Christian Ashley, Leah Robinson, and Andy Walsh dive deep into the realm of pop culture in this episode, spotlighting their top three unfinished or forgotten storylines. From cliffhangers that left fans hanging like a poorly executed punchline to narratives that just fizzled out, the trio reflects on why these unresolved plots still tug at their heartstrings. They explore the emotional weight behind these unfinished tales, questioning what it means for a story to be left hanging like a forgotten sock on laundry day. As they share their picks, listeners are invited to reminisce about their own favorite narratives that deserved a proper conclusion. Buckle up for a nostalgic journey through storytelling that’s as unfinished as a sandwich left on the kitchen counter!

Christian Ashley, Dr. Leah Robinson, and Dr. Andy Walsh dive into the fascinating world of unfinished narratives in media, sharing their top three picks of storylines that have left viewers and readers hanging. The trio kicks off with a lighthearted banter about their latest 'geek-outs,' including revivals of beloved shows and upcoming films. As they transition to the main topic, they explore the emotional weight behind unresolved stories, discussing how these narratives strike a chord due to their connection to personal experiences and nostalgia. Each co-host presents their choices, highlighting how these unfinished tales impact audiences and emphasizing the innate desire for closure in storytelling. The episode is rich with humor, witty exchanges, and insightful commentary on the nature of storytelling, leaving listeners both entertained and reflective on their own experiences with unresolved narratives.

In a captivating exchange, Christian Ashley, Dr. Leah Robinson, and Dr. Andy Walsh dissect the phenomenon of unresolved narratives in media, presenting their top three picks for unfinished storylines. The episode opens with a playful discussion about their current pop culture interests, setting a relaxed tone that permeates the conversation. As the hosts delve into their choices, they emphasize the emotional stakes tied to these unfinished tales, considering how they reflect personal experiences and societal trends. The trio's banter is laced with humor, making the exploration of such a serious topic enjoyable. By the end of the episode, listeners are not only entertained but also encouraged to ponder their own connections to unresolved stories, leaving them with a sense of camaraderie and shared experience.

Takeaways:

1. The podcast discusses the emotional weight of unfinished storylines, emphasizing how they can leave audiences feeling hollow and unsatisfied after investing time in a narrative.
2. Christian Ashley, Leah Robinson, and Andy Walsh explore the reasons behind why we care about unresolved plots, highlighting the desire for closure and completion in storytelling.
3. The hosts share personal anecdotes about their favorite pop culture narratives that left them hanging, revealing the deep connection and expectations fans develop with characters.
4. The conversation touches on the impact of nostalgia in contemporary media, as the hosts reflect on how remakes and continuations of beloved series often struggle to capture the magic of the original.
5. Leah shares insights on the significance of Twin Peaks, noting how the show's unresolved mysteries continue to resonate with fans, demonstrating the power of ambiguity in storytelling.
6. Andy discusses how the cancellation of Mindhunter left a void for fans, exploring the show's unique take on true crime and character development, which remains unresolved after its abrupt ending.

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Our top three unfinished or forgotten storylines across all the media that we've engaged with over the years. This is systematic ecology. We are the priests of the geeks.

I'm your host, Christian Ashley, as today, I am joined by two wonderful co hosts, that of course, being Dr. Leah Robinson and Dr. Andy Walsh. I am out doctored today. I have no doctorate, I just have a master's. How's it going, Leah?

I have a doctor, but I can't turn off mute. So it's going very well, thank you for asking.

That's okay. I was struggling. For those of. My voice sounds a little off at the beginning.

It's because I don't know how to drink things, apparently, so I had to cough for like 10 minutes before we started. That's great. And of course, Andy. How's it going, Andy?

I am doing well, thank you.

All right, lady and gentlemen, what have you been geeking out on recently?

I have been excited about the new Scrubs revival. There are a couple episodes of that that were quite fun.

Kind of the opposite of our topic today, a story that perhaps finished several seasons before the show ended and maybe doesn't need to continue, but it's still nice to see those folks again. And it's like catching up with old friends.

And yeah, looking forward to Ryan Gosling both hosting Saturday Night Live this week and starring in the greatest film ever made project, Hail Mary, which is just a few weeks away now. So that's what I'm.

How about you, Leo?

I love it when people say the best thing that's ever been. Despite my desire for everything to be nuanced, I do like it when people just put a flag in the sand.

It's a film about a nerdy, funny microbiologist saving the world. It is, by definition, the greatest film ever made, despite the fact that I have not seen it yet.

I took microbiology, but I'm not sure that the person who taught me could save the world. But here we go. I have also been watching Scrubs, and I was talking about.

This is going to feed into my conversation about Scream, but I was talking about these things that. You're quite right, Andy. It probably should have ended a while back. And you can definitely tell these folks have aged quite significantly.

But I will say, if you're just wanting to feed into the nostalgia bit, which it feels like we're in the season of nostalgia right now, at least for if you're a millennial, I think they're really playing into that with us. And so I think watching Scrubs brought back something inside, just hearing the phrase newbie, I was just like, oh, my gosh. Yes.

So I would certainly say that is something that I'm excited about. What about you, Christian?

Yeah, I'm geeking out of my local library, but library, that's local to me right now. They had a book sale while I'm on vacation here, and I came out like a.

Like a king with as much as I got because that just further fuels my addiction. And part of that was I've never read the.

I'm saying, Animaniacs, the Animorph series from way back when, and I got most of them, and I'm going to be reading them. Maybe they're bad, maybe they're not. I don't know. Right now, I'm feeling pretty good.

I do want to say, too, I will add this, that I think they're playing into our musical nostalgia as well, because I went to go see Weezer recently, which was the greatest thing. But I think they realize millennials have money, and I think that's why they're putting some of these shows and. Or music and. Or movies out the end.

All right, well, getting into our main topic today is, of course, we're making our top three list. So this was. We kind of picked that topic, idea it out to everyone. This was Andy's idea.

So, Andy, you want to talk about why you picked this idea first before we head in?

Well, I think mostly it was an excuse to carry the flag for my number one pick, so we won't spoil that yet. But, yeah, there's still time that maybe it can convert from an unfinished story to a finished story.

And so, yeah, I think mostly I just want to bang the drum for that. But, yeah, you put out a call for topics, and was it trying to think of what's something we haven't talked about yet? And this is what came to mind.

Okay, so when it comes to this topic of stories that don't get resolved or for whatever reason, could be executive meddling, could be the death of an author, could be that a new author comes in after an old author is fired or creator, what have you, why do we care so much to see these storylines resolved?

I mean, I think it's kind of what you said is that it could strike something. I mean, the choice. Something about the choices I made.

But it could hit you at a certain time and place where it was kind of a crutch to you, or it was something that was important to you that you didn't want to end because there's something about ending that. That affects, you know, how you view the world, I think. But I think there's also this idea that you don't feel satisfied.

Like, you.

There's a lot of things that end. And, you know, my number one pick is one where I'm just like, wait a minute, the story isn't even historically done yet.

That's not going to. That almost made my cut. But, like, where are the. What. Where did they. We still don't. They're just hanging out somewhere. They're just.

They're just over now. They're not even the leftovers anymore. They're just over.

So I think there's something about that that hits us emotionally because I think we innately want a story to finish in whatever way that might look like.

Yeah.

There's that episode of the Big Bang Theory where Amy is trying to help Sheldon cope with things not resolving or things not working out in a way that is satisfying to him. And so she makes him set up dominoes and then only sort of knock them over or plays half of a melody and then doesn't finish it.

And she's trying to help him develop coping mechanisms, but at some point, he goes back and he just has to. To resolve all of those things that. That she had forced him to leave unresolved.

And so, yeah, I think that just really captures the tension there of you. You put a gun on the. On the mantle in act one, and then it just sat there and there was no Act 3.

And I have to know who's going to shoot that gun and who's going to get shot. Right?

Yeah. I'll echo a lot of what you're both saying.

Like, when we start a story, like, we do want to finish it, we do want there to be an end, because I've kept going with you with however many seasons it's been, however many issues of a comic it's been, or episodes or movie series, what have you. Like, I want to see finality there, and I would like it to be Satisfying.

Ultimately, you know, I can handle a bad ish ending, you know, if I ultimately enjoy the product more, unless the ending really sours everything else. But to not have one at all. As someone who hates ambiguity, that is antithetical to everything that I am.

Because you set something up and now there's never going to be payoff. Well, not never.

More than likely on some of these, there's a possibility they could come back and change things, but it doesn't feel like it in the moment. In fact, my top one, there's a chance for that. I mean, it technically has been resolved, but we haven't been shown how it's resolved.

So we'll get there when we get there. Yeah, so like, we invest ourselves in these stories. We want to see these characters grow.

We want to see them make decisions, you know, even if they make bad ones. Like, we can see why they make that bad choice. But if we don't see how that all culminates, it's like, did I waste my time with this?

You kind of question yourself. I would ultimately say no, but it still feels there's a hollowness left behind there.

Well, we talked too about the nostalgia. I wonder how many, because one of mine definitely falls into this. How many series or movies have we watched us get proliferated? Like, just keep.

They just keep making them because they're trying to get that first thing that. That hooked people. They're trying to get back to that first bit and they just can't do it for reasons.

But I do wonder, like, how many sequels have we seen where they really should have just left it at 1. Yeah, keep buying it. No, we just, we keep consuming it because we want it. We want to feel what we felt. And so they'll just keep. As we consume it.

They'll make it so.

And there's some industries, you know, like comics. I mean, when it comes to like your Marvel and DC characters, they're never going to end as long as they're making money.

So there's never going to be like a finale, as it were to them. So. All right, so when it came to picking our top three, what factors went into deciding how we ranked them and why?

Mine was very emotion based because I'm a lady and that's how we operate. But it was actually, it truly was.

It was shows that I wanted to never end, shows that I keep wanting to get back to that bit that made me feel something intensely. And so I keep, as I said, keep consuming. And then there's one that I'm Just I feel so upset. I feel like I got duped.

I was, you know, and it didn't necessarily. I wasn't necessarily emotionally invested in it. It's just that, you know, just got.

There's some shows that just get canceled and the story doesn't get finished and you're just sort of left hanging.

Yeah, I tried to focus on things where there was a clear question that needed to be answered. So not just, oh, would be nice to have more of this story, but there was somewhere that this needed to get to by the end and it did not get there.

You have broken the social contract and also kind of looking at the possibility of ever coming back to it. So I talk a lot about Marvel comics. I probably could have filled this out with just unresolved plot points or things in Marvel Comics.

But in a very real sense, the Marvel comic story is not over and may not ever be over, at least not in my personal experience. And so you never know when they're going to. There's a much stronger possibility that those stories will get picked up again.

But he used that name to tell a story so that he could kind of resolve that lingering thing from 20 some odd years prior. So you never know in that kind of ongoing universe, even if the title is gone or the author has moved on, somebody can still come come back.

So I wanted it to focus more on things that don't have that obvious like, well, they're still telling the story so there's still a chance that some version, it'll get resolved.

Yeah, I did have a question because I don't do comic books. This is for you both because I'm assuming you both do comic books. Read comic books.

But is there this idea that comic books just like you don't really have to have this fear that they'll be unfinished because there is this idea that they pro. Now they may not be as good. I'm not saying that. But this idea that they'll keep going?

It depends on the characters. But like in the end of the day, there's always a possibility of them coming back in some way, shape or form outside of like your main characters.

Like they're never going to end because they sell like Batman's always going to be there, Spider Man's always going to be there. X Men et CETERA because they sell.

Now, you may be, as an X Men fan, slighted because your mutant of choice is not on the team, and you may have to wait five, 10 years. So that's something to be brought up. Andy, what do you think?

And that's kind of the major toggle that they flip back and forth between various reshuffles. But there's still a sense that Batman and Superman stories will continue to go on.

So you mean Endgame wasn't really the end? What?

No.

Nor was the Last Crusade.

Yep.

And Jack Nicholson will always be my Joker. So that's fine.

There you go. Fair enough.

When it came to making this list, I'm thinking about it when Andy brought it up, like, what would I actually choose? And why am I putting these on there?

I think my number one answer is because I felt slighted in some way, shape or form and be like, how could you not resolve something like this? Or how could you choose to do something like that instead of.

I mean, so there's definitely some emotion playing in some of that, you know, because it's not. You don't have the monopoly on it, my dear. You know, we men have some.

I. Madam, that's all right. I accept.

But, yeah, because you feel for these stories like it doesn't matter. Like, you like these characters, you like what's going on with them, but then something is taken away from you.

And some of these things, it's like, well, why? What happened? Yeah, there's some stuff behind the scenes, like this difference in leadership.

Like, it still leaves that, like I said earlier, that hollow feeling of what could have been I'm never going to attain, or it feels like I'm never going to obtain. So I kind of put these. My number three is kind of a troll answer, but it makes sense when we get there.

But the other was kind of like how bad I felt when I didn't get what I wanted out of these. And speaking of our top three, we're not going to head there quite yet because this is our time for honorable mentions.

So the things that you wanted to put up there, that for whatever reason, you didn't get the Ending that you wanted or it never got fulfilled in one way, shape or form. Have at it.

Yeah, I mean, I mentioned the leftovers and that feels like a pretty obvious one. I was actually pretty excited about that whole mystery. And I love Justin Throw with the passion of a million suns.

But, you know, it was one of those, Andy. That you were kind of talking about, which is that there is an, you know, maybe not an obvious ending, but there should be.

You've hitched your wagon to this mystery of these people who just disappeared, and then you don't ever get to know where they went or what happened. And it's like, okay, cool. Glad I cared at all. You know, it's different when it's.

The very central bit of the story is like, we're deeply concerned where these people are. And it's just like, oh, well, maybe I'll circle back at some stage. So that would have. Definitely. It's.

I do agree with you in the sense of that there's some stories that just. Just like. I mean, there's cancellations and then there's like sharp cancellations where you're just like, yeah, that's never gonna get resolved.

I'll pick two off of here. One is the acolyte.

So we got one season of the Star wars show, the acolyte that very clearly was meant to be two seasons that finishes obviously sort of halfway through a story. I think it didn't quite crack my top three because when I got around to watching it, I was already aware that that was happening.

So I kind of didn't invest as much knowing that I wasn't going to get the ending that I was. That this story was going to promise. And then Heroes is one of those where we can make the joke about why did they only make one season of Heroes.

Such a shame that they never returned back to that.

But that was such a singularly beloved and well done season of television that for a variety of reasons, strikes and different things didn't, you know, they did follow up on it, but never really quite reached the same levels that first season promised. But also, you know, so yes, it did. It did continue on after that, but also, I don't recall.

And maybe this is because, you know, like many people, I fell off before. Before the actual last episode aired.

I don't have such a strong sense of, oh, there was a way that this show needed to end that first season, in a sense, kind of does everything that it needed to do. And so it's more just like, oh, it would have been nice if There had been more of that show that's more of that category of.

It sure would have been nice if there were more of the show, even if you count season two and three. It sure would have been nice to continue with that and some way, shape or form.

But I, you know, there's not an obvious single like, oh, here's a plot thread that needs to be resolved, or here was the arc of the show that just clearly didn't get resolved.

Yeah. And that. That cast was stacked. I mean, I remember that first season of Heroes and just being so invested.

And it was a phenomenon.

It was. I was, you know, save the cheerleader, save the world, here we go.

Amen.

Come on. You know, and then it just went. If there was a category for a show that just went downhill real quick, it would for sure.

But I did have a question about Acolyte, because. So I've not seen it, but again, Husband's a Star wars guy, and he. I was telling him the theme of tonight, and he goes, well, have you seen.

You haven't seen Acolyte, have you? So clearly that is the first show that he thought of when this category came up.

And my question is, because all the things I've read seem to really praise Acolyte as being a good show, like one that's. I mean, again, I've not seen it. So this is simply what I've read, or at least a different show in the Star wars universe.

And you can have opinions on that. But my question is not about those. It's more about why did they end it, do you think?

Poor viewer reception, poor numbers after the first couple episodes, the massive amount of budget that they spent that I really didn't see on screen that much, to be perfectly honest. Amongst many other things. Can you think of anything else, Andy?

Yeah, no, I think it just. It was. It was such an expensive show that it had to do phenomenal numbers. And anything short of that was hard to justify coming back.

You know, there was some. The audience reception revolved around, do we like female lead characters or not?

Do we like female or do we like lead characters of color and things like that? How much of that actually played into reception or not, I don't know.

But that was certainly part of the discourse around the show was whether it got canceled for being too woke.

There's always that side of the equation. I'm not counting them. I'd say to someone who watched the whole thing that needed a tighter scriptwriter room. It was bad, in my humble opinion.

I think when we reviewed it forever ago. I gave it a 2 out of 10. I don't think that has changed.

That's fair. He didn't necessarily say he liked it. He just said that it was a show that ended. It seemingly ended abruptly.

Yeah, it is a show with things left behind that there could have been more if they had a second season, actually resolve some of the plot threads they bring up.

Does it feel like it's at this stage with Star Wars? And then I'll pass it on. They're just like throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks in a way.

Like in terms of all these side quests that's happening, I would say side quest out with the star. The Skywalker folk. Or are they just trying to figure out what is the new direction that. I mean, it can be both. And

I think that was a Disney issue under a previous regime in general that they just wanted to make a plethora of shows to try to find things that would hit. And I think that era has passed. I think there was some inertia in.

Well, it just takes a while for things that got made to get finished and put out into the world. But yeah, my sense is that that was something that they were trying, but I think they've tightened up a little bit on.

No, we need to have more of a vision. We can't just that, especially with things like Marvel and Star wars and so forth, that really dilutes the brand, to use a terribly crass phrase.

And so there is a cost to that beyond just, well, that show didn't work. You're teaching your audience, your loyal fans, that all this stuff is disposable, all this stuff is skippable.

And so then they don't tune in for any of it.

It's one of those, it doesn't matter what we put on screen, you'll watch it kind of feeling. And I'm hoping that changes with what happens next. But we shall see under new leadership.

So for my unresolved honorable mentions, I have several because I just like talking. I'm going to start first with the Guardians of the galaxy's 90s comic series that was canceled way too soon.

Yeah, it got 50 plus issues, but it still was too soon. They have plenty of exploring the 31st century. You had like the Dune that they had to wrestle with there. The Martians.

We had the whole thing of whether or not this is really cool part of it where they show all the heroes dying when the Martians initially invade. And except for Captain America initially, and then he dies in Spider Man.

And it seems like he dies, but there's things like he could have been brought back to life in some way, shape or form because they had, like, this museum dedicated to him. I was super big on that. Obviously, the Spider man guy.

And speaking of Spider man, there's also his unborn baby or potentially born baby, depending on how you go about this, that was stolen away by Norman osborn in the 90s. Because we can't have our hero grow up and become a family man, because that's just wrong.

What's more responsible than becoming a husband and a father? Well, we can't have the guy who speaks about responsibility doing that. Will never bring it up again. Like, stupid.

Then, of course, on the manga side of things, I think my first ever feeling of rejection in this way was the Hunter's Guild Red Hood cancellation way early on. It went to, like, 18 or so issues and just got canceled. So it wasn't the best in the world, but I still loved it.

Then on the Star Trek side of things, Next Generation, we have the great episode near the end with, like, the.

The aliens that are controlling different members of Starfleet, and they're like, oh, my gosh, these guys are going to be so big coming up, and then they show up again. Then I just have, like, the X Files slash everything, because nothing ever got completed in the show.

Ryan Cooler is gonna fix all of that. It'll be fun.

Oh, of course he will.

They're both gonna be, like, in wheelchairs, and they'll bring them back and just be like, look at the chemistry.

Yeah, you guys like that, don't you?

They'll resolve it. They'll resolve it.

Then, of course, there's the ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion, if you know, you know.

And on the Star wars side of things, it was Jaina Solo not getting her trilogy of books where she actually would become the Sword of the Jedi that, of course, was killed with the Disney merger and everything. So that's it there. So those are honorable mentions. Andy, who do you have starting for their top three?

I believe Leah is up first. Yep.

All right. Oh, y'. All. So Scream. The Scream saga.

And I will say saga, because we're not just going to talk about Scream 7, but we can do that if you want to die inside, but we can. So Scream is a film that I chose, and I have different sort of themes as to why I chose my three choices.

You put Drew Barrymore's face in it. She dies within like two seconds of the film.

And you know that the whole thing, right, you know that the whole thing is not going to be what you thought it was going to be. You had the roles, you had Wes Craven, you had Kevin Williamson, who were both within their own, right?

You know, Wes Craven being a horror guy, Kevin Williamson writing. I think he was on like Dawson's Creek. They were. It was just all the people that were hot at the minute and they made it work.

And I think for six films now they have been trying to recapture this, this thing that happened. And to the point where they perpetually kind of, kind of bring up the idea that one of the original killers is eventually going to come back. Right?

That's how much they want people to think that this is going to be a recreation of what they originally did. And I think it's a testament. Like, I will go see them all. I was showing the guys earlier that I have my, my ghost face popcorn box that I got.

Like, I will, I'm that person, I'm that Star wars person. About Scream, however, what I will say is that they've yet to, to do it, they've yet to recreate it.

And you know, I think it's one of those things where the story probably should end. I don't want it to though. And I'll keep going back. I mean, I think they said it made like 96 million or something around there.

I believe you're right.

Which is insane. Like for this film that probably did not even. I mean, I don't know how much it cost. I don't know that. But it wasn't 96 million.

So it's like they're gonna keep on making it because people are gonna go.

But it is one of those things where I'm of two minds because all my like 14 year old, 15 year old heart wants it to keep going while my other brain is like, this story is over. You know, it's like I was a particular.

Oh, sorry, go ahead.

I was just saying it's like when I see Jamie Lee Curtis like hobbling around trying to beat Up Michael Myers and I'm like, you know, let the girl retire.

You know, if only it had been Michael at the end of the last one. Yeah.

So when it comes to like the unresolved stuff, like what in particular about the Scream franchise or just scream 7 in general, like you feel like is, is just unresolved for you.

Yeah. So I think what's unresolved is I really. People always think it's a story of Neve Campbell's Sidney Prescott. Right.

That this story is not resolved because she is not able to like ride off into the sunset. I am not sure that that's the case with a lot of people who are deep, deep in the fandom.

I think the thing that is unresolved is this idea of again wanting to recapture what they had before.

And I think even people who are new to the franchise, like, I talk about this with some, some of my students who are watching these all for the first time and they, you know, it's kind of the same talking about Star Wars. It's why they kept bringing back the Skywalkers. Like, why are the Skywalkers in these, the Rey trilogy? Like, because you need that, right?

You need that draw. You can argue against that. But I think that there is something that's drawing people in with those characters.

And so they keep bringing back these characters.

But I think the unresolved thing is how do we wrestle with the fact these films are not going to be what was originally there, but how do we recapture, I think that can in itself be unresolved is like, how do we recapture that feeling that we made people feel with this original film? Because it was, people talked about it constantly. Like in high school, it was a constant form of, you know, oh my gosh, this. Can you believe this?

Can you believe Drew Barrymore? And there's the rules. You know, people would say, I'll get you a Coke, I'll be right back. Say, you'll be right back.

You're not going to be right back. You know, we're like shouting in the hallways. It was a total water cooler moment.

And I think that that is the unresolved issue is that we can't let something die. And maybe, and I say this through my tears on my ghost face, Popcorn box is maybe. As I watched this film, I was like, it had lost.

It had done the opposite. So Christian, I were talking about this earlier is, it's a fine film. It's fine, like, it's a fine horror film. It's probably above average.

I mean, Kevin Williams wrote It's above average horror film, but it. It did not capture in any way that sort of feeling. And it's like, is this now just. Just dig a hole and throw it in?

So is that how you would resolve it all? Just, we're done, game over. Everyone rides off into the sunset.

Well, if you asked how I would, I would bring Stu back from out of retirement and have him be the killer, which it should have been this time around. But that's sidequest. He was one of the original two. And in terms of the lore, or in terms of.

I wouldn't say even the lore in terms of the rules of the game in this show, if you don't see someone shot, like, in the head, they're basically. It's fodder that they're still alive. Like, it's possible. Stu did get a giant TV placed upon his head, which would probably not be great for him.

But in the Craven Williamson universe,

he played survive.

Worse, he could still survive. And he has said in interviews that he was supposed to be the killer in Scream 3, but because of social stuff that was happening at the time, they.

They can that. So even these guys still think he's still alive. But then you resolve it and what, Neve Campbell shoots him, Then what do you do?

Fair enough.

Does Halloween continue after Jamie Lee Curtis is gone? May she Never. But I mean, this kind of goes back to the Star wars.

Conversation is like, if you don't find something that you throw at the wall and sticks, is it time to just be like, that's the end of the story? How do we resolve ourselves to a story being over?

I think with the franchise, the idea is like, okay, let's just let it cool for a little bit, and we could always reboot way later on, have a new audience, a new generation come about. You know, that's what they tried to do with the Halloween films. Your mileage may vary on how much it worked.

The Rob zombies definitely don't work for me, but that's its own conversation. Anything else you want to add about Scream before we move on to Andy's pick? I think.

No, I think I agree with you.

I think they need to let it cool off and reboot it the way they did, and hopefully they can capture a new generation's fascination with talking about horror films and what the new thing will be and have new actors. And I think they tried to do that with. With five and six, and I think they needed to let it cool for a bit. I think that's the answer.

Andy, what's up next.

My choice was the TV show Sliders. So TV show about the main character, Jerry Oconnel's character, Quinn, inadvertently discovers the ability to travel between parallel universes.

And he and some friends and some inadvertent bystanders set off on a journey across all these different. Across the multiverse, kind of Quantum Leap style, right? In that they. They don't really know where they're going to end up.

They keep trying to find their way back to their.

Their main universe, the universe that they came from, and instead they, you know, have all these adventures and all these different, you know, weird world of the week kind of places.

And this show I have some fondness for, because it was one of those shows as a teenager, I felt like I kind of discovered it, not just myself, and obviously I didn't make it or anything like that.

But this was an era before podcasts, before websites, before a lot of these things that kind of helped you find things or told you what was the hot thing of the week or the month. No social media. You just kind of turned on the TV and saw what was there.

And the most you knew about what was coming up was maybe the TV Guide or promotional ads on other shows. And so, yeah, there was just kind of the sense of you could discover things that nobody told you about, but that you found for yourself.

And so Soliders was kind of one of my first experiences with that follow along.

It was also something my wife and I bonded over when we met early on as a show that we both kind of had that feeling of like, nobody knows about this show, nobody else has watched the show, but somehow the two of us have seen it and liked it. And obviously that's not true.

But again, in that kind of time where it was without social media, it was harder to find your fellow travelers in these kinds of fandoms. And then the premise of the show is, well, they have to get back to their original world, and by the end of the show, they do not.

And so, yeah, it just kind of has that unresolved sense of, well, but how did they get back home? And do they get back home? And if not, why not? Or what are the consequences of that?

They got awfully close, or at least nominally, by the dialogue, they did not sure what the.

In one episode.

Yes, well, yes, they did get back. Right? But it doesn't stop there.

And then nominally, as the last season was kind of wrapping up, they were saying that they were close, they were one jump away or whatever. I don't know how exactly one Measures that what the distance metric is in the multiverse, but that was the sense.

So maybe there's not a whole additional season's worth of story there, but maybe there's a movie to resolve things, Serenity style or Peaky Blinder style. But, yeah, it just, you know, as. As it stands, it doesn't quite. Doesn't quite get across the finish line. And it would be nice to know how their.

How their story ended.

It's that really cruel moment.

I don't remember which season it is, but they get to the right universe, but they go up to Quinn's house and he's like, yeah, when if this, you know, gate squeaks, that means we're in the right universe, and it doesn't because his mother had just repaired it, like the day before. Yeah, it's, like, so close.

But there's also, like, yeah, you have, like, almost endless story potential with a series like this where you can literally go to any new reality and you just have to make new rules and new things happen here this way. But, yeah, but you also want to see him get home and, like, for good. So, yeah, I'm right there with you. Great choice.

So, like, Annie, how would you have resolved this? How would you have gotten them back home?

Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. And that maybe requires refreshing some of my memory of how the show went on as the seasons went on. It has been quite a while since I revisited it.

But, yeah, I mean, I think you just want that sense of, like, okay, they get to rest from their journey. Right. And maybe I would imagine you probably wind up writing something of some of them get back and say, okay, now I'm going to stay here for good.

And some of them get back and go, you know what that was.

You know, this isn't actually fulfilling anymore, that I was chasing something just like kind of Lee was talking about, you're chasing something from the past that you can't actually re. Experience or you can't rekindle that same feeling.

And so, yeah, actually coming back to this, quote, unquote, home universe doesn't feel like home anymore. What feels like home now is that journey, that voyage or whatever.

And so I could see, you know, some subset of them, you know, setting back out to, you know, to continue the journey, and some of them staying home. And that kind of being how you. How you resolve things. But you know exactly who and exactly under what circumstances.

Yeah, Again, I will confess I'm a little bit fuzzier on all of the specifics of where the show was at the end of season five.

It's been a while.

Yeah.

But I feel like the time traveling element too, creates a weird world of unfinished business because it's not a linear story. So I oftentimes think like, Doctor who. Does Doctor who ever really have to end?

I think at one stage they made some sort of comment about there's like a limited amount of regenerations, which are something at some stage that put a little bit of a thing on it. But in theory, it feels like these stories that involve time travel could almost just go on forever.

Yeah, sure.

I'm not saying that's happy. I'm just saying I don't, you know, because, like, what's going to. I don't know.

What was the mechanism that made them keep sliding through time, as you know, to use the phrase, like, what happened to make that happen? But, like, if. Was there any indication, like, that it could stop?

I guess if they. They had the ability to. Or there was a timer, or they like, their device was controlling that they jumped from. From one world to the next.

And so they had the option of when they got home to just stop, but they had no control over where they went in the multiverse. And so they were just kind of. They just had to keep spinning the roulette wheel, so to speak, and to see if they.

And so like Christian was saying at one point, they do actually get back to the correct universe that they're searching for, but they don't recognize it as such. And so they keep going. But, yeah, there's nothing. There's no external thing that's pushing them along or whatever.

They have the choice to jump or not jump into every next universe. They just don't have any say over where that's going to be.

So moving on to my number three. Mine is a song of Ice and Fire, Game of Thrones, Winds of Winter.

This is, like I said earlier, this is my troll pick because of who I'm dealing with here. Like, I do want an ending, but it's not like, gonna, like, fulfill me. It's more like I have a gripe with the author. So. George R.R.

martin is a very, incredibly talented man who writes really well, who has an eye for characters and world building. However, George R.R. martin is also an incredibly lazy, opinionated. There are other words I could use, but this is a family show. He is not.

Has no desire, it feels, to finish his series.

So I would say this is someone who got into it later that I don't feel the same way that someone who has Been reading since book one feels, but I still feel a certain way.

So for those of the uninitiated, Game of Thrones, the Song of Ice and Fire, fantasy world, lower fantasy at the start where you've got the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros under the control of a king. He goes to one of his best friends, Ned Stark, to come down and be his Hand, which is like his advisor.

And all the machinations that are at play within the court of King's Landing, where, you know, the king rules, the people working against him, the people making their plans for the throne as it all devolves into this giant abysmal war between different factions.

And you have different characters at different places, some of which have died at the chance to come back, others of which have been left in very terrible situations where you don't know if they're going to be fine. Daenerys amongst many others.

And what the good news is is that before the Game of Thrones series came out, Martin years in which he could have written something like this, you know, because he has the ability as an author who makes a lot of money to spend time and do whatever he wants for the most part to write this down. And yet it seems like he doesn't want to.

My conspiracy theory is that he has actually finished these and he's waiting until he dies to release them so he doesn't have to deal with fan backlash. I could be dead wrong. He may have not written anything at all. So we are left with many characters. We don't know their fates.

We have two books left to finish everything up according to him, and we've got nothing. So that's a scenario. That's why I feel as strongly as I do about this because I have invested my time in here.

I've noticed the biggest fan of everything that he does, but I still love these characters and I want to see how they end up knowing him not well, which is also a reason I'd be upset. But that's its own issue. So, I mean, for me, I mean, I guess I have to.

My way to resolve it is I have to go up to his estate, put a gun to his head and say, look, all these people have been paying you over the years. Get the work done. I don't care how long I have to hold you hostage.

It's not actually what I do because, you know, I say this as someone who is jealous of the position that he's in. You know, as a writer myself, I have written several books. I have not written many in years because I had seminary.

I'm in the job process right now, so I don't have the time or the will to get stuff done. So I would love to have what he has. And yet he squandered what he has, and that really upsets me as a reader and as a writer. Guys, your thoughts?

I like to think that you would just rock up and be like, my name's Christian and I'm holding you hostage. And now you must write, I want

Annie Wilkes him if I have to.

That's fine. I mean, I have also followed. I haven't read the books, but I've followed the TV show and I've heard all about this stuff.

I am also a writer as well, and it's. It. It's not the easiest thing. I don't know who he is as a person. I've not really listened to his interviews or met him. You seem to have a.

More of a clue into his personality. It feels like if he knew how much money it was making, that he would have been quite eager to. To write another one.

But it also may be that he feels like the story's done. I mean, and I. I'm not. I mean, I'm not saying it is, but, I mean, is there. You've obviously listened to his interviews.

Does he feel like there needs to be 30 more books or even three more books?

There's supposed to be two more.

Two more.

He had issues with trying to, like, wrap everything up, you know, as well as he wanted to.

It was bad. Yeah.

But he comes off as very condescending, like, almost like he hates his fans at times. Yeah. It would be very grating over the years to say, hey, have you finished the book yet? Have you finished it yet?

But after a while, you got to wonder, am I the problem? I believe he's the problem. Fair.

Well, in which case he maybe just doesn't care.

And as one who's written, you and I both know, and Andy, maybe you do as well, is if you don't, if you lose the ability to care, then you're not going to write anything. Like, because writing is not lucrative unless you're George R.R. martin in general. And.

But it's also, you know, something that takes a lot of time and a lot of mental, you know, fortitude. So, like, if you quit, maybe he just doesn't care.

I'm not super invested in this, but just, you know, in the interest of balance, I will say that I subscribe more to the notion that he is a gardener more than a plotter or an Architect.

And that, you know, it is awfully hard to end a story in that style and of that nature, that it's much easier to create the ingredients than to figure out how to bring them all together or to make a callback. It's a lot easier to put all sorts of firearms on your mantle and a lot harder to figure out what to do with them.

See, I would agree with you, Andy.

Yeah.

That's 15 years. It has now been 15 years since the man has written a book. Like, there's writer's block, and then there's a willful ignorance.

You know, it's interesting because, you know, I have opinions about everything. Leah with the opinions. But I. I honestly can't figure this out. Like, as an academic, I just don't get it.

Like, I. I'm trying really hard because there is the idea that maybe he just is. Has too much perfectionism and he can't do it the way kind of Andy was talking about.

And then there's also just, like, maybe he just doesn't care, and maybe he's just kind of an asshole. And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know.

Because he really created a world that was very great and very, you know, expansive and well thought out and, like, heartbreaking. And so it's like, it feels like he cares, you know, I'm just. I don't know.

Or maybe, you know, maybe the ending.

The direction he was going in was close enough to the ending of the show that the way that that was received kind of gave him a pause of, oh, now I need to go in a different direction. But also, I don't know what that direction was, because that was not the direction I was going in.

Yeah, because the scene. Is he concluding the series in these two books or three books?

She said, according to the TV show's ending, which is not how he wrote it to be ended, or is it based on his book's ending?

He gave them some ideas of where things were potentially going to go if he actually published the book, but they made their own ending that has next to nothing with his.

Okay, fair enough. So it's based on his own. His own rating?

Yeah, that was my top three. We're probably halfway through the episode now moving on to our number two, Andy. Morning Glories. Have at it.

All right. And I promise I did not put this in here just to wind you up, Christian, even though I know that you are not the biggest fan of Nick Spencer.

No, no, I love Nick Spencer.

Okay.

Zeb Wells is the one I have a problem with.

Oh, my apologies. I got my Spider man writers crossed. Oh, yeah. So Morning Glories. I talked about this recently on an episode with Kevin about icons of indie comics.

This wasn't one of my picks, but it was something that I mentioned in sort of the universe of indie comics was one of the early ones that I kind of got into.

Paul o', Brien, an Internet famous X Men blogger, has been reviewing X Men comics for three or four decades online, started covering Morning Glories when it first came out. And so that kind of got me into the book because I was following his X Men reviews.

And yeah, it is a story ostensibly about a boarding school and the children who attend it and the teachers and staff who run it, but it is this sort of labyrinthine sci fi fantasy story about time travel and all kinds of things that you needed that kind of like, okay, we're going to read each issue and then we're going to get together and who was that and where did they fall in the timeline and why were they behaving this way? And wasn't this person dead? And how, you know, all the kind of dissection was coming out around the same time as Lost.

And so I started to get into it about the same way that I was getting into Lost of just like following the blogs and the podcasts and, you know, what are our theories and how does each data point update our theories from month to month? And the book was planned to run for 100 issues, give or take, and we got to issue 50, and nothing has been heard since from.

From the world of morning Glories. It reached a point where you could take a break maybe, but, you know, certainly still a cliffhanger.

There's certainly still, you know, unresolved story here. Have I forgotten most of all that? You know, all those blogs and theories and things that I'm invested in?

Yes, because it was over a decade ago and nothing, you know, there's been no real reason to kind of refresh my memory on all that. But, you know, there's still a part of me that just, like, maybe just add pure stubbornness.

I want to know how this ends, even if I'm not that, like, invested in the characters of the story on an emotional level and a personal level. There's just that, like, mental. It's that Sheldon thing of. But you started this and it didn't resolve, and now it needs to resolve. Right.

Or there will be something in my brain that itches a little bit.

So you had me with Lost and the theories and the blogs, and you were hitting all the yay points for me, and you said it got to 50 out of 100, and I'm like, oh, no. I mean, I know that's the point of this show, but I was, like, in it. I was ready.

If I had said there were maybe only five issues missing, that would have been better.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I could fill in the blank with five. I don't know if I have a halfway.

Yeah, I don't. Yeah. And I think that that's, you know, I dipped my toe back in a little bit, and that seems to be the general consensus.

It is sort of, you know, where this is going, how this is going to end. Nobody has any idea. And maybe it falls into.

Maybe it's an even bigger version of the Game of Thrones problem of just, well, I could create all these interesting mysteries, but I don't know how to land them. I thought I would. I thought I would get to this point and have a better sense of what to do with all these threads that I've put out there.

But instead it's just the, you know, a ball of mess.

Was there any indication of why it

stopped or, you know, I think sales was a big part of it. I think it just, you know, the density of the storytelling meant that you could only ever really lose people as it went along.

It was really hard for people to jump in as time went on. So I don't think the numbers were great.

I gather at the time it was meant to be more of a, well, we're going to kind of pause and reset and kind of refigure how to relaunch this or whatever.

And then I think part of it may have just been that Nick Spencer got busy with other work that was around the time that he became a bigger name at Marvel. And I forget exactly where the. The Foes of Spider man series fits into the to the Morning Glories history.

I think they were concurrent, but it's possible that that came afterwards. And so.

Yeah. So maybe wrong. That would have been around the time that that morning glories stopped as it. As it happened.

So, yeah, so it may have just been that, you know, he got. He got a steadier paycheck from. From the world of Marvel Comics and just didn't have the time to go back to it or the incentive.

That makes me mad.

And you didn't even know this book existed five minutes ago.

I didn't, but I'm mad now. And I'm Sheldon. Right now. I am mad.

We are outraged on your behalf.

Yeah, my arms are cold.

I didn't know this existed. I didn't know Spencer was behind it because I enjoyed a Spider man run because he was going to change things until Spider man editorial stepped in.

So that's not his fault.

Better paycheck from somewhere else. And then who's Spider Man?

Apparently he went a sub stack after that, I think. There you go doing indie stuff. But yeah. Okay. So, Andy, from what you do remember, like what.

How would you end this story as best as you could, given limited information, given you're halfway through the series? Give us that ending right now.

Yeah, they all move to an island. They all graduate. It's a school book, so they all graduate.

So it's lost. It's lost. They all go to it.

They find a hatch, a polar bear or two.

Yeah, let's see. They definitely become cryptocurrency influencers. They were those kinds of kids.

So, yeah, they graduate from their school and they become cryptocurrency influencers. And alt podcasters. Definitely alt left, alt right. Take your pick. But definitely not mainstream. Definitely weird conspiracy theory podcasting.

I want 50 issues on my desk by tomorrow.

You know, we'll give ChatGPT the first 50 issues and see what it comes up with.

My brain just exploded again.

Anything else you'd like to say about Morning Glory's Andy?

No, I think I've said my piece. Thank you.

Okay, who's up next?

You are.

All right, I am. So Mass Effect 2, the best game in the series. There is a plot thread brought up here, so I didn't include just stories that didn't end.

I included threads that didn't end. And one of them that's brought up In Mass Effect 2 is the idea of dark energy messing up reality, as it were.

For those of you Trek fans, you remember the TNG episode where somehow warp cores are messing things up and everything's got to change, and that's never brought up again. It's kind of the same way here. So Mass Effect as a series, it's a sci fi RPG where you play the role of Commander Shepard.

You can either be male shepherd or female Shepherd. You're in control of the Normandy, which is your crew. You pick a different group of commander originally, you know, humans.

And then along the way, you recruit different aliens to join you. They become your party. They're your best friends. As you're trying to stop, what you learn is that there's this group out there called the Reapers.

And their technological life form have a little bit of organic inside of them, but they're mostly technological. And they come in every 50,000 years, and they wipe out every alien civilization that's of a certain, like, point in technological advancement.

So Mass Effect 2, you beaten the one reaper. Now you know there's more coming your way, and it is you having to work with a terrorist organization because you were.

You were killed off at the very beginning, brought back to life cybernetically. And now you're trying to recruit your old teammates again, some new ones.

And you meet Tally, one of your old teammates on a planet, and she's talking about, hey, I'm doing this research on why this sun right here is. It's like going and becoming a red supergiant. And we think it has something to do with dark matter.

And, yeah, we don't understand everything that dark matter does. That's okay. Just, you know, accept that it's, you know, video game science.

And what happens instead in Mass Effect 3 is that this is never brought up again. And instead, we get a different story, one that's far more controversial in that, remember those Reapers?

Well, why do they wipe out all sentient life? Well, they say it's for our own good. The original plan was for this dark energy thing to come up.

The way that they are able to traverse long distances using their mass effect relays was supposed to have caused problems with stars, with space itself. And that's why the Reapers were coming in, like, destroying people who were abusing those.

And we never got to see that come to fruition because different writers came up.

Mass Effect 3 comes out, and now suddenly the Reapers are all about, well, guys, you always create cybernetics, you always create AI and they always rebel, and that always causes problems. So to save you from yourselves, we have to kill all of you. And that is a very unsatisfying change.

So I felt very slighted as someone who loves these games very much with where they went compared to how they started. And that's my feelings on the matter. Anything else you want to bring up before I go to how I would fix things?

Is everything just Terminator Was Terminator just like the gold standard, and we should have just listened to Arnold.

That's where they went. Because you see different examples in a series of AI gone wrong, but you also see examples of AI gone right.

And there's that nuance there of, okay, if we do this correctly, we can potentially create new species of, you know, synthetic life. What does that mean? And that's kind of dropped at the end because apparently that's always a bad thing.

Agree.

Yeah.

Andy.

Yeah. I will say I'm not super familiar with this one, so I will just be curious to hear what your thoughts are.

I try to think of how I would fix this.

I would keep it up, and I would have it as a way of the Reapers, like, just being these generic doomsday aliens actually having a purpose, and that is actually meeting up with some of them and, like, causing a friction between the ones who just want to wipe everyone out. Because there's a more simplistic way of, well, they're just going to abuse the dark matter, and that's going to destroy planets and destroy space.

There's also ones. No. Let's find out how we can actually solve this issue. Like, maybe have a reaper civil war.

And you choose your side or choose a side of, like, joining with them or joining a side of, like, destroying them all and just having you figure things out. Because a big thing in Mass Effect is choice.

And at the very end of three, your choices are kind of, like, not as good as compared to the choices made before. And that's another reason it kind of left a stink in my mouth.

So I would give you a choice to, like, actually impacted the galaxy, and you could see the effects, and you could actually, you know, have a game beyond there instead of what we got, which is Andromeda, where instead of dealing cutting off any of the branches, we go to a whole separate galaxy. Just. We don't have to deal with any of that mess.

Cool.

Can I volunteer to go to another galaxy now? Is that possible?

As long as you don't do it the way they did, I'm sure you'll be fine.

Okay.

All right, next up, Leah's number two. Take it away.

I'm with you, girl.

Twin Peaks, favorite show of all time, as many of you all well know. That's why that show that Andy was describing sounds so intriguing to me.

It starred the wonderful Kyle MacLachlan, and perhaps more importantly, sorry, Kyle, is that it was created by David lynch and Mark Frost, who in themselves are just wonderful. Twin Peaks is interesting in terms of the unfinished stuff because it's kind of. David lynch is sort of the opposite, I would say, of George R.R.

martin is that all he wanted to do was write more and the network wanted him to resolve this story. So essentially, Twin Peaks is about the very first episode. You get that Laura Palmer has. Has died.

She's washed up on the shore of this small town in the Pacific Northwest. She's wrapped in plastic and she is the prom queen. You know, she is this. This very popular person.

And Colin McLaughlin gets brought in as Agent Dale Cooper. Again, these iconic characters, considering the fact, by the way, that this show is. I mean, the one that David lynch was a part of was one season.

Like, you get these, these. I mean, it goes on for another season, but that season that he was a part of was one season.

And you still get these iconic sort of legacy characters that live on in our memory. But anyway, so he goes to investigate. It's very quirky. It's very David Lynch. If you don't like lynch stuff, then you're. You might not like it.

It's a murder mystery. Yeah. You're trying to figure that out for sure. And he's investigating.

But it sets up this precedence that's like, as I've said, if you like Lost and stuff like that, you know, there's a central mystery, a bunch of kooky characters, and the character. Sometimes the cuckoo characters are more important than even the mystery. You forget what we're actually doing here sometimes.

But the unfinished story is that the network said we have to know at the end of season one who kills Laura Palmer. David lynch did not want to do this. He thought that would kill the story, that it would be the end of it.

He felt like he should do extended on, you know, and keep going, keep writing. That's why I said he's the opposite of Martin, is that he couldn't wait to keep going. He loved. He loved this story and they made him say it.

And so the next season, he said, I'm out. Like, that's it. Now does he come back? He does. He gives us a prequel, Fire Walk With Me. He gives us some other stuff in terms of.

Of other material, but you get the feeling that this is a story that he never really got to finish. Like, this is not even when you found out who killed Laura Palmer. It didn't feel like it was the finish of Twin Peaks that he wanted.

So to me, it's the ultimate story of unfinished stuff.

So, yeah, this is a great series. I mean, yeah. Are you going to be left with a bad feeling when you get to the end and there's it's not as satisfying. Yes.

Is the reveal about the killer not the greatest? In my opinion, yes. But you know what? They still got a really great cast here of a lot of really fun characters.

I mean, the Log lady, you've got Cooper as our main guy here. You got all these weird people around them. You know, there's this stuff about UFOs. Could they be involved?

Project Blue Book, you've got the Black Lodge. Like all this stuff that. Yeah. The owls are not what they seem.

I'm of two minds on this because lynch, from what I remember him saying in interviews, never intended to answer the question, the central question of who killed Laura Palmer? And I hate that.

Yeah.

I want an answer. If you present me a question, you better give me an answer. But I think ultimately he would have given an answer if he had been given more time.

I agree.

And he may have just said that to, like, pique people's interest or something, or get him outraged, maybe get him talking about the show. So we do get the revival. Yeah. This is a really fun show. Like, how would you have resolved things? Go ahead. Before that.

No, no, I said I agree with you. I think he would have ended it like I. But I think he wanted time, more than one season, you know, to do it.

Mark Frost takes over and you get another season. But it's still. I mean, loses a little bit of that love. How would I have resolved it? Well, you can't resolve it now because David lynch is dead. R.I.P.

you know, now what you would do is you would just take it to another network. I feel like. I mean, that's sort of how I would have just. People loved this show. Like my parents. Again, I'm old. I'm not this. I'm not Twin Peaks old.

But my parents said this was the show. This is sort of. This is what people are yelling about. I talked about Water cooler. This is what people were talking about.

So I think he could have done that. I never think Laura Palmer's death should have been revealed. I think he tried to resolve it, which is funny.

I think he gave that prequel where he tried to flesh out what would have been fleshed out throughout the seasons. I think you couldn't. You didn't need to lose those characters, so I think you had to keep.

There's something about losing characters that I think causes people to feel very unresolved. So part of the issue with my previous choice of Scream is that they're all dead. There's only, like, two left.

It's like Courteney Cox and Neve Campbell are all that's left. And there is something that is to be said about these stories that you lose these characters and you just don't have the same thing.

I will say another resolution that I think is a positive resolution is you get shows like Riverdale, you get shows like Lost, you don't have to like them. It's fine. It doesn't matter. But that pay homage very publicly to lynch. And I think that is a.

You could say it's a legacy or a testament or it's a resolution, is that they're going to keep telling these weird stories.

I will say the best one by far was Scooby Doo, Mystery Incorporated, where they. They bring up the Black Lodge, essentially. There it is. A Black Lodge, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In one of their episodes. And it's like the kids, they're not gonna understand the reference, but, like, me watching that, it's like.

Wait, what? That was pretty great. Andy, I didn't give you a chance to speak earlier. I'm sorry. Was this something you wanted to say?

No, I. I am ashamed to admit that Twin Peaks is one of those things that I just haven't. Haven't figured out how to engage with yet.

And so I've always wondered, as an observer, I've always wondered if it's one of these things that might actually benefit from that sense of being unresolved, that that's part of what has led to its sort of lasting, lasting place in pop culture.

I mean, maybe it definitely plays a part.

Yeah, I think so. I don't. I think that, you know, that's an interesting actual question.

Are there shows that benefit from not being like, we saw how Heroes definitely didn't, but maybe Twin Peaks did, you know? And like, I said, that legacy, like, I mentioned Riverdale because they make so many references. One of the moms is Madchen Amick.

I don't know if that's how you say it, but she's one of the moms on Riverdale. They named the video store Blue Velvet. So it's just inundated with these. These sort of references.

So I think the resolution is that it wasn't resolved, but people loved it, and it'll continue to live in the memory.

Anything else you want to add, Leah, before we move on to our top number one picks?

I haven't seen the reboot.

I have not either.

That's all I've got.

Okay.

All right, next up, Andy, we have me. All right. Surprise, surprise. Spider man is my number one pick for something on this show. I know you're all shocked.

And that of course is the ending, as it were, of the Animated Series where, you know, we go through secret wars, we go through the first spider verse. Sorry, Slot, my best frenemy. They came up with the first. I'll say that every time it's brought up because you didn't.

And there's this unresolved moment of Mary Jane still being alive because the one that Peter married was a clone. Of course, because we're dealing with Spider man, she has presumably been sent to an alternate universe or maybe out of time, we don't know for sure.

And we're told by Madame Web as she's bringing Spider man that this is part of his reward is going to find her. And then the series ends and I am there as like an 8 or 9 year old child go. But why? But, but why?

This was very formative to me as a kid of not getting the answer that I so much wanted. Because why would you cancel this show? Number one, it's the best show of all time. But then number two, you didn't give me the answer I wanted.

Like I want to see them reunited again. Now you may be saying, but Christian, in x Men 97 we see both Peter and Mary Jane together. Well, that's great. He didn't show me how it happened.

Like, give me that Spider Man 98. I'd love it alongside X Men 97.

They're both great shows for different reasons, but as a kid it was just one of those things of not understanding why someone would bring up a question and then not answer it on screen and leaving it for me to answer for decades at this point. It's still infuriating to this day.

Yeah, you know, they've released notes as they have, like, hey, like we intended, you know that we're going to go to Victorian England. Carnage was going to become like Jack the Ripper for a kids cartoon. They can only show so much.

But yeah, for all that, it's like knowing that there's a note about something but not seeing it really irks me. So you know, if they do decide to make a re, you know, revamp of the old series and bring it up, you know, they'll gain my love and affection.

But yeah, for me personally, if. Well, actually before that, what do you guys think about this?

Are clones just to get out of jail free card for resolution?

Oh, it's like Doom bots or what have you. It's like if we need or life model decoys, like it Explains why someone could have died. Actually, it was a robot or. Or what have you, or a clone.

Because Spider man in the 90s was very clone obsessed, to its detriment. There were some good stories in there, but they kind of got defeated by everything else that came around it.

So they were very influenced by the comics, and they decided to do that.

Which kind of is a question is, do we. Are we mistaking resolution for audiences being happy?

I think that's part of the process is making your audience happy as much as possible. There's no perfect story. They're all written by human beings. But, like, it leaves as much as possible happy.

I think it's a good way of going about things. Andy, what do you think?

Yeah, I mean, you know, there's the. You. There's the notion that, you know, storytelling is, you know, doing. Putting characters through all these terrible things. Right.

You want there to be some. Some payoff for that that you want there to be. It's easy to make people feel miserable, whether it's the characters or the readers of the audience.

Right. Maybe it's a version of the Anna Karenina principle. Right.

There are many, many ways to make your audience miserable or to make your main characters miserable, and it's much harder to redeem that in some way or to get through that in some way, through to some sense of joy or happiness or satisfaction or contentment. And so, yeah, I think that's, you know, that should be something that we're chasing after. But, yeah, it's going to be.

It's going to be hard to get to.

Yeah, there's a thing.

Christy, who did literature, my podcast partner, she always says that Russian literature is a actual testament to the fact that the Russian authors didn't care what people thought. And I was like, she's not wrong. Ouch. But also fair

as far as how to resolve things. I think we did a bonus question this forever ago. You know what? Fine. I'd have them go find her.

You deal with the repercussions of bringing her back, of, you know, I married someone I thought was you. Have her go. I mean, is that how you think of me?

Like, have them wrestle with a relationship issue, but then ultimately come back together, recognize that they are meant for each other, get remarried.

I'd have him tell Aunt May that he's Spider man, have him fight some of the villains that couldn't be fought before because of rights issues, and I'd end the season with them married. But he's still Spider Man.

He's gained more respect in the community, not loved by everyone because this is still Spider man, but enough to where he feels some satisfaction at the end. All right, next up on our docket, we have Leah.

Go ahead, Mindhunter. I think I'm one of those sad. As I look at my choices, I'm like, oh, I may be see Christian. This explains my pick for Bridgerton.

This is why I need Bridgerton in my life. Mindhunter. Great show. Great show. It was a TV show that basically looked into the history of serial killers in essence.

So they go back and look at some of these serial killers like BTK and the Co Ed Killer and all of this. So it's in, it's in the 70s. It's in time, like in the 60s and 70s. You can see. See it as it's developing.

And the idea is you have these two FBI agents who are going and interviewing these guys. You get Summer of Sam guy as well, and they're trying to figure out their. Their brains.

And it's quite a simple concept, except that the actors that they have in it are so good. And it's often heralded as being one of the best detective. And you can debate this detective series.

It's been David Fincher, which, if you are a movie buff, you'll know, was in charge of it. And it was on Netflix and it went for two seasons and they were essentially in.

I think they were Moving into the 80s at this stage, and then it was done and they were actively investigating these murders that happened in Atlanta during this time period, children's murders. So, you know, it's a time and a place. Like it's. It's not. And then it just. And basically venture.

They venture, put it on hold and said it was really expensive for Netflix to make because there were a few like, Jonathan Groff is a fairly big actor. I don't understand why it was so expensive, except for maybe him, which was maybe what. That's me editorializing. But anyway. But it just, it just.

They put it on hold for a year and then we all were waiting for it to come back and it just didn't. So is it one of those that you would. They dropped it indefinitely. And I don't think they've.

They've had lot, but it's the one that you'll see lots of rumors that's going to come back which shows that it's unresolved if you want to watch it. I don't think that the. The fact that it ended abruptly is going to affect it if you're interested in this sort of world, like, because you still get.

I mean the story doesn't change because they're doing historical kind of reenactment. So, you know, kind of the story, as it were, but you get to see them kind of work through. So that's Mindhunter.

It's not my favorite favorite series, but it's one where you talked about Unresolved and it just makes me sigh.

Yeah, this is one of those I haven't gotten into. But like, it's one of those why haven't I already.

As much as I love true crime and everything there, I think part of the reason now that I haven't is because I know.

I mean, they bring these.

There is no resolution that get to

play the serial fighter.

Afraid of getting upset.

Yeah, they bring them in. Like the guy who plays. Is it Edward Kemper? I think the. The co ed killer. Yeah. He's so good in it. And it's so interesting because they're.

They recreate interviews that they already had that they. That they had already filmed. So they get these actors to kind of recreate these and it sort of gives you.

Because Ed Kemper comes across as trying to be helpful. So he's like, hey, like, let me help you to see how crazy people work. And you watch it and you're just like, I kind of like this guy, I think.

Or I don't know.

He's so affable.

He just seems really helpful, you know?

Yeah.

And then. Then you get reminded sometimes because they'll like act out and these violence. He's a monster. Yeah. I mean. And that's it.

So I mean, like I said, I was in Venture being a part of it. I'm not sure why they canceled it. It didn't feel like a very. It wasn't Star Wars. I don't know what was the big cost here for this.

It had a flavor to me of the great question from the Matrix. From the Oracle in the Matrix, what will really bake your noodle later is would you have cared?

Would you feel like the show was unresolved if we hadn't told you there was going to be a season three? Because there's no central mystery. It is history. So you can always look up and read about what happened to these people.

There is an FBI behavioral crimes unit. There are behavioral profiling of serial killers became a thing. We've all seen Criminal minds or whatever.

Silence of the Lambs and all these things that came out of that. But, yeah, there is still that sense of. But you told us there would be more. Can we have some more, please?

I think. Right. I felt like little Oliver Twist. I was like, but David Fincher, you told me there'd be more. Like, yeah, no, I mean, I think that's right.

Like I said, it doesn't hurt your soul the way some of these that we've talked about hurts. But it just felt so abrupt, I think, for someone. If you. Like, they were just in the 80s.

We followed you from the 60s to 80s, and now we're still in the 80s. And, yeah, we can look it up, but we could have looked up Ed Kemper, too. I want to see what he looks like in real life, you know, and

it fell into that pattern of Netflix just, you know, and some of the other streaming networks as well. They just make things for one or two seasons. They don't promote them. They don't tell anybody they exist. They don't put them on the front page of the.

You know, the app, and then they wonder why no one watches them, and then they don't finish them because.

But that was the other thing. By all accounts, people really like this show. This is why it's such a.

It actually baffling.

It is baffling. And all Fincher said is that it was too expensive, and so that was the reason why they cut it.

And I'm like, the A's aren't B's to the scene right now. You know, Like, I don't. I don't actually get. Feels like there was something else in the background. But anyway, will we see another Mind Hunter?

I don't know, but.

So they give you the keys to the kingdom. You've got season three and more as much as you want. How are you resolving this?

Get rid of David Fincher. Keep the. I know. I know he's a bit of it, but I would. How would I resolve it? I mean, I would. It. It's. As Andy was saying, it's history. You know, the.

And the idea, sadly, is that this show could go and go on and forever. So I don't. The resolution is keep looking at serial killers to help us to know how to deal with.

I mean, that was the whole point of the show, is it Was these serial killers helping these FBI guys find other serial killers? So keep doing that.

Anything else before we move on to our final topic?

Nope.

All right, Andy, take it away for your number one.

All right, so my number one is the oa, Another Netflix show that ended after two seasons. This is a sci fi. Ish mystery. Ish. Good luck defining it or summarizing it.

Show about characters who maybe are in touch with some kind of parallel universe or maybe just have had some sort of psychological disconnect from this world, from this reality, but there isn't another reality. I think a good encapsulation of

a

21st century version, an early 21st century version of the allegory of the cave is there. That longing of, there's something else out there.

There's something more real, or at least there's something more to reality than what I'm currently experiencing as a way of coping with life isn't all that great for me right now or for my community right now. And, yeah, I struggle a little bit with what was so compelling about the show, except that it just was really compelling and the.

The characters were well done and there were some mystery elements to it that made it compelling, but also just. It was so different from anything else.

And I think that maybe is part of the appeal, just a very different kind of story and a very different way of telling a story.

And then season two ends, and I don't wish to spoil it yet because I think it's recent enough that people might still discover this and still want to experience it for themselves.

But it ends on this cliffhanger that just so mind meltingly like, okay, this raises all kinds of new questions, and I don't know where it's going to go, but I need to find out because I can't. There isn't an obvious. Like, I'm going to connect the dots and figure out, well, at least I have a general sense of where it will be going.

But, yeah, then it just doesn't go there. And we didn't get anymore. And I don't like that

I literally screamed, but I had. I was on mute, which is great, but you can go back and look, because I loved the show, Andy. I freaking loved the show.

This is one of those, I don't know if you guys know the Key and Peele sketches with the ballet parkers where they just kind of get animated about things and they run off the screen or through the revolving door or whatever, but, like, this is one of those things that, like, in my brain, I'm Just, you know, running through the revolving door over and over again because I just can't even. Yeah,

this is one I have not watched. And the only reason I haven't is because I know there is no ending.

The only reason I found out it existed in the first place, Netflix, is because I saw it was canceled. I had no idea this existed beforehand. And I'm like, well, I'm hearing all these people outraged because they love it.

Obviously there was something good about it. But I don't want to go through that madness again of getting my hopes up. Surely, because I watched Adobe of Season three.

No.

So I'm happy to hear that it has rabid fans and that it is as good as promised, but I don't think I'll be engaging with this anytime soon.

And that is totally fair. And I can't say that I would recommend that to anyone at this stage given. Given the status of things.

But it wasn't that long ago we could still get a season three Apple tv. Are you listening? Netflix didn't want it, but it seems right up your alley. And you seem to have unlimited money for niche science fiction stories.

Andy's doing the PR and Christian's kidnapping people. So Zal and Brett walk out. But also, hey, what up, Apple tv?

It's only because we care.

It is. It's only because we care.

That's what I'll say in the police report.

It was so great. I think I watched it as it was happening to your point, Andy. So I think we thought, like, that's.

That's the harshest ones, I think, when you don't know, like, you're just watching it.

Yeah, I mean, it was so odd. Like, clearly they're going to make a season three because you can't end a show. Like, I don't know if it was Den of Geek or one of those.

I was looking up recently and they're like, it should be illegal to do this. You should not be able to end the show that way without having committed to, yes, we will resolve this.

You should have made them film a different last episode or something.

You made me think of two more honorable mentions. The Canterbury Tales. Reading that for the first time and then going, oh, he planned like, what?

60, 80 more stories and now this is it because he died. That's not fair. How dare he die. The number two Star Trek Enterprise.

You know, just as things are getting good, just as we're getting into the Romulan War, this is when you decide to cancel the series. How dare you.

Yeah, all right.

And that was Mindhunter too. I think I was watching it. Are we just mad at Netflix right now?

What's the problem?

I think I was just watching it. This episode is not sponsored by Netflix

and we never will at this point.

Right. But I do think it's one of those things of, like.

Well, yeah.

When you're in it. Like, you're. How cruel is that? Is cruel. You're right. Like you. Because you're. It's different hearing about it later. But dang.

Yeah.

Yeah. All right.

Because wasn't the last scene. Can I ask one thing? And it's not. I'm not going to spoil it.

Yes, you may.

And he wasn't. Wasn't the last scene. Like they're in the. The cafeteria of the school or something. I'm trying to.

That maybe. But that is not how. That is not what stands out to me about the finale of the show. We can maybe talk about it after

we end because it's very current. So I'm not going to.

But to quickly wrap things up since we're running very long. How would I end this show? I realized as we were talking, I can solve two problems with one stone.

Because the OA crowd can meet up with the Sliders crowd and help them to get back to their proper parallel universe. And then some of the Sliders group can hang out with the OA group and go on their journeys together.

And some of them can go back to where they wanted to go. Home. And that's how we'll resolve both of them. And without saying any more, I think that would fit pretty well with both shows.

Genius. No notes. Yeah. As previously mentioned, we went way over budget today, so we are going to be doing a bonus question today.

If you really want to hear more of us. After hearing a lot of us today, you can spend money and head that way onto Fourth wall.

The link will be down in the description below to get that way. If you really think we're worthy of your money. If you really want to hear our voices again.

And we're going to ask you the question, what is the story that we got a conclusion to that left us unimpressed and why? So the total opposite of what we did today for the main episode. So if that interests you, head that way.

Lady and gentlemen, do you have a recommendation for the audience?

There's a lot of ways this could go. We talked about it several times, but it's made me miss it. So I'm going to say go watch that first season of Heroes.

You can just watch the first season, it works as a more or less self contained thing.

It was really good and it's probably been long enough that there are probably people out there that haven't seen it and maybe didn't even know they should see it. So for Season of Heroes, amen.

Is this ones that we didn't think resolved well, or is this a separate.

In general, Anything you want to recommend?

Just anything.

Open a whole wide world.

Gosh. I mean, I. Okay, well, on topic, actually, go watch the original Scream.

To a wall and you answer. And even they were like. A lot of times people will be like, my students will be like, why would you have answered it? You wouldn't have.

You would have always answered that. So go watch the original Scream with that in your brain.

Okay, I'm going to recommend. So I just thought of it now and Andy's here, lost. Because I know he has more divisive feelings than I. I think that's funny.

I. I think the way that I ended up more positive overall is that I Stockholm myself into lying, that it was always about the characters and it wasn't about the questions. Because if I actually go the other way, you know, the correct way, I would be more upset than I actually am. So.

Well, actually, all the questions got resolved. Andy, we do have another podcast about this. Okay, bye.

All right, so guys, thank you for all you do. Please leave a five star review in your podcast with Florida. If you're on YouTube right now, like the episode, leave us a comment down below.

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