Guilty Pleasures Of The Night... Agent (Season 1)

0:01 Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore. I'm a producer, writer of film and television and now a podcast producer. And despite having every streaming service, I never know what to watch. So anytime I watch something good, I talk about it on the show. This way, you'll never have the same problem I do. I watched this tonight. There's always something good to watch. Let's get started, all right. Today on the show, we're doing guilty Pleasures of the Night. Agent.

0:47 We have a guest today that I'm very excited to welcome to the program, sort of like long time listener first time callers. James, I'm so excited to have you on the show. Could you just tell the audience a little b about who you are? Hey, my name is James. I am I'm just a guy that loves like movies and TV, like since I was a kid, you know, and I and I'm like, I'm I'm probably super nerdy about it because I don't just watch things. I like, you know, I analyzed and I want to know where I've seen that actor before. I wanted to know who directed it, who's the producer on it? So I died pretty deep into shows and movies that like most people probably wouldn't do. And my wife finds it annoying at times, but at the same time, she knows, I know all these things that she will ask me, she knows I know the answer. She said, Oh, my husband knows the answer to that. Hey, who's on that show? Baby?

1:38 You know? So I it's a blessing and encouraged to her. I guess you know this is this is a game that I play with my with my dad because my dad never knows anything about what he's actually watched. He knows like one word, one name, a face, the guy from that thing. Oh yes, And I instantly I'm like, oh, yeah, well that's you know such and such thing. Yeah. Oh. We played that game at the house here all the time because my wife is terrible at like names, but she just knows it's that one guy from that one show that did the one thing. She didn't know anything, and if I could put that together for she's impressed with it. But you know, I kind of know will enough now, you know, I can kind of like, oh, I know who you're talking about, and then sometimes act like I don't know, And she was like, I know, you know what I feel like you don't know. It's like a Jedi mind trick. We're we're excited to talk about The Night Agent, the full season that has dropped. You know, James and I both finished it, and I think we both had kind of a similar reaction. Yes we You sent me a note on Twitter, d have on Twitter that I thought it was hilarious and like, honestly, like, I don't know that I would go this far, but I do think that it's like it speaks to what the conversation we're gonna have, which is you said, I have concluded it as a bad show, but I think they know how campy it is. That being said, I would one watch another season. Oh I hope. I hope they do was doing another season. Yeah, I may pull back a little bit on that statement at this point, haven't done a little bit more analytics on it. That was just like in the moment, that was my reaction though, like I

3:12 think this is a bad show, but like, but I think they know what they're doing. It's not like like sometimes people make bad product and they don't realize that it's bad and they think it's good and that makes it worse. But sometimes people know like, oh, there's things about this that really aren't great, but like we kind of know that, but we're giving this other stuff that you that you kind of like that makes up for it. And I kind of feel like that's what this show does. Does I think that I keep using the term guilty pleasure because what I think is the sort of the frog and the boiling pot of water thing that happens with the show is you turn it on. And I want to be clear. I want to make sure I state this clearly. I am obsessed with Sean Ryan.

3:52 The reason that I am in entertainment media in any form, and I've written television, I've written films is because of Sean Ryan. I watched The Shield when I was like, I watched it probably from when I was like thirteen. It's just too young to watch that show, way too young until like college like that. It's when it came out. It was like appointment television for me, and I think it's the best show of all time. So you go into it and there's Sean Ryan and it's on Netflix, and you think it's gonna be like a classic prestige kind of show, which is takes itself very seriously and is made a certain way. And as you go into it deeper and deeper and deeper and you get Toto the characters more and you start to see the tone of it, it's very clear that it's kind of goofy. Yes, it's a good word. There's there's some goofy that's going on on this show. But it's all but it's all kind of masked by this light because it's the hot they give you, like the high octane, high stakes, you know, situations going on where like, oh man, this is a really oh this is gonna be a really serious show. You know, it's really gonna be gritty. It's not really, it's not that greedy. I think that a good like area of the show that encapsulates this that's non spoiler and we'll get into spoiler soon, but is the two assassins and their whole relationship which has no basis in reality whatsoever. Right, it's basically like a very I wouldn't say cartoonish, but I wouldn't say it's that

5:23 far away from being cartoonish. It's very close to being cartoonish. Yeah, there's some things that go on between those two that is very odd and weird. And kind of almost takes you out of the show for meeting. There's an episode when and I'm forgetting her name, the chief of staff, the lady who's yeah, Diane Farr. Yeah, And so she is meeting with Peter and they meet at like a zoo for some reason, for no particular reason, just because it's an interesting place to set a scene, and then she has this whole monologue about out about like the lion. It's it's and you're sort of watching, yeah, a little like what, yeah, what was that? I mean, I've got it at the end, but I'm like, that's weird. I think that it is. So the show obviously has been a massive success. It's already been renewed for season two. And I was thinking about it because the nature of me doing this podcast is that I have to keep coming up with new episodes. So it's rare that I watched something to completion. If I watched them to the end, I'm really engaged by it for whatever reason, and I think that the reason that I'm that I finished this show and I was so engaged by it, and obviously the audience has been engaged by it, is that I think it took what is a pretty straightforward thing, and they put just enough weird stuff into it that it throws you off balance. Is real, Yeah, I think, And I really think that's what got because I this show was not on my radar. My wife saw the trailer and said, oh, this looks like

6:58 it might be good. I said, okay, well let's see. Yeah, if I'd ended the first episode, I just want to see what's gonna happen next, because they do hit you with a lot right away, and like and like, I just want to see it because in my head, I'm like, I don't I don't know what this is. I don't know. They throw me off with these a tonal change like right away, you know, and I'm just like, what, Okay, I gotta see what else is next. And then we just end up like we we I mean we we almost being said, let's let's take our time with you know, because we always run through shows like so fast, So let's take our time with it, and you know, at least make it last a week or so. And that's what we did. I mean, in a weird way. This thing that we keep kind of circling around, I would argue is actually the secret sauce of the show. If they had done it like totally straightforward and there wasn't anything weird in the design of the characters or the tone or certain things that they do with the dialog or whatever, like I don't, I probably would have checked out of it sooner because it would have been too straight down the middle. Yes, they're there are some dialogue things that are just not that's the stuff that I say. That's that's not good.

8:07 Some of the lines are real corny, man, I know, but it's like, but like, at this point, I'm already in so I just accepted it. I'm just like, Okay, I know what the show is doing. I be but that didn't know, but I thought I knew. I thought I knew. That didn't know that I thought I knew that I didn't know. We have to get into specifics to talk about this and fully like sort of embrace it. So I would say, if you've already seen the show, obviously stay with us. If you have not seen it and you and you're not gonna watch it, I encourage you to listen because there's some stuff that just us describing again I think will be pretty entertaining. I think so I want to talk about episode seven because a ton of important stuff happens in episode seven. This is the one that starts with we see the flashback to young Maddie, the vice president's daughter. Yes, so I've just literally going to describe what happens at the beginning of this episode. She she's playing with her sister. The vice president is on like a work call, and he literally says this out loud. Essentially, he says, voters don't win elections. CEOs and super PACs too, so he's basically like almost like cartoonish twirling mustache villain at that point. That's that out. I'm glad you said that, because it's like, oh my god, Okay, go ahead.

9:22 And then Maddie at the time, it's like five, and he leaves her like a like a loan, and the sister goes in a pool and drowns. And then afterwards we see little Maddie, five year old, and the vice president in a limo and they're driving like to the funeral, and she is obviously devastated. She's a little girl, and she says something to the effect of like, oh, I can wish my sister back, and he literally tells her she's never coming back, and you were supposed to be watching her and this is like a five year old. It reminded me so much of the beginning of Walk Hard, when Dewey Cox cuts his brother half of the machete, yes, and his dad says, the wrong kid died.

10:07 Oh, I'll tell you the Vice president character, it's like the worst. I'm like, that's when I really knew. I'm just say okay, like I kind of already picked up that the Vice President was kind of it was villainous, but like, we've just gone to the extreme, Like you said, the toy mustache, you know, turning the kid too weren't train tracks and let the train run over him. It was wild that that was a wild scene, and that whole dynamic between him and the daughter wild. He was just outrageously evil with her. It's like he literally could have said, you're not even half the brother he was after you cut him in half, and it would be the same tone, yes, yes, oh.

10:50 And what about since we're getting into it, what about when like after she's gotten shot and then he's like, oh, we gotta go see the president or in the garden and he's like making her walk you know and get on. He's like not even helping her down to stand, like she got shot. You'll started that shot. You're just like, hey, bring ass, the president wants to see you. There's a part later where so I guess we could talk about this too. Let's see, Oh yeah, no, so this this connects to what you're talking about. So there's a part later where they're in the house. She has returned from being kidnapped. He's he's talking to like his co conspirators, and he says something I hadn't I had the note down here somewhere like he basically is odo. He says, by tomorrow night, I can issue pardons all around. And he's there's like it's not like he's just there by himself, right, like there's other you know, there's people in the house, and he's just like and that's and I'm like, you know what, I know, you want to kind of like give a reveal to a character so they kind of know what's going on.

11:54 But that's just so blatant and it's so dumb on his part. I mean, at this point it doesn't matter though, See it's so late in the show. If they did that early in the show, I might have been like, you know what, I'm not watching this. It's just too blatant. But like, because you're so deep into the show, and she's so invested even by okay, and then in order for him to know that she overheard him, she she goes to walk up the steps and she like brushes against the banister and leaves like a bloody mark. But this isn't like, just to be clear, this is not like she they just got her from the like they she's already been seen by a doctor. They've set up a hospital bed in her room. If she's bleeding that much, she's gonna die, Like what's going right? Why it's she's been home for hours, she's been seening like you said, to see my doctor. Why is she still bleeding that much? Like all over she's leaving a trail of blood after she's supposed to be seen by Like I mean, it's the vice president's daughter, so she's as soon this is a top medical professional. She's been seen by another thing. Just to get at the goofy ess of it. And I think it's like you said, right, I think that the people making the show are fully aware of all this because at a certain point I wrote this note down in my notes, I said they could start throwing in twin brothers back from the dead. They might as well. And then in episode eight, a crucial part of the plot is Peter goes they murdered the wrong twin.

13:24 Yes, And then I remember watching it and we're like, what is going on and my wife said it better not be a twin and I'm like, oh, I think that's what it is. It was right, but this is the fun of the show. And so then one thing I want to touch on that's sort of the opposite of this. So also in episode seven, the whole show, we've been building up Peter and Rose and this romance between them, which is I think genuinely think well I bought into it in terms of, like they're bonding through trauma. It makes logical sense that Okay, they're gonna hook up at some point. We know that's gonna be okay. Okay, I just didn't get the serious romantic bab from him, but I get yeah, here here's my pitch on that, right, because what happens is, Okay, we've been building up the whole show, at some point they're gonna get together, and then it is the most chased like.

14:20 It's like a pure Flix like Jesus movie. I've produced a lot of faith based movies. It's it would have been appropriate for a faith based movie. That's how chased their get together is. And I was baffled by that because it's on Netflix. It's not like they need to make it so squeaky clean like that. It was. It had no impact. In fact, I almost forgot that they aked. And so this is my sort of fan fiction pitch of this, and and I think it relates to them. I was thinking about Jack Reacher, the Amazon show. So Amazon does Jack Reacher, and they're like, hey, man, it's on Amazon. We're gonna have like at one point, there's a guy that is castrated and we see him like full frontal that he's been castrated, and that his and we find out that his dick has been put into his mouth or something some crazy thing like that. In general, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, I forgot about that, Jack Richard and and um, so my pitches if I was doing it and the others that I say this again, it's because you're on Netflix, you can do it without it being pornographic.

15:26 I'm not suggesting that it needs to be like, you know, like splicit in that way. But if you had it where you know, we see them they're in the bed on the boat. You know, they're sort of holding each other. They're they're naked, and it's and she asks him, you know, if it's gonna be okay, and he says it will be okay. And then at the end of the same episode, right now, what it ends with, they're both faced down on the dock getting arrested and he tells her it's going to be okay. Right, So, if you did something like that, I think it would have that romantic charge. Yeah, that it It just did. It felt like they built to it and then they just that was the one part. You know, the vice president, his daughter, he's like no problem for five years old. Wow.

16:07 But but for whatever reason, they were real tame about this. Uh. I feel like there was there was more Uh, there was like more heat between the assassins. I thought you were going to say there was more heat between the vice president and his daughter. Right, Well, hey, it's assume this is someone in the family show. I don't want to take you there, but I mean their their relationship was really weird and Uh, yeah, I'm kind of uncomfortable at times. Yeah, the whole the whole baby thing, but like, let's have a baby, but not really have a baby, but i't steal a baby. I thought that was really weird. Yeah, with the assassins, I just didn't. It didn't not I didn't.

16:47 I didn't get that at all. And I got it, but I didn't want to get it. I also wrote down Rose Larkin top five TV girlfriend of all time, and the reason I wrote that is, Huh, at every at every turn of the plot, there's a moment where she shows that she's like ride or die. Like in the FIRS, I think in the first episode she casually robs some people. Oh yeah, and then as it goes along, she stabs people, she pushes people off of cranes. She's like she's down for whatever. I would say that she is ride or die, but not effectively ride or die until she pushes uh the sasson of the crane. Because like when when he gets in the fight with the with the assassin down by the water and she's hitting him with the stick, the large long hit him more than once. She might hit him once, and then like waiting, I'm like no, no, no, wear his ass out with that thing. I said, because your boyfriend is about to get killed. She has ride or die intensions. Yes, can't always deliver on them, that's true. Maybe. I mean, I know it's new to her. She's like she's a she's a she's a tech tech gals. I can say that. Um, I think we should at least mention also Gabriel Basso, who plays the lead, who has a really tough part, right because he has to be earnest, kind of square jawed, straight leading man.

18:15 And that's not an easy thing to do as an actor because you're short of handcuffed. There's really not you're not playing character beats, you're sort of playing straight down the middle. And I thought he did a really good job. Yeah, I think he I think he watched the Jack Ryan Sylon me because Jack is real. Jack Ryan is real light down the middle, but like it's just it's more like what he does than what he says or how he acts. That that defines the Jack Ryan character. Like he's really seemed like he's straight down the middle, but like he will go left with you know, And I think that that's uh Southern. That was his character's name. I feel like Peter had had that game same kind of Boube seemed like a you know, kind of straight down the line, straight shooter kind of guy. And he was and he honest and he cared about people. But like, hey, when it's when it was time to like do what he had to do, when he felt he had to do the right thing, he was gonna do it is sometimes it was a bad decision and it worked out in the end. Yeah, he has a part at the end.

19:12 I think he's holding a gun to the President's head and he says, oh, he says that whole scen what was there? He says, I love my country, and he really sold me. I was. I was like, I was like, yeah, I believe Yeah, I believed it. I was just I was just like, how did we get here? I want to talk about It's episode nine, So it's the build up to that. They introduced this plot device where so let's say you and I have now spoken one time, right, Yes, I've heard your voice one time. If you if you call me on the phone tomorrow and it's a different person speaking, I will know it's not you right now. In this show, multiple times they do this thing where it's like they pick up a talking some guy they just punched out or whatever, or they answer the phone for like some other person and they just talked like they're the person and nobody on the other end is like, hey, Bob, I know it's not you, Bob, I know your voice right Well until the um the CEO, the kind of Blackwater CEO, kind of guy, it took him a minute to figure out. They're like, oh, wait, this is not her.

20:25 Even though this woman has a failing accident, it's the first time somebody doesn't speak with that accident. You should know this is not her. It doesn't take much, That's that's what I think. It's like, it took three or four response befo, it's like, oh wait a minute, maybe this isn't Aver or whatever her name was. Imagine like a person that you work with at your job, that you talked to pretty regularly, like calls you. You would know instantly the first word that they say, you would know who the hell is this because this is not so and so that would be my response of I do want to give them so we've we've again. I want to be clear, first of all, in the very likely of that the Sean Ryan ever listen to this. I want to be clear that I do like the show, and I really I'm telling this is the reason why I said I would one hundred percent watch another season. I do like this show, but this show is crazy. This show does a lot of things like genre wise that are just like because like this is where I kind of feel like they've mailed it an. A lot of shows do this. I feel like he got a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

21:34 He's definitely you know, you got a little bit of like the action is very Olympics has fallen, and because the action is crazy and it's like nobody really like they're blowing things up and like major explosions where people in very close proximity and they're not dying. That's true. Yeah, the subway explosion with the little girl, there's no way they should have survived that when they When they didn't, I said, oh, I thought they were gonna kill the little girl out the back. I'm like, oh, they're serious, they're killing kids, and like she gets something like I'm okay. I'm like, oh shit, there's a part and I think it's the last episode where like a house blows up, and I was like, I had one thousand percent thought that multiple characters were in there, who then is alive, and they're just alive. I'm just like, Oh, we're just doing the explosives for effects, you know, just to like for the drama of it, but not like for the actual you're killing characters off. So I'm like, Okay, guys, I see what we're doing here. We're going because because the Olympus following movie wasn't very much like that Gerard Butler's character in that movie, it should have died like in the first fifteen minutes of those movies, and he somehow survives. He's harrowing shooting like gigantic shootouts him against twenty guys, massive explosions, getting dropped out and stuff. Oh, for example, come on the hotel thing with Peter and Rose where they like fall off the whole say them like go through the glass and like get the concrete, and they jumped right back up. What. Yeah, it's great. I love

23:07 it. I love it. Though I I do want to give him credit that at the end we find out that Peter's dad legitimately was a trader. That it wasn't like some sort of thing where it was like, oh, it was just a misunderstanding, like he was legit a trader and I thought that, but it was for a reason though, well yeah, I mean they sort of they they they made it a little softer in the sense that you know, they tell him at the end he was going to become a double agent blah blah blah. But it was clear that he did something wrong. He was not he was not an innocent, and I was glad that they didn't pull back on that, right because I kind of feel like he he took the money and then something bad, worse happening than he thought.

23:48 But then they started to use that against the whoever was and like he like he started off as a kind of subillain and it kind of became a hero. Well he didn't get a chance to become a girl because they killed him, basically, But that was that a little through line. I liked that that was kind of sitting there the whole time, like they they kind of way and made us way to the end. I like that part. I want let me say something about like just to give this a show mother compliment, I feel like the structure and the pacing was really good. I was gonna talk for that, y'all. Yeah. I feel like, you know, like the way, like structure wise, the way the story was told. I like how they whoever was kind of gonna be the focus of that episode got the got a backstory seeing at the very beginning to kind of because we got because they know we got all these unanswered questions. So they're saying, oh, we know you got a question about Peter here at being the episode, here's a flashback, come on in, we know you got a question about Dane far Oh, here we go, here's here's here's an answer in the flashback. So I really like that and just like giving you just enough and moving along just at a right pace so you don't get bored or you don't feel like, you know, it's rushed. They did a really good job at that part. Yeah. No, I equate it to like if you watch like one of the Jason Bourne movies and there's a there's a character that's interesting, Like I remember in the first one, Clive Owen before he dies, he says, uh, you know, do you get headaches?

25:11 I get really bad headaches to Jason Bourne, and you're like, wow, what an interesting character, And like It's almost like this show is like, what if you got to spend ten minutes alone with that guy and learn about his life before Jason Bourne has to kill him, you would you would care more about him, you'd be no more about him, And so the structure of it is it's really I mean, this could have easily been a two hour movie. But what they did is they take characters. It would have been like, it would have been terrible though, to try to stuff all that into two hours. There's no way. And I think that's why it works is because it has the space that every one of the major characters we know enough about their backstory to understand their motivation, to understand who they are, and so it is satisfying in that way because you really get to know everybody. They do it. They did a good job. I like, yeah, I don't really feel like I feel like almost all the characters got enough backstory on them that I kind of like, I mean most of them, like maybe a few people, but for the most part, I thought, so, well, I'll tell you one thing because I should trying to throw you off. I make you think that one guy is the villain, but he's really not the Robert Patrick character, because you know, he was he was gruff and and just like a complete asshole. And you know, my wife's following force. She's like, oh, he's the bad guy.

26:30 I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. The guy that acts like that is never the bad guy. He's probably a good guy. He just he's just an ass you know. And then of course, you know, it turns out the way it turns out. The second that Diane Fire gives the speech next to the Lion, I was like, this is way too weird for it to just be like a piece of window dressing. Like I pretty much pegged her at that point, but they did a good job throwing me off the trail, and then by the time you circle back, it was still surprising. Kind I kind of all her like a couple episodes in I didn't I didn't have I didn't know how or what. I just said. I just sat here. Trust her. I just didn't trust that. I don't trust her. It's just something about her. I don't trust. She was just too cool, Like she was really really cool and really really even until things started going sideways and she had to like cuss out the vice president in the in the military contracted guy.

27:26 Like then they kind of she kind of like started losing it and she started custom and all that. I thought that was I like the way they did that. I thought that was hilarious. Like she really dropped into like a different Oh yeah, it was like a street argument. Yeah. Oh yeah. She was so cool before and then like way too cool for mine. I'm like, hey, this woman here, we got a major crisis going on, and this lady is just like, oh okay, well you know, come on the end, and hey, if you got that hard drive, bring that with you too, you know. And I just like, way too casual. Yeah, And then I just want to tell we could go on and on so much going on in the show. I just want to talk about the ending as we sort of wrapped up here. Um, so we see it's like the sun is setting. Rose is like sitting on the hood of a jeep or something like there's a jet on the runway.

28:15 It becomes like American porn, like they should have had Springsteen playing. It was like it was like top Gun Maverick all of a sudden, and you know, it's like this guy's a real patriot. And I do think that there's a real vein you can tap into with that, like people like even me, I mean, like I totally am susceptible to that if you sort of put it in the right delivery system. And I think that's part of why Top Gun Maverick worked. I think it's part of why this show worked, because this guy's a real patriot. And at the end, again, it's it's it's literally almost like Team America World Police like America like it's it's it's so it's so patriotic at the end of the way, it kind of sends you out. But why did you just leave it behind? And like, oh, I talk to you when I talk to you, like, I mean, she's already proven her medal, Like get her a job.

29:02 You guys can work as the team. Probably she's obviously has the tech skills you know, to be an asset, like get her a job, and just leaves it there sitting in the car. I almost wondered, like a James Bond thing where it's like, you know, James Bond, there was always a different love interest in every you know, Yeah, I'm sure that's probably where it's going on. But I thought deserved Roles bad that Roles deserved better, That's all I'm saying. Yeah, he did rose dirty at the end there. Yeah, in the man, I enjoyed this show. All I know. I said a lot of things that were crazy and wrong or whatever, but like, overall, they had me pretty much from the first episode. I was engaged the whole time. I couldn't wait to see the next episode. You know, So, good job, guys, Let's go again. I would say it's a rare situation where the flaws of the show are equally the reason that I enjoyed watching it as the strength of the show.

29:56 Yes, but that's not unusual for many there are. There are movies and shows that I know are highly flawed, but I'm in I love it. Sometimes sometimes the bad makes the good better. Yeah that makes any sense at all. James, thank you so much for coming on the show. Oh man, it's a pleasure, man. Hey. I appreciate it, Hey, because, like I said, I'm just a guy that really enjoys this stuff, and I appreciate the opportunity to come on your show. You know, I listened to the podcast every episode that comes out. I really enjoy it, man, and like I really I feel like like maybe we were related in another life, because our tastes are very similar, and I feel like our perspectives on these things that match up like weirdly the same.

30:41 This is one of the great joys of doing a show like this is that, yeah, there are people where it's like we just for whatever reason, have the same taste and so it's kind of cool to be all bounce off each other with that kind of stuff. So thanks again for coming on the show Man for the listeners. That is a show for today until next time. Bye, love, love, love