Class Of 09 (Hulu)

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Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore.

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I'm a producer, writer of film
and television and now a podcast producer.

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And despite having every streaming service,
I never know what to watch. So

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anytime I watch something good, I
talk about it on the show. This

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way, you'll never have the same
problem I do. I watched this tonight.

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There's always something good to watch.
Let's get started today. In the

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show, we are talking about Class
of OZ nine, which is a new

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series on Hulu. I actually graduated
from college in two thousand and nine myself,

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so you know right away they having
just on the title. I love

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any story where it's like we're gonna
tell you what happened to these people,

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you know, at a certain age, then at another time years in the

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future, and then at another time
us in the future after that. Anything

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like that, I'm always really interested
in, you know, I always think

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about me, like, if you
took me right now, I'm thirty six,

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I think, and if you like
showed me my own life at twenty

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five, it's like night and day
different. And then if you took me

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back to like me at like sixteen
and again drastically different. So I just

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think you learned so much about people
by seeing where they are in different stages

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of life. Barry has just done
this hilariously by the way, no spoilers,

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but yeah, Barry just did this
recently in the last episode a way.

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It was so funny. So yeah, I always am interested in this

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thematically. This is an interesting one. So we're following an FBI class in

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three different timelines. In the past, we're seeing them when they're first going

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to Quantico. In the present,
we're seeing them when there's some sort of

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issue with like there's an internal investigation
in the FBI. And then in the

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future we're seeing them when one of
them has become the director of the FBI.

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And it seems to all be correlated
with this like chant GPT minority Report

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kind of policing. So kind of
interesting premise, right, Um. The

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question is, you know, is
it any good at it? And I

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have to say, for whatever reason, I was a little worried that this

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might be like a Gong show.
That was my fear. I have a

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buddy who listens to the show who
will not be named in case he's working

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with anyone affiliated with this, but
he had some criticisms for this, and

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I don't feel like I've heard,
you know, any significant hype around it

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or anything like that. It just
sort of appeared one day on my Hulu.

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You know, FX is a pretty
good track record, so I always

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want to give them the benefit of
the doubt. So I watched it,

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and let's find out if it's worth
you're watching it. We opened in the

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future with Brian Tybee Henry in the
room for Minority Report. I mean,

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that's what it is, you know, minus the It really feels like that

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all this data that they're looked,
they're looking at the screens with all this

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data floating around, and they've identified
a guy who is a threat, and

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Kate Mara and another agent go to
this house where this guy supposedly is That

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guy also has the Minority Report room
set up with the million monitors and stuff,

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and he's got like a TikTok loop
of Brian Tyree Henry talking about how

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America has become one of the safest
countries on Earth. So that's the future,

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right. Then we jumped back to
the past and we're at the initial

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entry to Quantico. So we're with
Kate Mara and Brian Tyree Henry and they're

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having a classic Quantico training stuff and
there's something that happens in this show eighteen

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minutes in that really made me feel
good about the show, and I,

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you know, I have mixed feelings
about it, which I'll talk about throughout

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this episode, but this little vignette
I thought was very effective. So everyone's

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in so almost like the orientation session, like if you get a new job,

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like I spread session. They're asking
people to stand up and talk about

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themselves. It feels like the first
day a kindergarten or something. And a

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bird flies into the window and dies, and one of the FBI recruits says,

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can we bury the bird? And
the trainer people are like sure,

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and then they go bury the bird. Everyone stands around and they asked,

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like, what do you think about
us burying this bird? They asked the

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other recruits and the other creature like
yeah, it's really nice. And then

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as everyone is walking away from the
burial of this bird, Kate Mara asked

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Brian Tybree Henry, Hey, what
do you really think, Like, what

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do you really think about the fact
that we did this? And he says,

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I think that guy's bags will be
packed before we get back to the

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dorm, and he's right, like, they don't even let he tells Kamara

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later, they didn't even let him
pack his own bags. They had people

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pack them for him, because he's
too nice to be in the FBI.

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I bought that. I thought that
that, you know, obviously I don't

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think anything, you know, I
don't know that that's scessarily realistic. But

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I bought it in the context of
the story, like meaning that I really

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felt that made a strong statement about
what kind of FBI we're going to be

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shown in this television series. That
this guy who was kind enough to want

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to bury a bird, that's like, we gotta get this guy the hell

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out of here. This guy said, there's no fucking way we could let

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this guy stay in the FBI.
I feel like that moment. You know,

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there's certain moments when you're reading a
script if you're an executive, and

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you're like, all right, this
is a cool concept, let's see if

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they can pull it off. You're
reading the script and then there's like a

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great early scene that really sells it. And I feel like that was this

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for me. Like there's some stuff
in the early going. There's a very

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Network TV. You know, it's
from the dialogue and just certain things about

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it just felt a little weird,
and that moment really kind of pulled me

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in. So that's the past,
right. Then in the present day narrative,

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Kate Mara is like Donnie Brasco,
like she's undercover with a corrupt group

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of Philadelphia cops and the FBI.
Once she completes that case, they assign

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her to investigate her own friend who
has some sort of new criminal database.

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Again the Minority Report program chat GPT
of crime solving that she's involved with,

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and we know in the future that's
gonna be really important. Then in the

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future, Brian Tyree Henry testifies before
a congressional committee. Again, all of

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this, the comparisons to Minority Report, I feel like they slept on in

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the marketing of the show, and
it might as well. They could have

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called this Minority Report, and I
think people would have been would have gone

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along with it. It does feel
very prescient, meaning it in order for

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this show to come out right now, I'm sure it was written years ago

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and was produced at least, you
know, six months to a year ago,

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and it feels very much like,
Wow, this is probably where we're

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going with all this chat Gpta I
stuff. And then Kate Mara is also

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in this future timeline and she is
visited by the guy that they were looking

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for at the beginning of the episode
at the end of the episode, and

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it's this classic thing where he's basically
like, hey, this organization, there's

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something wrong here. You know,
it's dangerous for you, like that kind

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of thing. And then she is
interrogated afterwards and they asked her what did

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he say, and she says,
nothing I could make any sense of,

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which, honestly, you could kind
of say that about the pilot meeting,

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that it's the pilot does not show
its cards. You have a vague sense

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of like what's going on here.
It was not a surprise to me to

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see that Hulu released the first two
episodes simultaneously, so I probably will watch

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the second episode. It feels like
it's almost like a two parter premiere kind

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of thing. But honestly, for
me, it's not the plot that I

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really care that much about. What
I care about is the thematic ideas of

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the show. So there's an example
that in the past timeline, Kate Mara

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has a budding romance with a classmate
and her friend encourages her to pursue this

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romance. That is the same friend
who in the present timeline. Now it

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didn't work out with that guy,
and he is Katemara's superior, and he

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assigns her to investigate that same friend. So it's like how much these people

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have changed over time. That's interesting
to me. And I think the show

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has helped greatly by having Brian Tyree
Henry and Kate Mara because they're both actors

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who are very naturalistic. They don't
overdo it, they don't overact. They

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really always play down, less simple, real like, so especially the future

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stuff, there's some elements everything can
feel a little silly, like Kate Mara

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has like some sort of bionic eye
or something, but they keep you grounded

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into it and they help kind of
sell the whole thing. So I would

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say, look, for me,
the jury is somewhat still out. I'm

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not one hundred percent sure about this
show yet, but there was enough that

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I liked in the first episode that
I'm going to watch more. And if

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you're concerned in watching this is like, is this going to be like just

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goofy and you know, some sort
of like high concept thing that doesn't work

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at all, that's not the case. It's well made, actors are good,

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the anatic stuff is interesting. It's
very timely, so, you know,

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I think they made a good pilot. Whether or not it will be

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a good show for the duration of
the season, I think it is still

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an open question for me. But
I definitely want to see more. So,

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um, let me know. Let
me know if you you know,

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watch this and you find it interesting. Let me know if you're on my

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friends side who didn't like it.
You know, FX in general, I'm

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always going to give them, you
know, the benefit of the doubt.

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So that is the show for today. As always, Thank you so much

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for listening and you can reach out
to me at any time at dan voyagemedia

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dot com. Watch This Tonight on
Instagram, Ben Mordayn on Twitter, and

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you can join our Facebook group Watch
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the show, please leave us a
rating or review. And I have a

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podcast. It's the best way to
support the show, and I'm always open

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to suggestions of stuff you would be
interested in me covering on the show.

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That is the podcast for today.
Thank you so much for listening. Until

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next time. Bye,