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We're talking about the second episode of the third season called Play Test. Black Mirror is a show created by Charlie Brooker. It's an anthology series with six self-contained dark stories. The series explores the darker outcome of human interaction and our relationship with technology.
The New Yorker has called it the Twilight Zone for the Digital Age. And this next episode run features appearances from Bryce Dallas Howard, Halton Catchfires, Mackenzie Davis, House of Cards, Michael Kelly, Roots' Malachi Kirby, Boardwalk Empire's Kelly McDonald, Game of Thrones, Jerome Flynn. That's just a name of few. Seasons 1, 2, and 3 are all streaming on Netflix plus that Christmas episode.
You can follow Black Mirror on Facebook at Black Mirror Netflix. Six new stories of the critically acclaimed Black Mirror. Now streaming only on Netflix. I need to force that to be the room.
Stop and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am editor at TheRinger.com and joining me on the other line, he just got off cleanup crew at Pariah.
It's Jason Concepcion! Hand over the Nitro Glisser and motherfucker. I'm so excited to have Jason with me today. Andy was unfortunately not able to make recording today, but we got Jason obviously to talk about Westworld.
We're going to go really door-heavy on Westworld theories and then Jason. It's kind enough to join me to talk about the second episode of Black Mirror Playtest. So that's the second half of the show. Jason, my first question for you, based off of last night's relatively dense episode of Westworld, is who is the target demographic for a Sunday night HBO orgy?
Because this is now the second time in a calendar year, I think, since true detective season 2, where they've just been like, orgy episode. And I just can't imagine, like, who's like 7 o'clock, whatever. And these go, it's like 10 o'clock, you're settling in, you've got the World Series on one channel, you've got the football on the other channel, the elections going to hell, and you're like, but what I really need is group sex on a pre-pig. I need to see like, I need to see robots just absolutely sprinkled in gold dust, striding naked through the streets of a border town.
I hate to be denipic rising. Was that the most inessential group sex you've ever seen? Well, I think that was kind of the point. I mean, like, it's hard to say, you know, but I feel like kind of the point was to make this unappealing while also kind of like, to check the boxes of necessary nudity on a Sunday night at HBO.
Yeah, I feel like they just wanted to make it seem like, you know, you don't really want this, even though you think you want this. Yeah, and I think that also, I mean, they had to differentiate Pariah from the usual sex and drugs and rocker role that happens in the Westworld. Yeah, which is like, is it that different? Yeah, it's really that different from what, yeah, I feel like this is the stuff you can get into at maze, like at any time, you know, like you can absolutely get down with like three or more robots at maze and then like kill them all and like get into it with some confederates.
Right. Like is it really that much crazier? You just don't get to have a eyes wide shut mask on while you're doing it, I guess. Right.
Yeah. Okay, so one of the things we wanted to talk about today is like the treasure trove of theories that are out there. There's a very, you know, robust Reddit pop community that's tracking Westworld and pretty much every day now or every Monday. The internet just spits out like all the theories.
We're going to try and be a little bit of a clearing house. I would like to just like, sweepingly credit Westworld Reddit with a lot of like this stuff. I'm not coming up with this stuff by myself, obviously. I recommend that you check out those those Reddit threads if you're interested in this stuff because they are really spins and gold out there.
But you know, just to kind of like run through them, I think that the first one that we wanted to talk about because of last night's episode, it made it pretty, if it's not two timelines, they are really like going pretty close to the edge with it being two timelines. So what do you, where are you at? Do you think that we're watching two separate timelines and then second question, do you think the man in black is William in a later part of his life? Yes.
I was, I was on the fence before, but I think they made it, they just dropped so many hints last night. You know, at one point Logan, when he's talking about, you know, business meeting, they were taking part in the real world. And you walked in and your cheap black suit and I was like, oh, okay. I think it's pretty clear that that's what is going on.
This raises a whole bunch of other questions for me, such as, you know, like when the man in black talks about dissecting the robots and them being made up of million little circuits and parts. Like when, how different are the robots in the early timeline and in the current quote unquote timeline? I don't feel like differentiation from say the robot that Ford is talking to in the freezer downstairs and early Dolores and current Dolores. It's hard to know how they really changed.
I'd like to know more about that. But I think it's pretty clear that they've hinted pretty heavily that it is a two-time line affair right now. Yeah. And so there's, what Jason's referring to is I think he, the man in black when he finds Teddy on the tree is like, I once tore, like cut you open and looked at it.
And then I'm not sure, so sure I understand the medical science undergirding the blood transfusion between robots. But, you know, I'm going with it. It's interesting. Like the idea of this sort of vampiric life-giving juice that goes into like these pieces of metal.
I guess that's kind of fascinating. The other, so if you take that to be given, certain things start to kind of materialize. And this is really a lot of it is speculation. So if you don't want, I mean, this is also the kind of thing that we're going to throw into.
It's like if you don't want it to be spoiled by two people who don't know anything, this is kind of a tough lesson right now. But you can make an argument obviously that William and Logan are part of like whatever this, I'm not actually sure if it's the Delos corporation because Delos is that Hopkins is that Ford's company? Or if they are like quote unquote the shareholders who come in, but they are arriving in their timeline and saying this place is hemorrhaging money. This guy Arnold killed himself and ever since then it's places been in free fall.
We're thinking about investing. And William is marrying into this family. He's marrying Logan's sister. And Logan is like this bad boy.
William is like this kind of a nine dude who's just like trying to do good in the world. And you can kind of see the blueprint of this idea that these two and this family are going to be the shareholders that Borg and Lady later on is going to be reporting to. Yes, that seems pretty clear. And that possibly, if we go along with it, William is man in black, that the man in black has kind of gone rogue from the entire thing.
And that his vision for this, his personal journey is not necessarily one of investment return. Right. He's just been looking for the maze basically for 30 years. Right.
And that sort of takes us nicely to Dolores who I think is going to be the other person who plays the major role in whatever these two timelines either overlap, which I think kind of think that they could overlap in the maze or at the end of the maze. Right. I think, well, the thing I've been thinking about is when Dolores is walking the streets of Pariah and sees herself in the parade, I think, and then she faints and the next thing, you know, she's being debriefed by Ford. I think there's some kind of, that's where the memories cross over.
In other words, that's where current Dolores is having some kind of fragment of a memory of being in Pariah 34 something years ago and causes some kind of break. And that's the moment where Ford is trying to kind of like still trying to explore whether Dolores is reaching consciousness, is she conscious, which I think like also why are they still trying to figure out if the robots are conscious after 30 years of them obviously being conscious. Right. And that's a real suspension of disbelief thing.
It's like the level of these flashpoint. I mean, it would take a real corporate sort of negligence to not see the volatility going on here. I think that obviously you could make the argument that what happens in the park is so visceral or whatever that like there's going to be obvious moments of violence and sex and craziness, but the amount of different hosts who are now experiencing issues as the Shana as Elise says, it's just like this is a virus basically. Yeah.
And that was that that I'm glad you brought that up because that is something I've wondered about when she she discovers the reason for the woodcutter host, the reason kind of wandered off was someone had implanted some kind of hard work. And was using him to upload data out of the park, which kind of seems like rich people have been coming to Westworld for three decades, doing all kinds of things in there, ostensibly in secret, but really being recorded by hosts and watched by people. And it just seems kind of obvious that hackers would be trying to get into this place like round the clock for years, like all the time, because it's just like a treasure trove of blackmail material. Yeah.
And this is what you would say. You had a really great piece that was about like Westworld's misunderstanding of shame and this idea that the arc of our sort of sexual desires has like gone from the public to the private that we're moving away from going to like, you know, not a strip clubs, but also like porn theaters and like the idea of this public adult entertainment to it's increasingly private. It's increasingly online. It's going to probably move into virtual reality altogether.
That's where this thing is going. The idea that people would be like, I want to be on camera committing genocide and sexual assault is in paying that much money. It must be a radically different world that this world is setting. And that has come up a lot online.
Like a lot of people were talking about last night about it. I think Emily Nussbaum was putting this out among others about just like the racial politics of this is like pretty bizarre or at least the lack of discussion about racial politics within the world of the show is pretty bizarre given what they're talking about. So we'll see how that plays out. I kind of just don't feel like this show is really going to unpack that, but maybe I'm wrong.
If you went to Westworld, like it would you be fine with just like getting down knowing that like various people are watching on their iPads? No, this is the thing with this full show is that like I also, frankly, and this is nothing about my character, like I would be much more comfortable with the city slickers version of this. Like let's just have a cattle drive. We don't have to fucking assault someone.
Like you could just like move the cows from that place to that place and like have someone be like, yeah, woo, you did it. Here's a steak. Have a whiskey. It's like the idea that like to make it really feel real.
It has to be this bakanal and like, heronimous Bosch scene. It's kind of nuts. I think like I'm still enjoying it. I do think though it is it is come time to like flesh out the world a little bit.
Like for instance, when that one tech gets outed taking liberties with decommissioned hosts. For necrophilia. Yeah. Just like the fact that that wouldn't be stated at you know, whenever you're brought on as an employee.
Like, hey, this is all on like they record everything. Well, it's like given the level of intelligence. Yeah, the nipwits that they have cleaning these things. It's really that much of a surprise that all these robots are going rogue.
So the thing that I wanted to talk about you mentioned it briefly, but was this conversation between Ford and Dolores, which had echoes of the confrontation between the architect and Neo, which kind of still worth mentioning. One of the coolest things like I think I've seen in like a mainstream blockbuster movie is the nine minutes speech the architect gives, which I did you were you like when you saw that the first time where you like I get it or did you I needed to see that like multiple times. And that was also early internet really did a good job breaking that down. Like the I remember like finding some like explanation of what that was after like relatively soon after it came out just being like just having my noodle completely cooked by that.
I remember being semi shocked that that seemed like the first time that you know like a creative like a movie or or TV kind of nodded towards internet speculation in a real way because there was a lot of you know I remember between those sequels. There was a lot of online talk about. Oh, you know, it's it could be a matrix within a matrix within a matrix and etc. And then they you know the architect really kind of laid that whole thing out that this has been going on for a while and Neo was part of is it like an established.
Yeah. Yeah. I was I remember being shocked that they did that and also a little bit disappointed that they kind of that they felt the need to explain it to that level. Yeah.
I think the thing like in these of you Westworld it kind of feels like it's a mystery in the same way that a crossword is a mystery in that figuring out what's going on is really the meat of what is driving me back to the show. But at the same time if you just kind of read the words of a crossword there's not a lot of there there yet. And I think that was for me that was kind of like the Ford Dolores. Yeah.
And I that that when he says when she asks are we friends and he says we're quite the opposite and that basically brings to the fore for like the idea that Dolores is Neo right like Dolores is going to be the one Dolores is going to be the one that gets sent in so whether it's something that Arnold has programmed himself into her deep into her like you know her code and Arnold is giving her messages if Arnold is in fact dead you know this sort of mysterious suicide seems to get like a little bit less plausible every week and that she is the one who is going to basically free her compatriots. And that in that first timeline if that's what we're operating from Dolores is basically going to lead some sort of bloody revolution that they will then stamp out they go through 30 years and then the man in black comes back and I kind of feel like giving like the way that they're connecting like a lot of it is going to be related to Dolores. Do you agree with that? I do.
I think you know this is kind of cheating. This is something that you showed me actually was Jonathan no one has a comment on a Reddit thread. Yeah. I think the shower thought is a Reddit threat where the shower thought was basically the scary thing isn't an AI that passes the Turing test.
It's an AI that consciously fails the Turing test and I think that's what we're seeing with Dolores like she on some level she understands that Ford and the park are watching her very closely. And so she's kind of repressing these is kind of awakening that she has and trying to hide it to some extent. Yeah. That is interesting to me.
I mean the best thing I saw on Reddit this week about the show is just in reference to Cliff and Colin sort of assuming the Lawrence Elo also the sort of bandit role in the one of the timelines in the Jimmy Simpson timeline is that right? Yeah. So in the Jimmy Simpson timeline, Cliff and Colin's who later will play the fugitive who had Harris is dragging through the desert to find the maze. You know this line from Shakespeare from Romeo and Juliet those violent delights have violent ends has come up a lot and you know you could make very obvious that the violent delights are.
But in Romeo and Juliet that is spoken by fire Lawrence who gives Romeo and Juliet the poison. So we can kind of see where things are going based on just like look this is just this is bad robot man. This is how these guys do it. They build these stories like you're saying it's more of an a crossword than it is a narrative right?
That's exactly what I'm saying. I think like yes that's exactly what I'm saying. And I still maintain that there's a level that there's a gear that this show could get to by kind of laying the groundwork a little more granularly that could be really like super interesting. Yeah.
Not there yet but I think it could get there. I think that when the show first started I was like we need the show needs a Han Solo it needs a Luke Skywalker it needs a Jon Snow it needs a Rob Snow it needs a Rob Stark it needs a like some identifiable avatar characters who are going through a quest. And I think that it just took a while but like Jimmy Simpson's probably gonna break that it's gonna have like a tragedy. Yeah and that'll be a very interesting transformation to watch and I think the big thing that you're talking about and the one that I guess we could speculate on is what is gonna be the zoom out shot and is this on our website.
And is this is this on our world is this 300 years in the future. Is this underground is it on an island like what is the setting that when we do the gods view of what's happening here everybody's like oh no I get it and it's gonna be crazy because it's like when that happens what how much of the outside world are they gonna show us. Right. I feel like I've changed my mind so many times about this I kind of feel like it is on earth but something bad has happened in the meantime where there's just like a huge swath of land that you can build a gigantic robot sex park on.
Because at some point forward when they're looking over the gigantic earth movers does say something about the neighbors. Like are they complaining blah blah blah blah. Interesting. Yeah so I think that you're going like I think it's on earth and I think that it's just kind of like corporations have carved up.
Large magic. Who are the neighbors like the University of Phoenix? Who's next door to Westworld? Just like you know we moved in next to Pariah we thought it was gonna be an episode of the Acedency.
It kind of seems like in early western the Jimmy Simpson timeline the early the Logan William timeline kind of seems like the host can definitely like mess you up at that time. Yeah well I wonder whether or not that's like also because they say like the farther you go out the crazier it gets. Right. I wonder if there's some sort of a there's like a checks and balances thing that's like not happening because of that Dolores is sort of propagating when she arrives somewhere like crazy shit happens.
Yeah but I don't know what the explanation is for that. Are we supposed to assume I didn't see scenes from next week cut scenes or anything like is a is Logan dead or is he just captured. I didn't show him at all. Although he has that he has that little bit of a smile as William walks away that you could interpret as okay this guy's finally like getting into his play story.
He's playing the game and so that's kind of like a lack of fear that these hosts are actually gonna kill him. Although I mean they're definitely like slugging him and strangling him against a stage coach wheel at one point so obviously they've turned down like the danger sliders in the intervening years. Yeah. Yeah and so one thing that's weird though is has the security guy who's always bantering with the lease was the Hemsworth.
He says there's they do have a scene of him saying oh there's a request for explosives at the jail and he approves it. Right. So that's he's in the man in black timeline. The crazy the guy who caves his head in that's also in the man in black timeline.
The wood cutter. Yeah. That's not in Jimmy Simpson's timeline. Right.
That is in the quote unquote current timeline where we see Elsie slash Shannon Woodward who's the task. Sorry. Yeah. Right.
So Elsie Hemsworth Bernard, Borg and Lady all in quote unquote current timeline. Right. And then Jimmy Simpson Logan Dolores one. One would assume some version of Ford somehow.
All that is in 30 years ago. And then Clifton Collins is playing two characters in each and we haven't seen Maeve in the first one and in the second one right. We did not see her. Yeah.
We haven't seen her in the early timeline. I believe. Oh no she doesn't she's trying to get Jimmy Simpson and he's like I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm spoken for or doesn't she send timeline on? Well Jimmy Simpson can't be in both right.
That's right. I think you're right. Go go ahead. No, no.
So I think that yeah those are the separations with the ones that we don't have that Wyatt Hector and Armistice who is the kind of like the female outlaw. Those are the those are not in the early. Those are the characters that aren't in the early Jimmy Simpson. Okay.
Because that's why it has why it's been mentioned in both. Wyatt I do not believe has been mentioned in both. Okay. Okay.
Okay. So I basically want to end the second by like just sort of stating like do you have a heat check thing that you want to like say a theory about the show in general or like a prediction for what's coming forward. I think Arnold I've said this word I think Arnold is either not dead or he somehow uploaded his his consciousness into like the software code of Westworld and that's how he's he's able to continuously affect these robots and I think like if if Dolores is true like a neo figure you'd have to ask yourself why Ford has a throne or an incinerator and I think right. I think the reason is for some reason he can't like there's some part of Arnold's code that is integral to operating this park.
Well then you get into the part wired into the yeah and you get into the neo battle star kind of everything that's happened will happen again. The revolution is needed to kind of regrow everything. I don't really this isn't like a specific theory but I definitely think that the harvester thing that happens in the episode before this one where he pauses time and the giant machinery comes through and destroys his tequila vineyard. And just the kind of apocalyptic ideas about this new narrative is that we're going to basically like symbolically look at this as Old Testament New Testament and that Ford is writing the book of revelations.
Yeah, I think that is trying to basically bring about the end of the world in a way that is harmonious with his vision and that that you know he is God and there's not going to be a world without him. Yes, I think he's trying to he's trying to create a religion with himself at the head that can somehow see his control of Westworld from the board and place it back to them. Okay, all right, fun stuff. All right, let's start a quick break and we'll come back to talk about Black Mirror.
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Never buy before you try again. Alright, we are back. We're talking about Black Mirror episode two. Andy and I are going to talk about these every episode.
But I do want to mention just by popular demand and the fact that it's just such a cool episode. We're going to talk about Sanjuna Pero next. So we're going to skip Shut Up and Dance. I think Shut Up and Dance will come later.
But we just wanted to bump up Sanjuna Pero. Jason and I are talking about Play Test today. If Andy has thoughts on that, I'll share them Thursday. We'll be talking about the finale of Atlanta on Thursday.
But for now, Jason and I will just knock out Play Test. And this was actually in terms of watching experience, like my favorite watching experience of the third season. And among my favorite of the series, I thought it was just the one that felt very different than all the others to me. Even though it obviously dealt with a lot of the same themes that Black Mirror always does, like the corrupting and nature of technology.
You're somebody who plays a lot of video games though. So that's why I'm really glad we're talking about this. I've read that there are a lot of like, that a lot of the episode itself is shaped by the logic and kind of emotional connection you might have while you're playing a game. Yeah, it's very survival horror.
There's a game that came out for PlayStation like a year and a half ago. I'm going to call it PI. And it's very similar in that you kind of wander around this very scary house. You look at the pictures and you look at this kind of trash that's like stood around and listened to the radio a little bit and then scary things happen.
It's very much like that. I like this episode a lot in terms of like, I think a lot about what would happen if the technology to project video games directly into your brain ever happens. Right. Is that like that's like in play, right?
I don't think it's in play anytime soon. I think there are a lot of like really like interesting moral questions like about that technology. Like can you override it? Can the person who's in it override it consciously?
Is there a safe word? Because you know it's like obviously extremely dangerous. Yeah, if you start and that's what they get at in Playtest is that so I mean, you shouldn't listen to this if you haven't seen it. But in the episode obviously, Wyatt Russell plays a American backpacker going through like a sort of global country hopping trip running away from some stuff that happened to America and he shows up in London.
He's running out of money and running out of time meets this girl. He needs to make some extra cash because something's up with his bank account and he signs up to be a tester for this new game being produced by like cutting edge gaming company called CIDO Games. And it's basically a virtual reality, but almost a reality reality horror game that is more or less feeding on your own fears and your own nightmares. And that part really I thought was rendered incredibly well.
And I also really like to be as much as we talk about video games. There was a lot of dream logic to this without actually harping on the most boring thing in the world which is people talking about their dreams. The way that he was like, the logic of the episode was like the way you would try to wake yourself up or tell yourself you're not really falling or you're not really doing this in a dream. Yeah, I think my criticism of it would be that like a lot of Westworld also, like a lot of fiction that references games that kind of doesn't get at the reason and the way that people play games in a way.
There's a lot more of a shared experience when you, an interest in creating a shared experience when you play a game. And I think with something like the technology from Playtest, you almost wonder like why you would create, why the first thing you would do with that is create a horror game. Right. Like why if you're projecting like stuff into a person's brain, is the first thing you think of going to be like how can we access their fears and create something like incredibly scary.
I think probably think that one R concept of technology is disappointing that we're just out here disrupting food delivery rather than going to Mars for real. People with Black Mirror with this show and Westworld, they are looking at technology and let's just make the scariest or most sexually charged or violent thing inside of us come to life. Yeah, it's something I've thought about with the development of VR and with Playtest in particular, just in the way that that technology existed would work. The thing you would use it for is like interrogations.
Like super dark. You'd put that on somebody at a CIA black site somewhere and be like where's the bombs at? Like in projects. They're family being tortured into their brain and be like, okay, tell me where the stuff is or we kill your kids right here.
And it's not real, but it's real. That's what really chilled me about Playtest. Right. And I think that is actually something that's discussed briefly in the first episode or two of Westworld.
Is someone says to Ford or I think it's the Board and woman says, I'm not even interested in your theme park. I'm interested in the technology underneath of it. And it's purposes and what its other uses could be. Yeah.
I mean, obviously the military industrial complex would be the biggest buyer of that stuff. And that's the kind of thing that's weird to me about both Playtest and Westworld is that to me, what the driving force behind the expansion of the technological advances of the last 20 years, the internet, social media, etc. Is this people want to express themselves with other people? They want to share things?
They want to do it in private anonymously, but they actually want to connect with other people? And that's the thing that's weird to me about Westworld is that there doesn't seem to be any... Like you go there and then you don't talk about it apparently. There's a maze, but people aren't theorizing in the real world of Westworld how to solve a maze.
And it's the same thing with Playtest. You would create this shared simulation that projects something into someone's brain, but you would just do it super scary. You wouldn't do it in any kind of way that I feel like people would want. I'm not sure what the first experience you'd want in a simulation that's projected directly into your brain, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be haunted house.
Yeah, I'd like to maybe hit a Grand Slam down three in the bottom of the ninth at the Phillies in the World Series in Game 7 of the World Series. That sounds like a good one. I'd like to dunk on the wrong game. I'd much rather dunk.
Then I want to shoot somebody. 100% I want to take off from the free throw line and just body LeBron James. Let me get like an average Gerald Green dunk. I'm not even greedy.
I want a crazy in-game dunk. Can we Westworld that? Can we make Donald? Oh man.
That was it. So you're mentioning it's one of the things that's tough for shows for science fiction to do. And this is actually something that the Matrix for all is insane as it got over the last two movies of that trilogy. There was an internal logic to the Matrix based on very basic ideas.
It was like the machines we thought they were solar powered, but then they found out another power source and put the babies in the tubes and plug them in. And I keep watching some of these sci-fi shows like Westworld and Playtest. And I'll be like, you know, but like you're in a top secret tester laboratory. You just made this dude sign an NDA.
You just moved his phone six inches away and didn't even stand up. There's no cameras in there to watch him be like taking pictures of your test kit. Like that's insane to me. That would not happen.
And the same thing with Westworld is like while all this revolt is happening, I'm like, what? We can't figure out why this guy keeps murdering people and pouring milk all over them. Don't you guys have a kill switch? Like can't you just be like go to sleep?
And it's just like it's just Shannon Woodward with an iPad. Be like stop. What are you doing? It seems like there should be like an extra electromagnetic pulse that they should just send out and be like good night.
Especially about Playtest. Like how much of that, because at the end there, there's that they talk about how the whole experiment lasted like less than a second. Like it was just they put the thing on his head and then that started. So how much of that was like actually the program and how much of it was just like some kind of thing that was flashing through his brain.
So unless it started, he took the pictures before he even played whackable. So unless there was some other moment of them putting a button on him, he was fine until they put the actual sort of halo on him and then he started then his mom called and killed him. I thought that, well I just thought I was just on an intelligence level. That white Russell performance is sneaky awesome.
In that Richard Link later movie from earlier, that's what I'm talking about. Everybody wants some. Everybody wants some. It had been called.
That's what I'm talking about. It's good. He's good at it and he's just on for a couple minutes. He's been in some other stuff.
He just like Harrison forwarded the button there. He is funny and charming and you kind of are like, yes, you are the perfect back packer. You're the totally back packer dude with all the bracelets you've picked up across your journey. I just thought that was a really good casting.
He does a great job. He's in rooms by himself for that entire show and you're just like, oh what an engaging performance. He was great. I love the way he kind of modulates his fear when he goes into the simulation.
He gets progressively more freaked out but also is kind of like holding it back. Oh, it's a spider. This is really terrifying but I'm going to just, it's not real. I'm going to kind of push through this.
The spider has the face of his belly. I also love any moment where someone sees a painting of something that they are in. It's like in the ring, it's like look at the picture of the woman with the horses. I always love that trope of the light is on and the painting now or whatever.
I also really thought this stuff with the way that they use all the technology that they would be benevolent that the people working for that company would be like, we're here to help you. We're going to stop and we'll stop it and then it's like, oh no, we've lost the signal. It was just great. Before we go, I'm just curious on a personal level.
Do you have any like, it's like a road travel dude. Any like wild road trip and or backpacking stories that like fall into like, I almost got pulled into a fight club kind of thing? Yeah. The first time I arrived in Santa Cruz, California, like after college, I ended up at this party where all the food was just like laced with weed.
And classic Santa Cruz. And it's just like, we ended up like hitchhiking down to a concert and it was just like the strangest six hours of my life where like, we get into this car with this guy and he would just kind of like turn around and you're already feeling like totally weird. And he'd turn around and just say stuff that's like very weird serial killery. Like, did you guys see the constellations today?
Okay. And then he'd turn back around and he'd drive me to the yellow king. Yo, he was and then he would, it was just like crazy. You know, like, you guys like reggae?
You ever listen to reggae? Did he just drop you off of the concert? Like no problem? That was it.
He dropped us off and it was, but it was like definitely. What was the concert? It was a reggae concert. Oh, so it was a reggae is a totally normal question.
Yeah. But it was the way like he was like, do you ever, it was like deep, weird reggae questions? Like, did you listen to roots reggae from pre 1972? And then he just kind of like fix you with this glare and then turn back and drive and then come back at you with something like totally bizarre.
Okay. That's that's creepy. That's the closest I felt to where I was going to be in play. I had an interesting experience in high school that I'm not really sure what drug I did still, you know, but I did wind up in like my friends and I were all like, okay, now it's time to leave.
Like it was one of those classic like your at-some of these house in high school and you're watching faces of death, you know, like whatever. And then you just like, okay, let's go out. Like, I don't even know what we were doing and something happened and I wound up, I wound up in someone's car that was none of our cars. Like, I don't even really even remember what happened, but that was like the weirdest thing that's ever happened in that regard.
I made myself for theft. So all my European trips are really like just benign kind of like, you know, they're way more Romanian new wave than they are horror. Like there's like no hostel like, hostel part three. I'll trade you like a full like a whole chicken for that packet cigarette kind of thing.
So yeah, anyway, Jason, thank you so much for joining us. We'll have you back on next week to kind of continue to unpack Westworld. Andy and I will be back on Thursday talking Atlanta until then. Great job, Bransky.
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