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Addressing Baker Dill being sentient: He does seemingly start to become sentient when he pulls the knife on the 2 drunk guys in the beginning. That's the beginning of things starting to go awry. I assume that when Baker pulled the knife, this could also be the moment that the kid got the knife in meatspace? We as the audience know something is off because that's when the salesman first misses Baker, he's very confused as to why Baker isn't there at the coast. He should have been there according to the strict predictability of video game timing. Something changed. I guess you could assume this is when the kid started to code the game into the new game: killing the stepdad. ? Before this time, it was just Baker being the player in the fishing game. I don't think Baker has the literal spirit of the kid's father, but I do think this is the "eaten the forbidden fruit" moment. Whether he has free will is unclear and doubtful, but I do think he became sentient.

Just about to start the episode, but in case nobody mentioned BAKER DILL = BAD KILLER

Wow I can't believe I have been calling John "Paul" all this time and no one corrected me. I sort of thought when the son showed up in the video game that it meant he was also dead? (I wasn't sure if he had killed himself or perhaps had been killed for his crimes?) I'll admit to checking out towards the end. Mostly my take away from this is that maybe I should take a vacation to Florida. And then I googled if it was filmed in Florida and it was not. It was filmed in Mauritius, and I was like, Oh I should go there. But it's kind of far and then I ended up looking in the Caribbean. Long story short, I went to Antigua in May.

I mean, the twist of this movie is just the final episode of St. Elsewhere. It traded an autistic boy looking into a snow globe and reimagining the people in his life, to an autistic boy looking into computer code and reimagining the people in his life. I know that they don't specifically say that he has autism spectrum disorder, but he's definitely written that way. The stepfather calls him a 'creepy weirdo' who stays in his room all day with his video game, but that his teacher says he's a genius. His mother gets super defensive when he's mentioned. His bedroom is still very childlike. Doesn’t seem to want or have any friends. He's hyper-focused on the world he's created and that world only. He has a strong sense of justice. Having him actually commit murder was the nail in the coffin for me. After sitting with the movie for a bit I thought maybe I was just reading into things, but then I read some Tweets from a few other people with ASD who felt similarly. I just couldn't enjoy this one. The cat(s) were adorable though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This was my interpretation, and I think it's borne out by some of that out-of-nowhere voiceover that gestures at how consciousness might be an emergent property of this kind o code. But as the gang touched on several times — and what was really at the heart of June's confusion whether this was a video game at all — it's not clear whether the son is playing his own game. Like, when you see screenshots that are anything but code, it appears to be a relatively simple-looking first-person view of a person fishing off a boat, which suggests he's playing as Baker Dill. But if you take everything that's happening in Plymouth as how it appears to Baker Dill, and not how the kid sees it, you're positing that Dill is an AI consciousness, not as an avatar the kid is merely piloting around. That distinction is super important because it's the answer to the question of "who makes the decision to kill Abusive Greek Dad?" It seems to me that the kid has already made up his mind and is guiding Dill to that conclusion. Which means Dill doesn't have agency and there really are no consequences for the moral dilemma he's placed in (especially the last minute wrinkle with Lucky Gas Pumper, as you said earlier). But all this really goes back to what Jason said at the top of the audience Q&A — if the questions are about the internal logic of the video game world, we can just stop right now because there simply aren't answers to be found.

"Serenity now! Insanity later." - Lloyd Braun, if he watched this movie -- Probably,

I dunno, for narrative purposes I am willing to suspend disbelief that the characters within the game buy their world as real, and to express that to the audience (and to not give away the twist) the world has to seem real. This actually touches on something I was thinking about this movie and that it lacks a stylization. How interesting would it have been that when the twist were to be revealed that the world got more and more video game like... Less detailed, the same NPCs walking down the street, more obvious souless behavior... even some pixelization?

I literally had to spit my coffee out with this one.

This is great but it makes me wonder about the nature of the game. Did the kid always mean for Matthew McConaughey to kill his step dad in the game? Because it seems like the game started as just hanging with his dad and fishing. If the rules changed to kill his step dad, having an anagram name for Bad Killer makes no sense. That would mean the anagram is just for the audience and it's a complete coincidence on the part of the kid.

joined a new band

But that’s raclette noob

When the son showed up in game, I assumed it was supposed to be a young version of Matthew McConaughey. But I found that I kept over complicating the plot. I thought being the video game was a mild twist (because it seemed kind of obvious and was revealed so early). So, I kept expecting the movie to get crazier. Then it kind of didn't and all my theorizing was for naught.

But then they couldn't have given us the gem: "a hooker who can't afford hooks."

This was amazing. I was at the live show in ATX. I have two comments from the ep: 1. I lost it when they mentioned Nirvana b/c I tried to send this to them earlier that morning 2. I can't believe Queen man won the 2nd Opinion slot. I def hoped the girl who did hers to Deep In the Heart of TX would win; The crowd just clapped right with her and flabbergasted Jason, lol. Also, the obligatory "June, John, and Jason".

Or stuff that burger with some!

These are the truest words ever spoken. Oh, and if you want to crumble some of that sweet, sweet BC on a burger, I won’t say “no”

Are you blaming this movie on El Nino?

Ketchup and mayo is "Russian dressing" Ketchup, mayo, and relish is "Thousand island" also known as In n' Out burger sauce, which is delicious.

It was actually a polar bear. I'm dead now.

Even crazier is he’s fishing in Texas and the competition is in Las Vegas

It's been a long time since I originally saw this movie, but at the time I remember being amused that Kris Kristofferson seemed to have gone straight from a fishing trip to a dance competition, fully dressed in a tuxedo -- something he had definitely not planned on doing when he originally went fishing. So was he carrying a tux in his tackle box?

Oh, at my old dance studio, there were weekly "parties" as well. It's more of a get together to dance. Basically anyone can show up - they had salsa nights, tango nights, etc. It's good for people who don't have dance partners, because people rotate and often instructor-assisted.

Also, like, I'm sure I'm not too culturally aware, but when you think of Cuban burritos, don't you think of the ones that are cooked on both sides (kinda like a Cubano), not those regular burritos Vanessa tried to eat?

Are you saying he's a...bad hombre?