EPISODE 442: THE RULE OF THREE THREES
Threepio Tears, Squid Showers and Paul Rudd Loving Us Every Way That We Want
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Hello and welcome back! It’s going to be a little scattered today, as I’m on the road and a bit spun out. (It’s always astonishing to go from Los Angeles, a driving city, to someplace where you can do some serious walking. I relish the chance (plus: hey, trees!), but then by day three or four my legs are like heavy slabs of meat.
Which come to think of it I guess they actually are. But these feel heavier. Bodies are weird you guys.)
Chapter One: A Long Time Ago THERE WERE HORSES IN SPACE
Man, it has been a Star Wars week. We’re at T-Minus 53 days, and the Star Wars gods were kind enough to give us not only one last trailer, but a C-3PO gut punch, which I didn’t think was possible. Threepio is like that one friend you’ve had since college that you all just put up with because you all went to school together and he ended up somehow marrying someone else in your friend group, but despite that he has never stopped being annoying. He’s the Bert to R2’s Ernie, basically. (You know when someone shows up at their house they do not stick around if Ernie is not home.)
And now what, Threepio’s sacrificing himself in some way, maybe agreeing to have his mind wiped? Are you going to make us reevaluate the know-it-all fuss bucket who won’t stop telling us the odds, J.J. Abrams? Really?
(Also, I love the fact that the trailer for the first of the sequels had Han telling Chewie they were home, and the trailer for the last has Threepio saying goodbye. As always, Star Wars delights in structural echoes and parallels.)
The trailer also has space horses (!), a tear-inducing score and this (trigger warning, prepare for feels):
I mean, I don’t know who read my Christmas list but thank you in advance. Each of the 30 times I have watched that trailer I can literally feel Leia’s hug.
You’ll definitely be seeing more of Star Wars from me over the next 53 days (spoiler). I just rewatched Force Awakens and Last Jedi in fact, and there is so much to say…
For now, three quick takes:
1) Having just rewatched the Last Jedi, I just think it’s really important that we’re all clear on one key point: The real villain of the film, nay, the series, is Poe Dameron. He wipes out the Resistance’s forces at the start of the film and is then responsible for the deaths of almost all the survivors at the end. Don’t let that hair fool you, Poe Dameron is bad news. Sith by proxy.
2) The Force Awakens actually has more in common with Jedi than you realize. The whole idea of the Force as this thing we can all tap into in different ways, we don’t need no stinkin’ Jedi, actually begins in Awakens, right at the start, with both Max Von Sydow, who plays some Force-friendly guy that we still don’t know the story on, and stormtrooper Finn, who almost seems like he’s the Jedi-in-waiting, breaking through his mind-wipe-training-program, getting noticed by Kylo Ren, and later fighting with Luke’s lightsaber not once, but twice, the last time against Ren himself.
Awakens also introduces Maz Kanata, another friend of the Force of some unexplained kind who is the keeper of Luke’s lightsaber and the one to give the big Yoda “The Force binds us” speech to Rey. Yep, Rey’s entrance into this whole new world comes not from a Jedi, but a fabulous non-Jedi woman.
3) Just before he disappears, Luke tells Ben, “Strike me down in anger and I’ll always be with you, just like your father”. Then he says: “See ya around, kid” — which is something Han repeatedly says to Luke in the initial trilogy. Brilliant.
Suffice to say, deep on my wish list is not just Force Ghost Luke, but Force Ghost Han. (Hopefully Force Ghost Leia in some way, too…)
And speaking of visions of ghosts:
CHAPTER TWO: WE JUST NEED AN AIMEE MANN SONG
Did you catch Watchmen? It took me a couple days, but I got there. The show is still kind of a mystery at this point. Definitely a very different take on that world than the comic books/movie offered.
Three Favorite Parts:
1) Magnolia, but with Cephaolopods: Halfway through Watchmen we get a random downpour of baby squids. Yep. Precipitation in the form of Proto-calamari. Which happens almost without comment.
It reminded me of a something TV creator Mike Schur came up with in building The Good Place: Every episode should take advantage of your premise. If you’re going to set your show in the afterlife, every episode you should have crazy things happen like people flying or demons exploding into goo. And if you’re going to set your show in the Watchmen-verse, you should have weird stuff like footage of Doctor Manhattan building dust castles on Mars and rainstorms of baby squids.
2) Tulsa, 1921: Watchmen begins with the white people of Tulsa slaughtering the black people. It’s a horrifying sequence, seemingly way over the top – the white people even have planes.
Since Watchmen is set in a fiction version of our own universe – Nixon won the Vietnam War, Vietnam is the 51st state -- I assumed series creator Damon Lindelof was seeding some new fictional history to fit where he wants the show to go.
Turns out, the Tulsa massacre really happened, plane and everything. Hundreds of black people were murdered.
I have no idea if Watchmen is going to work as a series, but to begin with a real event that is so awful the audience is going to assume it’s part of the fiction and then force it to contend with the fact that it really happened is just all kinds of Wow.
3) Regina King Regina King Regina King: As the chief badass of Tulsa’s masked police, Regina King is amazing. Which is no surprise, because Regina King is always amazing. Again, I don’t know if this show will hold together, but the world is better with Regina King doing Regina King things in it.
(Also with Don Johnson singing “People Will Say We’re in Love” and Jeremy Irons typing while naked. There’s some crazy stuff going on in this show, people!)
CHAPTER THREE: PAUL RUDD WILL DO ANYTHING FOR YOU, AMERICA
Paul Rudd has a new TV series out, Living with Yourself. It has a pretty high concept – Depressed Paul Rudd goes to a spa known to help people find their best selves. Then he wakes up buried in a plastic bag in the woods; and when he gets home there’s another, Better Paul Rudd living his life. (Stop me if you’ve lived this.)
The show makes really fun, wild choices. Every episode that I’ve seen, in fact, has a big oh-where-is-this-going-to-go moment that I didn’t expect.
And so has Paul Rudd’s talk show circuit to sell the series.
1) Rudd shows a clip on Conan: If you know Rudd’s many prior appearances on Conan, you will not be disappointed. If you don’t know them, it might even be better.
2) Three Minutes of Paul Rudd Sleeping: A bit from James Corden’s show which really does live up to its name, and which I loved for the way it went from funny to mellow to funny again. Another great example of the gold to be found in sticking with a bit.
3) Howard Stern Magic Karaoke Hour: Yes there is something weirder than watching Paul Rudd sleep, and it is asking Paul Rudd to sing Wichita Lineman and then listen to Howard Stern sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
(It’s been a long time since I’ve caught up with Howard, but man I think he’s softened a little.)
THREE TWEETS ABOUT HALLOWEEN
When Parents Go So Bad:
Come for the Great Tweet, Click for the Great Comments:
All Time Winner:
TWO HALLOWEEN COSTUMES
When You Really Want to Make Your Adult Children Regret Their Childhoods:
Who’s a Good Ghost?
ONE HALLOWEEN RELATED ARTICLE
On Friday the Making of the Exorcist article I wrote for America dropped. It’s got some great stories in it, an interview with an exorcist, who says the problem with the movie is that it’s not scary enough (*screams inside*) …also some great analysis from Jennifer Moorman (of Interviews with Interesting People), who helped me to realize rather than offering an empowering portrayal of women The Exorcist is kind of a screed against adolescent female sexuality.
If you look at all the most horrific moments [in the film], they’re all sexual, they’re her asserting her sexuality.
To me the ‘horrifying thing’ [of the film] is a child coming into her sexuality as a woman. And she has to be cleansed of that in order to be brought back into the normal social order.
And at the end there’s also a short interview with my mom about when she first saw the movie with her friend Mary Jo. It was a lot of fun to write. I hope you enjoy it.
Have a great week, everybody, and a happy Halloween. May the visits of this week’s midnight/dusk-until-8:45pm spirits cast away all your fears. The world may be nutso, but you have got this.