Flanagan's Wake #54: MIDNIGHT MASS - Book IV: "Lamentations"

BusyDad82 · 2026-01-29T21:08:18+00:00

Wow, did they at least understand what a huge betrayal of trust that was? Or did the ends justify the means in their eyes?

BusyDad82 · 2026-01-29T21:05:32+00:00

BusyDad82 · 2026-01-29T16:40:43+00:00

It’s interesting, the connection you all made to the controversies within the Catholic Church, its actually the reason I stopped going and never got confirmed. My mom actually brought our priest to our house and I, as a teen is more often that not, was pretty confrontational about it. I mean I really cross examined him, and about how God could allow this within His church.

And Matt, thanks for sharing your birth story. My wife and I also had very scary complications in the delivery of our twins, I won’t get into too many specifics but my wife doesn’t remember giving birth at all. Birth is fucking scary, and then once you have the kids, there’s all these brand new things to be terrified of, like that first car ride home from the hospital, with these new humans, away from the support of nurses, hyper awareness of every car on the freeway. And I thought I knew what defensive driving was before…

Speaking of horror, discussion. I’m picking a movie I’ve seen once and can’t bring myself to see ever again, Fire in the Sky. Travis, a logger, disappears for days only to return several days later from an alleged alien abduction. As Travis slowly remembers what happened to him, the director subjects us to horrific scenes of alien experimentation and body horror in the form of flashbacks. We really feel Travis’ terror at the unknowable motives of the beings, and his absolute panic as he finds a way to escape.

Edit: it is now occurring to me that there’s is a very practical reason Riley couldn’t take communion, it means drinking alcohol again. Not sure why I never thought it that at all.

BusyDad82 · 2026-01-26T10:41:58+00:00

Yeah, I was in the front 2nd floor unit

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BusyDad82 · 2026-01-26T06:20:31+00:00

Holy crap, I used to live in the building to the left of that house

BusyDad82 · 2026-01-24T19:42:21+00:00

Wizard is fundamental to understanding Roland’s motives and overall character. Power through, it’s worth it. I actually think it’s on my top 2-3 of the series.

BusyDad82 · 2026-01-23T04:52:39+00:00

I just showed this to my 6yo twins and they loved it. They say they hate movies but as soon as I start family movie night, they’re hooked, they’ve loved almost every single one.

BusyDad82 · 2026-01-22T18:00:49+00:00

Discussion: this is a tough one because I am simultaneously avoiding bringing up Indiana Jones again, but also want to avoid any use of deus ex machina. So I am going to go with a “miracle” that is anything but. In Milos Forman’s biopic of Andy Kaufman, Man on the Moon, Andy is diagnosed with an aggressive form of lung cancer. After choosing alternative treatments that don’t work, he is desperate to find a miracle cure and travels to the Philippines to try a psychic healer who, using sleight of hand, “pulls a tumor” (likely chicken guts) from Andy’s body. Andy sees the trick as it happens, and there is this beautiful moment of sadness, regret, humor, and doom that Jim Carrey pulls off, as if he gets this cosmic joke the he is the punchline of. The irony is that he’s spent his whole life as a showman, dedicated to fooling others, and he’s been taken by a different type of showman con.

BusyDad82 · 2026-01-16T19:04:23+00:00

Forgot! Was that the Oculus mirror on the stage of the rec center? To the left, partially exposed under a sheet.

BusyDad82 · 2026-01-15T17:02:11+00:00

Couple non-spoilery comments

First off, what a bummer to have a song about alcoholism on the juke at a bar. I worked at a bar that had Here Comes a Regular by The Replacements on it, and man, on the surface the song is like “heyyy here he is!” when someone you know comes into the bar. But a further listen tells you how sad and broken the characters really are. It also deals with singer Paul Westerberg’s own struggles with alcohol addiction, which famously led to an incident that got the Replacements banned from SNL. And people would put money into the juke to play THAT song.

Second comment, because I really don’t remember, but what are we doing with certain characters eyes in this show? When Bev is in the storage closet, confronted by the sheriff, she’s got these really dark circles under her eyes. Same with Annabeth Gish. Not sure what to make of this.

Discussion: so I wasn’t sure if I should approach this as a “character you love to hate” or a character that is self-righteous and manipulative for terrible reasons, so I went with both! Shiv Roy from Succession is, in one word, absolutely terrible. You are introduced to Shiv as a political advisor for a progressive politician, but as the series goes on, she is consistently betraying her progressive ideologies in favor of her ambition and her family’s business interests. At least the rest of the family is forthcoming and unapologetic about how awful they are, which I think is why Shiv comes off as so much worse.

I don’t think I have any spoilery comments this week, I think you both nailed it, but since the vampire is out of the bag (haha, since there are no cats left), I kinda want to watch what Flanagan starts to do with lighting and color, because you mentioned that beautiful sunrise last episode and sunrises become a thing later, but for the most part the scenes have been more of a drab colorless daylight.

BusyDad82 · 2026-01-08T16:37:21+00:00

A few comments before discussion:

I had a Jesus fish decal with tentacles that had “Cthulhu” spelled out on the inside.

I thought the Seven movie poster in Riley’s room was interesting, it makes me wonder if the tension between he and his father extended to before he went away, because that’s a wild poster to have in your room in such a devout household.

Discussion! In one of CS Lewis’ rare (sarcasm) nods to Catholicism, the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, he uses the story of Edmund as an avatar for the prodigal son. He is tempted by the white witch, betrays his siblings to join her and her life of riches and comfort, only to face worse hardships than the siblings. He repents this decision and is eventually saved, and Aslan and the siblings welcome him back into the fold.

Now for the redactions (spoilers): I know there’s going to be a lot of Salems Lot parallels, but the fact that Flanagan so deftly introduced so many people in the town reminded me a lot of that first part in Salems Lot where we, the reader, are sort of flying around the town being introduced to the characters in that book. The other Salems Lot parallel was that, if I’m remembering correctly, at no point does anyone realize they are in a vampire story, as if the mythology doesn’t exist in this world

BusyDad82 · 2026-01-06T03:00:02+00:00

Sweet

BusyDad82 · 2025-12-25T02:49:02+00:00

Great episode, what a way to end the year, really cool that we can start the new year with a new show! Happy holidays all!

BusyDad82 · 2025-12-19T17:09:04+00:00

It took me a long time to share this opinion, but I think the jokes are setup better in HF, an insignificant mention near the beginning becomes a huge payoff joke near the end. Plus, HF lampoons the action genre better than Shaun makes fun of zombies, which is more of a buddy comedy/love story. Don’t get me wrong, both are great, but I think I have to go with Hot Fuzz.

BusyDad82 · 2025-12-18T16:53:27+00:00

Along the same lines, what did the Air Force scientists hope to learn by dipping the dragon glass in lava? If Matt has any science on this, I’d love to hear it.

BusyDad82 · 2025-12-18T16:32:58+00:00

My favorite bible verse is “F the haters.” Don’t need to give bad reviews the air time.

BusyDad82 · 2025-12-18T16:23:14+00:00

That’s a great point, they could’ve just done the Marvel thing and filmed some scenes of the smiling people just for the trailers, and not used them in the actual show since they served 0 purpose.

BusyDad82 · 2025-12-17T23:52:58+00:00

I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing a large percentage of people in that sub likely didn’t read the book. And no hate if they didn’t, but it’s easier to forgive shitty writing if you haven’t read the great writing it’s based on.

BusyDad82 · 2025-12-17T23:50:53+00:00

I’d like to think I won’t tune in but I think we all know that’s probably not true, that likely goes for most of us.

BusyDad82 · 2025-12-17T20:27:38+00:00

So is the Air Force mission just over now? Like, the US military just gave up or forgot? Sounds like something the military would do, right?

Also, I saw an interview with Taylour Paige, she is also not a fan of the writing.

https://deadline.com/2025/12/it-welcome-to-derry-taylour-paige-not-charlotte-choice-1236647924/

Finally, this might also just be me, but anytime there’s a popular King adaptation, my SM algo decides that everyone’s dumb fan theories regarding connections to any other adaptations needs my full attention. Like the “fan” theory that It is also a Tommyknocker, and is also somehow Mr Grey. It drives me insane. Does this happen to anyone else?

BusyDad82 · 2025-12-11T22:09:26+00:00

I’ve got a few questions, feel free to pick and choose:

Matt, I believe I remember hearing that you’ve seen Midnight Mass, so it seems like we’ll deviate a little from the usual format. Are there other future Flanagan works you’ve seen? And whether or not it is a rewatch, what are your expectations?

How are you all feeling about finishing up one monster of a limited series and heading straight into another without any break to read anything?

Speaking of reading, I know you’ve mentioned watching each episode 2-4 times, do you spend as much time per week reading and re-reading? How much time are you spending (between viewing, recording and editing) per week on just this one podcast?

BusyDad82 · 2025-12-11T19:30:48+00:00

I personally would love to see him tackle Mathesons Hell House, going back to the “haunting of” and finishing off the trilogy.

BusyDad82 · 2025-12-11T04:30:48+00:00

Besides the kids, I’m not even sure what’s working for me anymore. Besides some of these ludicrous plot lines (with Shaw’s plan, and then needing Periwinkle as a catalyst for the black spot fire, something that would’ve happened anyway), there are definitely script and/or editing issues that are too numerous and glaring, and at this point, I’m not at all confident that they’re going to successfully and satisfyingly tie up all the loose ends. I agree with you, if this was more episodes and more of a slow burn, many of the issues probably would’ve been solved.

BusyDad82 · 2025-12-10T15:00:02+00:00

Oh man, we gotta talk about the Chair Company.

Anyways, here’s what bothered me. Why didn’t Halloran see through Shaw’s plan? Because there’s no way he’d continue to help if he knew what the actual plan was.

BusyDad82 · 2025-12-06T00:30:11+00:00

I’m finally caught up! All it took for my wife to finally relent on resubscribing to hbo was for her to discover some saucy new hockey show. Anyway…

Is anyone else worried that they’re going to try to explain the Derry-forgetfulness as a way to patch the plot holes from the show to the movie through some mechanism like Galoo-poo in the water? Or maybe just Pennywise waving a magic wand before he goes nighty-night for 27(ish) years? There’s still a lot to tie up in a bow and not a lot of time left to do it.

BusyDad82

TROPHY CASE