Crystal Lake: Part 2 - Kulture Meltdown

The time has come, so let out a cheer. It's like someone put a curse on this town. It all started when that kid drowned last summer. There's something in these woods, and all it knows how to do is kill. The time has come, so.

Let out a cheer. Mommy's here. Can't crystal like what we love. Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Culture Meltdown, a show where I, the host of The Culture Cast, Chris Stachew, and Brian, the host of Movie Meltdown, sit and talk about, well, kind of whatever we want. Isn't that right, Brian?

Yeah, I've spent so much time on my show talking about movies that once we got this opportunity to talk about whatever we want, immediately I was like, ooh, finally, I can talk about a TV show. So, yeah, I was kind of leaning towards this, and you got suckered right into it. But you know what? I don't feel suckered because this is such a good show that when it's good, you don't feel suckered in by anything. So if you heard the last episode, you know what we're talking about on this episode.

If you didn't, we are going to be talking about the third and fourth episodes of Crystal Lake, the Friday the 13th TV show that is currently available in all eight episodes on streaming on Peacock right now. Go watch it. If you listen to our last episode, And that was the only takeaway you had was go watch it. That's going to be the main takeaway here. We're going to talk spoilers.

We're talking the third and fourth episodes, part three and a new beginning. Cause get it, get it, Brian. They're, they're titled after the movies. See, even, even then they're being smart and being very meta and cutesy, which I appreciate because again, intentionality is something I appreciate, but yeah, on this episode, we're going to be talking about the third and fourth episodes of That first season. So, Brian, I'm going to kick it to you immediately.

What did you think of the third and fourth episodes of the show? It continued on doing what I wanted it to do, which was Pamela going down the crazy street, murdering people as she went. So it we as we were leaving off the last episode there, we kind of got our first glimpse that the Jason that may be. We were teasing whether or not we would ever really get Jason on the last episode of our discussion. And that was kind of, we had the boyfriend out in the woods there and he saw this image of some weird creepy kid hanging out in the forest there.

And then we get the shoe thrown through the back of the car. That is obviously Jason's doing. So in this one, we kind of jump in. After that. So we've had the promise of Jason now.

So we have to, I guess, as we continue on, see how much Jason we. Have thrown at us. Still not overwhelmingly in these next. Two episodes, but we kind of pick up with her running off. The Grace character was hanging out with the cool kids and got in a fight with Claudette and then ended up in the shack.

So we have that little flashback. to the kids finding the shack when Jason was still regular Jason, if he was ever regular Jason, I don't know. But once again, we get Jason being kind of cool. So it's, it's interesting watching regular Jason, knowing how he will become in future movies, but he's pretty cool hanging out here being. Like a, a scout kid. He's like, look, I can put my canteen in here, my comic books and my chuckles.

And I, He's very Will Byers. Like, it's very, again, like, strange. Yeah, he's dorky. It's very Stranger Things coded, which is very funny. Like, in that show, it's like, oh, you know, zombie boy.

And it's like, well, here it's like, you know, actual encephalitis boy. Like, you know, he's, again, it's so weird to me. Jason, the killer, the most sympathetic character in this show. other than Pamela Voorhees. And yet that was what they missed in the movies. Like that was the part that everyone glazed over.

It's like, no, no, no. I see the kid who drowned in the lake. He's a fucking psycho. And it's like, wait, what? Yeah.

I don't think anybody ever felt that way about Jason. Like they liked him because they're horror fans and he like kick ass and he murders people. And he like, just completely like bludgeons them and just slashes them and does horrible, horrible things. But they never leaned into like the Jason, like is like this kind of like revenging force of it all. Yeah.

There's no personality to him and there's definitely no arc of him. Like, you know, I'll get revenge on you. Like at most it was just like, these kids are screwing around. and doing drugs and I don't like it in my woods. So I'm going to kill you all. And even that was unspoken.

That was just like the narrative that horror fans gave all of slashers overall, really. So yeah, there was never any real arc to the Jason character. There was never even backstory to him. It was just the mom story. He was in the lake and now he kills people and that's pretty much all we ever got from him.

So This is like surprising how much Jason you have thrown at you through the flashbacks and how likable he is and how much they're sort of building him up as a character in the flashbacks. And then how important he is to Pamela once you see her like going through all the trauma that she is. So yeah, this is kind of a shock to the system if you're a Friday the 13th person. And can I also mention something else? How smart it was that the show– in that first episode just gets it out of the way that Jason dies because like right at the beginning.

Well, and it's so smart because we're not like, Oh, well we don't like, Oh, it's like, it's building up to this moment. Like, Nope, there it is. Like we are dealing with the aftermath of it. And I think that's so interesting because again, for anyone like you just alluded to that has watched the movies, you never see this. You never have seen this before.

So even if it's like, well, this is a, you know, taking place. And it's like, This is its own thing to begin with, but it's also talking about a time that you have just not seen before in the mythology of this franchise. Like even in the Jason flashback seconds, and it is like seconds and sort of out of focus in mom's head for a few minutes at the very end of the movie. Do you even see Jason bobbing up and down in the water? So like, again, you don't really see any version of this.

And even on this, in that first episode, you don't see what goes on in the water. He just sort of disappears. So it kind of keeps that mystery. But at the same time, he's gone. Like, there's no more version of Jason from that point on.

It's just mom dealing with trauma after that and flashbacks. So it is an interesting way to handle that. That, like, right out of the gate, we murder this child. And then, like, it's like, okay, well, now we're going to tell you the rest of the story. Don't worry.

It gets more depressing. Hold on. Like. But I do appreciate that the show understands we have an opportunity to do something with the Jason character. But like you said, was again, I felt like the obvious, which is it's a really sad story. make Jason super sympathetic and you can get so much more mileage out of him killing people because then it feels imminently justified and you don't have to make me hate them.

I just want to see him kill them because they deserved it to begin with because he's a sympathetic character. And that's exactly what has been happening since this show started. It's like, it's making my feelings towards the Claudette character complex because Jason is very likable as a character. There's nothing about him where I'm like, Oh, okay. Like you can see how he's a killer.

Like there's no Michael Myers here. None of it. Talk about humanizing him. This was one of the, I was surprised they went down this road, but I find it really like kind of refreshing that like they make him a real kid because mom's cleaning out, you know, like she's finally decided I'm going to go on with my life. And the sheriff comes over to help her.

They're cleaning out his room and they find a playboy. And I was like, I don't know that they would have done that in reality. in different versions of this. Like it's very humanizing. It makes him a real kid. It makes him a real.

Turning into a teenager kid. And like, that's what is going on at that point. So I was, I really liked that because it made him a real kid. And it makes it feel even more sad that he is like making, you know, he's Pamela Voorhees is already clearly susceptible to whatever it is that's going on with her and again you and i like we mentioned in the last episode we've only watched through episode four so we've only watched the first half of this show and jason as a character i think it's so smart that he's a sympathetic character because you're gonna get more mileage out of that in the long run with whatever you do with him as a character in the finality of this show if he starts out as a sympathetic character and by the end of it, he's no longer a sympathetic character that makes it a more complex, you know, where's my arc, Tony?

It makes it an actual arc of a character as opposed to, well, he's just been killing people this whole time. Like, okay, great. But to what end? And in a TV show, like to what end has to be answered? Well, they also kind of play with that.

There's so many, and mostly with Jason, because he doesn't have that much time. So the time that we spend with him, they bother to work in these little references that are just kind of, I guess, cute if you know Friday the 13th lore. But other than that, you might not even notice. But the fact that in the beginning, when she's she she brings out like the supplies for them to go camping and he immediately is drawn to the machete so that in and of itself is funny but also like he like holds it up like a sword and is the. Woods are mine it's like i'm the king of the woods baby that's yeah it's like that's very yeah fuck yeah jason yeah you are like it's going to be your your domain in the future don't you worry But even her mom's response is, you look like a crazy person, which again is its own joke.

Like, yeah, the guy who machetes people in the woods. Yeah, that's a crazy person for you. So like they realize these moments and. Like they're kind of playing with the Jason of it all, but doing it just almost subtle, just enough that you're like, okay, I see what. They're doing there.

So we get a few moments of that as we're going along, that it's them just sort of playing with the the joke of it all of what Jason will become, but now he's just a cute little kid. So we can throw in these lines and it makes it okay. Well, and like we talked about in the last episode, maybe what Jason was in the other universe, like who knows what it is here. We don't right now. We don't know what is where Jason factors into this show.

We know what we've seen Jason as a child, but we do not know. what Jason is if, if right. Like, I mean, I'm not speaking for you out of turn. Am I like, I don't know what this show is doing with Jason as a character. Genuinely. And that's a good thing.

Yeah. I like that. They haven't, officially committed to like, we haven't flash forward. They haven't shown their hand lumbering through the woods with a hockey mask on that. They legally may or may not be able to do other things.

We've seen things, but we don't know what it is. And I think they legally can. If they're, if they're having horror ink showing up at the beginning of this show, my assumption is that Jason can show up with the hockey. Like what the fuck? Like they have the, the, the, the trademark down on a hockey mask.

You know what I mean? Like, of course. You can have Jason killing people in this show without Jason killing people in this show. If you really want to do Jason, you can do Jason without the hockey mask, as it is anyways. That's definitely, I mean, this early on, because again, he's not the killer in the, spoilers, for the first movie.

He's not the killer. In the second one, he still doesn't have the hockey mask. If it's Jason just reincarnated by the lake as the spirit of vengeance- I can get on board with that too. Like, yeah, you know what? Like that has a very indigenous first people vibe to it.

You know, you speak, you spoke to the it of it all. You know, the thing that I think they fucked up so badly in that second movie, the actual, how do you kill Pennywise of it all? That's explained in the book ad nauseum. Like, and in the movie, they're like ritual of chewed. Ha ha.

It sounds dumb. And we don't explain it very well. Like, yep. No, you didn't. And I feel like we're kind of, I wouldn't be surprised if they go that direction where we have something that speaks to like, why are things like this?

And if it's like some sort of first people, indigenous explanation, I wouldn't be surprised because again, like Camp Crystal Lake on the East coast where the first people were like, yeah, like, uh, yeah, I, I, if that's where they're going, okay. Because you know what? Like kind of makes sense given that it's a summer camp on the East coast and And there's a lake there. And you know, crazy Ralph is like the lake never gives up. It's dead.

Like, yeah. Oh, like, okay. Like I'm on board with that. And if that's where the show is going, awesome. Cause like, I'm not saying, I don't know if it is or isn't, but that feels like a logical direction to go.

Because again, that's an unmind part of this story that again, could explain why and where Jason is what he is. And if Jason is even a physical manifestation or just like a, spiritual, you know, can pass in it, phase in and out type thing. Never been explained because he does technically die and get resurrected over and over again. If that's the direction they go with things, which again, they kind of cutely hinted at shit, which is the part that I love about this. These kinds of shows is like, again, like we know what we're doing.

Follow us, please. We know what we're doing. I'm like, yeah, I trust you. And I putting my trust in a filmmaker or, tv writer or showrunner is like as someone who watches a lot of stuff like you do like and we've committed to engage for eight hours with this show i do not feel like my trust is being wasted or taken advantage of and i can't say that for everything because like i've seen plenty of shows that shit the bed beyond shit the bed and like this show so far has not shit the bed even remotely I do feel like that's initially where I thought it would go. And I guess if.

I came up with a backstory for the Jacev at all, that might be more of the spirit of the woods kind of. A thing or the magical lake with some sort of healing powers or whatever the hell it is. Again, they keep teasing the other option that I feel like because there's so much of that being thrown around, I almost feel like they're going to go a way more man-made direction. Government run. I mean, why does it have to be either?

It could be fucking both by accident. Like, Oh, it's what's the worst thing that could wander into a lake that reincarnates people is the kid who can't die. Like, Oh, like yikes. And like, or ages really quickly, possibly like, again, because we do see at the beginning of the last episode, a big version of Jason grabbing his mom out of the boat, like the end of the first movie. There's, I mean, it jumps around time wise, so it's hard to say because I feel like it was like a five year gap.

If you go by what. It was originally supposed to be from when he like drowned versus when they reopened the camp. So he would have been like heading towards like 16 or so. So still not like the big dude that we know from all the movies. So this slows it down a lot like this is he dies and then nine months later.

It's like, we're reopening the camp, which I like is very Jaws. You know, it's like, oh, well, you know, like, why would we keep it closed? And it's like, why wouldn't you keep it closed? Fucking assholes. Like, well, we got to make money.

And if we don't make money, it's like, right. Okay. I got that vibe when she was at the picnic and she was just like, get out of the water, get out of the water. Like she was yelling at everybody to quit having their party because they don't care about her son. And I'm like, yeah, they do all suck.

But at the same time, it felt very Jaws, get out of the water. Yeah. I really enjoy that, like we've talked about before, the show is willing to wear its influences directly on its sleeve. Because for me, again, I know that some people might be annoyed by that. But for me, I appreciate that the show exists in a world where it assumes that I am a watcher of something other than this.

And that I've come prepared to enjoy this where the filmmaker or showrunner wants me to enjoy it. This is also where it starts to change because before we got a little of the like sad end of true crime where you've got guys trying to beat up on some woman and she has to kill them. So that's more of a revenge version of that. But when we get to episode three, it starts to become more of a true crime solving the mystery aspect because then we start getting the sheriff and they're like, finding the rental car and like trying to track down, like they're figuring out the mystery and what happened to these guys and where did this car come from? And like, so there's also that aspect that again, kind of works on its own.

Like if this weren't in the middle of a Friday, the 13th story, it would still be a compelling small town. Two guys showed up here and got murdered story. You know, it's like, if it wasn't already tied to this I still feel like what it's doing in this solving the mystery aspect as we go on through these next two episodes is really interesting and kind of compelling that I could see it pulling in viewers just from that angle. Cause I feel like that stuff kind of works too. Well, unlike you mentioned, you know, it, it is kind of doing, it's doing different things and having different kind of offshoots and tangents to things going on, but also in those moments doing something different, you know, we, We talked a little bit about the Grace character in the last episode, but in this episode, we get to see more of her, especially in episode four.

But in episode three, Pamela kills her mom because she thinks that she's burning her arm with cigarettes. Turns out she's burning herself. so is her mom abusing her. I mean she sucks but i don't know if she sucks as bad as we thought she. Did can't you can't do what pamela does to someone just for sucking i guess is my whole thing That's what I'm saying. Her mom's just kind of an asshole.

But yeah, she feels like she's like. Protecting her from full on abuse, whereas she's just kind of a shitty mom. But a lot of people grow up with shitty parents. Like, what are you going to do? So murder them?

Oh, if you're Pamela, that seems to be the case. Well, I do like what is the show saying, I guess, is my question. Well, I like we already spend time with Grace before that, because we also start seeing her just sort of, I said before, she's sort of blossoming as a woman, but not that that's not cheesy enough. But we also see her just growing as an adult. And like you see her start to question all these things, specifically like Claudette, because Claudette was like the person she looked up to and who she thought was the cool like teenager that she wanted to be like.

And then Almost overnight, she's like, you know what? You're full of shit like you. You've been kind of a bad person to other people. And then specifically, she's kind of being a jerk to her and she won't let her party like she wants to again, like a teenager. And I do like it's funny that like to the point that she like kind of kicks her ass in.

The bathroom, like even though she's several years younger than her, she kind of beats Claudette's ass. Like had the teacher person not showed up, I was like, all right, see one more reason. I think Grace is awesome. She's a much more interesting character than I would have thought a show like this would have been willing to introduce. And just spend this much time on, because again, I thought.

Like I said last episode, when she sat down next to him, I was like, oh, look, Jason has a friend. But I kind of thought that's as far as it was going. And then you started to see a little bit of a surrogate mom thing kind of kick in. Even the last episode, you saw Pamela kept checking in on her. But then by the time we get to this, she's become kind of our... default new main character in the kid world because we took Jason out.

So like she's the the takeover version, like for for our teenage kid. And like she's the one that's also kind of going through the stages of what Jason was starting to. Go through before he died. So it's like we start to see her as our new stand in that's like starting to grow up, starting to question the people around her and the bullshit of the, we all, again, teenagers, you start to figure out the whole damn world's bullshit. So like you see like this innocent little kid, even in the first episode to by episode three, she's already like getting into fights in the bathroom and telling her friends that she thinks she sucks.

And like, Burning herself because she's a weird, moody teenager now. So, yeah, there's just so many stages that kick in in the span of like three or four episodes here. That's like pretty impressive for a character that we just met, you know, three, four hours ago. And I don't know if they could have done something like this 10 years ago with a female teenage character, because I think, well, no, I, you know, I think of something like Game of Thrones that really squandered a lot of its female characters. I'm not going to say like, oh, it's only men's fault because of that.

No, there were men and women writing on that show. That wasn't just like a male writer's room. There were men and women directing and writing that show. It was not a men's only writer's room for God's sakes. I don't think any writer's room in Hollywood is a men's only writer's room anymore.

And as I as I sit here, like the character of Grace is such a weird character to be in a mainstream TV show. But it's it works because, again, like Friday the 13th has a really weird and complicated history of sexuality because it is the one similarly to Halloween, I guess. But I would say like Friday the 13th more so. It's like you have sex, you die. Well, it's also just the changes of shows that are coming out too.

Cause we've, we've several times brought up the stranger things of it all, but you look at that, it started out, you know, as a, as a show about four dorky boys and you add this 11 character and she's like this super cool female character. But before we're done, it's like, by the time you bring in like Sadie Sink, like damn near steals that show. I think she does, frankly. She does. But then, like, even the last season, the Holly, like, becomes our lead character.

And she's, like, an even younger... Because the other ones were all in their mid-30s by that point. Still in high school. So, like, we brought in a new young character. And so, like, I do feel like there is something to be said of, like, young female characters that are, like, these kids that grew up watching Rey be the superstar of the universe.

You know? It's, like, it's... It's changed a lot, even in the last 10, 20 years that like there's a whole new wave of you can have a strong female lead and it still be a successful thing. And that didn't used to be, you know, there were it was always the male lead or you'd occasionally get a weird female lead. But this is a movie for girls.

This is a show for girls. And like, I don't think that's the case anymore. I think now. If you just make a good, strong character, regardless of the gender, like the show. Can be successful.

And that didn't used to be the case, I feel like, but it's, it's definitely changed. So I think that's, that's why I don't feel like it's as much of an issue here. I think she, she very easily is becoming lead of the show next to Pamela because she's such a well-written character and is going through this impressive, like arc of stuff in, in a, short amount of time really, but you're seeing her kind of growing up way faster than you probably would want a kid to. And like you've mentioned, I think it's also very smart that we have a child character that is not Jason was associated with Jason, but is not Jason that we can have a flashback interaction with separate from Pamela, the other kind of character that interacted and had a relationship with Jason. but also is a female character that has agency and autonomy of her own that then is interacting with Jason's mom.

Who's trying to take her on as a surrogate child. And again, at the end of this episode, fucking murders her mom. So it's like, well, full on plans. She took out her mom. Yeah.

Full on. I what's the, isn't there, I'm trying to think there's like an animal that does that. It like kicks the fucking parent out of the nest. I guess it's the cuckoo bird, right? Like that's the, The cuckoo bird is the one that like lays its eggs and it's in another animal's nest or something like it's this fucking crazy.

She's nothing else. Pamela is a cuckoo bird. Yeah, she's nuts. I mean, but at the same time, while you mentioned, yeah, the character of Grace's mom doesn't deserve to die because she's awful to her daughter. Pamela, again, like this is maybe the first time that's not a justified kill that we've seen.

But she doesn't really know that. Again, it's still maybe overstepping the bounds, even if she's burning her. That's probably a bit excessive. You just need to report her to the police and take her child away so she's not being abused anymore. But that's not how Pamela deals with things.

But even then, you don't see her knowingly do that. She still thinks she's doing right. She thinks she's protecting, you know, Right. We as the audience are the ones we. Then see the other version of it and like, oh, no, she's just being a weirdo teenager and like doing self-harm.

And that's not cool either. But also, you just got your mom killed. Way to go. Which I, you know, I asked you last episode about like, what is it trying to say? Like, what is the show trying to say about this? in this episode, like why are they giving us that complexity?

Like what is, what is the show getting at? And I, I'm, I don't, I don't, it's not that I do or don't know. I think it's interesting that it's like, again, we have this unreliable narrator, main character. That is the, the lead. It's also a female.

Again, there's a female led shows and there's, and there's two female like leads in this show, which I really appreciate. Like, again, like one of my favorite shows is Westworld. That's, a show ostensibly led by a lot of two female leads. And I, I appreciate a well-written female character. I don't know why they have not done it in film as well as they have in TV.

Like we talk about like, well, you know, what, what is one of the things that you could describe TV that's important about TV? I think TV is really the, the place where female characters are well-written and, Yeah, I think most executives are just afraid. They're afraid to invest that much money in a female led project most of the time. Occasionally it happens, but it is rare compared to the tons of money they will invest in any dumb male led project. And there are plenty of them.

So, yeah, I think they just they don't have faith in it. They don't. they will go out of their way to prove the track record. And every time one fails, they hold it up as like, see, you can't put a woman as a lead in the movie. And so, yeah, I think they just the deck is stacked against you if you're an actress trying to make a big budget movie but i guess there's a little lesson that's the thing the tv shows are really well made now so i don't know that the budget's as different than making a sizable mid-level movie anymore. But I think they're willing to take a little more chances in TV.

And there's maybe a better response to the audiences as well. I think it's just the need for content, too. Like we talked about in the last episode, like the weird, you know, we talk about we talk about how like streaming changed everything. I would say like the comparative is streaming changed things the way CNN changed 24 hour news. Like being able to watch a movie whenever, wherever is so different from, I have to have a DVD player and I have to set it up and I have to have the DVD and edit it out.

And they're like, I can just watch it on my phone in the airport while I'm waiting to get on the plane. The CNN of it all. That's fucking mind-blowing, right? Like, 24-hour news cycle, dude. The way news was reported on changed the moment you could get news at any time.

Everything became news. Well, but it changed what you were doing, too. Because then it's like, if the news was only on at like 11 p.m., and they just told you they had a half hour, and it was packed with every big dumb thing that happened in the world today, and we got it out in 25 minutes with commercials, and here we go. Well, now it's on 24-7. After that 25 minutes worth of important stuff, they're filling the.

Rest of the time. So it's like, here's a human interest story and here's a restaurant opening. Like they just start going out to find anything at that point. All the news that's fit to print is just everything now. And I feel like.

That's also what happened to the streaming content too, is like, we have to fill all Every hour, every streaming service, every platform out there has to have so much material. I mean, it's the same thing that happened when VHS came around. It's like they suddenly needed to put movies on VHS and they started producing these crappy straight to VHS movies that were made for a fraction of what they used to spend in theaters because they just needed to put titles out there. And this is like times 100 when you get to streaming, when there's. So many new options that came out, so many new places, and people were just waiting to watch whatever.

And they weren't real discerning is the problem. So you did see a decline in the quality sometimes, but at the same time, you got a chance to make a lot more stuff. And so hopefully along the way, somebody will step up and make good things as well. I think when you have... the hose on all the time. And as, and, and, you know, here's the thing you have to remember, right?

Like this, this thing, the confluence came around at the same, that the perfect time, because the, the amount of people with access to the internet with streaming made it where it's like the, the need for content is constant. I'm assuming, and you tell me if I'm wrong here, Brian, that people in the industry are assuming that people are watching shit 24 seven. 365. They have it on even when they're sleeping, maybe, because it comforts them in some way. And you know what?

Am I wrong to say that that's the assumption? I mean, I'm one of those people, but that isn't even a streaming thing. So am I. Actually, I'm the opposite. I grew up on network and it was just on because I wanted it on.

Again, it was comforting to my I can't stand the silence. I'll have to listen to the voices in my head. So you turn on some dumb thing in the background and it's just on. I'm not even paying attention half the time. Right.

It's just on. But I don't do that with streaming because you have to pick a specific thing. And then again, I usually am watching movies. So like I want to then focus on this. If I start it, I want to sit down and watch it and pay attention. versus random crap just on network television in the background I don't pay attention to.

Like occasionally there's good stuff. I'm not knocking it, but I'm like, I don't focus on it that way. And streaming makes me feel like I need to be watching the thing I. Just hit play on. So I don't treat streaming the same way.

I specifically seek out things and sit down and watch them and then turn off the streaming when it's time to like go do other things. And I'll still have something on in the thing that I push play on and now need to be watching. So you're talking about active versus passive watching, which I think is like, you know, there are things that I can have on that I am interacting with no differently than some people interact with music. You have this on in the background while you're doing something else. I choose to have a movie or TV show on in the background because that's the soundtrack I want to have on.

Because I appreciate being able to laugh along with it or quote it or whatever, you know, have it bring up something that I think about versus music, which not saying that doesn't do that for music for me as well. But there are some people that do not understand the first part of what I talked about. They only understand the music side of it, which I understand. But I feel like a lot of people do it like that now, too. I think you're not alone.

I think a lot of people have they pick a streaming thing that they like and it's just on a loop now. I think it's generational, too. Like, I don't know if people my my parents age do. My mom and dad have like news and stuff on in the background. So they are still having something on in the background.

But like when I go to visit them, I will put on like my stuff and they're not fighting me on it. So they're at least like amenable to it, but I don't know if they would go. I mean, maybe they do now. I think it's, I think it's weird. Like, I think maybe if I didn't do what I do, they might not because their tastes would never kind of have seen some of the things that I've introduced them to that.

I think maybe they wouldn't have watched otherwise. Cause I know that they were not watching YouTube, you know, and they've started, they, they have like a couple like YouTube channels that they watch. And I'm like really happy that they do. Cause not a lot of people their age watch YouTube. No, that's what kids do nonstop.

But yeah, even in the middle, a lot of times, not so much or only specific shows. But like the younger you get, the more it's just habit. Like that's what they do. Even people our age aren't super into YouTube. Like I feel like I came upon YouTube really late in the terms of like engaging with content.

Like I didn't have a favorite YouTuber in my 20s. Like I literally came to YouTube in my late 20s, early 30s. And it's weird to me because, again, like I think the way shows are made now and, you know, to come back to the original thing we were talking about, like the original kind of thesis of this entire question is why is a why are female leads better on TV than in movies? Because I think there's just the need is constant. And because you have so much all the time, you are going to get good things more often. because you a new TV show can literally come out every day just and now a new movie can come out every day too which is great like I love that about movies and TV like I love that we can get them at any point you don't have to be able to just like you don't have to just go to the movie theater anymore to see a movie and that is a really I know for a lot of people that me saying that might really be irksome to them but that's a really positive thing too for the ability of people to be able to watch movies and enjoy them.

And actually it's been like that for a long time, but like it's, it's still ever increasingly changing. And it's, but just when we think it gets to the point that like, Oh, the movies are dying. Nobody goes anymore. You, I mean, this year is proven. That's not true.

This is like the biggest, we've had some of the biggest movie openings ever in history period. And it was all this year. So it's like, it's now more of like appointment movies. Like there's a movie that will hit and it will make people leave the house. And that's something that quit happening for a long time there.

So it's like, you're still getting those little spikes of specific movies that like kind of take over the pop culture for a couple of weeks. And then it goes back. But like the streaming of it all is constant. And like they're still at home. watching those shows. They're still on YouTube watching what they want to watch night and day.

And they're still finding new shows on streaming that they're, you know, are a regular constant thing. So it's like, I think they can still coexist. I think you could still have a big movie following, but it's not the way it used to be. It's not like that. Cause I mean, movies used to rule everything.

Like everything was built around the big movies coming out and TV was so just looked down upon by the entire industry. And then they leveled out. And now it's the point where TV or streaming versions of it is the norm. And the occasional thing that takes off is a big movie, but it's, yeah, it seems like it's, it's all kind of continually changed as the years have gone on. And I wonder when you make a movie now, if you're not looking at it as like, well, what am I competing with?

Am I competing with other movies, or am I literally competing with fucking everything? And my assumption is they're competing with everything now, which is why, again, why every IP ever is being done something with, why everything that has ever been popular at any point is being done with. reappraised or turned into something else, because anybody and everybody's trying to make just that little bit more movement of something that has already been done before and successful and hopefully make money. And sometimes you hit upon something like this, which has a built-in audience, which has a built-in genre that people are very into, which has the A24 of it all. And then again, to put Linda Cardinelli, who I think has had a lot of goodwill in the industry.

She was in to talk about something I just got done re-watching, which maybe the less said about it, the better, but those Conjuring movies. Uh, she's in one of the lesser, lesser, lesser conjuring movies. And the only reason I had any reason to watch it is cause she's in it. Literally the curse of La Llorona is really not great. Like it's kind of middle of the road, if best, like it's a lesser conjuring movie, which is to say it's like in the bottom third of those, which is like not very, that's not many of those movies other than the conjuring movies are down there.

Like a lot of the nun and Annabelle movies are taking up those spots. Well, when you're competing with the peak of her career, which is obviously Scooby-Doo. I mean it's hard yeah yeah i guess for some people i mean that's when i think of linda cardinelli that's what i think of genuinely i mean. It's one of my favorite things she's in like she's really good like it's that was a weird cast that shouldn't have worked as well as it did but they all were kind of perfectly cast and it clicked and like it cheesy as those movies are like they still like I think it was such a big nostalgia factor for those kids that grew up at that time and then they've shown it to their kids as they've gotten older so like it's still I mean if you go to a convention you will see a line wrapped around the building for Matthew Lillard and it's all little kids holding Scooby-Doo stuff so it's like it's, it's continued on like the, the following that, that has for that specific cast for that run of movies there.

It's like, it's surprising how much that has hung on over the years. So I, I still go to that as one of my favorites for her. I love that movie. I love Matthew Lillard in that movie. I mean, I love everything about that movie.

I don't know. I, you know, I think for me, when people ask me like, what's your favorite James Gunn thing? I'm like, It's Scooby-Doo. I think it's the thing where I interacted with it in a way that felt... I don't know.

It was one of those things where when I watched Scooby-Doo the movie, I didn't really see Scooby-Doo the cartoon. I just see Scooby-Doo the movie. And Scooby-Doo the movie is its own thing. And it will always be its own thing. And that's hard to do, yeah.

Right. Because the show was so iconic in the animated form that you wouldn't think any of the live action stuff could compare. Yeah. Casey Kasem and all that, that's so iconic in and of its own right. It made it so iconic that, like you said, Matthew Lillard, did the voice for Scooby-Doo in a Scooby-Doo cartoon.

And I think it's like the de facto voice for Shaggy. I think, I believe, like I believe. At this point, why wouldn't he be? Yeah. Yeah.

And I don't know if you've seen Looney Tunes back in action, but there is a very funny scene in that movie with three different Shaggies. I did. Live action Shaggy voiced by Casey Kasem Shaggy and then voiced by Matthew Lillard Shaggy all in the same scene, I believe is what it is. Isn't that them in the restaurant and the animated... Shaggy is kind of like critiquing.

Yeah. The Casey case of one. Yeah. Yeah. It's very funny.

And it's, again, it's like very meta and it's in the right movie for that, for that kind of joke. Uh, and anytime I say that, I always want to say, and it's a very serious joke by Stanley. It's not a, it's not a serious joke, but it's one of those things where like, you have to know all of the things. You have to be that level of geek to fully get it. Yeah.

And that's again, like, When we talk about making a show that works well and is understanding of the people who are watching it, this, I think, show understands that when you're watching a show about Friday the 13th, you want to see Pamela Voorhees unhinged, which we see. You want to see Jason doing something, maybe, But maybe other than that, like, I don't know what other boxes need to be checked. And what's so interesting is they just kind of are doing whatever they want. And again, what, what they're doing is not really that new and original. It's like, again, it's riffing on other stuff, but the stuff that it's riffing on is really successful.

So, you know, like if you're going to riff on stuff, you might as well riff on stranger things, you know, like you fucking worse things to riff on, I guess. Well, it's also doing a nice little like portrait of a small town because this is the episode. We also get the bunch of drunken idiots that are going to go out and shoot a bear. Very jaws of it all. Once again, like the assholes with the fucking roast and all that.

Like, this is my wife's roast. Like, she's going to kill me. Like, yeah, like I love that. I love or again, like to speak to fucking Stranger Things did that. What is that season four that they were doing that where they were having the kids running around like chasing after People and trying to like, oh, they're what are they called?

The Hellfire Club, that whole thing. It's like they're trying to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, you know, again, they have a little bit of that. Like, you know, they're wearing their influences very openly on their sleeve, which again, like you could do worse than imitating shows that are very successful.

But I also like they're such idiots that they end up shooting each other while they're out there. Well, I mean, who knows who shot again? He's claiming he saw Jason. Well, he and he did basically. I was tubing.

I don't know what he saw. I think it's the other idiot that was with him that shot thinking he saw Jason. Like, I think the guy that gets shot actually. Saw Jason because we see him come over out of the woods. But the other idiot like.

A hundred yards away thought he saw Jason and it was that. Guy and shot him. Was the way I read it. But who really knows? No, I think you know.

I think it's in the woods. Yeah, I think you're right. Which makes it even funnier. Yeah. So it was just him.

But that guy did like because we see him kind of see it before he gets hit. He sees something in the woods over there. And then once he's down, you see. Like the image of this weird creepy kid come stand over him and just kind of look at him and be like, the hell are you doing you drunken idiot so that's again toying with the jason of it all of like is is he out there and yeah kind of because he's standing there so what what's going on and is he did he drowned is this the not drowned version of him he is this is the raised from the dead because it's a magical lake version of him wait like we don't know like it's just sort of toying with that at this point. The question is maybe not what he is, but when, I mean like, you know, I don't know what or how time works in this show.

Like all of a sudden the person that's standing over this guy is like a grown man. That's what it looks like. Like, it's like, it's not a child. And Jason is a straight up child in the show. Like as we've seen him up until this point, he's literally like, like what, like a 10 year old, 12 year old, maybe like 11, maybe something like that.

He's like a young, like a young teenager. So it's like, okay, like it, What we see standing over this guy is like a fucking adult. Like it's a straight up man standing over him. In what looks like that outfit that he's wearing in the one where the actor who has the greatest name of a stuntman ever, Dick Warlock, plays him where it's like the weird like gray jacket suit thing. You know what I'm talking about?

It looks like he's wearing that, which again is like a callback to one of the movies. So. I mean, maybe, as we've said, we don't know what's going on in the lake and or woods. So maybe the woods just is a portal to other time and space. And you've got future Jason showing up to come back in time and murder people because he can.

Right. Like I wouldn't put it past this show, given that there's some sort of like, again, the argonaut of it all has not been explained yet, which not so far. No, which I don't I genuinely don't know what what do what is your take? Like, what do you think it's going to be? Because like we're at a point now where it hasn't been answered yet.

And the next time we do an episode, there is a moment or a possibility that that is explained. So what is it? What do you like? Let's let's kind of go back and forth here and let's see which one of us ends up being closer. But like, what do you think it's getting at?

I mean, even at the first mention of it in that promo, that's what I thought. That's why we're watching this show, right? Pretty much, because I saw that and went, oh, I don't know what... Because if. It were just like, here's a flashback, here's the backstory of Jason, and we tell mom losing it, going crazy, and this is how Jason ends up in the woods, blah, blah, that's how we get to the movies.

If it's just a straight... A to B, here's the prequel. This is what we're doing. Then I, again, it might be fine, but I don't think it was going to do anything interesting. So it was still questionable whether we would have done this.

We got to that moment and I was like, okay, that's something weird. And they're good. at least play with that. I don't know fully if. They're going to explain it or not. But to me at that point, I was like, this seems like, and I think I said this last episode, this is like a government project that this is a toying with people.

And, and once again, we've got a very sh me of it all because there's no father. She she's specifically like, I'm not married. Like, so we've never had a mention of a father, right? So like, as far as we know, he was just created by the force for some shit. Who knows?

But like, literally like it's, it's that same scenario of like, there's no mom or dad. It's just mom is taken to this facility. They're doing experiments on her in the process. Maybe the whole reason they're doing experiments is to create this kid. It goes maybe horribly wrong.

And that's like the reason he is the way he is or maybe right. And that's the reason he is. And like the side effects of him having whatever he has also gives them some sort of powers that we haven't fully had explained to us yet. And I'm sure we will see some version of. And then from that point on, it's them probably trying to use him to make money, create weaponry, whatever the government does, which is always those kind of things.

And then she realizes that's what they're doing and takes her kid and runs. And that's why she's been on the run all these years and created this new identity and went to go hang out in the middle of the woods and not really engage with people for the most part, because this is who she's hiding from. And the term Argonaut means an adventurer. on a dangerous or ambitious quest. So it's like, it's a very specific, intentional, like choice of a, of a, uh, you know, of a name. And obviously, you know, Jason and the Argonauts, Hardy, har, har.

I mean, again, like the, I got the joke as I'm sure you did like, do you like, Never heard of it. Right. Like, it's a very funny joke. And again, you know, it's not explained as of yet. But, you know, even by the end of the fourth episode, like we don't even have it really addressed by the end of the fourth episode.

Like the fourth episode is confirming to us that there is the world of the supernatural in Friday the 13th. Which we've gotten to before. But this is like the most explicit. But I mean, it takes them a long time. It's like, again, not really until like six, he's rising from the dead.

By seven, you have people using psychic powers to fight against him. So I mean, like we definitely have a lot of that stuff in the franchise overall, but it takes them that far in before it totally leaves the... for the most part, he was just like a killer in the woods. Maybe there was some weird reason he was still alive and it was supernatural. For the most part, he just hit you with a machete and killed you the same way any. Other human did.

Well, one of the movies, it's not even Jason. It's a dude pretending to be Jason. Well, that's my point. Like, they're even trying to explain how Jason doesn't die because technically he wasn't like Jason. It's like, oh, okay.

So like, we even have to have a meta in universe explanation why Jason doesn't die, die. Like, I don't, you know, it could literally be he's a fucking time traveler in the show. I wouldn't be surprised. It would be pretty entertaining if that's the case. Yeah, I don't want this show to be necessarily serious.

You know, we didn't mention it in the last episode, but I guess, I guess it, is it, I guess it is this episode where it's the communist agitator, Martin Luther King. What the fuck? What the hell joke is this show making? I mean, that's the world we were and maybe are still living in. Yeah, I love it. you know, what's funny is it's 1970, but it doesn't feel any different than the time now.

Like, Oh, look at these, look at these fucking hippies being dumb. Like let's kill the hippies. You know, like all the, again, like, Oh, the other ring of all these people. And like Jason ultimately really is the story, ultimate story of the other ring of like, you know, a child who didn't deserve to be othered at all. And so he's taking his revenge on the town that othered him.

And that's the thing. Like it's, I, I know that this is, the gentleman who did it, right? When it's like, that sounds infested by Pennywise. What if this is just this, what if the entire like thesis with this show is, and follow me here, it's like inverse Pennywise. Like Pennywise isn't killing children in the town just because he wants to.

Like, what if Jason is just killing the town because the town is a bunch of shitheads that don't respect the fact that he just drowned? I mean, he's not wrong. Not in remotely any capacity is he wrong. And it's like, I wonder if partially that's what the show is kind of getting at, which I'm, yeah, like I totally am here for. as a watcher of this show, because like I think it's it's speaking to something that is not present in the original movies, which is like How do we address Jason as a character and why he's doing what he's doing and what his motivations are? And giving Jason some real tangible motivation, not a thing up until this point.

In Jason X, it's like, oh, they kind of woke him up and pissed him off. All these other ones, it's like, what is he doing and why? He just seemingly is not really doing anything for any reason whatsoever. other than just because he can. And it's like, I'm not saying that's bad. The, you know, the immovable force meets the immense, the immovable object.

It's like, okay, great. Like I don't necessarily always have to have a reason why these two are banging into each other, but if you want to give me one and it's makes this more interesting, I'm, I'm going to appreciate that as someone watching your show. And I think they really have, like, I think wherever they go with Jason, um, the Argonaut stuff or not, like they've set it up where Jason is justifiably upset at more or less everyone in the town. And it would also seem like there's some Lynchian inspiration of like everyone in the town has something to hide or something fucked up about them or they're doing something stupid or they're involved in weird shit. And I couldn't help but think of like the weird idiosyncrasies of the town of Twin Peaks when watching this show.

Because again, like it seems like Again, it's coming kind of inspired by a lot of things that have come out in the last 20, 30 years since the first Friday the 13th came out. While we're coming up with crazy theories, so you went down the Argonaut Road. The other thing they've got, the card that they have is subsun solutions. So subsun is a rare atmospheric optical phenomenon that appears as a bright glowing spot directly below the actual sun. What if Jason is from space?

I mean, again, like an alien. That's why he went back as Jason X, because he's from space. Good God. What if he's like one of those like alien children from the X-Files? They're not aliens.

They just said, what is it like the measles or something? I forget what the fuck is smallpox. I forget what it is, but they're like, we treated them and they just became like aliens. Like, no, they're fucking aliens. Like, knock it off.

So this, this, this. Alien group of people realized that earthlings suck. So they're going to send this guy down to start taking them. Out one at a time. It's a slow plan, but it's a plan nonetheless.

I mean, look, American horror story had aliens and, uh, you know, it, it didn't, it didn't hurt that series. I just don't think they ever did anything really substantive with it. Again, I'm being kind of ridiculous, but at the same time, if they went down that road at this point, it's so. Crazy and over the top, I'd be like, well, points for originality. The Argonaut question feels like a sci-fi thing because Stranger Things is sci-fi, like Stranger Things is sci-fi and horror and like fantasy, I guess.

And the sci-fi of it all is like all the stuff at the Hawkins lab. And they're hinting at like, there is something of that or adjacency in this show. So like, yeah, I don't, I don't think that we're that far off because the paranoia seventies aspect of this show is intentional. Like it's not, we're not grasping at straws. Like the show is doing that intentionally.

Like I think there's a high possibility. We might be right about at least some of what we've joked about, because again, like, I don't know why they would have shown the things that they've shown if there's not some kind of grand, weird thing at play here. That, again, maybe it's just an accident that someone like Jason, because his mom and him went on the run, that he... happened to drown in the wrong lake. You know, I, I, I could see that being just like, again, like the kind of darkly comedic aspect of the movie, right? Like, oops, like the, the, what happens if a super soldier drowns in a lake that reincarnates you as a zombie?

Like, I don't know, but we're going to get an answer to it. Maybe that's the thing. It also like, as much as they never really explain what's going on with Jason or why he does what he does, the one thing we know is that like, he's damn near indestructible so much so that again, they're trying. To replicate him in the future. So it's like that if you're, if you're creating something like this and you know, that's your end point, you could certainly tie that in, like go back and make, well, this.

Is our overall arc that we're heading towards. So yeah. Why not work this in as our, as our beginning point too. And like, it's, just a slow in between version in the middle where he's just murdering kids in the woods versus where it started and eventually ends up so I again I don't think that's that. Far off I wouldn't say any of this is outside the realm of possibility if they hadn't shown a literal like laboratory door.

And the fact that she's running from someone who's very serious because they sent dudes to murder her. So obviously it's something because they wouldn't have sent people after. She wouldn't have to be hiding and changing her name if it was just. you know she got a sperm donor or. Something if it was normal like she'd just go move to a city and get a job but like she's been hiding the entirety of jason's life so obviously it's something going on which again like i i love that we have more to the jason character than you know like that's the thing with like freddy krueger that we didn't talk about in the last episode like Freddy Krueger has a very narrow runway. He is a child molester.

Like, and that was the thing that that 2000 and more murderer, whatever, just murdered him in the old wind, only in the two thousands when he's also, but they, they could have done something interesting with it where they have him not actually be the killer, like him, not actually being like, The molester, like they are wrongfully accusing him and that's not the case and do something different with it and make him a nuanced character. And they didn't want to do that for whatever reason, because they felt like they had to do exactly what the original did. And I'm so glad that there's none of that here. that there's none of this, like, we have to make sure that we're doing what the original did. Like, nope, we're going to do our own thing.

Is Jason a fucking sci-fi super soldier? Like, you know what? He very well might be. And you know what? I would not have believed that this show would do that, but here we are.

And if they go there, and I would assume there's some reality to that, I would love to hear what the fans of Friday the 13th have to say. Because if they're pissed off, Have you seen your franchise where, like you said, they literally go to fucking space? Not kind of space. They literally go to fucking space. Yes, that one takes a lot of heat for the silliness of it.

But also, in the one you referenced last episode, he's also hijacked while he's dreaming by Freddy Krueger in another movie. Which is meant to be canon, by the way. Literally meant to be fucking canon, because they spend, I don't know, 30 minutes of that movie trying to be like, and this is how this works, and let's explain this. Just make the movie good. Can you do that?

And I'm not saying Freddy vs. Jason is not good. I think Freddy vs. Jason is a more than competent romp, but it is... it spends a lot of time explaining rules where it's just like, just get to the fucking Freddie and Jason of it all. We got it.

It's a comic book crossover issue. We know just move on with the story. Did you know that there was a temple under the ice and let's explain, shut the fuck up. We don't care. Don't fucking matter.

Quit explaining shit. Like, fuck off. Like it's this, you know what? And I think it's so funny. Like so much of this, like we talked about this a little bit before we turned on the recorder, but I wanted to save a little bit of this conversation for talking about this.

Like, the Zack Snyder of all of this, where it's like, I'm just going to do whatever the fuck I want. And you know what? You're going to like it. And it's like, you know what? You can do whatever the fuck you want, but I don't have to like it.

And me not liking it has nothing to do with the fact that you're subverting expectations because this show and so many other things are proof of you can subvert expectations and still get me to like it without that being the intention. Like, oh, you didn't like it because I subverted expectations. Like, no, I didn't like it because you did a bad job at making it anything resembling the base thing to begin with. Like, you have to have some initial idea of the fucking nugget of the thing that most, if not all of us, can agree upon. And if you're not willing to do that, okay.

But like, no, you can subvert my expectations all the time. And make this thing completely different and I will show up for it. Even if it is a thing that has a long tail of eight or ten or however many goddamn movies there are. A lot. Yeah, it's like ten, right?

Isn't Jason X called that because it's not... It's the tenth movie? Let's see. Eight is New York. Nine is Jason Goes to Hell.

Okay, then there you go. So yeah, so 10. Yeah, Jason X is also called that because it's the 10th fucking movie. Like you said, Jason X is canon. So if that's canon, they could literally have him be a super soldier.

If that's where we're going, yeah, it's definitely a possibility. So can we talk about the supernatural? Because we get the confirmation that the supernatural exists in this show, right? We get Grace's mom who... Pamela Voorhees murdered.

She hit her in the face with a mallet and then she fucking flew into a fryer, which when that happened, I was like, Holy shit. Like that, that was the moment I was talking about in the last episode that elicited a genuine reaction for me. I was like, wow, that was something else. Like it wasn't the fryer for me. Cause any, any, horrific movie where there is a deep fryer, somebody's going in it to some extent.

Yeah, if they're in the kitchen together, yeah. Yeah, somebody's getting scalded in some way, shape or form with hot boiling grease. But the ripping her jaw off with a meat tenderizer was like, it is a gnarly effect. So that one was more of an impressive feat for me. I was just like, wow, she is not messing around.

She was not like you messing with that child enough that she just tore your jaw. She hits her so hard with the mallet that her jaw just like comes off. It's fucking gnarly. And you know what? Like it's, it's well earned because again, as we've understood in the world of this show, like there is a level of violence to what's going on that like you get hit in the face with a mallet.

I think it would do that level of damage to you. So it's not like they're, going above and beyond they're going like maybe 10 to 15% overboard, but it's stylized. Yeah. They're like focusing on, look how cool this is like horror movies do. Like that's why we bring in such great effects guys back in the eighties.

And like, that's what we're building on here is like, because you would stop for an extra 10 seconds ago. Look how cool this effect is. Look how much time we spent on this latex right here. And so, again, this probably has a little tweaking in the CG world. But that aside, it still looks amazing.

And, like, is disturbing. So, like, of course, we hang on it for an extra few seconds just so the horror fans can be like, whoa, look, like so. I'm still that dork. I still do that. Look at her tongue hanging out in her mouth. her just like her distended jaw.

Like it's, it's fucking proper. Like you said, it's proper gnarly, which I appreciate. I am not above that. I had that same response still. I was like, yep, there you go.

You got me. You did something horrific to her face and I am entertained by it. It takes a lot to get me anymore. But like, even I was like, that's fucking gross. Like Jesus Christ show.

Like it's, I appreciate that the show is willing to kind of push the envelope, which, and again, it, it, it, it pushes the envelope in a way that doesn't feel, I'm not going to say like unearned, but the show does such a good job of earning those like gory moments, but also populating the moments in between with interesting, you know, things to look at, or, you know, like a funny, like kind of one-off scene or Linda Cardinelli doing whatever. Like, I appreciate that the show is not just gore for gore's sake like it it it earns those moments but those moments are populated in between a lot of like interesting character stuff or world building or a little bit of all of it like it is really the kind of it or kind of dairy of it all like they're really building the world around these characters and i like that of it all you know like it's you know it's such a it's such a refreshing thing to be like oh you're really engaged with making the world that these characters live in feel real.

And I appreciate that. What I think is really interesting. And again, it's, it's this moment is maybe the, where you really see it kind of take form is it's like Pam at this point, like she's had this almost awakening with like her life falling apart when, when she loses Jason, but that's just like mourning for nine months or however long it is. it's when those guys come back looking for that, like she, she hits this new level. And like, I think I said last episode, you also see it's like where she starts trying to recover and she starts trying to, you know, decide she can clear out his room and get in a relationship again. But it's also what leads to all these dead people.

But she's like, she's almost an avenging angel as they go on. You know, it's like, she's the first two are just self-defense and, But then you get like the next guy that she's about to kill is just like standing up for herself. So that's like an in-between version that she then gets beat by that other guy who tears his face off. But when we get to mom in this one, like it is full-on i'm defending a poor child that you're injuring like she's just become a hero in her own eyes like in in her intent is like she's she's trying to be a superhero now she's trying to save someone who needs her and like it's it's a weird arc that she's going on but like she's she's improving and becoming more of a normal person in her everyday life with each of these steps that she's going through.

And like, she's becoming a more well-formed, functional individual, the more people she murders. So it's, it's all out of whack, but it's a crazy journey that she's on because it is her just sort of going through these steps and like finding each time that she does this, that she feels that she's in the right, that she's not just murdering people because she's a sociopath, which maybe she is, but she's doing it because she feels like it's the right thing to do in this moment. And like, she, she feels like it's, it's what she needs to do is to stand up for herself and for other people that are being victimized. Correct me if I'm wrong. Is the chick, the hippie chick that goes missing in the fourth episode, or third episode, whichever.

I know she shows up at the end of the fourth episode. Is she not dressed the way that one of the characters is dressed in one of those movies? Is that not another? That's another like nod, you know? But I'm talking about the one that's like goes off on her own and gets murdered.

No, I'm saying in, in the movies themselves. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. Fair. There's a lot of kids doing drugs.

So, you know, there's plenty of hippie kids of some sort. So I'm sure. I'm pretty like, again, like it's the intentionality, but with what they're doing, everything in this show is again, like it's sly and a wink and a nod. But at the same time, like if you were a fan of the series, you're going to see these things like coming, you know, a mile away, which again, you know, I think the fans of the show appreciate that, or at least the series. I mean, I think the fans of the series became fans of the show, I guess is a better way of putting it.

I think people who like the movies will appreciate this show. We didn't really address that in the last episode, but I think the show is good enough to get people who are fans of the series on board. with more of the show, which I think is the most important thing. I think if you're trying to get like long legs with a certain audience, like not all the audiences, I think the other audiences are going to show up for the right thing. Like, I think that the show does enough of the other things, right. That it's going to get those other people.

But if you want to get like the OG fans, I think it does enough to get the OG fans as well. I feel like it's almost got more potential to rub the old fans the wrong way. But what it's doing right and it's telling such an interesting story, I think it's got more potential to pull in regular people that aren't as into Friday the 13th or even horror maybe if they find their way to it. I think that's the thing. I think the hurdle is it's got such a connection to Friday the 13th.

And the horror world that like they're going to think, oh, this isn't for me. I feel like if they get past that and are watching an episode, I think they would get sucked in and probably watch it. So I think it's got a lot more mainstream appeal than even most people would realize. It's just you got to be OK with the gore. But other than that, I think it's got potential to pull in, you know, regular streaming viewers out there.

It's a little gorier than American Horror Story was. That's got such a fan base. That's what I mean. I think that's crossed over. It's not just the old school horror fans.

It's a big enough ordeal that happened around that and got the promotion that it did that I think it pulled. In a decent amount of regular viewers as well. Well, that's what I'm saying. I think this show has that possibility as well to be kind of bridging of the gap of like, well, I'm a casual– fan of horror like i'm not gonna say i'm like a fan of horror but i'm not gonna say i dislike horror either like and i i think that i think that there might be more people like that now than there ever have been that are willing to be like well i'm more of a casual fan but i i wouldn't say i dislike it i know that there was a you know a subsection of people that used to used to and do still really dislike horror for you don't want to like to be scared it's like oh my god whatever fine But I think there's so much crossover stuff now that has less of a specific genre to it that people are amenable to watching things that maybe present as more horror than they would have watched before.

And I'm like, oh, okay, good. We live in a world now where I think genre and genre-specific things matter less and less. Yeah. And they've blurred the lines on so many things that they're kind of this, but they're also this too. And like, so this is a very funny show.

Yeah. Like it's, it's not just a show about Friday the 13th. Like it's a funny show. There's like a lot of like really genuinely funny, well-written comedic moments. Like what does that have to do with horror?

Yeah. And it's just, again, telling a good story about her. I mean, you see this woman rebuilding her life. Like here we see her after she, rips a woman's jaw off, watches her face fry, burns down the entire diner to cover it up, then goes and hooks up with the sheriff. And has sex with the cop to make sure she covers it, double covers it up, by the way.

Like, yeah. Gives herself a fucking alibi. I was like, this is an interesting story. Yeah. I was like, even if you take out all the murdering and the gore, like.

Her just going through this journey is a hell of a story regardless. Even if you take the Friday the 13th out of this, if this had nothing to do with Friday the 13th, this is still a very entertaining, well-written show. The Friday the 13th of it all makes it, I think, more intriguing for me. That the show is doing. And it's got brand recognition to help them.

That's probably what got it made versus if this was just a woman with a different name, even if she lost a kid, which everybody be like, just like Friday the 13th. But like you could disguise it as the something else. And like, I think it would still be able to win people over if you stuck with the story because it's so entertaining. Why don't we just do Friday the 13th? Okay.

Like, yeah, like it's, we can do that. Yeah, we could do that. And like, that's the thing. Like a lot of the, a lot of the right things kind of coalesced at the right time to make this show. And that's the other thing that I really appreciate about this show is like, you know, this show could not have existed in this form kind of before now.

Like, and I'm glad that we live in a time where horror can be, the spotlight of a TV show. And it's not, you know, because again, you know, we haven't really talked about this, but don't forget, this is technically the second Friday the 13th TV show. I mean, in title. I mean, technically, yeah, in title. But in title is more than anything else ever has had up until this point.

Because I was watching that every week and never did you see Jason hanging around there. No. I saw some Roby. I was there for Roby, but. It's not the, you know, again, like, I think it was really smart.

If you're not going to be able to do Freddy the way that I think, you know, and I don't know what the hell anyone can do with Freddy anymore anyways, even at that time, but. Like you said, Jason isn't doing any talking, so he's not going to be in the wraparounds. Having Freddy in the wraparounds, very smart. Have him be the Crypt Keeper, right? Like, there you go.

Jason, I don't know how you do that. And so with Jason just kind of being his own free agent, as it were, he is a character that didn't have a place in that show. But making him such a big part of this show, even if he's not on screen, smart. Address it head on. Address Jason as a character head on.

Don't shy away from him just because no one else has. View that as an opportunity to do better. Because I think this show, in the first four episodes, has done better by Jason as a character than any of the movies have up until this point. I mean, it gives you a reason to care about him when he's young. But then even once we get to post-death or what we think is death.

They still haven't found his body, to your point. Yeah, it's made him interesting. Like, now it's a mystery. It's like, is he still out there? Or if he is still out there, what is he now?

Like, it's entered into potential supernatural of it. So then we're like, well, what's going on? And why is this happening? So even when he's not being a cute kid on screen, there's this whole other aspect that's already kicked in that's like, Leading towards that, potentially, we don't know at what point it's going to pick in and fully become a Jason's version of the story or if they ever really hand off the other than just leading straight into a movie. But, yeah, I think it's interesting that that he's as well represented as he is in this story.

That's not really about him. It's Pamela's story. But like he's still featured heavily because he's so important to her. And like none of this would happen had her. she not lost him. So that's kind of what leads us to this story.

Well, I don't know if none of this would have happened if she hadn't lost him. I just think she's more susceptible to this because he's gone. I don't know. I mean, she, he was alive and things were going poorly for him. Like, let me put it this way.

If Jason had survived the drowning, do we really think she wouldn't have gained retribution on the people that did that? This is what I'm, this is what I, as you said that I was just wondering, I was like, she seemed like he was her whole world. Well, would have happened if Jason had come? What if it had happened if those two guys had shown up when Jason was alive? See, that's a different story.

Yeah. If she was still around and nothing bad was going on, I think she would be happy and be with him and have whatever crappy job it took for her to be with him. She didn't care. She just wanted to be with him. Now, if you enter in like someone putting Jason's life in jeopardy or something like that, if those guys show up and threaten to take Jason or kill Jason or whatever.

Yeah, I think she easily again, then it's just mama bear at that point. Like she's just going to tear him apart because you don't mess with Jason. And this essentially is just the world mess with Jason. And now she's pissed off and she's taking it out on everybody. So like you said, I love the idea of her being the mama bear and feeding those guys to the bear.

Mm hmm. You know, and you had the bear up in her face the last first episode of her second episode. And that was another like weird like is this is this a supernatural thing? Does the bear sense she's equally as mean and powerful and doesn't want to mess with it? That she is also a mama bear.

She is also a mama bear. And like, okay, you're just doing this to protect your kid. I get that. Right. I've been there.

So I'm not, I'm not coming for you. I'm going to eat these guys. Cause they're already like honey glazed. So I'm going with this. That's right.

They're, they're delicious already. They're just waiting for me to eat them. I, man, I'm so glad that you wanted to watch this show. Yeah. It's a really like a I, you know, I think about, you know, we mentioned in the last episode, the Scream TV show.

I didn't dislike the Scream TV show. I don't know if you watched it, but it wasn't terrible. It wasn't it was not in any shape, form or fashion anything to do with the original series, which I appreciated. Like, again, it's probably a good idea when the first one was so important and did things so right that like, where do you go from there except down? So why not just to something very different.

And it, I think for me worked because like you just said, like it, it was committed to doing something else. And I appreciated that about it. It didn't even use the ghost face mask. Like it literally had a different mask. Legally, it couldn't once again.

Yeah, well, that's, I mean, there's also that. But I think, again, that's to its advantage of like that separates you from it as well. Right. If you can't use it, what do you do instead? Like you figure it out.

And they redesigned the mask in a way that was interesting. I, you know, I think that that show is the closest we've gotten up until this point. I mean, I don't know. I mean, Psycho, again, I haven't seen it, so I can't really speak to that. But I also– Psycho just– you mentioned the idea of Ghostface on the back end of things.

Norman Bates is too far removed for him to be mentioned in that conversation. Like he's not, his body counts not that high. Like maybe the kind of granddaddy of it all expanded version of Norman. Sure. But like not the OG version of him.

So I, I just think, you know, in my mind, it's like what we have now is a TV show that is actually like, like we've kind of talked about like giving itself a reason to exist more than just, well, we have the IP, so we're going to do the show. Yeah, I mean, that may have been what brought this into play. But from that point on, even as it was changing hands, even as it's having problems, somebody behind it decided, well, I want to do more with this. You know, there's a lot of options of things we could do, and we could just do run-of-the-mill, here's a bad version of Jason in a TV show instead. But they decided to kind of focus on Pamela and to even then– expand it and do a lot more than just kind of your basic story.

So, yeah, I think it's impressive what they decided to try. And I think for the most part, you know, again, like that's I guess as we kind of, you know, get ready to talk, you know, transition into the later half of this season, because, again, we've only watched the first four episodes. I do worry that the back half will sour what the first half has done, but that's always the fear, right? I mean, yeah, with, with a lot of shows, it's kind of hard to, because you're building up so much stuff in the beginning of anything, even movies sometimes is the same thing. It's like you're structuring it and like all the cool mystery of it is right there.

And then when you have to. Answer the question of the mystery, it just depletes and it kills everything. So yeah, It's a balancing act of like, can what you deliver answering the question of the mystery be as cool as what the mystery itself was when you didn't know anything or just the tantalizing aspect of it when you didn't know the answer. So, yeah, I think that's a fight in anything you put together. There's a definite give and take when it comes to like, well, we have this box of But we can't leave the box closed the entire time.

And we have to give you a little bit out of the box because if we don't give you a little bit out of the box, you won't be interested and you won't come back. So we have to make sure to balance that with giving you more to think about because if you don't have something to think about, you're going to be disinterested because then there will be nothing for you to engage with. So it's a balancing act. And so far, I'm engaged. Because even the cop character has a, well, what was he doing that would cause this guy to be like, don't fucking talk to me anymore.

I'm out of here. There's so much going on with each of the characters that is interesting while not getting in the way of character development. That again, this is a well-written show by someone who, and a writer's room of people that I think understood the assignment, which, you know. That is not the fucking case all the time. It's not a guarantee that that's going to be the case.

I do just remember at one point, the guy in the hospital refers to him as some kind of demon. So maybe we've also got that. They keep dropping hints, right? Maybe it's full on just demon. He's just a devil has come up to earth to start murdering people left and right.

Yeah. I mean, again, the stranger things of it all, the portal in the lake to the other side of who knows what, he disappeared. This could be, yeah. I don't know how to feel about the Jason disappearing, his body disappearing, if they're trying to like, oh, well, he's still alive. I feel like if Jason was still alive, he would have gone back to his mom at some point.

They seem kind of attached to one another. They were joined at the heart. They were forever, apparently. It's through the magic of a mother's love that Jason is able to come back. It's like the Pokemon movie.

Like enough love will bring him back to life. Like, all right. Jason, I choose you. That's right. I'm, you know, I'm so glad that they decided to make Friday the 13th a somewhat serious thing.

Maybe. Oh, maybe. Can we can we give Nightmare on Elm Street a little love for God's sake? You are pushing your luck. I know.

I know. God damn it. That's I feel like that's my own fault, really. But, you know, a girl can dream. So, you know, I just want Freddy Krueger to be, I don't know, not a serious character, but you know what I mean?

Like cool again. Because he used to be really cool. I mean, that's the thing. Like, I don't know. At the end of the day, is cool Freddy that much worse than whatever version of Freddy we got in that 2008 movie?

I don't think so. He wasn't cool. He was creepy, but not the right kind of creepy. No. That's my point.

Again, he got too serious. It wasn't fun anymore. You're like, ugh, this is just kind of gross, and these kids are boring and depressing, and nothing was fun about that movie. That became the problem, I feel like, versus... The first one, even for as horrific as it is, the kids seem like real kids.

Freddy was genuinely creepy. It had so much that it brought to the table, that first movie. Yeah, I mean, again, diminishing as it got sillier, but that first movie is just so damn cool. Well, and again, what's the intention of the filmmaker or the screenwriter or the showrunner? I think in this, it's like to expand on what's been going on before, you know, all the other things up until this point that are Friday the 13th named.

And I think, you know, what has been achieved here is a more kind of interesting look at the world surrounding Jason and everything else less specifically like, well, why is Jason killing all these people? It's like, that's not necessarily the most important question to answer. And I like that this show is kind of acknowledging that and wants to have a different conversation and wants to explore different avenues. And they're not the avenues that might have and would have been expected 10 years ago, 12 years ago, 15 years ago. Because again, even the reboot is still kind of doing the Jason thing.

Yeah. It's very traditional. It mixes up the story a little, but it's still very traditional. If this is Jason is a fucking super soldier from some government experiment, like that is pretty far from anything they've done before. Other than Jason X, which is, again, canon, so.

Which is, and again, the one that everybody thinks is ridiculous. I'm like, well, I mean, yeah, but. But isn't this all ridiculous? They did yeah he's like if that's so is a kid magically disappearing into a lake and then coming back and not being able to die over and over and over again at least freddy krueger tries to explain it's like well he made a. Deal with the dream demons And the dream demons kept him alive because it's kind of like a monster's ink thing where they're like the dream demons are powered off of nightmares apparently.

So Freddy is killing them and giving them nightmares. And so they're enjoying that. Like Freddy, they did that. They did that. We just need an animated version in the Monsters, Inc. style.

Right. And then it's Freddy going to college. Right. I'd watch this. I would watch that too.

But, you know, I think this is kind of giving us what might now be kind of the way people view Jason moving forward, which I think is very funny because there's, up until this point, they've kind of not addressed it. And so if you haven't addressed it up until this point, it's kind of open for interpretation. And if this is the interpretation they're going with, perfect. Perfect. It's definitely an interesting take if that's where they end.

Up with it. Yeah. So on that note, on the next episode, you hear Brian and I on talking about Crystal Lake. We'll be talking about episode five and six of the first and possible only season of this show. So until then, you can find Brian and I at weirdingwaymedia.com where this show is.

Brian's show movie meltdown, my show, the culture cast, which this is on the sub feed of can be found. So go there, do that. And yeah, like rate and review whatever show you are listening to, or all the shows you're listening to on iTunes and then Spotify in that order. That helps us out the most. It helps us engage with the algorithm.

If you want to go to Patreon, patreon.com slash culture cast is where you can do that. But you know, liking and rating and reviewing the show on iTunes and Spotify is much more helpful. So do that. Go there. And yeah, come on back for when we talk about the next two episodes of A24' s Crystal Lake.