205 May Is the Worst (DIS205)

Jeff and Steph are back in the weird with Star Trek: Discovery. And this one goes sideways fast.

What starts as a straightforward mission turns into a full-blown moral debate when May makes a call that nobody can quite agree on. Tilly’s caught in the middle, Hugh’s presence raises more questions than answers, and suddenly “doing the right thing” isn’t so clear anymore.

This episode spirals into intention vs outcome, control vs survival, and that familiar space where everyone thinks they’re the hero of the story.

Also:

• someone gets defended way more than they should 
• someone else gets judged way too quickly 
• and yes… it escalates 

🧠 Insight / Takeaway

The episode quietly asks a brutal question:

If your intentions are good, does it matter if your actions aren’t?

Trek frames it as a philosophical dilemma.

Supernatural would frame it as a consequence you have to live with.

This is the overlap. This is the show.

Transcript

All right. Test, test. Testing. Talk like you actually talk in the podcast. Talking like you talk in the podcast. But then when you get in, you're yelling sometimes. But I'm not, I'm not I'm not like, oh yeah. The whole time. Sometimes you do. No. Yeah. No. It's uncertain times. That's it. Okay. Don't even I will come for you I believe you. You won't like what happens when I do. I feel like that's a good note to just let it run. You didn't see if it was okay? Yeah. Fair. Okay. Well, hello? Hello. Really? You're gonna start us off okay, fine. That's fine, that's fine. Hey, man, we have we have an elephant in the room we have to address. Do we? Yeah. Well, we could just act like it didn't exist. Well, first of all, I'm Stephanie. Oh, yeah, that's right, I'm Jeff. And, um, we have this podcast that we started just over a year ago, um, called my our sci fi world. Oh, goodness. And the good news is, whenever we change the title, you're not even gonna miss a beat, basically. Basically, we watch sci fi shows. Um, and then we have discussions about them. And we started with supernatural, which is one of my favorite shows, and he'd never seen it. So it was a rewatch for me and a first watch for him. So that was an interesting. And now we're on Star Trek, which is his favorite show. Um, and I've we'll just say that I haven't really seen it. You've never seen it, um, even though I have but a little bit, but, um, so yeah, it's a season. For a season. We did one season supernatural. Now we're doing a season of Star Trek. But we kind of fell off the face of the earth there for a minute. Um, we're just we're breaking all the rules with Star Trek. That's just how we're going. Yeah, it we could get into all the reasons why, but that would just probably take up time and no one wants to hear that. Go ahead. I I'm I'm I'm for it. Well, I think it's just it's really, you know, life happens, right? And, um, we had a lot of different busy seasons and things going on, and, uh, you had a lot going on with work, which made you really tired, which then, understandably so, didn't want to have to do. I mean, this is fun, but it also is work in a way. Um, so there was times where you didn't feel like it and then, I don't know, it just became the new routine of not doing it. I think in a lot of ways, yeah, I think we got stuck in a, in a not yeah space. Yeah, I think, I think we did really well when it was just a, um, not tradition but a part of the routine. Yeah. We would come here usually on Sunday nights. Yeah. Um, and um, and do it, and it became a part of our routine. So we just did it. And then skip a couple weeks here, skip a couple weeks there, and then it became, oh, well, it's not a routine anymore. It's I don't know well, but also mix it with everything that happened because we had we yeah we had the holidays. Yeah. That's what can normally happen. But intermingled with the holidays. We had house guests, people coming in from out of town. We moved. Yeah. We did move while the house guests were in town. Yeah. We still we still live essentially in the same place, just like five minutes away from our other building. We're close. We had a great offer. Yeah, we had to take it. Yeah. So then we were moved in. I had the birth of my first nephew happen. Yeah. And then my dog died. Um, and there's just, there was a lot of things to happen that just really. And I had a trip after I had a business trip right after Christmas. Like, we finally got back. We were in our house for our new house for, like, a week. Yeah, I think it was like ten days. Yeah. So I'm very, very short. And then we left state for a little while to do the Christmas tour, uh, which was great. But then by the time we got back, it was just, it was exhausting. We were just tired. And then a few weeks later, I had my business trip, and then all of a sudden, we're in March and we're like, what the heck? We both got yeah, that's right, I forgot about that. So anyway, there's our list of really great excuses as to why we haven't been doing this. Yeah, so it's not been for a lack of love. It's just been. Yeah. Hopefully we can get back into the routine of it. That would be nice. So we can. No offense to Star Trek get back, get to season two of supernatural. Wow, I do, I do enjoy it. It's just, um, we left supernatural on a cliffhanger, and so I really just want to, like, finish that cliffhanger up. Um, well, here's here's what I'm wondering. And I don't think it's possible, but I love the optimism of it is there's going to be strange new worlds, new season coming this summer. So I, I wonder if we can possibly track along with a new season, but we have a lot of material to cover. A lot of material a lot. We've got twenty two episodes of supernatural to get through. Well, we have multiple seasons because we're trading a season for a season, right? And so we've got multiple seasons of of strange new worlds to do with the counterpart, supernatural to do so earlier, when you said that we might do two episodes today, we're trying to get back on track here, people. Um, and then you were like, oh, maybe not. I assumed that maybe not came from you feeling tired, but it sounds like to me we needed to do episodes. We're publishing this one right now. We have to do it now. I wonder if we can. Maybe we can't, I don't know. I would also love to align, um, boys season five with this really cool, uh, supernatural reunion that's coming up. Yeah. During that season two. But I think I just saw when is that coming? I think in June. I don't know. I watched. I think they just pushed it first like two episodes of the. Yeah. We gotta get you caught up on that. Two seasons of The Boys, and I know it's an Eric Kripke show. Eric Kripke also, um, was the creator of supernatural. It just really wasn't. I just wasn't jiving with it. But I haven't seen the seasons with, um, Jensen Ackles, who plays one of the main characters on supernatural. So, yeah, I could possibly try it again. We'll work on it. Yeah. Anyway, anyway, so we've not been not watching TV. We just haven't been doing plenty of that. Yeah, we're doing a lot of that. Just not the podcasting bit. So here we are for all of those that did not want to have to listen to the long intro about why we weren't here for the last like six months. Now you can stop fast forwarding and, and, and, uh, and we can commence with, um, the actual pod or the podcast. Um, but, um. Yeah. What's part of our intro? Usually, guys, we're so out of practice. Don't come here for facts. So what? It's fine. And Jeff will tell you that one of the really interesting parts about this podcast is that I work in the industry. It's the second most interesting part. Oh, well, then take over your part of the intro. Okay, well, the coolest part about this whole thing is that we're together. The second coolest part is that you work in the industry, and so we get to have some fun chats about how does this stuff actually come to be behind the camera, behind the script, behind the actors? Why does this end up being red or blue, or why did this stone wall shake? We could have all kinds of talks about that too, because you've got insights. Yeah. I'm finding those insights are a lot less, uh, relevant in Star Trek, though, because they spend ninety percent of their time just on the ship with the same people over and over again. So it's like, well, but these shows also had the budget to back from the beginning. They had the name of Star Trek. Whenever they did season one, they already had the success. They already had the budgets to do it. Yeah, but I meant more like I have a lot more because my job as an ad is putting a lot of different pieces together. And usually that involves like more complex, like, oh, how are we gonna how are we gonna accomplish this shot? How are we going to like, oh, the sun is going down. Like it's a lot of logistical stuff. And when you're shooting on the stage in basically the same place all day long, and you don't have to worry about making changes because, oh, now we're in day three. They were the same thing every single day in the show. Like there's just so many things that like, don't apply really to being an ad and like my insights to it. Um, if I was a visual effects person, I feel like Star Trek would be my show to be like, oh, I have so many things I can say, but I'm not. And so I feel like Star Trek, I just don't have as much stuff to contribute. That's one of the beauties, from an economic standpoint, of why the show was able to become successful is because they were able to shoot rapidly. They were able to reuse the same sets over and over again. They were wearing the same uniforms from point to point to point. So they they were able to shoot episodes much cheaper in general, which was one of the earlier successes. Now with CGI. Who knows what that looks like? And with the reputation, it's obviously a different thing. It's a different role. Anyway, we watched episode um, I'm actually not sure what the number of the episode is, but it's two oh five oh, okay, two hundred and five called Saints of Imperfection. And you have a little synopsis for us over there and the date it was originally aired and all that. Yeah, probably. Let's see what happens. Uh, so the Saints of Imperfection, this is episode five, season two of Star Trek Discovery, uh, which is also episode five, season two of our podcast, which. Fun fact this is the last episode that they align. We will break apart from after this for the first time since the podcast began. Yeah, wait until the end. You won't believe what happened. Give me a quiz. Yeah, this one's going in the book. Uh, but yeah. So the episode, uh, Saints of Imperfection, Burnham and the crew navigate a dangerous alien landscape in a race against time to save Tilly's life. But Stamets is not at all prepared for what they find in the process. Number five will amaze you. Uh, section thirty one is assigned to help track down Spock, much to Pike's dismay. This episode waiting on it. Pull up, uh, was directed by David Barrett. Uh, interesting. Kristen Beyer, Sean Cochran, and Gene Roddenberry are attributed as writers, which is weird because Gene Roddenberry has been dead for over twenty years. Yeah, maybe it was some sort of original story that he, uh, or something? There's there's a there's a lot of background information and maybe we'll get maybe we'll get into that. Uh, but I'm looking for. Yep, I am. Come on, IMDb. Well, why he. While he does that, I'll remind everybody. Okay. Oh, this actually aired on Valentine's Day, February fourteen, twenty nineteen. Uh, direct to streaming. This was this was in the fun streaming time runtime of fifty two minutes. Uh, it was originally published in color. Okay. Um, good time to remind everybody. He said that this is the last time that the episodes line up with Star Trek. We're not just watching a season of a certain Star Trek. We're going to be split it up in between Discovery and Strange New Worlds. We're calling it Pike's. Hello. So for those of you that are just joining us or don't remember from ninety million years ago when we talked about it the first time, we are doing a kind of. Can conglomeration, conglomeration, conglomeration of episodes of the Star Trek universe, not just one particular show in Star Trek, but the goal is to get to strange worlds. Part of that was because the episode Count of Supernatural was so much higher than the first season of Strange New Worlds, but also by the time we got to see Christopher Pike in episode one of Strange New Worlds, he had already been in multiple episodes prior. They used it as an as a handoff through discovery, so we're using that to do the character introduction the same way that we would be getting it now. Um, yeah. The Gene Roddenberry thing is really interesting. You want to you want to hear that little fun fact he is still being attributed as a writer? Uh, at least on IMDb of everything that's being produced. And he passed away in ninety one, which is really interesting because Gene Roddenberry, brilliant visionary that he was, also a bit of a shyster, and he felt after he did his first show that was cancelled early, he felt like the rug got pulled out from under him. So he ended up for the rest of his life very defensive playing the studio game. And so he would do things like the original theme song was written for the next generation, and he would add lyrics, so that way he could be accredited and collect royalties on the opening theme song. He would do stuff like that all the time, and his his like, private attorney would walk around set for the first few seasons of the reboot show, just making sure he was protected because he felt so, so incredibly screwed by what happened in the first place. So to see him as an actual accredited writer, I don't know if there's a lot of paperwork behind that, but I have noticed in everything Star Trek I've written, he has been credited. I mean, good for him. I mean, I I don't know him as a person in terms of like, if was he actually a good guy? He was like, you know what? Fine. I'm just gonna protect myself. And that's how it is. Or he's just like, I want to screw everybody over. I don't know, but it is not a surprise to me that a studio would screw over people so that they can have more money in their pockets instead of giving it to other people. Yeah. From everything that I've seen, it looks like there was a lot of back story there, but it also looks like it was a perpetual theme throughout the remainder of his life and his involvement. But there are episodes upon episodes that we could do. Talking about the Gene Roddenberry phenomenon, I don't know what to call that, but that's for another time. All right. What did you think of this episode? Um, well, uh, what's the word? Um. Full disclosure, this is the second time that we watched it. The first time we watched it, and then just never got to the podcast part, and I was like, I can't talk about an episode that I watched. However, it was a while ago. Did you remember it? I remembered parts of it for sure. Okay. Um, I didn't take a lot of new notes this time around. I referenced my old notes and kind of like, it was like a game of, like, what does that mean? And then it would. And then something would happen. I was like, oh, that's what it's talking about. Hashtag no spoilers, man. So it was it was actually kind of a fun game to play. And also like I didn't necessarily, you know, it's in chronological order. So I wouldn't look to the bottom of my notes and try to figure out what that meant. Yet because I knew that it was, you know, way far in the future. So I would write down a new note talking about, oh, perspective is everything. And then later I have like, I talk about it, I'm like, oh, I guess I'm on the same page of my former self past. Stephanie. Um, I mean, it was pretty good. It was surprising. The Hugh thing, of course, was extremely surprising. Um, because Hugh was obviously killed. Um, was it it must have been season one. Yeah, I think it was the end of season one. Yeah, like the last episode. It was one of those big moments. Yeah. So Stamets husband Hugh was killed? Um. And all of a sudden, now he is this quote unquote monster in the my my my mycelial, my, not my serial mycelial. Can I say my serial? If you want to say my serial, that's fine. Um, mycelial network. Um, I actually would be super curious to find out if that was planned from the beginning, like by the writers, or did they say, you know what we love? Like, I don't remember that actor's name, but we love him so much. We love this character. Like, let's figure out a way to bring him back. Interesting. That's a good question. Like that would be I would be super curious to find out if from the beginning when they killed him off or not, even from from the time they killed him off before they killed him off, that like, you know what we're gonna do? We're gonna we're gonna kill him off, and we're gonna bring him back through the mycelial network like that. I don't know, it's always interesting because, like, either way, it's cool, right? Because they figured out either. They'll figure out a way to bring it back and back after they didn't plan for it or they planned for it. And you're like, dang, you. Like you had the long game in mind. So, I mean, that's the beauty of Trek is that you can kill off a character and bring them back whenever you want. You just have to introduce this technology. Ex machina. Oh, well, that happens in supernatural. Supernatural can't do that because it literally. I know, I just haven't seen it yet. But but yeah, I spoiled it. I I'm happy that Hugh is back. Um, I do like you. Um, I mean, I wrote it over and over and over again in my notes. Not necessarily on purpose, but it just happened. Uh, that may sucks. May just. We do not like May, huh? May is horrible. May is confused. May is barely even corporeal. She's from a different dimension. Yeah, but she cares so much about her species and this and the other. So she clearly has, like, feelings and empathy and all of these other things. So I don't feel bad for her because she is hurting other people. Like I wrote down, one of my notes about her was that she thinks she deserves that she's owed help. Why you've caused so much pain. Why? Why did why are you owed? Because she's only focused on what her people need. That's what we do. The same thing. She can't expect her to relate to humans. She doesn't even know what your tiny finger is. I know that was a funny. That was pretty funny. What are you doing with your tiny finger? I mean, I, I get it. I can imagine us Americans, us humans, we would be the same way. Especially if we were in a very, very different, completely different species. We don't even recognize their shape. Well, I mean, it's the human condition, really. And you say it's not human, but it's it's it's the same thing. It's human self-preservation. Yeah. And I think I think I would have a lot I wouldn't say that she sucks as much as I have said she sucks if she like, acknowledged that. Like, look, I'm desperate. I'm gonna do anything I can to do to I survive. But instead she's like, you need to help me. You need to help me. I'm owed this. You have to, you have to. It's like, why? Why does anybody have to do anything? Why would why, like, you feel like you're, like, owed this by these humans? I don't know, it's just. It's weird. I don't like it. And and on top of the fact she later threatens, she's like, I'm gonna attack if you don't help me. Like, that's not that's that's that's not true. Help. Then you're you're you're threatening somebody to make them help. And it's not help anymore. It's you suck. What's whatever it takes, though. And also, these are private thoughts with Stephanie. She. I didn't know you had this many feels about this. She also at the end there when they're trying to figure out how to get Hugh back into the human world out of the mycelial network, because it turns out that even though she denied making him, she said that he can't cross into the human world because she's he's made up. They made him of matter of not the human world. I'm like, wait a second, which one is it, lady? But regardless, um, they're like, oh, we can put him in this little travel sack that Tilly got sucked into and traveled the Star Trek Tauntaun, the travel sack, the big glob travel sack, and we can transport him that way, maybe. And she was like, no, because that's my only daughter. I'm like, so wait, we're sacrificing Hugh now because you want to have a door. Like there's nothing that she has done that's redeeming. And then they all just like, oh, that's good enough. May's promise. Even though May is not trustworthy at all, let's all just leave. Now, granted, they should have left twenty minutes ago when they when they were told that they were out of time. We have to go now. Understood. Who wants coffee? Six minutes later, Like, I know, like I get it, I get why? Because, like, it's hard. You have to you have to put all this information out there, but at the same time, like it's it, it really takes away from the urgency that's being felt from the human side of the world. But regardless, um, and there's more to say about that too. But sticking with the meh thing, she she sucks. I don't know, like, I don't feel like I feel for her in terms only of like, desperation. She's desperate because of, you know, this thing is happening. Um, but also it seems like it's kind of of their own fault, right? Because the quote unquote monster was trying to protect himself with the yield tree bark because they were trying to eat him, slash, destroy him. Reconstitute is the correct word. Well, regardless if they just leave him alone, then he's not a monster, right? Yeah, but I mean that they were doing what they do. That's anything that enters their realm immediately gets broken down into energy. I'm not making a justification for what they were doing, but I think these were two very different ideals that were clashing from the beginning. Immediately. Yeah. Well, I mean, it it comes down to what I said, you know, perspective is everything, right? And Tilly said it best, you know, to him, Hugh, you are the monster. Meaning May and her people and obviously to May and her people. The opposite is what they felt. And it's one of those things that it's so interesting because it's not only a part of the human condition to have kind of an inability to see a different perspective. Sometimes when you feel like, you know, I'm just defending myself from this monster, so therefore I'm in the right. Anybody has the right to defend themselves from a monster. but, well, if you feel like you're preserving yourself or if you feel like you're fighting on behalf of something else. Yeah, it puts you into an entirely different moral superiority. Yeah. And so they both felt like they were doing the right thing. Yeah. You know, I would be willing to bet that Hugh wasn't aware that he was killing a bunch of. I mean, he's he's a doctor. Yeah. He's trying to survive at first. It's it's the Hippocratic oath. It's a do no harm. But, yeah, he was trying to survive from these light fireflies attaching themselves and burning him and burning him. Yeah. Yeah. He didn't realize he was killing. You know what happens if the mosquitoes fight back? Yeah, that's kind of where we're looking at. Yeah. And so it's not only that, but also of the human condition of it's it's very rare for people to see themselves as the bad guy. That's a great point. Right. Um, they we've seen it time and time again. The amount of pretzel twists. People have to put themselves in in order to justify to themselves more than anybody else that they're not bad. They're the victim. They were responding. They were whatever. But yeah, you go watch the the Nuremberg trials. The Nazis did not believe they were the bad guys. Oh, yeah. That's a great point. Yeah. So it kind of it's kind of twofold, right. Of like, you know, I'm in the right because, you know, like you said, this moral whatever it is. And then the other side of that is even if you're not right, even by like objective standards, it's hard for the human to rectify, to grapple with the idea that I'm the bad guy in this story because nobody wants to be the bad guy. Exactly. You know, um, and it's a very, you know, Disney likes us to believe that villains see themselves as villains. Like, I was watching. Were we just watching? I was watching this show called School Spirit and. Oh, yeah, that's right. There was this, like, old spirit guy who had a lot of horrible things back in the day, and now he's a spirit continuing to do these bad things. And he had this whole speech about how he loves it, he loves it, and he's gonna keep doing it. And there's nothing you can do to stop. It was like, that was so terrible. I'm sorry. I like to show school spirits, but that was so terrible because I was like, villains are complicated. People who usually think that they're in the right. Thanos from Avengers. Right, exactly. Um, it's very, very rare to have a villain that's like, yeah, I'm a villain, and I love it. Yeah, and it was. It was so Scooby Doo. Yes, yes. And I haven't watched the show. I just literally popped in and I was like, who the hell is this guy? Yeah, but it felt so incredibly Scooby Doo. Or you end up getting, uh. You know, as much as I love, uh, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, anytime the bad guy was caught, he was like, yep, I'm the bad guy. So here's my justification. Yeah, they always wrap it up in this nice little bow. But modern television, I think has has better embraced reality. Yeah. Is that people usually see themselves as the good guy no matter where they sit. And I think, yeah. And I think too, you know, part of the reason why they do it is to make whoever the hero is of the story, like, absolutely right. Right. Like that. Like if they do end up killing this spirit, of course they had to, because he was a villain. He was evil. One hundred percent. There was nothing. There was no sort of grappling needed to be done. You know, the white cowboy hat? Yeah, exactly. And so it's I actually saw this, um, thing the other day, uh, Trevor Noah, who I think is great. Um, he was talking about how. Trevor. We'd love to have you on the show, by the way. Just reach out. How our generation, millennials in particular, um, since we grew up so much as Disney kids, um, like Disney movies and all of these, we have like a we were instilled with, like, a really false sense of how the world works. Um, and to put it shortly, basically the idea is that we have this idea that things will work out. Like, if you're bad, you'll you'll get it. Karma will come to get you later in line. You will be caught. And if you're good, good things will eventually happen. Even if you have to go through some some hardships, eventually things work out the way they're supposed to work out if you're good or bad, right? And so we have this kind of maybe complacency of like, oh yeah, that bad things happening. But don't worry, he'll get his we don't have to do anything about it. The world, the world will take care of it, like the universe will take care of it, because we were taught that that is how the world works through, you know, Disney movies and things like that. Yeah. Good guys win, bad guys lose. Yeah. And now, as you said, things are much more complicated on in TV and movies and stuff like that. Um, you know, what's crazy is that I thought that was interesting. I wrote down and I think some of the best shows that are being produced right now, you know, think in the last five years, ten years, some of the best shows that are being produced are the ones that blur the lines a little bit and ask you, who is the actual good guy? You're some of my favorite shows of the last ten years Breaking Bad, um, first four seasons of House of cards. Uh, but you really have to question, is the main character the actual good guy here? You know, it was Walter White, the good guy. And then you question, who's the bad guy? Well, and the real the real answer to that is that it's way more nuanced and complicated than a good guy and a bad, because that's how life works. That's how life actually works. I literally have a note from this episode is I wanted to ask you, who do you think is the antagonist in this episode? And that's so interesting that this is where we landed with it, because that's what has happened. Is May the actual bad guy here, she was fighting to to preserve her own species, I think. I mean, the thing is, it's not an actual person. The bad guy here is an inability to see past one's own self, which is just a floor. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. It's a floor that we all have. Some people are better at overcoming it than others. But if May had even like, you know, sat down and really grappled with it and critically thought about it, she might have been able to figure out, hey, maybe if we just stop attacking him, he'll stop. Yeah. Putting this bark that's poisonous to us over him, because maybe he's feeling like, you know, attacked. So maybe we should just stop. Yep. But I mean, again, you think about the nature of, you know, May had come in, and the only way she was able to exist in this reality was to occupy Tilly. Then it wasn't really a conversation all that much. There wasn't really an opportunity to actually sit and talk about it until Tilly was kidnapped. Because, I mean, who are we kidding? That's kidnapping. So I hear you, but it's complex. It is definitely complex. If I had to choose it, would. It would certainly be May, though I mean, she the thing is, I wrote in here actually in my secondary set of notes, not my original notes. Um, is that maybe starting with the truth? Right. She freaking kidnapped. She inhabited. Tilly was trying to, like, um, I don't know, inception, her or whatever, right? And, like, basically leading her, like, to believe one thing when it's actually another thing, all these different things. Then she kidnaps her. Maybe it could have been. Hey, the only way I can talk to you is to inception you. But right from the get go, I'm gonna let you know. Hey, this thing is happening, right? You know, maybe that's. And that's where it's like. Yes. May had her own reasons for doing the things she did, but if you really are truly just trying to get help, then why go through all of this bullshit? Just say, hey, I need help. This thing is happening to our world. You didn't know about it. Can we? Can we? I need help, well. And yeah, track will track will do that a whole lot. Like, if you think about the difference, the different ways that humans exist, Coexist counter exist. They take it and push it far to the reaches of basically the edge of our imagination, and then force us to interact with, with each other and say, where do the misconceptions come from? Where do the cultural norms create a difference? You know, small accidents, even in the hand gesture, while a word is being said can be enough to start a war in a lot of different situations. But they lean into those differences. And, you know, I can think of we've got a lot of different examples of meeting people from other countries, very, very different upbringings and very small things like, um, oh, what's one of them? Uh, it's a British thing and I it is slipping, my mind, crossing our fingers. Thumbs up. Time out. It's the time out signal. You know, taking your two hands and forming them into a T is a vulgarity. Like, take those tiny little things and then put them into a very delicate political situation. And this show does love to explore that. I mean, I think again, it goes down to the human condition, right? Because the most enlightened of us all would understand. The basic it's a basic concept, but it's really hard to, like, internalize really and really live by it is that, um, you can feel a certain thing. It doesn't mean that it is a certain thing. A good example is I can feel disrespected by this t sign. Um, timeout. Sign. It doesn't mean that that t sign is or that person is being disrespectful, because more than likely, this person has no idea how you feel about this t sign, right? And so so yeah. So it comes down to sorry. I'm sorry. Finish your thought. So so the idea is that Again, just leaving the door open for a different perspectives exist. It's the idea of of perception and transmission. You think about how any kid who's reading Shakespeare right now. Do you bite your thumb at me? I do bite my thumb. Yeah, but do you bite your thumb at me, sir? Yeah. So, like, if somebody if I was. We were writing on the train heading into the city one day, and I looked over and this dude on the train is looking at me and biting his thumb. I'm gonna think he's weird. Yeah, not necessarily trying to start a fight. Yeah, it's transmission and reception. Yeah. And the tough part about that, right, is that it's not completely objective, right? Because there are some things that I always like to refer to it as, like a jury of one's peers because like in a murder. Right. For example, what a jury of self-defense would a jury, you know, a member of a, you know, a reasonable person, that's always how they say it. What a reasonable person be fearing for their life in this instance enough to feel like they have to defend their life. So, you know, biting your thumb. What a reasonable person think that most people would feel threatened by that? I would think most people would say no. But if someone. But if someone's coming with a shovel and starting to swing at your head and miss you by an inch and then is winding up for another one. Most people would think that's threatening. Even if the person swinging the shovel is like, I don't know, swinging at a fly and just happened to get close to your thing. It's reasonable for someone to be threatened by a shovel swinging next to their head. Yeah, in someone screaming or something. You know, I think it gets to a very interesting perspective at that point as well, because then it, you know, even the entire journey of your peers becomes entirely subjective. It is still subjective, but like, think about like you and me, when we go through things in our relationship or conversations that we're having, the jury of our peers is literally you and me. But if we are out outside of the train station here, just on the edge of New York City, some of the cultural norms are going to be interpreted a very different way than if we're standing outside of the Amtrak Amtrak station in Atlanta. The perception is going to be extremely different. Or if we're going over to when we're when we're spending time in Germany, something is going to be taken very differently. Yeah, I think the idea is that it's more of like a universal thing. Right? Because generally, a shovel being swung at your head over and over again is, is a little bit or someone coming at you with a knife, you know, things that are like very reasonable for anybody in this life to be like, oh yeah, that doesn't that doesn't feel good. Some of those things are going to be relatively universal. Now, we haven't dug into the Klingons very much, but there's there's a completely different code, uh, in that situation where I would say the swinging shovel or swinging sword or swinging weapon in general is going to be taken in a very different way. And there are some other parts of human history that would operate the same way. But I would say in general, most situations aren't near as cut and dry as swinging a weapon. Right. A lot of them can get lost in the in the translation. And that's that's kind of and you bring up two good points. One, different cultures, different peoples, groups of people or whatever might see things differently. And so I think if you're dealing with someone like if we were in Germany, right, and somebody did something that I find offensive, I would be much more likely to be like, wait a second, is this a weird culture thing that I'm not understanding? Yeah. Than in America, right. Because like, say in Germany, flipping, flipping someone off is totally fine. No one gives a shit, right? It has nothing to do with. It's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, you know, fu or anything. Here in America, universally we know that that is not a good thing, right? So if I got flipped off in Germany, I might be like, wait, I would ask you, like, is flipping off in Germany like, still a rude thing? Like I would be much more likely to question myself. But we're talking about humans and mycelial network and no one's questioning themselves. But that's also a level of enlightenment as well. You think about if we went over to here's one of my favorite examples, it's not near as vulgar, but if you ever have a conversation with somebody from India and you're saying something, it can get really tough to know if they're still agreeing with what you're saying or not, because they'll shake their heads. And that means yes, that means I'm following. They'll say literally, they will say yes while they are shaking their head from left to right, not up and down, left to right. And so it can still be very, very confusing. Yeah, but it takes a level of enlightenment to not assume that the version that, you know, is the international universally accepted truth. Yeah. And again, and we say universally accepted. Right. That doesn't mean that all nine or however many billions of people we have on this earth are going to agree. True, right? But it doesn't mean that if you are the say there's ten people that don't agree. It does not mean that that those ten people can say, well, then I can do whatever I want because somebody else agrees. It's like, no, you have to like at some point, like, you know, either just accept that you're not going to fit into society or maybe, um, adjust a little bit. Right. Because it can't be. Oh, well, because I did this thing and I my tent wasn't this. But even though the other billions of people agree with you, you're still wrong. It's like, no, that's not how it's gonna work, you know? Um, I don't know. It is difficult, though, and I think that it's complicated. It's usually how I try and quote unquote check myself is like, what would most people be reacting to? Whatever has just occurred to me in a similar way that I'm that I'm feeling like I want to react right now, or am I like, you know, responding to my own trauma or am I having a bad day or, you know, whatever it might be? Um, that's usually what I try and do because I'm a human. I'm fallible. Um, and so I try to kind of like, check in with the jury of peers. But, I mean, I think that all of that is a level of enlightenment that I think most people in general don't have. But the playing into what happens if you do and what happens if you don't. You being the person across the table or you being a collective group of people. Because I can think I mean, my background is I came out of the south, small town, small little mountain, Appalachian town of thirty thousand. And now I've now moved into, I believe, the most diverse city in the country. And so just to see how like, how would people have from home have responded to a Sikh headdress, even just a small little thing like that, or what we noticed in Germany is that people try not to touch each other in public. So there's a little tray sitting out at the gas station. If you're going to hand somebody cash, or if somebody's going to give you change back, they're going to put it in that little tray. They're going to avoid holding it over your hand and dropping it into your hand, because that's considered dirty. That's considered transferring. It's considered a sign of respect. Yeah. So whenever you hit those counter moments when your idea of respect differs from their idea of respect, what happens? Yeah. And I think that's where it. I remember when I went to Paris for the first time when I was in college, and I was told before going there that French people, um, get highly offended if you don't say bonjour first when when like, say you want to ask a question about something. I'm not saying that this is true one hundred percent, but I'm just telling you this story for a reason. Um, that if you don't say bonjour first, that they it's like equivalent of someone spitting on their shoe. And I remember thinking, man, how horrible of a life to go around thinking that if someone doesn't say bonjour, that that's how horrible you're gonna feel inside, that someone's just spat on your shoe, when in fact, maybe they just don't know. And so, like, you've now ruined your day. And that might be an overexaggeration. Probably is, but you've ruined. You've had a bad moment for yourself because you're assuming that that person is trying to be disrespectful towards you, when in fact you're Paris and you get a you get millions of visitors every year from every country. It's complicated. You know, it's the same thing as being in the South and somebody asking how you're doing. The response is good, how are you? Doesn't matter what's going on, but the response is good. How are you? I hate it. Oh, I despise it. It drove me crazy because I would just say, hey, how are you doing? I'd be like, fine. Just look at him. Oh, I had more fun than I should have with that. I hate it because I think for a different reason. Because I don't like it as a greeting. because, as you said, the appropriate response is how are you doing? Good. How are you? It's not, oh, I'm having a really bad day. No one cares. Yeah, exactly. So it's it's it's complacent. Yeah. It's just lip service. Yeah. And I think that part of that might be my, my, uh, my neurodivergence of like, don't ask me a question about how I, you don't care how I am. Don't ask me that question because I'm going to want to answer you truthfully, but I don't want to answer you truthfully. Okay. So then talk to me about this. This, uh, what did they call it? The pathway, the transfer, the transfer device. You know, the big caterpillar on the floor of engineering. What did I call it? The travel pod. The travel pod. Travel sack. Travel sack. Yeah, yeah. So the travel sack at the end of the last episode when we came into this episode. This is a loaded question on purpose. Do you think Tilly was dead? That's how they gave it to us. No, they wanted to scare us. Okay, I agree with you. I didn't believe it for a second now. No. Yeah, I didn't either. There have been some shows that have done an incredible job of putting the viewer in a state of not knowing, because they are actually willing to kill off a character. I'd say one of the best shows you can have, Game of Thrones. Okay, I'm going to say my original statement, but you're absolutely right. I think one of the best shows of doing that is The Walking Dead. We got two or three seasons into The Walking Dead and you're just like, oh man, Shane just disappeared. I don't know if Shane's actually okay or Carl or there's a whole, uh, Andrea, a whole list of characters. They would they they had a willingness to kill off a main character. Breaking bad would do it, too, but I think lost, I think as well did it. But Star Trek Next Generation would do that rarely, but they still sort of willingness to do it. In the late nineteen eighties and early nineteen nineties, when that was extremely rare. I think in this case, though, I'm glad to hear you say that you didn't buy it because it just it felt, well, it felt very plot device to me, I think. And you can tell me if the if this isn't correct with any of the shows that you mentioned. I think that the difference is that I if it's a main character and they don't show them dying, then either they're not dead or they are kicked off the show for another reason. Mhm. Okay. Who, who who just went missing and we never saw from them again. And they were dead and weren't kicked off the show for another reason. We eventually got circumstantial confirmation. Um, I just forgot his name. Carl's dad, the main character. Freaking walking dead. The cop. Oh. Andrew Lincoln. Yep. I can remember the actor's name. Rick. Thank you. His wife. We saw her die. No we didn't. Yes, we did during childbirth. She got eated. Oh. Well, then she's dead. We didn't watch her be eaten, though. And we had the same thing with Andrew. We had the same thing with Amy. I don't know, but they also gave us a couple of situations where we didn't know. Uh, the first fake out with, um, Merle Dixon. We didn't know if he had died or not. They gave us plenty of times fake out, though. In that case, it was a fake out. I remember Lori, I remember knowing Lori. Thank you. The wife I remember, she they were in the the prison and Carl was with her, and she she died right there. Like, I, I don't, um, I don't know. Maybe our memory. Yeah. I distinctly remember knowing Lori is dead. Like. Oh, there she is. She had her baby, and now she's dead. Like that could be wrong there. I remember that show feeling like. I remember feeling on edge many times that they. They've actually showed a willingness to kill off a main character. Well, yes. Killing off a main character. Yes. But also. But the actual certainty of it. And I think the reason why and this comes back to like the film industry side of it, right? It's very rare that you'll have a main character and there's like, hey, by the way, you're gonna die and you're just you're just done. You're just off the show now. You're a major name, you're attracting viewers, but it makes more sense in the story. And the thing is, part of it is if it's a main character, what do they get out of this person just disappearing? And we don't see their death because that's not going to impact the audience. The irony is, is, uh, Sonequa martin-Green, Michael Burnham, she was written into this show and killed off of Walking Dead because she had gotten this job and so. And so when I say that if we haven't seen their death, they're most likely still alive. The caveat to that is if they have to leave the show for some other reason, right. Like, um, okay, so if we can expand, I'm sorry I cut you off again. Um, you know, I worked on a show where an actor was one of the main actors, and he's a popular actor. Um, in, like, people know him. And he was killed off screen because he had been accused of many, um, sexual assault crimes. And so our show decided to distance themselves from him, and he got killed off screen. Never saw him again. Same thing with Frank Underwood. So, yes. So that's the asterisks they can. Okay. So then let's expand it then to writing them out, not necessarily killing the character because Trek would do that a couple times. They would have major differences with some of the actors sometimes, like they would get some movie deals. They decide they wanted to go, um, movies instead of TV. They had major disagreements with some high end character or some high end, uh, people inside of the show. And so they'd get written out that way, or they're sick, or they have cancer and they can't continue on. Or, you know, you and I have had a few, a few tears over one that we're about to watch is that the actual actor died. Yeah. And they have to be written out. I know, I know, you're thinking of the exact same way I was thinking of bringing up, like, two minutes ago. Yeah. And I'm they're either going to do a great job of it or they're going to do a terrible job of it. Either way, it happens. Yeah, we've lost a lot of people in this case, Tilly. I wasn't buying it. Oh, no, it's too soon. It was way too simple. Yeah, it was way too simple. She's not gonna die by going into a blob. The weird thing is that Star Trek has actually done that before. And I think that's what they were banking on. Um, and they had done it. They did it very abruptly, without warning. Uh, main cast character vanished and it. And it hit so hard that they recalled it. Huh? Maybe a half dozen times after the fact. Multiple seasons later, they brought it back in because it was such a jar, and especially considering nineteen ninety. So that's the one out of the thousand, right? It really is. Most of the time you can bank on the film industry. Standard way is you have to watch somebody die, because that's what I mean. Why not capitalize on that? Right? Exactly. People dying gets audiences riled up and emotional and whatever. And if you don't see it, the emotions not gonna be there. So they're going to capitalize on that moment that they're gonna get, you know, no one's gonna write a big article about how someone just suddenly isn't on the show anymore, and they're presumed dead. They're gonna write an article about the horrific deaths death scene of this character. So, um. So, yeah, Whew! That was a another diversion. I love em. So, Tilly, I know we've talked about Tilly. Is she growing on you? Um, I like Tilly, who I don't really like is Michael. Whoa. That is not where I was going with that. My my my last. No. Say more things. My last note is Michael kind of annoys me, and I think it might be. I'm not for sure, but it might be this, um, Vulcan stoicism. And it might be difficult for the actor to be playing that and also make it look like things are genuine, because right now, and I'm not saying this is one hundred percent the case. It's what it feels like to me. It feels performative. All of her, her caring about like, oh, Tilly's in trouble and all, and oh my gosh, Tilly and oh, this person and all the things that we've seen so far, not just this episode feel performative to me. And I think, and I'm not saying it is. I'm saying that maybe because of how the actor has to be this stoic Vulcan, while also still having to show that she cares. Doesn't mesh well. It makes it look like she doesn't actually care, but is pretending to care. Uh, I don't know. For me, I might be the minority. I probably am the minority. Okay, so, uh, Trek fans, I'm really curious to how she's actually gonna do a Spock once we get into this realm, because she's. I would say from the fan side, you know, the fan side that that justifies what was done. She was a human being raised by Vulcans. And that Vulcan stoicism is it's nature and nurture her entire nurture. All of her upbringing was being raised as Vulcan, as a human in a Vulcan world. So the emotional side of things, and you can think about people that have operated in this realm, is that emotions are a sign of weakness. You need to be logical. You need to be calculated. You need to be constructive. That's real productive. And to allow emotions in are a sign of weakness. So you have to keep them categorized. You have to keep them separated. And it seems like Michael Burnham is in general very well trained, very smart and very wise. And so she's trying to figure out how to balance the two. So then the little bit of emotion, whenever she does share it, like I would say, her attraction to ash in the first season was incredibly sincere, but it was also very elementary. Here's what, um, popped into my head when you said that. Stoicism. I'm not on board with it. Stoicism is Misrepresented a lot. But yes, because true stoicism is how the Vulcans do it, right? They have mastered and really, truly understood their emotions in order to master them. The way that stoicism usually plays out in most people is I'm controlling my emotions and I'm not going to show them. Well, okay, point of clarity here. So somebody being accused of being a stoic in general culture is is usually an assignment of you're not showing any emotion. True stoicism means thinking logically through situations. So the emotional surprise doesn't disrupt your ability to be logical in a situation. Actual true stoicism. Marcus Aurelius Seneca. The old dead guys did not advocate for the removal of emotion, but it has been attributed because Stoics will tend to not be near as surprised or as emotionally overwhelmed when a situation comes up, because they've been taught to think logically through the situation and to anticipate more situations. But this Vulcan stoicism thing goes more into the perceived definition of the word of stoic, not necessarily the philosophical idea. Does that make sense? Yes. However, I think that I think that there's very few people that practice stoicism in the way that it actually is, and I don't and I don't mean in the colloquial like, oh, you're stoic because you don't show up. I mean, people that truly, actually are trying to be stoic because really, what most people that are quote unquote being stoic and I don't mean again, by the actual like, I'm a stoic person. I practice stoicism when someone says someone is being stoic. Yes, exactly. So not just because somebody usually means cold as a fish. Yeah. Like somebody who actually is like, I follow stoicism. I, you know, I am trying to be stoic, that person. Most of those people are really just suppressing emotions. That's what they're doing. They're not actually being stoic. Stoic in the way that it's actually intended. My my understanding is that true stoicism is you have really, truly allowed yourself to understand emotions and how they impact you and what that feels like for you. When you truly are sad, what does that look like for you, and how do you express that in order to understand it so well that you can, like, move past it quickly? You're still regulated? Yes. And most people that do stoicism is just like, well, I don't show anger, you know, because they're suppressing it. They don't understand it. It's not. Yeah. It's not true stoicism. And and then through that they don't understand their own emotions. And so they'll tell people I'm calm when in true fact they're not calm. They're just suppressing shit over and over and over again. And then they blow up at some point. So then. So I'm not down with it. So why don't you like Michael? Because I think that, Michael, it's funny because her dad, who is also, of course, a Vulcan, her adoptive dad. I think he cares more. I feel like he cares more than Michael does. The way that he expresses himself, the way that he interacts with the world. I get that he actually cares. Despite the vulcanus. Michael feels more performative for me, and it might be because she actually isn't a true Vulcan. She hasn't haven't actually truly understood all of her emotions. In order to be a true stoic, she's learned how to suppress them and be logical. Just because you can be logical doesn't mean you understand your emotions, right? There's so many insights as no, no, no, no, I love this. I want to, I want to, I want to take out the the next package inside of the package. We I've told you this before, Saric has been a featured character many, many times. We've got a lot of dynamics a lot of differences. In fact, I just started doing a rewatch of enterprise. And there's just there's so much that we get to learn about Saric. So there's there's incredible insights in there that you don't even know. But that being the case is that Michael is trying to be a Vulcan when she's not a Vulcan. Is that a fair assessment? And she's doing a bad job of being a Vulcan. Yeah. Does that make the actor character portrayal better or worse? Well, and here's what we don't know. Is it because the actor's portrayal is not good, or is it because that's the actual character being played? Hmm. I can't answer that for you. Is the character actually not great at being Vulcan, or is the actor not good at portraying being Vulcan while also still being sincere in the caring? Now, granted, I'm bringing this up later in the season. I cannot wait. My interpretation of all this could be completely like one in a million. And so I'm really kind of just wrong. That's fine. No. But like, I love this, I love this. I want to take this soundbite and transfer it to the future. I cannot wait until we get to the point where this comes full circle. I cannot wait. But generally speaking, I just don't care about Michael. She annoys me. That's fair. Well, we're gonna leave her behind soon anyway. Uh, so. So. Yeah, I like Tilly. Um, I she's so she's got so many good one liners. Like, so many good responses of things. I actually responded almost exactly the way that she responded. When. Oh, yeah. When when they said, oh, we just I just, you know, put you in this, this travel sack transferred you atom by atom, atom by atom through the dimensional plane of in this whole long weird explanation. And she said, and I said, oh, is that all? And she said, oh, that old trick like, very similar response. Very sarcastic. Very. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like naturally, of course, you know, that type of response. And she had a lot of those in this episode and it was, it was, it was funny. I still mad at her for cheating in the, in the Ensign race. Oh my goodness. She's so upset about this. So okay, so let's talk Tilly for a second. Just because on the Star Trek side, um, in the nineteen sixties, Gene Roddenberry really set out to create a world that went into the future of humanity that didn't make it doom and gloom. It's all dystopian anytime we go. Future of humans on television. It's dystopian. He wanted to create a utopian world, and he wanted to say, okay, what was this like? Uh, and in fact, when they I just found this out recently when they originally cast Sir Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard for the second series, they had him wearing a hairpiece because Gene Roddenberry was pushing the fact that, well, we have solved human inadequacies like baldness. You're bald. Do not throw Baylon Dupre in this. We don't have the time. But Gene would continually. I'm talking about like we're friends. Gene Roddenberry would continually push toward. This is the difference between humans and their more perfected state in this humanism philosophy versus where they are right now. Tilly, I wonder if there's somebody somewhere that would talk about how Tilly was the genuine, authentic pushback to defining Star Trek as a modern series, as opposed to the traditional element of trying to capture Gene Roddenberry's vision. Because there were a lot of things, even in the. You think about Gene Roddenberry dying in nineteen ninety one, there were two different spin offs that came nearly immediately after, and we've had more shows now after his passing than before. And there's a I've told you this, Trekkies are the most fickle beings there are. They are the most insatiable. I wonder if Tilly was in this place to do a whole bunch of the firsts. Tilly was the first character to actually cuss in Star Trek. It's one of those random little Guinness marks, but she is reportedly special needs. You mean neurodivergent? Uh, yes. I think she's, uh. No, they they actually refused to say what it was. Either way, not in this perfected human form of where we as a species are going to go to have a perfect world. They're showing the imperfect world until he is a catalyst for a lot of that. Yeah, I think I mean, I like that, right? Um, I also think that it's interesting because the quote unquote perfect world prior to Tilly was a world full essentially that what they're saying, I mean, it's more than just this, but is neurotypicals as if neurodivergence there's something wrong with them. Oh, there's a lot about her that is. And I think that it's interesting because, yes, neurodivergent. There are a lot of struggles with it. Like, you know, as an individual, a lot of struggles. But how we and I say we because I am neurodivergent and it looks different for everybody. But there are some ways in which we interact with the world that are not there, not accepted necessarily by neurotypical world. But if you're in a group of neurodivergent people, everyone prefers it because we all interact with world the same way. And it's not a bad thing. It's not the way that we interact isn't bad. It's just not how neurotypicals do it. And so therefore it is not quote unquote optimum or whatever. Right. And so I think it's really interesting, the idea that there's now maybe an acceptance that neurodivergent doesn't equal not optimum, it just means different. Yeah. She is the pushback to the optimum theory, because I think I want to say it was the first episode that we introduced her want to say that she said something along the lines of, with my condition. They told me I couldn't have a roommate, and now I get to have a roommate. And so she was really excited about having Michael Burnham living, bunking with her. And she has continued to be contrary to that. Um, she her shape, her body shape is is different than what would be considered human optimal. But she continues to be a crucial part of this crew. Yeah. And I love and I don't know if it's a actual decision to use her as a catalyst. Uh, but they they end up doing it a lot. Yeah. I think it's important to, to note that there's probably some strengths that she has that are that nobody else on that ship, like there's some things that only Tilly has been able to like, solve basically. And it might be in part because of how she works differently, very specific scenarios that I can't tell you about because hashtag no spoilers. But yes, I mean, you know, again, it goes back to yes, there are a lot of struggles with being neurodivergent in terms of like, yeah, there's a lot of obstacles and things, but a lot of the obstacles are because neurodivergent are in some way, shape or form forced to assimilate themselves into the neurotypical world in order to, you know, be acceptable in some way, shape or form. Right. Um, and the irony is that there's so many things that neurodivergent people have contributed because of how differently their brain works. Like a neurotypical could never have conceived it because their brains just work differently, you know? Um, and so it's it's interesting that we do have a very strong tendency in society to suppress those things that are different. Like, great example, left handedness. I think we're getting significantly better on all fronts in this. We are one hundred percent. But in general, we fear that that that which is different. Yep. And usually and then try to suppress it. My grandfather was left handed. I am left handed. He trained himself to be right handed because it was considered to be unusual. Yeah. And now, don't get me wrong, being left handed and right handed world is not fun. I mean, for those that know, know the ink on the hand people. I mean, you know, if you know. Right. Um, so it does come with its drawbacks, but, um, but yeah, I don't know. You're you're right. Though in general, we are getting much better at, um, I think we're getting significantly better. And now that being said, the asterisks there is there are groups of people that are getting better, and there are other groups that are still not well. But I know that that, um, you know, people who are on the autistic spectrum are now being tapped for advanced problem solving in certain industries and certain positions in certain high level positions. Their unique approach to just the world around them has become an incredible resource. Temple Grandin is an incredible a really, really great answer. Uh, and if somebody hasn't seen Temple Grandin, highly recommend it. She's so powerful. She's she's so powerful in her story that she has Ted talks. She has a movie. Absolutely remarkable. Um, Ellen is on the spectrum. I mean, their autism is neurodivergent. Exactly. So. And and it's a huge spectrum. You know, you have those that are nonverbal and, you know, this, that and the other. And then you have people that are extremely high functioning to the point that they never even get diagnosed, but they are most certainly, um, autistic. But that movement toward accepting the differences as unique advantages is part of that utopian mission that Federation, Star Trek, Starfleet, that's that's part of what the attempt was in the first place, to try to get that out into the world through entertainment. Yeah, it's part of the mission of the show. And they I think that Tilly is a really great representation of that. Yeah, I think I mean, it's only in the last few years that it's really been I mean, another great example is Mel on The Pitt. And if you haven't seen the Pitt, watch The Pitt. It's so good. But Mel is another great example because, um, because she essentially she, she assimilates very well into the neurotypical world. But if you're paying attention enough, you'll notice, like she's not quite quote unquote normal, right? Um, and so that's, that's much more, I think, typical of someone that's neurodivergent in this world. I think most neurodivergent people aren't those that are at the far end of the spectrum. Um, they're more, you know, closer to neurotypical, but they definitely are still neurodivergent, and they are very high functioning and, and, um, mask very well. Um, but there was another one, another show. Doctor Murphy was the name of the character, but he was a he was a good doctor. The good doctor. And that is one. You know, I've heard that it's not a great representation of, of autism out in the world, but I feel like it's almost like the overdramatization of it. Yeah. As opposed to which at the time, could have been necessary. Yes. But now I'm happy to see, um, people like Mel from the Pit or Tilly from Star Trek that are more representative of generally what you would see for those that are high functioning and masking but don't quite fit. And so they have to figure out how to do their best to continue functioning. Wait till we get to the new Star Trek. The stuff that's being created right now, they're they're diving head first into it. I mean, both both stories are valid. You know, the high end of the spectrum versus the other end of the spectrum. Both both are extremely valid stories to tell, but I'm happy to see ones that are less cut and dry, I guess. So did you did you catch the MoMA reference? Yeah. And you told me it was my fault. But it's not my fault. Do we need to explain whose fault it is? And the whole thing. I think it's a cute story. So it is your fault. All right, so here we go. Uh, damn. It's briefly mentioned. Uh, Hugh taking him to the Museum of Modern Art. Yeah. And our. You know, the coolest thing about the show is that we're together. And I originally moved up here from Nashville almost two weeks ago or almost two years ago. Uh, almost exactly. And, uh, moved up here to be with Stephanie. And so when this started happening, before I moved up, I started visiting up, visiting, uh, regularly to get to spend some time with her and also get to check out this city, because New York has a lot of vibes about it and wanted to check it out. But whenever you do this, it's kind of like when you go shopping for a new car, all of a sudden you start to see that car everywhere. Well, as soon as I started coming to New York City to come visit Stephanie, I started noticing New York all over the place. So whenever I would, I would notice and I would say, hey, this is your fault because I see something on TV. I see a New York license plate, a show that takes place in New York because there's so few of those. And it was continually her fault. But then on the flip side, she would start seeing because I moved up from Nashville. So she would start seeing more Tennessee things, more Nashville things. And so we've we've been we've we've gotten ourselves into this pattern of anything that is Nashville or Texas, Tennessee or Texas or Oklahoma or kind of Oklahoma. I still argue that one. No, it's my fault. And then anything that's New York or Michigan because that's where she's from, is her fault. So the museum I'm holding the microphone here. No, it's my turn. No, I'm taking the microphone. No. You hear that? I took the microphone. Um, I don't agree with that. Um, with the New York part of it, but it actually started way earlier than that. It started many years ago when you were, for some reason, seeing Ray Liotta everywhere. And it was reminding you of me because I worked with Ray and you were friends with Ray. Yeah. Rest in peace. Um, he and you and you had messaged me or something. Or you told me later, like I saw I was seeing Ray everywhere. It's your fault that he's like. He's like. And you know what happens every time you turn on TV? The almost always, it's New York, and that's valid. That started so that was years ago. Now I want to say it was like eight years ago or so. It all started. Yeah. Yeah. At the end of twenty eighteen. No. Uh-Uh. Yeah. I can tell you off, Mike, if you need me to either way. Museum of modern Art, in a show that takes place three hundred years in the future, is your fault. No, it's your fault. No. Good chat. Okay. Really quickly. Really quickly. They say that they have about an hour or two to find Tillie before the. The little. Little. I'm calling him nanites. The little nanites in the mycelium network. Eat through the hall. And I'm thinking, is it okay if they eat through ninety nine percent of the hall? Like, is that still a viable, viable whole technology? Ex machina. That's just one of those things. You just have to accept it because they've got things like reinforcing structural stability fields. We're okay with this? Yes. Okay. Yes. Still bad. At a certain point. You just have to accept that the technology makes it work because we have to continue the plotline. Okay, okay. Moving on. There's always a problem with the phase inducers, okay? Just remember that. Okay then. All right. Well then that was quick. Um, my only really big I only have two other things that like, really stuck out to me, I think, which is, um, uh, when Michael is defending, uh, Hugh, not Hugh. Um, Tyler to Pike saying I know him better than most and like, I know him, I know him. She also called him a man of secrets. Um, but I'm thinking. But what is bringing up the idea of what? Is knowing someone really mean, though? Right? Because we have so many cases of, you know, spouses or children or best friends of serial killers that had no idea that they would be a serial killer. Yeah, right. So we're also talking about a character that basically had multiple personality disorder. Yeah, he was a sleeper cell. So maybe that's another reason why I don't like Michael. Man, you have really tagged Michael. It's just an arrogance, right? Of like, no, I know him, I know him. That's the Vulcan stoicism. It's a reflection on the ideology, not the character. Vulcan Stoics. Vulcans in general. I can tell you this. This is not a spoiler. So log that Vulcans tend to be wrong. In general, they are right until they're not, and then they are absolutely dead wrong. Think about when they're when they're running through the mycelial network. And Burnham is just sitting here looking at Hugh, saying, I don't understand how he is here. Like it, just like her philosophy is so damn hard strong that to imagine something outside of it is just absolutely earth shattering, earth shattering, universe shattering. So are you a Vulcan? Wow. Focus. Um, I think it's a strong character development that she could stand there and say, no, this is the absolute fact of the case, and then stand there and looking at Hugh in front of her when she was saying five minutes ago, it is it is impossible that he is still alive. And then he's there and she's just staring at him, going, I can't understand how he's here. That's so crazy to me that that's a thing, because you would think that being so wise with their logic and all this, it would dictate that there is one of the wisest things ever said. All that I know is that I know nothing. Right. It's like that. There is always, almost always room for it not being what you think it is, you know. And the Vulcans, for whatever reason, over the course of fifty years of producing television, of producing TV shows with them as a species, they always have that hindrance they lack. They end up lacking imagination. They end up lacking. Um, how do you say that? Flexibility with their boundaries of simply what is. Yeah. And they end up getting caught with their metaphorical pants down because of that. And they end up growing slowly because they cannot accept new ideas that are outside of their pedagogy. Yeah. That is such an interesting thing about logic, right? Because it's only it's logical based on what you know. Right. And it's actually a bit of, um, you know, how we talked about stoicism. There's like very two different ideas of it. There's like the social stoicism and then there's like the actual stoicism. It's kind of like that of like there's true logic. And then there's what we say is logic. And I think that most people fall into the trap, if you will, of not using true logic. And yeah, the show touches that so much. Like what exactly is the power and the, uh, deficiency. That is logic. Because you can't say that logic itself is a bad thing. No, but doing anything over the top is a bad thing. Drinking too much water can kill you. Same principle. What happens if you have too little logic? What happens if you have too much logic and they encapsulate that entire argument into a species? They do the same thing with passion. Can you have too little passion? Yes. Can you have too much passion? Hell, yes. What happens? That's the Klingons. Well. And it's. You know, there's so many things you can apply logic to that just simply, unfortunately, just aren't true, right? Like, you know, I mean, through through many, many years and decades, you know, women in their butts, like, if you just, you know, you have I'm sorry if you have if you have really if you have a fat butt and you want it to be smaller, just work out your butt and it'll get smaller. Unfortunately, that's that's what logic dictates, right? It makes sense, but that's just not how it works. You don't get to choose where fat leaves from your body does. And so it's one of those things that like logic dictates, wait a minute, wait a minute. But it doesn't necessarily mean it's true. What about concentrated fat loss? Is that actually a thing? Obviously. I mean, you can make your your your glutes stronger, right? And you'll get more muscle. But you're if you're losing fat, your body's going to decide where that fat is lost from. It's not going to come from the place you want it to be lost. If that were the case, then every woman out there would be able to dictate where they can put extra, extra stuff and lose stuff. The implication is that if you can control where it's taken away from, then you can control where it's placed. Yes. That's interesting. Yeah, I so wish that was the case. So that's actually a logic. That's the logical fallacy of it. Stoicism for the win, baby. How is that stoicism for the win? I don't know. But no, I see you're exactly right. If we all could choose where we put on those few extra pounds and lose those few extra pounds, wouldn't life be so much better? Yep, I know. But unfortunately, the human body does not go that way. So, I mean, do you have anything else? I think I'm excited about the next episode. I think we're starting to rapidly head toward actual strange new worlds. I'm excited. Thing is, to just lightly touch on the Giorgio thing in my real. I'm sorry. The what? George. Oh, Giorgio. Yeah. I was like, did I say it wrong? I heard it a little differently. Um, is what's with the apple? Is that supposed to be like Adam and Eve? Apple? I didn't. Yeah, I get that. They they really focused on it. And I also hung up on it, like when she came in to Pike's office and then she just grabbed an apple was like, well, she's just making herself at home. But then they ended up playing back to it when Michael went a little bit nose to nose with her, and then she dropped it and focused on it. Yeah, I don't know. So I'm like, what is what is what was that a metaphor? I know, I think we just tuned in on it more than was intended. Okay. Because I think it's one of those things you show a gun, you gotta use it, right? I'm like, why are we focusing on this apple so much? Or. Or maybe it was a sign that Apple is about to buy Star Trek from Paramount. Oh, God no. But I mean, she did. Michael did mention, like, your snake pit, and she hissed at her. So maybe it's like, kind of isn't there a whole Bible story about a snake in the garden and apples? Yes, there is a whole Bible story about it that's. But it's a fascinating catch. I'm not. I'm not religious people, so I don't. Well, they did say. They said a few times. Cut off the head. Cut off the head of the snake. Interesting. I never thought about that. So the non-religious person over here is the one that caught the religious reference. I'm gonna. I'm gonna flag that. I'm gonna. I'm gonna keep an eye on it. That's that's interesting. There could be more there. But other than that, I, I mean, I have a few other notes, but nothing. Nothing earth shattering. Okay. Well, then what about one of my favorites is, uh, favorite least favorite. Oh, shoot. Oh. Big trouble. You're gonna have to go first. I'm I'm I'm prepared. Okay, we'll go first. Okay. Well, my absolute favorite. This still cracked me up. And every time I think about it, it cracks me up, which says a whole lot. Oh, that old trick. That was fantastic. No, I had written it down before you said it, don't you? You can't even say you had that picked out because you just admitted that you didn't have one. No, no, Linda. No, no. I wrote it down. The ink is dry. Okay, but here. Hold on, hold on. My favorite bullshit. I thought about that particular statement, but then I was like, no, you know what? I'm not gonna limit myself. I'm not limiting myself. Well, look at you with the high road. How's that working out for you? Say, uh, Tilly's comebacks in general. There was that one. There was also, um, when they were in the ship. And I forget what it is that May said something about, like, everyone's gonna die or something like that, and, and and, um, Tilly said something like, well, that's a lovely thought or thanks for that or something like. Yeah, thanks for that. Yeah. She had so many of these little, like, hilarious comebacks. And there was another one too, while they were still in the other world, um, that she, uh, she had a few. And so that was not just the one specific comment. It was going to be just all of her little zings. It's a little bit of a cop out, but I'll take it. Okay, fine. Uh, my negative my my least favorite is that there was no Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Oh my God. No no no no no no no no no no no no no. You are so in trouble. But there was also no Spock. Yeah. Oh, that's that's your new. That's your that's my it's it's. Yes. But it's actually written down that way. That's your new. No. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, you need an actual thing of the episode. No, this was legitimate because they have teased him for five straight episodes. But you need something that actually is. The episode I have in previous episodes had other non favorite things, but they keep teasing us and I know where things are going. And I want Spock. I mean there is it is true that they were they were chasing his his pod. Yeah. And then it wasn't him. And then they locked on and transported and. Oh, yeah. By the way, it's Giorgio. Yeah. Okay. That's fair, that's fair. Thank you very much. This time I'll allow it this time. And every time that they don't give us Spock or Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Great conversation. Stop it. Miley's favorite thing is just Michael's like, I don't know, man. I think if I had to choose one particular thing, it's this. This. I'm gonna call it arrogance that she knows ash so well and yet, like, clearly she didn't. Right? Like, she clearly actually didn't. But somehow she still thinks that she does. It's like there's the evidence and there's the evidence there that shows that she did it, but yet she still can't accept that she didn't. You can know someone, but then still say, but. Which is ironic, considering how much she was broadsided by him when he was activated as a sleeper. Exactly. Yeah. That's fair. I feel like if she had said I know him better than most. That being said, he is a man of secrets. Would have respected that of like, hey man, I think that I know him, but I'm willing to leave that door open because I've been fooled before. You are really getting Michael Burnham's number. Yeah, I don't know. I'm sorry, girl. I'm sorry. Well, the good news is we're gonna move on pretty soon to, uh, actual strange new worlds. So we will. We will leave Michael behind. But I just want you to like her better. Sorry. Discovery was like the first New generation reboot, and she was the head of that. And it's really funny because I said I didn't watch Star Wars Star Trek before, but I did watch discovery the first two seasons, two or three. I think you did two. I did the first two seasons of discovery, and I did like it. I don't remember having specific opinions about Michael. Um, at the time. But, you know, that was many years ago. And maybe I'm just less about the bullshit now. I don't know, because I feel like there's a lot of bullshit going on with her. Wow. I'm not here for it. But I could be wrong. Maybe I'm just reading it wrong. That's fine. All right. Well, regardless. Damn. I really hope she salvages in the next little while. Um, next episode we are doing. This is where we start breaking away from the from the regular timeline. And I'm really excited about it, because that means we're getting closer to Strange New Worlds season one. Yeah. That's happening. I talk with my hands the next episode that we're doing, for those who like to get ahead of the curve is Discovery Season two, episode eight called If Memory Serves. Now I get to have my fun predictions corner. Stephanie. Forget about that. What? I'm never gonna forget about it. You made me go through twenty two episodes not forgetting about it. So here we are, twenty two. Whatever. Uh, I think it was twenty three. Uh, if memory serves predictions corner. Let's go. Oh, that's the name of the episode. That's the name of the episode, if memory serves. Oh, gosh. I mean, well, since I'm on this Michael thing. Michael talking about her memories and how that means that what she's feeling now is fact and and it turns out not to be true because her memory was, um, by her perspective only and therefore flawed. Wow. We're leaning into the hate. All right, that's fair. Okay. Don't come here for facts, people. Clearly. Yeah. Any other thoughts? I don't think so. Okay. Are we gonna do another one? It's really nice to be back. I'm not sure yet. It's nice to be back, but we're gonna keep cranking on this. We've got plenty of stuff to go, and it sounds like we've got more stuff coming, so it's nice to keep doing this. Yep. Okay. Good job. Okay, well, then I guess we'll see you next time. Bye bye.