Today's Episode
We watched it. Every episode covers the latest installment(s) of a different TV show.
Today's Episode
It: Welcome to Derry (PILOT)
BOO! It is back. Well… not Pennywise, not yet. But if the first and last ten minutes of this new Stephen King prequel series teach us anything, it’s that you don’t need Bill Skarsgård to show Derry, Maine as a full-blown nexus of evil. Kids should probably skip this one, but fans of horror should not. On the podcast, we break down the 53-minute pilot: plot points, expectations, standout moments, comparisons, reception, and the weird trivia we picked up along the way. I’ll say right off the bat, between The Music Man and the show’s heavy reliance on turtles, it had me from the jump. That said, hear our thoughts and let us know what you think.
Welcome to Today’s Episode!
Welcome to today's episode, the podcast, where we discuss the most recent installment of a different series every show. It is Halloween, and we are here to discuss this hour-long pilot based on Stephen King's It. It welcome to Derry. It's also based on the 2017 and 2019 movies, chapter one and chapter two. What do you think of them? I thought that they were uh scary, you know, for the most part. I like the first chapter better than the second. I think you're in the majority there. I didn't like the adults.
SPEAKER_01:I didn't like the adults. I agree with you. I remember for it chapter one, I came in kind of late, so I sat down right as that boat was going downstream into the sewer. But I thought that the first chapter was one of the best films of 2017. I like the kids, I like their chemistry. I thought that Sophia Lillis, I think her name is, who played Bev. Her career is taken on. I thought she was a standout. I and like you said, it had some really scary moments to it, but also had a lot of humor to it.
SPEAKER_00:I do remember being a little taken aback that Mike from Stranger Things was also in it, and it was just like, but you're friends with the other group, and I don't like mixing you in the world.
SPEAKER_01:That was back in the day, though, when like Stranger Things season two had just come out, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and we're only at season three right now. Yeah, well boy, they take forever.
SPEAKER_01:But uh, with chapter two, I also agreed with that. It wasn't as good. I thought the runtime was way too long, the pacing was very sluggish. I did think when they started to flash back to the younger, the loser group, when they started incorporating them, the movie got better. Right.
SPEAKER_00:The scene where uh there was the benches like in the um baseball game or whatever, and then like the kid walked underneath. Was that the first one or the second one? Because I thought it was the second one. I thought James McAvoy was probably.
SPEAKER_01:Oh no, no, that was the second one.
SPEAKER_00:And and yeah, that part was still good. And I remember seeing that and being like, ooh, that's the part from that's the scary part. But yeah, so when did the 2017 and 2019 movies take place? Remind me. Uh wasn't it like the 80s? Late 80s, and then 2016 was so 27 years, uh 89. And then the 90s miniseries, which you watched.
SPEAKER_01:I just saw a couple days ago. For the first time, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It had what were your impressions of that?
SPEAKER_01:It had the same problem where part one set up. I didn't think that they were as good as the Bill Skarsgarden movies, but it set up like a very Tim Curry did a great job, but I'm saying more like the kids when I was when you were following them, that was when it was interesting. When you got to part two, it was awful. Like following the adult films that they're following the adult uh characters.
SPEAKER_00:Was it that the adults act too much like kids or are they just too boring?
SPEAKER_01:There was one scene with Bill and Mike where they were on a bike like riding together and they were supposed to be acting like kids, and it was very strange. I also know that part two on ABC is kind of notorious for being as bad as it is, like, spoiler alert, but it turns into a giant spider and they're still using a slingshot and they're all adults.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's the part that I think is like when you're an adult, when when you're watching a kid do things and it's like, oh, they're in their magical realism thing. Like it's it feels like that could actually happen to the mind of a kid. But when you're watching an adult, do you're like, why didn't you go to the police? Why didn't you like actually do things that an adult would do?
SPEAKER_01:Right. And I mean, like, that's that's part of the reason why in part one, when they're using a slingshot and like they hit Tim Curry's head and like light comes out, it doesn't come across as like bad as them trying to hit the abs of a spider or something.
SPEAKER_00:You said it already, but penny wise, you like both renditions of it. Now, the 1990s version, it was more uh taken to the books time period, so like 1960, 1990 were the two timelines. Here in the new pilot were introduced in 1962, but it is in the same canon as the 2017 films. So a lot of the characters that we know from later on are actually their like relatives are appearing in the previous series here, which is interesting. Um, what do Johnny Depp, Daniel Radcliffe, and Diddy all have in common? Oh god. Oh, you don't want to know? No, it's uh it's fear of clowns. Chorophobia. Chaphobia.
SPEAKER_01:And like they just can't like stand to look at them, or do you what is it? I have not asked, but so let's talk about the 53 to 50. Are you afraid of clowns? No, not really. I never understood the fear that much, but I knew that there was like in back in 2016. It's a disguise. Back in 2016, there was like that huge clown-like fear, right? Yeah, like that one. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:53 to I think it was on the tail of Joker, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00:53 to 54 minute pilot. What year? 1962. How do we know that? Because the music man is playing at Derry's Capitol Theater, and Maddie Clements, a 12-year-old boy, is watching this movie. Now, I think some articles were quick to point out that the music band didn't actually come out in theaters until June, and yet we're in the year wrong.
SPEAKER_01:Or no, they got the time frame wrong because we're in January. Right. Because I was gonna say we're around Christmas time. There's a lot of snow.
SPEAKER_00:Think it might even be New Year's.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there's a lot of snow in Maine, and I think that I even saw some Christmas trees. Yeah, Paul Bunyan is on the billboard, which is a direct reference to the movie where Paul Bunyan literally chases after whoever uh Mike Wolf or Finn Wolfhart.
SPEAKER_00:You want to take a guess at how expensive it was to go to a movie in in uh 1962? Oh god, I would say maybe a dollar. Hey, you got it. You got it? 82 cents to a dollar. So you're right in the yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we're listening to The Music Man, the first play I've ever gone to, and probably still one of my favorites for that reason. And Trouble in River City is playing, and uh, I know like all the words in my head, and so I'm watching this and I'm like, what a good way to start off the TV show.
SPEAKER_01:I couldn't get over it because last year on comedy Bang Bang, the both like episodes back to back have Scott Ackerman and uh and they were both on the best of Scott Ackerman and Paul F. Tompkins, and they're fighting over if the music man was actually a good person or not.
SPEAKER_00:So whenever uh Harold Hill. So you're that was one of the deeper points I wanted to like kind of bring up was like that's a story about a small town. Now it is like earlier, like 1910s to 1920s time period. So it could actually be the it version previously, like that because they're gonna make three seasons of this. This one takes place here. The next season, I think, is gonna be like 30 years in the past before.
SPEAKER_01:So it's gonna be a trilogy. Do you know if it's gonna be like an anthology or is it gonna be based on like the well it's just gonna continue the storyline so that it's all connected.
SPEAKER_00:But the the how Harold Hill thing makes a lot of sense because that guy was sort of a sleaze bag coming into town. But the whole idea is that because he fell falls in love with the town and the librarian, despite the town being kind of like uh pushy towards him at first, that he turn turns the other, or he like becomes a better person by the end, right? And uh and he actually does succeed in like making himself better and also making the town a little bit better. And it it like is like the exact opposite. Yes, he just keeps on terrorizing this place, right? Yeah, no, I so and I mean going after kids, I think uh obviously is almost the exact opposite, like where he comes in evil and then he leaves good. Like, that's not really what happens with it, unless you're talking about the final movie where he is proud of the kids. That was such a weird way to kill him off. It's so memorable, though. That was my other favorite part of the second one. Was what was his line? All grown up, all grown up, yeah. Okay, so Maddie Clements is watching the music man. They're singing Trouble in River City, and he's he's he's using a pacifier, right? Oh, well, I well, what I was wondering was is it a ring pop? I thought it was a ring pop too. Some articles said ring pop. I I'm instantly was like, Oh, it's just candy, right? Ring pops weren't invented until 1977. That's a simple Google search. So this kid had probably a pacifier in his mouth, and the only thing people were saying was he comes from a broken home, and so that's his like thing that he does, like a baby.
SPEAKER_01:Still, I he was like what eight, 10 around there. 12, he's 12 years old. Yeah, he's 12 years old.
SPEAKER_00:Uh yeah, there's no way that he would be. So it's just a little bit of an odd thing from this kid. The usher obviously is used to seeing him sneak in, catches him, starts like running him out of the theater, and that's where we meet Ronnie, who is the projectionist's daughter. And we also get the backstory on Maddie because the projectionist, her dad, says, let him go. His family is broken.
SPEAKER_01:There's also the save the cat moment where Ronnie doesn't sell him out because he's hiding right behind the post.
SPEAKER_00:Ronnie knows and she is the last person to actually see Maddie alive. Not technically true because the usher does see him after Ronnie leaves. But yes, she's the last kid who to see him alive. And one thing that I do want to point out is that later on when we meet the Losers Club and all that, and uh and Phil and Teddy are talking about how Maddie's mom was trying to get them to go to his birthday party and trying to pay them with candy, and they still didn't go. That doesn't sound like parents that are like terrible to their kid, does it? That they were really, really trying to get other kids to go to his birthday party. I think it was I saw like a distinct difference between what Maddie believes is going on in his home or how he's presenting it and what actually is. It both could be true. Maybe his mom really does care about him and his dad is abusive, but like it did seem kind of contrasting with like the background they were giving this.
SPEAKER_01:Either way, you know it's not going to end up well for Maddie. Because if you look at like the the it like uh ABC film, it starts off with a little girl on her bike and then uh the clown comes out and kills her. Wow. And then uh part two didn't really have it, but then chapter one started off with Georgie's death. Then chapter two was the person who was a little bit older, it was Adrian, and he was 23, but still that person dies. That's the first scene. So I was uh already like, okay, what's gonna happen to Maddie? How are they going to introduce it?
SPEAKER_00:Maddie is Matthew in the original book, and he's only like said in a small part, I think it was even in before times, like it was like 19 again, early 1900s, and he was a baby. So they were like an yeah, they they mixed a lot of people's characters and they like they fleshed things out and they changed stuff. But overall, I think it stayed to the tradition of it because this next crazy hitchhike scene where he gets into a car and he's just like, take me anywhere but dairy, right?
SPEAKER_01:I'm gonna I'm gonna label it as the most horrifying scene of 2025. Maybe alien earnestly. I mean, the second she pulls out the liver, but really what the mom said when the mom said I couldn't even keep those uh legs closed if I glued them up. Oh, she's like 14 or something.
SPEAKER_00:Call her daughter. It wasn't she didn't call her a straight up whore, but she called her a like a hussy or a harlot. She called her a harlot, and this is a kid, and it was just like, yeah, so out of bounds. And the like first instant that he gets in the car, everybody's flags are up. Like, right, are is this family normal, this nuclear family? They see it.
SPEAKER_01:Because it seems like it, it seems like it seems like the mom and dad.
SPEAKER_00:Because they say, Hey, where can we take you? And then uh followed by we're going to Portland. Like, if it was an evil car, why not just kill him right at the get-go? But like, that's what the it clown is. It's like it only grows the more it's able to stay. Yeah, he likes to play with you a lot of times. So it waits until it starts doing some weird stuff, even with the raw liver. That's when I was like, Oh, this is absolutely not good. But the kid pulls it out, the girl does, yeah, and she starts to dip her fingers into it. Yeah, saying she loves the smell, puts it in front of Maddie's face, and then she stops annoying him for a second, and she turns to her other brother and who's like spelling out words very loudly and tells him to shut up, which is very normal in like a family.
SPEAKER_01:But it pulled it back for a quick second.
SPEAKER_00:For a quick second, you're like, oh, maybe things are still okay. And then the mom gives birth to a deformed winged demon baby.
SPEAKER_01:You actually see it coming out, you see an uh an umbilical cord and all like everything. And I do have to admit that while I was just like so cringing during the scene, I did have to laugh when the dad started chanting O-U-T because they were it was just like they were summoning it. So insane. And yeah, you obviously it's like no nudity, but you see it through her underwear.
SPEAKER_00:It was just nudely. It was like alien, like where it just bursts through the guy's stomach and you don't necessarily see the full thing.
SPEAKER_01:It was like alien, it reminded me a little bit of the M. Night Shyamalan movie Old, where they were on a beach, they had a similar kind of pregnancy. Uh the changeling, more just because it was a horror show, but I know that the pilot also had a pregnant scene in that, but I think that was on a subway. But this one by far took the cake in terms of like how just disturbing it was.
SPEAKER_00:It reminded me a lot of the Rolls-Royce Wraith in Nosferatu, Joe Hill's book, Joe Hill being Stephen King's uh son. It when I read that and also watched the first episode or first few episodes of the series, um, that had the whole idea was that this guy who had would take these kids to Christmas land. So he would kidnap them, stick them in the back, and the car was the actual evil presence. And what it would do in the back is it would just leech their like energy and their imagination and turn them evil into like the little gremlin kids. And that's where he would just keep them in this Christmas land thing. But it reminded me so much of that because when the kids would get in, they'd get so scared being in the back seat. And you could tell him that he was super scared when everything was going down and the demon baby came shotting out. He just immediately looked out the window and just started sucking on the pacifier again. And that's where you saw the whole family turn and just stare at him, including the deformed baby. And for like another second, you were like, are they not allowed to act unless he's looking at them? And then no, they still attacked. And that guy was, I guess he died right there. But we were led to believe maybe he could have been kidnapped. Well, we never see the episode.
SPEAKER_01:The part that I just couldn't get over is that you saw there was a quick scene of the mom holding on to the cord as the baby was run like I was like, this is this is this is this is literally insane.
SPEAKER_00:Like, this is even more insane than the movies. It does feel like if you ever connect it to Land Before Time, the first Land Before Time is known to be just tragic and sad, but also bittersweet. And then every Lambert Lamb Before Time sequel TV series, I think they actually had like 19 movies. Wow, it got more and more childish. This is the opposite. It feels like it's getting darker and darker. And it they did say uh on HBO they were able to do darker things than they were able to even do in the movies.
SPEAKER_01:There was a viral music video called Die Fantasy, and then I and then we can move on. But there is a viral music video back in 2013 called Die Fantasy, and very, very similar to what happened here. This just felt like the live action version of it. But yes, then we cut forward in time.
SPEAKER_00:Before cutting forward, I just want the concentration on the first 10 minutes here is so important because to me, I feel like the first 10 minutes and the last 10 minutes make this series a necessary watch for any Borough fan out there. Agreed. The rest of the show, there's a few things I would like to critique, but I don't think we should concentrate on them as or at it as long as we concentrated on the first scene here. But yeah, so we jump to April. We're at the standpipe, which is a famous thing for Stephen King. He includes it in almost all his it's the water tower. And we're introduced over the course of the next few scenes to the Proto Losers Club, who include Looney Lily Bainbridge. How would you describe her?
SPEAKER_01:It was the person that Maddie liked, but she's also an outcast. Like she's opening up her locker and a pickle jar is falling out.
SPEAKER_00:Her dad died a year beforehand, um, almost to the day, and he died in a pickle jarring accident where he got stuck in the machine and mangled to death. And she blames herself, which then she will later on blame herself for Maddie's death too.
SPEAKER_01:Well, she also only has like one friend, and even that one friend is kind of getting tired of being around her.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's because yes, she after she had a psychotic break, and she went to, I think the place was called Juniper Hill. She mentions it for like a quick second. Same insane asylum or wherever that they took Henry Bowers, the bully who like grows up, and then like we see different scenes from him in the in the different chapters, right? Uh so they are consistent with with that. And so she's in that clinic for a while. She gets out, she goes back to high school, and obviously kids are gonna tease her for the fact that she's loony. And so she doesn't have a lot of friends. In fact, the two other kids, Phil and Teddy, uh, Phil is a conspiracy-loving nerd, he's not that into schoolwork. Teddy is kind of the opposite where he really is about the schoolwork. Teddy's the main character, though. It does feel like it. Uh, yeah, he's Jewish and he does, he's the one who asks the adult at some point what to do in the scenario where like weird things are happening. And that's where his dad, who is also Jewish, is like, don't compare what's happening in dairy ever to like the Holocaust. And that kind of shuts him up. However, he also mentions what we talked about in the Ed Dean series, which is that the Nazis, that one lady um would like make lampshades with people's skin, and then suddenly we see a scene where Teddy is in his room and he's being haunted by it um with a lampshade of skin.
SPEAKER_01:God, that was yeah, you see like the faces of the skin in the skin. Right.
SPEAKER_00:I think it wasn't just CGI, I think it was practical effect too. Like they did like a mix of the two.
SPEAKER_01:I always like it when TV shows do that. But yeah, what do you think? He's also the one that's most haunted by Maddie. Like Phil, you can tell, is kind of put off, but he's not, he's not really willing, I think, to admit to himself that he cares that much.
SPEAKER_00:I think guilt is a big thing. Yeah, it's something that like the uh Pennywise like eats off of too. But like you said, Looney Lily Bainbridge, Maddie had a crush on her. He took her to the water tower, which he wasn't supposed to do technically, and then he tried to kiss her. She said, We're just friends, but at the same time, she felt bad about that because she didn't know if she like liked him like that. She just hadn't thought of him that way.
SPEAKER_01:I just say that, like, also whenever the show goes out, like in that first scene where you're able to see the snow and the lights or that fireworks scene, when it goes to the exterior, it looks great.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they shot in the same place that they shot the movies, which was I think in Ontario, but they were able to outfit the town and make it look like that time period. Uh, you've already talked about Marge, and then we talked about Ronnie. Phil has a kid sister who ends up joining later on, named Susie in real life. Phil and Susie are brother and sister. That is cool until you find out the ending where they are massacred. Um, so guilt, yeah. So Lily has the guilt with father, with Maddie, and how does it come about? How does it uh rise up with Maddie? She's in the bathroom, similar to Beverly, Beverly Marsh. And what happened in Beverly Marsh's scene? That was the blood scene, right?
SPEAKER_01:Where the balloon, right?
SPEAKER_00:Filled with blood, comes out of the faucet. Instead, here what Lily hears is Maddie's voice singing the trouble song from Music Man, and then not Taylor Swift. Not Taylor Swift. That's a good point. Uh, and and so she says, Come on out. No, she's like, Maddie, where are you? You know, and uh please, please come home.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, what it is is black phone, basically. That's why I connected.
SPEAKER_00:I was gonna say there are a few moments scattered throughout, not just the first 10 minutes and the last 10 minutes, that I do like. And when he yelled, he won't let me, I was like, Ooh, good shivers, you know, like that, like, yeah, that moment of like maybe he is still alive, and at the same time, he's trapped. So she goes and she tells who she thinks is his best friends, Phil and Teddy. Teddy and Phil sort of don't believe her. That's when uh Phil or Teddy is haunted by the lampshade. He tells them about it, they all decide to start investigating. Um, so Lily, Teddy, Phil, and Susie go to the library. They find out that Ronnie's family was the last one to see him. So they go to her and she gets mad, but then she also admits to having this guilt uh over it and having heard Maddie's voice. So at this point, Phil is like the only one who hasn't had any guilt. So why is he dying? Is my question.
SPEAKER_01:I, you know, that's a good yeah, because he doesn't even seem to be, we haven't seen him haunted yet, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but he does flip out after um Teddy comes to him and says, I was haunted by a lampshade. Because he was like, I've known Teddy since forever and he would not make that up.
SPEAKER_01:Talking about that library scene, they use I don't know what the machine is, but like that kind of uh makes newspapers bigger. I always like seeing those. The micro something or other. And they say that the in the in the article um about Maddie that the last place that he was at was the cinema. Yes, like and so that's why they end up going there at the very end.
SPEAKER_00:Right with Ronnie. Ronnie sets up the same film, the music man.
SPEAKER_01:Looked okay, so I just saw this a couple weeks ago. Maybe I wouldn't make this connection otherwise, but that cinema looked to me a lot like Cinema Paradiso, like the movie classic there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Something that you would go in there and but especially with like Ronnie setting up the projection and everything, and you seeing the film reels, it just brought me back to that movie, surprisingly.
SPEAKER_00:So it felt like a classic. It also, for some reason, reminded me a little bit of Inglorious Bastards. So uh we're watching this thing, and it's the last 10 minutes, so we know something scary is gonna happen. And it becomes forced gump. Like they're watching the film, and suddenly Maddie shows up, and I'm thinking, this is cool. Can we spend like the next few uh episodes watching the music man and just have Maddie like interacting with these characters? No, no, no. He's they zoom in on him, he can hear his friends yelling at him, come on home, you know? Yeah, and he's holding what we know to be the baby, but it's like wrapped up, so they don't know what he's holding.
SPEAKER_01:The first shot we get though, when he doesn't say anything and they just show him in the film, that was that was cool, but it was so funny to me. It was like that that that was a great, great moment, right there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So Teddy and Phil and little Susie are the only ones in the theater because I no, no, no, and um uh Lily is also there, right? Yes. Ronnie is up in the balcony or whatever, setting up the projection. So basically she's safe. And that's when Maddie has a turn. He stops being just their old friend Maddie, um, and he he kind of goes Robin from Joe. You know when Joker kidnaps Robin in that famous cartoon and then turns him into the joker.
SPEAKER_01:You're talking about like the Batman Beyond one, right?
SPEAKER_00:Uh yeah, I think that's but it was like right now, yes. It follows the comics, yeah. So like when his face he goes into like almost the demented uh Bill Skarsgard look, he does the smile and his face lightens up and it looks like he's almost going full clown. And I was like, is this gonna be like a new origin story for Pennywise? Is Pennywise Maddie? And then no, I think it's just Pennywise's spirit is inside uh Maddie right now, and he's just using him as a vessel.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you should also mention that he tray like the music man kind of fades out in the background. He's he's walking away from the movie practically, and then it's just him towards the screen.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, he's breaking the fourth wall, literally.
SPEAKER_01:Right, and but it's just it's just him against blackness by the time that he's having his evil moment.
SPEAKER_00:I thought he was gonna walk out of the screen. He sort of did. He threw the baby out of the screen. And I know the baby's scary, but it is tiny. And I was thinking, maybe if you hit it. What did they have to hit it with? They didn't have a fists. I mean, you I'm saying like, but then it proceeded to just maul and dismember uh all three of them, uh Teddy, Phil, and most sadly his sister, Susie. Susie had the moment, the Georgie moment, where uh uh uh uh Lily asked for her hand, yeah, tried to pull it, and ended up with a mangled arm in her in her hand.
SPEAKER_01:Because yeah, so this was insane to me because we start off the first thing, the first person that dies, I think it's the person that's thrown against the window, is uh is Teddy. Like just so sad. His his body just gets completely smushed. You see like the blood and gore and everything. It was crazy they killed Susie off, though. The like the youngest person usually horror TV shows or movies like save that one. I was gonna say my initial impressions, but absolutely she had perhaps the most graphic death with the hands still being clung to Lily by the time that Lily leaves.
SPEAKER_00:They went there, yeah, yeah, and then she screams because Ronnie has come down at that. In my mind, I was like, how can I make this so that like by the end of it they find out it's a memory or like they're gonna bring them back to life? And I was like, nope, nope, it seems like they're actually killed off, killed off.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, I that's that's getting into kind of my my impressions where it's like I hope that they do remain dead. I'm I if they still come back in ghost form, I still think that that's fine. I hope Phil remains dead. No, I'm exactly I'm just saying that like if it was any other TV show, I would be more afraid that they'd be bought back. But I think that it a lot of the times when they're dead, yes, you might see them in Pennywise's form, but they but they're like dead.
SPEAKER_00:I have some more to say, and you have some more to say on the impressions, but I do want to approach the second storyline really quickly. Major Leroy Hanlon, uh, a black Korean war veteran, newly assigned to Derry Air Force Base. It's the place that we saw Phil looking at from the water tower at the beginning. He's studying this military camp. They have B-2 bombers, and so uh they're they're not exactly sure what's going on there. They're running experiments. Reminds me a little bit of another Stephen King story, The Mist, you know, where uh something wacky could be going on. Maybe they have monsters. Some interested uh sleuths on the internet were thinking maybe that they're hunting Pennywise. Um but yeah, you have uh the main guy, uh Leroy Hanlon, who is obviously connected with Mike Hanlin, the main character of the original series. I think it's his grandpa. General Shaw is played by James Remar. He is the one who apologizes consistently every time there is any sort of racism directed toward towards Hanlon. Yeah, he's also the one that kind of steps in. And I bet you didn't recognize Captain Paulie Rooster.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I absolutely did. I did.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, Rudy Mancuzo.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, Rudy Mancuzo. What is he doing in that? Not playing the piano. That's what he's not doing. I was I was shocked. I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait. A YouTuber is now in the world.
SPEAKER_00:Best friends with the grandpa.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, here's the thing YouTubers usually make the jump, but they don't make the jump into like a huge series like It Welcome to Dairy most of the time.
SPEAKER_00:It's actually related to Andy Muschetti and Barbara Muschetti, the brother and sister team who do the who who created the and developed the series and no, I'm just making that up. I have no idea. I have no idea how he how he got into it. Um it's just funny that, yeah, you have a YouTuber there um and you've shown me videos of his before. And then uh I also wanted to point out that um they get attacked, right, in the middle of the night, because we see very small bits of this story, but they get attacked by these people wearing gas masks. The last time we've seen like a gas mask show would be like Teacup, which again was like last year.
SPEAKER_01:Or the stand. I mean, but my question about that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, my is that's a good point. Uh is why didn't they grab the gas mask and try to rip it off? You know, they had a few seconds, and I feel like that would have been the go-to move is grab that gas mask and rip to see who it is.
SPEAKER_01:Who it is, yeah, because they're asking for uh specs on the kind of just laugh off the fact that he was attacked by the end. They've yeah, it was also just weird that like Pauly Russo was the one that basically chases them off. Like they don't they don't even like injure them really, they just kind of run away. Right. Right. It was I guess they just didn't want to fight two people. Uh and they had guns, right? So they had guns and there was like four of them. It was very s weird, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we'll find out more about that later, but for now on the pilot. He is a pilot, so it's got a double meaning there. The pilot, the pilot. Um, and and and that that's about the episode. So let's talk about what other impressions we had on it. Uh you want me to kick it off or do you?
SPEAKER_01:Uh I'll I'll start off with mine. Okay. Guess because we were just talking about it. The army-based story I hated. Don't know why it was in the show. Really wish that they just focused on the kids. Thought that it was the like it bought the showdown. Yes, it had some famous people in it, but I'm sure it's going to be explained more in the seven episodes left, but I just wish that it was out of the story.
SPEAKER_00:Ah, I liked it. You really? Yeah, I think because I didn't like necessarily all the kids' scenes, especially when they were together, I felt like it was a little stilted, like they were really trying to pile in the references, and it came at the cost of actual natural, authentic dialogue and way of making these kids not seem like actors. And so seeing then this other storyline kind of taking a break from it, um, I think that they overkilled the fact that, like, the first second he gets in there, he is uh he's not given the proper salute because there's some racists. James Remar apologizes there. Then the next scene he apologizes for it. Then the next scene, he is attacked by a bunch of racists. I I would think um in the gas mask. It just felt like there was an overwhelming message there when they only needed to do it once or maybe twice to kind of get the point across. Um as far as the kids are concerned, I think Marge is getting promoted because I think she's gonna be part of the losers club now, and it's just gonna be Ronnie, Lily, and Marge. So it's gonna be three three girls, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:No, I mean, and also I like the way that the 60s was portrayed. Like we've already talked about the music man was there, but Bert the turtle mascot, obviously. So turtles, right?
SPEAKER_00:Let's talk turtles. Very important to Stephen King's universe, especially the it universe, because it's like there's this magical super cosmic turtle, kind of like an avatar that is supposed to be the antithesis to the evil that is Pennywise or it. And so that like at some point we should see an Avengers style turtle versus clown fight. But Bert the Turtle was there. And also, if you remember, Maddie gave uh Lily his Cracker Jack turtle that he got. Yeah. And she said it's good luck. My question is, had he kept that turtle, would he still be alive? Is that turtle what kept Lily alive? I would think yes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, right. I would think so too. I thought that Bertha the Turtle worked well though, because obviously it was a symbol of the Cuban Missile Crisis, so it fit right in with the timeline.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but I I love any turtle reference, I love any music man reference. For that reason, this show is going to get high marks for me for I'm just giving that away. I do think it's the search that kind of fucked them overall, the kids. Had they not gone so hard, I think they were like egged into it, but had they not done that, then it It would not have been able to, I think, put them together and have them in the same place and just do this massacre in the same way. I think it was sort of a ritual for him.
SPEAKER_01:Because of that, it's kind of a nitpick, but it does just re-tread, it feels like territory a little bit too much for me personally.
SPEAKER_00:I I think a lot of people expected the kids to die because we all know where it's heading. Right. They were not successful at defeating this monster until the the the chapter one and chapter two. So we know that like possibly these kids are all gonna die, but to happen in the first episode, after you spend so much of it trying to I the people were saying it's a bait and switch, they pulled the rug out, but in a good way.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and that's that's what leads me to actually my next pro, which was that the pacing was really good. I mean, I'm not sure if we're gonna agree on that, but I felt like by the time, even though it ended with a bang, I thought I was expecting it to keep going, not feel like 50 minutes to me. I was like, oh wow, okay, that was pretty fast.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, when you spend the first 10 minutes in such graphic violence in the last 10 minutes and stuff, you are kind of left being like, I that did not feel that long. Like I was I was entertained. Um, I do feel like the the adults kind of have a Charlie Brown effect in all of these things where and I think it's even addressed in uh in the movies where they forget what happens after these tragedies. But it's crazy that that happened. Like, this isn't one or two bodies in a small town, it's killing a lot of people. And the fact that they had this like memory wipe, Alzheimer's like lock and key style, kids only remember, it it makes it so that the world, it's hard to figure out how if you were in that situation, you would beat it.
SPEAKER_01:But talking about the fate of the main characters, it feels like we're starting back at square one. Right.
SPEAKER_00:They have to reintroduce you to a whole new litany of like, because I'm as sure the losers group is going to be made up of more than three people. Right. But now we're we're following Lily and you have to find more losers.
SPEAKER_01:Uh but my thing is more like, what was the point of telling Teddy's backstory if in the end they were just going to kill him off?
SPEAKER_00:Uh oh, Teddy's backstory? I thought you were talking about Matt again. Um, I I think they'll still show up. Like, I don't think those characters are gone in the way that, but they'll just be ghosts, like they'll be the evil versions of themselves.
SPEAKER_01:To me, it's one of the things where it's like we've started a race, and I feel like we're going a couple steps back because this next episode is going to have to be probably flushing out or giving more characters or adding them to the story. And I feel like, you know, it's it's gonna be like a second pilot. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00:I found that like my main criticism was definitely the kids' writing. Like I just it's Phil and Teddy. I I by the end, I think Teddy was okay. I didn't like Phil's character. I felt that like the Lily Maddie pushing that love story when like they were just kids. It didn't feel like Maddie had really that much motive to leave based on what we were seeing. Um, the fact that she rejected one kiss.
SPEAKER_01:Uh plus she was she she she felt bad about it, like she still wanted to be there.
SPEAKER_00:When you compare this to Stranger Things, because everybody's gonna compare it to Stranger Things. Very much those kids in that first like episode, they didn't have any references that they had to push in there. Now, they obviously were paying homage to the 80s and and horror, but like the kids themselves in those first two seasons were so good at seeming like real people, like real kids that you'd want to hang out with or that you just uh you'd see. Like there was nothing about it that felt stilted and as corny, right? Right. This did have that. This I felt like that was its main hiccup. All also, you could say that there was no Bill Skarsgard.
SPEAKER_01:I was yeah, so that was my thing. The CGI a little bit off, but also no pennywise, all iterations make sure to have him in the first scene. And I get that they are using him sparingly, but it's called it. The poster is him with a balloon, just him on the front. Why do we have to wait? Because I feel like we're not gonna get a lot of him next episode either.
SPEAKER_00:And if that's the case, that's the case, I'd be mad. But just one episode without it. I think it was also subverting expectations. Kill all the kids, don't have the monster in it, have the baby monster in it. I I still wanted to see him. Yes, that's where I'm coming from, too. Is uh but it would have still been nice to see like the scary monster. Right. Okay, and then uh yeah, so my pros though, I already said Music Man, the significance of the turtle, uh, also Miles Urkhart, the guy who played um Maddie, he his first role was in Turtles All the Way Down. Um, so does the show, do you think, expand the pennywise mythology on television without losing the cinematic polish and tone of the movies? Yes. Okay, because that's what they set out to do. As I said, Andy Muschete and his sister Barbara Muschetti are the ones who developed this. Um Benjamin Walfish is the same person who did the score in the movies, did the score here. You have writer uh Jason Fuchs, who penned a lot of the series, Fuchs and Caleb Kane, Brad Caleb Kane, who voiced Aladdin's singing uh singing voice in like the 90s movies. Oh, the cartoon versions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, so he's the co-showrunner. Um, and they also, like I told you, uh, shot in Port Hope, Ontario, and they shot it under the title Greetings from Fairview, all these other really tiny facts. Last one I'll throw in there is that Teddy's older brother, the one who comes into his room, is like, I don't know why we're related. Yeah, after the lampshade Stan's father from the film, he's the future rabbi of Derry. So he does take a what are your comparisons for this show?
SPEAKER_01:Uh I kind of went through them all, but I had um I had Stranger Things, like we talked about the terrifier just because Terrifying Clown, Black Phone, Haunting of Hill House, just because of the tone, really. I saw one place, one article, compare this to Untamed. I don't know how, but I wanted to see if you could guess why, how you could even connect the two of them.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, both regard an investigation and a missing dead kid. Um, that's about it.
SPEAKER_01:You just yeah, I was I was very confused by it. But overall, I'll be giving the show an eight out of ten. Eight out of ten if Phil and Susie and Ted are actually dead. Seven if they come back. But again, I don't think I don't think that's happening. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Um, I'm saying for the pilot, yeah, 7.58 is is good to give it. I would also be uh trepidatious before like jumping in and saying the whole show is gonna be great. Um again, it you have to see if you're a horror fan, the first scene, the last scene here. Uh, I would compare it to invasion, as in the you had the kid plot, and then you had the side plot with the military. Uh Leroy is kind of like that character in that. Um, obviously Stranger Things. At one point, the writer strike affected this, and so they had a state of spontaneous growth. I know that Stranger Things has had to deal with the same thing. Gas mask, teacup, shining connection. There is a character from the shining who is in the television series. I don't know if we've seen him yet. And then them, because of the racism. 1953 is when that took place, also had some crazy shit with a baby, I think, uh, later on, but not not like, yeah, different type of horror. The reception for this thing has been pretty good across the board. I mean, they've had so many people weigh in because it is one of the most anticipated shows of the year. Um, some of my favorite headlines were like, even Dairy Girls fans who have switched on in confusion might be convinced to stick around. That was the independent. The Guardian, actually, I don't think gave it a great review, but a lot of the negative reviews were kind of reiterating the same thing I was talking about, which is that the kids weren't as likable because they didn't come across, especially in their scenes together, as that authentic, like they were actually friends. Um, especially the scene where the Phil was like peeping. I think that was the one where I was just like, this feels so dumb. And that was like one of his first few scenes. Yeah, he didn't get that many. And I think part of it was like, Oh, we're gonna kill these kids off, so we can't make them too. Like they can't, but it but Marge is kind of like Barb was in Stranger Things, but she's gonna survive. So yeah. Um, Welcome to Dairy feels like a lesser imitation of Netflix's phenomenon in almost every way. That was the rap negative. Um, TV Insider says it's not as clever a brand as FX's superb alien earth. It's not top-tier king, or even the best it, but it's far from the worst. The worst being ABC's part two version, right? Okay, and then uh 60 on Metacritic, 8.1 on IMDb, 76 on Ron Tomatoes, critic score, 81 audience score. It's nice when they link up like that, and it seems like everybody's sort of on the same page. Um, Reddit is like flurry with uh different ideas of what's going to happen next, but they won't have to wait long because the second episode it comes out today, tonight. They're releasing it early, which is really cool. Um, thanks for listening. We'll see you on the next episode. Hope you enjoyed this one. Bye. Bye.