Episode #49
Chekhov’s Bird
The Con Men are officially a year old, which seems as good a time as any to contemplate mortality. Adrian takes a look at what appears to be the final ride for Jackass and the strange sadness of watching a group of lunatics who built a franchise out of destroying themselves finally become too old to keep doing it. From Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O to the loss of Ryan Dunn and a younger crew that never quite captured the original chemistry, it becomes a surprisingly thoughtful conversation about friendship, nostalgia, getting older, and the ever-encroaching march of time. Also, Dan and Adrian discover their own podcast is basically Jackass , except the mousetraps are metaphorical and nobody has to drink anything from a flying portable toilet. Then it’s the penultimate episode of Lanterns , “The Jordan Boy’s Legacy,” and the series finally shows us the burden Hal Jordan has carried since childhood. Young Hal learns the truth about his father and grandfather while, decades later, John Stewart gets a second chance to know the version of Hal preserved inside the ring: Halogram , the man from before Sinestro’s betrayal left Hal broken. As John and Halogram slowly find the friendship their living counterparts almost managed to build, we discover something potentially much bigger: John can maintain Halogram without even wearing the ring . Chekhov’s Bird has come home to roost, and the series appears to be telling us that John Stewart’s will may be powerful enough that he doesn’t need a Green Lantern ring at all. A portable black hole sends John and Halogram to a dead world soaked in fear, where childhood trauma, yellow skies and a suspiciously forge-like structure make the destination feel considerably less accidental than it first appears. John nearly loses himself to the planet’s fear toxin before his own subconscious manifestation of Halogram saves him—and waiting on an island in the middle of it all is Sinestro . With one episode left, the mysteries are finally colliding: John’s impossible willpower, Hal’s legacy, Sinestro, fear, the increasingly yellow imagery and whatever the hell this season has been building toward. The Con Men give Episode Seven eight rings out of ten on its own—but with this much story still on the table, the finale has one hell of a landing to stick.
