Charlie and Steve Watch Stuff

# Swell AI Transcript: Charlie and Steve Watch Stuff - Intro Episode.mp3

SPEAKER_01:
Hi friends, welcome to Charlie and Steve Watch Stuff, your one-stop shop for two guys that want to talk about the things that they watch together. And I swear it's not as dirty as it sounds. Welcome to our first ever introductory episode where we're going to just kind of tee you off for the journey that we're about to embark upon. So if you're joining us from the beginning or you're starting from the beginning after we've been after this for a while, hopefully we've been after this for a while. That would be like the dream, right? So before we go any further, I feel like it's really, really important if you're listening to a podcast called Charlie and Steve Watch Duff is so you know exactly who Charlie and Steve are. So without further ado, allow me to introduce my friend, my cohost. He is vengeance. He is the knight. He is Charlie Peppers. Charlie, welcome my friend.

SPEAKER_00:
Hi, how's it going? Also to just before I enter a room, have somebody say he is vengeance. He is the knight.

SPEAKER_01:
like the bar well the bar is set really high after that so it would be great but it would also just you'd have to live up to that shit all the time the answer is yes I am forever available to be your bard for hire and to announce your title everywhere you go we can discuss that

SPEAKER_00:
If hard for hire, we can discuss that off air for sure. Thank you so much for having me, Steve. So a little about me. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. I was very, very much into comic books and video games and movies because as a closeted black boy in Brooklyn in the 90s, I felt like I had to go inside of my head to keep myself company because you know, around that time there weren't a lot of people that you could relate to. So these characters really gave me a sense of home and belonging and Batman was one of the biggest shows that I would run home from school to watch when I was but a mere tot. It's also one of the first shows that showed me what TV could do. And that is partially responsible for what I do for a living now. I write TV, I write screenplays, I do a lot in terms of just the medium of film because I really think that that is one of the best forms of storytelling. To show a character's progression through a season of TV, it's something that drives my imagination wild. I think it's deeply interesting. I think it's really ripe for study and analysis and yeah, I love to write stuff and I like to watch stuff.

SPEAKER_01:
He's shortchanging himself, folks. He's very good at writing stuff and I'll be the one to say that he was recently nominated for an Emmy Award for writing on a little show called Poker Face. You may have heard about it. I have no idea if I'm allowed to say that, but if I am, it's 100% staying in the podcast because I like to celebrate my friends and their successes. So we have a brilliant writer on board with us, and more importantly, a brilliant friend of mine. And before we talk a little bit more about how we became friends and all that good stuff, I might as well introduce myself. Hello, my name is Steve, Steve Selnick. i'm also from the east coast i was born and raised in connecticut i went to school in boston and then promptly ran across the country to los angeles and i've been living on the west coast between los angeles san francisco and a little mistake called seattle for a little bit of time as well i've kind of been all over the place in my career life. I was in and out of media production. I went to school for broadcast journalism. I did a little stint as a field marketing representative. We'll talk about this a little bit more in a second. But what I currently do is I'm a fitness coach for a living. I coach at a boutique studio fitness chain that I will not name because I have no idea if they'll be cool with me talking about them. And I also produce podcasts for a living on the side as well. So I've kind of taken both sides of that coin and turned it into the thing that sustains me for now. And I, like Charlie, have always been a bit of a nerd. I didn't treat it as much of an escape from needing to feel like I could be myself, which I understand is a very important part of nerd culture and fandom for a lot of people. And I think something that my time being not in suburban Connecticut and being around wonderful and different people like charlie has helped me to understand throughout the years but growing up and that early relationship to fandom i think i was very heavy into star wars as my first like big thing that i could remember being truly obsessed with and i think that's carried through to my adult life i have a tattoo of an x-wing on my arm so i think i could probably say solidly that i like it and i and i do think it was a i do think it was an escapism of sorts for me one where i could dream beyond the scope of what I thought was possible, and I think I continue to use it in that way. I'm very heavy into the video games of it all, and I always enjoyed being able to physically control the destiny of a story through the character that I'm controlling. which is why that I have always identified with like the Mass Effects and the Kingdom Hearts and the RPGs and the... I mean, I can get into a looter shooter with the best of them too, but I think there's a certain storytelling of the video game medium that I find uniquely suited to telling some of these stories. so we touched about it a little bit and charlie i'd love for you to dive into this a little bit deeper just your your introduction to fandom like what was the first show that you remember being like okay this is a medium that speaks to me and and why was that it's a bit of a two-pronged

SPEAKER_00:
answer. I would say before Batman the first show that really really grabbed my attention was Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and I liked that show because of the martial arts and the violence of it all. Love stylized violence. I love when people beat each other up and when it's tied into something that they're working through emotionally. It's literally my favorite shit in the world. And I would say that after I found Batman the Animated Series, the show that really got me into TV as an art form in earnest was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Because you had somebody who you would expect to be the least powerful person in the room being the protagonist of the story and having agency over what happens to her. And I would say that that character is very important to me because as somebody who felt very small in his community, like I wasn't seen for the things that I brought to the table. Buffy was the first character that I could project onto as somebody who was able to exceed expectations and take her destiny into her own hands. I think that that was very powerful. That's brilliant.

SPEAKER_01:
That's like a way cooler answer that I'm gonna give. You don't know that. Here's an early theme audience. Charlie gives thoughtful, incredible answers to everything and has depths upon depths. Then I'm like, yeah, this just seems like it would be a lot of fun y'all. So there's the difference between me and him. So no, I, I love that. And, and I think that's gonna, and one of my favorite, I mean, I have many favorite things about you, but one of my favorite things about you are these, like these meetings and these stories and these depths and these progressions that you can extract out of these stories that are seemingly meant for kids. And that like on the surface are really just like five teenagers in colorful suits beating up on putty guys that do crazy flips. But there's like, there's all of this plot and growth and everything else that you're so good at extracting out of it. And that's why we're so excited to be starting with this series because we think that there is way more than just our cartoon bat and a lot of eccentric villains then that meets the eye basically. But just to quickly cover my bases, I think obviously Star Wars was an early thing for me. I spent a lot of mornings as a kid eating cereal, watching Pokemon. I think that is again, because, because of video games and when they started doing that show and you got so invested in these, these things that were just like, kind of like what, for lack of a better term, as an adult with knowing what you're doing, we're just like virtual weapons that you're using. And they did such a good job of, like making all of them feel like living beings if for lack of a better term and giving so much depth to a world that again like i think on the outside many quote-unquote adults called that stuff silly and i mean first of all it's not like they were being written by children they were being written by adults that had real feelings and thoughts and they did a better job of putting it into their content than you thought That's my earliest introduction into, I think, fandom was definitely that like, I mean, me and Power Rangers talk about things getting into like a fantasy of it all. I wanted to legally change my name to Jason for a while.

SPEAKER_00:
The red Power Ranger. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:
I'm pretty sure my mom could corroborate that story.

SPEAKER_00:
that's so funny my parents still make fun of me to this day i'd go around saying don't call me charles anymore call me zach call me zach call me zach please and thank you how many times were you zach for halloween uh actually zero i You've never done it? I've only been one Power Ranger for Halloween. I've only been Billy, the blue one, who I think speaks to my soul a little bit more. If there were a sorting house that would sort me with a Power Ranger color, I think I would be the Blue Ranger with like secondary Red Ranger energy. Okay.

SPEAKER_01:
I like that. I think actually low-key, I would also get Blue Ranger, which I think says something about us as people as well.

SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, creative, intelligent, definitely knows their shit. Like Billy was slept on.

SPEAKER_01:
Billy was slept on for sure. Well, now that we've talked about our younger years and becoming the nerds that we are, I feel like we should tell the people about how we know each other and why we came to the point where we decided we should get on microphones and talk about this nerdy stuff. So let's fast forward all the way to, I think we want to say roughly 2016. That's the, that's the current guest that we're working with. We could be exact about it and go up and look it up, but who does that? Charlie, I would like you to share your experience of how we met, because honestly, you make me feel really good about myself every time. I just want to hear it again on a recorded platform.

SPEAKER_00:
Yes. Let's immortalize my great first impression of you, Steve. I love this. So when I first met Steve, he was the leader of a free fitness group called November Project, which isn't just local to LA, it's all around the country. Is it international? Is NP international? It is. Wow. Okay, so you learn something new every day. I thought it was just American. I love that you didn't know that until now. That's how, that's how, no lie Steve, I took the friendships that I wanted from MP and I was out of there. I was like, oh cool, I like you, you, you, cool, never coming back again. But Steve is one of the friendships that stuck. And the thing about Steve that really really struck me is his willingness to just accept everyone for who they are immediately and just how willing he is to lean in and help somebody if he feels that they need help. I felt very safe with you, I felt seen by you, and I threw up behind a tree our first workout. You didn't look at me any differently, you were like, it happens to the best of us. Didn't that happen to you your first time?

SPEAKER_01:
100% happened to me my first time.

SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, it didn't happen after that. But yeah, definitely, that shit was real. And just I remember thinking, Oh my god, Steve's so cool. It would be awesome to be Steve's friend. And lo and behold, here we are. And now you're one of my best friends. So well,

SPEAKER_01:
I love you, buddy. See, we can, we get that recorded forever as well. The, the acknowledgement. No, I, if I can now wax poetic about you, my friend, I am, and this is probably me saying something about myself that I'll probably have to bring up in therapy, but I am typically floored when brilliant people want to spend time with me. And so when Charlie wanted to start spending time with me, I was very confused because not only was there this very cool and personable and welcoming and geez, however many other synonyms I could come up for to someone who also creates space for people and wants to make sure that everyone is welcome and themselves around them. On top of that, he loves all of the same shit that I do. It's so rare, I feel like, and it's just so willing to explore every angle of how you feel about something, and then also incorporate every angle of how they feel about something, and then incorporate all of those angles of all of those things, and you somehow feel like you've walked away from the conversation kind of a different person. I love you very deeply, and I love having these conversations with you, and so the fact that we get to now take this and put it out there for everyone or no one to listen to is just another great joy of mine. life so let's talk about batman should we talk about batman i feel like that's why we're here are we gonna are we gonna talk about batman or are we gonna talk about batman over under how many times do we do the voice it's not even the right show it's not the right batman universe yeah okay let's go let's go Yeah, so I think the overall goal of Charlie and Steve Watch Stuff is to be a rewatch podcast in general. And so we were trying to think of how we wanted to do this and how deeply we wanted to go into something. Did we want to go all in on being a niche of one thing? And we decided that we wanted to keep it as general as possible, but we did want to start with a singular project. And we decided on Batman the Animated Series because A couple reasons. The first of which is I think it spoke to us both very deeply on a content level, and that's what I want Charlie to speak about in a little bit. But the thing that I will say about it before I let Charlie kind of take why this series, and you'll get why I'm asking him to do this in a second, is because I haven't watched this thing since the 90s. And it's not the 90s. It's been a long time since the 90s. I think we cover a lot of bases for this show specifically because I'm coming in remembering some stuff but not a lot and having fresh-ish adult eyes versus how maybe I would have felt about this as a kid. And what I think Charlie brings and what I want him to speak to is the fact that he rewatches this shit all the time. He knows almost every plot point. He just recently posted a very detailed character arc of Barbara Gordon on Reddit that has like upwards of 60 comments on it. So like this dude is very much so more involved. So I think that we are uniquely equipped to cover this show because we're covering both angles of the fresh or the refresh. So if you're starting on this show or you've never watched it before and you want an excuse to, you can follow along from that lens. And also if you feel like you're also deeply entrenched in this lore and these characters and these stories, and you want to be able to impart your opinions on this conversation, well, we've got that space for you as well. So Charlie, why don't you just give us your two cents about what really does it for you with this show?

SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, well, this is my favorite. version of Batman across all media, hands down. I think that this is the bar that I compare every other interpretation of Batman to because Batman is one of those characters that it's so easy for him to be overshadowed by his rogues gallery. All of his villains are very interesting. He has interesting sidekicks and supporting characters that revolve around him. the thing about batman the animated series that makes it as phenomenal as it is is that it is such a intentional character study of not only Batman, but Bruce Wayne. And what I love about the show is that we do see him change from the very first episode to the very last episode of Justice League Unlimited, which is his last canonical appearance as Batman in the future, which I think not only is phenomenal work for him as a character, but the fact that the creators and the showrunners were able to keep a finger to the pulse of his character arc across several shows for almost a decade, I find to be ridiculous. It is ridiculous what they do with his character in this show. Also, I love how compassionate Batman is to his villains. in this version of the show he doesn't of course he's gonna break their limbs and throw them into arkham asylum like it is a cartoon and we are here for the stylized violence am i right but he does want to help them and he does want them to get better because as he says in a future episode he knows what it's like to have a really bad day.

SPEAKER_01:
Already giving me feels. Already hit, already hitting me straight in the feels. So just to dig into some of the logistics of it all, the order in which Batman, the animated series is displayed on the, the app formerly known as HBO, now currently known as max is let's just say it's not in the right order. And the first season is like a jumbled mess of what, like 30 something episodes or something crazy like that.

SPEAKER_00:
it's it's kind of a hot mess but I think the cartoon gets away with it because the two-parters aren't broken up so the two-parters have everything that needs to happen in in those you know so you're able to follow things that happen to characters like Harvey Dent, like what happens with Batman's relationship with Selina when it's Poison Ivy introduced. So I think the important episodes are where they need to be, but for the sake of the series-wide arc of Bruce Wayne, I think that it's very important to watch in order if you want to experience a very finely done, exceptional character arc.

SPEAKER_01:
I couldn't agree more, which is exactly why we've done some due diligence on our end. And we've gone back and found the chronological order in which this series is supposed to be, in our opinion, viewed in. So a little kind of structure talk about how this is going to be moving forward, because this is our introductory episode and we're going to be covering this show moving forward. So with every episode that we cover this show, we're going to cover two episodes. Now they're not going to be the first two episodes that you see at season one. When you go into the max app, they're going to be the first two episodes. If you are watching this series from a chronological standpoint. So the first episode is going to be technically the earliest in Batman's timeline that you are going to see in the show. And if this thing really goes and we have our way, Like Charlie said, we're going to go all the way through the end of his chronological canon run in the DC animated universe, which might include a little Justice League Unlimited, baby. You never know how far this rabbit hole goes. So that's what we're going to be doing. So we're going to be covering two episodes in our first episode. The first one is going to be on leather wings. and the second one is going to be Christmas with the Joker, which may or may not have an iconic line or a song in it that you may or may not have completely forgotten was from that show. So before we get out of here, Just to repeat that I'm really, really excited to be doing this with you, Charlie. Beyond this show, what's your current feelings about the Caped Crusader? What are you loving about Batman? Are you always just going back to the animated series? Where is your deepest connections to Batman lie?

SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, the animated series is where I tend to go for my Batman fix. I also grew up during the Tim Burton era of Batman films. So if I wanna watch some Batman stuff, first is gonna be the animated series, then there's the one-two punch of Batman 1989 and Batman Returns. Batman Returns is probably the movie I've watched the most of anything in my entire life. There's a poster in my bedroom. I am not playing with you. I would say after that, the batman arkham series i play those back to back just all three games i think they tell a very great story also the dlc is amazing my current feelings on batman i really loved what matt reeves did with the batman film that he did i thought that it felt like seven if seven were a batman film set you know in modern times i'm really excited to see what james gunn does with batman because he's doing brave and the bold and with brave and the bold he's introducing the robins into live action and i think that the robins have been so hard to get right so i'm excited to see what he does with the batman robin dynamic well the robins have barely been used in the last 10 years i feel like they're always so fucking old like why is robin batman's age that defeats the purpose of their dynamic.

SPEAKER_01:
So you don't think that it's problematic that it's a child? That's not related to him?

SPEAKER_00:
I'm gonna give leeway. It's also, I think that there's always been an element of gay panic when we talk about that. It's like, oh my god, his sidekick is a little boy. It's like, yeah, a little boy whose parents have been killed. who he's taking under his wing, it's problematic that he's a child soldier, it's not problematic that he took on a young ward who lost his family and had nobody to rely on. I think what I find problematic about it isn't what everybody else finds problematic about it. And I also, I don't know, I think people are quick to be like, oh, was there any sexual undertones to their relationship, I don't see it. I think that Robin is Batman's son. I think that Robin is what Batman would have been if he had the tools to work through his trauma and a mentor who wanted him to be better than him. So I think that Robin has all of Batman's strengths with very few of his flaws.

SPEAKER_01:
I want to apologize to the audience for accusing Batman of being a groomer.

SPEAKER_00:
Oh, no, you're not the only one. You're not.

SPEAKER_01:
That was funny. Right when you said it, I was like. you just called me a Republican. Oh my God. So, and I think my answer is really the Arkham video games because that's kind of where I go to first for the stories. I remember the Riddler trophies, especially for Arkham Asylum being the first time I feel like I really dug deep for getting into collectibles because of the extra lore and artwork and other stuff and references that you unlocked because of it. So like, I felt like it was, kind of a giant trope through batman history and if you i actually just recently played arkham city not too long ago and if you look close enough you there's easter eggs all over the place especially for and i'm not like nearly as knowledgeable of people that have had their faces in comics since the 80s on this stuff so like or even longer because obviously it's been around for longer than that so I think there's a lot to parse here. I'm very excited to dig into it kind of fresh with you. And I'm excited to soak up all of the knowledge and the revelations that you have. And we're so lucky to be graced with your feelings and opinions of it. What are your final thoughts for this project, this little crazy idea that we have before we get out of here?

SPEAKER_00:
I would say definitely going into each episode and not only pointing out what the animation team did well and what the voice actors did well because the style of voice acting. Andrea Romano, I know that in terms of a director of the voices, she had actors be in the same room with each other. So when any of the cartoon characters are reacting to each other, those are actually the reactions of the actors bouncing off each other so I think it's a very unique way to record a show like this and it really shows and how great and how lived in and well-rounded the performances are.

SPEAKER_01:
couldn't agree more my friend and we haven't even talked about we get to listen to the mark hamill master class on how to be a maniacal psychotic villain for the next however many hundreds of episodes and his performance grows too it takes a while for him to break in what makes that character work and paul dini said about

SPEAKER_00:
Christmas with the Joker, he said, mm, we didn't quite nail him in this one, but the DNA of what would make him one of the best versions of the Joker is there, but they didn't hit it out of the park yet.

SPEAKER_01:
I think we're going to get out of here. Welcome to Charlie and Steve watch stuff. We're excited to be watching stuff together with you. Like I said, we're going to be coming back with our first episode covering the first two episodes chronologically in the Batman animated series. That's going to be on leather wings. and Christmas with the Joker. So if you're starting that rewatch along with us, just jump onto the Max app, find a way to watch the show along with us, come back ready to hear the discussion. So whether you're joining us from the beginning or hopping onto the journey while we're somewhere along the way, we're super glad to have you here. And for myself, Steve Selnick, and Charlie Peppers, we want to officially welcome you in to Charlie and Steve Watch Stuff. We'll see you next time, fam. Bye.