Taking a Look at 'Silo' Season 2 with Rob Mahoney | House of R
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Hello, welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson. Join me today...

Deep down, all the way down at the bottom of the silo, I suppose. It's Rob Mahoney. Hi, Rob. How are you doing? That's exactly what you uptoppers would say, Jo. I feel the discrimination oozing out of your voice. Yeah, it sounds like me. Listen, this is my sixth podcast of the week. This is the third podcast Rob Mahoney and I have done together this week. So I can promise you right now it's going to be a real normal one. Yep, extremely.

Rob is graciously filling in for Mallory Rubin, who is working on a special project. And so we thank Rob for binging all of Silo season one in order to join me here today. Thank you so much, Rob Mahoney. You're the best. Mal will be back with me at the top of next week. We're going to be talking about Dune Prophecy and both episodes.

The Midnight Boys and House of R will, of course, be checking in on Gladiator 2. It's thigh's o'clock. It's a very important time in the culture, so don't worry about that. Mint Edition is continuing its cover of Arcane, and Button Mash is covering some video game anniversaries that I don't understand, but people are really excited about. So tune in for that. And if you want to catch up on all of that, you can follow us

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Why don't you shoot us an email? Hobbitsanddragonsatgmail.com. We want to hear all of your thoughts. Some of you sent post-finale penguin thoughts. We appreciate those. We're looking forward to your Doom prophecy thoughts. We're definitely looking forward to your Gladiator 2 thoughts. And Skeleton Crew is coming up. We're going back into Star Wars land pretty soon. So all of that, you can reach us, hobbitsanddragonsatgmail.com.

Spoiler warning, Rob. What are we talking about today on the pod? We're talking about the television show Silo. Correct. Now, here's my question for you, Jo. How much are we spoiling vis-a-vis the books that this series is based on? I got to admit, I have no idea where we are in the books right now. About halfway through book one. Okay. Is where we are. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rob, for House of Our Listeners, famously does not read fiction. It's fine. Don't worry about it. But you can hear him talk about that more on the Prestige TV podcast. You can't throw me to these wolves in that fashion on this podcast. He reads books, just not fiction. Just not those books. We can all go to the library together. We're just going to come out with different stuff. In fact, I'm not competing with you and all of your listeners for your fiction reservations. Freeing up the hold feed on the novels that people want to listen and read.

I'm just saying we're on the same team here. I love that. I love that, Rob. Thanks so much. Book-wise, I think we can just leave the books out of it. Chiefly because I have not read them. So it's not really relevant to our coverage here. So everything from Silo season one is on the table. And we're going to talk about Silo season two, episode one, the premiere. That's it. Nothing beyond that. No book spoilers. None of that.

If you are dying, as am I, to hear Mallory Rubin's thoughts and opinions and everything on Silo, we will probably be checking in towards the end of the season, which will be, I believe, in 2025. So next year, you can probably hear Mallory weigh in on Silo as we sort of wrap it up. It sort of depends how the season goes. If it's like the best season of television we've ever seen, we might check in sooner. But at the very least, you will at some point hear Mallory Rubin.

Any other questions before we get into what we're going to talk about, Rob? Just all the big ones. Why are we in the silo? Who built this thing? What is going on in the world around us? I have many, many questions, Joe, but I think they're best saved for the procession in front of us. Okay, great. Let's go to some quick facts. Those are my favorite kind of facts. I'm going to be honest with you. As Rob mentioned, this is based on a number of fiction properties that he will never read. Wool...

Shift, Dust, some short stories, and a graphic novel. These are all the source texts here. And the showrunner of this particular series, Graham Yost, who Rob and I have a lot of experience with, has said they want to do four seasons of this show. So they're spending the first two seasons on the first book, Wool, and then you can kind of probably graft the next two books onto the final two seasons, is the plan for

I know you have not read these books, Joe. Do we know what the titular wool is?

It's an acronym for a shady organization. Okay. Interesting. There's also, I think the, is it wool that they use to clean when they go out? That's true. I think, I think that is a little pocket wool, like giant, giant lint that they're, they're busting out on that thing. So I think that's a wool, but there's also W O O L, which I don't know what it is. That's a, that's a problem for future Joanna and future Rob and future silo people, but not us right now. Um, yeah.

Season one, really well received. I think it was a surprise hit for Apple. Rob and I have a lot of experience covering Apple TV shows of late. We certainly do. And we have a lot of thoughts and opinions about their strategies. But I think what is fundamentally true of an Apple show is that Apple never knows which one of their shows is going to hit.

And this was a real, I think, shocker for them. And a stat that they were touting was that this was their most popular dramatic series until Presumed Innocent came along this summer and blew everything out of the water and everything.

If you want to hear Rob Mahoney and Joanna Robinson talk about Presumed Innocent, that exists over on the Prestige TV podcast feed. A week by week, us unraveling as the show unravels in front of us. And Bill joined us for a pod, so that was great.

You did not watch Silo Season 1 until I begged and pleaded with you to do so a couple weeks ago. It did not take much arm twisting. This is safe to say because of that reception has been like a perpetual on-the-list show for me since it came out. That was going to be my question. What was your awareness before you watched? How much of the buzz from Season 1 were you absorbing? Definitely absorbing. And I'm always keeping my ear to the ground specifically for sci-fi TV. It can be so hit and miss.

It can be so like if it's not your exact version of sci-fi, you can bounce against it really hard sometimes. And so I'm always willing to like I want to give these things a try. I want to do an episode or two or three to see if it's in my zone. And I think thankfully this one is in a lot of different ways that we can get into. And it's not surprising to me that it is so widely received positively. I would doubt.

that it's anyone's favorite show, but it's a show that a lot of different people can like. And there's a lot of different entry points. There's a lot of, there's star power involved. There's enough genre trapping to pull in sci-fi fans, but not so much that it would be off-putting where you're looking at like green aliens every week for weeks on end. It's accessible enough, I think, for people who aren't as versed in genres type storytelling.

Rob Mahoney doesn't like fiction, doesn't like Gamora. Good to know. Not me. Good to learn. I'm looking out for our fellow people out there who are just looking for the latest procedural, you know? Rob is pretty willing to do a massive rewatch project. This is something that's true of Rob. So he was receptive to this. Definitely. And then I said something.

something about tattoos and Rebecca Ferguson and he was like all the way in as are all of us yeah this is the big draw for Silo is Rebecca Ferguson and as we're going to talk season 2 episode 1 The Engineer written by our guy Graham Yost directed by Michael Dinner who is a classic justified TV director um

It's the Rebecca Ferguson show. And if you are not buying into the Rebecca Ferguson show, you are not buying into the season two premiere of this, of Silo. Absolutely not. Or the show as a whole. I don't think it works without her. I think she is far and away. There's a lot of incredibly talented people in the cast hit and miss as to whether or not they're hitting for me on this show.

But every time Rebecca Ferguson is on screen, I am like sitting up and paying attention. So that's...

That's what silo is. She has that effect. Like we are but red blooded humans who like watching Rebecca Ferguson do things on screen to her liking in whatever way she prefers. Honestly, like I like that she can be kind of a weird performer sometimes. And certainly, as we know, a very weird junket interview presence, like one of the most chaotic energies you can put into that particular setting. Did you see her on Seth Meyers this week? No. What did she do?

She talked about how she steals stuff from set. That's fine. That was like cute. It was like whatever. She tried to send like a skull that she stole from set with her. Oh, from Hercules, I think, with her daughter to show and tell. And the teacher was like, no, thank you. But more importantly, she has like an elevator phobia.

And so Seth's like, how do you... She's like, so I take the stairs all the time, right? This is Rebecca. This is the perfect show for you. Let me bring you into this world. Yeah. She hates an elevator but can hang with a trash chute, I guess. I don't know. But okay. So Seth's like, well, how do you prep yourself? Do you have to leave extra time? What do you do? She's like, well, I'm a celebrity now. So I make things come to me. Yeah.

So she was talking about like turning on the Christmas lights at the top of the Empire State Building with the rest of the cast of The Greatest Showman and how they had to bring the switch down to the lobby. And like Hugh Jackman and Zendaya and Zac Efron had to be down with her in the lobby of the Empire State Building because she would not go up to the top and do it. And guess what?

We stand. We love her. I love that for her. So, you know, be the Rebecca Ferguson you wish to see in the world. What a fucking flex. Oh, my God. Aspire to a level of greatness where whatever your phobia is, you just can make the people come to you so you don't have to confront it. On the one hand, you could process it and try to work through it. But on the other, what if you never had to deal with it again? What if you were just that powerful? I'm in favor. Okay, great.

most of the season one cast is, is, uh, back in the habit here for season two, other than like the, you know, the various characters who died in season one, we presume David Oyelowo is not showing up for like a flashback or something like that. And Steve Zahn has joined the cast for season two. And we get the barest glimpse of him, a part of him at the end of this episode. Um,

Rob Money, are you a Zonhead like me? How do you feel about Steve Zahn? Of course. Steve Zahn and I are bonded very closely. In particular, That Thing You Do was an extremely formative movie for me. So Steve Zahn in that like...

zany energy sidekick zone is where I usually like to be. And I will watch him in basically anything. And it's been interesting watching him get older. It's like he trends a little kookier and kookier every time, I feel like, in terms of the roles he's being offered. And I'm not mad about it. This is kooksville. It feels like it. Yeah. This is as kooky as I think. This is like...

uh, maybe beyond kooky to spooky, perhaps like, I think we're like, yeah, yeah. I think, I think we've gone down that pipeline, but like, yeah, Steve's on that thing. You do is, was going to be my like number one pick for Steve's on. But, um, also you've got mail or reality bites. Like there's just like a bunch in the nineties, um, where he played that, like,

that zany level or best friend. Yeah. Or out of sight, or then he did stuff like Treme or white Lotus season one. Like, you know, it's just like, and it's always, it's always worth buying a ticket completely on show. So adding Steve's on to the Rebecca Ferguson show is,

As long as he is willing to do things in the lobby of buildings rather than go up any stairs or elevators. It's a very exciting prospect. I'm really, really excited about this. I love that his characters, to me, almost always feel like they are having fun. And they may not always be the most balanced or the smartest people in the world, but...

but they are often having a good time and it feels like he's having a good time when he's acting. This feels like it's going to be a darker kind of thing, as you said, kooky to spooky. Yeah. But I love that zone for him too. And I think we've seen him trend that way. Like Righteous Gemstones is a great example of kind of toeing the line of spooky and kooky of like, is this guy just a weird uncle or is he like a crazy extremist with bombs? Maybe both.

Why not both Rob? I have to ask you, but like, also I think that not to get too far ahead, we are going to talk a little bit more about season one and your experience through it before we get into the particulars of season two, but on the like,

spooky kooky am i having fun sort of spectrum there is so much drama that the character himself orchestrates around his reveal in this episode yes that i have to imagine he's having a bit of fun and i have to imagine that where we find him and if you are listening to this podcast you've not watched the season two premiere yet uh

He has been alone in his own silo for, according to Graham Yost, the showrunner, decades. So when it comes to creating your own fun, he's got to be a master at that, right? Yes. You've got to make your own fun or else maybe, as we heard in this opening clip, what are you going to do? Just die? No. Okay. Let's go down to our opening snapshot. ♪

Rob, tell me about your journey through season one. Did you have a good time? How are you? How are you doing with it? Definitely had a good time. Yeah, I would say my overall experience is this, that I felt myself being more invested in the mysteries of the show than the characters of the show. OK. And even Juliet, like Rebecca Ferguson, we love Juliet. I like well enough. I wouldn't say she's the most vibrant character that I've seen on screen.

And so a lot of the characters in the show overall, I feel, have the same problem, which is like they're a little bit inert for my tastes, but the overall twists and turns and the big questions of the show are what get me and what hook me. And what kind of pulled me on, I would say, from episode one, but really once it starts heating up and you start getting a sense of some of like

you know, the ticking clock mechanisms of keeping the silo running. And obviously this kind of lighting a fire under Nichols once she becomes sheriff to quickly unravel this mystery before she's ousted, you know, out of office and eventually out of the silo. Those are mechanisms that I really like and enjoy. And so like I was I was in it for the mystery box. I'm still kind of waiting for that second level pull of like, I really care about these people. And I'm hoping we can get there in season two.

Yeah, I mean, I feel like I was really invested in David Oyelowo's character and Rashida Jones' character. Yes. Those two characters, I really felt emotional about them. Actually, most of the characters that I got really emotionally invested in in season one died. Like Ruth Johns, the previous mayor, or...

Will Patton's character. You know, like I was really feeling for these people and then they died. So maybe they invested all of the emotionality and the people that they knew they were going to rip away from us. But I was really like Rebecca Ferguson being her character, Juliet being slightly inert. So what's it? Okay. I told you I haven't read the books and that's true. I read like the first chapter. Yeah.

I do know, though, that they added the sort of murder mystery element to season one to give Juliet more of a motivation than they felt like she had, more momentum than they felt maybe she had on the page in the book. And so in doing that, they turn Rebecca Ferguson into this almost like

noir-ly. Do you know what I mean? It's sort of like what... In classic noir, it's like a dead, missing girl. But what happened to this person? And I am...

trying to either emotionally process it or stifle down my grief so that I can figure out what happened. And so there's sort of like this built-in stoicism to that character archetype that kind of works for me. But to your point, now that we are in a different mode of storytelling, I'm curious to see where they go from there because Rebecca Ferguson, an actor with just like an abundance of charisma and, and,

and all these other things, I think there's so much, even more that she can be doing in this role and in the show. Definitely. And I think this episode is a great example of that, right? She's incredibly stoic because she has no one to play off of until the very end of this episode. And so it is this mostly silent performance, give or take the occasional scream into the void. A grunt or two, you know. A stray grunt. Who among us would not be grunting under these circumstances? A choking, flailing gurgle.

at one point I think we did get some sloshing for sure at minimum yeah but yeah so it is you know it's not film noir in this way it is much more adventurer in kind of mode like stoic adventurer and that I think she does really really well I think

Some of my hesitation is not with her being a film noir lead and more with the specific film noir story they were trying to unfurl, which it is not a surprise to me to hear that they had to basically draw up some of that stuff whole cloth because I don't think it works very well. Like her backstory with George is,

Felt like the exact kind of thing that probably would have registered much more strongly in the film noir mold if we knew and saw less of it. I kind of want, I wanted hints and bits and pieces and like little items and mementos and memories, but not full on flashbacks. And once we started dipping into here's them being cute together and making these promises to each other. And he's like, they had a lot of screen time together in season one in a way that I think ultimately was kind of counterproductive to making me feel invested in her character. Yeah.

So more of the Pez dispenser. Always more Pez. Less of the canoodling, the active canoodling. Yeah. I want the hint, the suggestion of canoodling. Yeah. Okay. Just a scoach of canoodle. On the Graham Yost front, a creator that you and I, we love Justified. Of course. We covered Justified City Primeval for better or for worse. Yeah.

That's how much we love Justified. Exactly. Over on the Prestige feed. Gravios has been sort of like shepherding a number of other series, like shepherding the Americans a little bit, shepherding some horses a little bit, like sort of using his shine off of Justified to get these other projects up and running. But this is a show that he is like genuinely show running. Do you see connective tissue between Silo and Justified?

I do not. Yeah. I don't see a lot. I think in some ways to its detriment. This is a show that could use a little bit of Justified in it. But it does fit

like one of his buckets. I feel like if you look at the overall body of work for Grand Mule, whether it's the things he's shepherding, as you're saying, or the things he's overtly show running, it is like those sorts of super digestible, fun action procedurals like Justify and Slow Horses. Yeah. You've got your historical drama, like the Pacific, Masters of the Air, that stuff. And then you've got straight sci-fi.

And I'm not a falling skies head myself, Joe. I'm sure they are out there. But I appreciate his interest here and elsewhere in the genre here and the project. I think there's something here that I would love to see him merge some of these ideas and interests of him that he has a little bit more overtly in a way that might give these characters a little more life or a little more to do. Um...

That recap of Grammio's CV was broken arrow erasure, and I just wanted you to know that I noticed. Well, that's super fun digestible action procedural. That's the zone. But, like...

And these are both books that he was fond of, right? These are book adaptations in the case of Justified, Elmore Leonard books, and here are these Hugh Howey books. And the tones are so wildly different. And so Elmore Leonard is dry and sharp and witty and all this sort of stuff like that. And

Hugh Howey is a tremendous world builder, but is not infusing his story with a ton of, like, wisecracking or... Or, again...

I really have only read like a chapter. So I'm not, I'm not, if you are a wool head and you would like to email hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com that I've gotten it all wrong. And the book is full of hilarious wisecracks. It's just a bantery book. Really? When you get into, when you get past the wolves and into the other wolves, Joe, that's when it really gets bantery. When we get to acronyms. Yeah. Once the rebellion is in full swing and people are dying, that's usually when it gets more fun. I'm sure. I'm sure. Um,

I will say along these lines, I feel a jolt of life in Silo when Patrick Kennedy is on screen, who's played by Rick Gomez, Justified's own ADA Rick Gomez. I love Rick Gomez. I'm so happy he's here. He has a totally different energy than almost anyone else on this show. And I'm just like waiting for him to come back every time he leaves. And so it was a great joy in season one that he kept kind of falling into the story in all

kinds of ways and I hope that's not the last we see of him I hope he's still kind of instrumental in some way yeah he's on the cast list for season two again like we only watched season two episode one and so we did not get to check in with the OG silo in this episode but I saw a list somewhere I saw like a mention somewhere it was like most of the original cast is back and I was like

Number one on my list is like, did they get Gomez? We got to get back. They get Gomez back. Yeah, I agree. A real a real bright spot. I also thought in season one, I thought that, yeah,

Like Harriet Walter as Martha Walker is struggling through a really strong accent choice. And don't worry, people who are stressed that we talked so much about the accents last time in silo. I'm not going to dwell too much on that, but she's struggling through a lot of accent stuff, but she's Harriet Walter who people might know from succession or if you're really cool sensibility, whatever it is, but like she's always, always,

to me worth watching. Yeah. So that stuff really works. But then when you've, you've like performances like Tim Robbins, who doesn't seem like he's just like giving it his all or common, who sort of just seems like,

he's excited that he gets to wear this cool leather coat and that's is he excited he's he's delivering every line like it's a jaguar commercial i don't understand what he's trying to bring to this character but like common feels miscast to me that is a character he needs to be more intimidating than common is capable of projecting in the way that he tried to act out that part uh

Yeah, Tim Robbins is, I think that's kind of, when I say a nerd, I think I mostly mean Tim Robbins. Tim Robbins. Sort of sleepwalking through some of this in a way that I am sensitive to the way they tried to reveal his character in the first season. It's hard to know how to play that before the turn, but even after the turn, he was just kind of the same guy, just maybe with like a slightly more furrowed brow.

And something that Mal and I talked about when we covered season one is it just felt like a really blatant casting spoiler to put Tim Robbins in that role and give him that haircut. And I was like, that's our bad guy, like clearly. That is the haircut of a crypto fascist if I have ever seen one. Exactly. Let us sort of splash around with Silo season one, shall we? Okay.

So as I mentioned, something that Hugh Howey does incredibly well and the show does incredibly well is this astounding world building. This is an incredible environment to find a story in. Just the physical construction of this world, the set that they built for the show, which is a massive set. A set so impressive that when they made this

premiere episode they had to shoot it last because essentially like the second silo that she goes to they just took the original set and like fucked it up essentially and so they had to like wait to shoot that stuff um wouldn't you love to be on the demo team that's just scuffing up silo number one yeah we need more muck over here can you toss some corpses over here i would really appreciate it um and so

How does this sort of physically stratified sci-fi world work for you? How do you compare it to other similar versions of this kind of story? Or is there something similar that you can compare it to? Yeah, the similar versions thing is interesting to me because I agree in terms of the world that has been created in concept, a lot of fascinating ideas. There's so many little bits and rules and pieces and elements of this that are just like...

It's so specific. It makes me really invested in finding out the answer to why things are the way they are in the silo. The way that the set is ultimately created and the visual world of the show, I agree with you, is clearly a massive undertaking. And kind of the undertaking that only a company like Apple can really do right now to this scale and degree. Like this is Apple TV money and it looks like a big expensive set. It also looks a lot like

every sci-fi thing you've ever seen before in a way that I wonder how intentional that is in terms of like, is it meant to evoke the artificiality of this experience? Like I see this, I mean, there's Star Wars stuff all over here. There's the Matrix stuff all over here. There's like Demolition Man stuff all over here. And it's like, it feels like a hodgepodge of every sci-fi thing you've ever seen in a way that

I think can be a little jarring at first and give it a little bit of like a galaxy's edge kind of vibe the first time you see it. But the more time you spend in the world, it's like there's an uncanny element that I think oddly enough actually sort of contributes to the overall vibe of the show.

Are you suggesting to me, Rob Mahoney, that Tim Cook, when he's done congratulating the president on his president-elect on his win, should build sort of a silo experience in Cupertino or something like that so he can just go and be in the silo and maybe draw straws for who's an upper-level member of the silo and who's down at the bottom? Is that...

Would you enjoy that experience? Just the Stanford prison experiment, but in the silo? We'll make it silo. Yeah. Honestly, I would hang on like the farming level. That seems like a good ambiance. I would enjoy spending some time there looking for like the one loose rabbit that's hanging out. I mean, on the one hand, I agree with you. There's this sort of like brutalist architecture, a lot of concrete. Yes. And then the tech, yes, similar to Star Wars and a number of other things we've seen. Yeah.

I do just think that the central idea of the stairs and what they mean and the stratified layers of this society, especially down below, I think it gives it an edge. I hear what you're saying, and I don't disagree. All the way back to Terry Gilliam's Brazil, there is this connection between brutalist architecture and

near future sci-fi or post-apocalyptic sci-fi. But like, I think that the stairs are so compelling and also the screens, which we'll talk about in a second, but like the stairs as metaphor, the stairs is as continuous action set piece. The stairs says limit the limitation on what you can do both like, you know, personally and societally and physically inside of the space and,

And then the set deck inside of the rooms, I had a question for you. This dips into the season two premiere, but like, did you feel like the rooms inside this other silo were decorated? I mean, it was hard. It was dark and dripping and dusty. But did you feel like the interior decoration was different from

Then the types of stuff we saw in the rooms in Silo 18. I guess my fundamental question is, are we meant to think that there's a dramatically different culture? There's obviously clear similarities between the two silos. But was that set deck supposed to show us that...

you know, this one is more influenced by maybe this geographical location in the world or something like that. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I think there is some of that. It's clearly, I mean, look, it's the same physical space, so there's going to be a lot of similarity. But the way it's accessorized and dressed is clearly different. And it's different in a way that, yes, I think can reflect culture, but also in the way that culture can reflect resources, right? It's like, what is available to you? And so in this, there's like a little bit more like

yarn work and bead work than I think we saw in the home silo. Now, some of that may be because we spent most time with, like, Nichols, who does not seem... She's not, like, combing the Pottery Barn catalog. She doesn't love a tapestry. I don't think she's into, like, a little, like, yarn wall sort of situation. What about, like, a comfy throw blanket?

No, I think she would. It's tough, tough way to live. Prefer to let her her memories of George keep her warm. I think I think is what we're working with here. I think so. But I do agree with you on the larger sort of conceptual product here of the stairs, of the verticality of the silo. Yeah, I think some of the most interesting ideas that the show has grappled with so far have been about class and about the divisions and sort of.

the way these people are segmented by the type of work that they do how that clusters you with the people around you and the way it'll either affords you or like limits your mobility as you're trying to navigate the silo and the fact that it's like physically taxing to go from one end to the other is a really compelling idea um on the did you did you watch fallout no yeah me neither okay um

Sorry, guys. We'll get to that event. Someday I will get to Fallout. But when we talked about season one, I remember the Fallout game being like, and I think Hugh Howey has talked about this Fallout game being a huge inspiration for him. So I will be curious, HobbsandDragons.gmail.com, if you watched Silo season one and then watched Fallout and now are watching Silo season two, how much has like having seen Fallout in the interim changed?

changed or impacted how you, how original this world feels versus not. I'm curious about that. I don't have a good answer, but that's something I'm curious about. And then like, yeah, go ahead. One more thing too about the influences and I think the sort of like brutalism you're talking about in the design, there is something to that in the sense that

the world of the silo, as we understand it now, we still need to figure out why this thing was built. But it does not feel like a work of tremendous imagination. This isn't like a society reaching for the stars. It's one burying itself in the dirt, presumably to survive. And so there is like a rote

pragmatism to everything in terms of the way this is designed. Now, does that explain why there's no elevator other than the fact that Rebecca Ferguson won't take it? Does it explain why they can't magnify anything for God knows what reason, but I am super compelled to find out? The magnification is very compelling. How is that so good? I would never have guessed that something like that would have hooked me as much as it did.

Yeah, it's... How would you rank it? Is it like... Does it come above the Pez dispenser or below the Pez dispenser in terms of things that hooked you into the show? The Pez dispenser is almost like too on the nose in an It Was Earth All Along way. I think I would have preferred to not know where we were for longer in season one. And the Pez is like, okay...

clearly we're in a human society somewhere. Let's save the Pez for a little bit later. We live in a society. All right. So in terms of the screens and this idea of like living inside and viewing the world through your screen, Hugh Howey has talked about, directly talked about the fact that this is intentionally like sort of a social media comp. And I think for a lot of us, especially I would say right now, again, just generally, I don't,

I do care how you feel about the election, but no matter how you care about the feel about the election, a lot of people are experiencing what's going on around them through updates on social media, be it TikTok or Twitter or Instagram or blue sky or whatever. And there are these, it's,

So distorted based on the silo of belief that you have put yourself in, in terms of like what your what news you're absorbing, whether or not the news you're absorbing is real or, you know, I have a friend of mine who every single day will tell me report to me something wild that happened on TikTok. And I said, okay.

is that true? And she goes, yeah. And I go, show me a news story. And then she can't find it. I'm like, you're being liberal QAnon right now. Like you need to check your sources, man. So like this idea of having this screen, we view the world through. And of course, in many ways, in many ways, like the Pez dispenser, it's a bit on the nose, but on, but in the other, another sense, I mean, this is as old as Plato, this idea of like, um,

having a limited idea of what the world around you actually is and being kept in the dark. And it speaks to conspiracies and government control and all this other stuff inside of the silo itself. Water that makes you forget. Like I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about that, but like as a,

tech analogy or any analogy as you prefer? Like, how does this work for you? And what level does it work for you, Rob? I think it works pretty well. Ultimately, it's interesting to draw that comparison because the world of the silo feels so analog in so many ways. Like,

huge technological power and advancement is basically forbidden by a lot of the rules and a lot of the ways that they operate. And so this idea of putting yourself in a physical silo as a, as a kind of metaphorical manifestation of the silos that we all put ourselves in, I like because it's not banging you over the head too hard. Like I, I think there's a lot of range of idea within the silo of the show. And so there is a kind of captivity between,

And a kind of captivity that we all opt into on some level of like, we are willing to abide by a certain set of rules. And like, I'm not going to push too hard on the walls of this thing because on some level I am convinced that it will come crashing down, whether that's true or not. Like I have been told that and I have believed it and I have internalized it. Right.

I think you can see that as social media and you can, you can certainly see social media as the kind of captivity that we have accepted for ourselves. But I think it goes so much further than that. Like it's, it's any kind of community. It's any kind of grouping. It's any kind of like us versus them or us versus the world, or we can't open our door or X will get in. It's all of those things kind of wrapped up into one in a lot of ways.

fun time as we live in now i mean it's not relevant at all to current society this is so abstracted that we could never we could never context or like uh we could never contextualize these kinds of ideas joe sci-fi is escapism rob it has nothing to do with the way we live now it's fine it's fine um any of the specific world building stuff that you want to talk about either in the book or the show i know you haven't read the book nor have i but like they're um

When they say up top, maids down deep, just little language bits like that really, really work for me in creating this universe as much as any piece of set deck does. Things like the pact. Yes. You know, just like... I don't know. It's just like fun trappings of sci-fi shit that I absolutely love. That like... It's so...

It's so easy to get it wrong and overdo it. Did it ever feel like overdone, overwrought, over uppercase named things inside of this world? Not that often. I think overwhelmingly it works in a positive way. There are a couple times where, look, there's just some phrases that if you watch enough of this stuff, it's like if anyone utters the phrase the before times, I'm just like...

I'm just like tired of it. So there's some of that. But ultimately, I think most of the terminology they create, the world they create, everything around the pact in particular, like the recitation that is read to everyone who is going outside, like the series of questions and statements that are like applied to the society. Yeah.

I'm really into all of that. I'm into the detail of this world in a lot of the cases. And I have a lot of questions. I can't wait to see how some of it kind of unfurls itself. But it's also like just something as simple as like the little snack that keeps getting passed around, the hush puppies in season one. I'm like, are they sweet? Are they savory? Like, what is the vibe here? Is it a little bit of both? Is this a beaver nugget situation? Like, what do we think this thing is? I have that level of questioning. Yeah.

Sorry, do you want to double back? A Buc- a Buc-y's drop? A Texas Buc-y's drop? Here on House of R? Contractually obligated. I can't count on Mallory to bring the Texas-specific knowledge, so I feel like I need to indoctrinate your listeners, as the silo would respect. You know what's great about a Buc-y's beaver nugget, and if you guys don't know what I'm talking about, please do Google this.

It would last forever in the silo. Oh, no doubt. Forever. What do you think they've been surviving on? Yeah, it's essentially the beaver nug. Wow. How grim does the future feel if the beaver nug is like the thing that's going to outlast us all? It's all we got.

It's going to be the cockroaches and then just like a sea of beaver nuggets from Buc-ee's. Honestly, that doesn't sound too bad. Now that you lay it out in specific, I'm kind of down for that. No free ads. But if you've never been to a Buc-ee's, you maybe have not truly lived. It's an experience. Yeah, I agree. I love sci-fi food. Oh, yeah. Just...

My favorite version being in The Force Awakens when Rey takes like a bit of powder and puts it into a bowl and it blooms into like a perfect little loaf of bread. Yeah.

Incredible. Why don't we have that? I'm waiting. Everyone's like, where's my hoverboard? I'm like, where's my blooming, perfect little bread loaf? I want it. I think you're thinking too small. I want the fifth element tablet on the plate into a giant roast chicken. That's what I want. You always know how to dream big, Rob. And I love that about you. I try. I do love that about you. You talked a little bit about Rebecca Ferguson as this stoic,

And we talked about her as somewhat of a noir lead, at least in season one, as she's gumshoeing her way through this murder mystery. She also is very much a reluctant hero. Mal and I talk about this archetype a lot on this show. Jon Snow being our favorite example. But she doesn't want to come up from the down deep all the way up and have this... Wait, she doesn't want what?

I don't want it. I feel like if you're going to do it, you got to do it right. I don't want it. Thank you. You're welcome.

I don't always know if you listen to this podcast, Rob, but I would blame you if you did. I literally have in my notes that I was going to try to bust it out. But look, we got there organically. I would like to hear it, Rob. Please. See, I don't think so. I don't think so. Maybe a future House of R appearance. Or maybe later inside of this episode. Perhaps. Just drop it later and I'll be delighted and surprised. Thanks so much.

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Someone with so much grit in them that against every single odd, they trek their way across a poison landscape to this other silo, have to leverage the door open with their full body weight on the crowbar, almost drown, fall from a great height, this, that, the other thing, and they keep going. How do you reconcile the I don't want it nature of Juliet with...

in the indomitable like journey that she has inside of this episode. I mean, the, I don't want it. Nature is the only thing that makes her like fit for power in the first place. And the way that many of these heroes find themselves in, uh, I think what's interesting about her is even when she's sheriff, like she's not good at being a sheriff, right? She, she's,

She's incredibly resourceful. And that's the only reason she can kind of bullshit her way through it for even as long as she does. And so it is not surprising to see her in this kind of physical capacity, just like being resourceful all over the place, being clever, but not so clever that everything works, being like really good at scavenging, but not so great that it's every she has the perfect item and the perfect thing every single time. Like she's doing her best in a broken silo.

And to see that version of Nichols, that's a version I'm really interested in. The version that is outside the silo, that isn't just like, you know, unwitting revolutionary. Like she didn't take the job to stoke like discontent among the people of the silo. She just wanted to find out what happened to her boyfriend and she thought he was murdered. And so the version, like this version of this character in a lot of ways makes more sense to me than the one she was kind of like,

pushed into being by the end of the story of season one. I have a really important question for you, Rob. So you find yourself inside of a spacesuit sealed in by the good tape in a poison landscape, yes? I want to talk about the spacesuit. Let's circle back to the suit. I want to hear this hypothetical first. We'll come back around to that.

You find yourself, it's like the start of the video game, right? You're in your suit. You're like, you've got the good tape on whatever. You start encountering obstacles as one does. When do you, Rob Mahoney, when watching season two, episode one, when did you go, that's where I would give up?

Wedging the door open? Yeah. Actually, I mean, maybe even crossing the field of bodies. The ocean of bodies? If you have to cross an ocean of dead, dustifying bodies to get somewhere, maybe you shouldn't go there. Yeah, if people are literally piled on top of each other and they're frantic, either escape or return to the silo, maybe that's not the place to go. I thought about, I would give up there.

I would certainly give up before I had to haul a number of corpses up and make my own rope swing out of the corpses. It did occur to me as she was doing that, I'm like, is she going to do something with the bodies? And I'm thankful that she did not. Oh, like a body bridge. I thought a body bridge might be in play, but I'm glad it was just the rope. Um...

she falls into the water she can't swim she almost drowns i did i loved her like scream yeah that she gave when she got out of there great stuff from from fergie there but like i there were so many moments where i wrote couldn't be me wouldn't be me couldn't be me and i would say chief among them was when she did the first rickety bridge oh sure

That was literally like Indiana Jones crumbling underneath her as she walked across. I was just like, simply couldn't, like the minute she stepped one foot on there and it just like creaked and groaned and wobbled. I was like, simply no, just simply not. I would say maybe I'll go back to my silo and submit to whatever it is that Tim Robbins wants me to do rather than continue with this. That's why I'm not a hero of any kind of story. I think you're the hero of your own story, Jo. I think you're the hero of this podcast now that you mention it. Thanks.

Rob, I don't think that's true. I mean, it's at least a co-hero. Thank you so much. Okay. Well, here's my question. Let's say the second bridge, the stronger, stabler bridge. With the incredible barrel maneuver and then the sandbags that are holding it down in place. No, not that. Is that the second bridge?

There's so many bridges. I'm getting confused. She rope swings first. That's a no. Then she rickety bridges. That's a no. And then she does the barrel platform sandbag situation. I think either the rickety bridge or the strong bridge. She takes a very slow and steady approach, which as someone who myself is not thrilled about a very narrow walkway, I understand. But I feel like if you did MacGyver the walkway...

you might just want to try to book it across that thing. Just go. If you can bound and take one big step across the middle and launch yourself a little bit, I think you might be rewarded for it. That said, you also don't want to get stuck on the other side and you don't really know what's over there ultimately. I have to

I have to let people know in case they've never met you and have only seen like your head on a podcast. You're speaking from the privilege of having extraordinarily long legs. You're a very tall person. So I think you could maybe span that chasm in a few bounds. Whereas a shorty like Rebecca Ferguson might not have the same ability. But also a shorty like Rebecca Ferguson can climb.

climb above the door and hang from the crowbar and leverage her body weight in a way that like, frankly, I could never. Like I simply could not contort my body to do that thing. And so I never would have made it to the bridge. I never would have made it inside the silo at all.

I really actually enjoyed this episode and we'll sort of loop back around to it. But before we go fully a bit more into that episode, even though we've already broken down a few of her mechanisms, I do want to talk about the pacing of season one. Yeah. And staring down the barrel of another 10 episodes or season two, knowing that they split one book over two seasons. Yeah.

And that it was Apple's request that it be a 10-episode season for season one. I don't know if they made the same mandate for season two. Did you feel in the pacing of it? I know you were watching it. You didn't do a 48-hour binge, but you did over a couple weeks binge. Right. How did the pacing work for you? Did it ever feel like they were...

Like there was filler inside of season one. Is it something that you are thinking about in terms of season two? I honestly wasn't too bothered by it. I think some of it is the balance of the mysteries that are put in front of you. And as I said, like the big questions of the show really gripped me and are kind of what is the primary hook for me.

I also was really interested in the small-level mysteries of the show. Like, what happened to Juliet's mom? Like, what exactly happened to her family? Like, those sorts of interpersonal dynamics, we were strung along slowly enough that I was like, I really just kind of want to know what happened there. And, like, what happened to her younger brother? What tragedy exactly befell them? And how they got kind of pulled apart. Where it missed me was, like, the middle-level mystery, which is to say...

what is true of the outside world and what is the illusion. This sort of like, what is, I think, structured as like a fundamental question of the show of like, is the outside real or is it lush and green or is it barren? Like, I wasn't as interested in that, to be honest with you, as the rest of it.

Like, Rob, do you feel like if you were in the silo, you wouldn't want to go outside? You wouldn't care about going outside? It's not that I don't care about going outside. It's like in the structure of the story that's presented to us in the show, I just kind of assumed from episode one on that it was lush and green outside. And so I don't really have a doubt in my mind that that's like a mystery that I need solved, even though it turned out to be a different hologram and like a double feint story.

that is its own kind of interesting turn. A real screensaver situation. A real screensaver vibe. But yeah, it's just like, that was not the central tension that was pulling me through the show. I'm trying to figure out, like, what's going on in this world? Like, how did this place become this way is kind of what I was interested in. Given the double fake on the display, like, how did you feel about all of the revelations as they cascaded at the end of season one? And, like, how important...

Is like something like shock and surprise to you. Does season two need to shock and surprise you with like bigger revelations?

I don't think it needs to. I think obviously the way they are doled out is pretty important and you don't want it to come all at once. And you also don't want it to come too late. It's a, it's a really delicate balance that you have to strike with these kinds of things. But ultimately I think what is driving, not just my interest in the show, but like the primary motivations of a lot of the characters is not just, is this a vision or is this like a hologram or is this a screensaver? But like, why,

why, like, if that is true, why are we being held in this way? And I think that's sort of the interesting question that comes up out of the double fake, which is like, why would you go through the trouble of the double illusion? And I wonder how much that's going to tie into some of the central themes of the show of this idea of like a control society. And one way to create a control society as they've laid out is to dictate who gets to have kids and who doesn't.

And I wonder if it's almost like a trap to tempt the more curious people outside, right? Like if you, if you give them enough of a breadcrumb that everything outside is not what it appears to be, the people who are curious enough to investigate it might find their way outside and therefore are no longer of danger, quote unquote danger. If you're running the silo to everybody else to interrogate the system, to be curious about the system. Yeah. Um,

And folks listening at home who are like, wow, they're an hour in and they haven't talked fully about season two, episode one. That was always the plan, just so you know. It's one episode. It was always our plan to sort of dwell in. You say that as if House of R is incapable of doing three hours on like a half hour episode of television, but. Oh, no, I'm saying that we got three hours more. Let's go. I have lots of thoughts about the rope swinging technique and the knots that are being tied. Yeah.

Do you? No, not really. But everything else, pretty much. I was ready for you to be like, as a Texan. Not in my skill set. I have some rope knot thoughts. But let's build a bridge to Silo Season 2 with Steve Zahn's character, quote unquote, Solo, who is probably just the little kid Tim from the opening flashback. Do we agree? Sure seems like it. Let's go. So we're not going to do B by B because it's mostly Juliette.

scavenges and builds stuff. That's basically what happens in that episode. You don't want to do physical challenge by physical challenge, like Ninja Warrior style, and dictate the terms? I don't. But basically this episode is Juliet picking up exactly sort of where we left off with her, with her traversing this poisonous landscape. She finds this other silo. She finds so many dead bodies. And she enters and she has to...

Rig up a lot of stuff in order to finally find the one other person who is still in the silo played by Steve Zahn. And we have three flashbacks. Well, three-ish flashbacks inside of this episode. We've got what happened at this silo that prompted all of these people to go out into the poisonous air. Yeah.

We have Juliet's... Or the hazardous hair. Do we know what's killing them exactly? Oh, sure. I'm happy to cast a wider net of possibilities here. Yeah, like depressurization, heat, poison. I honestly don't know what's happening. That's kind of what I wanted to circle back with the suit a little bit. It's like...

I'm not sure what exactly the suit is supposed to do other than clearly fail. Filter the air? I thought it was something you're inhaling. That was my assumption because when they take the helmet off, then they like gasp and choke and die. But then what good is the good tape?

To seal in the good air that is being filtrated through the suit? Maybe. I honestly am not sure. I'm really torn as to whether... I think ultimately something I've bumped on in this episode is when Juliet has to bash open the visor of her own helmet. Yeah. Because she's gasping for air. Yeah.

Yeah. Is that the suit malfunctioning or is that the suit functioning as it's intended, which is to say these things aren't really designed for people to live once they get outside. They are operating under the assumption that anyone who goes out is going to die. Is there like a very limited amount of air and resources in the suit? I did have a question about that, and I didn't know whether or not this was like a slight metaphor for the larger issue.

Because when she, when she bashes open the glass on the helmet, she doesn't know that the air inside the silo is good. Right. There's just more corpses everywhere. So she doesn't know, but I guess, you know, to go back to that opening clip we had at the top of this episode, when Shirley's like, what are you going to do? Die? Like what other options does he have? Or the flashback that starts episode two of, you know, the sheriff and the rebellion inside of this new silo.

basically the whole place is going to flood anyway. Yeah. So we got it. We got to take our chances outside because what else can happen? Completely. So sort of like she has to bash this glass towards her face and risk potentially contaminated air in the silo because she's

She's not going to survive whatever's happening inside of the suit. But I don't know that I understand the full mechanics of the suit. And if you do, hobbitsanddragons.gmail.com would so appreciate your suit expertise. If you're a tape enthusiast and you really know what's going on there, I would love to know more. What makes good tape? You know, I would guess stronger adhesion would be my guess. Okay, so listen.

This theme of isolation, as it pertains to the Juliet flashbacks, which are both around Shirley and then also around Walker, and both Shirley and Walker tell a story of, I had a dream or I had an experience where I was all alone and it was the scariest thing. And what did I do? And, you know, it's not subtle, right? That those are like the two stories we get. And it's,

It's not just Juliet alone for most of this episode, but it's us having to think about what does that do to someone like Steve Zahn's character, who we see at the end of the episode, has been surrounded by corpses for, again, apparently decades, according to Graham Yost, has just been there forever.

With dead bodies all around him. Maybe not. I mean, I do have questions about this. Like, was he the only survivor of what happened here? Or is he the last survivor left alive inside the silo? Did he have to kill other people to survive? Right. The few people who were left. We don't know any of that information. But, yeah. Yeah.

Having endured what happens in the silo in season one, which is all about society and government and structures and how that can feel claustrophobic and how that can feel isolating and how that can feel, taking the entire other side of the coin and bringing us to a character who has just had nothing for a very long time is, I think, an interesting thing that this season has on its mind. Completely.

Completely. And how these characters interact, if at all, going forward. I don't know how Juliet gets in that door, given the threat that has been issued at the end of this episode. But Steve Zahn isn't showing up on the show just to show his eyes through a window. At some point, we're going to get more of him in some capacity. And I want to see what he's like after this time. What is left of this person who, especially if it is young Tim, that's a child growing up in this world, mentally.

maybe all alone, maybe in complete isolation without so much as another human being, without even the comforts of like people on video, like really no human interaction of any kind potentially. And so to see what his world has been like, I'm a little torn as to whether I want

the flashback day after Tim's story or the like, maybe he just talks about it version of that story and explains what happened to him. I'm a little torn on what I actually want to play out in this show, but that is a character I want to know more about how he got here. I feel like with 10 episodes, we're going to get the Tim to solo evolution episode. So we should make it really clear. So the episode opens with...

this rebellion in this new silo, uh, many years in the past, I guess about 35 years in the past that they are fighting it, this guy named Russell in it, who I guess is like the Bernard comp or something like that. Same haircut. I'm sure who won't open the door and they have to storm, you know, the it to get the door open. They have to like cross this chasm and, uh, you know, uh,

kill each other in order to make this revolution happen. And we've got the sheriff and his kid is named, he is name-checked, he is Tim, and there is Roy, who is a guard, and these are the names we learn very clearly. And so when they go to storm out into the open air, and we know what happens because we then cut to all of the corpses and his flag, his green flag, in tatters,

How did Tim get from the front of the Vanguard back to safety when there's so many other bodies out there is a question I have. Was Roy, the guard who we've already seen once, they said, hey, get Tim out of here. Is that his role again once they start gasping and gusping? Are they just sort of like, Roy, get Tim out of here? Yeah.

I mean, that's the only thing... That's the only question mark I have around whether or not this is Tim grown up. Like, I feel like it has to be. But logistically, I'm curious how he gets from the front of the Vanguard all the way back down into the safety of the silo. Any thoughts, theories, questions, concerns about that? I mean, many, many concerns. You know, there's a lot of people or bodies he had to cross to get back into the silo. And how he manages that, I don't know. I suspect the answer will have something to do with why...

his eyes look the way that they do. And also the fact that we only get this very limited physical glimpse of what he's like, like,

what other injuries or deformities or other things might have happened to him from being in such a hostile environment. And I say hostile in both ways, right? Like if people are going out there and starting to die, everyone is going to lose their shit. Then it's an all out battle potentially to get back inside how he gets back inside. I want to see. And I kind of suspect that whatever it is that's happening with his eyes is indicative of like some, um,

Whether it's poisoning, exposure, like maybe he's blind in that eye. I don't know. Like what is he physically capable of at this point and what exactly has happened to him? There's just no way for us to know, but there's a lot that's being teased out.

There's a sign in and among the other graffiti that Juliet sees as she goes through here, like lies on the screen or fuck the founders, all this sort of rebellious graffiti that this is the potential future of the silo that she came from, is what she's walking through here. But in and among all of that graffiti, there's the graffiti that says, any survivors, please help us.

Which to me is the biggest indicator that it wasn't just him who survived, like whoever us is. So then was it did it become just this like feral Lord of the Flies situation where there's just like a few little bands of survivors and they and they, you know,

killed each other to see who could, who could enjoy the very limited resources that are left in the silo. I don't know. You know, it's not an accident that he's locked into a room that if like basically the fact that he has the capacity to kill Juliet when she's standing outside it to me says this is like a barricade, right? This is a structure he has created to protect himself from other people. And I'm assuming those people are gone or dead at this point. Is your interpretation that,

That he cut the rope that she was hanging from the first time. Because she goes back and she examines sort of the frayed edge of it. And she's kind of like, huh.

So is your interpretation that at one point he slipped out of whatever that little bunker is and tried to cut the rope before she even had a chance to get to his oscillating fan situation over on the other side of IT? It seemed like that's what the show was hinting. I mean, that's him covering a lot of ground to be able to do that in that fashion. Unless he wasn't in the room to begin with. Maybe he was coming back from elsewhere in the silo.

And happened upon her trying to swing in that way. I guess that's always possible. But the way she looks at the rope certainly suggests that this is not just frayed from rubbing against the edge of the banister. Okay. I'm glad we're on the same page with that. So he's already tried to kill her once. Juliet can't swim. None of them can swim. Yes. She goes into the water. She barely makes it. She's also just surrounded by ropes that are trying to drag her down, too. It's just like it's a lot of...

A lot of flailing. And to try to kill her, if that is indeed what happened, no questions asked. Like, this isn't, we're going to have a conversation. This is like, I'm going to try to kill you. I don't want to know who you are. I don't care what you want. I'm going to go live in my little hut with a viewfinder and hoard whatever resources I've got to myself. He's locked himself into, like, an even smaller silo inside of there. I think that, like,

I think all of that is pretty chilling and scary to figure out. And probably if anyone can charm their way into a bunker, it's Rebecca Ferguson. And so we should also mention, I mean, I think I am interested, especially in a 10-episode season of television, I am interested in a Tim episode. Like, what happened to Tim? And to watch...

that child actor. And then eventually presumably Steve's on like, show us the sort of degradation of, of this character. But something Graham Yost said in describing him as he called him Robinson Crusoe without his Friday or Tom Hanks without Wilson and cast away. And I was thinking about Rebecca Ferguson in this episode who largely has to carry this episode by herself on screen and

And how rare it is that an actor could do that. I was like, yeah, thinking about Tom Hanks and Casper, I was thinking about Matt Damon and the Martian, I was thinking about Sandra Bullock and Gravity, but it's just, it's like mega stars can do this, but it is not something that a lot of actors can do. Can you think of other examples or what do you think it is about Rebecca Ferguson that we are just down to hang watching her...

as you put it, MacGyver her way through the situation. Yeah, let's take that part first because I think part of the reason that she's able to pull this off and that it works so well is that Rebecca Ferguson is just an incredibly gifted physical performer. She's obviously great and charming. You watch any Mission Impossible movie or any movie she's ever been in, it's like, yes, this is a person who could talk their way into a room. But she's also so good at action set pieces. She's also so good, in this case, at making things feel effortful.

Because if everything is too easy, right? Like if building the bridge is too easy, if getting into the door is too easy, this is not an interesting episode. Like she has to fail. She has to struggle with everything. And to do that, she, an actor in a like somewhat practical, but also very CGI heavy space has to sell us that this shit is real. Yeah.

And I think she does an incredible job of it. Like her muscling some scrap metal onto some barrels is compelling television because she makes it by will compelling television. And not everyone can do that. I also think there is something pleasurable in just like understanding the like mechanics and physics and leverage and like the way that her brain works. This is like a simple machines showcase. Yeah.

That there are no, am I remembering in season one correctly that there's no pulleys allowed? Like that that's one of the rules? Was that a rule? I think that's one of the rules. Damn, no pulleys. No, you gotta have a pulley. And she sort of like makes her own pulley by like looping the rope over something and using leverage. You know, and that goes to, again, the flashbacks are to show us Shirley and Walker talking to her about isolation, but also this idea of like,

recycling things that people think are broken or thinking about things in a different way or not giving up on the way that you, you know, attack a problem and all of that sort of stuff. So again, I would have given up quite early, but that's not what Juliet did. It is not. Thank you so much. There were 400 visual effects shots in the season two premiere.

That's a lot. Something I will say, I think they did a great job making the haunted season two silo look as haunted and derelict as it does. There was some stuff, maybe this is like the way that I watched the episode, you might have watched it under better circumstances. In the opening flashback...

Was it actually physically hard to see things sometimes for you? Or was that just, like, my screen resolution? It seemed pretty dark. I think dark by design, but not unintelligibly dark. Yeah, I think it, like, bordered on unintelligibly dark for me, which is something that I've, like, been on high alert for since the final season of Game of Thrones, where I'm just sort of like, it doesn't have to be this way. I understand that they are in the literal dark. So, like, obviously, like, the power is out everywhere. But IT, like, you know...

you have to convey that it's dark, but I'm always, always hoping that shows that these budgets can still make it so that we can see the incredible work they've done to make this silo look derelict and haunted and un-

under a rebellion and stuff like that. Well, I think they do a good job of that in the present-day version of this silo. Yes. Because there's this glowing light and room that Rebecca Ferguson is trying to get into, it illuminates the space. It gives you a beacon to orient yourself in space and figure out how does she need to cross this particular chasm and all those things. I think things like that help

ground all of that, all of those effects, all of the set deck, all of the stuff like it, when you light it that way, I think it makes everything feel pretty practical. It's also like this episode more so than anything I remember from season one, maybe her like trying to fix the generator sequence or something like that. But like, um,

It felt very video gamey to me, and I don't mean that as an insult at all. But, like, it's super... Like, I'm not, famously, not a huge player of video games, but, like, I have played some. And, like, this idea that, like, here's a locked silo that you have to figure out how to get in, and there's the light. You have to get to the place where the light is coming from, and then eventually you're going to hear some spooky music, and you have to follow that down the hallway. Like, it's...

you know, and on all the things you tried and failed and like, what are your resources and what are your skill sets and all this sort of stuff like that? It's like, it's fascinating to me. And I'm curious if like more of the season is going to feel that way or not. And again, that's not a knock to me. Like there's plenty of great fun stuff that feels like a video game. Um,

But yeah, that was my vibe off of this episode. Yeah, and I think to your point about what actors can pull this off, it does feel evocative of a video game in that way. It does feel like you're Joel in The Last of Us or something like that, in the parts where you're separated, where you're having to navigate spaces by yourself. Basically any genre of semi-horror or horror-adjacent game where you are a character with a flashlight in a dark space cobbling together items, which is to say...

I don't know, a third of every game that's made in 2024. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot to draw from there. And there's a lot to draw from in this performance. It doesn't work without her being interesting and captivating as she's trying to do this stuff. I take your point about Sandra Bullock. I think that's a great comparison in terms of physical obstacle and mission-oriented filmmaking. That's a lot of what's happening here. Yeah.

There's also the range of stuff that I wonder if we might get a version of here where it's like a person who's isolated but acting opposite a voice. Like maybe she doesn't get into the room with Tim, but there's like a walkie-talkie type situation where she has something to bounce off of, but

has to still do all of the acting in terms of these scenes by herself in like a like a Joaquin Phoenix and her kind of way in a Sam Rockwell and moon kind of way you know like you know maybe less the AI love story element of that and more just like you know dissociated voice and person is this my genre this is the thing the other thing that came to mind for me watching this was Wally like I

it felt like the first part of WALL-E a little bit in the sense of like person scrapping together a life or maybe Tim is the WALL-E in this case. And he's kind of hoarded himself up in there and he's just like watching old timey, like, uh, you know, hello, Dolly, hello, Dolly, like peak, peak Hollywood dance, like dance numbers and musicals in there. I don't know. Except he's watching a breakfast at Tiffany's, I guess. Cause I guess. So I did want to ask you about that. Um,

Moon River plays hauntingly down the hallway and she follows it. Again, probably the only choice you have, but also I don't know that I got it.

Don't go to Moon River. Like, don't do it. Do you just take a beat? Like, eventually. I mean, what else is she supposed to do? Die? Like, what do you do if you don't follow the spooky music down the hallway? I'm going to go sit under the tree with the water and I'm going to hang out there. And I'm like, look, that's your space with Moon River in the creepy IT department. I'm going to be over here with the plaintiff ferns. That's where I'm going to hang out.

Speaking of the water, do you feel like, was your sense that she washed the toxins off her suit with coffee or dirty water?

It seemed like dirty water, maybe. Right. It wouldn't be decades old coffee. That would be like sludge at that point. I would think so. I think I answered my own question, but I was just trying to figure out like which I would prefer more to douse myself in very old, cold coffee or in water that looks like very old, cold coffee. So pretty gnarly needs must. Okay. Spooky Moon River. Yes.

luring you down the hallway. I was, I have been before I watched this episode, I was staying with a friend of mine and they had a record of the ink spots, which is this, you know, like this group that they play the ink spots music in fallout. It's a go-to spooky old timey,

sort of group you hear at the beginning of Shawshank Redemption like you hear the ink spots all over the place when you want to feel like unsettled um and I've been listening to the ink spots uh like just Spotify playlist no free ads but it's our company um Spotify playlist and it's been a really good time I've been really enjoying the spooky ookiness of it you've gone from kooky to spooky I I'm still kooky though I contain multitudes um

Is there a more haunted group than the Ink Spots? Or what is the most haunted music that could or could not lure you down a hallway? Rob Mahoney. You said a couple of very key words there for me. One, old-timey. It clearly has to be before a certain period of time. And it has to feel old in style in a way that is going to make the hairs on your arms stand up on end. Yeah. Also...

you mentioned that your friend had this on a record. I think it's very important that you get that like analog scratchy vinyl scratchy viners like popping speaker vocal distortion. Yeah. I think a lot about in Gremlins there's a scene where they're playing like do you hear what I hear the Christmas song on a record. Yeah. Like either the needle gets like dragged off the record or like

Maybe the gremlin scratches it or whatever, but you get like the with the voice. That kind of like vocal. And like if you can get that in a song and it's kind of glitching back and forth even better. The first song that came to mind for me, and I'm not sure if I've been horror movie pilled into this song and it's happened. And I've just kind of internalized this as a horror song is Que Sera Sera.

Oh. I could see if I'm... Like the Doris Day version. The Doris Day. Specifically the Doris Day. I could see myself walking down a dark, dimly lit, brutalist hallway hearing that song. And I am of the nope variety. I'm turning around. I am not following Moon River to its conclusion. I'm good. Yeah. Yeah.

So that was the one that came up for me. Did you have any other candidates? That's a case where I was a really good one. Like Doris Day is very capable of sounding quite haunted. Just a little haunted is all you really need. Yeah. I don't think I can top that or top the ink spots like just as like a generally haunted group. Um,

But hop us and drag us to gmail.com if you want to give us haunted suggestions. I might even make a haunted songs playlist. A playlist? Let's go. Enough of the bad babies email and suggestions. I will put that on. Old timey, spooky. Yep.

The only thing that makes you go down that hallway is the knowledge that Steve Zahn might be waiting for you at the end of it. Otherwise, it's a nope for Rob Mahoney. Anything else you want to say about this episode? It's kind of spare. That's why we sort of dwelled in season one, because it's sort of like, a lot happens and not a lot happens inside of this episode. But I guess I like the choice of it, because Yost has said that...

Episode two will take place entirely inside the other silo. So they like did episode one. It's just Juliet in this silo. And then episode two, we're going to go back to the other silo. And then presumably we're going to cut back and forth until we get the episode of our dreams, which is the Tim only episode at some point. I just want Tim to be a little bit older in his teenage years, but with de-aged Steve's on face on him. That's what I want.

Um, they're like, you thought a sea of corpses was an impressive special effect. Wait until you see baby face Steve's on. Um,

So what do you think of the choice to do it that way, to split the story over Juliet here and then to go back to the remaining cast of characters in the next episode? For this balance, I like it for these first two. If it's that way the whole way through until they meet or whatever, maybe it would get exhausting at a certain point. But episode one, episode two, I like it because as we are watching...

the flashback in episode one of this other silo and their march outside it's impossible not to think of the home silo and in particular that we left it in a place where we didn't even really see the fervor like really heating up yet but we know that anyone who was looking at a screen was shown a vision of the outside world that is much more lush than they have led to believe and certainly would suggest to them that they've been lied to would really rile some people up

My favorite Tim Robbins moment of the whole season is when he's like, honestly, you say favorite. I say if I have, if I can lodge one more objection to season one, a lot of the dialogue is like 15% to direct and 15% too much. Like people saying exactly what they mean and exactly what they want. Correct. But that,

It works on a level. I probably laughed at it more than it was intended, but it worked. It got a reaction out of me. That's for sure. Yeah. And I think he's supposed to be a little pathetic in that moment. He is like trying to cover people's eyes from something they've already saw. Like it's a doomed errand. Yeah. It's Ed Harris, end of Truman show. It's like, you know, like whatever, it's all crumbling around, uh, around you. So like,

That worked for me, but more broadly, I do take your point about some of the dialogue in season one. But overall, in terms of this structure, there is a natural, propulsive want in a show like this for the truth to be revealed and the tyrants at the top of this to be overthrown. And yeah, Bernard is unseated and Sims is taken down and all this stuff, and the people get the truth and they get what they want. And it's like, to show us a version of that endgame that is everyone marching outside...

into the open air because they think it's okay and summarily dying in a giant crater together.

I think gives immense stakes and heft to everything we're about to see in episode two. Like, I'm getting that, like, train-on-a-track hurtling toward a destination feeling of, like, oh, no. Like, I want these people to have their version of the truth and to know what's going on in their world, of course. But at this point, like, the only people who might be able to save them from their death are, like, the villains of this show to this point, effectively. And that, I mean...

And will Juliet be able to get word back to them in time to prevent whatever calamity? But yeah, that's why the flashback is so interesting to sort of parse and parse and parse that starts this episode because there's the question that the sheriff asks his wife. You sort of like,

Why do you think he wouldn't open the door? And she said because he was told not to. But is Russell, who seems to be the head of IT in that flashback, is he actually the hero who was trying to save all these people? And even though the silo is flooding, maybe they could have made some sort of go of it in a flooded silo versus...

certain death outside. You know? I like that that stuff is getting a little murkier because when it is just...

bad men lying to people and keeping them in this like locked box. It's a little too straightforward in terms of what you would want in an ongoing show. Like you need the dynamics to gnarle up a bit and for everything to feel a little bit more situational. And it's like, there is a circumstance here by which Bernard is the only thing standing between the people of the silo and dying. Right. Like, is he actually not the good guy at all, but like for the greater good sort of thing, you know? I mean,

I mean, I think he literally has like a greater good kind of drop in, again, 15% too direct in season one. He was a hot fuzz fan before it all went sideways. You know what I mean? Listen, anything else you want to say about Silo or about this episode? Rob Mownie.

One last thing as we're moving forward back into the home silo. One character we haven't touched on that I'm looking forward to getting back in touch with is Billings, who I really found myself being more and more interested in his story, not just because he has the syndrome, which is in itself this whole

like tangent and can of worms and interesting kind of side story involved in all this. But I don't agree with every decision he's making, obviously as a character, but he just wasn't at all what I expected him to be. You know, the first couple episodes of season one, it's like, oh, this kind of shadowy, this by the book shadowy figure who's going to be installed as sheriff. And you see him and he's like,

I mean, with all due respect, like kind of, kind of a fucking dork and the kind of dork that's very endearing and ultimately like is unraveling this story and, and finding the truth and everything along with everybody else. And certainly with like, and on a parallel journey to what Juliet is doing, there's something that's like really endearing about this character who was supposed to be the sort of like strong arm puppet sheriff turning out to be this like wounded, sick, like,

beating heart guy who's like just trying to figure this out and and who has dedicated his life to acing pact bees and now all of a sudden has to confront the reality of what the pact is actually all about um to that end there was an interesting interview i read um common and tim robbins an incredible junket pairing i'm sure uh gave an interview where they were talking about sort of

Who they act with or who their scene partners are in season two. Colin was talking about how his character Sims has, like he has a family. Billings has a family. We go home with them. We understand their home life. And Tim Robbins character, uh,

uh, Bernard, like doesn't have anyone. And what common said in this interview, he said, quote, what is life about if you don't have anyone? So like shots fired at damn. But like that idea that like you can be the Russell figure or the Bernard figure, the person who knows more is keeping secrets for quote unquote, the greater good.

which ultimately I think is not the move, but let's say that's what they think they're doing. How lonely and isolated is that existence? And what line can you draw between that and

Steve Zahn's character completely who I don't want to call solo I would prefer just to call probably Tim please I'm just gonna call him probably Tim until we're told otherwise I'm just gonna go with Tim but yeah to could like construct a world in which no matter what angle you look at it from

every character is isolated everyone like even the characters who again have this power have this agency even even juliet in a lot of ways who is put in positions of great power and authority like her response to that is i'm not going to let anyone touch the generator that is my job and i'm going to like isolate and imprison myself in this kind of responsibility yeah and then she becomes the mayor and she does the exact same thing with a totally different mission and it's like every person

is locking themselves in a room. And they're doing it for different reasons. Sometimes it's to maintain a visage of the truth. Sometimes it's to protect themselves. Sometimes it's like, I mean, I don't know that we know entirely what Walk is afraid of, other than maybe being rounded up by one of the raiders or something, as some of her other friends have been. But everyone is terrified and everyone is isolated and everyone is lonely. And now we just get a guy who is physically in one of those rooms, peering out at us, hopefully with a lot of interesting things to say, Jo. Yeah.

Sometimes you lock yourself in a room because you're the only one left in the silo. Sometimes you lock yourself in a room because you have a podcast to do. And this has been our podcast on silo season two, episode one, and sort of our look back at season one in general. Thank you so much. We'll be back next week with

uh, do prophecy excited, excited to go back to Arrakis or wherever else we might go in that universe. And also gladiator too, uh, as Mallory likes to say, it's thighs o'clock. Um, we're, we're having a good time in the Sandy deserts, uh, next week. That is the plan. Um,

Thank you to Rob Mahoney. This is kind of a desert too in its own way. Maybe not as sandy, but a dusty craterous... A poison desert. It's a desert of a kind. Yeah, an emotional desert, certainly. Oh, certainly. Thanks, Rob Mahoney. The best that there ever was. Thank you for talking to me about three entirely different shows this week. You're the best.

Thank you to Steve Allman and John Richter for their work on this podcast, the video side. We're doing new experimenting with new video techniques this week. So we're really excited to see all of that come together. Thank you to Arjuna Rangapal for his production work on everything that we always do. He is the best on all ends and all sides. And thank you to Jomia Dinaran for his work on the social. We'll see you next week where Mally will return. Bye.