Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: What up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Nerdjourn Report. I'm your host, Pablo. Joining me as always, this is Mister Brian Schultz. Brian, I saw the penguin about three times.
Wow, that's nothing. My brother's seen it like four or five times. Yo. I'm like, yo, why keep.
But it is that good when you see it, Brian, because you pick up on so many other little things. You pick up on the little, on the second watch, I picked up on certain things, and I was like, oh, snap.
But, Brian, so far, you are hearing people talk about this show as being the best comic book show ever. They've been able to see a couple of episodes ahead. We've only been able to see one. Right. I think they released it to the big.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: They usually give the screeners. We'll usually get like three or four.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Exactly. I think they've, they've been given three. And, Brian, the way they talk about this show, it is, it's been given high praise. I started thinking about what Colin Farrell had said previously, Brian, about the possibility of him returning.
I look at it possibly as more of a tactic for the bag, because.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Just like his character, Brian, because every.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: Everybody is praising this Brian, so if you want him back, he is giving you his gripes right now, so you can make it much more easier for him to say yes to come back to a four second season. But, Brian, this first episode and the kid that he got with him, we got to get into all of that. But what do you think about the first episode?
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Thought it was great on a number of fronts, and interestingly, kind of just roped the wife into watching it with me. She was, for reference, not a fan of the Batman.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: I, of course, love the Batman. She was kind of put off by how dark and kind of methodical that movie was.
She loved it. She loved the first episode of this show just as much as I did. So it kind of shows you a little. And she basically, the only reason she gave it a chance was because of Colin Barrel.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: She likes his work generally. So she's like, all right, I'll check it out.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: I think the first episode is a masterclass in trusting the audience to be patient and go with the world building plan that Matt Reeves and Lauren Lefrank have.
It really is kind of exactly what they said it would be in the sense, to me, it was a showcase of Ozdev. Right. We got a little appetizer of Oz in the Batman right from the very beginning. I feel like this was Colin Farrell's show. It's like he, like, we've talked about shows in the past where the star is passing the ball. He won passing the ball in this. Now, he got a lot of help. There's some really cool supporting characters we'll talk about.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Oh, yes.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: But he's the show right from the very beginning, I thought, with his first couple monologues and his exchanges and sort of his first little bit of violence. And he's doing a lot in this episode, even relative to what he was doing in the movie. And I was very impressed. So I'm a big fan of the show, if nothing else, because he is showing, he's bringing more to the table than what we got in the film.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Yes.
I think Colin Farrell's performance and Matt Reid's perhaps influence on the character, he, Matt Reese, has been able to do something very extraordinary, which is take a character from the comic books and adapt it to this world. Right.
He's, it is a penguin that is very fitting to this world that Matt Reeves has built, this Batman world, and while still keeping the elements of what makes them them. Brian. Which he did with the Riddler and what they've done so far with the penguin and what cotton Farrow has been able to do with this character.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Brian, the physicality was great too. I feel like they really put the spotlight on the limp. He makes it. He sells it like a penguin. Like waddle. Right. So there is that nod of these shots of him at a distance wide. He's got the umbrella. Right. He's wearing the purple. That car is pretty cool, but not, like, crazy. So there are, like, more penguin ish nods here to the comics. But at its core, this is still a very serious character. But I think the episode does a great job of, like, weirdly humanizing him. Like, when you see the shot of his deformed feet, that scene with his mom, which is really, like, I did not see that coming, but it works.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: You know, and it's just, it's adding dimension, and it really is sort of, you can, I can feel it pulling me into the. Yeah, I'm gonna root for this guy, at least for this, this show.
[00:05:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: Get there. Even though I know in the end, you know, the real hero that's out there needs to stop him someday.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: But his, they also do a good job with the dialogue and telling us who Oz is.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: What do you think of, what's the name of the young supporting actor that he has with him? His sidekick, I guess.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: Well, Vic is the name of the character.
Well, I liked it. I mean, I knew where it was going the second he showed up. And I was like, oh, this is a good choice. Like, a guy who is both fearful but also kind of hungry.
And as the episode goes on, clearly shows that he's willing to get his hands dirty to, you know, granted, he's got an incentive. He doesn't want to get killed. Powerful incentive.
But you can sort of see him, like, buying in a little bit as he's going.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: So I like the choice. Was not familiar with the actor before this show, but I thought he did a creditable job. He wasn't getting blown off the screen.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. What you think of the daughter, Falcone? She was very. She was crushed.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: It her first shot where she's out of focus in the background and then the look on her face when she says she just got out of Arkham. I'm like, I didn't think this was. It's weird. The trailer hid this.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: I felt like it made it seem. The trailer made her seem to me more like a classic gangster's daughter.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: And then when she showed up, I was like, oh, she's actually nuts. Like, she's actually. She's actually more Joker or Harley Quinn than I was expecting. I was all in. I think Kristen Milioti looked, looked and sounded just so sadistic. And then by the end of the episode, you realize, like, uh oh. Like she's gonna be a problem in this.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: Yeah. They did a. They've done a fantastic job at setting the table for what's to come, Brian.
And how the penguin or Oz is gonna be able to get out of these situations when people find out they're being manipulated, almost. Pretty much, right.
But they gotta see it through because he. He's put them in these positions wherever they have no choice. Pretty much. Right.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: But I don't know. I thought she was great. I thought she was terrified. And then, of course, like, even though in a small role, like Michael Kelly, the always reliable character guy, as the competing boss, and then you get a taste of Clancy Brown as Sal Maroni. So that's what I mean. Like, this show was. They brought out the lineup for this show.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: I liked pretty much everyone you met on the show, Brian, even to even his workers.
Right. You can see that they're cool with Oz and they tell him what's going on and he's, you know, he's the. He's the boss, but he's cool with everybody. Even Brian. When he arrives at the mansion, he's saying, hey, fellas, you know, he's. He's always trying to charm in little, subtle ways everyone who's around them.
He's just. And I think probably perhaps a lot of it is for improv.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Brian, that's interesting. It certainly comes off as genuine. There is this the way Farrell plays it, too. You see the layers of. If you just saw that exchange with the. With the henchmen I know you call him, you'd be like, oh, that's mutual respect. Oz is this deformed kind of limping guy, but they clearly respect him. He gives them respect right back. But then you peel back the onion, you see how he handles Alberto Falcone behind the scenes, and you're like, yeah, these guys probably know this is probably not the first time that Oz has drawn on someone and, you know, fired and fired first and, you know, done some. Some deeds to where, like, yeah, it's mutual respect, but there's some fear, too. Yeah, he's not afraid. They are.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
Do you think the buzz around the show and where this show, when it finishes, supposed to lead us somewhere else because of the praise that this show is getting? Brian, do you think Matt Reeves has been sort of pushed a little bit further along his timetable as to how long he likes to take to do his thing, to be like, yo, get this done? Because right now, after all of this, what was it like a few months ago? A few weeks ago, I don't know about Matt Reeves, about the Batman being delayed.
Now it's. We're shooting like, the script is done and we're shooting in early 2025.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: Well, the movie was delayed, right? I mean, it's 2026.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: It was supposed to be 2025.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
I just find it weird that we're getting more updates on this stuff.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: Yeah. That may not be a coincidence. That may not be a coincidence. I, you know, the first episode of the show made me wonder whether WB wishes they could have laid out this jigsaw puzzle a little differently, because I do think this show has the potential to really breed a lot of momentum in the Batman world, this particular Batman world.
And I do think it's kind of a shame that we'll get to the end of this and it'll be two years before we see the Batman part two on screen. Yeah, I feel like there's probably a perfect script where this show would have ended and the Batman part two would have come out the next week.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: That would have been dope, and people.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: Would have been, what? Fired up?
[00:11:27] Speaker A: What?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
You right, man. And that's. That's where perhaps, maybe, just maybe, Kevin Feige's genius comes along. Right? Maybe. Maybe because that's the way you. Again, when was the Batman? The first?
[00:11:47] Speaker B: 1 march of 2022.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: Three years.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: It's going to wind up being almost five years by the time the next one comes out. Yeah.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: Yeah, man, this should have been planned out a little bit better. But they didn't know. Perhaps they didn't know what they had. Brad, I don't know how you don't see that and prep for that and seeing what you're doing and just. Just getting it moving.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: It's a filmmaker's prerogative. I mean, that's honestly what it is because, like. And the reason I say that is because, like, I, you know, I study the study the practices of the best filmmakers, and you'll see, like, how is it. How is it that Christopher Nolan can deliver what he delivers religiously every three years? How. That's his process.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: His process somehow lends itself to. He's able to write, shoot, edit the biggest of big projects, and they're look at his, like, it's literally mechanical when these things come out. But not everyone's like that.
[00:12:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: There's a lot of people who, like, they just get lost in the world and it takes forever, and then they pop up with the movie. And Matt Reeves is more like that, where he's like, 90. Take Matt. Like, he's more like David Fincher. Like, he's meticulous and he's exacting. And it. And there's a part of me that wonders if, after the Planet of the Apes experience, whether he felt constrained by that because he was on that timetable and he did deliver those movies kind of a couple years apart. And maybe he felt like, for this, he's like, I need to be fully in command. And if that means it takes me 20 years, then that's what it's going to be.
Yeah, I do think it's going to be a little bit of. I think the look, I think the Batman will be fine at the box office, but I do think the box office would have been bigger.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: If this show was ending right as that movie was about to come out.
[00:13:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah. Let us know in the conversation below what you guys think so far. The Penguin show, the first episode that we've seen, I mean, you can definitely hear some others who have seen the second and third episodes, and they're praising the hell out of this. This is like, Brian is crazy.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: This is. See, I want to end on this point. There's two things about this show that gave me a little bit of hope. Granted, I know this was coming for a while, but everything about this show felt quintessential HBO to me.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes. What is it? Releasing is releasing on Sundays, right?
[00:14:17] Speaker B: Yeah, on HBO prime time Sundays. It looks good. It sounds good. Everybody is working at a high level in this, right? So it feels like it belongs on the shelf with the Sopranos, with succession, with some of the big heavyweights. That gives me hope for things like lanterns, because HBO is putting those things in the same arena.
I also would draw your attention when you watch it because it stood out to me immediately, which I think speaks to. They care and they notice and they're paying attention. The use of light in this show versus the Batman.
I didn't even know that he wore purple in the Batman, I gotta be honest, because the whole movie is so black and red, you never see him under the light of day. So when he popped up in the purple suit with the purple car in broad daylight, I was like, there wasn't a single broad daylight shot in Matt Reeves film. There's cloudy and gray at the funeral. There's twilight when he's on the roof at the end helping people. But in this movie, it was jarring when I was like, oh, he's driving around in broad daylight. This show is stamping itself as Batman's time is at night.
[00:15:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: What that movie is.
Oz operates day and night. So we kind of have this interplay. I thought it was brilliant, and it really stamps this show as related but different.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Last thing before we move on to our next topic, next show, will you be disappointed if any mention of the Batman is not mentioned?
[00:15:55] Speaker B: Well, he's already been mentioned. Right. There's always on the roof helping people.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I see.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: Let's put it this way. I will be disappointed if I don't see the signal at least once. I don't need to see him. No, but we know that Gordon sends the signal up and, like, these dudes are gonna be perpetrating stuff. So if that's the case, the signal has to be up some of the time when they're working.
[00:16:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:22] Speaker B: Now, I do think Oz has shown in this first episode. He is thoughtful about covering his tracks. Like, when he goes and tries to structure an alibi for his killing. That gave me encouragement of like, oh, so he is gonna be thoughtful about what he's doing. Which bends to our previous discussion about, if you're up against the world's greatest detective, you can't be leaving amateur hour evidence around. Yeah.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
So, yeah. Let us know in the comment section below what you guys think of the first episode of the Penguin. And we'll see you next time on the night J report.
The show goes on.
