The Baldies - Deliberations I (2018)

Unlike many other, actual awards shows that are taken seriously by the industry, we’re not content to merely rip open some envelopes and throw some confetti and that’s that. Oh, no. We sweat the details and record audio and video of all the debates Jim and I have had to arrive at the winners. If you disagree with our rankings and ratings, this is the info that will hopefully explain where and why we disagree! Topics in this episode include Best Drama, Best Debut / Pilot, and Return to Form…

The World We Deserve - 304 – The Hour and the Day

Jim and A.Ron break down all the decade spanning clues of HBO’s True Detective’s latest episode, “The Hour and the Day”. Who done it? The priest? The one eyed man? The cousin? The pumpkin lady? We sift through the evidence and theories and opine about the excellent character work this episode, as we get ready for what promises to be some hellacious action going down at the Woodward residence!

Bald Move Pulp - The Punisher Season 2 Wrapup

Jim and I haven’t finished The Punisher season 2 yet, but we’ve seen enough to tap out. As we discuss in our spoiler filled review, The Punisher has the chief sin of these Marvel/Netflix collaborations; a bloated 13 episode runtime, and adds to it ludicrous character details and plot-points until this grimdark ultra-violent fantasy pushes through the drama boundary and hits unintentional comedy. 8 episodes in, we still don’t know why we should care about Amy, or what makes the Pilgrim tick, or why Frank let Russo off the hook when he should be worm food except, oh right, this is a 13 episode season instead of a more reasonable 8-10 episode season and if things made sense and had dramatic urgency they’d be five hours of content short. 

Bald Move Pulp - Fyre (Netflix) and Fyre Fraud (Hulu)

Netflix and Hulu had dueling documentaries on doomed Fyre music festival, Fyre, and Fyre Fraud respectively. With slightly different focuses, the documentaries broadly outline how founder Billy McFarland built several ponzi schemes on the idea of selling a fictionalized “baller” lifestyle to young, naive, rich people and took them for a ride. Built on the back of a few dozen paid influencers and a long list of impossible promises, Fyre was supposed to be the event of the decade. Instead, it barely avoiding being a genuine humanitarian disaster. We discuss influencing, the morality of excess, and engage in the kind of barely contained glee at seeing narcissists fall from grace that you’d expect in this discussion of all things Fyre.

The World We Deserve - 303 – The Big Never

HBO’s True Detective continues to build their triple layer mystery over three decades in “The Big Never”. A lot of new clues come to light; the children being secretive in the woods; handwritten notes and maps; a photo of Will taking communion that looks suspiciously like the way his body was staged in death. Meanwhile detective West recruits Hayes to help with the re-opened case in the 90’s, and in 2015 Hayes has to face gaps and inconsistencies with the official investigation while being confronted by the ghosts of his past. All this plus a rollicking discussion of feedback and the latest theories harvested from the psycho-sphere!

The World We Deserve - 301 & 302 – The Great War and Modern Memory & Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye

We’ve checked out the first two episodes of HBO’s True Detective season three, and there is so much to talk about! Reliable unreliable narrators, parallel time structures, two macho, damaged cops who aren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and get hands on with crime, and in the center, a missing persons case with strange, unexplained details. It feels a lot like season one, but Mahershala Ali brings a stellar performance to a character that is dealing with post-war trauma and racism in middle America. And don’t get us started on moon phases!