking funny.

So fucking funny.

It looks how like YouTubers would do it's. Stormy out.

It's stormy. So we'll make the fucking sky kind of greenish. Anyhow, they dodge a lightning.

I still think the mannequin in the car is the worst thing I've ever seen.

Yeah, this is bad.

In the mannequin's wig, like, shaking as the car falls out of the back of his just it's absurd.

Yeah. And then they get inside and that was close, but what about your car? And he runs and he moves Evelyn. And on his way back in, this is when he dives in. For some reason, he decides not to go into the front door even though he's right there. He dives through the drive through riddle. And just as he does, he's hit in the back by this non fatal bolt of Watkins lightning. And he's all hurt. And then it's time for a second flashback. Another flashback. And is this where I forget why the Reaper show up? Do you remember?

Because the active shooter okay.

Yeah.

The active shooter shows up in the parking lot that's right. Of the burger joint and blows someone's brain out and is attempting to remove the veil.

Yes, because she is saying it's all bullshit. She has the same uniform as Quiet, she's missing as her brother, and she's missing a finger just like them. And she's like, it's all bullshit. It's a lie. You're never going to get the property. This whole contract is bullshit. And then the Reapers. The reaper, they say. Reaper? Singular. Anyhow Reaper shows up, which is two nondescript, probably Pas, with face masks covering half their face. They shoot her in the head. And they have my friend, the same purple hearse that you may have seen in episode one. I wonder if that's going to come.

Up again in the biz. That's what we call a callback.

That's a callback. And Quiet and the brother just kind of look at each other like, I wonder what's going on with this. Might she be onto something? Might she be telling the truth? This crazy lady it took them this long.

It took a crazy lady getting absolutely fucking demolished outside of a burger place for them to realize this deal might not be what they think it is.

Let's play a game. How long after you're told they're going to cut off your finger? Do you or I realize this deal is bullshit?

Immediately.

Immediately. And I say, you know what? I'm not doing this. Oh, we'll kill you. You're going to kill me anyway.

You're going to have to fucking catch me first, you sack.

This is fucking ridiculous. I'm not this stupid. I can't talk. And you are going to cut off my finger. But if I do this for four years, you're going to give me a beach house? I don't fucking think so. Anyway, we come back to the present, and what are they doing? They're just sitting and talking at this point. They're waiting out the storm. And they're throwing lids, soda top lids through the cardboard mascot of the Astral Burger. And they have a little game going, which is whoever makes it, the other person gets to ask the other person a she.

Because they're in high school.

Because they're in fucking high school. He makes the first one. He's like, what's the best place you've ever been?

And she says, like, me?

Do you like like circle? Yes. He asks the greatest place she's ever been. She says, Disneyland. He doesn't know what that is, which is an OD thing. An OD detail, I guess.

He well, he doesn't remember anything pre apocalypse.

That's true. So he's probably a Disney fucking scion if we're going to turn out at the end of this series. And then she asks him the same question when she makes and he says The Container Store, which I kind of like. And then he's like, hey, you know what? Now that we've been fucking, we should be partners. And she's like, I can never be partners. Because basically it's implied that the promise of a house in New San Francisco is triggering her because of what she went through in the OC. Because she promised a house.

Which again, the fact that John Doe doesn't see anything super sketchy with this fucking mean she. She is somehow smarter than him. And she's one of the stupidest people in this post apocalyptic world, clearly.

I don't even remember what the fuck where this conversation goes. They end up fucking again in the ball pit. We cut back to the past. I guess they're still on lockdown. And the brother grabs quiet into the freezer of that Astral bird.

I think it's just the prep area.

Yeah, prep area. And they start talking, and she's like, there's something going on. That crazy lady might have been onto something. He's like, yeah, maybe we should get out. And that's when the manager comes in. And boy, are they in trouble, buddy.

They're talking to each other.

They're speaking. And he's like, I'm going to fucking get you. And there's some fucking distraction happens. Some other bullshit goes down. Maybe that's when the fucking person shows up. But he's like, this isn't over. And it's like, yeah, it's fucking over. We're leaving. And then I think they run outside. And this might be a cutback later. But I'm just going to finish this bullshit story because we're really close to the end of this episode.

Thank you.

So the manager turns in them to the reapers. And he's like, get them. Get them. But first I'm going to cut the brother's ear off. And he does. He puts on his fucking necklace. And he's just not paying attention while he's doing this because he looks up and both reapers have had their throat slit and they're dead on the ground. And he's like and then Quiet slits his throat and grabs a brother. And they have a big hug. And he calls her Bunny Bear or whatever her stupid nickname is. And then they are off because we have perfectly set the table for episode one. Thank god. We had so many questions. They take the Reaper's car and they're off. And I needed to know where they got that car.

Thank you for all the character development.

Toasted.

Now I better understand Quiet and her plight.

Now I understand the way she is and why she faked being quiet after she was clearly talking in this episode.

She was just used to being quiet.

Except she wasn't because right after that, she was talking to her brother. So then they start fighting in the present. They start fighting again. And they're trying to sleep. And she keeps moving the ball pit. This is him off. He keeps moving under tinfoil, which whatever. She starts to try to cook a burger. This is just the worst writing you're ever going to find, folks. And the propane is out.

It's a frozen burger.

It's a frozen burger.

How is it frozen still?

How is it frozen still? What they're 20 some fucking years later?

It's bad anyway.

It's bad anyway. It's long past estate, but she can't get the propane. It turns out it's empty. So she goes to get a full one, which is right around the corner. And she goes to pick it up. And it's really heavy. And he's like, let me help you. I don't need your help. And then he grabs one side, but she still has her hand on that side. And he says, you have to let it go.

You know what? Maybe I'm tripping here, but I don't think he's talking about propane.

He's not talking about propane. He's talking about the past. He's talking about her trauma. He's helping her. Dude got it more ways than what he telling her she had to heal. Beautiful. And she starts crying. And she breaks down. And he's like, yep, I got through to her. And then the storm passes. He wakes up. She's gone. He's like, I really thought he didn't say this, but this is the idea, is he really thought he got through her this time. But she's off to kill Stone.

And this is one of those fucking classic TV tropes, right? Where oh, fuck, she's gone.

Yeah, of course. Another just in the long line of tropes of this show. He goes outside. He's like, well, live and learn, I guess. I don't know what he says. He goes outside and she's like, morning, sleepy head. And she's like packing up. Evelyn the just. She's an early riser, buddy.

Like Earth. She's starting to heal.

The Watson storm of her emotion has passed.

Yeah. In fact, she's over it completely now. She's over all of her trauma. She's all smiles because of the propane metaphor.

It was beautiful. He did it. Yeah. He's more than a milkman. He's a help man. Something. So they get on the road and I wish someone had been watching this. I watched it alone on my computer. I wish someone because there's a shot of him driving and her just sitting there. And she rolls down the window. And I was like, she's going to do the fucking hand thing where she sticks her hand out and she rides the current of the air.

Only someone who's healed from emotional trauma.

Can do such things because she's celebrating. That's like a sign for the wanderlust of youth or some bullshit. She absolutely fucking does it. And I think that's it. I think then we cut to they drive towards New. Whoa, whoa. But wait. It says Chicago x Miles. But someone has spray painted on the signs. Calypso is real. So yeah, Calypso is real, budy. We know.

Yeah, he's real.

He's real. And we've heard mention are we going to hear more? Yeah, he's real. And so is this episode. It's real. Real.

Unfortunately, now we're six episodes episodes. We are six episodes in and they still haven't reached New Chicago. He has absolutely blown this timeline. Like this time it was eight days. Yeah, he's absolutely fucking blown it. But we are supposed to believe that this has only been like four days.

Yeah, four days. This all happened in four days. I think they've gone day to night to day nine or ten times at this point.

Yeah. He's absolutely fucked this up completely. But hey, the timeline like the metal in this show is twisted.

See what you did there? So according to you or for what you've heard, at least, next episode, are we getting manzookas, it's Zook's time.

I think so.

Oh, god. Thank. Please. It's all I've had is thinking about that this episode was dog fucking shit. Top to bottom. Yeah.

This might be the worst episode.

I can't make an argument that it's not right.

The writing is just so bad. It's unforgivably bad.

It's absolutely adolescent. It's like a teenage girl wrote this. And I don't sorry, but that's what it reminds like you have to let it go, are you?

You know what? I think I'm going to hit you with a conspiracy theory.

Oh, hit me.

This show, I think they were going.

To shit can, okay?

I think they were going to throw this show right in the dumpster. But then the writers went on strike. So Peacock put this out to make people think, do we need to pay these writers that much?

Yeah.

I think this is a strategy by the whatever AMT Amp yeah. To undermine the efforts of the ongoing writer strike. And I will say we're not falling for it.

We know.

So you can shove all this bad content down our throats, but we still think writers should get paid. Maybe not these writers, but writers in general.

So these writers are probably on strike right now. They're probably picking it in front of fucking NBC Universal's offices. And everyone's just looking at them like, oh, you guys are at they're looking.

At what they think are clever puns on their signs, like, oh, fuck.

God, yeah.

Go home.

Yeah. So we won't stay quiet. And there's a picture of the twisted metal logo. People are like, I don't know what that means. And it's horrible. Yeah.

I've never seen that show.

Nobody is God. So we're more than halfway through. Closer to manzukas. We might be right before Manzukas, you said this, but now I'm saying it. It can't get worse. It can't.

I can't imagine it getting worse.

A bottle episode with a fake fucking.

Storm of I think it's also very clear that they planned on this being more than ten episodes.

Yeah. There's a lot cut out. Yeah. Like these little moments between episodes. These things. If that's the gag, then you've got to lean in harder and be like, can you believe it? And then this happened. You know what I mean?

You can't just we didn't bring this up. This is another episode directed by Maggie Carey.

Oh, okay.

Director of the to do list.

Damn you to hell, Maggie.

I'll say this to Peacock. Release the Carrie cut.

Yeah.

Release the carry. It let's see the carry. But I'm assuming it's somehow worse than this.

Yeah. Like the editor saved. Like, no, we can't put that in. Yeah.

God bless the editors on this show.

They're trying them. And Anthony Mackie trying.

Because if this is what came out, I can only imagine how bad it actually was.

I can't imagine seeing the first assembly cut of this series and being like.

Holy fucking can you imagine the editor, the Ae, who had to watch the first dailies from this?

He's like, sitting there.

He's got to and he's like, I can't run this off the flagpole how bad this is, because then I'll talk myself out of a job.

Yeah. Then they'll fucking can it. I've got to act like it's got potential. There's stuff in there. Oh, yeah. It's all there. That's what he says. What do you think we'll find in the edit. It'll be fine. Oh, man.

Boy.

Yeah.

It's not good.

Not good.

Well, thank you for listening. Yes, you're welcome for us watching this, because goddamn.

Goddamn.

And make sure you check us out every Tuesday, where we talk about PlayStation two games, and every Friday where we talk about this hunk of shit show.

Yeah.

And make sure you subscribe to our spotify or subscribe to us on Apple podcasts or Google podcasts. Wherever the fuck you get your podcasts, we're there. We're ready to entertain you. Also follow us on instagram at discrete error. Pod. Go over there to find out what our YouTube is, because we have a YouTube now. We also have a Twitter, and I don't know any of that information, but our social media guy, Ron, knows the king of social media, and he runs our Instagram. So if you have any questions for him, blow him up on Instagram. Whatever you do, just engage with us.

Please do.

We're living in our own post apocalyptic wasteland right now. Not hearing from you, not hearing from our loving listeners.

We're getting hit by Watkins storms. Lightning all the time.

Yeah. Calm the Watkins storm of my heart.

There it is. That should have been the title.

By reaching out. Yeah.

Oh, my God.

All right, well, we will see you next week.

We will see you then. Bye.