Ep. 606 - Judas and the Black Messiah (GUEST: Valerie Complex)

The trailer looks painfully unfunny. But I'm not sure I vibe overall with the comedy tastes of this crew, because I felt the same about the Borat sequel, which I suffered through in its entirety (this BTW is after loving THE ALI G SHOW and the first Borat film). 🤷🏻‍♂️ They generally have simpatico tastes in dramas and SF though.

I watched Barb & Star and I feel like I watched a completely different movie than you guys. This movie was barely funny at all. It had a few moments, sure, but overall I wouldn’t recommend it.

Brad Haney

Great film! Enjoyed your discussion. I agree that obviously the FBI of this era was very much an evil organization (practically Skynet, as your guest colorfully observed). But I don’t know if that’s fair in the present tense as she (and sometimes you guys) used it. I don’t claim to be an expert on federal law enforcement, but I appreciate the way that throughout the Trump administration, they did not roll over for his bullshit. Even right up to the end, his own FBI director Christopher Wray was affirming that the election was free and fair, and that white supremacist hate groups were a major problem for the FBI to fight. So I think they deserve some credit for having become an organization that does good in the world. And getting back to the film, the filmmakers also deserve credit for not making it total hagiography. They accurately portrayed the Panthers, warts and all. Breakfast programs for kids and free clinics, but also shooting cops in situations that were not necessarily totally justified (yes, the cops also engaged in a lot of unjustified killings, but two wrongs don’t make a right). This actually lines up with a very recent interview I heard with Noam Chomsky on Coleman Hughes‘s podcast in which Chomsky said the Panthers were made up of two groups: earnest progressive crusaders, but also others who were simply criminals using the organization for their own selfish purposes. And even the Jesse Plemons FBI man was portrayed with nuance. At the end, I wish you would have either edited out the comments about the discredited conspiracy theory of the FBI pushing crack in the inner city, or added some kind of disclaimer in post. (I understand it might have been awkward to push back in the moment, especially since you were wrapping up.) If we are going to call out right wing conspiracy pushers like Marjorie Taylor Greene, we need to be consistent and not give tacit approval to that kind of thing when someone from “our team” does it.