This episode is a doozey. We recap and breakdown and hash out and extrapolate on the most interesting movie and streaming video info to come out of San Diego Comic Con this year. Find the links below for each of the trailers and previews we discussed.
Marvel Studios announced is Phase 4 projects. You could guess we are excited and you’d be correct.
We recap chapters 10-14 of The Golden Compass. We continue to marvel at Pullman’s themes and complexity. We discuss his unique hero, Lyra Belaqua. We plan to finish the novel in the next episode.
Trivia is Apollo 11 themed to honor the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.
Episode One One Four: Stranger Things Season Three One Shot
Recorded 7/7/2019
This episode your BrothersGeek bring you a One Shot in which we deep dive into the third season of Stranger Things. We dissect the ongoing mysteries of the series. We ponder how the artists who create the show manage to find the near perfect balance of tone and genre. We appreciate the smart, driven female characters and understand the silly, clueless male characters. Our discussion roams to Chris and the memories the show evokes in him and to the nostalgia Patrick and Andrew feel with each passing pop culture reference. Our discussion dovetails into an examination of the “binge-watching” art form and we agree Stranger Things 3 might be the best example of it.
Stranger Things theme Remix by C418
There is no trivia this week as Andrew is a failure.
This episode your BrothersGeek trademark a brand-new phrase and it is magnificent. Andrew sells Chris and Patrick on the Deadwood movie that dropped on HBO recently. Patrick and Chris sell Andrew on Toy Story 4. We do a deep dive into Soviet Russia power structures of the mid 1980s after Patrick watches three episodes of Chernobyl. Luckily, Christopher is something of an expert on the subject. Christopher and Andrew play lots of Harry Potter Wizards Unite from Niantic games. It is a surprisingly robust game for an initial A.R. release. The boys continue with Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass. The book only get more tense and more dense the deeper the boys get into it.
Next episode will be a Stranger Things One Shot as each brother has plans to binge watch when season 3 drops on July 4rd.
Trivia is His Dark Materials themed and Chris goes it alone.
We, your Brothers Geek, bring a regular sized episode this time around. We talk about anything and everything we want to. We recap what is hyping us up from E3. Andrew and Christopher are particularly excited for Halo: Infinite and the new Xbox rig that is coming in the near future. The Boys agree that the purchase of a Switch may finally be in the offing for one or all of us. Chris and Patrick have seen Dark Phoenix and both agree it isn’t nearly as bad as people are making it out to be. Andrew will see it just hasn’t yet. We talk at length and in depth about Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass. We recap and remark regarding just how complex and deep the world Pullman is building across just the first five chapters. We agree to read through the end of Part 1: “Oxford” before our next episode.
Trivia is ruined in our X-men discussion but it’s ok.
This episode we discuss two unstoppable forces of nature, John Wick and Godzilla. Each had a new film drop and your BrothersGeek have seen them both! We talk about what we like, we talk about what could have been done better with each film. We hope for greater things in the future from both of them.
Also, we tease our first ever BrothersGeek Book Club. We are reading Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass. Read along with us! Chapters 1-5 by Father’s Day!
Trivia is John Wick themed and Patrick is successful!
Loved the podcast, here are some of my own observations. I really can say, I only watched the first and last seasons.
· Loved the most human episode when they knighted the woman and faced their deaths this season, speaks the most of love and loss — and the quest for power, the major themes it seems of the series .
· And that is what the last episode is all about.
· In life we live the paradox, life is bittersweet, really nobody wins — or loses. Life just is — a grand adventure, full of love and loss, great joys, moments of great goodness and grace and powerful sorrows and losses.
· Death of one kind or another gets us all — in the end and that is what the decision scene is about. Even in winning there is great loss.
· John Snow’s murder of Dani is most powerful symbol of that. It seems bit overdone in such obvious direct way, like hitting an egg with a hammer, but the point is made. Huge victories achieved at high cost to others results in high cost to ourselves.
· The dragon’s destruction of the throne is the final symbolic seal of final vengeance — and loss for everyone. The dream is dead too for everyone. And everyone must let go of it.
· In the end, life is about loss, nobody quite gets what they want —- except for fleeting mystical moments where we sense our connection with one another, our deepest loyalties and yearnings.
· And in the end, the seven kingdom’s are not united, the iron throne proves to be an elusive fantasy of power and wealth — unity. The final peace is achieved by human agreement, not by violence or even unity. They — we have the power all along in our grasp, the violence and search for power is fantastical absurd pursuit — that is why the rock continues to fall back down the hill.
· The person who lost the most and appears the weakest becomes the leader/king. Now that is almost biblical, but that may be stretching it. That is the story the perseveres. Look to the most vulnerable among you for your leadership. That is the story of all of us. The rest is fantasy.
· So in the end game of thrones is really about life and loss and moving on and life’s almost complete unpredictability — and the final lesson may be — be careful what you strive for, power and wealth never really overcome love and goodness — and a good story — in the end.
· Game of Thrones just created fantasy story to reveal these basic human truths, sometimes in powerful images, sometimes in heavy handed ways. But it was fun ride.
Love the podcasts. You mother and I did not get any of the trivia questions.
Episode One One Zero: Samwell Tarly pitches Democracy
Recorded 5/20/2019
We discuss the finale episode of our beloved series. We reminisce on the ups and downs, consider our favorite moments, and lament those moments we will never see. Andrew poses multiple Game of Thrones themed trivia questions to the Brothers and varied levels of success are achieved. We tease the weeks ahead and what our listeners can expect now that this special series of episodes has reached its conclusion.
Episode One Zero Nine: Praise the Seven, Euron’s Dead!
We talk the penultimate episode of season 8 of Game of Thrones! The Fire and the Blood and the Bells! We agree this may be one of the most visually stunning episodes of the entire series but, alas, the imagery can not make up for just how shallow our beloved television series has become. We discuss the big moments from the episode and just how unearned some of them feel. And we totally forget a “major” character dies, because, honestly, he sucked anyways.
We react to episode 4 of Season 8 of Game of Thrones. The Long Night is over and now the final war begins, but first drinking and sex and betrayal! It feels like classic Thrones. We endure two tragic deaths Jon can’t say farewell to his direwolf and Dani is oh so close to the edge. The series is truly in its final phase and gas pedal is pushed all the way to floor. We just hope this car isn’t headed off a cliff.
I’m a devoted fan of the world that George RR Martin has created. As you may know about me, I grew up reading Tolkien, playing Dungeons and Dragons, embracing and absorbing the science fiction and fantasy genres in art, literature, gaming, movies, all of it. A Song of Ice and Fire is a universe that does what all great art does – examines the human condition through the lens of a fictional and in this case, fantastical world. The literature of Game of Thrones turns many a fantasy trope on their head by relegating those fantastical elements to history. The current time period of the world to which we are introduced is seemingly bereft of magic and monsters. The game of GOT is human conflict, power, and survival. People are preoccupied with the accumulation of wealth, power and prestige (as humans do), to the detriment of a shared knowledge of history, and appreciation for the fragility of human existence, except when that existence is threatened by the tip or edge of a sword. The Wall and the Night’s Watch are punch lines. These themes dominate the early parts of the story in both the books and the HBO show. Martin does an amazing job of teasing the forgotten history, sprinkling his world with memory, myth, and subtle, unexplained but acknowledged family lore. It is a wonderful approach to a genre tale, because the people like me who love genre worlds are curious and pay close attention to all these elements. We search for connections, fact behind the fantastical, and love knowing more than the characters in the world know. The anticipation, the setup, the reveal of knowledge and amazing experience is why we love this type of world, and why the world of GOT captivates – because it teases the bigger explanation for the unexplained, the lurking threat or moment of epiphany when the currents of the fantastic are revealed to our heroes. Martin’s books are weighty tomes, filled with details that close readings reward. And they are frustratingly slow to reveal that knowledge, but so well plotted to include sprinklings of fantasy elements that keep that longing fed with a trickle of fantasy spirit. The HBO show in its early seasons did a great job of replicating that tantalizing flow of knowledge and wonder. As the show grew in popularity, with characters captivating and repulsive in equal measure (all built 1
upon the rich base Martin created in his books), the show allowed us fans to finally see the GOT world in all its grimy, bloody and human glory. We are enthralled by it.
Martin has been…glacial….in his publication output of the main story. And as a result, given the demands of money, time and artistic desire (which cannot be discounted), the show has moved beyond the books. And it has lost something in that process. Decoupled from the admittedly dense books, the show writers and producers have been able to graft their vision into Martin’s world. Sometimes to great affect, and sometimes to less than ideal results, rooted in a…simplification of approach.
For non-readers of the books, purely watchers of the show, you may not understand that the Night King is only hinted at at this point in the tale written in the books. I have zero doubt that Martin has heavily influenced and guided the introduction of and early interactions with the Night King in the show. And the limitations of the medium of TV, regardless of how creative the team at HBO really is, make it very difficult (but not impossible) to effectively reveal knowledge and wisdom about the Night King in a subtle way. We’ve received teases of lore, smidges of knowledge, hints of speculation – all definitively coupled with a looming existential threat, but often with less than the deft touch of the creator of this world.
That being said, the teases have been relatively effective, peaking our interest in what the Night King is all about, what is his plan, what does he want, what is the source of his enmity to humanity and life, and what could be his undoing. Close readers and watchers THINK they have an idea, but the internet is, at its most effective, a speculation delivery system.
And as Jon Snow has repeatedly emphasized lately in every conversation he has in the show, the Night King and the dead approach to wipe out life in this wonderful universe we love. Nothing is more important than this threat to humanity in this world of Ice and Fire. And it is a credit to the writing and Harrington’s performance that the Queen of Dragons, and others in the North
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and elsewhere in Westeros, and we as fans, are all persuaded by him.
Yet, the show has unfortunately devolved to the simplest, surface level explanations or resolutions. Contrary to this, episode after episode has teased the Night King’s power, and his connection to the ancient lore and conflict between the Children of the Forest and humans. And, the books and show have hinted at the connection between the Three-Eyed Raven and the Night King, suggesting a powerful bond, or at the very least, a role the Three-Eyed Raven plays in resisting the oncoming winter personified in the Night King and the dead.
The books and the show have teased deep magic. The return of the dragons, and Daenerys as the Mother of Dragons is the most visible example, but there are regular references to at the very least magical elements to the lore. And as genre fans, it is these elements that need more development. We don’t need a complete explanation, because we never get that, but we love the best fantasy worlds because we get introduced to fantastical systems that have a internal logic, an consistent rationale, and at the same time a fulfillment of our interest in things beyond our senses. We crave deeper knowledge, because from that flows the wisdom at the heart of the tale.
And what we got was the enemy defeated by a knife. Don’t get me wrong – that moment in Episode 3 of Season 8 was a badass confluence of all the Arya training, skill, and magic she possesses, Red Priestess Melisandra’s lore-ifying and the shared knowledge of the capabilities of dragonglass. Oh, and the characters’ speculation that if the Night King is killed, all the walkers cease to exist as well. For me, I loved that Arya struck the blow, if a blow was to be struck.
But we also got the Three-Eyed Raven, with all his powers of sight, warging and who knows what else, as passive bait. We get nothing more of the interesting and unknown connections between the Night King and the Three-Eyed Raven. We get nothing on the Night King’s motivations and history – maybe other than he was created to kill humans?
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Bran’s discussion of the role of the Three-Eyed Raven plays in this world in Episode 2 helps to explain my disappointment. The Three-Eyed Raven is human memory, and the Night King wants to wipe out humanity, including its shared history, which we only know through memory. And then Bran suggests that he be bait to draw the Night King to him. This discussion is at the core of why we love this genre – it involves more than simply the clash of swords, the solving problems with violence, the basic human approach to challenges by brute forcing the solution. It teased the “more” that we love in these tales.
And what we got was the existential threat defeated by a knife.
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