Special Edition – Lanterns

0:00This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom. Nordstrom. Bigger a small? We're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still add. Discover it all in NordstromStores and at Nordstrom.com. Nikki Glazer. This stunning tour. The thoughts of death I don't like to dwell on them for longer than like 10 or 15 hours a day, so... November 19th. Yamabah Theater. No wonder women rushed to have kids were being trained for it since we were kids. They're like, here's a baby doll. Here's an easy-bake oven. I got one of those. I stuck my head in it. I was like, I want out of this narrative. Tickets on sale now at Yamabah Theater.com. Don't miss Nikki Glazer. Yamabah Theater.

1:00I found the language to be superfluous at some point. Like the cursing was just like, do we need to be cursing as much as we're cursing? Like having kids has changed it. Hello, welcome to High Fanboy Special Edition Review of Lanterns Season 1 or all of it. We don't know as of this recording. They have not announced whether or not there's going to be a second season of Lanterns. So maybe this is it. My name is Conor Copacic. I'm here with Ron Richards. And brightest day, Connor. And we're here to talk about Lanterns, the HBO series, HBO Max. It was on both. That just ended this past week. I've got my Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Darwin Cook Toys here to jump in and save the day

2:04in case we need it. I've got my Hal Jordan somewhere downstairs. Oh, that's where. Lanterns, take us away. Tell us, tell us to tell people about Lantern, Ron. Yeah, Lanterns. So this is the, as you mentioned, the season, the season just wrapped literally. We're recording this on Monday after the episode aired on Sunday. You're going to be listening to this on Thursday. You got some time to gestate. And this is the show that has been, I feel like it's been a development for a while. I just feel like we've been hearing about it for ages. The showrunners on the show quite the, quite the all-star team, Damon Lindelof, best known for, of course, lost, but also for Watchman from HBO, which is now a while back. That was like, it's a while and it's sort of been forgotten about pandemic. Ask it. Was the Damon Lindelof along with Chris Mundy, best known for more recently Ozark and what else did he, true detective? True detective, of course. Yeah, how can I forget that? Which, you know, you pick up a lot of true detective vibes from this, but also a lot of Damon Lindelof, Watchman, Kansas, Nebraska, Midwestern, and also Ozark is thrown in there.

3:07But then, of course, the third piece of the showrunner, Triumphurrent, behind the show, is Friend of the Show, Comic-Pak Rider, All-Star himself, Tom King, which is great to see elevating from the page to the screen, Mr. King, bringing some of the comic-pagnolage to the TV screen. Did they lock him in a closet? I don't know. We wish there was a little more comic knowledge on the show. So Lanterns, this is under the DC Studios banner. I don't know all the inner workings of what was in production before James Gunn and Peter Safran, what was not, what they're being forced to or not. I feel like I read that this was not James Gunn, but he's clearly supporting it and Guy Gardner's in it, the Nathan Philly in which came from the Superman movie. You felt like he was shoehorned in, right? I was trying to decide if he wasn't not. So I just Googled quickly and Lanterns has been a TV show called Green Lantern, has been in development since 2019, but that was the Greg Berlanti version, which was going to be in space and was going to have Guy Gardner and Alan Scott people in it, like a whole

4:07rigmarole. Oh, what we didn't get, but it would have been super cheesy because it was Berlanti. And that was scrapped in 2023. And so this seems to be like, this has been a gun, this version has been a gun thing from the beginning. All right, all right, so there you go. They re-tooled it into a earth-based mystery show featuring Alan John. So they took the original thing, which was Space Cops and put them on land. Yeah. And made them street cops, made them grooming gritty on the road. Right, cool jackets. So we're going to talk about the show. We're going to talk about the whole season. Spoilers be warned. If you haven't finished watching the whole season, we're going to talk about some of the details of what's going on with it. But you know, kind of getting to the beginning of it, you know, just kind of putting all of our cards on the table, Connor, you're much more of a DC guy than I am, right? Come on, yes. And I'm a big, how Jordan guy? You're a big how Jordan guy. I am more of a Marvel guy, but I do enjoy DC and actually one of my two entry points to DC were the Flash and Green Lantern. Unfortunately, Kyle Rainer, much to your dismay. But then I quickly... New Frontier? How Jordan, obviously new Frontier. But no, but even I read, you know, Ron Mars is Ron, you know, all the great stuff right

5:09the older, you know, the older Neil Adam stuff and, you know, with Green Arrow, those team ups and all that fun stuff. So yeah, so well versed in the Green Lantern world of things. I wasn't originally going to watch the show at all. Right. Just because I'm not, I'm not really as excited about what Gun is doing in DC Studios. I didn't love Superman, I didn't love Supergirl. SuperSider for Clayface. No, you're not. SuperSider for you to watch Clayface. We'll talk about that at the end of the show. I know. But I wasn't going to watch it. We weren't really talking about it that much at the I Family Office. I know you and Josh were. Well, we would talk about it. You know, when we get ready for the pick of the week show, like, was we were getting ready, we would say, yeah, do you watch the last episode? Like, we discussed it a bit. Yeah. But not like a show where every Monday, the three of us are talking in our slack channel. Yeah, I felt like it didn't have a ton of like oomph when it premiered and came out. It was like, it wasn't like, oh, God, we all got to stop and watch this and make a play around the river. And so I wasn't going to watch it. So the show stars Kyle Chandler, who you and Josh have a collective man crush on. We do since the days of Friday night lights.

6:11Yep. But it also stars Aaron Pierre, who I've been a big fan of since Rebel Ridge, the direct and early on him. Yeah. Big fan Aaron Pierre. But and then it also stars Kelly McDonald's one of my early crushes from the train spotting back in 1995, which she was much younger. I did not know Kelly McDonald was on the show. She's still got it, by the way. She so still got it. She's wonderful. But I did not know she was on the show had I known I would have been tuning in immediately. So when it came out, I was like, I'm not going to watch it. And I don't honestly, I don't even know why. I think you know what I think happened was that I think I had a business trip. And I was like about to leave. And I'm like, I need to watch something on the flight. So I just downloaded the first, the first episode. I think it was the first two episodes. And I'm like, I'll just watch it on the flight and I'll just check it out. And I think by the third episode, I think that's what I texted you. I'm like, are you watching lanterns? Like are we doing are we covering lanterns in any way? She performed and I wanted us to do a podcast like in the middle of the season because I had thoughts. Sure. And you I wanted to wait until we finish because it was a short season.

7:12If it was like 25 episodes, then it'd be a different story. But remember when the were when TV seasons were 25 episodes, by the way, no, and I think you were right to wait until it was all over and talk about totality. It was a different conversation. Yes. Yeah, because because if we talked about it and at the third of the way or halfway point, my opinion would have been much different because my opinion at that point, and when I text you, when I was when I had serious thoughts because I could see what was happening on the screen. And I could see the influence of Chris Mundane, David Lindelof from a television story, production standpoint. I could see what was happening was very good, right? Like obviously I know that, you know, we know that Kyle Chandler is great. And I and Aaron Pierre, I think is a is immensely talented actor. And he and hopefully and now you see you. Did you ever watch Rebel Ridge? By the way, no, I keep, I keep thinking I need to remember and you tell him to do it. I go, I got to watch that and then I forget. Dude, it's so good. I know. I know. So watching it on the screen as a TV show that is like, erasing my comic book origins,

8:15watching a TV show, like, I know what I'm watching is good. But there's that nagging comic book fan inside me that I can't, you know, whatever. And if I had to give a grade at the halfway point of the show, I probably would have given it like a B or B plus. Right. And my criticisms were at that time was that I like what they're doing with the story. I like what they're doing with the idea of like an, you know, an older Hal Jordan and a younger John Stewart and the conflict within the two and the mysteries that they're trying to solve. But what was frustrating the hell out of me was a lot of the production design decisions mainly in and around the comic book side of it. The biggest thing. So the big is being that like the few, you know, like, I totally get like, don't have them wear supercar costumes, have them wear 300 dollar jackets, have college handler wear an awesome, you know, Texan, Wrangler jacket, have an air in here, wear a different 300 dollar jacket every time it does it. The few moments we saw college handler in the Green Lantern uniform, it looked worse every time.

9:17It looked disproportionate with his head, like the costume itself, like that on his body and his arm are to the shoulders, which makes the shoulders even wider. It's almost like he's wearing an 80s suit, you know, it looked like the old Justice League movie remember the 90s just with David, I agree, not David Algrier, David Ogden's tears, David Ogden's tears as John Jones. And they made the Green Lantern logo super small, right? Like the Green Lantern logo should be big on his chest, you know, like it should be like, you know, like on your action figure, right? It should be like the proportions were all odd and weird, right? And it just felt like, and I couldn't tell if it was the kind of thing where they did that to make it look ridiculous to justify the decision to put them in street clothes. Or if it was a budget thing or if it was a truly, they just got it wrong. Like I don't know. And so, so at that point, I'm like frustrated by it, but then I'm like, I kind of ignored, ignored, just pay attention to the story. I realize that Tom King is one of the showrunners, but he's not the only showrunner. So it feels weird to say this about a show he's involved with, but it had a whiff of being

10:19embarrassed by the source material. Right. That's what it felt like, which is a problem with a lot of these TV shows, especially the Marvel side, where it's like, we'll do anything we can to not show that these characters are superheroes. Right. And so they're never in costume. They hardly ever use the rings because the rings are always at like 5%. They've rarely made constructs. It just felt like, then feel like they were clearly budget constraints, what they couldn't couldn't do. And so the solve was just to have them solve these mysteries as cops, which they're cops, but there are also space cops with a green lantern ring. And so that was never really fully utilized. And I was talking to our friend, friend of the show Hank, and he was like, why did they just make a green arrow show? Why did they make space character show where they never did anything? Right. And it's a good point. I don't know why they did this as green lanterns. I want to preface, oh, not preface, I've already said it, but I want to say I did really like the show. And I really enjoyed watching it every Sunday. I watched it Sunday night when it came on. I really liked it on the whole, but I had to bite my knuckle as a comic fan because almost everything involving the comic lore drove me back to crazy.

11:22It was just like for a lot of the reasons you've already said before many, many more. Well, yeah, but I will give them this though, because there were, there were hints of it. And there were, I feel like there were things that as a comic fan, you could tell it was coming from. You could tell Thomas there and you could tell there were, you know, they could totally, you know, because they, they didn't shy away from Oha. They didn't, they mentioned MoGo. They mentioned the, you know, there was a lot of other green lanterns mentioned by description or by name by Hal. You know, for God's sake, spoiler, I know I gave this boy the word, but like Sineshtro's in it, right? Like Guy Gardner's in it, you know, like they're, you know, the Guardians are in it, you know, say what I will, Laura Lennie. You know, so like they, they, they definitely didn't shy away from it. They didn't go to Oha. We never saw, you know, like, you know, we never truly saw, you know, the constructs in the way that I would hope to see what I would expect them to be, to use the ring in the way they did, you know, like we were talking earlier before the show and you had a really good point that the, it seemed like the, the ring was always nearly out of charge.

12:25Yeah. On the show to the point where the last two episodes, the ring was perpetually at 5% charge. Yeah. So like, we have for two, two whole episodes and it was like you're running out of charge there, but you know, it's like, oh, man, it's not just a lanterns problem. I think it's a James Gunn problem because a lot of my problems with how they use the ring are also evident in the Superman movie, which was when a green lantern, so a green lantern, yeah, God, they're used to the ring really, really jumping nuts. The green lantern ring, first of all, it makes the suit. Like the suit isn't cloth that has got to get into it, find a like a phone booth and put it on. Like he just thinks about, he needs to be in the suit, he's in the suit because the ring creates the suit. The ring also protects the wear. So like, you have a somewhere they were charging the ranch, you know, they had to figure out a way to get in there because you don't get shot by snipers. It's not a problem for the green lantern because the green lantern ring will stop the sniper bullet, right? That's all stuff to join me nuts. But the stuff that really bothered me and this was also in the movie was that the constructs were made with the ring separate from the ring. So like when he made like the bird in this show, there was just a bird just appeared, didn't it flew off?

13:25In the comics, the constructs come out of a beam from the ring. And so it's always visually signifying that the construct is a manifestation of the will of the lantern. And so it's always a connection between this person who's using their will to create this thing and keeping it around. And so when that's cut off, in the movie, the same thing like he made the bats or the hands or whatever, they were always separate from himself. You lose the idea that this person is manifesting this. There's a point where there's a guy going to explode and he's got a bomb inside him and then how it makes a bubble around him. And then he puts his body on it to hold it like he doesn't need to do that because his will through the ring is holding that bubble together. And if he can't do it through the will, then throwing his body on it doesn't is a waste of time. It's just that stuff bugged me and it was strange considering, you know, Tom being in the room that like kind of the essence of what a green lantern is was lost. And I don't know if that is a gun thing. I don't think it's a gunverse, but whatever. A gun DC thing. It's just really, really bugged me. The suits bother me. The suits suck.

14:25The design is terrible. And it's hard to, because we don't want it to be one of these things where it's like, oh, you guys are, you guys are nitpicking. You guys are hanging up. I'm getting them out of the way. We're exactly. We're getting them out of the way because by the eighth episode, and I was telling my wife before we recorded, she's like, so what did you think of it? She's like, so what did you end up thinking of lanterns? Did she watch it or just, no, no, no, no, no, come on, come on. They're very handsome men. They are. They truly are. Aaron Pierre is very, very handsome. By the end of the eighth episode, when it all wrapped up, I think that they absolutely stuck the landing. And I end up giving it a probably like somewhere between like an A-minus and an A. For what the show is, and which when I as a viewer, a comic fan of 40 plus years, I tried to separate out like this. I'm watching an elseworld. I'm watching an interpretation of these characters. That thing that they did, which was this murder mystery, the small done murder mystery involved, having to involve these characters. And what they did, I really thought they did a great job. And I'll thank you one step further. They created this really complex murder mystery that had several layered mini mysteries within

15:32it, almost like a, almost like a tear mousseau of mysteries. A trace of letchies. And trace of letchies that also at the same time became a character defining moment for John Stewart. We entered the first episode not knowing, you know, and I know, of course, I know John Stewart and I, you know, from both from the comics and also like his great characterization from the cartoons back from the early 2000s and all that stuff. And I know John Stewart architect, right? But in this particular case, in this generation, in this DC studios, at DC, whatever, whatever DC cinematic universe, whatever you want to say, we got introduced to John Stewart as a character and got over the span of these eight episodes, a fantastic character definition, background establishment introduction. And you walk out of this eighth episode, knowing who John Stewart is and Aaron Pierre has wholly become this character in a way that positions him to appear in the next Superman

16:36movie. On such strong legs, he's going to get applause when he appears on screen. Yeah, absolutely. If you watch that show when they see him, they're going to go nuts and it's going to be great. And it's going to be deserved. He could actually do some shit. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. But, you know, and I'm a huge Aaron Pierre fan. So I'm glad to see him do it. But this dude nailed it. Just do nailed the show on a level that was so well. And when he got up and flew away at the end of the eighth episode, I was like, right, I want to see this guy continue on in these these. I wish they had a green outline on the flu. But it doesn't matter. I just think of a million things when I'm like, I just kind of just kind of does it. Yeah, but no. It just looks like they're on, it looks silly. It looks like they're on a harness as opposed to like put a green thing around. Also, this is nothing to do with the comic book stuff and more than nipping. I found the language to be superfluous at some point. Like the cursing was just like, do we need to be cursing as much as we're cursing? Like having kids has changed it. This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story.

17:37The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom, bigger or small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still add. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at Nordstrom.com. The Geek Laser. This stunning tour. The thoughts of death I don't like to dwell on them for longer than like 10 or 15 hours a day. So… November 19th. Yama va Theter. No wonder women rush to have kids we're being trained for it since we were kids. They're like, here's a baby doll. Here's an easy-bake oven. I got one of those. I stuck my head in it. I was like, I want out of this narrowness. Tickets on sale now at Yama va Theter.com. Don't miss the Geek Laser. Yama va Theter. So the show takes place in multiple planes of existence.

18:37In 2026 is the present day. 2016 is 10 years ago. That's when how is training John. That's when they first arrive at this town in Nebraska. In 2026 John is returned to the town. Then there's flashbacks earlier. We see John as a kid. We see how and his younger days. We see all kinds of things. We see Sheriff Kerry when she first arrives to town from Gotham City. We can talk about that if you want. Did you like that, by the way, your little Gotham mentions? She's a cane. She's probably Bruce's cousin. Kane is Martha, his mother's side. Kate Kane is Batwoman. She's Kerry Kane. Who knows where she is in the family tree, but she is somehow related to Bruce. Anyway, at the end of the first episode, when we see that John is returned to town and Sheriff Kerry hasn't invited him to come, they find Hal Jordan's dead body. So it becomes a double murder mystery. It's who killed Hal the present. In the past, Hal and John are investigating a mass shooting at a high school football game. And that becomes evolving aliens. And then eventually becomes evolving a manhunter. But there's a double murder mystery.

19:38First, who killed the aliens? And then who's the manhunter? And then it's who killed Hal in the future. So there's multiple levels going on here, a very time-king-esque. And what they did really, really well is cast the town. Like Kelli McDonald is the sheriff. She's married to Garrett De La Hunts, rancher, big wig guy who seems to run the town with his army. He's married to his son. That's right. I really get confused in that. She's married to Jason Ritter, the terrible mustache. Horrible mustache. Who is a lawyer? He's sort of the fraydo of the crime family. He's the lawyer in town. He's married to the sheriff. They have a son's football star and his father. You know why? Garrett De La Hunts seems to not have aged. He's naked at one point and he's just like, how is that possible? How is that body possible? His wife is the manhunter. I also slept with John. So there's a whole lot of intrigue and mystery going on here. And it's the point of, what is the man doing here?

20:39And what is their plan and how do we stop it? And then it all comes to a head in an episode. Is it five or six the big? Six. Six. And that was the thing was that what was really startling was that there was a big culmination, climax, catastrophic event where Hal and John figure out who the manhunter is, which by the way I called. That was the other thing. There's like three big kind of reveals in relation to the manhunter and Hal's murder that we got revealed in the first episode that Hal was murdered and that what the thrust of the story would be and I called all of them in ahead of it ahead of time, which I was like, I don't know if that's bad storytelling or just the fact that I watch a lot of TV. I don't know. And this massive town destroying moment and it's like, that's it crazy episode. And I remember looking at like, how many episodes in the season? Because it really felt like a finale. It really felt like a last episode. And then I was like, so we've got two more episodes to go. And like that was in 2016. And that's when in episode seven, it jumps to present day. And you've got John Stewart with the goatee

21:40and you're seeing what he's doing with his life. And that's when, you know, and then it's also when Hal dies. And you find, and then that's when it goes back to the solving the mystery of Hal's murder. And like, oh yeah, we still have loose ends to wrap up. And, you know, and it definitely did for a moment is like, did they know that they had eight episodes or did they think they only had seven? They went to the chopperly piece. I will say that for sure. But I do feel like they wrapped it up. Like it doesn't feel, it didn't feel like I haste the ending. Cause I will say at the end of, at the end of seven, when episode seven ends with John Stewart stuck on another planet that has been destroyed by man hunters and, you know, and it's revealed that it's him and Sinestro alone on this planet. And I'm like, how are we going to end this? Like it feels like this was the next arc. And it felt like there was a lot of, like episode eight was going to have a lot of heavy lifting to do, but they were able to do it. They wrapped it up cohesively in episode eight, I thought. They kept Hal on the show by inventing the idea. This is invented for the show that,

22:41like Rieland turned uploads his consciousness into the ring. The Halagram. The reasons unknown. Yeah. And so John having Hal's ring could call up the Halagram to talk. And so that kept him around. But yeah, no, the planet was cool. The planet of fear, people, a lot of people thought that would introduce the Sinestro core, but that didn't happen. But clearly, I mean, that's the idea. It was all yellow and the water there made everyone scared and have faced their greatest fears and everything. And so whether or not they ever plan on utilizing that is up to them. But it was, yeah, I mean, I feel like it needed more episodes. I thought it, well, it ended well. It could have used a couple more in that present day to wrap things up. I think things happened very quickly in the final couple of episodes. Yeah. Where we go back and forth and who killed Hal. Yeah, who killed Hal. And then we also learned that there was another, there was a second man Hunter because somehow, well, that synthetic beings can have children.

23:42And so we find out that the son of the sheriff. So does that mean Jason Ritter was also a man Hunter? No, no, no, no. The last episode did have the explanation moments. Noah Macon, who was Kelly McDonald's son. Both of them. Was also a man Hunter. And when Kelly McDonald, she was fleeing Gotham because she was being chased because her father was a snitch and the gangsters that were in there. It was a man. And it was a man-hunter pregnancy. Yes, that's right. And so what happened was that the man Hunter woman helped her out by she made her cut off her finger and gave it to the gangsters and said, show that to your boss to show them that you took care of her. And then she took the finger and, you know, because the managers have technology to regenerate human skin or whatever, which they use several times on the show. And she used that to impregnate her with Noah. That's right. It was the immaculate pregnancy. Yeah, that's what it was, right? This was the other reveal that I predicted that I was like,

24:43oh, Noah's a man Hunter. And at first I thought Noah was the one who killed Hal. Well, he admits to it. What are you gonna do it? Yeah, I know. But before he admitted to it, I thought I was like, oh, I was like, I know as a man Hunter and he killed Hal. But in episode seven, when the halogram was convinced that Kelly Maconald did it, I was just like, oh, he's like, my gut's always right. And I was like, oh, it's gonna end up being her because his gut's always right and turns out it was her. So one of my other critiques about the show, which is tangentially related to the handling of the comic material, was that throughout the show, they just made a lot of weird decisions, right? So when it comes to Noah, one of the weird decisions that they made was that, so there was a scene when he was a young boy in 2016, when he was outside practicing throwing the football, and John Stewart teaches him how to throw a perfect spiral, like by visualizing it, right? And then he grows up to be the star quarterback, right? And there was a scene in episode seven when they're like having a pep rally or whatever it is. And he's standing there with his offensive line, and they are the smallest, daintiest group of boys.

25:47He's small and dainty. We were laughing at him, so he was just being a big Nebraska football star. Like, like, like, five, seven. They're talking about him going to all of these big colleges to play whatever. And you're gonna tell me that this offensive line protects it. Like, listen, I know I'm a baseball soccer fan. Like, I'm not a big football guy, but even I know that the offensive lines got to be like 250 pounds and all this or stuff. So like, I don't know if it was a casting, they didn't have the money or whatever. They just made a lot of decision there, right? Not a lot of football players go in acting. So yeah, but still you could have gotten big, big burly kids. No, I agree with you. It was ridiculous that these guys are supposed to be. Another weird decision they made was in John Stewart's origin episode, they show him his upbringing with his parents and all this stuff and how they're raising him to have no fear. And he becomes a Marine and he becomes a specialized sniper. And he gets tasked to do this top secret mission to go undercover and hide out to take out some Russian gangster, whatever it is. And he's perched three miles away from the guy's mansion and he's just waiting for the guy to show up to the mansion

26:48and take him out. And he's there without communication and that's the thing. And he can't go back until he's done the job. And he's there for a long time, right? You get the sense that he's just gonna wait until the guy comes back to do it, right? And they said he was there for nine months and like he grows a beard and he's eating bugs and like all this sort of stuff. And like you could have done that and hadn't been there for like six weeks and had the same effect happen, but to make it nine months to make it so ridiculously long, it pushes the boundaries of believability, right? And there was a bunch of little, and it's the same thing with House Costume where they over designed it or did whatever they did to push it past the point of believability to make it look absurd. Like they, and not even like good kind of absurdity. They just made weird decisions that every now and then took you out of the story. So that was a one little kind of criticism of it. Yeah, I mean, the whole Stewart family was nuts. And I don't know if they intended that to be the case,

27:49but like the whole episode about his upbringing and then training him to be a green lantern was like his parents are crazy, at least his mom was nuts. Yeah, well, you get visited by Guardian and having Hanjoa a diamond the size of a candle open, see how you feel. What do you supposed to do with that? I can't take it to a bank. They did address that. They said how she got, you know, they should've tried to sell it and she almost got arrested in a moment. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview, the first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old, the tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom. Bigger a small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still add, discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at Nordstrom.com. Nikki Glazer, this stunning tour. The thoughts of death I don't like to dwell on them for longer than like 10 or 15 hours a day, so.

28:51November 19th, Yamavath Theater. No wonder women rushed to have kids were being trained for it since we were kids. They're like, here's a baby doll. Here's an easy-bake oven. I got one of those. I stuck my head in it. I was like, I want out of this narrative. Tickets on sale now at Yamavathether.com. Don't miss Nikki Glazer, Yamavath Theater. Here. Let's talk about some of the guest stars or Sineshtra. So Sineshtra's probably Ulrich Thompson. He's a Dutch actor, I believe. And. I thought he was great. The first time we see him, how goes to this prison planet to visit someone after he's told some information I don't know what it was, it was right early on the season. And we get the Hannibal Lecter moment where he goes to visit Sineshtra who's in prison. And at first, I was disappointed because Sineshtra was one of the heavy hitter villains of the DC universe. And I was trying to picture this guy in a movie. And I was like, oh man, this is a problem with introducing these checkers and TV shows as you get these smaller actors playing them. But by the end, he was great.

29:52He was awesome. He had a menace to him being Dutch. He was just a little different than him being an American. So he was getting a little off putting energy to him. And he had this quiet intensity that really worked for Sineshtra. He made him seem formidable, not physically, but psychologically. And he's got a ring, doesn't matter how physical he is. I just thought he was really well cast by the end. I was very happy with Sineshtra. Yeah, I thought he was great. From the moment we saw him in prison and he was kind of pinkish skin, but not pink to the point of cartoony. You know, and he had a mustache, but not twerly like the railroad twerly mustache villain kind of thing. He didn't have pointy ears, but still it's fine. And then we see him again at the end in episode seven and eight on the on the deserted planet. And the chess game of like, what should you do? Should he not do? He forged a lantern for Noah, for the kid manager. And it's got all these cracks in this yellow kind of thing. And John picks up that is different. He's like, what are these yellow cracks? And he's like, it's his fear and his whole kind of, you know, monologue about harnessing fear

30:52and you get the idea of Sineshtro, you know, the hologram warrants, John, not to charge his ring with it. And you know, as a comic fan, we're like, oh, it'll become a yellow lantern, but it doesn't happen. That's what I really thought of. But it doesn't happen, right? And so like, so like they're dancing around it. We all know where it's going to go, but the normals don't know where it's going to go. The regular people just watching it, what does know where it's going to happen. I thought they played with Sineshtro enough to make it intriguing, but this isn't a Sineshtro story, right? Like that's what I thought was very well done. But it's a shame because, you know, will we not get a Sineshtro story, right? Because they're old and how's gone and how's Jan was old? And you know, like did we miss the window here? Yep. So we had Guy Gardner show up a couple times. Nathan Phillians, he was one of the breakout characters of the Superman movies. So was he a breakout character, really? Well, people really liked him. He was certainly popular coming out of it. I don't know why they make him blonde. The red makes him look so much more weird, but whatever. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the thing that I have to bite my knuckle about, but I couldn't doubt who Shuhornin because of the popularity from the film or not. I mean, you didn't need him to be there, really. They found Suffer him to do, but it was very quick.

31:52He's probably less than five minutes on the show, but they had this like lantern signal that he installed in the town as an apology for all the damage that was caused. And so if anyone ever lit it, he would have show up. And there's a Batman joke and there, and John uses it to bring him. And he gets pissed at John, they don't like each other. Yeah. But he was fine. I like him a lot. I like the act real hot. We talk about Shuhornin and him and whether you know, come and think, but they needed to include him in it. I'm glad they included him earlier to have some relationship or some, you know, some connection to John, but they needed to see at the end of this episode just to explain how both these two guys are gonna exist in this universe moving forward, right? Because we just saw the SuperM movie and we saw a different guy's green lantern. And now you're gonna tell me this, you know, that was the main question. It's like, well, how are there two? We all know how there can be two. We know there can be 12. Right. Exactly. So in this, there's one lantern per sector, but John has this like rogue ring because he has household ring and synestros lantern. And he says, basically, you go be green lantern

32:53of the rest of the sector and I will take care of earth. And so that means no guy gardener in the man is still in the movie. Does that mean still continue to butt heads? We'll find out, but I thought he was good. I thought it was helpful to establish the connection of the wider DC cinematic universe. So this takes place in the same world. Superman's like, that was helpful. I thought he was fine. I'm happy he really shows up. We had these unnamed aliens show up in the vise of Antan played by Paul Ben Victor who was a great character actor. Yeah, he's great. They're the ones who alert John to the presence of the man hunter, manned or wiped out their planet. I kept waiting and saying what aliens they were. I thought maybe they were guns, but they never say how they were. They kind of came and went. They show up and then they all get killed or so. They were McGuffins, this is our degree. Yeah. They weren't that important to what was going on. So in the flashbacks and then several times later, we have the appearance of a guardian played by Laura Linney named Leana. Again, budget constraints mean all the aliens appear as secret humans. We see almost none of the aliens in the original form.

33:55What does the man hunter really look like? We don't know, never see him. But at one moment, Laura Linney show reveals her true form to John Stewart's mother. And I was all excited because, oh, we're going to see a little blue guardian. Yeah. I was shocked when she begins growing and gets very, very tall. I screamed to the TV. So the whole thing with the guardians is in the comics, they're like some of those powerful people in the universe. And so the irony is they're tiny. Right. And here, for some reason, this again goes back to your point, Ron, I'm just tinkering just for the sake of tinkering. Right. They may encourage gigantic. And think why? My first thought was wasn't there in the comics? Wasn't there like bad guardians that were tall? Maybe. I thought there was, and so then I was like, oh, they're not really guardians, right? Like, and then, and then the comic nerd brain and we started going and I'm like, no, no, I got to stop. I can't, I can't do this. I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't have that. I can't have it. So I just, I just, something we assume that they were just tinkering and just, you know, for whatever it is. What happens when you, when you have these comic adaptations, there's two things that happen.

34:56Usually one is that someone's embarrassed that they're actually doing this. And some other thing is they make changes for the sake of making changes because they want to have ownership of it. And so that's why you get all these tinkerings with the way things are in comics. And there's no reason why a guardianship is a gigantic being. Right. It's like expected that this powerful concept being is that way. It's unexpected that they're tiny. Yep. And so that was annoying. But she's great. Laura Lenny's great. I'm never complain about having Laura Lenny on the screen. But it's just another thing that was frustrating about the show in terms of the comic lore. And there's a lot of it. But then you had the whole making family. Well, you had Kelly McDonald's greatest sheriff, Caracane, late of Gotham City. Jason Ritter was fine. He was barely in it. But he was funny with how they sort of jokied for his wife's affection, which islands of winning. Because he doesn't have a dumb mustache. Yeah. Garrett Delhunt, we talked about him earlier. He was great as the guy who you thought was the big bad it wasn't. And until we find out as a man, he's talking about his boss. His boss funding, everything. His boss is in control. He's got to keep reporting to the boss.

35:56And the boss is very anti-aliant. So I thought it was going to be Lex Luthor. I thought we were going to get another cameo. Yeah. Because in the movie, he's Lex is all about being anti-aliant. But it wasn't. It was a man out there. So there's a lot of great actors in it. The writing was really strong. The pacing was a little choppy. But on the whole, if they announce the season two, I'll be very excited. If they don't, that's fine too. Yeah. I don't know where you go from here. You can't do this story. This story is over. Well, yeah, you can't do this. Yeah, I don't know where you go from here with it. It's obviously John Stewart's story from here on out. And so it's like how do you do it? Another small town mystery. Like do we see more of Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan in what shape or form? How do you feel? So like that's the one thing I want to say. I want to see him, though, because he gives us goodbye when the ring, he says, once you recharge that ring, I'm going to be wiped from the rings. Right. Yeah. Let's talk about Kyle Chandler slash Hal Jordan. Okay. So Hal Jordan, one of the big seven, right? And when he come to the DC, when he talked to the, when he talked to the silver age DC pantheon of characters

36:58that define modern superheroes, right? It's obviously Superman Batman, Wonder Woman. Flash. Barry Allen as the flash Hal Jordan as Green Lantern. Hawkman. Aquaman. And Hawkman. And Hawkman. Is that who you do as Hawkman? That would be the big seven. Would you say Hawkman really would you? Silver age for sure. Yeah. All right. So that said, and we've seen Hal Jordan in the comics in lots of different, I'm say personas, but lots of different, you know, kind of executions, right? We've seen sad sack toy salesman. Right. Sad sack toy salesman. We've seen hard traveling heroes, you know, with the Neil Adams and green arrow kind of rendition. We saw power hungry, Ron Mars, parallax version. And then, you know, and then of course, you know, as the aforementioned and held up on the pedestal, new frontier, darn cook execution of it. So, you know, you know, you've mentioned that Hal Jordan is one of your favorites. So how do you feel about this characterization of Kyle Chandler as a elder Hal Jordan at the end of his career? I do want to mention, you mentioned predicting things.

37:59When they showed the trailer of this originally, I knew immediately that he was going to die, because there's a line of how, I'll give up his ring over his dead body. There's only one Green Lantern, it's the sector. And I knew, I knew just knowing Kyle Chandler's actor was not signing up to play Hal Jordan 15 movies. Like that was not ever going to happen. Right. And he right away, so when they revealed he was dead, absolutely one, I wasn't surprised. That being said, this is not a Hal Jordan, we recognize this is a Kyle Chandler Hal Jordan. This is a Texan Hal Jordan. And that was not Hal Jordan. He's a California guy in the comics. It doesn't matter. This is a new interpretation. It's fine. He's charming. He lights up the screen. The show's better when he's there. Yep. So in the other day, it's a different Hal Jordan. But for the 99.99% of the people watching the show, they've never seen Hal Jordan before. And so no preconceived notion about what he could be. As long as they don't change the comic book version to be more like this one, then fine. Right. I'm okay with it. Yeah, I mean, I enjoyed Kyle Chandler. Yeah.

39:00But like if you had, and that's why I struggled with it because it's like, if you had asked me to envision what Hal Jordan, even at this stage in his career, even at this stage in his life or whatever might be, would have been like, I could never have predicted this kind of way he was or he carried himself and calling John Stuart Jr. and like, and doing all this sort of stuff. And like, I get that Hal Jordan was brash. And he's a test pilot and had this confidence and a bravado. But it just, it, you know, and again, it's hard to separate the actor from the character sometime. Right. And so how do you feel given what we saw the fate of Hal Jordan, not only that he died, but the fact that, you know, this big horrible, you know, this big fight. And like, and this is, this is what, the one thing that I did think a decision that I thought was really interesting in this story was that the big battle and episode six had consequences in that they, you know, there's this town of 1,100 people in Rushville, Nebraska that gets decimated through their fight

40:01with the manhunter and then Hal goes to prison for it for 10 years. Yeah, I don't, I had to wave that away because I can't, I couldn't, I couldn't think of any world in which superhero's exist and which, which he's a exalted superhero where there's a disaster and it's get blamed on the superhero and they go to jail. Like, right. In a world with Superman in it, like, did he go to jail? Because of all the people that died metropolis during the movie. Right. This doesn't make sense logically from an internal. This felt again like this kind of, they had to figure it out and get them off the board to get him to where they wanted to go 10 years on and it just felt like a thing that would never happen. It's not like he was someone new out of nowhere, like he was a famous superhero. Right. And he's a famous law enforcement agent. They wouldn't hold him responsible, they'd hold the manhunter responsible, which I don't think we even mention the manhunter, but did we mention the manhunter? Yeah, I think we, yeah, we mentioned the manhunter, didn't we? Or by a porn, uh, Jag and Nathan, she was the secret manhunter. Yeah, the whole thing stem, the whole thing stems around the town that abinsur, crashed in,

41:01right. How it got the ring originally, who was transporting a manhunter back to Oa and crash landed in on earth. And the manhunter was Zoe, the woman, and she settled in this town and, and kind of took it over. Set your sights higher. Manhunter. Just settled down. Just want a little piece of land. That's all I had to wave away that 10 years in prison thing. I just didn't make any logical sense from the world that it was in, but fine, it was like a big It was just a reason, it was just a, well, adjust the way to justify the 10 year jump. Yeah. It didn't make any sense. There's a lot of things that didn't make any sense in the show. Right. But you kind of went past them. Right. I don't know. I liked it. I really liked it, but man, I just have to turn my comic brain down a bit and it's just a bummer. That's the thing is that it's an exercise in turning the comic brain down and just, and, and having it be, go with the story, which the story was really good. The story was good. The actors were compelling. I think it was, you know, it was one of those things where you're, you're, you're just like, I'm excited to watch the, where's the next episode? And it's, it was Lantern's Sunday in my house.

42:01Yeah. It was very, very good. And a lot of that was, it was just the screen crackled when Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre were doing their thing. It was, it was, it was a great, antagonistic relationship where you could, you knew how I had an affection for him, but he wasn't going to show him until the absolute act too. Yeah. And he did at the very end, then it was a very touching moment when, right before he goes away. Yeah. But you're right. I don't even know what they would do with Susan too, because at this point, John's a full-fledged green lantern. He's not a bitter old green lantern like how. Right. So he's not going to solve some mystery in his street clothes again. Right. And let's Chris Mundy, because they have already announced that day and then Tom are not coming back for a second, Susan. Oh, really? I didn't see that. Unless Chris Mundy has a great idea. How does it they do? How does it they can, you know? Yeah. I don't think you can capture the lightning in the bottle like this again. These days, it's possible to know how pop-dow things are not popular. So I have no idea how this to, I mean, this seems pretty popular. I mean, based off of, I'm based off of, I've seen it in some top 10 charts. I've seen it in some top 10 charts. It's hard to judge based off my feed, because my algorithm is, you know, what it is.

43:06But I will say that tonight, as I charged to the computer to talk to you, you know, my wife said, you know, my wife who did not watch the show, who's not one of us, said that it seems like the show is pretty popular, because I see a lot of people talking about it. And if it's in her feed, that shows it's kind of breaking through, right? So, you know, yeah. I hope it does. I hope it leads to there in peer getting not a lot of, you know. Yeah, I, well, I hope it does for you. I did justify it or neg it or whatever in response to my wife saying it seems like it's pretty popular. I go, yeah, but there's nothing really else on right now in this genre, in this, in this realm right now, there's no, there's not a lot of competition. In this genre, I was about to say we stood in the show, but all the TV that's on here. Oh, yeah, there is no, but, but it started eight weeks ago, like in August, whatever, in this genre, in this kind of, in our kind of corner of the world, there's no real, this is it right now. So, like, you know, so, you know, to me, it'll be interesting to see how this is brought into the man of steel movie, you know, how Green Lantern is utilized, is Guy Gardner there.

44:07Yeah. And people could be screaming at their advice. I don't know. I don't research, I try to go and blind as much as I can in these movies. So I don't even know if they've announced that Nathan Philly and Zinn are not. I'm sure he is. But let me just see how they fold in the events of this show into that movie, if at all, they're introducing Jon Stewart in the film as Green Lantern. So there's going to have to be some acknowledgement of something that'll be interesting to see. And that's the distinction that at the end of the series that John made to Guy, which is Jon's the Green Lantern of Earth and Guy is the Green Lantern of sector 2814, right? Right. So, you know, so how does that, how is that going to play in whatever happens in the events? Guys in the Justice League. So what does that mean? Right. Yeah. What does the Justice League, I mean, that was a joke in the last movie. So it's like, you know, how does that make you feel, by the way? It makes me sad because there's not like any classic Justice League in this world. Like in the Marvel stuff, they set up this classic Avengers team. But that means there's no Justice League involving Superman and how Jordan Batman and Wonder Woman. Like it doesn't exist because we're already jumping in the past set.

45:07We're already burying the old heroes and it's weird. Yep. It's supposed modern. It's supposed modern DC universe. That's what it is. Just read my comics. That's all you can do, man. Final thought is I really liked it. Yeah. For all the comic book nitpicking and there was a lot of it in my living room and a lot of gnashing of teeth and a lot of having to pause and go, but the ring doesn't do that. But then the whole, I really liked it. I really liked it. My favorite nitpick was not mine, but I did read on social media. A lot of people wondering where John Jones was and where Martian Manhunter was when the Hernandez were in it, which just made me laugh. And it also made me laugh all the nerds are flying to them, getting mad at them for thinking that. All right. So you liked it. So what grade would you give it on the whole season if you had to give it a letter grade ratings? I'm going to give it four stars out of five on our traditional five star scale. I think four is fair. Yeah. I'm going to give it four. Like I said, I give it like an A minus. Enjoy. But if you have some reason you listen to or watch this and haven't watched this show, definitely check it out. It's solid. It's totally solid.

46:08It's a solid show. If anything, just to experience, I mean, Aaron Pierre is fantastic and college haller is great. Kelly McDonald's fantastic. Just the cast is great. It's fantastic casting. Great storytelling. A lot of time jumps, which are great. I like when people play with time in that way in shape form and everything really, really kind of paid off. And if anything, the character study of John Stewart, it's worth it to see that kind of evolve. There were some moments that surprised me. I mean, like the end of episode six, what happens with Hal and John and the ring? I did not see coming. True. I thought that was a good decision. So bravo. I'll give it to him. All the nitpicking aside, all the complaints about the costume, all the complaints about everything else like that. As cheesy and steam punky is the ring in the lantern. Okay, the ring to design. Then I didn't like that. Outlooked, whatever. I still didn't match the logo. I know. So somehow it's October, which means we have a couple more months to go before the end of the year.

47:08Oh, no, the countdown to clay face begins, my friend. It's continuing. We're getting so much closer. October is clay face month. They'll be doing that in about three weeks. When I saw digger this past weekend, there was a clay face trailer, which I had not seen yet. Oh, how excited are you now? So when we were walking into digger, my point of the poster after my wife and I said, I have to review that a couple weeks and she said, oh, I'll go with you. And then after the trailer turned around, I looked at her and she just shook her head. And she went, no, never mind. You're going by yourself. Clay face is coming. We're going to be reviewing that at the end of the month. I believe on the, it'll be coming out on the 29th of October. And then in December, we'll have the review of Avengers Doomsday, which I'm getting more and more excited for. I think after the success of the rerelease of endgame, I think this movie's going to be huge. What? Oh, geez. I don't know. I think you didn't see endgame in theaters. I did. I went to go see, I took my son to see endgame. Infinity vision. I did see it. Not only did I see an infinity vision, I saw it in a screen X theater, which is periodically in various scenes.

48:09They projected 270 degrees. Onto the sidewalls. I'm glad you're here. It was overwhelming. It was fine. I don't know. As I'm several years past it now, there are some mind bending decisions in both Infinity War and endgame. Oh, I think in games of bad movie. Well, no, not in this bad movie. Just, but regardless of good or bad in this movie, there's some decisions in both those movies where I'm like, why is Red Skull on Vormir? Like, there's just a stupid. Like, what are we doing here? Yeah. You know, what are we doing? But we stayed through the, all the end credits to see all that we went to, the infinity vision screening so that we can see all the new, like the all three minutes of the, the, the newest stuff and, you know, I don't know, it's fine. That's fine. But the box office was there. I think I think the movie's going to be big. I think people still have affection for those movies and characters. And if you give them a big enough reason to go, they're going to go. That's my prediction. Yeah, I just, I don't think they've given up a big enough reason. So we'll see. We'll see what happens. I'm sure people will come out and droves whether or not they deliver everything that we've seen from it so far still looks pretty drab and in.

49:11I don't think the movie's delivered. Thank you. We're going to show up for it. Yeah, people will show up. Yeah, but so, who will they show up five or six times like they did for the other ones? Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, in the meantime, head over to fanboy.com. That's where all of our shows live. We've got over 1500 audio shows there for you at new episodes every Sunday and most Thursdays. It's a lot of fanboy.com and also youtube.com slash. I fanboy. Yes. And if you like more things that are green and you like things to listen to, you head over to Android, faithful.com, listen to my other podcast, or me and my friends over there talking about technology and smartphones and mobile technology. I've been talking lately about the new line of laptops from Google, the new Google book laptops that are running on the new Android laptop operating system. I just got my hands on one and been playing with it. Reviewing it this week. Doodle hands on and that not really review because I just got it. But more of a little hands on first impressions with it. But yeah, having a good time. So check that out over at Android, faithful.com. And if you're looking for something to do at night or in your spare time, go play pinball. It's fun. Everybody loves to play pinball. Go to your local bar or arcade and download scorbit at scorbit.io.

50:13And you can use the scorbit app along with your favorite pinball machine to keep track of your scores. And participating locations go participate in some tournaments and win some money. We're scorbits at cheese at like over 40 locations around the country. A whole bunch of them where you can participate in tournaments where you can win cash money. And we're going to be in Chicago next weekend for pinball expo. We're going to be a pinball capital just outside of Chicago, throwing a party on the 15th and the 16th. And we'll be hosting some tournaments there. And looking at so if you're going to pinball expo, come find me, come say hi. And let's play pinball together. If I may have one final nitpick. Yeah, I'm going to mention this. I can't believe I forgot. Was when John changed the oath. Yeah, I knew you're going to. I could not believe they did that. But then I could because of all the stupid changes they made. When they had him finally charged his ring after eight episodes. And they have, but no, he wouldn't say the oath he had to make up his own oath. And I thought, that's not how this works. You're joining a core. Also, the ring shouldn't charge if you don't say the proper words.

51:16This is not, none of this is how many of this works. I don't know. I believe there was a very, very prestigious organization that you were affiliated with. I was not, I was not a member of heat. No, no, no, no, no, no, he, not heat. Okay. But a closer to your home that coined the term, nothing makes sense. Nothing matters. And that is the error of life that we were in. And you can buy a t-shirt or any other merch over at the iFamboi Merchstar on Threadless. That says nothing makes sense. Nothing matters because that's where we are. And iFamboi.threadless.com because nothing matters. We're in a postmodern world. No one cares. No one has any faith in anything. Exactly. All right. Well, thanks for joining us. We'll be back for Clay Face in a few weeks. Oh, I can't wait. Oh, I can't wait. To an end for someone who hates horror films and hates body horror talking about Clay Face. It's going to be great. It's going to be the blackest night for Connor. I love it. Because you know what? All these villain movies without the hero really work. They've all worked so far. We'll see. All right. So until then, I'm Ron. All right. I'm Connor.

52:25Thanks for watching. And prize picks is, bringing out their best offer yet. you want all in the same app. And now, PricePix is available nationwide, locking for kickoff because everyone and everything is on PricePix. What you want? Download the PricePix app today and use code Spotify to get $150 instantly in lineups. If you win your first $5 lineup, PricePix, run your game. Let's be present in certain states visit PricePix.com for restrictions and details. Nicky Glazer, this stunning tour. The thoughts of death I don't like to dwell on them for longer than like 10 or 15 hours a day. So... November 19th, Yamavath Theater. No wonder women rushed to have kids

53:28were being trained for it since we were kids. They're like, here's a baby doll. Here's an easy-bake oven. I got one of those. I stuck my head in it. I was like, I want out of this narrative. Tickets on sale now at Yamavathether.com. Don't miss Nicky Glazer. Yamavath Theater. At ZockDock, we know you care about your health. You wouldn't do that early morning cardio if you didn't. So the fact that your annual physical is overdue just shows how hard it can be to get seen by a doctor. Sorry, that doctor's not a network. Press one for more options. You've reached us outside for all business hours. The next availability is in three months. But ZockDock makes finding the right doctor easy. Download the app and search by specialty, insurance, and availability. Read real patient reviews. Then book instantly. ZockDock. Ready to be seen? Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at clod.ai slash Spotify and keep thinking.

54:33That's clod.ai slash Spotify.