Weekly Update for Week of 7/28/23

Talking. Twisted talking metal. Talking. We are the we are. This is the weekly update. And for the next ten weeks, it's going to be Talking Metal, the Twisted Metal podcast, where we review an episode of the hit Peacock original series Twisted Metal, based on the very famous video game Twisted Metal.

Yeah. And we're going to talk about an episode a week for ten fucking weeks.

Yeah. You know, and you'll love it. You'll love it. Like we love it.

Like we love it. Well, let's jump right into episode one.

I actually took notes.

Did you? I did.

I took notes.

All right.

I took notes on a sticky note.

Okay. So that's about right. I took mental notes.

Yeah, mental. Brav. Brav gov brav. So episode 101, they do this really cool thing, like fucking so cool. Where every episode title is seven characters.

Like a license plate.

Like a license plate. So episode one is, will you drive WL U-D-R-V which is a line in the show.

Fucking ridiculous, man.

The title is kind of like it's meta.

Yeah, it's very meta. Very meta.

Speaking of very meta, let's get into it.

Let's get into it.

So the premise of the show, because we did an episode on Twisted Metal Black, and there's not a ton of story to these games.

No.

So the show is in, I would say the early 2000s. So 20 years ago in 2003, a bug, they don't really get into what, but a bug wipes all the computers out.

Sure.

Energy grids go down. Everything's gone to shit. And some of the major cities walled themselves off. And they are know this is a stolen premise from the George Romero film Land of the yes.

So stolen valor.

Yes. So there's walled cities, and that's where the insiders live. And then on the outside is all the criminals, but sometimes humble motherfuckers, like Anthony Mackie's, john Doe, as he would say, they're milkmen. They do deliveries between the walled cities.

Sure.

Yes. And apparently everyone freaked out when porn wasn't readily available.

That's what he says was not the impetus for the whatever, but part of it.

Yes. This is a joke every 30 seconds type of show. Yes, but not in a good way.

Like Veep or in a good way, like anything.

Yeah, it's in a bad way. Like everything Joss Whedon's ever done.

I will take Joss Whedon over this a billion times.

Yeah.

This is god damn it.

All right, so John Doe, our titular character no, he's not titular.

No, he's protagonist.

Protagonist. Yeah. Our protagonist, John Doe, portrayed by Anthony Mackie of Marvel Fame, the new Captain America.

Yeah.

He and his subaru Evelyn are just loving life, cruising around. They got machine guns, delivering shit. Delivering shit. He's got a sticker on his bumper. It says, Got milk?

Because he's a milkman, you see.

Yeah, he's a milkman. And the first episode really takes a minute to build this world. I would say every episode is trying to do some sort of world building, I suppose.

Yeah.

Which, I mean, we'll see how that continues. Because if they're going to spend all ten episodes building a world, they must know something I don't because that would mean second season.

Yeah. I think that's an ambitious role there to try to think that you're going to get a second season out. This already.

Yeah. So Anthony Mackie, John Doe is delivering some medicine, insulin to New San Francisco.

Well, could we do a little zoo to do stop talk about the opening scene, which is a car chase through a mall.

Yes. The opening scene is a car chase through a mall in which he does a donut around a directory and he says a line. Oh, there's a Foot Locker. Yeah, brilliant.

He also, at some point, sideswipes something.

And a copy of the PlayStation game lands on the windshield of his car. Now, I take umbrage with this.

It raises so many fucking questions that are never going to be answered.

I take issue with this because it is the long box version oh, boy. Of twisted metal.

Okay.

Of the original twisted metal. Now, why on earth would the long box of twisted metal, which came out in 1995 yes. Still be in a mall?

It's a fair question. A fairer question is what the fuck are you saying by that being in the show? I understand. It's a joke. Listen, I like jokes. I make jokes. That joke doesn't make any fucking sense.

It's bad.

What's that?

It's a bad joke.

It's a bad fucking joke. It's a bad joke because now I have to ask the question, are we saying that Sweet Tooth is nothing more than a fan of the video game? Because the video game exists?

I'm going to go ahead and say I don't think that this show follows any sort of rules. It doesn't have internal logic.

Thank God for that. That's what we need out of a television.

Yeah. So he also grabs some Jordans one.

Again, we're going to get through this. But he's driving by, and it's a display sneaker, and he grabs it, but then he's wearing two for the rest of the show of those sneakers. Makes no fucking sense.

Yes. And then he has a sweet little scene where he parks on the beach for the night, and there's a bunch of seals, a family of seals. And he's looking at a picture of his family, him as a child. His family is burnt from the picture. And we find out that he has amnesia.

Yeah.

He doesn't remember anything.

His first memory is his head bleeding, waking up in Evelyn.

Yeah. Which is weird. Very weird. And then he eats a seal.

He eats the baby seal.

He eats the baby seal.

Yeah. Our hero.

But then he makes it to San Francisco.

Yes. Yes.

He makes it New San Francisco. And he delivers the insulin to New San Francisco. It has a great line. Life must be good if the diabetes is that bad.

Yeah. Good shit writers.

That's a good joke.

Maybe.

There you go.

Is it a good joke?

Yeah, it's a good, great joke. But at this point, things go a little bit sideways because the guards at the front of the gate say, the COO of New San Francisco wants to see you. Because cities famously have yes.

Yes, they do.

And that's when we meet what is the worst performance in this show? And I don't think it's particularly close. This is a show full of bad performances. This one is not close by 50 miles. The worst.

Phoning it in is Shakespeare compared to this. This is so far worse than phoning it in.

We meet Nev Campbell's, Raven, which I think on a previous episode, we'd said that since she's the bad guy, our idea was that she's calypso, but she kind of is.

We'll get into it, but she kind of mean.

I don't know. I don't know. I've only seen the first three episodes.

No, but in episode one, she well.

We know she's bad.

Well, we also know that she can make someone's greatest desire come true.

Oh, that's true.

She offers it to John Doe. We're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves, but that's the point of this scene. She has dinner with him and she says, I can make whatever you want come true.

Yeah. So they hose him down. Very gratuitous ass shot of Anthony Mackie. They wash his clothes, give him his high C shirt back. Get it?

Yeah.

He's stuck in the past.

Yeah.

It's like starlord shit, right? He's got a tape player.

Not just him, he's got a CD player. He's got the Jerky Boys in his CD player.

He does. He's got the Jerky Boys. And we'll get into the music because, God damn, this is a show that loves itself. A needle drop.

And it loves paying for well, it.

Might be the Sony Library, the Universal or Sony Libraries. Yeah. So he meets up with Nev Campbell, and she's like, I need you to do a job for me, and if you do this job, I will give you citizenship. I'll make you a citizen of New San Francisco. Which is all he wants. He wants to be part of something. He wants to be part of a family, wants to be part of a community. Because he doesn't remember his parents, but.

He remembers the feeling, and he meets her. Nice family. Her husband, Noah.

Yes.

And little baby dove. Dove. Because Raven dove. Think about it.

Yeah. And then they eat some meat, and.

He doesn't know how to use a fork and knife.

He doesn't. He holds it like a weirdo but.

Not two scenes ago, we watched him eat the seal, and he seemed to be using a fork and knife just fine. Just saying.

Yes. Also, for dessert. They have jello, which he doesn't know what it is and thinks it's some sort of greeting. So it's like jello, which is a joke that reoccurs in multiple episodes. It makes me mad.

Should make you mad.

And then he finally he agrees.

He's going to do he's going to go to North Chicago.

He's got to go to New Chicago. He can't know what he's picking up. We know it's not organs. It's never organs.

Yeah, he sees it. Very upset about it.

Yeah, he's very upset. It's never organs. And he's got ten days. He's got ten days to go to New Chicago, pick up this thing that he doesn't know what it is, and come back. And the second he leaves New San Francisco, she hands the baby back to someone. It's not her baby spoiler.

She's disgusted by it. She wipes her hand.

Yeah. And her husband is not actually her husband, but some dude that she paid to pretend to be her husband, but.

Also he's some sort of prisoner, too, like he's led away.

Yes. And then John Doe visits the only person in the world he trusts. His name is Tommy.

Tommy. That's right.

And he goes to Tommy to get a map to New Chicago. And he's a cartographer, and he makes his maps with crayons. And he takes payment in Crayons as well. On restaurant placemats of maps of America.

Yes.

Because that's a thing.

That is a thing.

Yes. And then while this is all happening.

The B story, baby.

The B story. Let's get into the B story. In this episode, the B stands for Bad Stephanie Beatrice of Brooklyn Nine Nine. Fame. Rosa Diaz on Brooklyn Nine Nine plays quiet and she has zero lines. In this episode, she does not speak once because she's implied that she's mute. Yeah, it's implied that she's mute. Her name's Quiet. She's traveling with her brother Loud, played by Richard Cabral.

I didn't know that he was named Loud. And I hate that.

Yes. And they're traveling, and we first see them very briefly trying to rob John DOE's car.

Yeah.

They're trying to jack him, and she flips him off. And you realize that she's had her middle finger chopped.

Uh oh.

But we catch back up to them. They are in a purple Cadillac Hearst.

Yeah.

Throwback to the game. Little Easter egg for people who've played the game. And they're being chased by a police car with a rocket launcher on top of I don't know if you thought this, but I saw the cop car. Now, I didn't read anything about the plot of this show, Same, but I see the cop car, and I'm like, oh, fuck. Is it outlaw?

That'd be awesome. Outlaw.

I love it. So the rocket ends up blowing up the hearse, and then they crawl out, and they're like, because they stole some shit.

Right?

So the coppers are after them, and the cops finally catch up to them. After they blew them up. And you realize that, no, this is not Outlaw.

No.

This is Agent Stone, played by Thomas Hayden church.

As if you needed further confirmation that they do not give a shit. Thomas fucking Hayden Church steps out of the cop car yeah.

Looking like the paychecks on this show must have been fantastic.

Gorgeous.

And we do have a figure. We do have a figure for the budget of this show. The budget of this show for all ten episodes. 72.3 million.

Wow. Shot. Yeah.

Shot entirely in New Orleans. Okay. Yeah. And principal photography started in May 2022.

Okay. They turned it around.

They did it around. Oh, boy. Did they turn I mean, turned it around as in got it. Uh, yeah. They shot from May to post production was not super long on this show.

No.

Yeah. So Thomas Hayden Church gets out of the car, Agent Stone, and throws a gun on the ground in front of them and says, you have an option. One of you can kill each other or we can kill you both. So they decide they're not going to do it. But then Loud picks up the gun and says, eat my ass, motherfucker. Motherfucker. And blows his fucking brains out. To which Thomas Hayden church has a great line. He looks at it, he's like, it's a lot of brains. Who'd have thought?

Get it?

Brilliant.

Brilliant.

They must have gotten all the writers from Seinfeld.

There you go.

Yeah. Larry David's writing on this show. Is this a shonda rhimes joint?

It probably it makes sense.

It's a shonda rhymes.

Shonda land is definitely yes.

Oh, and then they brand quiet with the badge, right? Yes, they brand her with a badge. And here's the weird thing. She screams, but it doesn't really make because she's mute.

She's a mute. She doesn't make noise.

She's a mute. She's a fucking mute. Then we go back to John Doe, and he's getting the map from Tommy. And Tommy's like, you going north. I hear there's a steel rush, which I don't know what the fuck that means.

Fucking mean anything?

And he's like, no, going east.

New Chicago.

And all of a sudden, Tommy gets very serious. Very serious, because apparently the east is real bad. So this might be a metaphor for American exceptionalism. Western civilization versus Eastern mysticism.

I'm into that.

Yeah, something like that. I'm implying some depth here that the show definitely doesn't have.

No, certainly.

And he tells him, give me your belt. And John DOE's. Like what? And he's like, give me your belt. You're suicidal, clearly. So give me your belt. And reaches for his belt, which is a says and then he does some foreshadowing. Does some foreshadowing, right. And says, well, you know who runs Vegas? And then we're introduced to Samoa Joe playing the most iconic character from the twisted metal franchise, sweet Tooth.

Yeah.

And he's in his ice cream truck in the middle of the desert.

Vegas. Yeah.

And he's voiced by Will Arnett.

Yeah.

So because this show has no sense of time, all of a sudden, John DOE's on his way to Vegas, and he's not really paying attention. And all of a sudden, quiets in the middle of the road.

Standing there.

Standing in the middle of the road. And he almost hits her, but he doesn't. And then she tries to steal his car. And then they get into, like, a Mexican standoff kind of thing.

Sure.

But then they hear Sweet Tooth coming after him because from miles outside of the city, they were loud enough that he could hear them.

Yeah. He heard John DOE's car. Yeah.

From miles.

That subaru. That little fucking four banger engine. He heard that?

Yeah. Miles away.

Yes.

So, of course, he goes to investigate. And the episode ends with Sweet Tooth coming for him.

Baron down. Yeah. Ready to do some damage.

Yeah. And that is episode one.

Yep.

Let's talk about the music real quick. Right. The show is scored by Leo Birenberg.

Sure. One of the greats.

Yeah. He was an additional music composer on the Peanuts Movie 2015. Peanuts movie. Also antman first one. Yeah.

That doesn't make a difference, but whatever.

He was also an additional music composer and orchestrator on Hot Tub Time Machine Two.

Okay. Back to that. Yeah.

He was the score coordinator on the Hangover part three.

He was coming in late.

Yeah. He was the score coordinator on the guilt trip. Famous Barbra Streisand vehicle with Seth Rogen. The guilt trip.

Dear God.

His composing stuff is limited as, like, the primary composer. Right. He did F The Prom, which looks like a straight to TV movie. Plus one with Jack quaid. Never heard of that. Butcher's Crossing. I don't know. And a movie called Bottoms.

Okay.

But this show loves needle drops. They basically do the entire run of Champagne Supernova by Oasis.

Yeah. Is it the opening credits or it's.

Not the opening credits. It's like when he's, like, eating the seal and stuff.

Okay.

And he's driving around and when he's getting robbed by quiet. Quiet and loud. Right. And then there's another needle drop, which is my boo ghost Town DJ. When he's pulling up to New San Francisco.

That's right. Yeah. What the fuck?

So they're spending the money on this show.

Yeah. I mean, they are. I mean, they're spending the money on the music, or they're not.

And this is just their I think.

It'S just Sony's Library, honestly.

Yeah. So I think my biggest I guess here's where to start with this. I don't want to hate this show.

No, I don't either.

I don't want to I really like the games, of course. At least, like, the original run of games. I just this fucking post apocalyptic thing is just, like, so done to death.

Yeah.

There's so many post apocalyptic fucking shows. I would much like rather them go the tournament angle, of course, or something like that, because this just feels like a bad version of every other post apocalyptic show. Post apocalyptic show has been done perfectly already. The first couple seasons of Walking Dead, last man on Earth, fucking great. With Will Forte. Incredible, right? Like, these things have been done, and this show takes all the wrong kind of lessons from the shows that have come before it. And it's humor for.

Babies.

This is middle school humor.

It's just the most broad. It's funny because with the fact the writers strike and all this talk, this feels like something that was written by AI because the jokes are just so just broad and just so cliche. And another thing I want to say is, like, listen again, I like jokes. I like comedy. There are so many jokes, and there's a flippancy to the actors and to the characters. So much so that no one feels like they're in any danger, that there's any stakes. No one seems to give a shit about anything in this world.

And the jokes, too. It feels like a comedian working on his hour right there's. Just like, okay, is this working? Is this joke working? Is this joke it feels like they're auditioning jokes.

Yes.

And the lack of any drama between the jokes. See, I'm good with a show that is like, laugh a minute. Sure. Like we said, veep.

Yes.

Or the office is a bad example. There are shows that you can kind of jam pack and they don't have to be serious. But this show also really wants you to take it does?

Yeah.

You know, like, there's very somber moments with John Doe about like, oh, I don't know, my to. Fucking it's hard to feel bad for a guy who, when asked what he wants out of anything in the world is like toilet paper. I would love some touply. And then Nev Campbell's. Like, I could do better. And he's like, three.

Yeah, it's that kind of thing where it's just like, sometimes just pass up the joke.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? You don't have to set up every fucking joke. You don't have to jump for every joke, right?

Yes. If you stripped every single joke out of this show and then gave the script to someone and said, you need to do a comedy, pass on this, but only go for the low hanging fruit, only go for the easiest jokes with the least amount of effort, it would end up being this. It would be right back to where it was.

Exactly.

It'd be the exact same thing.

Exactly.

Because that's what it is. The jokes are the easy jokes. Jokes. And I mean, it comes back. I got the impression that it was going to be like this from the teaser, the Thong Song teaser. Like, what on earth?

What the fuck?

Because this feels geared towards geared I get it. This feels geared to me. Right? This is, like, for people my age. Exactly, right. Thong Song Unleash the Dragon by Cisco was a big deal. When I was younger, twisted Metal was a big like, this is kind of like trying to hit my nostalgia button with all the subtlety of, like, a car accident right to the point where it's like, what did I say? You know what movie I was talking about the other day? I was talking about the flash.

Sure.

And I was talking to someone about it, and they were like, well, don't you like it just for the nostalgia, all the callbacks? And I was like, no. It feels like someone's jingling keys in front of my face and be remember that? Do you remember?

Like it or hate it? I think the worst thing that happened to us as a culture is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Because up until it's hilarious because that movie endgame was literally the end of that thing being done. Well, since then, they can't do it. No one else has been able to replicate it. This thing where you take disparate pieces from other blah, blah, blah and this shows up and you're reminded of this, and it actually works. I thought it worked in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

This is why I'm saying this show is fucking Joss Whedon's fault. The Joss Whedonification of entertainment is why everything is so dire. Right?

Yeah, yeah.

And why we have ass shows that look like this. You know what this show visually reminded.

Me of something shot in Toronto. Team night rider.

A much better show than this. Visually, it reminded me of my Name is Earl.

Yeah.

I like that show a lot.

Sure.

But that's, like, the level of production quality for this shit.

It just looks cheap. And you said about the jokes, but it's everything. It's like a first draft. Everything in here is a first draft. The first line reading was probably taken the first fucking production sketches of what New San Francisco should look like. All right, let's do like it just feels like no one had any sense of like, hey, can we do any better with any of this?

This is why they were able to turn the show around so quickly, is because this is, like a two take maximum set. They're doing the Master, and then they're doing takes for coverage. And that's it.

Right?

Exactly right. This shows shooting, like, three, four setups a day, for sure. Right?

Absolutely.

Like, they're burning through these scripts, and it shows.

Yeah.

It really, really shows. And you'd think that since they have Will Arnett right. Do the voice of Sweet Tooth. So he's not on set. He's doing this in post. There's time, and they still don't even fucking try.

No, they just don't fucking Will Arnett's lines because you can't see fucking Samoa's Joe's mouth. These are what they had. What an extra six months to come up with for Sweet Tooth? To say. Yeah. This I mean, Jesus Christ.

Yeah, it's insane. And you know know, Ian and I both work in television. This is my theory of what happened. I feel like this was a show that they went and shot it and then when it got into post, they were like, oh, fuck.

Yes. 100%.

This is bad.

Yes.

And then they're like, we just have to make it just has to be something.

Yes.

It just has to exist and be coherent enough to where it's not just super embarrassing for everyone involved. And it is super embarrassing for everyone involved. But this is like one of those well, at least it's a television show.

Yes. Just based on listen, I'm not expecting Walter Merch in the editing, but just like the two stories, the A and B have nothing to do with each other. When we cut back and forth, seemingly random, it just 100%.

They cut every scene of this show and then put it together. They cut scenes in a vacuum and then just slap them together. And it feels that way.

I'd be willing to bet there was a time where the agent, whatever his name is storyline was not in episode one. Yeah. I don't think that's going to be a runner through the whole series. I think that is going to be a very small piece. I know. I don't think that's going to be a big piece of the rest of this. And I think it's just going to be things like that where the John Doe story is always in every episode. It's a long one. And then there's just going to be almost seemingly random placement of scenes that have nothing to do with anything.

Yeah. Almost as if it's like an episode of the week, kind of. Which, you know, there are shows that do that really well.

Yeah.

There are supernatural.

Yes.

The first couple of seasons of Supernatural are incredible because they're just monster of the week shows with a very loose through line to get you moving along. And that works. This show is going to have scene of the week stuff in each episode. And it feels wonky. And I want it to get better. I want it to get better.

I don't have high hopes.

I don't have high hopes for it either, but I really want it to. And I'm going into every episode open minded.

Me too.

But it's one of those things. It's one of those things where it's like the first episode does not make a good impression.

No. It leaves me not wanting more at all.

Honestly. They should have done an hour long first episode because having the first episode be this quick moving too is disorienting. And it leaves you completely unsatisfied.

Oh, yeah. Nothing really happens in the first episode. You have just the basis of setups that you could have gotten through in about ten minutes.

And I'm assuming this is why they released them all at once, right, is because I guarantee you if you binge this, you'd end up with the Netflix disease, which is episode drift, right? Where you're like, I don't fucking know what happened in any episodes. I just kind of know what happened in the whole thing. Absolutely. Worst offender of that in history. Orange is the new black. 100% worst offender of that kind of thing ever. And yeah, it's just rough. The show is rough. And I feel for the people in post who got a hold of this and were like, fuck, yeah.

We are fuck.

How are we going to make anything out of this? We just have to make this. This just has to be Watchable.

Yeah. Well, I'm not so sure they landed that.

But this has to be something that can get past the network noting process.

Yeah.

That's it.

That's all.

And apparently the notes weren't that hard.

Apparently.

Or the network gave up on it. And again, that's why they're releasing all ten episodes at once.

It's also a weird time to release it. I mean, it's just a weird time to release it. It's just we're in the dog days. No one's watching TV right now.

It's like, yeah. If this was NBC Universal's plan to be like, see, look, we have content. We don't need these writers and actors. Boy OOH fucking boy OOH fucking boy.

Yeah.

Or or this is them trying to.

Be like, these writers don't deserve more money.

Yeah. This is what you think we should pay these people for.

Yeah. There you go. Nice stealth thing to do. This pile of fucking trash. To be like, they don't deserve money. Look at them. You could have done a better job.

Than I mean, because Universal is not doing the Warner Brothers let's tank our whole company for tax write off purposes. So they want this to make money.

Yes.

But I don't get how I mean, honestly, if they wanted this to make money, where's the merch?

Yeah.

This is a franchise that lends itself to merch.

Yeah.

Where's the collab with Hot Wheels?

Right.

Seems pretty obvious. Yeah. I mean, I haven't been to a Hot Topic in a long time, but I should be walking into a Hot Topic and seeing nothing but fucking Anthony Mackie's face on T shirts.

Smug fucking expression. He's just smug through the whole fucking.

First episode in the worst way. Like, oh my god.

So awful garbage.

So what are you ranking the first episode of Twist of Metal. We're going to do this out of ten every episode we're going to do out of ten.

I'm not doing my thousand thing for this. Yeah, out of ten. First episode. Two. I mean, it's just fucking bad. Yeah.

I'm going to go ahead and give it a three.

Okay.

Only because I really like my boo by Ghost town.

DJ okay.

That's a good enough champagne. Supernova is a good song too.

It's a. Great song. Yeah, but I hope it gets better for episode two. But I do not have fucking high hopes.

Yeah, I do not have high hopes either. Well, join us next week for talking twisted metal. Talking metal. Talking metal. The twisted metal podcast from brought to.

You by discrete error There you go.

And make sure you check us out on So Schmeads. You can find us on instagram at discrete error pod. And you can find me on Instagram at Funeral casual games.

I'm at Ian Golding games and we.

Will see you next week. Drive safe.

Drive twisted.

Fucking twisted, dude.