Today's Episode
We watched it. Every episode covers the latest installment(s) of a different TV show.
Today's Episode
The Abandons (PILOT)
The Abandons is Netflix’s new Western, created by Sons of Anarchy showrunner Kurt Sutter and set in the 1850s Washington Territory, where devout rancher Fiona Nolan (Lena Headey) and ruthless mine owner Constance Van Ness (Gillian Anderson) collide over land, power, and the fate of their families.
On the podcast, we discuss the 50-minute pilot, from the cattle wildfire to the Romeo-and-Juliet love story. We also talk Sutter’s exit from the show, the rumored extra-long “Sutter cut” of the premiere, and how his usual strengths and bad habits show up here. Tune in to hear our comparisons, rating, and trivia. Welcome to Today’s Episode!
Welcome to today's episode of the podcast where we discuss the most recent installment of a different series every show. It is Friday, December 12th. Today we're looking at Netflix's latest Western series, The Abandons, created by Kurt Sutter himself. So you are very familiar with Kurt Sutter. I think I've seen every show that he's created, at least part of it. Well, let's talk about a few of them because you have The Shield, which was uh starring Michael Chickless.
SPEAKER_01:That was kind of his first big hit, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Walton Goggins, right? Who would then go on to Justified and The White Lotus and Brighteous Gemstones and all that stuff. And then also then you have that followed by Sons of Anarchy. Sons of Anarchy, yeah. And then Minds and Sea.
SPEAKER_01:Literally followed by Sons of Anarchy, though, because the Shield, season seven, the final season, premiered the day before the pilot of Sons of Anarchy.
SPEAKER_00:And the the scope of you go from like corrupt cops, right? And then you go into like a corrupt biker gang. Not exactly corrupt, but a regular biker gang with regul regular faults and definitely has an adversarial uh connection with the law.
SPEAKER_01:It was a modern retelling of Hamlet. They also got a ton of actors from The Shield to show up in Sons of Anarchy.
SPEAKER_00:And then they followed it up. They thought they were going to do a prequel, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that that was like talk talked about right after season seven ended that I think had Brad Pitt attached for a little bit, and then that just the plans for that were scrapped.
SPEAKER_00:And Brad Pitt would have played whose whose dad?
SPEAKER_01:I think he would have played uh Charlie Huntham's dad, Jax's dad, I believe. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And then they followed that up with Myan's MC. Well, they followed it up with The Bastard Executioner. True. He did have a little foray into the medieval uh Dungeons and Dragons verse, because that was like a mystical series, too, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it was from I I remember I only watched the first 20 minutes of it where like they had the most fake CGI looking dragon, and then I I the time I turned it off, because I was so excited for the series that I watched it the next day after it came out, was when a character was talking about how he likes to fuck a sheep, and I was like, you know what? I am done with this series, I'm not going back to it.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I don't want to push back too hard on that, but I can see different characters in like Minds MC or Sons of Anarchy saying the exact same thing. Like there's no characters that fuck a sheep.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah, no, they definitely all had their quirks to it. Right. But then he wrote South Pie, didn't direct it. He wrote the Jake Gillenhall movie, and then yeah, he made Mind's MC, I think that came out in 2018.
SPEAKER_00:And in the middle of all this, like Taylor Sheridan was working for him. He was one of his actors, and then he went on and started doing a bunch of Western movies. Sons of Anarchy, yeah. You do like Kurt Sutter's work overall, yeah?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I have his like kind of projects placed in between the good, the bad, and the ugly.
SPEAKER_00:I'll have you rate them in a second and also just give me your favorite episodes. But I I was wondering if you could just tell me what are the flaws of a Kurt Sutter verse? Like, because it seems like there's ones that just repeat that people online like to talk about a lot.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, he kind of he always goes for shock value. That's one of the things that I thought hurt Sons of Anarchy the most because it started out being an actually really interesting series about this biker gang, and then at the end, it just turned into wanting to kill every character off and trying to be the most shocking that it could.
SPEAKER_00:I d is it just the shock factor, or is it also because it seems like he kind of falls too in love with his own stuff, like he becomes overindulgent. The the ending episodes or the last few seasons of the Sons of Anarchy show, were they not over an hour long per episode?
SPEAKER_01:I think that it started with season five, episode 10. And I think that like, yeah, they ended up being like 80 or 90 minutes with commercials. Right? Yeah, yeah. It was it was crazy. It was always like I I would always want to watch him before school because they would premiere on Tuesday night. So you'd wake up at 3 a.m. And I would I'd have to wake up super early.
SPEAKER_00:Sometimes I won't be able to finish the episodes before I went to school. But it worked, right? Like overall, the Sons of Anarchy tied up in a good knot. Like that's one weakness for him. Another one that people have pointed out is his wife that he likes to kind of shoehorn her every project. And and a lot of directors do that. Yeah. A lot of it like, but it's the way that he does it that people have kind of maybe because of her singing.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah, no, no, because he does do like his own original soundtracks and she did do a lot of songs. So did Edwards. Did you never take it out though?
SPEAKER_00:That like to Ed Sheeran's a famous singer, he's able to sell out concerts across the world. I don't know if Katie Sigal would be able to do that. Did you enjoy her singing? Yes.
SPEAKER_01:No, I I thought so. Uh, but she's not like singing in every single episode. Was she in the abandons at all? Uh not from what I saw. The abandons. Okay, no, no.
SPEAKER_00:So then give me your uh the order of these shows in your mind, and then also your favorite episodes from each.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, sure. So underneath the good, because that's the good, bad, and the ugly, Sons of Anarchy. I thought it has I have the most nostalgia for it. I thought that the first five seasons were the best. Like I said, last two seasons were a little bit more soap opery than I would have liked. And then it goes the shield, which is also underneath the good category, because I thought that the first three seasons, it was this really dark drama, but I liked seeing Vic Mackey. I know that you compare Vic Mackey a lot to Denzel Washington's character in training day. And although I haven't seen the movie, I can definitely see why. And I and that's where I really became a fan of Walton Goggins as well. I like his character. Seasons four and five I thought were a little bit slower. They focused too much on guest stars like Glenn Close and Forrest Whitaker, but season six and seven, in terms of how to end a series, I thought that was a thousand times better than Sons of Anarchy. In fact, uh Michael Chickless has one of my favorite lines from any TV show ever. Um, it's the penultimate episode, and he ends it by saying, I've done worse. Anyone who's seen the series knows about it. It's one of the most harrowing lines, and I I love that line from it. And then underneath the bed, I have Mayan's MC. There were some interesting characters, especially for the first two seasons, some interesting plot lines. I like Edward James almost. I like a lot of the cast, but it just felt like the show was very directionless. Like it didn't have a clear basis of the case. Are you just saying that?
SPEAKER_00:Because that was one of the other weaknesses of a Kurt Sutter thing, is he's prone to not quit, but like leave a series for one reason or another. And that was certainly the case in Mayan's.
SPEAKER_01:The first two seasons were the best, and those were the ones I worked on. But yeah, it just didn't ever feel like the show had any clear, concise way of where it was going. I I I'm in season five right now, which is the final season, and I still don't know why the characters are acting the way they do.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Um, so going into this, like apply all the lessons you've learned about Crit Sutter and the fact that he does like to bring upon some of his previous talent. Yeah. So you do have like Ryan Hearst showing up in this show.
SPEAKER_01:He plays Miles. You also have Quentin played by, I don't know the actor's name, but he plays Angel, the brother of JD Pardo in Mayan's MC.
SPEAKER_00:So one of the main characters for Myan's MC is in this. All right. And so he brings them aboard this project. And again, what do you what are your expectations? Because it is female led, which is a first for him. Usually he he doesn't have too many female characters in the entire show. Um, and and so now it's two matriarchs that going face to face.
SPEAKER_01:I'm expecting a succession with guns. That's what it seemed like, at least at first, that it was going to be guns.
SPEAKER_00:Succession with guns, yeah. That is some high expectations. Well, I was expecting you to be like Yellowstone, Deadwood.
SPEAKER_01:Let me explain. That's what I thought the plot was going to be. I thought that we were going to be getting quality-wise something along the lines of like American prime evil, which was also. Yeah, it was on Netflix. Yes, exactly. Maybe Landman. Actually, kind of like Terror Taylor Sheridan shows, Dark Ones, you know, kind of something along those lines. Uh-huh. Okay. And uh, and instead, Sons of Anarchy was a modern retelling of Hamlet, and I felt like this was a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:But uh I mean, there's some things you gotta know. First of all, you watched the hour and 40-minute pilot, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I watched the 50-minute pilot.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, well, then you some background. Uh Kurt Sutter left the show a year ago before production wrapped. Uh, this is he brought the pilot, which was one of those long Sons of Anarchy type episodes to Netflix. The producers did not like it. They said, we gotta split this up. We're gonna bring the episode total that we gave you originally. We said we were gonna give you 10 episodes and we're gonna break down to seven, but then you're gonna have to cut the first episode that you've already made into two. So that limits him down to now having to make five more episodes and doing a lot of reshoots. I didn't know that he left over creative differences, and it seems like at first the internet was like, oh man, he abandoned the abandoned. But then after a while, with the like just little stories coming out, people are saying they're more on his side because like more on Kurt's Sutter's side, given all the constraints that it seems like was being put on, and also the fact that we're not able to compare it to what the hour 40-minute pilot is. They completely had to change the climax of the first episode that you watched, change the cliffhanger. And having watched it with you, while also having read some of the reviews beforehand, I think I know what they changed, but but we'll get into that.
SPEAKER_01:So I thought that this was going to be Kurt Sutter's return because he hasn't done anything since like Mayan's when he left, I think, in like 2019. And I there are some projects I absolutely hate, like Southpawn, the Bastard Executioner. That's why I had underneath the ugly.
SPEAKER_00:Well, he had five years, and there was the writer's strike, and there was uh the fact that the I mean it came in out of the pandemic.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, the last four years it's just been this project for the that's so that's so disappointing because I was ready to be like, all right, this is okay.
SPEAKER_00:And he even had the guy who did like Peaky Blinders, some of the episodes of that, uh, and the the pilot of uh Robin Hood that we talked about, Otto Bat Bathurst. Oh, Robin Hood that came out like a month ago. Yeah, the one who did the pilot to that. We talked about him then. So like they were working together on the pilot episode. Uh so it's interesting. Let's go over the plot real quick. Right.
SPEAKER_01:So we started off in a place called Angel's Ridge, Washington Territory, 1854. And Angel's Ridge looked like a sum of a thousand parts from modern old West TV and movies.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, nothing technically bad with that.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, definitely.
SPEAKER_00:It's very easy to do, you think in Hollywood Beach.
SPEAKER_01:I thought that it looked a lot like Godless Westworld 1883, even once upon a time, the location whenever they shoot the Western film.
SPEAKER_00:I think they shot in Canada, and I think they shot around where they shot The Last of Us.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, no, and it and I thought that it looked cool. You see the town hall, guns, bar name Moran's, and like it's our first introduction to the Van Nesses, the evil villains in this show. Uh, they ride in on horseback and they want to talk to Patton Oswald.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, Patton Oswald shows up again a justified thing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, and that's that's so funny because I remember when we were talking about Justified City Prime Evil, so many characters from Sons of Anarchy, almost I'd say like over half the cast show up in Justified.
SPEAKER_00:It almost feels like Kurt Sutter is somehow tied to Justified, but he's not.
SPEAKER_01:Right. It seems like he should be. But yeah, I think this is the first time that Patton Oswald has worked with him, but he's playing the mayor, and then the Van Nesses let out their grievances. They say that like the the mines, the you know, silver, it's going down. It turns out that there's just like not a lot of time that Angels Ridge or these places have left because the finances are just so bad.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, the Van Nesses are very rich, but they see their fortune as dwindling, and while they still have the power that they do, they want to amass more, and they look over the ridge and they see who just hanging out.
SPEAKER_01:They see the abandons, they see actually four different families. They see the abandons, the Paxon family, the Sarah family, and the Alder Standard. And why are they called the Abandons? The abandons because Fiona, who is played by Lena Hedy, has adopted four kids. Orphans. Yeah, and we don't see a lot of Lilla, but the other three are Albert, Elia, Elias, Elias, Elias, and then Dahlia. Yes.
SPEAKER_00:And so, like, it reminds me a lot of the previous series that we just talked about with House of Asher, where he is kind of uh in charge of this misfit group of gladiators. I wish they had leaned further into that and gone like Ryan Murphy style misfit. You had like one with one arm, or like they could have really gone and made them the real underdogs. Instead, they didn't. But here it's kind of the same principle. You have people who um are marginalized, a community that's already looked down upon or that people don't really respect. And she's and and uh the Van Ness family wants to force this sale because they live on a silver vein so they can mine those minerals and get their fortune.
SPEAKER_01:But every single uh like kind of offer that they've given these four families, the four families have turned down, they want to keep their land, and then it led to probably one of my favorite sequences, my favorite sequence, come to think of it, of the whole episode.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, well, this is gonna be interesting because this was definitely a polarized sequence. But go ahead.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so uh it turns out that Constance, she hires some men and they set fire to the forest, and they also let the cattle out. And the one thing I recognize is that Kurt Sutter loves to start off with fire in the woods. I remember in Sons of Anarchy, the Mayans, the first scene of that is that the Mayans like blow up a safe house full of guns in like a desert. He's got a little Michael band. And so, but this one was even way more. Like you see fire starting off on the trees, and Fiona wakes up, she runs out into the living room and shoots off a gun. I thought she was just going to scream, but she shoots a hole in the roof. Everyone wakes up, they all get on horseback and they're trying to save the cattle before the cattle go off this cliff. I felt bad for the one cow because you see this just giant herds of cows and they all stop, but then the inertia from the back cow hits one and it goes toppling over the edge. Right.
SPEAKER_00:And so she's uh Gillian Anderson's uh character is trying to just destroy any sort of use or utility that this land would have for.
SPEAKER_01:She's trying, she's trying to threaten them, she's even watching it all go down from far away with like binoculars.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I I guess you could take it one of two ways. One is that she was just threatening them, the other is that she expected all the cattle to fall off that thing, and then they would just be completely broken, they would have to take her money. Yeah, that's the way I was seeing it. But um people were also pointing out how they thought the CGI looked really bad.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, I wasn't really focusing on that much. I'm sure if I was looking at it, I probably wouldn't be like as well.
SPEAKER_00:And the funny thing is that the people who did like there were some people commenting who had actually worked on some of the VX uh oh VFX? VFX, yeah, and they said that it wasn't them, it was the colorizing people. So they were pointing the blame other other ways, and and that the final result isn't indicative of what they originally did, which looked a lot better, they said.
SPEAKER_01:I thought that it looked cool anyways. Like again, I like the fire against the trees, and I even was okay with them saving majority of the cattle, even though I'm sure that that probably wouldn't be how it actually happens in real life.
SPEAKER_00:No, no one died though, right? Not in the first scene. Right. Not in the first scene. People are safe, the abandons go back, and then the next day.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, it's it's really Elias who says, you know what, he he has no he he knows it's Constance. He's like, this is the Van Ness's, no question about it. We have to get all the other families on board. So he goes to meet Walter Paxson. He's the singular family member of the Paxton family, but he's like, You have to help us in Paxton. Is like, no, I don't want to deal with it. Do you want the dog? Uh yes, he is. Okay. And then he also goes to the Aldertons and Miles Alderton, played by Ryan Hearst, biggest beard he probably has had since Sons of Anarchy.
SPEAKER_00:And Outsiders, did he have a beard in that?
SPEAKER_01:Uh he might have. Oh, he wasn't that though, wasn't he? Yeah. Yeah. And he goes and Miles is like, you know what? No, I don't want to do it. I don't want to mess with the Van Nesses. And then it's just turns out that like no one is wanting to go against them, even though the abandons are trying to form a pact.
SPEAKER_00:It didn't remind me of Deadwood or Yellowstone. It reminded me of of Ransom Canyon, where uh they also had these families, and you would have within the family groups these people who would try to convince the other families to work on one side of an issue, and uh there would be that stubbornness factor in them, and then something terrible would happen and that would like put them all together.
SPEAKER_01:It reminded me a little bit of Horizon, the Kevin Costner film that came out like two years ago, especially just with the way it was colored and kind of the the house that the abandons are in.
SPEAKER_00:Does Kevin Costner like demand everything that he does? He has to ride a horse or something?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think it's supposed to be a saga, right? It's supposed to be four films.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_01:Anyways, yeah, so you know what I'm talking about now. So then um, yeah, then we then we cut a little bit later, and Willem, he is just this terrible character. Well, played by Toby Hemingway. Yeah, so we we see that like kind of everyone is in town. He goes up to this guy named Isaac because he feels like the horse isn't gaining as much attention. Also, Trish, who is part of the Van S as Trisha. His sister, right? Yeah, she's like, hey, you like that girl, go talk to me. You like Dahlia, and then uh, and it turns out that Willem, he's just he calls Isaac a Jew. He also is talking to Dahlia, and he's just being very weird.
SPEAKER_00:Your family was just attacked, uh, it or it feels like that. Dahlia isn't receptive to anything that Willem's gonna put forward, and she insults him, right? Right, she's very depressive. You have no brains. And and I thought when I watched that, I was like, okay, he's gonna have to like over the season like lose that edge about him and then like maybe turn into a good guy. But that's that's the exact opposite of him. The opposite of what they do.
SPEAKER_01:He he goes to a bar, he drinks, he sees some people making out. I guess that turns him on, and he's also just very angry. He gets on a horse and he rides over to the abandoned farm, and then he basically tries to rape Dahlia. Well, he does, doesn't he?
SPEAKER_00:Like he actually is in the process of doing that when they finally break in. Um, so I wouldn't even know, I don't think they stop him, but he walks out there all smugly and says, You can't kill me, otherwise you're gonna be in a hell of like a lot of trouble. Right.
SPEAKER_01:Albert uh Albert comes bursting in, that's him with the gun. That's why he was able to stop having the encounter. But then it turns out that Dolly is the one that puts a rake through him and through his stomach. Yes, a pitchfork.
SPEAKER_00:I don't think a rake would be strong enough, but yeah, it reminds me a lot again of House of Asher, where the character I talked about in the House of Asher, where she goes about it a different way, but she stops people from taking advantage of her. And uh in both, it's like the repercussions of that. Actually, in Spartacus, it it basically played out right then and there. She had a fight and then she kind of proved her worth, and then that was it. Like nobody asked any questions. In this, it seems like it's gonna have long-lasting impact because now Constance is like, where's my boy at? But he doesn't die, right? From that picture. He's he's a he's a he's alive for like the next 10 minutes of the show, which was kind of weird, which is like hours in actual timing of the the time.
SPEAKER_01:And what Fiona says, because some people learn about it. I think that the Miles family might be there. I'm not sure. I think the whole everybody learns about it right. And she's she except for Constance. Basically, what she says to the families is if he's alive by sunrise, we will start the big track and we'll take him like to the Oregon hospital. But everyone leaves except for Dahlia, and Fiona is just like, I'm taking care of this. Starts talking about how she killed her first ex-husband and then steps on Willem's throat and he is dead.
SPEAKER_00:I get the need for character development, but what would have been the problem with just using the pitchfork to go right through the heart?
SPEAKER_01:That is exactly what my biggest con, or one of my biggest cons of the show was also I I feel like they did that maybe because they didn't want to make Dahlia be the one to kill him, but then in that case, just have Albert be the one with the shotgun.
SPEAKER_00:Right, or or but even if Fiona could have killed him, even in that sense, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Have have Fiona be the one that comes in with the shotgun and shoot him right there. And then I didn't understand, it just felt like it was there to pad time, and it was a very strange directional choice.
SPEAKER_00:It does feel like for the rest of the episode, now it's less about this deal that they that Constance wants to make and more about her just being more and more suspicious of of the uh abandons knowing something about where her kid is.
SPEAKER_01:Right, because Constance, she's going to the abandoned, she's going to Pax, and she's like, Have you seen Will?
SPEAKER_00:Well, eventually she does. At first, she like just waits for him and then they go to the police station and stuff. But while that's all going down in town and like the abandons are are just like hanging around, that's where Trisha, like her her relationship with whatever is Elias is is really blooming.
SPEAKER_01:It's being yeah, it's being hinted at. I'm sure we're going to get more in the next six episodes. But uh then Garrett doesn't like how she's talking to Elias and it turns into a giant bar fight. And then he uh it would really be like Garrett? Yeah, Lucas Till, right? From Manchester by the Sea? No, not from Manchester by the Sea, it's from Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh I think it's Lucas Tillman from Manchester by the Sea. So Lucas Till yeah, no, I I I actually like Garrett in this uh in this role, but he insults Fiona, and that's the thing that makes Albert punch him in the face.
SPEAKER_00:What's the difference between you're liking his character but disliking Willem? Because they both are just assholes to the Abandons. Why is one person's version of it different than the other? You thought that Garrett was uh was as bad as Willem was? I'm not saying they're as bad as one uh each other, but I'm saying they both have that distaste. They both insult the abandons at one point. Is it because we know that Willem did die to them, so they are slightly responsible for that hate?
SPEAKER_01:I think so too, but also Willem, I I felt like Garrett was supposed to be more likable than Willem was. Willem was like bottom of the barrel, like just terrible case. I mean, he did rape someone, yes. Yeah. So I I didn't think that Garrett was as bad as that.
SPEAKER_00:What about the relationship of this Romeo and Juliet thing is like working for them? Like, why are they falling in love?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I don't know. I I don't know yet. That's why, that's why though I saw like the Star Crossed Lovers type of thing. Of course. Because you have two opposing families. And then Willem also fills the role of Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, uh, you know, after he's slain by the by Romeo's family. So it's like, so that's why I feel like uh Kurt Sutter just is such a fan of Hamlet, because or sorry, such a fan of Shakespeare because he always likes to like kind of adapt these plays.
SPEAKER_00:So the abandons having like facing this issue of constance bearing down on them for one reason or another, they are trying to get rid of a body, right? Right, and they hold it up to a vote with the four families that oh yeah. So, like, don't they go directly to the guy with the dog first and they're like, hey man, can you just like get rid of this for us? They go to Paxton. Paxton, and Paxton's like, no can do. This isn't my problem. And then he like walks away with his dog, and his dog is a mutt, but like it's obviously very smart and he cares about it a lot. And then they do the vote, yes?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, so they end up having this vote with uh at first just the Alderton family and the Sarah family, and this was something straight out of Sons of Anarchy. It's probably my second favorite part of the episode because a stick, every family had two votes. A stick meant that uh they were going to go against the Van Nesses for what they were doing, or the stone was going to be that they were just going to let it go.
SPEAKER_00:So we see where everyone wasn't that really the thing was? I thought it was like, you guys will help me with the putty burying the body and stuff like that. Not or or you're just gonna like go off on your own and not help us at all.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that's uh but I'm saying that like really what it was was that if they were going to help with the body, they were going to be going against the Van Nesses. I understand. And they wanted war. So uh it turns out that the tellers, because that's what they abandon our call, they choose two sons of anything. Any connection? The drax teller you know, but I really liked how that was kind of an Easter egg to Sons of Anarchy. And then you had um Quentin, Quentin being uh the Mexican, he like he it's a Mexican family. That's a guy who's angel from Mayan's MC. He decides that he's going to go with a stick as well. However, his wife goes with a stone. So you can see that they're kind of split on that decision. And then Miles jumps in and he doesn't let Samara, his daughter, have a vote because he knows that she's going to go with a stick. So he's like, she's too young, and my family is going to go with the stones, so it's three to three. And then that's when Paxton walks in, and this was sad, with the dog. The dog apparently died, and he's all out for war. He's like, the Van Nesses did this. I don't need two votes. We're going with a stick, and then it ends with them burying Willem's body. And you like that ending. I did. I thought that it worked for the show. Again, the final vote scene was a lot like Sons of Anarchy, whenever they were in the chapel. And I thought that the dog's death, although a little convenient that he walked in right as they were having that vote, I thought that it made sense that it was going to go that way.
SPEAKER_00:I thought it came out of absolutely nowhere. Like I thought that that was the most obvious place where they could have done a reshoot where they were like, we like all the parts where they're going around trying to get recruit families to go against them. I thought that was just sort of inherently there. And so I can totally see how like they were like, how can we extra layer in the fact for the first episode that this is what's happening and get everybody along? And we need something that's a big deal. Let's kill the dog or something like that. So that all felt like they did that in the last minute to kind of like we'll reshoot a scene, everybody will have a vote, and the last vote can be done by this guy. And we didn't do anything foreshadowing the dog's death, but we'll throw it in there and everybody will be sad and everybody will think that's a legitimate first episode. So you so you and I differ on on that. That's what I thought.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So my pros were that yeah, A, the abandons are called the Tellers. That's so cool. I like it. It's reminiscent of Jim Beaver, the actor who plays Bobby Singer in Supernatural, and then how he also is playing someone named Bobby Singer and the boys. So I kind of like that.
SPEAKER_00:Imagine if Eric Kripke and Kurt Sutter ever did a project together.
SPEAKER_01:That would be a crazy project.
SPEAKER_00:The cast would be so hard to pick. It would be just the who's who of their previous people.
SPEAKER_01:But talking about the cast, I thought that Gillian Anderson, she was probably my favorite character, and I thought that she plays evil really well. I imagine training for the show was pretty difficult with all like a week of cowboy camp, they say. Yeah, yeah. And I know that 1883 did something similar with uh the horses. It's always cool when you see people riding horses on TV. And then the final vote scene was so much like Sons of Anarchy, and I thought that the dog death worked. Okay. But getting into my cons, one was why keep Wilm alive. We already kind of talked about that. Didn't make a lot of sense. But also, why does Kurt Sutter feel the need to use rape as a plot device in every single show that he has ever had?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because I don't think that that would be one of the things that, because of how important it was to the episode and the plot, I don't think that was one of the reshoots. I think that was probably in the original script.
SPEAKER_01:But it's like you don't have to have the character rape someone, like you can choose them to be villainous in in different ways. It's just the fact that he does in every single one of his shows, and it's such an archaic way to tell a story.
SPEAKER_00:Wasn't it with his wife in the previous?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, let me so it was in season two. Uh it happens to a lot of characters actually in Sons of Anarchy, but season two, most notably Gemma. And then in season three, The Shield, it happens to Chief Asavada, who was a guy that time, and they always take so long to resolve. Even in Mayan's MC in season two, there was a character I think named Cassandra who it happens to. And when I say show, I mean actually show. Like in Sons of Anarchy and the Shield, you see the rape happen.
SPEAKER_00:Do you remember the blowback that like Ramsey and Santa that scene got in some? It's like you're saying it happens in every Kurt Sutter show.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and and even in this, you see the rape happen as well. Now it's not irres irreversible 10 minutes, but it's still one of those things where it's like, I don't like seeing it, and I feel like you don't have to keep on shoehorning it in. Find a different way to make your villains villainous. Okay. You know? And then after, yeah, and there's too many characters to keep track of as well. Like five families.
SPEAKER_00:Again, he wanted 90 minutes.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I I understand that, but it's like 40, yeah. With the five families, you're supposed to know who they are, and then you're also supposed to have the sheriff and the red mess and and uh the mayor, and it's just like too much. They should have whittled that down, I feel like just keep it at Patton Oswald and the two matriarchs. And and I feel the and the nitpick I have is that I struggle to find a point whereas the moral beyond entertainment, I struggle to see any real message that the show is trying to send.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's saying that like there's this again marginalized community that's being taken advantage of by some bigger, stronger, uh uh richer like group and like the story of how they fight back against that.
SPEAKER_01:At first, but the back half after Willem dies, it slows dramatically. Like it screeches a halt. Really nothing happens.
SPEAKER_00:Like they're not gonna stop wanting to buy their land.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah. No, I'm sure that's gonna happen in the last six episodes. But again, that's why I can have Nickpick. Overall, nice production. I think that the cast is talented, but I'm going to give it a five out of ten. On my Kurt Sutter scale, I will place this underneath the bad. Uh okay, but it's better or worse than Bastard Executioner. Oh, no, because the Bastard Executioner is in the ugly camp. Okay. So that's so yeah, it's better than that, but it's not like nearly as good as the Shield or Sons of Anarchy.
SPEAKER_00:All right. Uh for the most part, people have agreed with you. It's got a 25% on Rotten Tomatoes. It's been pretty panned, uh, 43% on Metacritic. I can't find it really that many good reviews. Like the best reviews are basically saying, yeah, it's kind of like a mid-tier uh Western. I think Guardian gave it like three stars. Um, but like there were a lot of places being like, this is the worst show. This is awful. And and a lot of them were jumping aboard the fact that like Kurt Sutter had left. And that like it I I I guess it kind of had a lot going against it once the initial uh optimism of ooh, a new 10-episode Western Kurt Sutter show is about to come out.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but I also can kind of understand, even though I didn't I don't know the full like details, why Netflix would maybe be like we don't want to have an hour 40-minute pilot followed by probably an hour-long like nine other episodes. But you'll never know until you see it.
SPEAKER_00:So demand the Sutter cut is what we're saying. Anyway, so five out of ten, thanks for listening. We'll see you on the next episode. Hope you enjoyed this one. Bye. Bye.