Kulture Meltdown: Crystal Lake (2026), Episodes 1–2 — "I don't wanna heal. I wanna find my son."

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. Camp Crystal Lake, oh, we love you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Culture Meltdown. I am one of your hosts, the host of the CultureCast, Chris Stashew, and I'm joined, as always, by the other host of this show. He's the host of Movie Meltdown over at weirdingwaymedia.com, the newest show added to weirdingwaymedia.com, Brian Renfro.

How's it going? Good. Better than people that are chasing after Linda Cardinelli's Pamela Voorhees, or should I say Pamela... twittering what the what the fuck is going on in this show brian because you're confused already good lord yeah on this show brian and i like to talk about things that uh we want to talk about and we have not explored the world of tv uh i have not done it on my feed before but i'm super excited to because tv is something that i watch just about as much as i watch movies i watch it's about 50 50 in a lot of ways i watch a lot of stuff and it's either tv or movies there's Or I guess YouTube videos, but that's kind of its own thing. It's kind of hard to critique. But TV and movies are kind of it.

And so I'm so glad we get to talk about movies most of the time. But I'm even more excited to talk about TV because this is a TV show based on a movie. And it's a prequel TV show to a franchise that has been languishing in... courtroom hell for the last, oh my God, five years now because of the rights being similar to another show that the gentleman who was going to make this show initially did not get to make it. But his other show has also similar courtroom issues with who owns what. We're talking about Crystal Lake, a show that was originally created by Brian Fuller, who created Hannibal, which is a show that I'm talking about in reference to The issues that who owns what came into with this show, because this show is a prequel. to Friday the 13th, the first movie.

That is specific because this is a prequel story about Pamela Voorhees and Jason the Child. Not Jason the Killer. That's a character that's owned by, I guess, the Jason universe people. That's the Jason with a hockey mask. Ladies and gentlemen, if you've seen Scream, the answer to who's the killer in Friday the 13th is Pamela Voorhees, not Jason.

She's killing people because her son drowns at Camp Crystal Lake. The third movie, three and a half, three and a half, right? I mean, it's like halfway through. The third movie. It's middle of the third movies before we get the Jason we all know and I guess love.

I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I was about to say that's that's it. We'll get to that here in a second. But this is a prequel to Pamela Voorhees's story about her son, Jason, drowning in Camp Crystal Lake, which is really just the first movie.

And this is all specific because this show is about Pamela Voorhees, not Jason Voorhees. The killer as we, like you said, all know and love, which is important. Which is kind of when I got interested. Like I heard a while ago, they were toying with the idea of making a prequel-y Crystal Lake kind of a thing. And I was like, ugh, whatever.

Because they always want to come up with all of that. And we can definitely dig into that as we go on. But. then when i found out linda was involved i was like oh now now now we're talking because i'm always kind of on board with her even in the weird stuff she's ended up over the years i'm like she's she's always good in everything even the lesser projects she's the best part of it so i'm like well now at least they're not you know just throwing any random streaming actor in and like gonna make it work like they've bought in they've They brought in somebody who is a name and who is an actor that I actually think is good and respect. So now I'm kind of interested in the whole idea. So that just sort of floated there until I saw the first trailer and went, oh, no, I think we're going to have to talk about this.

This looks like it's going to be good or bad, interesting regardless. And so, yeah, on these next. Four episodes of Culture Meltdown. Brian and I will be talking about the eight episodes of the first season. I don't know if there's going to be a second.

I haven't finished the show yet at this point in time. I've only watched the first four episodes because of the way we're recording things. So I don't know if there's going to be a second season. They haven't said, but we are covering at least this season or first season or only season of Crystal Lake over the next four episodes of Culture Meltdown, which is mine and Brian's crossover that we do on both of our feeds. So that's the way you can listen to us talking about it.

We will be releasing them kind of piecemeal over the next couple of weeks and trying to take advantage of the kind of fervor around the show. There is a little bit of kind of chit chat around the show. I think the show is getting rather well received, which is nice. You mentioned something that or we haven't mentioned something, I guess, that's also important. This is an A24 thing, which I think also for a lot of people that brings in a crowd that may not have been watching Friday the 13th or may have even thought Friday the 13th is kind of dumb, which I feel like is part of maybe, you know, slasher movies get this kind of bad rap.

So I wanted to ask you, Brian, very curious thoughts on Friday the 13th, the franchise, and then more specifically, Friday the 13th, the film, the first one, given that, again, like we've talked about already, this is a prequel thing. I mean, I guess this is a retelling of the first movie. I don't know what this is, but this is not anything to do with pretty much anything past the first movie of the franchise, as it were. But for me, I am assuming, and best I can tell, this is like Noah Hawley's Alien Earth. It's inspired by things we've seen before, but this is its own world timeline, whatever.

We now live in a universe where people care about that kind of shit. This could have existed 20 years ago and it would have just been a thing. And we don't have to answer stupid fucking mythology or myth arcs or what are they changing? And is that okay? Like this is its own fucking thing.

Just like the Fargo TV show is its own fucking thing. And I'm okay with that, but I want to know your kind of thoughts on Friday the 13th completely, I guess. It's also interesting that this is A24 on TV because that's not normally what people know A24 for. So that is an interesting new little area that they're, I don't know how much they've done in the past, but it's definitely not their main area that they're known for. So that's also kind of interesting.

As far as Friday the 13th, again, I've from before I was conscious of it, I've been watching horror movies. So like it just as far back as I can remember, I was watching horror movies. So I grew up watching all of the slashers in general. I saw most of them at home on TV. I was watching stuff on cable.

I probably shouldn't have been. And then renting stuff as the, as I got a little older and was renting my own things. So I watched a It's one of those, I feel like the slashers in particular for horror fans became that thing that we all, it was sort of like collecting baseball cards, you know, not to mix it with sports because that's not normally a geek thing, but it was one of those that like, well, you had to, you had to have that one. Like I had to know what happened in Friday the 13th part seven. So when I get together with the other dorks, we can make these references about that.

Or I know the, the overall story arc with Jason, like, well, what happened in five? Cause it's not like the rest of them. So You almost had to collect them all so that you would get the overall zigs and zags, ups and downs of this crazy story as it told all of the different slashers, all of the reboots and reinventions and all of that stuff. It's like you needed to just sort of watch them all as you went along to sort of create your own personal story. system of horror or your own little world of horror that you knew what you knew about horror and it would all just sort of gel in your brain and you would create you know everything you knew and liked about horror movies so that's where mine all happened it's like I watched all of those over the years I don't think I missed any of them along the way and then, uh, I eventually went back and I've picked up a few here and there, but it's still, it's still probably a lesser of the slashers for me.

No offense. I still like it. It's a solid horror movie. Anytime you see one, even the dumber ones, it's always there to deliver exactly what you want from a Friday the 13th movie. But again, is he the most charismatic slasher out there?

I don't know. I, as previously mentioned on a for another episode. I was a sucker for Michael Myers from the beginning. I think he had such a cool like image and a vibe that he brought to it. Like he's kind of top tier.

I liked Freddie when he started cause he was dark and weird. He got super silly, but like those were probably more of my go-to. And then Jason was always just Jason and like, he just did his Jason thing. So Again, it was not my go-to for slasher, but it was always there and always a solid slasher. So I've watched most of those all the way up through the reboot, which died, which is also, I think, why we had such a long period of them not attempting to do anything else because nobody cared about that reboot movie.

And then it's just sort of satched with them trying to decide what to do with it until this new, let's make a TV show idea came about. I'm super disappointed that that reboot movie never went anywhere. I just like to say that out loud. Yeah, I liked it. I liked it about as much as I liked...

Well, I don't know. I was going to say about as much as I liked the Nightmare on Elm Street one, but I think that the Nightmare on Elm Street one was so. Just exactly what I was expecting it to be. It was just a reboot. Like at least the Friday the 13th one was different.

It did have something more than nothing in terms of originality. I feel like Nightmare also, there was something just off about the whole vibe of it. Like not just that as much as I like that actor, like he's not Robert Englund, so it's hard to do that anyway. But even the kids, it was just a weird vibe. I remember when it came out, we did a whole episode and like, that was my main thing.

It was like, it does like, these are the most not real kids ever. Like they're not real high school kids. And maybe it was saying something about that next generation that was coming along. But I was like, that was my main issue with that attempt at a reboot was like, like in the first Nightmare on Elm Street, like third, high school kids and they're hooking up at her house. And like half of the time, it's like those two trying to get together and hook up.

Like it's the most devoid of sex. And like, even just them, like having contact with each other in that reboot of nightmare on Elm street. Like it's so not like humans function. It's so cold and detached that I feel like that's also part of why that one didn't work. Whereas the Friday the 13th, the characters were OK.

Again, it's not amazing, but like it did a decent job of Friday the 13th. And it did sort of try to put its own spin on it and do sort of a retelling of one in two of the old series crammed into a new sort of doctored up story. but it was fine. I'm, I'm, I would think, you know, there's been way worse slasher movies that got six more sequels after that. So I don't know that it was so bad. It didn't need any more bad sequels, but that's what happened.

I really like Rooney Mara as an actress, but she was beyond miscast in that movie. And it's, it's such a shame because like you, you, like you've already said, like I, I wanted to like that Nightmare on Elm Street movie because Nightmare on Elm Street for me is my franchise. It's like that and Scream and then Hellraiser. Like Friday the 13th for me. I have seen the first one one time.

That's it. I'm probably the best and worst, depending on who you ask, person to watch this show, because I really don't have any brand affiliation with Jason. For me, the Jason movies that I've seen that I've enjoyed, the reboot with Jared Padalecki, because I'm a supernatural guy. The first four seasons of that show were first two or three, I'm trying to remember exactly when the show effectively like felt like the end was, it was like whenever the yellow eyed demon died, I think I was like, it. Was all angels and demons.

It became such a huge part of it. I was like, damn it. I don't even know what's going on anymore. I tuned out early on, I think just for no real reason. I just got sidetracked and busy doing other stuff.

And like after the first season or two, I wasn't keeping up with it anymore, but I would see just enough every once in a while to be like, wait, what are. We doing now? And then by the time it ended during the fucking pandemic, it was on for 14 years, dude. It was, it was insane how long the show was on. It ended, it ended during the pandemic.

And you can tell by the time the show ends, because there's like, whoa, Sam and Dean are talking to each other and they're the only ones. It's like, there's not anyone else within earshot even. And so for me, I, I have like zero brand affiliation for Friday the 13th. So going into this show, like I wasn't going to watch the show, not because I don't like Friday the 13th. I wasn't going to watch the show because Friday the 13th is just not, if it was a Nightmare on Elm Street TV show, I probably wouldn't have watched it either.

Because at this point, like a lot of these legacy brands are just kind of treading water, really. Like, Hellraiser, eh? I haven't seen the one with the female Hellraiser. It doesn't have Doug. I'm not even wasting my time.

I don't know. I've heard it's okay. Fuck, dude. Those movies are... Talk about bad movies.

The first two are good. I like the second one. I like the third one. I haven't watched the third one in a long time. It's so dumb.

It's where they. Start becoming dumb. And then the fourth one is like, it's in space now. And it's like, okay, whatever. Well, it's the fourth one.

They had to go to space. I mean, Leprechaun 4 went to space. They all did. That's the thing. Yeah, fuck it.

I mean, that's the thing. Jason X for me is one of my favorites because it's just completely insane. Yeah, it's like it has the frozen face kill. It has the like Jason. The sleeping bag kill.

Yeah, it has the sleeping bag kill. It has the Jason like, you know, nanobot version where he looks proper fucking horrifying like a goddamn monster. Like, you know, and that's the thing. I also and this is genuinely the most I ever really see Jason. and again, it'll probably make some people who listen to this a little irked, but stay with me here, folks, I promise. Freddy vs.

Jason. Everyone's favorite movie. Yeah, I mean, it's not bad by any stretch of the imagination. That's the one, actually, that's the one I missed out on for years. And just in the last few years, I kept going, wait, I didn't see that, did I?

It's not bad. I finally went back and watched it. It's fine. Again, it's not a great one for either of them. So it's just sort of like, eh.

Yeah, they're both here. Like, it's a cool concept. It's exactly what it needs to be. It's like Alien vs. Predator, you know?

I feel like if Freddy vs. Jason or Alien vs. Predator was done now, I genuinely feel like people would... Do it differently. I feel like 10, 15 years ago, it was just, you have these dipshits smashing action figures together really hard and saying like, what are we doing here?

And it's like, now I think there's some nuance to what people are doing. Which leads me to Crystal Lake. You and I were joking about this couple of things. We're going to talk spoilers. I hope you don't listen to this thinking we're not like, who are you?

If you listen to this and you're like, I'm not going to spoil the show for me. If you are on the fence about this show and you are a fan of things such as Hannibal, such as Dexter, such as you can fucking see where I'm going here with this. Like it, it, the, the, it, are you talking about it? The movie? Well, I mean that if you like it, the movie, I don't think this would be king, but this is also the show runner is the guy who did welcome to dairy.

So yeah. Okay. That's his other most recent thing. So I'm like, if you liked that, which I heard good things, I just hadn't gotten to it yet, but like one of the other people on my show really liked it. So I've, I've heard decent things.

It's much better than, and guess what I rewatched recently? I rewatched those fucking Pennywise movies recently. And man, that second movie is three hours long. That's what I. Was going to say.

I really liked the first movie. And then I saw the second one and went, oh, whoa, what have you guys done? How can you take the same basic idea but mess it up so bad? It's so not. Entertaining like insanely masturbatory like it is and you know what the sad thing is like there's a fun bill hater performance in there and a james ransom performance rest in peace performances but it just doesn't save the movie like jessica chastain and and james mcavoy doing hard r city everybody because i'm from the uk like I watched a couple episodes of Welcome to Derry.

It's interesting. But I think for me, I just kind of don't give a shit about Pennywise and the Pennywise universe. It's just not for me something that resonates with me. I am much more interested in what's going on with Crystal Lake, primarily because A, it is a complete 180 from what I would have expected this thing is going to be in terms of a TV show. And B, because at the end of the day, like you've already said, the guy who's doing the show, regardless of my feelings on it as a movie or TV show, he clearly understands horror, horror movies, horror TV shows, and horror in general.

And you know what? If you get it and you can give it emotional core, which I think the Derry show clearly, I think, has in a lot of ways. from what I could tell. This show also has that, but it's also, and again, of the episodes of the Welcome to Derry show that I watched, there was some really fucked up shit going on in that show. Like in the first episode, the really, yeah, like some real wild shit going on. And man, if we don't say it here right at the beginning, the first episode of this show opens with Linda Cardinelli covered in blood, picking a tooth out of her hand.

Yeah, you know, we've all had those weekends. It's Sunday morning, you wake up like that. I mean, it's like things get out of control. And you've got a tooth in your fucking hand. Sometimes.

Depends on the weekend. Right. Have you seen Hannibal, the TV show? No. I've seen...

I might've missed that last movie too. I've seen the old school movies and then, uh, I liked the idea of Hannibal, but again, I think it just got away from me when it was first on. And then there was, it kept going. I was like, well now I'm so far behind. And then I just haven't gotten into it.

So I've heard nothing but good things about Hannibal. It is so similar to this show in a lot, like the tone and the expectation and the way they're doing things and the the, the storytelling mechanics of like, Oh, we're going to, you know, nine weeks ago or whatever. And it's like, I was hooked from the moment the show opened. Yeah. It's a really good show.

I think you would agree, right? Like I think this is, this I think does for Friday the 13th, what I think a lot of horror franchises do. want which is being taken seriously but not so seriously that we lose sight of how goofy and fucking weird friday the 13th. Is see that's what i was surprised by is like it it started out and it seemed like what i kind of assumed most streaming shows that are kind of digging into a property over several episodes would do and they're telling the story and then we got to that aside from her being covered in blood but then we got to that first like gore scene and i was like oh oh no they're not messing around it's. Like they're really not messing around and. Once we once we got into the next couple of episodes that i was like okay no this is this is made for horror fans and like it's not like the show itself is something that just anybody could pick up streaming oh this looks interesting But when you get to those kills, it's like, no, this is for horror fans.

If you're not a horror fan, you are not going to be OK with the way some of these people are being taken out because it is full on slasher movie, crazy scenarios and over the top gore. Every time somebody even gets injured in these, it's just like, oh, that's not a normal injury. That is a horrible horror movie injury. So that's the part I was happy to see. Well, and like you said, I mean, there is literally from the jump of this first episode, like we see her covered in blood.

And then by the end of it, we understand where the blood came from. And it is like proper gross. Like, yeah, I mean, not like I wasn't like grossed out or anything, obviously. I mean, again, like having seen enough of these things at this point, like it takes a lot. But it is gnarly when she's slashing at a guy's face with a machete or stabbing a guy in the throat.

There is a lot of kind of elevated violence. I'm not saying elevated horror, but there's a lot of really stylistic violence. And they lean into the core. Yeah, it should just be a basic little like, oh, you got a machete to the head and then that's it. But no, it's like she will like, hit them and shave off part of their face as these things happen half the time, which has happened like a couple of times now of like, Oh no, that's, that's, that's a really gory injury now.

And a normal show wouldn't do that. This is specifically made for horror people. And like that, they're not messing around. Like they went straight for the gore because this is Friday the 13th. Why would you not like.

Well, and you know, when I think of Friday the 13th, the original movie, It's not the goriest thing I've ever seen. Definitely not. No, I mean, fucking Nightmare on Elm Street, the first one, is much gorier in a lot of ways. Oh, yeah. It's funny because I think this TV show acknowledges that people getting killed with machetes is pretty gnarly.

And taking a machete to someone's face or head or body is... it's a giant knife fucking sword. And getting to see that guy get his face slashed in that first episode is it's, it's crazy to me. Like I, again, like I'm, I'm, I'm really glad that the show, like you said, it acknowledges the level of violence that is needed to make this show work. Because I feel like if it hadn't really said, you know, like, fuck it, we're going to do violence. We're actually going to do it.

Like the dairy, the welcome to dairy TV show, the like first three episodes that I watched, there are some pretty like gross stuff, like gory, gross stuff going on to the level of those movies. You know, for as much as I don't maybe like that second movie, they're at least still kind of gory. You know, I mean, they do have a level of kind of like gore to them. That's not, it may be the spectacle at that point. It's maybe not stylistically the thing that I'm super in love with, but they're not sanitized by any stretch of the imagination.

And yeah, this show does not hold back, which I appreciate. Like it, it may be, you know, and like, obviously with it being a TV show, it is kind of, you know, the, the thing that we kind of have to talk about immediately is like the pacing of things. Right. I think it's paced rather well by me having watched the first four episodes of the show. Maybe it falls apart in the last four episodes.

And I, you know, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it does, you know, a lot of TV shows, uh, cannot sustain an entire eight hour run. And that's a lot of time. I mean, you know, it's most of the Friday the 13th movies are an hour and a half. You know, they're not, they're not clocking in at two and a half hours. They're not, you know, they're not really like their character dramas when, you know, they're driven by the plot.

Like now they're fucking not like the first couple are not really, you know, they're not the most like in depth films. They're really not. And the thing that this is trying to do is trying to flesh out and give the some understanding to why is Pamela Voorhees like this? Why is Ralph the town weirdo like this? Like what, what is Crystal Lake the lake mean?

How is, you know, what they're clearly wanting to answer is how the fuck can Jason come back? And I don't really know that they're going to. Except that there's also, and that's what I was saying. They're going to answer something, Brian. It's clear that they're going to answer something.

Whether or not it's what the lake is, is beyond me at this point. In that first promo that I saw that made me go, no, I think not only do, am I going to watch this, but we need to talk about it because they did the, they did that line of like, if they knew what you two really are kind of a thing. I was like, Oh, okay. This seems like there's a way bigger thing that. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do fucking stranger thing.

Yeah. It's like, it's going to be thrown into the, the lore of it all now that it's going to change all of that and, And that's the part I'm like, I don't know if that's going to be good or bad. I was like, but it's going to be something. So I kind of want to be there for that run. But yeah, whether or not it really answers the because that's I mean, there is no real answer for it in any of the other stuff.

And he just comes back to life. Well, and they don't even address that. Like he is just sort of the. the scary story in the woods of it all in the beginning there. And like they, they just keep telling those stories. He's the woods boogeyman.

Essentially. He's the camp boogeyman versus the city boogeyman that Michael Myers. So it's like, But basically it never answers because then it's like, well, in the first movie, it's like he's dead, but he's back. Why? I don't know.

Who cares? Come back for the next movie. And then by the time you get to two and three, it's like now he just wanders around and kills people. Why? I don't know.

Yeah. And by the time you get to by like six when he's full on zombie, which basically we've just he's dead and we've used Frankenstein technology to make him rise from the dead. And now he just shuffles around like a zombie. And I'm like, well. okay, is that what he is? They never really just give you an answer the way that you want, but also horror fans aren't that worried about it, and they're just there for him to hack people up.

So you just kind of shrug and be like, yeah, well, that was pretty cool, so I'll be back for the next one. What do people really want is the question, right? Machetes to the head. That's what people want. Well, and that's the thing.

Like, I think that's what people wanted in the eighties. I think now what people want, I think is, is more complex than that. I think people that are watching this at this point, like you can't just at this juncture in time with Friday, the 13th, you cannot just give me a guy hacking people up. Because I've seen it before. Even if you want to say, well, it's not the best practical effects.

Fuck you, Tom Savini. I think the practical effects in the original films are fine. That's not the issue with the original films. The issue with the original films is the stories are completely nonsensical and make no sense. Well, they're minimal at best.

Those first several, it's just, you're out in the woods, people are getting killed. The end. That's all you need. Why don't we give... this character a proper story. And I have no problem with that.

In a lot of ways, there's not a literary equivalent to Jason Voorhees. If you want to say, well, with Hannibal, you just go read the book. Yes, but the Hannibal TV show has given you so much more time with the character than the book ever could have. And that's the thing. This show gives you eight hours of Pamela Voorhees there's like an hour and a half in the movie, you know?

And there's a lot more than you expect. Well, and she's not even the main focus of most of that first movie because we're busy watching kids do dumb kid things and hook up and get killed. And like, so it's only that last finale of like, Hey, it's all about me. Like then we get a little bit of backstory, but it's still a fraction of the running time is spent on Pamela in that first movie. So yeah, this did at least have so much open space to just kind of fill in whatever, like all you have to do is hit these handful of things along the way.

And by the time in the first like 15 minutes, she's wearing the sweater. I'm like, all right, we're there. That's all you had to do. Like you just put her in the sweater and we're, we're 90% of the way there. Just have her machete somebody and we're done.

Like, so I feel like it, it does that stuff well. That it needs to do, but it also gives you a lot more like generalized story that I feel like would be in a lot of other streaming shows at this point. It also is kind of hitting that this is what a streaming show is kind of a mood that I feel like. With the exception of the over-the-top gore, regular people that could care less about Friday the 13th might be on board with this as an interesting, it's a streaming show about a small town kind of a thing. And oh, there was this tragedy.

And if it wasn't so damn gory, I feel like your regular mom from Iowa would sit down and watch this and be fine with it as an interesting story. Is it really that much gorier than the last two seasons of fucking Stranger Things? It's pretty gory. I know, but so is like Stranger Things. There's characters getting like tentacles to the chest.

And in the last season, there's dudes getting like fucking tentacle hands through the backs of their heads. Like, I don't know. Like, you know what? When shows started existing outside of what I would consider to be the network system and you could just watch things on your TV or on your streaming platform or on your smart TV or on your phone. I don't know how you judge any of this shit anymore.

Like the rating systems and everything else are completely fucking arbitrary. They always have been, but now they're even more arbitrary because you could just watch whatever the fuck, wherever the fuck. And the only way to stop anyone from watching it is by safeguards on your own end. Hmm. Kind of like that should have been the fucking thing the whole goddamn time.

Which nobody does, which once again is back to me watching stuff I did not need to be watching. On cable when I was a kid. I go, you're learning then, you know, I feel like John Cusack in high fidelity where it's like, what came first, the music or the misery? Like there's way more depressing music than any movie I've ever seen. Like I cried listening to music more than I have ever cried watching a movie.

And that's the same thing here. Like with, with TV now, like, I don't know if this is a gory TV show or not. I think, I think everything is fair game at this point. Genuinely. Like, I think the only thing you can compare this to are other TV shows that you could watch. and spend eight hours with where it's kind of Stranger Things, it. fucking Stephen King.

Like this is not Friday the 13th. This is so like, that's the thing I appreciate about this show, but I also feel like some people will be turned off by is like, this is not Friday the 13th at all because it's, it's so trying to do something else, which I'm here for. But you and I both know if you are coming to this, expecting what you would be getting from a Friday the 13th movie, you are going to be sorely disappointed. Because, So I feel like especially in the first episode, because we're kind of exposed to it and maybe the most, although we're already getting other snippets of it as we go along. We also have to address the other big thing, which is time spent with old school version of Jason.

Like child jason child jason. So number one and this was my i swear like i feel like i said it out loud sitting in front of the tv i was like oh so he was always like that so i guess i went back since then i'm like yeah the little clips you see of him like jumping up and down in the water about to drown he kind of looked like that too i guess i don't know I really didn't remember. It's been, like I said, a long time. Are you talking about with the hydrocephalus head? Yeah, just the fact that he was a special needs kind of a kid, where I was like, I think in my head, I was just like, I don't know, he was a kid, and then he died.

Oh, yeah, no. By the time he comes back, he looks like this, and that's the way we get him from there on. But I don't think I thought about him as a regular kid beforehand, one way or the other. Yeah. This is like throwing you in the middle of, oh, no, this is this is Jason.

And here's what he was like. So that's that's a lot to kind of process, really. I think what's crazy to me is you have a story about a mom taking care of a special needs child and she was the killer. And that was the problem when it's when it's like, no, like when you watch this show, this show is just like, hey, what? And here's the thing.

Like, again, there's no spoilers here. You are assuming taking spoilers into your own hands by listening to us talk about this. I love that this show has effectively, Linda Cardinelli is just fucking nuts and wants to kill people and is killing people. And that's it. That's it.

Because in these first two episodes, we go from, oh, let's feel bad for her to, holy shit, what the fuck is going on? Like she's a complete, she's a complete psycho. And you know what? Good. Because I did not expect that from this show.

I didn't know what to expect. I didn't even look into the thing that you were talking about. You kept talking about like, oh, you know, like there's this, this weird thing. And I was like, I don't know what it could be, but I had in my mind, it was going to be something like what it ended up, what it's ended up being. And I, like I said, I haven't seen the back end of the season yet.

So maybe they answer it. Maybe they don't, I don't know. But I was not, I was not sure what to expect with this show at all. All I know is all I knew was Linda Cardinelli is in it. And now that it's like, oh yeah.

So she's, just vindictively killing people that are fucking with her and acting like assholes, which is fine, which is very Hannibal, which reminds me again, like Brian Fuller was originally involved with this. So that makes sense. And then you have this kind of like weird tone that reminds me of Coen brothers movies reminds me of that Fargo TV show reminds me of alien earth where it's like, there's like these weird, funny or black darkly comedic moments that don't make sense in other shows but i get what they're doing here because in this it makes sense because of who's creating it and what their intention is but man i i really like this show but i was not expecting to like it this much because i did not know what to expect and i love that we live in the age now of stuff like this where someone can come into a show like this, which is based on something else that is so kind of, I would say like formless, but I feel like you could do this with Texas Chainsaw Massacre too.

Like they are so kind of free form in a way, like the story was not really the important part. Of this or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. You weren't here for the story. You were here for something else. And because that was never the case, now they're, like you said, given so much runway that this is just kind of going to be hopefully its own thing for a while.

And I'm okay with that. Because if you want to do this without Jason, it's essentially Hannibal. Because Hannibal's like, well, we have a Clarice character in there, sort of. But because we can't use the Clarice character, we can never do Silence of the Lambs. Which is weird, right?

Because when people think of Hannibal, it's like part and parcel of Silence of the Lambs. But the thing that's interesting, and I think this show might be doing it as well, it's kind of peeling those things apart, but also seemingly saying like, well, we can do Jason as the killer as well, which is akin to those other movies we'll do it our own way because we can do it without the hockey mask. Well what what seemed dangerous as soon as i saw the fact that we were getting jason and we were getting this version of jason first i was just like oh this could be entry entering into an area that we've previously discussed The are we getting young Anakin Skywalker here? Are we getting the villain where he's like, yippee?

And like, he's just super cute and all shucks and everybody's supposed to like him. But you're like, how the hell are we supposed to like him? Because he grows up and murders people. So we kind of had that in the very specifically this first episode, like that's that's where I was like, oh, OK, is this going to be a problem? And then like by the time, like almost immediately he gets killed and most of the time we're seeing him in flashbacks.

So it's like. Not really, because I think there wasn't any of that to the mythology of Jason. I feel like Jason was just Jason. He's this wordless dude that just murders people. And again, he's almost supernatural in his own weird way.

So you didn't have any personality to him. But by giving him so much personality and making him likable in the beginning... it almost gives you reason to be on Pamela's side. Like when she starts to lose it and like be pissed at everybody for not caring about the fact that this kid's gone, like you totally are like, well, yeah, I mean, I'd feel the same way. Like, you know, people weren't taking care of her kid. And even after he died, nobody seems to care.

Nobody cares that the body never showed up. Nobody's, you know, taking into account her feelings. She's just she's dealing with so much grief at this point that when you see it sort of manifest in this anger like it does you're like yeah i get it like so i think it actually like makes it seem more balanced like if he was just like a horrible little brat like he'd be like what is she so pissed about but because they made him like a real person and like he actually is a good kid that like you would otherwise totally be on his side. But now that we're seeing all of his existence, like through flashbacks and filtered through her processing, all of the things that have gone wrong since he's died, that like you're, you're getting this window into why she's like this.

And yes, it goes off the rails pretty quick where she's just like, or I'll just start killing people now. But I do think it's all based in that it's all, coming from just dealing with the grief of losing this kid and the kid that was her whole life. And now that she doesn't have that, she's also kind of like, well, I don't have anything to worry about. Like I don't have anything to lose. I'm a lunch lady for God's sakes.

Like the only thing I had was my kid that's gone. So I kind of have freedom to do whatever I want with my life. And I've decided what I want to do is kill people that are pissing me off so when it takes that road i'm like yeah all right i get that i feel like we're all kind of one step away from that at this point anyway. Which is so again like it's so interesting to me that that is the road they're going with because again like you've said there is no real direction here inherently like there's not an inherent direction with friday the 13th because again most people don't even remember that she was the killer I mean, again, yeah. Horror fan.

Drew Barrymore, we're talking to you. Yeah, exactly. I mean, like, I'm not saying like real horror fans, but like the lay person when they think of Friday the 13th. It's Jason. It's always Jason.

Yeah, exactly. And I think what's so interesting about this show is, like you said, it's like, okay, so I have no love for Friday the 13th as a franchise. So going into this, I don't care if they do anything with the characters that is not sacrosanct or sacrily oh my god there's a backstory now like whatever like cool you want to explain why jason can come back to life or he has some magical powers or he you know he's like i don't feel any pain it's like what the fuck are we doing here show like what is this again like i don't know what they're doing and they're kind of just like not playing their hand in these, in these first two episodes. But what's interesting is what we do get in these first two episodes is like you said, a reason as to why Pamela Voorhees is killing people.

At least this version of her is, which again, if you want to look at it as, Oh, this is a prequel to the movies. Cool. But it's, it's more about what is the story they're telling here? Like this story, Because again, the story of Friday the 13th, there isn't really much. So this is just like, we're going to riff on the notes of Pamela Voorhees.

But what it is, is kind of up to us to determine. Us, the creators of the show. And like you said, when it was clear to me the direction that they're kind of taking this, I'm on board with it. Do whatever. Go to a self-help convention place. thing and and interact with that person like you i would love to see what a psycho sociopathic killer would do to a person like that who she's like you know don't fuck around in our heads like you don't know what you're messing with right like i want you know what like i vibe with that like that's great or like you know the scene at the beginning or at the end of the first episode where she's trying to figure out how to like tape a dead body's head closed, and then she wraps it in a plastic bag, and then she tapes it, like, I'm here for this insanity.

Because I, like, again, like, what I have expectation-wise for Friday the 13th is nothing. So all this is is just, like, gravy to me, you know what I mean? Like, I'm just enjoying this show for this weird serial killer getting her revenge on the people who wronged her while trying to hide in broad daylight. and maybe, you know, like continue to do what she's doing with impunity. Like I'm here for it. Like, cause again, I had no expectations going into this.

I am the best and worst person because again, like I said, best because I have no expectation, but worst because I don't really, so many people are like, Oh man, you know, like this is, you know, the Holy Bible. And it's like, not really, you know, it's like Lord of the, like maybe Lord of the Rings or something like that, where we have, so much like, why are you doing your own thing when there's so much that's already there? There's a lot of texts there. Right. Friday the 13th doesn't have that.

So it's like, there's not like a million bajillion things to run from. Like you can reference things, but even your references don't have to like be one for one, you know, if they want to do some sort of like sleeping bag adjacent thing, or if they do some sleeping bag adjacent thing in this and be like, Oh, that's funny. That's clever that you're referencing it, but like, it doesn't have to be like the exact same setup. Hasta la vista, baby. Like, okay, we get it.

Like you said it in Terminator Schwarzenegger. Like you say it in everything now. It's that it's like, you can do that without it being like fucking the one-to-one. I don't know. It's really, it's an interesting way of doing this.

That is so, you know, to speak to the AVP and Freddie versus Jason of it all. Like they had to try and explain in those movies how the fuck those two characters were getting together. And it's like, why does it even matter? Like, Like it's, it's just the characters that you want to see together. It's not the whole idea of the universes together.

Like, I just want to see the characters just do that. And this is that same thing. Like Pamela Voorhees, larger universe doesn't matter. Like there's not this like whole thing we have to hue to. It's like, we're going to have her as the center point, her and Jason and build everything off from there.

And you know what? I'm, I'm here for it. Genuinely. Like it's a very exciting show. to be able to watch, to not have a fucking clue where they're going with any of this. Yeah, that's the thing.

There's really only just an end point for her, I guess. Maybe. And even that, they could kind of change the rules. That might piss people off a little bit. What is the end point of a show that's doing its own thing?

Yeah, I was like, and we've had like a few, because of the other things you've mentioned that it's reminding me of, one of the ones that it definitely felt a lot of the, which again, I didn't get around to, but I heard such good things on Bates Motel. And that's almost that exact same thing of like, well, here's a killer. Their whole identity is that from from the pop culture end of it is like, this is what this guy does. He just he's a slasher. He's the original slasher.

But then what was he like when he was younger? And what was his mom like? So it depends. digs into that a lot but that's also one of the few things I heard about Bates Motel they also do their own thing so much so that when they catch up with the psycho of it all they change the game and the main things going on in psycho don't happen in the series and they just do their own thing and continue the story and and do like a new, there's a fork in the road at that point. And their story just takes a different road and starts doing something entirely different, but still in that same universe, still with these same characters, but they just picked a different choice. And this character did something different from before.

And now it's led to a whole new story. So I'm like, truthfully, if this gets enough of, you know, response that they like it enough, hell, they could do that with this. And like, all of a sudden now Pamela doesn't die in the first movie that, so they could like, do a whole different thing if they want. I don't know if that would piss off fans, but that's the other thing I was thinking. It's also not that beholden to lore the way that some of the other franchise stuff is like this one.

Again, it was all just spooky stories in the woods was the whole basis of that idea. And eventually we got to some of the specifics of what happens in that first movie. But Even the Pamela stuff in the first movie is so just sort of there, like I said, in the background. So it's not really hardcore retelling of the stuff. It's expanding of it all.

And again, another thing it reminded me of that we haven't mentioned, I got a very Dexter vibe because she is so... she's definitely as time goes on becoming a serial killer, but also like you, you realize what she's doing is wrong, but you're also kind of on her side almost the whole time. Like even when she starts doing stuff, that's not okay anymore. Like at first it's just sort of self-defense, but then like later it's like, no, now she's just pissed off. So I don't know. I got that vibe where it's like, well, as time goes on, Dexter himself becomes the full on villain. but like you're still sort of on his side because this is his show and you're watching it with him and you're invested in his character and you're seeing it from his perspective.

And even when he's doing things that are wrong, you're like, but you make up your excuses. I'm already doing that with Pamela. Like I'm already halfway in going, well, yeah, this is a little excessive, but you know, she had to do this because of this. So like you immediately just are on her side. You feel bad for her in the scenario she's in and you kind of already want the best for her.

You know, it's like, we haven't even gotten into the, the building. Like in this first couple of episodes here, we just get the hints of like, I think this sheriff's got a thing for her. And then pretty quickly you're like, Oh, vice versa as well. So as that starts to develop, I'm also like, yeah, I kind of want this for her. Like, I don't, I don't want her to just hack him up because she's a crazy person.

Like I want her to have a functional life and like, it sucks that her kid's gone, but like, she doesn't have to throw everything away and get herself killed in the process because she's grieving so that she could also choose to have a functional life again. So it's interesting that they're kind of playing with that, especially in these first two episodes of like just sort of easing their way into what could potentially be a relationship again, which is not what I expected either, really. Well, and again, I didn't know what to expect, but I do now feel like, like you've said, the idea of they can kind of do whatever. Yep. And that is the most exciting thing here.

I think about that Exorcist TV show, which I actually really liked. And I don't know if you saw it, but the first season is like a... A surprise sequel to the first movie. You don't realize up until, I want to say maybe like halfway through the first season, it's like, oh yeah, this is actually like a sequel to the first movie. And I'm mentioning it now because it's been so long and there's been so many fucking sequels and we've seen now a Mike Flanagan trailer for a Mike Flanagan movie that's coming out.

It's a sequel to... It is a sequel to something. Maybe, I don't know, possibly even exorcist three. Um, that's what I've heard. And it sounds, it sounds kind of interesting actually.

Right? Like, okay, cool. Again, like it feels like this where it's like, okay, like I have a, I have a starting point that you recognize or some things that you are familiar with, but I am not feeling as beholden as everybody else's felt before. to the quote, mythology, unquote. You know, when Noah Hawley's Alien Earth came out, it was like, oh, where is this in the timeline? It's like, it's Stone fucking timeline.

And you know what? There's something so freeing about that because it's like, well, how, how does this relate to Ripley? It's like, it doesn't because there's no universe where this could have happened and people didn't know about the aliens. So it's very clearly its own thing, which is good because you know what? Who gives a fucking shit anymore about where the timelines are?

Like, I feel like this show is a tacit rejection of so much of what we have seen in the last 20 years of, of filmmaking and tv shows where it's like we have to do a thing that's tied to this thing just like the people expect us to and it's like nope and friday the 13th is like the most visible of things like i mean like you said with psycho or with hannibal like friday the 13th is like one of the big ones it is i mean like in terms of money making visibility like i don't know if there's a bigger franchise you could have done for horror other than maybe nightmare on elm street like or Scream, but they've already done a Scream TV show. Yeah, and Nightmare on Elm Street's so far removed. Again, it's been so long even since the attempt at a reboot.

I don't know that any of the newer generations have the reverence for Nightmare on Elm Street that you did the first time. I definitely did, but I think about several generations of kids since then that at best they might have watched them at home. And being like, oh, all right, that was fine. So like, I don't think Nightmare carries the power unless it's older fans most of the time and a handful of like hardcore kids that are still hanging out at like horror conventions and stuff. But I feel like regular fans and even regular horror fans of today probably don't care as much about Freddy as the fans used to.

No, I mean, I think it's Art the Clown and Annabelle and all these other things. And, you know, like, Art the Clown has mythology, but it's his own mythology. It's not beholden to anything. Like, it's inspired by other stuff, sure. But it's not beholden to a goddamn thing.

I mean, what's funny is Friday the 13th is, like, the worst best case example of how do we handle who owns what? Because that's, I mean, like, the Victor Miller of it all, right? I mean, this... I own Friday the 13th, the computer game or the game. And you know what?

Like one year, one year into the game existing, it no longer existed because the rights for that game were given to the people and they didn't actually have them. And then they had to take it down. It's like, Jesus Christ, like fucking figure this out and stop, stop roping innocent gamers into this bullshit. You know what I mean? Stop roping a game company into this bullshit.

Cause it was like a Kickstarter or something. Even I was like, oh my God, like people gave these people money, but it's like. It's a whole thing. Like Friday the 13th is the worst one, but it's finally been answered. And like, you know what?

If, if they have their own Jason universe stupidity going on to in tandem to this, I'm much more interested in what this is doing then. Oh, just more Jason. Like, okay. I've seen that before. I have, I mean, I've seen this in other things, but I've never seen this before. like this.

And that is what's most exciting. Like I, you know, I don't know if we're going to see a killer Jason in this show and I don't know if I need to. That's the thing. I feel like they have that option. Like as it continues on, if they want to work him in and he starts doing his own, which we may get to that later, but like you start to see things that are like, okay, the Jason of it all is still involved and, But it's still focusing primarily on Pamela.

So it's like we could work them both in and have two different murdering plot lines going on at the same time. We could wrap up her version and pass the torch and like it could continue on and do a whole season of just Jason out in the woods murdering people. I don't know that that's going to be interesting comparatively, but there's definitely a lot of different ways they could play it. But I mean, there's already... Enough of a tease of Jason in the woods that like we definitely can work him in as part of the killing aspect of it.

But I think what's been so interesting in the opening of the show is that that doesn't have to be there. That what we're doing with the Pamela plotline is already so interesting on its own that I'm good with her. If we didn't even get to Jason this early on, if we waited until episode eight and they were like, oh, look, there's that kid in the woods. I would be fine with that because she's done so much in the first two episodes here that it's really– promising that like there's already so much for her to do as a character and like there's so much of her life going on there's a lot more aspects to her than you would expect in something that's just like ah we're gonna do a cheesy backstory about this serial killer and it's like well it could have just been that but i feel like they did at least give enough character to her and then bring in a real actress that can kind of dig into this and like you feel like you're you're seeing things that you wouldn't expect to see in a show like this.

Yeah. I, and you know, you said it best, like Linda Cardinale is the best part of this show. She's so good. I mean, I mean the show itself in terms of like the sensibilities that it has, I love that the second episode of this show to, to talk a little bit about the second episode. Now I, I would think like, I love that it opens with the beginning of the, or the end of the first movie.

Like it opens with the end of the Friday the 13th. And it's like the people that are making this show understand what the people who are watching the show expect from the show, but not that it's like, I don't need this to be like, I don't know. I just don't need you to do Friday the 13th, the movie, the show. Well, I feel like they at least are working in like I feel like that's the sense of humor of it all is like it is working in like dorky little jokes just for the fans, because I don't think I even caught it. the first time but like when they're doing the stupid announcements did you hear that part of it when they're like on the speaker and at the founders day somebody hotter and it's like In 1779, Lieutenant Hodder McCain.

Yeah, I did. I did catch that because it was on the subtitles. And I was like, there's only one person whose name is associated with this, whose name is that. So there's there's stuff like that. And then I just saw one today.

Like if you're watching in the background, there's the girl wearing the Mickey Mouse shirt. Which is in the first movie. Like, so they're working in these references to the other ones that are like so minor that like, unless you're a big horror dork, you don't even pick up on them. But for the hardcore fans, it's like you've got those little touches, and then when you get to the gore aspect of it, I'm like, no, it's full-on horror movie there. So it's delivering the horror stuff and the stuff specifically for the horror fans, but it's also shoving all that in the middle of a drama that's going on that could be a very different show for a different audience if that's how they wanted to spin it.

But they're still like they've found a way to kind of like straddle that line. And it's like it's doing both at the same time and I think doing a pretty good job of it so far. I feel like and again, like, you know, I feel like the choices that they're making are I don't know. You know, we talk about like the choices you make are so important, but the choices you don't make are important as well. And the ones that they're not making here are smart, not rushing into like, well, people want, you know, it's like that whole fucking Prometheus thing where it's like, well, nobody showed up because they didn't say it was an alien movie.

It's like, that's not why they didn't show up. They didn't show up because people just didn't get that movie. Like I just, they didn't get it. Like there was the expectation wasn't there. The audience was, the audience found that movie eventually.

I think that movie fucking Prometheus is better than, than Romulus. Covenant is better than Romulus. Romulus is pretty much just alien. Like, it even has Ian Holm in it. Like, prove me wrong.

I'm sorry. Like, I really like, again, like to go back to all of this, like Romulus takes place before this. And who cares? Just like Prometheus and covenant, like the same thing. It's like, who fucking cares?

I just want to know how the story ends. You know what I mean? Like just tell an interesting story. And I don't really care where this takes place in anything. As long as the timeline, as long as the story is important, the timeline is unimportant.

And with this show, like, It's clear to me that the people that are making the show, I think, understand that as well. It's less about like, oh, well, at this point in this, this had happened. It's like, no, we're going to do whatever. You know, at the beginning of the second episode, all of a sudden we have the end of the first movie. Like shot for shot, like even has a little thing in the water and then he jumps out of the water.

Like all of that is coming from the end of the first movie. They're just doing stylistically fun things. Like, which is much more interesting than like, well, you got to make sure this ties into this. Like that's so just boring. And like tedious is the word I would use.

And frankly, like uninteresting, like who cares that much? It's like, you know, the Han Solo movie, like how'd you get that scar on your chin? Oh, it's solo. Cause you're by yourself. Let me tell you about it.

Yeah. Like two hours. Here we go. Who cares? I don't know.

Like, The way of telling prequel stories has changed so much in the last 20 years, and I'm so glad. Well, I think that's something that's different about this too, and different from what I might have expected, but I think is also what's making it move along as well as it does, and something very different from your, specifically your old school slashers. Because usually you had... a bunch of dumb kids and they were like obnoxious and you just wanted them to die. Whereas as good as, as Linda is like, we've also introduced several other characters specifically, like grace is like a really interesting character. Like even from the very beginning of that first episode, I'm like, Oh look, Jason's got a friend.

Like that's the, you wouldn't. Like a genuine child friend, which again, not part of anything because there's so little of any of this. Yeah. Yeah. So like introducing, yeah, introducing her as being this like so pure that she sees past everything else.

Like she doesn't judge him for anything except who he is and he's a good kid. And like, that's, that's a nice little bond that we get in the very beginning. And then those flashbacks. So we're, we're building a lot with her. So that, uh, that Gwendolyn girl that's her, I, I was like, has she been another thing?

Cause she's really good at this. I was surprised for as young as she is. Like the performance is really good. But then also you add in the Claudette of it all, who is a little closer to your girls. Like she's who would, you know, in a lot of the other words, be the final girl.

And I guess kind of in this series, she is because we sort of know where things are going for Claudette in the grand picture again, unless they totally change things. But you're also not making her like the boyfriend's just an idiot. Like the boyfriend's like every dumb character in all of the slasher movies, right? But there's a little more to Claudette. And I'm already like, well, I kind of want to see what's going on here.

And we're investing a little more time in this character than you normally would with any group of dumb teenagers in the slashers. So I think adding these characters in along the way, in addition to the sheriff being really interesting too, I think immersing you in this little town and then adding in all these characters that actually do have interesting side stories and what little backstory we get of them along the way is like kind of fascinating. So I, to me, that's kind of like taking it up a couple of notches from even your normal standard streaming show. No, I completely agree. You know, you, you, you put it pretty aptly.

Like there's, there's a lot of threads that the film, the, the films don't establish because the films are interested in something else that the show is so much more interested in, which is, Giving us characters to care about. And there was, you know, it's funny, there was like so little of that in the original movies. I mean, again, like to the point where, you know, Siskel and Ebert and so many other people were derivative of those movies because, and I'm not saying... unjustifiably, I get it, but you know, like, oh, they're just killing people. There can't be any art to this. Like, oh my God, fine.

Like you sound as kind of fuddy, you sound as fuddy-duddy as you're trying to avoid, you know? And that's the thing, like this show, I think is much more interested in, like you said, telling an interesting story, having these characters, having interesting characters. Look, I have zero awareness as to where the Claudette character goes, right? Because, again, I've seen the first movie one time. And I'm not going to go watch the first movie until I'm done watching the first eight.

Episodes of the show. And if they even go down that road, like we said, they can change things up as much as they want in this kind of scenario. So we really don't know for sure where it's going. Because we know that Pamela Voorhees didn't feed people to bears in the movie. Yeah. i like that part oh yeah her feet my girlfriend and i were like what the fuck is oh bears got.

It bears well and then i was like i've seen a lot of people try to cover up the fact that oops i killed somebody before but like i don't think i've seen that version of it i was like this far in to come up with a new interesting way to get rid of your body in a way that sort of seems like maybe it was legit it's like ah just smear some tuna on and put some money in their hair and it's like yeah it's fine bears will eat them it's okay and within the story she's right i don't know if it works for real we'll have to try it one of these days but right within the story it worked and i was like that's a cool and interesting way to deal with this problem that well now i've got two dead bodies what do i do with them and that that was a way to deal with it.

And I, I was going to ask you, because again, having only watched the first episode, the first four episodes, how do you feel about, again, to go to the, what they're doing differently of it all? How do you feel about them being like, there's a thing here? Like there's more going on here. I don't know what it is. And maybe they answer it in the back half of the season.

They probably answer it to some respect and probably open up more doors, but. What is your take on kind of this? Because this feels a little like stranger thingsy to me. That's where I feel like it is going. I think if they just left it at that, that's also the way all horror movies in the woods are, you know, it's just like, Oh, there's something in these woods.

And the guy at the gas station is going to tell you, you stay out of those woods because there's dark things there and you'll end up dead. And like, that's, I think there's an essence of that that's in all of these movies in the woods. You know, it's like, there's always something disturbing in the woods and, I mean, we built the entirety of the Evil Deads. It's just like, go out in the woods and something horrible is going to take you over and swoop through the woods and murder all your friends. So like, again, like anything in the woods has its own creepy vibe to it.

And I think it could have just been that. But they are adding this other, that thing I said that was sort of piquing my interest from the beginning there, where they're just like, oh, there's something else going on. And we keep getting these company names. So the fact that we're getting... the business card with a name on it, and then we keep flashing on that door in the, in the garage. what I'm assuming is some sort of government building. So like now it is, now it's like, is this a government experiment that's gone horribly wrong?

And now that's why she had to run away from them. So there's definitely like that backstory there that like, I feel like the more we dig into that, the more stranger things it's probably going to get. So I don't know that I have to have that. If it's done right, it could be interesting. If it's done badly, it could just be like, oh, this whole thing's silly.

I don't know. Right now, we're still kind of at that point where we don't really know. But they're definitely hinting at something that seems like it's heading more towards a... It's some bigger thing going on that somebody is orchestrating. It's not just spooky spirits in the woods, which also could just be all it is.

But the way that they're building this up and the specifics that they're giving us make me think it's somebody is behind it all and somebody is... done some sort of weird experiments to Jason. And that's why he looked like that. And that's also probably why he has some sort of weird powers that kept him from dying and keep him from dying as time goes on. So much so that by space, they're trying to clone him because he's indestructible. So to jump ahead to silly.

So, I mean, yeah, I feel like that's to some extent where they're going. It's it's kind of the how far into that are they going to go? How specific are they going to answer that question in these eight episodes is where we're trying to find out. So how much of it have you watched the first just the first four? I just yeah, I just went halfway in.

So I don't know where we're going on this season either. OK, I didn't want to have it like. kind of spoil my ability to talk about the show. That's kind of why I stopped. Okay. Yeah.

We, we, okay. You know, we're, we're professionals at this folks where we're figuring this out on air, but we, we think, and we think in group group think parallel thought, I just didn't want to ruin it for myself because I feel like if I knew where this was going, I would be unable to talk about it right now. Even though it dropped completely immediately like this, you could watch this in eight fucking hours just sitting there like you could. People did, I'm sure. But I, I cannot do that.

The most I can do, even with this, like my girlfriend and I watched the first episode two episodes and then we watched two more like i could not sit and watch four episodes of this in one sitting it's four hours that's a lot of. Time that's a lot of shows again that's why i am so far behind on shows even stuff i want to see a lot of times it's just so much at once that i just i put it off the only way you. Can watch like two hours of a show in a sitting like a. Serious show. Yeah.

Like normally I'm lucky if I get through more than one and that's, that's usually if, if I'm keeping up with a show as they're coming out, that's my best bet. Like if I know there's one that I like and I'm like, Oh, Wednesdays, they dropped the new episode and I watch it that Wednesday, I will keep on top of it as it goes. it's the ones that drop all eight at one time. I'm not saying anything about this show, but I'm just like, I think that's a weird choice. I feel like. You're, you're of the mindset that the, the, the, the kind of staggered release schedule benefits you because you don't have, it's like the, it's like the, this costs a dollar.

It is like, this is less than a cup of coffee a day type thing. You're, you're not invest. I get it. Like it makes sense. It's old school.

I mean, it's like, that's how I. Watched TV my entire life. Like there was no other option. you're not the only one it was only the box set era that changed everything because that you had no option for the rest of your life you'd catch things on reruns they were out of order like none of it even made sense watching it back in the old days and it was the box set was the thing that turned the tide for geeks out there that made it then like in a sitting kind of thing we're gonna marathon through you know 12 episodes of this this weekend we're having a party or whatever dumb thing people started doing and And then once box sets started going to rental, then it was like, oh, I can go watch a whole season of this show that everybody's talking about.

We normalized it. It really got normalized. That changed it to the point, yeah, that by the time streaming came along, that's how everybody did it. And I was like, okay, but I got other stuff to do, man. I can't just sit there for 16 hours.

Binge, you can't. Yeah, I'm not binge watching. I'm tired of sitting there. I'm not a binge-watching guy either. I'm really not.

I like having stuff on in the background when I'm doing something else. My girlfriend and I play a lot of board games or we'll be doing stuff in the living room at my house. I'll be playing video games and she'll be doing something else and we'll have something on my iPad. But I'm not just sitting and watching this. Like, holy shit.

Like, I could not do that. I could not sit and just watch a show for eight hours and do nothing else. That feels like, and I get, like, I have lamented the staggered release schedule of things. Like, why not just release the damn thing all at once? But I understand where you're coming from.

Like, it makes sense to me. Because, like, again, the way you engaged with TV before was, I have an hour a week I can watch it. And it's an hour a week that I can engage with it. And that's it. I get it.

It's bite size. It's manageable. You know, it's like it's something you can do. But I know, again, I'm not I'm not blind to it. Like I one of the people on my show, like they hate when they do stuff like that.

And to the point, we'll wait until an entire season is over. And just not listen to everybody running their mouth on the internet and just ignore everybody. And then when it's done, we'll sit down and watch it all because they hate the idea of not being able to go to the next episode, not being able to finish it if they want to finish it. And I'm like, I get it. I am that way.

I don't have that, but I get it. I am that way with stuff. Like, I won't watch something until the show's over for the most part. Unless someone else wants to talk about it, like Mike and I doing Rings of Power or you and I doing this, like... I don't really, for the most part, watch shows until they're over because I just want to be able to watch, like you said, I just want to be able to have the option to watch the whole show and not have to wait.

Because I know that there's not any consistency with fucking waiting a la Stranger Things. I like the, again, it's so old school network TV, but I also like that having a week of of processing it yourself. So like you, there is no option to watch the next one. You gotta wait till next week when the new one comes out, but it also gives you a week to sort of mull over it all and be like, well, wait, so what was going on? So like you're, you're being extra geeky for a week long in between anyway, but even more so once the fan bases got out there and now it gives like a week of time in between each episode. for all the geeks to get together, you know, mostly on the internet, but occasionally even people you run into in the real world and you'll sit there and like, you'll, you'll go down a rabbit hole.

That's like, well, what about this? Do you think this is going to happen? Like, so again, being a geek, like it just feeds that so much, having time to spread it out and having time to dig into the theories and the crazy like thoughts that you have when you're waiting for the next thing to happen. that you don't get those when you binge it. If you sit down for eight hours straight, you don't get to wonder what's going to happen on episode six because you already know. You sat and watched it all.

So it kind of kills that aspect that is kind of one of my favorite parts of being involved in a series is sort of the pacing it out and the figuring out what's going on as you go along versus just having it all thrown at you at once. You're advocating for a. Way of enjoying tv that is an old school way of doing it but i don't think it definitely is i don't think it's a bad thing i think it's just i think in the in the day and age of people engaging with things transactionally they want to be able to watch everything all at once and i'm even i'm guilty of that i'm acknowledging it but at the same time it makes it easier for me who someone who does something like that i do which is talking about recent stuff but also being able to enjoy the things that I want to enjoy, because when I do have time, I do want to just watch as much as I can.

And I tend to have something on at all times. Well, yeah, this is, brother, this is the fucking water cooler, dog. I don't know what you view this as, but this is, you know, this is the water cooler with the parasocial relationship, you know, at the end of the day. And that's, again, that's what led me to the internet world. It's like, I barely had that in the real world growing up.

I was just watching it and wanting to have these conversations. And now that I can, I'm just like, finally, the internet is here and dorks can get together and talk and piss each other off probably because that's what people do on the internet. But eventually you'll find other people that have like similar thoughts. And there's a couple of shows that I do that with now. And I'm like, I enjoy that aspect of it.

And the fan base that it builds is like, I think that's why you get weird fan bases around shows even more than movies a lot of times that are so hardcore is because it creates that and it also gives you a ton more material to dig into. But it also– that longer period of immersing yourself into it builds these fandoms and this relationship with other people as you converse about it all out there. that like if it's a movie you know you watch it and that weekend you talk about the last movie you saw and that's cool but then like a lot of people move on versus like those those fan bases for shows that are around for years and years i mean you look at something like supernatural or like those people are crazy like the the hardcore fan base that came from that because It was a weekly show and it had things that went on for years at a time.

There were story arcs that went on forever. And like it allowed people to just dig into that week in and week out and find each other at conventions and on the Internet. And like it just built this crazy fan base that like, I don't know, I still respond to that even for shows that I'm not into. I get it. I see other people being geeks about it.

And I'm like, all right, I see what you're doing there. I respect you and your geekdom. It does take away from the kind of communal aspect of things. But I also think that the communal aspect of things is now just Twitter anyways. You know, it's just, it's gone into the kind of internet sphere of things.

And, you know, there are people who do have conversations on Reddit in a civil fashion, but there are people that just sit and fucking scream at each other about, oh, traffic thunder or blazing saddles. That's most of it. Yeah. Yeah. Cancel it, whatever.

Like, and you know, the loudest assholes are the loudest assholes. You know, the people that are like me and you, I'm not saying we're quiet. I mean, we sit and talk about movies on the internet and post it on the internet. So I'm not going to pretend like we don't, but I just am so sick of fandom culture of a certain kind. Because for me, fandom culture is why we've gotten to the point where Star Wars doesn't matter anymore and Star Trek doesn't matter anymore and nothing matters anymore.

And I really, like, I have things that I love but I don't even care about Like, the mythology, like, you know, there's a new Mummy film coming out next year, right? Mummy 4, Book of the Dead is the title of the film, apparently. I could care less if they go and retcon the shit out of everything. Who fucking cares? Like, it's not the fucking gospel by any stretch of the imagination.

It's a movie. And the mythology of it is just, like, an interesting part that the people who are making the movie thought a little further through than they necessarily felt like they had to. That's kind of what it boils down to, because for the most part, whatever's on the screen needs to be entertaining. The mythology and all the other things are things that they can choose to involve themselves in, but don't necessarily have to. And with this show, they've kind of like, they're treading that, that line, right?

It's like the center line of, well, okay, we have mythology that we can work with and is, is good enough. kind of fertile ground but it hasn't been tainted by being over trod over and over again because again it it has existed without mythology really for so long that because there's not mythology that they have to hew to they can kind of do whatever the fuck they want which is exciting which is why we have pamela vorhees at a self-help convention talking to a clearly also psychotic self-help guy who by the end of it gets, I don't know what the fuck does this guy hit him with? He hits him with, I don't know, but he takes off half of his face in the process. Which is fucking insane. Because again, like the violence in this show is so amped up that anytime someone is getting hit with things or punched or kicked, it's like, Oh my God, like they're like half dead.

Um, By the time this is done. And it's again, like I'm here for it. Like, I like that the show has a hyper stylized level of violence. That's not trying to be like super serious. Like it lives within this weird.

And I'm not going to say like pastiche of a 24, but like, you know what I mean? Like it is. A24-ified Friday the 13th, which the expectation is met, and I think that they knew what they were doing when they started this show. I think they knew what people were going to expect from it, and I think it's nailing it. I think they just know this is the world they've created.

These characters, as much as they're doing more with them, and they're fleshing out a lot more of all of these different characters, but when it comes time... To have even a basic thing like some guy comes and hits you upside the head, then it shifts into horror mode and it's like, oh no, but we're still Friday the 13th. Like we still exist in the same universe where all these other horrible things happen. So when it's time for violence... It's time for violence.

And so that's what they delivered. Like, I feel like that's the again, the little like nod to the horror geeks. It is like, no, no, you're here. You're on the right show. Don't worry.

Like we're we're we're diving into character a little more than you're used to, maybe. But give it a minute and something bloody is going to happen. So don't worry about it. And yeah, I, you know, I, I believe it's a, it looks like a baseball bat or a two by four. I don't know what he hits him with, but he fucks this guy up and it's gross.

It's gross. It's like genuinely gnarly. His like teeth are fucked up and he looks, you know what? And what's funny is he looks like Jason. Well, there you go.

Right. I don't know. Like he looks, I don't know. Like, again, like so much of this show, I feel like for me is just like, we know why you're here. And if you're really here and you're a fan of the movies, we can kind of riff in fun and interesting ways.

Look, Linda Cardinelli is doing her own thing. I, you know, again, I, I don't really know what the original movies Pamela Voorhees was like, because I haven't seen it recently. Like I said, I'm going to watch it when we're done with this series. So if she's just like Linda Cardinelli, cool. If Linda Cardinelli is doing her own thing, great.

I'm here for this again. What I'm assuming is a sociopath of some kind. Like what is your read on her character? Well, that's, I mean, that's the thing. We got right up to what is maybe the most interesting part of that episode is like, yeah, that guy comes up and hits him with whatever he hits him with. seconds before she was about to bash his head in with a bowling ball and in public mind you like it's not like she was taking him out in the woods to go murder him she was going to walk up in front of a group of people and smash him in the face with a bowling ball i'm assuming so like she is definitely justifiably so question.

Mark I mean, that guy is an asshole. So like, but I mean, like he confronted her in front. I mean, like she gets embarrassed by him in front of a group of people. It's the Hannibal of it all. Like, and again, like to go back to the Hannibal TV show, which speaks to something that the movies never really get to, which is like Hannibal hates rude people.

That's like his thing. He's like, I hate rude people. He's like, you know, I think they talk about it in one of I don't remember. Is it one of the movies? I know it's the show where they're like this, this guy who's playing his clarinet is playing it out of tune in the orchestra.

And therefore Hannibal, who has a great sense of hearing is annoyed by it. And so he kills him like, like just because of that. And it's like, okay, like Pamela Voorhees seems like that. It's like, you know what? Like, I'm not sure she's killed anyone in this show yet that I'm not like, yeah.

Kind of had it coming. That's what I said. It's the Dexter of it all. Yeah, no, it is. They suck, so who cares?

I like him better than them, so go ahead and murder him, Dexter. I don't care. And for me, you know, and I think this cuts to, you know, to go back to the kind of a conversation we were having before we started recording, the marvel of it all. I don't need to see like, Oh, her secret identity gets exposed. Like I don't need her to get caught.

I don't give a shit. Like I, if someone gets too close, I want her to kill him and just move on. Like I'm, I'm past the Peter Parker gets revealed as Spider-Man story arc that apparently we were all obsessed with in the first or second versions of these movies that were coming out. Like, batman spider-man like they all had major plot lines in those movies about him keeping his secret identity they sat on those for so long that it's like it became a joke and now i'm as same with pamela vorhees or the dexter of it all like dexter has since come back as a tv show and everybody knows that he was the bay harper butcher Well, he just keeps killing them all. Right.

It's like, you know what? They all find out each season. And then that season he usually takes out everybody he knows and he moves on to the next season and finds new people to figure it out. And then he has to kill them too. Because them finding out is fucking unimportant at this point.

And that's my point with like this show, I think is coming from such an interesting place where it's like, I don't, I don't understand what Pamela Voorhees was fucking doing with that bowling ball. And we never get to see what it is, but she was going to hit that guy in broad daylight. That was such a weird character beat. What was her plan? Like, obviously she didn't have a full plan, but like, okay, so you go over there, you bash that guy in the face with a bowling ball notion of a plan.

That's what we go. And it's like, well, do you just stop at that point and be like, ha, you learned your lesson. Did you just sort of put them in your place and go back to your car and drive home? or what like do you wait around to get arrested like what where does that go if she follows through without that guy like beating her to the punch pun intended i suppose but so i don't know like that was one of the more interesting things in that whole run but definitely that episode of just like Where was this going and what was she going to do after that? Because normally, again, like with the guys earlier, it's like, well, then, okay, now you've got bodies, but then the logical part of your brain kicks in You're like, okay, now how do I cover this up?

How do I get rid of the bodies? How do I continue on with my life and not go down for this? You can't do that when you're standing in front of a whole group of people and you just murder this guy. So, yeah. Was she going to stop herself?

Was she going to be able to get everyone else to rally around her? Be like, yeah, this guy was an asshole. We taught him a lesson. Like, I don't I don't know. But that was a really interesting moment.

Well, and like you said, it's because we don't see where it goes. We don't know. And again, maybe they probably address it in the back half of the season. I'm assuming something. I mean, it keeps going clearly like. what we kind of have at the end of this episode is again, like it's an interesting place to leave all of this.

It's, you know, we all of a sudden realize, oh yeah, by the way, we are going to clearly have some kind of coming to the head of her and the cop because the cop finds the scissors and we know whose scissors those are. Those are her scissors in the guy's leg. The guy from the lab, apparently from Hawkins lab, uh, I mean, again, I don't know what else you fucking call them. Like we've seen this before. It's funny that like, like there's a riff within a riff on a thing that we've like, again, like if you were of a watcher of TV in the last 10 years, how could you not have seen stranger things?

I mean, at this point, I feel like everybody, I don't know if they all finished it, but they certainly all started it at one point. Right. But you know, right. You know what I mean? Like, that's my point.

Like it's literally at this point, if you've seen that first season, they're riffing on that first season here. Yeah. Like even a little bit. And I, again, like I'm, I'm so glad that Friday the 13th, a movie about a mother whose child dies because of negligence is being played this time is like, fuck these people. She's justified in her killing.

Like, yeah. And you know what? And we haven't really talked about, we talked about a little bit. Jason is adorable. Yeah.

I mean, he's a likable kid. He's a sympathetic character. And you're like, you know what? If he's killing people, it, uh, it kind of feels like he has a reason to be doing it. It's not senseless killing this time.

It's justified. And you know what? You don't have to, again, you don't have to have Jason killing eight people for it to be entertaining. You can have them kill four people or 10 by the end of the run of the first season and And each one is interesting and exciting. It doesn't have to be this like fucking hour and a half, 12 person bloodbath.

Like that's not required anymore. Like you, you can do more than that. I mean, Jesus Christ, I, you know, you've never seen Terrifier, but to speak to the Terrifier two of it all, there is a disembowelment scene in that film that goes on for five minutes. If that's what you need to see in your life, go watch it there. Like these are using violence and gore in a way that is like, it serves the narrative.

And it like, it amplifies and it's like, holy shit. Like, you know, there's a scene in, when we talk about our, in the next two kind of tranches of episodes, the episode three and four, there's some violence in there that I'm like, good Lord in heaven show. This is wild. I've not seen this in like shows don't go this far, but it serves the narrative. Like, it serves the plot.

It shows, like, what a complete psychopath Pamela Voorhees is. But again, justified. Like, I'm not sure she's a psychopath. She's just, like, she's just a pissed off mom. And you side with her.

You see not just the negligence part of it, but, like, the way everybody treats her and the way that, I mean, she... She definitely is a little off the deep end at the beginning, but almost like the crazier she is, the more rational she seems like she's not just like standing on the dot crying anymore. Like by the time she like exercises those demons, so to speak, by murdering those first two guys, she like starts to feel better. And you see like that's when she becomes a little more normal. And that's when you also see she starts to toy with the idea of having a relationship again.

She starts like deciding like, can I, can I move on with my life? And can I find this, you know, self-help version and realize this guy's an idiot. He doesn't know what he's talking about, but maybe I know a way to take care of this. And maybe I know a way to get better. And maybe it comes with murdering people.

It seems to for her, but she seems way more functional and together the further she gets into this level of craziness. Well, and I think it's interesting, you know, we, we haven't really talked about the setting of the show, but the show is set in the seventies, which is like the height of paranoia filmmaking. And like, this is like leaning into it. Yeah. This is leaning into it.

Like there's like some weird, like, again, we haven't talked about the Argonaut of it all, but there is a Argonaut door that again, stranger things, adjacent stranger things, immediate, like, That's the paranoia conspiracy theory. There's more going on here of it all. And again, it works. Cause this is a seventies thing. Like I'm here for it.

The original movie was set in what? 54 that this part of it was set in 54. The Jason dies of it all like this. They've, they've really sped up the timeline. Right.

Because like in the original movie, she's an old woman and Jason died when she was younger here. It's, she's younger and Jason died and we're seeing like immediately all of like the retribution that we would have seen before coming to pass now. And it's immediate. Like, we don't have to wait for Mrs. Voorhees to get old.

Yeah, it works better, too, because you would be. Well, not just because, yes, we want to see young ish Linda versus the old lady in the movie. No offense to her. But like that, aside from that, it also like logically like you would be dealing with that that, you know, year after that it happens, not like. 20 years down the line when you're like, just now, you know what?

I'm upset about my son dying. So it makes a lot more sense as just like a story arc to be like, yeah, she's immediately, you know, in shock and spends, you know, eight or nine months standing on the dock, like still waiting for him to come up out of the water. And then after that, when she's sort of, you know, they first think they find a body is like when she thinks she has to deal with the And that's when everything starts to kind of go crazy and she starts killing people, coincidentally. But like I said, not so coincidentally. I feel like that's also part of it.

It's a cathartic thing. She gets better the more she's killing people. And I don't know. I am so engaged with that narrative, with that idea, with what the show is doing. Because it's not...

I haven't seen this before. It is shades of other things, but I actually think like this makes Dexter look really like one dimensional. This is how you do a show where it's like you have a killer. who is hiding in plain sight and doing all sorts of nasty wild shit. But you know what? It's all seemingly justified because all these people are, you know, again, like we're going to talk about in the next episode, like this child is being abused by her mother.

Possibly this guy is being a dick towards her. Like in the first episode, she's being threatened physically. So like it's, you know, justified in terms of like self-defense and, Second episode, like you said, I don't know what the fuck she was going to do. I don't think she would have killed him, but she probably would have done as much as the other guy did. It would have looked as bad, yeah.

His face would have been smashed in. Whacked him one good, but I don't think, I guess I don't think that doing the story the way that we've seen before has a lot of legs the way that this does. And this is a much more difficult way of doing things. It's a much more complicated narrative that they're telling. But I think it works better.

I think it yields a more interesting story. And, you know, like you said, we have this character of Grace who is seemingly like dealing with sexual frustration and issues of attraction. And I'm not sure what yet. But again, like it seems like a really weird thought experiment on the sexual issues of Grace. the movies because again like that's the whole you know that's where the have sex and die of the horror franchise of horror tropes come from is friday the 13th yeah so i mean we're seeing they're kind of musing on it really it's interesting claudette is already there like she is the teenager but we're also watching her like try to slow down the boyfriend as they go on so it's like you're you're seeing somebody who's already at.

That point and how they're dealing with it And you see Grace is just sort of coming into that point of like, she's the blossoming young girl that doesn't know what the hell to do because nobody knows what the hell to do when they hit teenage-dom. So like, she doesn't even fully understand what's going on with her yet, but it's starting to sink in that there's something going on. And like, you know, so by the time we move ahead and start getting into the hippies of it all, that's also very 70s coded that what better way to Have your sectional awakening with a bunch of hippies. Well, and that's, you know, again, like it's it's weird that it's weird that the show's tackling it, but not really. It's just weird because like it seems so. well thought out in a way that I don't really think of when I think of Friday the 13th.

You know, I didn't talk about my exposure to Friday the 13th in the movies, really. Like I outside of the first one, I've seen. Which is the one with Corey Feldman where he fights Jason? Is that seven or eight? See, this is why you got to collect them all.

Once you get them all, you can go, ah, and then this one and this one. So when you get to four and Corey Feldman becomes the Jason of it all, he has to make it look like Jason to, I guess, confuse Jason and then try to kill Jason. But then he sort of becomes Jason, but then not really. Kind of like Whatchamajig from Halloween 2? Yeah.

Or Halloween 1, I guess. What was that, 5, the one that she's in? If you haven't seen the rest of them, then they sort of loop back around and undo that immediately, too, just like they do in Halloween 4. So they come up with that teaser ending, and then the next time around you see him, they're like, oh, no, we were just kidding. Not really.

He's still fighting Jason. It's fine. This is how you do a retelling of the prequel story of a character, right? Halloween, Rob Zombie. I did want to bring up the fact it is interesting that we're sort of inadvertently ended up on this when it's very similar beats overall to what we just discussed on your show a couple of weeks back when we did the Halloween one and two of it all with Rob Zombie's influence.

And yeah, I mean, that's kind of that same idea of like, here's somebody who grows up to be a killer. Why did they end up like that? And like, the thing is, I don't know that anybody was asking that about Michael. Now, the thing is, nobody was asking about Jason either. But Jason gives you so much freedom that like, I kind of like that all we had was the story about the mom, really.

And that was so minimal in the first movie that like, this just gives you free reign to do whatever you want with the mom, a whole lot of room to go wherever you want with Jason. So like this just leaves so many options because it wasn't so tied down. Whereas, I don't know, like everything that happened with the Michael Myers of it all, as we've discussed at great length, go back a few episodes. Yeah, I feel like it didn't feel necessary in that story. Whereas this, like, I don't know that it's necessary, but I welcome it.

Because they're doing such a good job of it and they're just being interesting with the way they're tackling everything. I think in terms of what I needed, I don't even like you said, I don't even think I need Jason to be a killer in this show. I think if you want to have like the spirit of Jason Voorhees because he died and like the thing that's not been answered is the lake of it all. And what does the lake mean? And, you know, to speak to because, again, if you're listening to this, you probably want us to talk a little bit about the mythology.

But, you know, like to speak to the lake of it all. What happens when you die in Camp Crystal Lake's Crystal Lake has never been really explained in terms of a satisfying explanation. But it would seem, based on Crazy Ralph, who is in the movies, based on Crazy Ralph, there is something in the lake that is causing something to be going on outside of the lake that would maybe... yield a Jason or Jason-esque thing to happen, and that being a killer in the woods, question mark? So, that I think is very interesting, because for me, that's kind of like the J.J. Abrams mystery box of it all.

There's the Argonaut, sure, I don't know where that's going. I can make assumptions, but I don't think there's any point. I think the thing that for me is more interesting is what does Camp Crystal Lake mean? And like, that's a question that's never really been answered. Well, and what is the purpose behind it?

Assuming someone is coming up with this, is it a plan? Is it a government plan? Is it like where we eventually end up? Is it just like military? Like, is it just trying to create a Jason super soldier out of it that can't be killed when you send him into battle?

I don't know. Again, that seems a lot. Would that be dissatisfying to you if that was the case? I mean, it's certainly diving into the silly end of the lake, but it certainly would give them a reason. I mean, it is what we normally want to do is just turn everything into a weapon and make money off of it.

So it doesn't seem disingenuous to the world we live in, either in the 80s or now, really. So. I don't know. Again, if that's where we go, it's fine. If they handle it well, I think I would be okay with it.

If they just want to do spookiness in the woods, I'm fine with that too. I already feel like that's such a big part of what goes on in most horror movies set in the woods. But in particular, the crystal lake of it all is like, whatever's going on in the woods has always just been like, bring kids out here, let them have sex and do drugs. And then I'm going to murder them. And like, if you want to just leave it as minimal as that, I'm fine with that too.

I, I, yeah, I don't, I don't. Need Jason to show up in this show. Like I don't need a Jason with a mask. I would be perfectly fine with the spirit of Jason because he died in the lake being reincarnated. And that being a thing or, or any of that being a thing in terms of any bodies that have gone into the lake or, you know, whatever, like I'm, I'm game for that.

Like, I don't need it to be like, well, we're following, you know, here comes Tommy. And like, I don't give a shit. I don't think it's needed. I don't think it's necessary. And I think anybody who that's the expectation for the show, I think the show is doing a very good job at, at not leaning into that, which is important because if you're just, if you're just giving the fans what they want, that is a very small group of people that are not going to exist 20 years from now.

And if you want this franchise to exist, you need to do something different with it. And I think that this is kind of checking a lot of those boxes, for me anyways, of this is a thing that's very different. It looks like something you've seen before, but it is still kind of doing its own thing in a lot of ways, inspired by a lot of the things that have come out since this came out. I mean, again, we've talked about Dexter and all these other things that have existed since the initial run of these movies. And, you know, I'm glad that this show is not existing in a vacuum.

And it's very smart that it's not. And it's, again, like, leaning into, inspired by, drawing inspiration from other things that, again, live in the same world. Dexter... you know, I mean, again, breaking bad Sopranos, like any show that had a bad guy as the main character is inspired by Sopranos essentially, because it's the show that was like, yeah, you can have a villain as your main character and then kill people. And every single show that has a character like Pamela Voorhees or Dexter or what the fuck is his name in breaking bad? Oh God, I'm going to get roasted for that one.

But his character. I don't watch shows. Whatever the fuck. They all exist. Dwight or White.

Walter White. Walter White. There you go. I dug it out of there and I didn't even watch that one. All of those characters exist because of something like Tony Soprano's.

This character included. And because, you know, I don't know if we would have a show with Pamela Voorhees killing people and us going, yeah. It's justified. And it takes a lot to get to this point, but I'm glad we're living at this juncture in time because... I don't think Friday the 13th has much of a future without people doing something with it that's completely removed from the Jason Voorhees of it all.

What's funny is we keep saying, like, I don't know if Jason could be in this. In the opening credits, they do have Sean Cunningham's company mentioned as well. So theoretically, Jason could show up in this show, I guess, with the mask on, because Horror Incorporated is the other rights holders to the Jason Voorhees character, and they are mentioned. So I guess they could have Jason in this show as we know him, but I don't think it's as of right now, like the show is doing such a good job at doing its own thing. I'm like, we would kind of be gilding the lily in a way.

Or cutting the legs out from under her. Like she's doing such a good job carrying the show by herself that like, if you bring him in too soon, like you, you take away from all the fun stuff she's doing, you know, it's like, so I, I, I feel like, again, if you want to tease that towards the end of the run, that's fine. Or even if they think they can spill over into a second season. But if you're going to keep her as the focus of it, I'm fine with not really getting to him as much. I feel like they're going to because I feel like they think they need to.

I feel like story-wise, they think that's what everybody's here for. I don't agree. I think Pamela's doing a great job at what she's doing. But. I think the instinct would be, but we've got to bring Jason in.

And I know, I don't know if they'd thrown that out when it was the original showrunner he specifically said he wanted to have the different eras of jason represented in the show as it went along which i'm assuming we're getting baghead jason at some point so i thought we were gonna see that but that also possibly changed hands with the showrunners. So maybe they threw that out. Maybe we won't get that much. I assume there's no more Brian Fuller in the show. Like, you know, I think the things that made the show Brian Fuller are there, but I don't know how much like it exists outside of the like Pamela Voorhees set up.

I feel like they're doing a lot of like weird non Brian Fuller things that seem very like maybe it's maybe it's, you know, welcome to Derry adjacent, but it definitely feels very its own thing in a very good way. Yeah. I'm glad. I'm glad that this show is good because we as horror fans need wins that are not, I don't know, like elevated horror. And I hate that term, but like, cause that's a dumb fucking term.

Like horror has always been elevated. Like it's, it's whatever, like horror has been able to talk about whatever the hell it wanted always. It's all how you look at it. You know, it's like the, again, by the time the geeks like us came along, like we took the dumbest movies from the eighties and then we attached all this meaning and we came up with some sort of overarching plot that or overarching theme that runs through all the horror movies. So it's like, it's as elevated as you want to make it.

If you want to sit around talking about it for hours on end, which obviously we do, like you can make it as elevated as you want, no matter how dumb the premise is. It's how much you want to put into it. They just started jamming that right up front when they hit certain movies later. But yeah, I think it's all elevated if you want to dig into it. Well, and, and that's why I hate that term.

You know, it's like this, the, we, it's like, it's like, you know, well now using all white meat chicken, like what the fuck were you using before? You don't want to know. Right. Exactly. And it's like, I, I don't, I don't know how to tell people this, but like good horror movies were coming out long before hereditary came out long before like, Oh, the Babadook, which God damn, I hate that movie.

Like there are just some movies where I'm like, when I think about that movie, I'm just like the discourse around that movie is obnoxious. And that's not to speak to the movie itself, which is features like a screaming child for an hour and a half. There's a lot of kid to get over. There's a lot of kid in that movie. Congratulations.

I, I, I think this is how you do this, right? Which is address a franchise that has existed for a very long time in a new way that, gives the people that are fans something that they've maybe never that they've seen before in a new way and people that have never seen this something interesting and exciting that feels fresh but is recognizable because again like part of this you have to like put some people at ease right like you have to put the people that are new people coming into this at ease like i would suggest this this show to my parents my parents like stranger things a fair amount I think my folks would like the show. Is it a little on the gory side? Sure. But do I think that like most people that have seen the full run of stranger things could watch this and be like, I'm kind of on board with this.

Yeah. I think that this is kind of a more adjacent to a mainstream thing than Friday the 13th has been since the first movie came out. Yeah. I mean, that's what I was saying. I feel like the story is engaging enough that it would work for anybody that just, you know, turns on whatever new streaming show is on. it's only when it gets to the gory parts that it like sets it at a different place in time.

And like, you have to be okay with that. But as long as you're okay with that, like, I feel like the story would welcome in people that aren't into Friday the 13th in particular, but I think even just not even into horror that much. I think the story is interesting enough. It could bring in some new viewers. Well, and let's not, you know, kind of gloss over the fact that we kind of haven't talked about it.

I wouldn't say that any of the violence as it's presented is deathly serious. It's rather comedic. Like there's a lot of like, darkly comedic moments a bag again my bag full of blood filling up on a man's head is very funny uh again her dragging these dead bodies around covered in you know bear attractant is very funny that's the the scene where the guy gets i mean i don't know how funny a guy getting whacked in the faces but this kind of like help me help me and she's like you shouldn't have fucked with me like that is comedic like they're the the violence in the show is not being presented in a It's being presented in the same way Terrifier presents it, where it's like it's serious, but it's also like the show understands that there's some comedy to the grotesque, and it's leaning into it.

It's just sort of winking at the audience. It's like, yeah, we know what you like. We know what we are, essentially. We're built from Friday the 13th, so we're going to deliver that when need be. But we're doing some other things along the way as well.

But don't worry, we didn't forget about it. We're just going to sprinkle it in every now and then. which works for me. Like I, I, I don't need it to be, I don't need it to be all the time. I do think that getting some non jokey violence works. And I think, you know, we, we do see a little bit of that, maybe not in this episode, but definitely kind of as, as the show goes on, but I'm, I'm a huge fan of being kind of aware of why people are here.

It's smart. And I think that smart film writing and TV writing and screenwriting in general is in short supply. And, you know, if, if you are able to get me on board with your show, two episodes in, yeah, you know, Brad, Caleb Kane is doing a pretty good job. Like he's, he's batting two for two. Cause that dairy show is getting like, you know, another season at least.

And probably, you know, I think it's like a four, four season run. So, you know, Good for him. I don't know, like we've said, we've kind of steeled ourselves at watching this all in one sitting, so I don't know where this goes, if this does get anything more, but I like that this show is giving me something as a, a fan of Friday the 13th, as much as I can be in some respects, but not like a super fan. I, I've seen enough of the movies. I've watched the camp crystal Lake diaries or memories, whatever it is that Corey Feldman narrated, like five hour long documentary.

I've seen it a handful of times, you know, like I'm a fan enough and I know I recognize the beats, but it's doing enough different and fun that I'm like, yeah, I'm here for it. And I, I'm excited to see where it goes. I hope it doesn't overstay its welcome. But that's kind of my hope for any TV show or movies. Like, I don't need another 15 minutes sometimes.

Sometimes you're good. Yeah, that's I've been OK with the pacing. Like, I feel like that's part of the problem with a lot of seasons of stuff. It's like sometimes they have a. it's become an ongoing battle for me is like watching movies and deciding, should this be a series or watching series and being like, would this have been a good two hour movie, but doesn't have what it needs for eight hours worth of episodes. So it's like, that's become an ongoing battle post streaming services.

You know, it's like once something could have been a limited run series, now you have to decide what does the story need to be. So I think this is, really has kind of worked pretty well. I don't feel like it's just dragging it out. I've seen people that have issues with the, like, it's telling backstory that you didn't need. I'm like, well, I don't feel like it is.

It's barely getting to the backstory. It's just building this, this town up and giving you more of these characters and giving you more of why they do what they do. But I don't feel like it's, it's dragging anything out. I feel like it's actually pretty well paced as far as what we've seen so far. If you came into this show with expectations and it's not meeting your expectations, that's on you.

Like, you're like, oh, I didn't, it's not the backstory I needed. Like, good for you. I don't know. Like, I don't know what to say at this point. Like, what do you say to that?

Like, uh, it's not what I wanted. All right. Yeah. It's probably, it's probably not like, Normally they're complaining because it's not like the thing before, but I'm like, I can say, well, you can go watch the movie, but the movie also. Doesn't have this backstory.

So I don't know what to tell you. You're not going to get it anywhere else. Write your own fan fiction, I guess. Yeah, exactly. Like, what do you fucking want?

Like, if this isn't what you want, go write your own thing then. I think that's the answer. Yeah, that's the thing. Like, this doesn't have a Lord of the Rings story. Or Harry Potter.

Or all this fucking hundreds of pages of bullshit. This has, again, enough, but not so much where it falls apart under the weight of its own premise. This has so much room to do its own thing. And Linda Cardinelli and I think the rest of the cast and the people working on this show understand that and are approaching the show appropriately. She is showing up just... she's showing up in just the right direction where she's believable, sympathetic, but also, you know, like you don't want to fucking piss her off and she'll fucking kill you.

If you do like believable, it works. And I, I didn't have on my 2026 bingo card that one of the best things I would have watched would have been Linda Cardinale as Pamela Voorhees. But yet here I am. And yes, it is a Friday, the 13th thing, but it being Friday, the 13th is honestly just a, an, inroad for a lot of people that wouldn't watch it otherwise. Well again it feels almost another everything ties to all the other things out there it feels almost very Castle Rock because it's taking a story in a small town of a kind of thing that you think you're familiar with and just sort of doing its own thing with it And I'm like, yeah, this seems like that town isn't too far away from everything horrible that goes on in Stephen King world.

So it's also kind of along that line. And you know what? I'm, you know, if they want to do a nightmare on home street show like this, cool. I'm here for it. Like, I, I don't, I don't know if, if like you said, if movies and TV shows, like, I don't know what justifies something being a movie or something being a TV show anymore.

I think by watching those things, it's how we understand what it needs to be. Like, I think it's up to the creators to make that decision and then see if they can actually nail it. And sometimes I've seen something it's like, Oh yeah, this is like, yeah, obviously movie. Perfect. Sometimes I watch it and like, this should have been a TV show.

Like, and, and it's not. And because it's not, I think we're missing out on, on something. And that's, you know, I don't know if I ever need another Friday, the 13th movie. If this is what you're going to do with the property, because this is much more interesting. And if you want to do Friday, the 13th movie, maybe give the people what they want and make it a big, dumb slasher and make it, you know, terrifier adjacent with some fun mythology, but let it do its own thing too.

You don't have to tie into each other. Like let this be whatever the hell it wants to be. It's clearly wanting to be its own thing. Anyways. Good.

It works for me. So on the next episode of Culture Meltdown, we'll be taking a look at the third and fourth episodes of the first season and possibly only season of Crystal Lake. So until then, Brian, where can people find you and the things that you work on? Well, there's this new fancy website I feel like you should check out is what I'm thinking. Where do they need to go to find this website?

Weirdingwaymedia.com. That's where. Mike White, our kind of cornerstone of the network. He is the host of The Projection Booth. He has spent the last couple weeks working on a website and it looks fantastic.

Head on over there. We no longer are beholden to Spreaker and the amount of money that they take from us that we never see. We're no longer beholden to them other than they give us hosting spots. And that's it. But we no longer have to have you go to their website to listen to our show.

You can come to our website and listen to our show right there and engage with us directly. And like Brian said, weirdingwaymedia.com is where you can go to hear everything that we work on. Brian's show, Movie Meltdown, my show, The Culture Cast, this show, Culture Meltdown, The Projection Booth, and so much more. So head on over there to weirdingwaymedia.com, like, rate, and review any show that you listen to on iTunes, then Spotify, in that order. And yeah, you know, come on back for the next episode where we're talking about the third and fourth episodes of Peacock TV slash A24' s Crystal Lake.