 They call me Mellow Yellow. Quite right, Slick. They call me Mellow Yellow. Quite right, Slick. Is that what happened? What's that next? What song is that? By who? Mellow Yellow, I'm assuming. I actually don't know that it's called Mellow Yellow. Um, I think the band was the itchy buttholes. You think it was the butthole surfers? Ah, yes. That's an actual band name. Look them up! It's true. Hey, welcome back to our Stupid Racks of the Corbin. The best dads get promoted to grandpa. You can follow us on Instagram, Twitter, for more juicy content. Thanks, Patreon, for following us on Instagram. Because it means they've taught their children how to properly fornicate. I don't think anybody ever taught me how to fornicate. Yeah, you don't really need to know how to do that. I mean, you could talk about it, but... No, I taught my kids. Here, everybody sit down. I got a book for you. Look at this form, look at that. I saw a video of a guy humping a tailpipe in public. That's weird. What? What category? It's the end of the world. It was actually a real on Instagram. Automobiles. No, it was actually a real on Instagram. Anyways, today we're doing a series review. Is that what that is? Yes, because there's more than one thing. More episodes. I guess. And we are reviewing Jubilee. The came out, I think, maybe a month ago, I think. And I think it came out like, they dropped the first five. Right. And then they dropped the second five. I think two weeks later, something like that. I don't remember. But anyways, I heard a lot about it. I wanted to get to it, directed by... Forgive, I mispronunciation on this, please. Vikramaditya Motwani. Who directed Udan, which we loved. Half of Sacred Games. Yep. What else? Did he direct Queen or was he an AD on Queen? No, he was an AD on Queen. Or maybe I'm going to hold on. No, yeah, he was. Yeah. But I think he also directed Trap. I think there was one other... He did direct, you are correct. He directed Trap. Hold on. I think there was one other thing that I... He was... Did he partially contribute to DevD? He was... I think he was just part of the production team. I don't think he was director. All right. He did AK for AK we never saw. Joshi Super here, which we haven't seen. Right, and there's... Lutera. All Lutera. Lutera, right. Another one we liked. Very similar actually. Very similar. I'll think about that for this. Anyways, so it was directed by Ham, starring a billion... A bunch of people. A big ensemble. Peace. Yes. A bunch of smaller in terms of not star names. Yes. A bunch of much smaller... I don't know what they would call... I don't think they would call them junior actors. They call them weird stuff in India. Yeah. They aren't as well-known. But we've seen before like our Benod. We saw him, I believe, in a couple things. Stree, I think was one of them. And what else? Dangle. So we've seen a lot. I think a lot of these people in... Stree, right? Yeah. In a few things, but they were more supporting roles. Yeah. I don't think anyone we've ever seen has been predominantly a lead in something, except maybe... Her. Was she in something? Who? Forgive me for forgetting the actress's name. She plays Sumitra. Sumitra. Adita. Adita. Padmavat. Rockstar. Yeah, we've seen her quite a bit. Yeah. Did she star in anything? Yeah, I think so. I think she was pretty big in Padmavat. Yeah, I remember that. Maybe that's what... I think she was the lead actress in Rockstar. I think it's those two. I think it's Rockstar and Padmavat where I have the memory of her. We saw those a while back. Yeah, yeah. Regardless, a lot of people in this one, big and subtle pieces. Yes, yes. And a legend in Bengali cinema and Mr. Chatterjee. Yes. But this will be obviously a hundred and four of you. If you haven't watched it, please go watch it. Come back and we decided to do just this way instead of a watch along. I've been told that you could do a watch along, but you didn't need to do a watch along. I'm actually kind of needed more focus on this one. I'm glad we did not do one. Yeah, it's slow. Film. Yeah. There's a lot of stories, but with a lot going on. And it's not a true story, but there's elements of, like I think they said, the first Bollywood scandals kind of peppered in there. A bunch of Bollywood history is also peppered in there. So it's kind of like almost not a full retelling of obviously the actual events, but you kind of get to go over some of Bollywood's history a little bit as well. Did the director also contribute to the writing? I think he was the writer of it. I don't know why. There's the creator, but actual script people. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah, he wrote it. And it was also composed by... Say his name. Again, mispronouncing. Ole Kadanda Das Gupta, who I could tell from the outset, contributed to Sacred Games. The score was... I don't know if you looked up who cast it though. I did not. Oh, well, not a surprise. Either way. Abashik Banerjee. Obviously, once again, it'll be 100 minutes for all of you. It's on Amazon. If you want to, please go watch it. Come back. And we're going to kind of go over a lot, obviously, because we're doing the entire series here. So we'll try to talk about as much as we can. Right. But Rick, your initial thoughts of the series? Yeah, initial thoughts and overview of the totality of the series. So I found production design to be exemplary. I found the direction, particularly, for me, the creme de la creme as episode one. And I found the acting to be exemplary. I found the story to be somewhat slow, and I allowed it to be that way. At times, once we got to the end, and I'll explain more when we get into this, it felt almost as if it had been a film that had been stretched into a series, as if it had been conceptualized first as a feature. Maybe it was, yeah. And it may have been. Who knows? But ultimately, my takeaway from it was, even with the exemplary production design, a beautiful score, very good direction, exemplary acting, there were aspects of the writing, both in the way things unfolded, just in terms of crispness, captivation, a sense of just really gripping me that it didn't in ways I was hoping it would. And then there are some things that you just had mentioned about where I did some research in regard to the truth versus what's depicted in here. And for me, that's the takeaway that was really difficult for me to fully celebrate it. This was a mixed bag for me. But this also wasn't trying to tell a true story. It was just inspired by that true event. It wasn't an actual retelling of any particular story. No, but it was just inspired. We can get into that a little bit later in regard to why I have very strong feelings about that aspect of it, which is the primary thing that pulled me away from loving the show. I liked the show. Yeah, I really enjoyed the show. I actually thought the beginning was a lot more slow and then I got a lot more into it towards the second half. So it's interesting that you thought the first episode was... Even though I loved the first episode, I thought the first episode was very good. Yeah, I watched the first episode and then said to Andrani, I said, you're going to want to watch this with me. She watched the first episode with me as I saw it a second time. She loved it. And then we got into episode two and it did a pretty dramatic drop in terms of captivating me with the story and even what I saw with the ingenuity and beauty of the cinematography choices in the first one. Episode two to five were a lot slower for sure. That's exactly the episode for me. And then it goes up again. It has a very nice final episode. It summarizes everything well. There was nothing I hated about this series. That was definitely the slower aspect of it. I think the pacing, even though obviously that was probably their goal, it was just a strict drama with the story telling. But that aspect of it being a little slow was probably the hardest part of the series. Episode two to maybe two to five, I think. Maybe two to four, I don't know. I don't know specifically. Overall, I did really enjoy it. We'll just talk about the set design first because the production design and set design is probably the best in every series we've seen so far. Utterly. Golden Globe, you name it. Incredible production design. Immediately transported to the world that they've created. Every moment of the show. It was extremely beautiful. I don't know if we shout out to the cinematographer because I wanted to Yeah, I'm sure there's a cinematographer. The primary DOP is Pratik Shah. I bet he's worked with him before. Oh, maybe not, actually. I thought he would have worked on Sacred Games. The whole team. The whole production design, art direction, costume design, lighting, cinematography, as good as it gets. There were some really gorgeous shots in this. Even in the first episode, anytime they're in front of that fire. What a great thing that set design people made for this series. I loved book ending that. From episode one to episode ten. Taking us right back to that fire. I agree with you. There were so many great scenes in that space, actually. Some of the best. Between Benod and Bengali. Especially episode one. Bengali... Yeah, Chatterjee. His first name. Prasangit? Chatterjee. He looked like... When he had the mustache, I thought he was an Anil Kapoor. He was very reminiscent of Anil. When he shaved the mustache, I thought he was more... What's his name? Just passed away. Or did he? I think of somebody else. The dad from American Pie and... Oh, yeah. What's his name? Um... Hold on. I didn't get that, though. I definitely got the Anil Kapoor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Eugene Levy, sorry. There you go. No, he's alive. Who am I thinking of that guy? I don't know. I think of somebody similar to him that died just recently. Anyway, sorry. When he shaved his mustache, which I was... I was like, why did he shave his mustache? It just happened. Obviously, they were doing the passage of time and he decided to shave his mustache down. Where did his mustache go? He almost looked like a completely different person. But yeah, the cinematography and the production design were off the charts amazing in his film. I wrote, from episode one, the very first things that I wrote were sleek, subtle, simmering, stylish, and artistically superb. Yeah. And the production design, which includes everything we just mentioned, art direction, costuming, cinematography, lighting, sound, design was flawless. Yeah. And another aspect I really enjoyed before getting to everything else, actors and everything, the composition and the score. The scoring was superb. They actually made this, they actually put song numbers into a series, which was cool. Which is very much a tip of the hat. For something that's like an ode to old Bollywood. Yeah. I thought it was a great little touch there. Yes. And also the songs were just really, really fun. But also just the background overall score of the thing I thought was really complimentary of it all. And I really, really enjoyed that aspect of it. Let's talk about some actors. Obviously, your lead here, which I think would be, I mean, you have a couple leads, I guess, but let's talk about Benoed. Yeah, it's primarily Benoed. You have Benoed and then Story. Jay Khanna. Yeah. Two and then... There's multiple leads. It's an ensemble piece, for sure. Yeah. But let's talk about Benoed, which is, say his name. Aparshakti Kurana. Which we've seen more in a comedic role in Street and then obviously we've seen him in Dango. I think we've seen him in some other things, too. Yeah. He had such a big arc. Because even in the beginning, I wasn't expecting his character to go in the direction that he went. I don't know if you would... No. I was not from the beginning. I was not anticipating that. No. Because his character arc, and I don't know if he particularly learned anything, but he kind of had to face the consequences for what he did. You know who his relation is to somebody else, right? To the real story. No, no, no. His... Like the actor. The actor. No. He is the younger brother of a Yushman. Oh, easy. I can see that. Can you see that? Yeah, I can absolutely see that. That's interesting. Yeah. They definitely have a similar face. Yeah. Have they ever worked together? Good question. I don't know. They not only have a similar face. He is equally... They're very different actors, but the... And again, Abashak's casting always in conjunction with whoever's directing is always good, man. If you want to ensure you have actors who have thespianatic muscle and are believable as these characters. Inside of some of the white actors? Yeah, we have few. Although, there was... Where is it? Which episode? I wrote it down. Episode five, the white guy with an exclamation point. It was the scene... I forgot. I looked up his name. Throughout the moment he was, but it's in episode five. I just know that. He has one scene and it's around the time they're talking about getting the Hindi songs on American radio in that ballpark. That guy. Yeah, that guy. I did, like I said, at some points, they had a white actor there, but he just nodded. Good. That's good. That's a good thing to do. I'm not going to have you talk, sir. But yeah, I felt... I thought he did a very, very good job. Very, very good job. Very believable. Absolutely. Very emotional moments for his character. I believed him as a very good actor. Yes. And it's super interesting. He has a very similar face to Yushman. I think Yushman has a little more charisma, which might be why he's the bigger star for the big box office, but I think he's an equally as good actor. Oh yeah. In terms of just... Solid actor. So, and then let's talk about Siddhant Gupta, who is, I think, our other lead as well. Correct. A very rent beer-esque look to him. I felt like if rent beer was in old Bollywood, I thought he did a very good job as well. I did too. His character was a little more straight and narrow, not as gray as even though kind of in the end, he kind of... Gets a little bit. He decided to instead of go after love, he decided to follow his dream. Yeah, a little bit to the end. And keep the fame and fortune. And also he would have implicated himself, I guess, with the way their court system is. But I thought he did a very good job. And then the other male, before we talk about the females, him, Chatterjee. In the lead roles, yes. I thought he did a very, very good job. I really enjoyed his character. I really enjoyed his screen presence, actually. Wonderful. And is he a Bengali? Yeah, he's a legend in theater and film in Bengali cinema. It shows. It shows. It absolutely shows. I loved his dynamic with any scenes he did with Benod. Especially that one in the beginning with the fireplace where Benod's reciting the scene. Yeah, the line, the scene. All of them have the capacity, most especially him, but everybody in the lead positions and some of the supporting positions. They have the understanding of being small without contriving that or indicating that. And if they're thinking about being small, it does not show, which is a testament to their process. But every single one of them knew how to just be the characters. And I believed them at all times. Yeah. All the actresses, your lead though, I can't pronounce that name. Yeah, Womika Gaby. Womika. Who played Nilifer. Did a really good job. Really lovely. As did, obviously, our Sumitra, which was played by Aditi Rao Hidari. If it's mispronounced, forgive me. And there's so many other characters and actors. There was nobody who was bad. Everybody was on an elevated, really good level, except for some of the white people. But that's just the norm. Unless you've got Mark Bennington in the role. Yeah, it's true. But it's lovely to see when you don't really have to be concerned at all with the performances going on. Correct. And that is for me, the production design and the acting were what held me to continue through with the watching of it. Again, it's a mixed bag for me because ultimately there's far more to like in this. But I have, we'll get to the summation at the end, the primary things for me had to do with the writing. Both in terms of truth and fiction and then also just some of the character justifications for me. Others may not agree, may not see it. But for me, there were things that lacked some of the riveting, sizzle, caring that I was hoping to feel for them by the time we got to episodes 5, 6, 7, and 8. No, actually I got more interested. Come 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, whatever. I was fully invested by post-5, I think, in the story. I thought it did, obviously, episode 1 to here. I think it did a little down and then it went right back up after 5, basically. It did a slow incline to 5. Agreed. Which, not that it was, but it was just really slow and not as engaging as 1. And then I think it got better towards the end. And through the episodes, there were some lines that particularly stood out to me that were very particular to acting and film and the industry. One of them was, one of the first ones was in episode 4. One of them was, I don't think these guys, I think these guys don't pay their writers. More power to you, WGA. And this quote, I made you a star. Don't try to be an actor. This other line here. One always has to get in bed with one or the other to make a movie. Right? Acting's just a matter of editing. And I did, I really enjoyed the fact that they incorporated some of... Like they talked about some of the... I think they talked about Awara. They talked about Mughal Islam. Mughal Islam. And different aspects of Bollywood history that we have. I'm sure there's way more that we didn't pick up on, obviously. We're only four years into this, but people that grew up with the industry will probably know a lot more references and stuff that was more subtle than we could pick up. Yes, absolutely. But I enjoyed that part. The arc of basically everything ending badly for everybody. Correct. I enjoy. Yeah. Yeah. This isn't a happy ending series. No. I don't think anybody actually is happy in the end. Benod and maybe his wife, because she didn't want him to be... Maybe. ...Madam Kumar. She just wanted him to be Benod. And so now they're nobodies again. Yeah. So maybe she's the happy one in the end, I guess. You could say. Yeah. But everybody else... No one goes riding off into the sunset happy. Obviously spoilers. Yeah, spoilers. Bunch of people die. Bunch of people leave the people that they actually love to stay comfortable in their life and famous and fortune and to not go to jail, I guess, because he lied under oath and all that stuff. So I enjoyed that aspect of it. What did you think about the ending? Yeah. The ending, too. And this is a good place, I guess, to segue into what I had problem with. The minor problem I had with the writing, and it is very minor, was that there were some arcs with characters that I didn't feel... I was wondering about the justification of it, and I don't need to get into the specifics, because that would be boring. There were just some aspects of character arc that when a character made a decision to do something, I wasn't fully convinced as to their why in the writing. The actors fully fleshed out what they were given to me. But there were a couple of those moments. The other thing ultimately was, yes, this is a work of fiction. There's a disclaimer before every single episode. However, so much of this is so closely replicated to truth that I have a hard time, as I always do in these situations, with saying in your disclaimer at the front, and this is actually part of the disclaimer, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead or actual events is purely coincidental. Bullshit. That's not coincidental. This is loosely based on the film company Bombay Talkies, and it is loosely based on the lives of Hamanshu Rai and Devakarani. Devakirani. And there's so much truth interwoven, like you just mentioned. They mentioned Mughal-e-Azam and other things. There are so many things to this that are so closely represented that to make that disclaimer and say that it's just, if you notice that, that's a coincidence. No. This was done with intentionality. And the story that I know after doing research and reading about it, because it matters to me, truth matters to me, it doesn't, if you're going to tell a story that is that closely representative of true people and true places and true events, you need to be more honest about that because if, for example, if Hamanshu Rai was my great-grandfather or my grandfather, it would bother me that they depicted him this way. It would bother me a lot. So that's ultimately why, for me, theater storytelling and storytelling has morals to the story. And when you take a story that has a huge amount of truth rooted in it and you simply change that for entertainment value or for plot value, it's very difficult for me because people can walk away from this thinking that this is the story of these people, that it's not a coincidence they're being presented this way. That was the ultimate for me. So you just mainly have a problem with the wording of the description? No, I have a problem with the way these characters are represented because they're based on real people. They're inspired by certain people. They're not based on real people. There's a difference. There is. Calling it Roy Takis versus Bombay Takis? We're getting into legalities now. No, we're not. They can't say that it's the real thing because of legalistic. That's the point, though. Every film does that, though. No, they do not. Shindler's List did not retell the story of what happened during the life of Oscar Schindler. But you're telling a real story of Oscar Schindler who were trying to retell that exact story. This was not. I think they should have. That was not the creator's purpose. So you can't say that they should have because you would have because that's not what they wanted to do. But if you're taking a story that isn't coincidentally based but specifically based off of the lives of real people and you're making it a dramatic telling that comes across as history, it's not farcical, it's not comedic, it's not ridiculous. But they also say that it's not real, though. They say it's a work of fiction. This is not the actual events that happened. And that any resemblance to the actual people and events is a coincidence? Once again, I think you're more upset about the wording of it. No, I'm not bothered by semantics. I'm bothered by motivation. I'm bothered by the why. I'm bothered by... It's the same reason I didn't like Raj Kamarao's film that depicted Daniel Pearl's murder by the terrorist the film took that story, showed it to everybody and told it in a way that it did not transpire. So people see that film and think, oh, that's what happened to Daniel Pearl. And that is a lie. So people can see this film and... Serious. Yeah, people can see this series. And even though it has a disclaimer at the beginning, which most people don't really fully read because the thing is never left on the screen long on a few to read every word, it's a legal thing, there are many people who couldn't watch this and it's so connected to so many things in real life that they won't be able to differentiate without researching what's true and what's not. And I have a problem with that when it's so closely resembling real events and real people that, example, the man who founded Bombay Talkies did not gamble away all his money and dive an overdose of pills. But once again, this is not telling the actual true story. But you can have... It's so closely resembling... But Rick, many films have done this where they have sprinklings of truth. They're not telling the actual story, it's just like, oh, you can tell that we're trying to almost inspire by this an actual event that people know. This is not the actual event that's being told. So it's not like a unique thing to this. Many films, series have done that. They take sprinklings of things that you're like, oh, they're doing a little Nixon thing there, a little Nixon shout-out. It's not the actual Nixon telling, but it's not a unique thing to this. Many, many series and films have done that before. If you could give me an example that would win me to your side of the argument, I'd be really happy. I can't think of any that does that. There are many that do what you're doing and I don't like them equally. I understand. But if you're going to tell a story that is this closely resembling actual events in people, this wasn't farcically removed. This was very, very closely resembling to actual people and actual events and included a lot of actual events. But it wasn't the actual event. That's why the character can die a certain way or they can do a certain thing by actually telling the story of that guy. Right, but there will be people who watch this and walk away thinking that the founder of Bombay Talkies killed himself and was a gambler who cared more about movie stars and money than he did his wife. That's that person's fault because it's already told this is not the actual event that happened, though. I never hold a film accountable for people's stupidity. No, you can't hold a film accountable for people's stupidity, but you can hold a film accountable for feeding the stupidity. It's not feeding it because it says it's not true. Once again, semantics. You can think of what you want. That's fine. It's your opinion. I don't agree. So that's fine. That's what this is for for us to tell the differences of opinion because, you know, I'm smart, ricks and idiot. Cheers. Truth matters. This is not telling the truth. Right. It's not. It wasn't trying to, Rick. Anyways, was there any other aspects outside of what you've already talked about that you wanted to discuss? No, we talked about SCOR, we talked about the great acting, the production design. Yeah, I just ultimately, the takeaway, as I said at the outset, would be I would absolutely, I understand if somebody would love this, I didn't love it, I liked it. There were things I loved about it. But ultimately my takeaway was I liked it but it has so many superlatives in it. Yeah, I mean, towards the end, if we get to do the dummies with like, because I'd at least want to watch at least five series to be able to accurately do the awards and like, so what we didn't do last year was series because we didn't watch enough. But production dies, I can't imagine. Maybe obviously there's other stuff that come out. I mean, this would have went over Farsi in terms of production design easily. We could say a couple other elements as well that it would win. Those are the only two that we've seen though. Correct. But yeah, I enjoyed the series, especially it did a upward trajectory after episode five for me. It did two for me. So I like that. I love that it was also highlighting lesser-known performance. Agreed. People that aren't, obviously Farsi had Shahid and that's wonderful. I don't think there's anything wrong with stars. Headlining series or anything like that. Not at all. But the fact that a series decided to highlight. I feel like a lot of OTT series would do that. Obviously Pankaj and Nawaz are now big names and stuff, but they don't get the leads in films. Right. It may have been a very intentional casting choice by the creators and with Abhishek Helman casting that they wanted to ensure that everybody in these particular roles, they might be known, but they didn't want them to be so well-known that it's on the one hand you get a star because they're the star. And then there's another time you don't want the star. Sally Field said this when she was talking to Spielberg about doing Lincoln. She said, I know I come with a lot of baggage because there is a moment when you see Sally Field on screen. She says this, that you have to stop. Oh, it's Sally Field. You don't instantly embrace her as the character. You have to really get your suspension of disbelief working versus an unknown. That hurdle is not there. And that's, I agree. I love one of those things as well as, hey, the more wonderful actors that can get work, the better. Yeah. Yeah. Just hire us, Abhishek. Because we'll do better. He's like, yeah, you know what the producers want to spend on roles your side, guys? Yeah. We understand why it's the way it is. They live here. Yeah, we get it. We get it. Anyways, let us know what you thought about the series and what should be the next series we should watch down below.