290 | Tamara Podemski (Outer Range: Season 2)

My Summer Lair Chapter #290: What Kind Of Time Machine Would You Use To Go Back In Time?

These are turbulent difficult times.

It’s why we don’t see with any sort of regularity diversity in our time travellers. (Plus…duh: why would you go back to those days? Currently we live in amazing times: you can be anything you want to be when you grow up.)

As a white dude Marty McFly can go into the past with no issues (indeed he even effortlessly time travelled to 1885. 1955 is already dangerous, there’s no way I’d go back to 1885. Way too much ruckus, well that and I have no desire to step in horse poop.).

Danger increases the further back in time a time traveller goes. Like a sketchy hood that’s in every city (usually given a shout out in bumping rap songs) you don’t belong in the past. (I know…your therapist disagrees with me.)

As a tinted avid consumer of science-fiction time travelling is fun but I understood the social contract is I can’t go back to the past. The future, oh yo…let’s go, son!

So, on April 15, 2022 when Outer Range Season 1 premiered on Prime Video I nodded: Josh Brolin (white dude) was suspected to have time travelled, he came from the past into our present. Reverse Marty McFly.

That checks out.

What doesn’t check out is Deputy Sheriff Joy Hawk investigating Trevor Tillerson’s murder. His body was found on a nearby mountain several days after Trevor was killed, but forensic evidence indicates he had only been dead 10 hours. How could be killed several days ago and 10 hours ago…at the same time?!

Well, Royal Abbott a Wyoming rancher played by Josh Brolin threw Trevor Tillerson’s body into a time hole on his land.

The corpse time travelled.

If you think a Black time traveller is rare…how many movies and TV shows show a corpse time travelling?!

When I’m speaking about diversity of time travellers I’m including the living…and the dead. If we’re gonna do diversity then let’s do diversity properly and throughly.

(If you watched Season 1 there’s a random buffalo with 2 arrows sticking out of its side that shows up every so often like a silent omen. Just seeing the arrows clearly means the buffalo is from a different time so again…this is genuine diversity. A time travelling buffalo. A bit long but that’d make an excellent punk rock band name: Time Travelling Buffalo.)

Okay, Outer Range you have my attention.

That brings us to Season 2 and the attached conversation with actor Tamara Podemski who plays Deputy Sheriff Joy Hawk.

Like most media folks I talked to her before Season 1 was out. Before I’d seen all of it and before the public had consumed all of it. We couldn’t unpack the shimmering mysteries of Outer Range. So even though we’re expert divers we stayed on the surface like a decent blind date. (I know “decent blind date” is an oxymoron.)

Tamara returned to my program for Season 2 and this time…the entire season was out: viewers were online pimping theories. She and I could speak more freely.

Know This: there is a pile of spoilers in this My Summer Lair episode.

If you haven’t finished Season 2 yet, I’d hesitate pushing play.

I’ll stop there and let you enjoy this My Sumer Lair episode and Season 2 of Outer Range.

Enjoy and be grateful. I concur when Tamara said to me: “I’m overwhelmed and overjoyed by the response that people have had to Season 2 and to Joy’s journey.”

Indeed.

Season 1 and 2 of Outer Range are streaming on Prime Video. Behold the trailer for Season 2:

Tamara Podemski @ W • T • F

Host Sammy Younan

Recorded: Wednesday May 22, 2024 at 12:00 pm (EST)

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