Activating Our Distress Signal For The Expanse

Dave: [0:03] This episode of Extra, Extra Hot Great is brought to you by Diatho's 15 Seconds of Fame. I guess they just wanted to make it look like an accident. It's quite clever, actually. They blew up. Tara: [0:29] Penguins. Batman. Oh, fuck off. Sarah: [0:39] XO. Dave: [0:47] I'm coming in and I don't want to see anything hairy. This is the Extra Extra Hot Crate Podcast, episode 382 for the November 15, 2025 weekend. I am Personality Fedora David T. Cole, and I'm here with Log Purge Sarah D. Bunting. Sarah: [1:16] This never happened. Dave: [1:17] And Distress Beacon Tar Ariana. Tara: [1:21] Help! Sarah: [1:24] Oh, boy. Dave: [1:30] Anybody else perform a log purge before we started recording? I don't want to take any breaks. Sarah: [1:35] That is none of your business. Hello. Welcome back to Extra Extra Hot Great. For another weekend, we are so glad you're here. A little punchy. Not that you're going to be here for long. We could not and would not make these episodes without your support. And tis the season to give that support to friends and family. Don't forget, you can give a membership as a gift or make a deposit in the mutual aid vault for your fellow listeners. DM me on our Discord about that. And speaking of your fellow listeners, one of them has brought us our topic today. The premiere episode of The Expanse has our November Forsening. If you are new here, welcome. A Forsening is exactly what it sounds like. You listeners suggest a TV for us to watch, good, bad, or ugly. We watch it and discuss. Sarah: [2:25] It was my pick this month. I went with a suggestion from Kelly R. Here's what Kelly had to say about The Expanse, Season 1, Episode 1, Dulcinea. Because it is one of the best shows around these days, all caps. Number one, political intrigue. Number two, super sexy people. Debatable. Three, aliens maybe. Four, a hook that makes me want to watch more. That is why Kelly suggested we watch the show, which is based on a series of novels by James S.A. Corey, actually Daniel Abraham and Ty Frank, who also work on the show. The Expanse debuted in 2015 on Cypher, then it moved to Prime Video after a few seasons. I picked it for us because although a number of guests on the main podcast have brought it to Around the Dial, and I think David T. Cole talked about it in the past. Tara: [3:13] We started the first episode, but we did not finish it. Sarah: [3:17] I see. Dave: [3:18] You're just confusing my love of log purges. Tara: [3:21] Pooh business. Pooh business. Sarah: [3:25] Oh, that Log Perch feeling. It is one of those shows that seems pretty popular in our podcast's demographic and listenership, but kind of just went around us somehow. Anyway, I also like to yell space, and I will probably get to do that. The premiere was written by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby of Children of Men, among others, and directed by vet Terry McDonough, who did a bunch of breaking bads, and it introduces us to the premise. In the 23rd century, humanity has colonized the solar system, with the UN controlling Earth and various territorial tussles happening amongst the inner planets for control of power and, of course, precious resources, air and water. We also meet the characters whose fates intertwine narratively, including UN bigwig Christian Abbasarala, that's Shoray Akdashloo. Police detective Joe Miller and his dumb hat, that's Thomas Jane. Acting Exo with a heart of gold and a question mark, James Holden, Stephen Strait, and various other crew members who introduce us to a vast interplanetary conspiracy. We will talk more about most of those things in a moment, but first, let us do the Chen check-in. David T. Cole, should our listeners watch the first episode of The Expanse? Dave: [4:39] I don't like doing this one because people love The Expanse so much, but this bored me as much as the first time watching it, and I did not care for it, and I thought it was overstuffed with things, so I'm going to say no. Sarah: [4:53] All right, Tara. Tara: [4:55] I mean, I'm not going to keep watching it either, but I can see why people like it. It does seem to have sort of Battlestar Galactica, 21st century version vibes, but no thanks. No thanks for me. Sorry. Sarah: [5:10] Yeah, I thought there were a lot of comps in here that it's like it's close to other stuff that I've been told I would like and probably would like but not love. I'm not sure this is for me. I don't think I'm going to keep going. Tara: [5:22] Several people on the Discord were saying like, oh, it's too bad it's that one because it's not very good. Like, oh, okay. Even people who like this show don't love that episode. Sarah: [5:30] Well, yeah. But I mean, pilots have to live or die by whether they get you into it. And it sounds like this one didn't necessarily. I mean, I was going to ask about how much we knew about the show before going into it. You guys knew that you had tried it and bailed mid-episode, apparently. Tara: [5:48] Yes. Sarah: [5:48] My only sense of it was that it was a non-TREC Deep Space Nine-ish premise, which is not exactly the case. But let's get into a quick plot rundown because there's not much to it, really. Dave: [6:01] Overall, it's the story of the people that are heir to the thrones of the guys that used to bring you the ice for your icebox in the 1900s. Tara: [6:09] Yeah, kind of. Dave: [6:10] Ice for you, sir. Sarah: [6:11] It's a space dystopia premise. There's only so many variations that there are going to be. But in this one, the cold open is a woman escaping from a zero-gravity holding cell of some sort to discover that the ship she's on has been arrogated by an enemy. This, as it turns out, is Julie, an expanse power-structured Nepo child who has been rebelling against her family's whole deal by rabble-rousing. She has gone missing, and Joe Miller, a corrupt cop-ish, who's also a bounty hunter, is tasked with finding her. Miller also has an annoying hat, but does a pretty good job with the pilot expositioning to his rookie partner, Havelock, Jay Fernandez, as well as making it clear that The Expanse has a point of view about corporate plantation systems, present and future, clip two. Any laws against beating up suspects? No laws in series, just cops. Got it. Miller is also seen taking a bribe not to inspect the station's air filters, which then clog up, causing a bunch of waves to cough heartstring tuggingly. And he seems to be reconsidering his place in this corrupt ecosystem. Guys, how do you think we are meant to feel about Miller if we subtract the hat? Dave: [7:26] All right hey yeah you're not thinking about getting rid of the hat are you it's. Tara: [7:30] Hard it's hard to because it even makes it into dialogue where it's like what is with the hat the partner asks he's like keeps the rain off my head like shut up. Sarah: [7:40] Yeah i know. Dave: [7:41] Tester a arthur comes into the scene takes off his hat puts on top of his own hat got two hats on there's a show oh. Sarah: [7:47] My god i wish. Tara: [7:48] I think he's supposed to be a lovable rogue knockoff of a knockoff of a knockoff of magnum pi mode but uh that is not how i i felt about him i'll say that dave. Dave: [8:01] It's one of those shows where they have to do a i feel like they feel like they have to do a job of making sure everybody is downtrodden to some extent because of the situation that they're in caught between two planetary powers etc etc so even if he's supposed to be like a lovable outside the system character or he's still like depressing enough that it's like, okay, I really can't get my hooks into this guy. But overall, I would have thought that this part of the story should have been episode two and not in episode one. Episode one just should have been the ships and what was happening there and set up that part of it. And then they should have frisky dingled it, which the second episode was just about the other half of the people that are revolving around all this. Because I thought there was way too much going on in this pilot and way too many factions and things in the middle. It's not that I don't want complexity. I just thought for a pilot that wants to grab you and get you into the premise, that that might've been an option for them. Tara: [9:03] I'll also say I saw Naren Shankar's credit. He was a producer on CSI for like seven jillion seasons. So that could have been something where he's like, hey, let's put some procedural juice in this. Dave: [9:17] Well, there definitely are some CSI level camera shots of ships twisting and turning and zooming through their hulls and shit like that. Sarah: [9:25] I think they also probably felt an obligation to get all the biggest names into the pilot for reasons. Because we also meet fond grandma slash UN bigwig, as noted, Christian Avasarala. She has flown straight from tickling her grandson at home to using variable applied physics to torture a suspected terrorist. Clip three. I'm sorry the gravity of a real planet hurts, but it's appropriate. Tara: [10:21] A Whisper will do, if that's all you can manage. With your weak belter voice. Sarah: [10:28] I know. I feel like this actor is often put into roles where the character's ethics are actually not that questionable versus outright bad. And then she is relied on to bring some gray. Did you feel like that was the case here? Slash, did that work for you with this part, Tara? Tara: [10:47] I mean, I feel like the show, as established to this point, made us understand that all power structures are basically corrupt. I was not as gobsmacked as maybe they were hoping I would be by the contrast between how she is at home and how she is at work. Dave: [11:00] I was gobsmacked, not by the ruthlessness of a UN person, but by the fact that the UN somehow got it together to take over Earth in the future. Sarah: [11:09] I know. Tara: [11:12] Also, making the Hamptons a lot less appealing than they are now by making them the location of a black site. Dave: [11:19] I think her and Kathleen Turner should have a talking like this contest. Tara: [11:23] Yes. Dave: [11:24] Do you like whiskey all the time? Me too. Sarah: [11:28] How about gargling with gravel? One thing I did like here is the attention to, not process exactly, but literally how things work in these worlds and differ between them. Like a belter, as mentioned, that's basically a prole who works in the asteroid belt that this version of the solar system relies on for key resources. There is more than one mention of hormones and supplements that dwellers on some planets or stations have to take to mimic, quote, normal human growth and bone development. The Ceres station, which is C-E-R-E-S, Roman goddess of plenty, we got it, has its own version of pollutant asthma affecting kids and poor people. And in that final slash main section of the plot, when the ship has to jump to hyperspace or whatever they call it on the Expanse. Dave: [12:18] Zoom time. Sarah: [12:19] Yeah, zoom time. Log purge. The writing understands that the whole ship and everyone on it has to do it, not just credits cast, and that it will have literal physical downstream effects. Dave: [12:33] Was that the scene with the go fast now pina colada mix stuff that they were sticking in their butts or whatever? Yes. Sarah: [12:39] Basically a whole like attendants prepare for warp speed bit before it happens and like characters have magnetic boots to walk around in low gravity. Was anyone else struck in a positive way by this thoughtful world building? Dave: [12:54] I mean, it's different. I don't really know if it's crucial. I wonder if they're going to be, you know, Pluribus, there's a, I don't know if it's in the ones, anyways, there's a thing that keeps happening involving an answering machine in Pluribus. And they do it once and it's kind of funny. And then they have to keep on doing it. And you're like, how are they going to work around this? And they do in Pluribus because it's a, you know, they take their time with the scenes and everything like that. But I wonder as the expanse goes on, somehow they're going to find super juice where they just you only have to take one shot a week we don't have to do this every time yeah. Tara: [13:28] Yeah that was the stuff that reminded me of battlestar galactica though where. Dave: [13:32] It was like. Tara: [13:33] Partly you know budgetary concerns are making it so that like we can't have a zero gravity. Dave: [13:38] Scene in. Tara: [13:39] Every episode so. Dave: [13:40] Hence the boots or whatever this is a scene in voltron and all those 80s anime where like they just do the repeat of the robot forming every episode right right Right. Sarah: [13:50] And also, they've got to save so much of their budget for all those transparent screens and iPhone iOS 400s. I don't know how much we love those on this podcast. Would anyone like to speak on that? Tara: [14:02] I feel like we've set our piece on that, but they're dumb and they're still dumb. Dave: [14:07] Hack Cop has one. His is a little smash because, of course, it is. But he also makes gestures and smacks stuff on the phone that actually has no interface consequences at all. like you can see him swiping on it nothing's happening it's just the video playing and he's like poking at things nothing's happening. Sarah: [14:24] All right, let's get to the main plot, which is that Jim Holden, creators, could we please stop naming characters that? I assure you that we got it. He's acting XO of the Canterbury. Again, got it. After the previous XO, played by Jonathan Banks, lost it, started talking to his plants while drunk and got section aided. But he, Holden, does not want the job full time. He does want to know what's going on with the distress signal that the captain cynically decided to ignore so that they wouldn't jeopardize their on-time bonus. So Holden digs it out of a deleted log, Tee-hee log, and files it with HQ. The signal was coming from the ship we saw at the beginning, and it soon becomes clear that the signal buoy was a trap, which they've blundered straight into. And the away team watches in horror as a Martian warbird torpedoes the Canterbury to smithereens. And that's when we go to credits. How did we feel about that sequence and all the CSI-ish, let's spend the effects budget on helmet cam shots? Were you emotionally drawn in? Were you just sort of like, I'll read it on the internet and see what happens? I thought it was well done. Tara: [15:35] I thought it was well done too. It didn't feel like it was too slow. It's an interesting cliffhanger. Like what does the shuttle people, what does that crew do now? I thought its ambitions were appropriate for what it had the capacity to execute, I guess. Sarah: [15:50] Yeah, I thought so too. I was pleasantly surprised. I was kind of drawn in. There were some things that were annoying, but in a way that was fun to be annoyed by as a TV viewer and reviewer. And if someone in my life insisted on binging this over the holidays while I was knitting and not really paying attention, I would not be mad. And for a show that's set in space, that's kind of where you want it to come in, at least for Buncee. You guys are out, though? Tara: [16:23] I mean, yeah. Again? It just feels like the problem is, like, there was such a rush to, I feel like, emulate all of the success of Battlestar Galactica that there's so many blue gel shot in Vancouver shows like this that I feel like I've seen one episode of that this one didn't, it wasn't bringing enough new to the table. Dave: [16:47] Oh, zero G fucking. Tara: [16:50] Okay. There was that. Oh, yeah, true. And I just want to say it. Sarah: [16:53] We did get to see ass. Tara: [16:54] I don't think that would work. Like, you'd kind of need, like, friction. Anyway, I don't want to get. Dave: [17:00] Too- It's like that guy in the space shuttle just waving his hands, trying to get a little movement so he can get a wall so he can live his life. Tara: [17:08] Yeah, yes. Dave: [17:08] And he spends, like, 10 minutes just trying. Like, he would have done better if he just farted and it just, like, kind of sent him over there. Sarah: [17:16] Okay, yes. Tara: [17:17] Zero-G sex, that was new. But the rest of it was all stuff I felt like I'd seen before and was not that compelled by other than the original, which was obviously Battlestar Galactica. Dave: [17:29] Were you tempted to scrape the head off a matchstick to put in your coffee? Tara: [17:35] Yeah, I don't get that either. How bad can coffee be? Dave: [17:39] Space coffee. Tara: [17:40] It's terrible. Sarah: [17:41] Yikes. Well, yeah, this was, given that it originated on Syfy, quite a bit better and more ambitious than I was expecting. But I'm still not sure that I'm going to keep going with it. Dave: [17:54] I can see the bones of a better show here. I believe that it does get better and more complex and the political part of it, the house of cards part of it can bubble up to the surface and make it a lot more interesting. than what we saw in the pilot, but the pilot wasn't that. The pilot, I thought, was pretty messy. Sarah: [18:10] Yeah, it was sort of pilot-y. Tara: [18:12] Yes. Knowing that it got picked up by Prime Video because Jeff Bezos is a huge fan of it, not understanding he is the villain that the show is about is very funny to me. Not to go by IMDb ratings, but this one only had a 7.5 and I saw there were others that were like 9.3 or 4 or whatever. So I would encourage that people that are like feral about this show, put together a canon pitch, make us watch one of the ones that you think was better than the pilot, because I'm not totally closed to the idea that the show could get better. I'm just, I would rather you just tell me where it starts getting good and perhaps I can pick it back up from there. Sarah: [18:47] Yeah, good call. Dave: [18:54] You know what else is a good call? This music for this segment called Ask EHG, it was just nominated, get this, 72 Grammys. Tara: [19:03] Whoa. Dave: [19:07] Latin Grammys. Sarah: [19:16] Vlog Purge. Dave: [19:17] All right, we have lots of questions from you for us, but first we have to deal with last week's Ask Ask EHG. Let's see who's going to be this week's judge. Let's spin that wheel. Tara, spin that wheel. Ooh, wheel today. All right. Our judge is me. Hooray. Last week, I asked, congrats on your new deli. Now comes the task of naming all the sandwiches after TV characters. What is your signature sandwich called and what's in it? Tara, you got an answer for me? Tara: [19:49] Yes. I don't know how often it's going to get ordered, but it's going to be very memorable. And it is on the menu for Gidget Lawrence from Gidget. This is straight from season one, episode 13, The War Between Men, Women, and Gidget. It's her heartbreak special sandwich, cheese, tongue, peanut butter, spaghetti, pumpernickel on the bottom, and angel food cake on top, like a slice of angel food cake as bread. Dave: [20:14] Wow. Sarah: [20:16] Okay. Dave: [20:17] Threw up. All right. Here comes your answers. Lots of creative answers. There's too many to go into in detail because, you know, these are all sandwiches and they got like ingredients and nutrition labels and everything like that. But I like this one from Randy for the Columbo. It is a toasted bun, slightly too much mustard, so it drips on your coat. It's got garlic, chicken liver, fried onions, lettuce. To sum up, it is the world's most annoying sandwich for everyone around you, but it's pretty good and old guys love it. Adam added and one more thing, pickles. So good tag team there, guys. Tara: [20:50] Yeah. Dave: [20:50] But only one answer for a sandwich without meat. So Leslie wins by default, but also because it is a great answer. It is the Rory, which is two pieces of Wonder Bread with mayo and pixie stick sugar on it. Tara: [21:06] Yep. Dave: [21:06] So Leslie, DM me for your prize. Thank you, everybody, for your submissions. Let's get into your questions for us. First one comes from Seth. Assuming that babies on Pluribus have access to all human knowledge, what job would you like to see a six-month-old perform, Tar? Tara: [21:23] This is another problem with the show. Kids just don't get to have childhoods now, but whatever. Taking that as read, I'm going to say aerial silk artist. The thing that Pink does when you're suspended above the earth, you know, in the circus. Sarah. Sarah: [21:37] Rodial clown. Dave. Dave: [21:40] Offshore oil rigger. We're going to have big wrench. Tara: [21:45] Oh, yeah. Dave: [21:45] Little baby. Tara: [21:46] It's adorable. Dave: [21:47] Jovial Jen, improve the pilot of an existing TV show by adding a flying, scary, carnivorous baby. Sarah, we're talking. Welcome to dairy. Welcome to dairy. Tara: [21:58] That's the one. Sarah: [21:59] As opposed to a flying, scary, vegetarian baby. Sure. I tried to get this to work in the For All Mankind pilot, but I just think old FSCB wouldn't really work for that show until like the third season premiere. So I am obliged to go with the Americans because I would love to see how Elizabeth Jennings has to contort herself intellectually to blame it on American warmongering somehow. That's my answer. Dave. Dave: [22:27] I want a helpful flying carnivorous baby in the gold. That was the scripted version of the Matt Sprink's heist. Tara: [22:36] Coming back for season two very soon. Dave: [22:38] Yeah, that's weird, but okay. Tara: [22:40] Well, they didn't solve it. Dave: [22:41] I guess. Sarah: [22:42] Golder. Dave: [22:42] The baby is the mastermind behind the operation, but more importantly, he's the getaway driver. So he's waiting in the car for everybody. He's like, get in, get in. Tara: [22:52] Young Sheldon. Dave: [22:54] All right. Randy. In my house, the character on Nobody Wants This is called Rabbi Seth Cohen. What is your favorite example of an actor whose name will always remain the same no matter what show they are on? This is me watching Banner Brothers. Oh, it's Lieutenant Ross. Tara: [23:12] Yep. Dave: [23:13] Tara. Tara: [23:14] Sawyer from Lost is Sawyer from Lost, even when he's Duster from Duster. Sarah. Sarah: [23:19] In my notes, Joe Miller of The Expanse was future cop Mickey Mantle. Dave: [23:24] Dixon Chance pitched a TV adaptation from a medium that has never been mined before. Tara. Tara: [23:31] So, not a book, play, movie, song, TV commercial, or NFT. That leaves me with this. Limitless wonders from fine dining to luxury apparel and everything in between await you when you climb aboard the opulent train known as the American Express. It's Fantasy Island, but at the end of the trip, you have to pay your bill in full. They do not let you carry a balance. Dave. Dave: [23:53] My show is called Malm, M-A-L-M. It is about an Akea Malm bed being slowly assembled by the overworked boss of a crime family and also new dad. It is based on the universal instruction diagrams provided with Ikea products. The last episode, of course, is missing and you have to go to the Ikea store to watch it. Sarah. Sarah: [24:16] Sing out, Tom Dooley. Murder ballads were the limited genre series of their day anyway. And so that's what I'm going with is a murder ballad. This could go on indefinitely. Anthologized. Dave: [24:29] VH4s cast one of the other Friends actors, living or dead, in a season-long guest arc on The Morning Show. Bonus points for references to recent historical events. Do all that, Sarah. Sarah: [24:42] Will do. David Schwimmer is attorney Nate Avery, Corey's college roommate and a David Boyce type, with a lot of secrets involving Epstein Island. Dave: [24:52] Oh, look, Ross is on The Morning Show. Yeah. Tara: [24:55] Lisa Kudrow plays UBN's new director of brand management, a woman of exquisite taste and graphic design prowess, who is the first one to sound the alarm about Kate Middleton editing that photo for Mother's Day. Pretend that for the sake of this answer that happened this year, like I totally, totally thought it did and not in 2024, which the morning show is already passed. Whoops. Dave. Dave: [25:18] Marcel becomes the morning show's equivalent of the Today Show's J. Fred Muggs back in the day. Marcel eats Alex Levy's face and connecting it to recent store of events release the Epstein files. All done. All wrapped up. Nice little bow. That show kind of lost it this season. Got boring real quick. Sarah: [25:39] This season. Dave: [25:40] Well, okay, but it was bad good before. Now it's just boring. Tara: [25:43] We only got two more. We'll finish it off. Dave: [25:46] Jermaine has a question just for Sarah I have been an extra hot great listener since its first iteration and I don't remember Sarah ever living in Toronto this has been mentioned several times on this show lately details please. Sarah: [26:00] This was long before even Mark 1, so it's not surprising that you don't remember it. A friend of mine who worked for the provincial government had a loft in Toronto, but he had to move to Ottawa, so I sublet his place. It's on Ontario Street. I could no longer afford to live in that neighborhood, I am sure. I was only there three months. I had planned to renew my visitor visa at least one or two more times, but my move-in date was August 31st, 2001. So events kind of con and transpired, and I was back in NYC by Christmas of that year. Not much else to the story, really, except that sometimes I'd see street signs in the background of a show and say, Spadina, teehee, Spadina. That was the story. It was fun, though. Tara: [26:47] Yeah, that was fun. Dave: [26:48] Millsnack, which adult education class are you teaching? So I've actually done this for photography many times in Hawaii. Enjoyed it a lot. I had a giant slideshow. I had props. I gave people homework. It was great. Sarah. Sarah: [27:02] The Art of the True Crime Long Read with a different author each week. Skip Hollinsworth, Pamela Calloff, Dominic Dunn, etc. I may yet do this, actually. I think Gotham Writers Workshop would be into it. Tara: [27:15] Tara. I guess critical writing, because I have no other skills that I can pass on to anyone, adult or child. Dave: [27:23] Jovial Gent. If Jessica Fletcher was in The Picture of Dorian Gray, how would she uncover Dorian's murders and dark secrets, skipping this? Never read it. Tara: [27:33] Based on that Murder, She Wrote game we played, I'm going to guess she is helped by one of her many nieces, Sarah. Sarah: [27:41] It's been really a long time since i read that but i suspect that she is a co-star of sybil veins in the quote dingy theater and when sybil dies of suicide jessica suspects a staged as it were seen and starts sniffing around about dorian and his legendary debauchery and eventually a stagehand whom nobody else ever bothered talking to overhears her muttering to herself about dorian and mentions that he looks the same as he did 20 years ago. It's really odd that he doesn't seem to age despite getting his mail at opium dens or whatever. And then from there, she figures out that he's who he is. Dave: [28:18] So Dorian Gray's got a magic painting of himself that keeps him young. Is that the gist of it? Tara: [28:23] It ages while he stays young. Dave: [28:25] Oh, okay. And how does it age while he stays young? Is there some karmic thing? Is it absorbing people's youth somehow? Oh, all right. Tara: [28:34] It's just like an enchanted magic painting. It's a soft sci-fi. Sarah: [28:38] That wears all his sins for him. And then eventually it stops doing that. Dave: [28:43] Yeah. Sarah: [28:43] Spoiler. Dave: [28:44] Thanks, painting. Diatho. Thanks, painting. That's what he says every time, every day, right? Just before he goes to bed in the secret painting room, pats the painting a couple times. Tara: [28:55] I thought you said you never read it. Dave: [28:56] Thanks, painting. I just remembered it all. It came back to me. Diatho. Sarah: [29:01] Each. Dave: [29:02] Of you needs to pick a tv animal familiar who do you pick and why sarah. Sarah: [29:07] Um just about any of the creatures in tex avery's farm of tomorrow cartoon because they're extremely useful hybrids but i think the chicken slot machine hybrid would be the most fun and useful then you can play games and also have eggs whenever you want all. Dave: [29:22] Right one guess what my pick is, Oh, boy. Tara: [29:30] Is it the dog from Poker Face? I don't know. Dave: [29:33] Dog from Poker Face. Incorrect. It's Littlest Hobo. Tara: [29:37] Oh, of course. Dave: [29:37] Jesus Christ. Sarah: [29:38] Oh, sure. Dave: [29:38] I like to file for divorce. Tara: [29:42] Great. Dave: [29:42] If I couldn't pick Littlest Hobo, I don't know, because of tariffs or something, then I would go Zeus and Apollo from Magnum P.I. Because, you know, they're loyal, but also scary. Tara: [29:52] Right. Dave: [29:53] That's a good combo. Sarah: [29:54] Yeah. Dave: [29:55] Tara. Tara: [29:55] That used to be what you said about me. My answer is Murray from Mad About You, and in this reality, someone else brushes him and vacuums daily because that is a long-haired dog of the kind I will never own. Dave: [30:07] Seekin, you're tasked to become a social media YouTube influencer. What type of show do you create and what's it about? My show's called Dave the Reboxer. I'm the after show for all the unboxing accounts. It's about reboxing what they unboxed until people figure out I'm also, later that night, robbing their house. Tara: [30:28] The thought of this makes me want to cry, but let's say I'm doing breakfast food reviews. Sarah. Sarah: [30:34] It is me, Tara, and Stephanie Green of the eponymous Screen, doing one-minute book talk reviews of celebrity dumb wars past and present. Tara: [30:43] Mm-hmm. Dave: [30:43] Wars. All right, that's it for us. Here is your Ask Ask EHG question to answer in our Discord, or you can email me, david at cole.fyi. It comes from Beezor Laura. They ask, name a really, really profound moment in an otherwise meager TV property. Go to our Discord, plop it in there. There's a channel called Ask Ask EHG waiting for you. Dave: [31:08] It is time for the extra hot, great, tiny cannon presenting this week. It's me, David T. Cole. I am presenting from Deadwood, Season 3, Episode 5, A Two-Headed Beast, the epic five-minute-long Dan Doherty versus Captain Turner fight on the thoroughfare. It is a full five minutes of two goons just going at it. We've got local goon Dan Doherty and capitalist goon Captain Turner serving as a proxy fight between Al Swearegen and William Randolph Hearst. Yes, that one. In this dirty, bare-knuckle, heavy-breathing tussle between two brick house men, you will get synchronized deholstering, synchronized unhatting, bear hugs, man grapples, man punching, thoroughfare rolling, barrel table crashing, headbutts ear eating, chokeholds, butcher table crashing with meat rolling, attempted weaponization of a side of deer, arm biting, mud drowning, fire pit stone bashing, eye popping, looking at bosses like emperor for kill decisions, firewood head bashing, and firewood brain spreading. Let's go back to that eye-popping moment, shall we? Tara: [32:30] No! No! Dave: [32:52] Mmm, gooshy. And you can really hear that thing pop in that clip too. Tara: [32:58] Yeah, you can. Dave: [33:01] So, reviewing this now, 19 years later, it is easy to forget that it seemed entirely possible that Dan wasn't going to make it out of this alive. It wasn't that kind of show where everybody you love and made it to the end of the season. Add to that, Hearst rarely lost a battle and Captain Turner was basically his T-1000 in town. This scene was not only dirty and brutal as fuck, but also genuinely tense and worrisome for the damn lovers out there. I think it holds up well and I submit this manly, muddy, five-minute-long battle to the tiny canon. Tara: [33:40] Thank you, Dave. Master Fleece submitted. I feel like Sarah should go first since she was the Deadwood abstainer on the panel. Sarah: [33:47] I am, but this did make me wonder, as I do occasionally, why I don't take another run at Deadwood. I don't think that's ever happening now that it's like, it premiered over 20 years ago, which seems crazy to me. I feel like it's never left the conversation, but I think this is a great scene and does what I do agree that Deadwood did well, which was sort of give you the sense, but not too unrelentingly of a just how like rhymey and puddly and difficult just day-to-day living was in Deadwood or any other settlement in the 19th century. But also that most fights are exactly this kind of bullshit. Like this is pretty operatic, especially with the, you know. Sarah: [34:38] Eyeball trailing down the face like a lost victorian gummy but like that it is mostly like, and people just like wailing on each other's ribs or bear hugging until somebody slips in a cow pat i mean i appreciated that that like both these men would know how to fight and would be pretty good at fighting and are evenly matched but that also most fights are just this dance it's not like pro wrestling ever IRL. So for the realism, for the really legendary grodiness of the outcome, and I mean, the mud puddle drowning was so lovingly shot, it did tempt me into giving the show another try. Perhaps I do kind of hate all the characters, I think, but maybe that's the point. Maybe I'll try it again and I can skip over the scene because I've already seen it and I never need to see it again. But that's what we're here for. Tara. Tara: [35:38] So I've enjoyed a lot of fight scenes worse than this. Fight scenes delight my inner 12-year-old boy. But rarely do they offer what this one does, which is the following. It is integral to the plot. It advances the story. The choreography makes it feel visceral even before there is actual viscera. But it also makes each motion feel improvised. The editing is laser sharp. The combatants are evenly matched. They clearly come to this with work strength, not gym strength. Obviously, the minimal reactions of their bosses is part of it, but every motion in the fight itself also feels economical, like there's no excess in any of it. It's just completely utilitarian. Also, the non-reactions of the townsfolk in the long shot, where it's like, a man is killing another man in the middle of the road, and at one point you just see people being like, well, I gotta get to the hardware store, so whatever, this isn't about me. be wednesday totally the penultimate horror with the eye is legitimately horrifying but there's also the restraint of the final blow happening off screen and just what we hear it and we just see al swearingen's reaction it's incredible to me that the same guy who brought us dan doherty w earl brown also plays like a the slickest hollywood sicko in hacks he's the father of the Meg Stalter character, like this very powerful agent guy. Tara: [37:02] That's what's called range. And our rewatch of Brooklyn Nine-Nine last night also brought us to the episode where Captain Turner just shows up for a second as another cop who also gets into a huge brawl on the floor of the squad, which is clearly not an accident, his casting. Someone was a fan, and that's why he's there. So, yeah, this is incredible. I can't believe that this whole episode is not in the canon, but I also don't remember anything else that happens in it because this fight is so... indelible. Dave: [37:33] Just one last thing, since you mentioned the minimal motions of Hurst and Swearegen just make these minimal movements. But the one thing I thought, not part of the fight exactly, but part of the scene was when it looks like Dan's going down and Al's just sort of like, has this ever so slight sort of lowering of his head. And then like about a minute later, the tables get turned and he like does the opposite where he's sort of like looking up. And it's weird. It's so minimal, but it feels so hopeful in the moment. Sort of a rallying moment for that whole scene. Tara: [38:05] Yeah, I would love to know how long it took them to shoot this. For five minutes of tape, I'm sure it was several days. Not just learning the choreography, but just mapping it out and getting it from all the angles. Sarah: [38:16] Mud continuity. Dave: [38:17] Yeah, and there's a horse that runs through the fight at some scene. And it looks like they're a few feet away from this horse stamping his feet and stuff like that. So yeah, not an easy shoot. All right, let's make this official Sarah D. Bunting. What say you for the Tiny Fight Cannon? Sarah: [38:33] I say fucking yay, cocksucker. Dave: [38:36] Tara. Tara: [38:37] Yay. Dave: [38:38] All right, so... The Doherty-Turner fight from Deadwood. You are hereby inducted into the extra-hot, great Tiny Fight Cannon. Dave: [38:50] Americans love a winner. Yeah. and will not tolerate a loser. Nope. All right. It is time to discover who are our not-quite-winners and not-quite-losers of the week. I will go first. Not-quite-winner for me is V4 Vendetta is getting a series adaptation at HBO. Tara? Tara: [39:10] Just like I said, it should have been when the movie came out and you were there, you know I did. Dave: [39:15] Yes. Can confirm. The piece of the article that interested me was right at the end, though. Channel 4 had attempted to develop a V4 Vendetta TV series, but it ultimately did not move forward. The HBO Max Epyx DC series Pennyworth, which followed Bruce Wayne's famous butler Alfred during his life in the 1960s London, was also meant to serve as a prequel to V4 Vendetta. Tara: [39:40] Whoa! Dave: [39:41] Though it was canceled before that storyline could be fully fleshed out. Tara: [39:45] Oh, that's interesting. Dave: [39:46] That makes sense, though. Sarah: [39:47] It does. Tara: [39:47] It totally does. Dave: [39:48] It's all about the fascist government uprising in Britain and all that. So yeah, that would have been that would have been neat. And my not quite loser breaking news for us here on Thursday. Peacock has canceled Poker Face after two seasons, which is madness. Peacock with their giant library of quality television says no to Poker Face. Tara: [40:09] Sure. Dave: [40:10] I'm sure it's very expensive. But then like you're OK, that's really sad. Poker Face was one of our great shows of the last couple of years. But then Rian Johnson's like, yeah, I had another idea where Peter Dinklage takes over, and that is the next season of Poker Face. Tara: [40:26] Next two seasons, yeah. Dave: [40:27] Yeah, so now he's shopping that around, and he's going to sell it. Tara: [40:30] Of course. Sarah: [40:31] Yeah, he absolutely is. Dave: [40:32] Like, Netflix will pick it up in a heartbeat, right? Netflix is already in deep with the Knives Out stuff, so why not? Netflix, you know, just wipe their ass, and here's $10,000 million. No more Poker Face. I don't really doesn't really get into why Natasha Lyonne's leaving. No hint at that. But Peter Dinklage, as the Charlie Kale replacement, thoughts, concerns, comments, questions? Tara: [40:56] I just imagine she has other things she wants to do. She produces a bunch of shows as well. So it could be it's too much of a time commitment, or she feels like she's exhausted what she can do with a character, perhaps. Dave: [41:07] Oh, it's just a curious confluence of things. Like, did they cancel it because she was no longer wanting to be the star, and they didn't think that would have the throughput they needed to bother to budget for another couple seasons? Or is this just, you know, it just happens to be that way? Sarah: [41:22] I love her, but she is like, I think this has to have come from her in part because she was like quoted in the piece and she's still executive producing whatever the show is going to be. She was like, yeah, you know, Charlie will have more adventures, just not in this physical form. So what she's like the doctor now, like, what are we doing? But also, like, I trust that they have a plan. And if you don't look at this casting change and say, you know, if you've never heard of Dinklage, then you're stupid and shouldn't have access to budget money. Dave: [41:58] So that's fair enough. I just that whole article just was like weird. It was like so many things I did not expect to read in one article. Tara: [42:08] Yeah. Well, it's a story to keep keep our eye on. Dave: [42:11] Yeah. All right. Sarah, what do you got? Sarah: [42:12] My not quite winner is a DC Comics Universe slash American Vandal fans because the character Jimmy Olsen is getting a quote true crime crossover show. That's like DC animation, I believe, but it's written and produced by the American Vandal team, which like I'm always the one that's like whenever there's an ask HG question, it's like what documentary team should and I'm like American Vandal. like i just wanted to do everything basically so i know nothing about what the dc universe is up to or any of that i don't know daily planet lore i will still watch this when it when it comes. Dave: [42:54] This was rumored for a while i kept on seeing little bits that there's going to be a jimmy olsen show and that it was going to be some sort of semi-serialized something or other i i think it's live action though i think so too yeah i don't think it's animated i think it's supposed to be with that guy like and he i guess by this oh you're right yeah you're right and they're saying the first season of this iteration is the gorilla garage season so it does sound like american vandals like they're doing a season arc thing i don't know could be interesting yeah. Tara: [43:22] He was a big breakout character in superman this this iteration of jimmy olsen played by skylar gazondo from um oh you know what. Sarah: [43:30] I'm confusing it with the spider verse. Tara: [43:32] Oh yeah no no like. Sarah: [43:34] Recent content from the spider verse i apologize. Tara: [43:36] Right. Dave: [43:37] It was gideon in the righteous gemstones yeah. Sarah: [43:40] I would basically, if they put Sharpie faces on thumbs and did a story, I would absolutely watch that. My not-quite-loser is the health insurance industry, because James Van Der Beek has partnered with some memorabilia sales outfit to sell memorabilia from his career. Some from Dawson's goofy necklace. Oh, no, it's the necklace he gives Joey at some point. There's also a bunch of Varsity Blues stuff. He has to do that to fund treatment for colon cancer. So, my God. America, get yourself correct, please. The man has children. He has all the children. Tara: [44:22] Medicare for all. Let's stop fucking around, please. Sarah: [44:26] Yeah, it's not great. Tara: [44:27] My not-quite-winner of the week, speaking of medicine, is The Pit, which will air uncut on TNT with nudity and graphic medical imagery intact. Dave: [44:37] Woo! Sub-winner, good news for shitty enema guy. He's still in the cut. Sarah: [44:43] Log purge. Tara: [44:44] He is. Yeah, people on the Discord were saying, was there nudity in the show? And there is. Like, it's, you know, usually on ER, it's like, cut open a woman's shirt to work on her and her bra stays on in the pit. It doesn't. So it's also going to have all the swears and everything. So basically, if you are not an HBO Max subscriber yet somehow still have TNT because you are not a cord cutter and we salute you, if so, now's your chance to watch The Pit before season two comes out on the 8th of January. Dave: [45:15] Watching The Pit with commercial interruptions would be weird, though. Tara: [45:18] Yeah, true. My not-quite-loser of the week is Weekend Update anchor Michael Che, who has been feuding with a former SNL intern on Instagram. She is a writer, aspiring writer. She graduated from NYU in comedy writing and worked as an intern on the show, and so she put up an Instagram reel or something. It's like what you don't know about SNL. And from what I read, it's like nothing you wouldn't have picked up yourself if you read the Lorne biography or any book or any article or any tweet about Saturday Night Live, to be honest. The issue is more that Michael Che responded to her reel by saying you learned you figured all that or you saw that from getting coffee. Like, you know what, dude, you can let some of these goes by. He is so messy on social media. Like, why punch down at this woman? Just leave her alone. Stephanie: [46:14] Welcome to your bi-monthly edition of The Green Screen, the segment in which I, Stephanie Green, walk you through some of my favorite current reality TV picks. I would be remiss if I didn't spend this month's The Greenscreen making the argument for why you might want to consider giving this season of Love is Blind on Netflix a gander. For those of you who don't regularly dabble in the Chris Cole universe, allow me to give you a brief overview of Love is Blind, a property that's now in its ninth season in the U.S., to say nothing of the many international versions. I'm personally a big fan of Love is Blind Brazil or Casamento As Segas, which is now in its fifth season. The premise of Love is Blind is that a herd of singles must date in pods in which they cannot see each other and must therefore form connections based only on personality. The flaws inherent in this scenario are many. First, people have ways of sniffing out a lot more than personality without ever coming face to face. Over the years, contestants on Love is Blind have hinted, subtly and not so subtly, about their own looks as well as their preferences for their partner's looks. Two examples. Stephanie: [47:20] First, let us never forget Abhishek Sheikh Chatterjee, season two, who asked potential dates if he would be able to put them on his shoulders during a concert. In other words, are you fat? Not for nothing, Sheikh was a petite gentleman, so the expected size of a female partner that this little tiny man could hoist onto his shoulders would be very small indeed. And a super cringe example of a contestant trying to hint at their own looks was when season six contestant Chelsea Blackwell told her soon-to-be fiancé that she's often told she resembles world-renowned hot person Megan Fox. Stephanie: [47:55] Suffice it to say that when they met in real life, the fiancé didn't see the likeness, and they soon broke up. And this is the other inherent flaw in the premise of Love is Blind. Love, as it turns out, is not blind. At least not among these famed-thirsty bobbleheads who, to a one, do deeply care what their partner looks like. Nine times out of ten, one member of any given Love is Blind couple is let down by how their, quote, soulmate ends up looking in real life, which creates resentment for the disappointed party, insecurity for the rejected party, and, subsequently, a desperate scrabbling by the disappointed party to get out of a committed relationship with a perceived uggo. This pattern has repeated itself so many times over the course of nine seasons that it's completely predictable. So you might be asking, if this show follows the same tired trajectory every season, why even bother watching this current iteration? Stephanie: [48:48] The answer is that while the general breakup arcs tend to be the same season to season, the particular flavor of cringe changes. This season, which takes place in Denver, we are treated to a number of unhinged drunks, a cavalcade of blonde hairstylists, a bevy of awkward racial dynamics, a torrent of man tears, a not insignificant quantity of drugs, two snowmobiles, one mechanical bull, and a partridge in a pear tree. Stephanie: [49:15] These people are all so hateable, so stupid, so vapid, that the heights of schadenfreude are almost unmatched. Then again, see my last missive on Welcome to Plathville. I was just talking about Love is Blind with my friend Claire, and she said basically, every season I go in assuming I'll hate it and I won't get through the first episode, and every season I'm hooked with it in four minutes. There's just something about these ding-dongs that sucks you in. I think for me, the exercise of watching the contestants initially insists that they're here on this television program because the way they'd been dating before, quote, just wasn't working. And they're ready to put looks aside and really connect on the basis of personality and values. And then watching these same people be visibly repulsed by whatever person they end up connecting with in the pods never gets old. In a twisted way, this show restores my faith in humanity in that I have never in my actual life met a person as vapid as literally anyone on this show. Oh, I think to myself every season, so this is the bar. If you're not convinced, give Love is Blind five minutes, or however many minutes it takes to get past the Nick and Vanessa Lachey content that no one asked for, and see if you're not a little bit hooked. It's only 12 to 15 hours of your life. Why not? Tara: [50:38] Welcome, grandpas! You've missed a whole heck of a lot of episode. If you were one of the people who were hoping we would ever talk about The Expanse, we did, and you can get that, plus all our answers on Ask Ask EHG, plus a submission to the Tiny Fight Cannon from Deadwood. If you've watched Deadwood, you know which fight we're talking about. All of that and more. Kick up that pledge, if you can, to the $5 level, and you'll get all of these whole episodes and all the whole episodes we've ever done. So extrahotgreat.com slash club for all the info you need on that. Today's extra credit topic is Tara forces everyone to watch nine Back to the Future tie-in TV commercials plus one absolutely shameless knockoff. Tara: [51:23] 2025 is almost over, which means we shouldn't get another burst of Back to the Future anniversary nostalgia for another five years probably. So quick, let's get in the DeLorean and watch these commercials for brands and products that either had direct tie-in deals at the time the movies were out or are still counting on consumers' lingering affection for the franchise to sell their unrelated shit. This is not, by the way, even all of the ones that I found when I went looking. There was a different McDonald's Happy Meal ad, one for Goodyear and one for something called the DeLorean Time Capsule, and then basically a short film about the Toyota Mirai. Tara: [51:59] I don't even know so let's hear them and then let's discuss start with number one for pizza hut you sure about this yep well here goes nothing landon 2015 all right, Pizza Hut, making it great with the Apple commercial font at the very beginning when we see Hill Valley. It's like the same font that Apple always uses for all their branding. Dave: [53:16] Yeah, Aramon Condensed. Tara: [53:18] Thank you. It's Billy Jane, not yet on Parker Lewis Can't Lose as the friend of the main guy who is not Wardlow the Street Racer from 90210 Season 3, but really looks like him. This is obviously a tie-in to Back to the Future Part 2. There's a hoverboard. There's Domino's, but now Domino's is a hardware store, which delivers. The Chevy Aerostar is still going strong 40 years from when this app came out or 35 or whatever. There's a robot traffic cop with a little display on her hat. And she's the one who tells them to go to Pizza Hut for their pizza. Dave: [53:50] It was a very taxi driver from Total Recall. Tara: [53:53] Yes, yes, it is. Sarah: [53:54] The Domino's drive-by, you had to try it, I guess. It didn't really pan out that way. as usual the conception of what the future people look like is super dated and then the people from like 1990 or 89 or whenever look kind of not normal but like less dated then like oh you know what says the future a side ponytail why are we still doing this why i. Dave: [54:20] Enjoyed the feely fluous news music. Hey, is that? No. Tara: [54:31] Nope. Dave: [54:31] No, it's not. Not at all. Tara: [54:33] It is legally distinct. Dave: [54:35] They did predict little tiny robots rolling around your neighborhood delivering things. That has sort of happened. So give it marks for that. The Pizza Hut building itself looks like A building could incorporate the spirit of transparent security blocks, and you made a whole building out of that and Lego, that would be what this building is. It was impressively terrible. Good job. Tara: [55:01] Moving on from 1990, this is for Pizza Hut Solar Shades. Clip two. These days, everyone's going back. where people are looking at the, going like there's no tomorrow. Pizza Hut, make it a great day. There was really a vogue around this time for fast food restaurants giving away sunglasses. Who can forget the Days of Thunder sunglasses that were everywhere from Burger King? I forget if they were Burger King or McDonald's. Dave: [55:49] No, apparently you can't forget. Tara: [55:50] Okay, where were they from? Dave: [55:51] It was Harvey's. Tara: [55:52] Harvey's, thank you. Dave: [55:53] You know Harvey's? Really deep in pop culture Harvey's restaurant from Canada. Tara: [55:58] Anyway, these sunglasses are meant to sort of evoke the future-y sunglasses that are in the movie. And if you wear any of them, you should get your ass beat, in my opinion. Sarah: [56:09] I would wear most of them, especially the ones that look like... Tara: [56:15] Asymmetrical ones. Sarah: [56:16] Yeah, the ones that look like a sort of mid-century Frank Lloyd Wright design. Tara: [56:22] Sure. Sarah: [56:22] There's a shit ton of them on eBay, new in the packaging. If you want to spend $18 to, I guess, look like a hose or in Tara's opinion, or buy them for me, I like them. Tara: [56:32] Good to know. put them on your dog according to this commercial next number three for nintendo also 1990 you've been back to the future of the movies now go there on your nes in. Dave: [56:48] Ljn back to the future, LJN, infamous, infamous for shovelware pop culture tie-in games of the Nintendo era. A lot of WWE stuff, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Tara: [57:05] That sort of thing. Yeah, like all licensed Nintendo games, this game looks like shit and like it is not fun. But if you were wondering, the kid in the commercial who's having the time of his life is Ryan Phillippe. Sarah: [57:19] Little baby ryan. Tara: [57:21] Philippe watch it again that's definitely him wow. Sarah: [57:25] I mean the kid actually was convincing that he was having a good time so there was absolutely no way i was going to recognize ryan philippe actor yeah at least you could tell like at least the ad was fairly forthright about the gap between experiencing the movie and the graphical interface experience of the game which is just like bloop bleep some shit that david lightman would make in war games in produs um but yeah oh my god ryan philippe that really changes the entire landscape this commercial what happened yeah. Tara: [58:02] Next up for mcdonald's from 1992 dr emmett l brown here through the wonder of video spectronomy i'm recording an. Dave: [58:29] Documentations and just have lunch. What you want is what you get at McDonald's today. That voice was all over the place. Sarah: [58:39] Yeah, celebrity voice impersonated. Oh, word. Tara: [58:43] The first couple of lines, it sounds like him, and then he kind of loses it. Dave: [58:46] Yeah, I can't. Thank you. Moves into Nixon for a little bit. Tara: [58:49] Yes. Dave: [58:49] Oh, Marty. Sarah: [58:51] Definitely, it's totally Nixon. Tara: [58:54] So these are the character designs from the animated show, which ran from 1991 to 93. I would not have thought was popular enough to have gotten tie-in toys, but I guess it was. And I bet millions of these are still not decomposing and are in bins at antique malls around the country, because who cares? Dave: [59:11] These but the the toys and there's no fidelity to the toys and yes of course it is a bad transfer of the commercial but you can tell like these plastic they all the faces already look pre-melted for your pleasure and the one that marty i think it's supposed to be marty on a hoverboard with like the dust that he is that the hoverboard is spreading over the street generating yeah and it looks like This pink hoverboard with this white stuff all around it. And it looks like dentures. Tara: [59:41] Yeah, it does. Dave: [59:42] It looks like he's on flying dentures. Sarah: [59:44] And he looks like a melted fuzzy pumper figure from the Play-Doh sets. Like, it's just very, is this the fix-a-dent kid, TM? What is happening? And also, if I wind a crank in the bottom of the dentures, does his hair grow using Play-Doh? Why is this happening to any of us? Dave: [1:00:03] Out of all the companies involved with these commercials, How is McDonald's the one that couldn't afford Christopher Lloyd to phone it in? Tara: [1:00:13] It's remarkable. Dave: [1:00:13] It's quite impressive. Instead, they got this. The other one is like he starts to sound a little like the aardvark from the Antony Aardvark car. Oh, yeah. Hey, you got to go back to the future, eh? Tara: [1:00:24] Well, the Doc Brown from the animated show was Dan Castellaneta, and that's not him either in the commercial. So it's just some guy. But speaking of being able to get Christopher Lloyd, we're going to jump all the way forward to 2006 and the era I'm going to call Christopher Lloyd Smeldachek because he's the one guy you can apparently rely upon to be in any of these. Let's start this batch off with number five. For a future of 150 HD channels, get DirecTV. A future of 150 HD channels. We do not have them yet. This was one in a long-running campaign with actual old movie clips that were then interrupted by the stars in the present day shilling DirecTV in character. The idea being that if you were flipping, you might be fooled into watching by thinking you had stumbled on a movie that you love, but other ones that they. Tara: [1:01:44] Included were Major League Aliens, Star Trek VI. I don't remember what this one was about, but it's even numbered, which means it's one of the good ones, I think. Dave: [1:01:52] It's not the one with Christopher Lloyd. Thank God, because otherwise we would have created a paradox. Tara: [1:01:57] Right. Dave: [1:01:57] That's the Shakespeare one. Tara: [1:01:58] That's the undiscovered country. Thank you. Airplane, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Twister, R.I.P. Bud Paxton, and The Karate Kid, R.I.P. Pat marita also bafflingly included in this campaign was the dukes of hazard movie with jessica simpson which is nobody's oh boy well anyway yeah christopher lloyd pretty good pretty spry christopher. Sarah: [1:02:18] Lloyd has four ex-wives so. Tara: [1:02:20] That explains. Sarah: [1:02:22] A lot of things. Tara: [1:02:23] Marty i've. Dave: [1:02:24] Got too many. Tara: [1:02:24] Wives but he's pretty good for you know what he's required to do well. Dave: [1:02:31] Yeah the best choice anybody had made for Christopher Lloyd in his life was for him as a relatively young person to play a very old person. Tara: [1:02:40] That he could play. Dave: [1:02:42] It's basically, you know, it's Ian McDermott Emperor from Star Wars. It was like McDermott. Tara: [1:02:48] McDermott. Dave: [1:02:49] McDermott. Yeah, it's basically that. And, you know, God bless him. Tara: [1:02:52] Absolutely. Number six from 2011 is for Nike. Tara: [1:04:34] Here. Guys, there's a fire in the parking lot, guys. Anybody want to put out the fire in the parking lot? Kevin, you want to go down? The fire in the parking lot guys got a legit LOL from me. So this is, of course, you heard Bill Hader. He's about two years away from leaving SNL at this point. And Kevin Durant, a basketball player, not to be confused with Kevin Durant, a Canadian character actor. We claim him. And this is for a limited run of the shoes from Back to the Future 2. They made 1,500 pairs of the Nike Air Mags to be auctioned on eBay for Parkinson's disease research. And when I went to see if there were still pairs for sale online, there are. Poshmark has one listed for $50,000, 5-0. Or you can go to StockX for the much more affordable pair that is only $29,994 for these very ugly ships. Sarah: [1:05:33] They're so ugly. So ugly. Dave: [1:05:36] They don't even self-lace. Tara: [1:05:37] They don't even self-lace. Dave: [1:05:39] Yeah. Did you see Frank Marshall directed the commercial? Tara: [1:05:42] Yeah. Good for him. Sarah: [1:05:43] I did see that. Yeah. Good for everybody. Tara: [1:05:46] Then I think this is from 2011. This is for Garbarino. So some of it is in Spanish because it is for an electronics chain in Argentina. Let's hear it. Ladies, excuse me. It's 3 o'clock in the morning and I can't, Yes. So, basically, this is a, the idea behind this was, it was like a tease for a faux found footage campaign of like, what's going on at Garbarino? Dave: [1:06:47] Yeah. Two people on a late night date in a absolutely deserted downtown area somewhere in Argentina. Oh, love is in the air. And then the DeLorean comes crashing through, ends up in the front of this electronics store. Tara: [1:07:04] Yeah. Dave: [1:07:04] Ask what year it is, does it get an answer, and then says 2011. Tara: [1:07:08] Uh-huh. It's not great. Dave: [1:07:11] No. Somebody didn't quite get the script right for this one. Tara: [1:07:14] No, but they tried. Dave: [1:07:17] They tried. Sarah: [1:07:18] Just kidding, it didn't. Tara: [1:07:19] Next, from 2014, for GE Turbines. It's fine as far as it goes. I just wonder what the point of these ads are. I know why McDonald's is advertising on TV because it wants me to buy McDonald's food. But what percentage of TV viewers does GE think is purchasing turbines? Sarah: [1:08:07] Or it's some sort of broader play to, I don't know, soften people up for their either investing in or divesting from NBC and Universal and all that shit. that is just sort of like, we got Michael J. Fox to do this and we got access to this brand and we're not evil and we're not polluters. I guess. It's okay that we don't pay taxes. I don't know. Dave: [1:08:35] You'd understand it more if it was just a pan-GE, aren't we all great? Tara: [1:08:40] Yes. Dave: [1:08:40] Pictures of trees and rivers and smiling babies and that kind of commercial. But the fact that it's for a particular division that makes things that have to be put on giant cargo planes and shipped halfway across the world is the bewildering part. And then marrying that with the Back to the Future tie-in, but then also not really taking the effort to really do anything with it. It's just a 3D render of the DeLorean spinning around in pictures of turbines and shit like that. It really is a very Pond 5-heavy exercise. Tara: [1:09:15] Yeah, it's true. Dave: [1:09:16] But what I was really wondering was when this was first pitched, What was the commercial that ended up this shitty, no-nothing, super oatmeal of a delivery? I assume that is Michael J. Fox. Tara: [1:09:30] Yeah, yeah. Dave: [1:09:30] So they got Michael J. Fox. They got the rights for the DeLorean, and I think it had the accoutrements. So I think this was an official Back to the Future thing as well, right? Tara: [1:09:40] It wasn't just— Had the music. Yeah, mm-hmm. Dave: [1:09:42] Smells licensed to me and then they just throw it away on this thing that the market then diagram between people that buy turbines and back to the future fans do not touch i. Tara: [1:09:54] Don't think so. Dave: [1:09:55] Do not touch so i think whoever originally pitched this i would like to hear from them and say yeah you know what it was really fucking funny and here i'm gonna tell you why and then they did this and i quit and now i'm a serial killer. Tara: [1:10:06] Geez okay i guess you can write off market like advertising so maybe that's why anyway uh and our last official back to the future tie-in is for pepsi perfect from 2015, the future is now the, now. The future is now. So, Pepsi Perfect was a product in Back to the Future 2. Okay. So, they produced it on the anniversary in 2015, in the year that the movie was supposed to take place. Dave: [1:11:02] Okay. Tara: [1:11:03] So, this was another limited edition thing. And Pepsi Perfect, it was enhanced with vitamins. I have no idea. Dave: [1:11:10] Future vitamins. Tara: [1:11:11] Future vitamins, sure. Dave: [1:11:12] Vitamin W. Tara: [1:11:14] Probably. But in the movie, it's sold for $45 a bottle. I guess that imagines a world where the minimum wage went up in 40 years. Dave: [1:11:23] More social commentary. Tara: [1:11:25] That's right. Take it. Dave: [1:11:27] Flippity flu. Tara: [1:11:28] Anyway. Pepsi Perfect. There's a robot. It also enjoys drinking. Dave: [1:11:32] OK, but here's the commercial. It's on sort of the same thoroughfare as the future. Tara: [1:11:37] It's in Hill Valley downtown. Dave: [1:11:38] Right. But with like the Jaws 3D hologram and all that shit. Tara: [1:11:42] Like in the movie. Yeah. Dave: [1:11:43] Right. And the robot is in the backseat of a future car with two people in the front seat and they're all enjoying their Pepsi Perfects. And then this fucking cunt on a hoverboard hovers next to it and just takes the Pepsi Perfect out of the robot's claws. Tara: [1:11:59] She does. Dave: [1:11:59] And the Pepsi Perfect guy, sorry, the robot is like, oh, and then she just hoverboards ahead of the car and like she's getting the hero treatment. It's like, I'm cool as fuck and I'm drinking a Pepsi Perfect. You can go fuck yourself, robot. I'm drinking a Pepsi Perfect. Right at that moment, I would have given $1,000 for a hover card to plaster that person just absolutely like, bang, oh, she ain't getting up from that one. Dead. Tara: [1:12:27] Yes. Dave: [1:12:28] That was terrible. Tara: [1:12:30] Or a bunch of robots like the one in the back of the car all descend on her and kill her. Dave: [1:12:34] Oh, no. The robot in the car who had his Pepsi torn from him turns into nanites, invades her body, exploding her from the inside out. Tara: [1:12:46] Yep. You cracked it. Dave: [1:12:47] That's why you don't steal Pepsi. Sarah: [1:12:49] I did you, though, because this is an absolute garbage commercial that is so cheesy and cheap looking that I don't know how you make any of that happen. I really would never have known that this was a 2015 ad. It looked like shit. I kind of love the jingle. Tara: [1:13:06] I won't lie. Sarah: [1:13:07] If you think you can get nanites out of this creative team, more power to you. Dave: [1:13:11] You just get a handful of jacks and you throw them at the camera. Tara: [1:13:14] Right. Dave: [1:13:15] See? Sarah: [1:13:15] Okay. Dave: [1:13:16] I've solved it. Sarah: [1:13:17] Now you've cracked it. Tara: [1:13:18] We're going to close up with the knockoff that was promised. This is from 1985. Apparently, like, a matter of months after Back to the Future came out. Let's hear it. that was victoria jackson that you heard she this is a year the year before she got cast on snl there was not an official tie-in with coke obviously to back to the future since michael j fox made about a dozen ads for pepsi and pepsi got the product placement in a real movie and. Dave: [1:14:13] Somebody a shy day advertising agency is like should we bring attention to this fact. Tara: [1:14:17] Us too yeah totally so the the time machine just looks like kind of like a pod like it doesn't really definitely does not look like a DeLorean, but it looks more like a mailbox than any kind of vehicle. Dave: [1:14:29] We have to return to the time after now. Tara: [1:14:32] Right. But as Dave let me know this week, Diet Coke with Lime is back and with this sort of retro-y label design. I'm not mad about that. Dave: [1:14:41] Which is weird because I don't think Diet Coke with Lime existed back then. Tara: [1:14:44] It didn't. Dave: [1:14:45] It's a fake throwback. Tara: [1:14:48] Yes, it's from the 2000s, I think. Which is fine. Dave: [1:14:50] Yeah. Sarah: [1:14:50] I had no idea Cherry Coke had existed in that timeline at all. I don't remember it. The font is amazing. It's beautiful. A triumph of design. Tara: [1:15:02] Yep. Sarah: [1:15:02] I love also that someone is drinking Cherry Coke directly from the three liter wide mouth bottle. I was going to say, tag yourself. Dave: [1:15:11] That's me for sure. Three liter bottle. Sarah: [1:15:14] The one where you're like. Dave: [1:15:15] I don't know if this is a good idea. As you lift it up to your mouth, it smacks your teeth. You feel your teeth moving. Tara: [1:15:20] In a water cooler. Dave: [1:15:21] Yeah. The Arrowhead edition. Tara: [1:15:25] Yes. Dave: [1:15:25] Yeah. Click, click, click, click, click, fizz. Tara: [1:15:28] Anyway, you know, Coke made some mistakes, but Cherry Coke, not one of them. Dave: [1:15:33] Cherry Coke's great. Tara: [1:15:34] It's yummy. Dave: [1:15:35] Cherry Coke Zero, one of their best products. Tara: [1:15:37] Superior. Very superior, I would say. Sarah: [1:15:39] Black Cherry Diet Coke, I liked. Or no, it was Black Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke. Dave: [1:15:44] You should try it if you haven't, Sarah. And I'm sure you have. But if you haven't, dot, dot, dot, try this, which is the following. Dr. Pepper Zero Sugar Cherry. Tara: [1:15:54] Mm-hmm. Sarah: [1:15:55] It's like cherry Coke. Dave: [1:15:57] But like more things are happening in your mouth. And why wouldn't you want more things happening in your mouth? That should have been the tagline for all these commercials, frankly. Tara: [1:16:06] Yeah. Dave: [1:16:06] GE turbines. Why wouldn't you want more things happening in your mouth? Dave: [1:16:15] Well, that I was thinking about doing the whole thing in my Doc Brown voice, but I don't think I could. Well, no, that's enough. Well, that is it. Sarah: [1:16:23] Turn it to Dan Hedaya. Dave: [1:16:25] Well, that is it for another episode of Extra, Extra Hot Grade. We watched Thomas Jane's hat in the November 4th inning pool entry, The Expanse, before answering your burning ass EHG questions about weird TV babies. Dave fought the good fight for the Dan Doherty-Captain Turner fight for the Tiny Cannon. We celebrated those who were quite the best and worst of the week and wrapped it all up with a look at Back to the Future commercial tie-ins. Next up, the beast in me Which is what I call post-veggie taco gas That is coming to you on Extra Hunt Great Prime Remember We're listening I am David T. Cole And on behalf of Tara Ariano Ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry Co Sarah D. Bunting. Sarah: [1:17:12] Here's mud in your eye. Dave: [1:17:13] Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time Right here on Extra Extra Hunt Great Prime.