Episode 142 - The Phantom: LIVE! (w/ Eliza Skinner, Ed Brubaker)

[firsttimecallerlongtimelistenr 3590]

and baby makes 4

 

[EllenM 943]

AUDEN!

 

What do you think about the earth-shattering CM news today?

 

All I could think about was how happy I was that we're never going to see Jack again.

[Auden 1809]

AUDEN!

 

 

What do you think about the earth-shattering CM news today?

 

 

All I could think about was how happy I was that we're never going to see Jack again.

 

Ahahaha, Ellen. I totally thought of you when I heard the news!

 

I have been on an emotional rollercoaster! And not just because I'm super-stressed and exhausted from packing for my move in, um, 7 hours. Here are my thoughts and feels.

 

- I love Aaron Hotchner so I'm sad to see the character go. And I'm losing the character in another way too. I can't watch the show without the knowledge of Gibson's real-life, very un-Hotch-like doucheyness hanging at the back of my mind.

 

- But I will always love the scene (S03E14, around the 20 min. mark) where Chester Hardwick was threatening to kill Hotch and Reid in an unguarded room in a prision and Hotch sneered, took off his jacket, removed his tie and rolled up his sleeves to get ready to fight the quite physically imposing serial killer.

 

- I wonder how the show is going to explain Hotchner's absence. A fatal fall down an elevator shaft? A tragic boating accident?

 

- Then there's the Shemar Moore thing. What is happeneeeng.

 

- The goss is hot and juicy.

 

- It takes a third strike, the last of which involved violence against a producer to get an actor fired from CM. But an actress on the show gets fired willy-nilly.

 

- Hahaha.

 

[EllenM 943]

1. I can't watch the show without the knowledge of Gibson's real-life, very un-Hotch-like doucheyness hanging at the back of my mind.

2. Hotch sneered, took off his jacket, removed his tie and rolled up his sleeves to get ready to fight the quite physically imposing serial killer.

3. I wonder how the show is going to explain Hotchner's absence. A fatal fall down an elevator shaft? A tragic boating accident?

4. Then there's the Shemar Moore thing. What is happeneeeng.

5. The goss is hot and juicy.

6. But an actress on the show gets fired willy-nilly.

1. Remember when he got catfished? I let that slide, separating the man from the character but now I'm like "Naww"

2. Agreed, so sexy. I was a little peeved when Reid jumped in to save Hotch from himself.

3. I am made of questions. See below

4. Getting robbed is cray. It came up on my Facebook trending bar.

5. I think that Aisha Tyler will get the female boost and CBS will default write Joe Mantegna as No. 1 and Reid will be No. 2. But now I have questions about the balance of the team because they're going to need to put another dude in there.

6. Don't you know multiple blonde/brunette white women are easier to find than a single brunet white guy?

 

My thinking is this:

 

So Hotch will be in the first 2 episodes for sure, they've been shot already. How to make the exit though?

• They aren't going to bring him back to kill him and he likely wouldn't do that either.
  
• Promotion to a different position/agency makes no sense given how many times he has fought to keep the team together. They could use a need of Jack's to be the scapegoat, like he needs to go to a new school.
  
• On the other hand, there are at least 20 serial killers he caught now on the loose. Maybe they will take the easy way out and have a serial killer kill him and Jack and they just won't show the bodies?
  

That feels unsatisfying even as I type it.

 

Next, Rossi gets the Number 1 slot with Reid as the new Rossi. This is weird, I know. Perhaps Cruz will drop by for team evaluations and work on some cases with them. There will be at least 2 episodes between the loss of Hotch and the Replacement!Hotch. Like Emily Prentiss, there will be an episode where a dude shows up and everyone is like "I don't know about this" then VERY slowly gains the trust of the team. There's been so much trauma in these people's lives over 10 years (in real time?) that they can't afford to get close to Replacement!Hotch. I think Replacement!Hotch will be non-white and be closer in age to Rossi, just a gut feeling. I know he'll have some dark secret driving him to do this work but part of me wants him to be well-adjusted and normal, having nothing horrific happen in his background. If he's non-white, I understand the unlikeliness of this.

 

Will Joe or Aisha get the "and" credit in the opening? I think it will look like this, based off of the Season 11 opening credits:

1. Joe Mantegna
   
2. Matthew Gray Gubler
   
3. A.J. Cook
   
4. Kristen Vangsness
   
5. With Replacement!Hotch
   
6. And Aisha Tyler
   

Honestly looking at it, MGG could get the "with" and the new guy could take #2. There's my hot take.

[Smigg 1488]

Don't forget, Paget Brewster is back this season.

[EllenM 943]

Don't forget, Paget Brewster is back this season.

*Paul's voice when he learned Staying Alive was a Choose Your Own Adventure Book*

 

What.

[Smigg 1488]

http://www.eonline.com/uk/news/738791/paget-brewster-is-returning-to-criminal-minds-yes-again

 

I've always liked Paget Brewster, I'm not fussed about Criminal Minds, but I like her.

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

Whatever they decide to go with its not going to be 1/10th as awkward as when Elizabeth Rohm's character asked if they were firing her because she was gay on Law and Order.

 

I cant help but feel his assault on a writer is going to guarantee said writer ensuring his character gets a thoroughly terrible ending.

[Smigg 1488]

For some reason, I just imagine a scene like in Friends when Joey got into a fight on the set of his new show called "Mac and CHEESE", and realised he was the one that was expendable.

 

"Tommy! Big opportunity for you, I heard that there's an opening for Criminal Minds!"

"I'm already on Criminal Minds, what are you talking about?!"

"What character do you play?!"

"Hotchner"

"Oh..."

[Cameron H. 23786]

Every guy in my office has expressed that they are hardcore Steve fans, and that's when I realized that is because they were all Steves when they were in high school and don't see how douchey he really is. Their exact words seem to be "I feel so bad for Steve! He just gets shafted!"

 

I'm still Team Nancy Needs To Be Single And Find Herself Again.

 

Okay, I was just thinking about this again. Could you please explain to me

how exactly your co-workers can feel like Steve gets "shafted?" He has a redemption scene (I won't call it an arc), and all of the sudden he's the good guy. And, while I'm not suggesting that Nancy is a prize to be won, he even ends up with her at the end! As far as Steve is concerned, he "won." How is that getting shafted? How is he being mistreated? That literally makes NO SENSE! Fuck, Steve!

 

 

[Anonymous37 22]

Ed Brubaker, at 36:16: I think it's ... it's what we're seeing now, where everything is some preexisting IP that the marketing firms are "You need to put out the Battleship movie, because everyone knows what Battleship is." And it's like ... but I don't think anyone even in the Nineties, other than your girlfriend's dad, knew who The Phantom was.

 

Paul Scheer: Yeah! Who was a 70 year old man, and he should know about it!

 

Ed Brubaker: Yeah, exactly! If you grew up in the Thirties and the Forties as a kid, you knew who The Phantom was, and The Shadow. But if you were like ... like l grew up reading comics, and I'm like, when that movie came out I was in my mid-to-late twenties ... I didn't give a shit about The Phantom. I cared more about Billy Zane. Which is weird, because I don't care about Billy Zane.

 

So I had to check Ed Brubaker's wikipedia page just to make sure, but he's actually older than I am, and I read quite a bit of The Phantom in comic book form. The reason for that had to do with the sort of comic books available in India in the early and mid-1980's.

 

I'm sure that things are different now. But the sort of comics that were around at that time were -- in addition to the Amar Chitra Katha books, of course -- Tintin, Asterix and Obelix, and the King Features heroes such as Mandrake the Magician and, yes, The Phantom. The Marvel and DC heroes didn't have as much mindshare back then, even for middle-to-upper class English-speaking Indians.

 

There are a whole lot of things that are problematic about those books and their treatment of non-whites, and Paul, Jason, Eliza and Ed get to that in the episode. But kids want to read comics, and watch and listen to heroes, no matter how offensive they can be to their own ethnic and racial groups. It's my guess that you'll find a lot of people my age who grew up in parts of South America, Africa, and Asia who gave a shit about The Phantom and older pulp heroes.

 

P.S. -- I didn't watch the movie, but one of the things I enjoyed about The Phantom in the old comic strips and books was that he would go into bars and order milk, then inevitably get into fights over it. I hope they at least had a scene like that, just as a sop to fans of The Phantom. But I'm not going to actually sit through the entire thing just to find out.

 

(Edit: changed "he's actually younger than I am" to the correct "he's actually older than I am".)

[taylor anne photo 11311]

 

Okay, I was just thinking about this again. Could you please explain to me

how exactly your co-workers can feel like Steve gets "shafted?" He has a redemption scene (I won't call it an arc), and all of the sudden he's the good guy. And, while I'm not suggesting that Nancy is a prize to be won, he even ends up with her at the end! As far as Steve is concerned, he "won." How is that getting shafted? How is he being mistreated? That literally makes NO SENSE! Fuck, Steve!

 

 

I have a huge suspicion that they knew that would make me angry. They sure do think it's funny to be misogynist to make me angry. Such fun.

 

 

But from what they were saying when they were talking about him it sounds like they think that Nancy is wrongly mad at him for everything? Even though I would be utterly pissed off at my boyfriend too if my best friend went missing and I found her car and all he could care about was getting in trouble for throwing a party. PRIORITIES MAN! And then I think they think that since Nancy never breaks up with him that she was just ghosting him and then running off with Jonathan, which again... they were trying to find Barb and Will sooooooo priorities here... They're the worst.

 

[Auden 1809]

Almost ded. The UNSUB is moving. Want to reply to funny and thoughtful and great posts but too tired for language. Post longer stuff later. Post quiz now. More Nancy or Barb? I got more nancy.

 

https://www.buzzfeed.com/genevievebolton/are-you-more-barb-or-nancy-2j9oy?utm_term=.qo3YNExb2#.mmR0rYQb4

[Cameron H. 23786]

 

They're the worst.

 

 

 

 

 

 

ETA: And apparently, I am also a Nancy. I don't know, though. I really liked Barb a lot. Now she got shafted.

 

[joel_rosenbaum 1269]

 

But from what they were saying when they were talking about him it sounds like they think that Nancy is wrongly mad at him for everything?

Just my opinion, but the character development in Stranger Things is horrendous. Characters (Nancy, especially) make completely irrational decisions that almost nothing to do with what we know about them up to a given point. They put together conclusions that they have no business coming up with given the available evidence. When one character postulates an idea that is completely bonkers, everyone else is convinced, full stop. It also seems like there's at least one scene of convenient exposition in every episode, especially when the science teacher is involved. He is basically the Prima Guide of Hawkins, Indiana.

 

Yet the show works. Kind of like Twin Peaks. Hopefully they don't reveal Laura Palmer's killer too quickly -- I think that spoiler is okay.

 

[taylor anne photo 11311]

Almost ded. The UNSUB is moving. Want to reply to funny and thoughtful and great posts but too tired for language. Post longer stuff later. Post quiz now. More Nancy or Barb? I got more nancy.

 

https://www.buzzfeed...Exb2#.mmR0rYQb4

Surprising no one I am Barb. They say that I am a badass who knows who she is and is confident in herself. Hell yeah!

[klemjohansen 748]

How did I get Nancy? This is bullshit!

[MichaelRogers 1]

there were cartoons

Phantom 2040 that was inspired by the movie

 

an 86 cartoon

Defenders of the Earth that dealt with the issue of daughters

 

and lastly there was the syfi mini series that was supposed to be a tv series is my guess

[DavidBaron 1]

Just in case you don't want to go hunting on ebay, but need some Phantom toy action in your life!

 

I am sure Billy Zane will sign it for you at a convention to make your life complete!

[ocean_machine 56]

So is "white privilege" like a superpower? How does someone have "white privilege" in the jungle?

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

So is "white privilege" like a superpower? How does someone have "white privilege" in the jungle?

 

 

He's a rich white dude in the middle of the jungle, living in a fully furnished cave complete with servants in little outfits. Exactly what needs further explication?

[MatthewThomas 1]

I know this is shameless self promotion but I'm a fledgling YouTuber who would love to have some more followers. I'm a long time listener to the podcast and I always watch the movies before listening. I recently watched The Phantom and recorded a reaction video to the movie. I'd love to have anyone take a look and if you like it subscribe. I'm posting this quite a while after the episode aired so this is probably worthless but you never know.