Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Without Remorse" and What's Making Us Happy

Jodie Turner-Smith and Michael B. Jordan are Navy SEALS in Without Remorse. (Nadja Klier/Amazon Studios)

Michael B. Jordan has reached the point in a male movie star’s career where his name automatically gets thrown into the mix whenever a new adaptation of some ancient specimen of still-marketable IP is in the offing. Case in point: While Jordan is promoting Without Remorse, the first of an intended series of military shoot-’em-ups wherein he becomes I think the third actor to play John Clark — a special ops guy created by Cold War technoscribe Tom Clancy — reporters are asking him whether he’s going to be the next Superman.

For what it’s worth, I think Jordan would be a marvelous Superman — never mind that like recent (current?) Superman Henry Cavill, he is, through no fault of his own, shorter than I am. At the very least, I’d be more excited for that movie than I am for the already-announced follow-up to Without Remorse, a rote, dreary, boring, and humorless affair that boasts a great performance by Jodie Tuner-Smith as Clark’s commanding officer and very little else. It’s certainly the least of the big-screen Tom Clancy adaptations, unless 2002’s The Sum of All Fears (which had Liev Schreiber in the Clark role) is worse. I never saw that one. I heard Baltimore gets nuked in that movie.

I was glad to join Aisha Harris, Stephen Thompson, and Daisy Rosario to hash out our shared disappointment in Without Remorse on Pop Culture Happy Hour. And to shamelessly promote my podcast A Degree Absolute! and its upcoming guest bookings and its undisputed banger of a theme song once again.

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode nine — Dance of the Dead

It's Carnival in The Village, and Dance of the Dead — an episode that was nearly scuttled on account of Patrick McGoohan's disdain for it (and refusal to shoot at least part of its climactic scene) — offers a fascinating glimpse into The Prisoner's conflicting aesthetic priorities.

Marry Morris, our latest Number Two, is a memorable malefactor whom my podcastin’ pardner Glen admits he’d like to have as his mom. (He also laments the undisciplined nature of her color-coded-or-not telephone system, and goads me into railing against the cosmic obliviousness of umbrella-users.)

You also get a great heel turn by Aubrey Morris, a haunting performance by Alan White as a doomed former colleague of The Prisoner, an oddly flat showing by Norma West as The Prisoner's observer, and some of the most haunting visual imagery of the entire series.

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode eight — Many Happy Returns

The first half of this episode is dialogue-free! This episode of The Prisoner, that is, not this episode of A Degree Absolute!, though that's the sort of formal experimentation we'd be game to try. Anywho, Number Six awakens in an inexplicably raptured Village and opts for the seaborne escape route, where starvation, pirates, and intrigue await. As does Georgina Cookson, on whom Glen has developed a serious crush.

PLUS: Listener mail!

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode seven — with "I Am Not a Number" author and "Repo Man" auteur Alex Cox

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SPOILERS AHOY for the entirety of the 54-year-old television series The Prisoner! You've been warned! Save this episode for later if you haven't yet seen the whole series!

Lifelong Prisoner fan Alex Cox joins Chris to talk about his 2017 book I Am Not a Number: Decoding the Prisoner, and What It's All About.

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode six — The General

Glen is under the influence of digital vermouth and under the spell of John Castle in our dissection of "The General." Wherein Number Six gets anger-cruised and Kirks a computer, and Colin Gordon "returns" as Number Two from "A.B. & C." — an episode obviously intended to follow this one, but which was broadcast before — apparently having survived his encounter with a tumescent scarlet telephone handset and the unheard but clearly menacing voice on the other end of that line.

One hundred percent entry; one hundred percent pass!

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode five — The Schizoid Man

Number Six comes face-to-immobile-face with the only opponent who can truly make him doubt his resolve: Himself!

It's the The Parent Trap episode. It's "Mirror, Mirror" episode. It's the Double Impact episode. It's the if-I'm-not-me-who-da-hell-am-I-episode. It's the episode that teaches us that fingering an electric socket may on rare occasions be quite necessary, despite what your parents and teachers would have you believe.

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode four — Free For All

It's election time in The Village and Number Six is the frontrunner! Eric Portman, this episode's Number Two, greets him thus: "Good morning, good morning! Any complaints?" And of course Six has complaints. He's like Portnoy: famed for his complaints.

Featuring the lovely Rachel Herbert as Number Fifty-Eight, his irrepressibly enthusiastic and enthusiastically unintelligible driver/assistant/etc. Or is she?

This is the episode in which our dearth of a title song with lyrics gets well and truly solved. And in which a voicemail from a listener sparks a discussion of Number Six's... likability.

"A Degree Absolute!"

Music and Lyrics by Chris Klimek

Arranged by Casey Erin Clark and Jonathan Clark

Vocals and Keyboards by Casey Erin Clark

Guitar, Percussion, Mixing by Jonathan Clark

Bass by Marcus Newstead

A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! episode three — A. B. & C.

They grow up fast. A Degree Absolute!, my punctuated and punchcard-driven passion project podcast with Pal-for-Life Glen Weldon, is already three episodes old!

We’re reviewing the episodes in the sequence in which they were aired way back in 1967-8 A.D., which is, as we explain, for the most part not the sequence in which they were made. This week’s episode, “A. B. & C.,” was intended to run late in The Prisoner’s first season, and was ultimately broadcast third. It features Peter Bowles telling Patrick McGoohan “I want you,” a classic John McClane-style air-shaft constitutional, some dodgy fisticuffs, the plot of the 2010 Christopher Nolan film Inception, and a milk-drinking Colin Gordon as a Number Two menaced by a tumescent red phone.