After a long hiatus, we’re back! This time with an absolute banger of an episode featuring writer and critic Séamus Malekafzali on director Peter Berg’s pinnacle of Mark Wahlberg-ness, Lone Survivor. Séamus may be too young to remember 9/11, but he’s more than old enough to stand face-to-face with Berg and challenge him to a blinking contest.
Berg's extended montage of suffering, released in 2013, heavily fictionalizes a real-life and extremely unsuccessful Navy SEAL raid in Afghanistan in 2005. On the pod, the boys discuss how Berg’s Americana fetish turns combat into a version of extreme sports — once again featuring Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights — and employs the same trick used by so many GWOT films when it lies about what really happened to create false stakes for its American protagonists.
If you like what you’re hearing, hit that subscribe button to get notified when the next episode goes live.
And in case you didn’t see it above, subscribe to Séamus’s newsletter here.
Share this post