Picking Nits
Operation Kino is not a subtle code name; Nazi security at the premiere is lax with a mountain of nitrate film and visible dynamite; Hickox calls Pabst German when he is Austrian; Wilhelm's table cannot hear the switch to English; Bridget leaves her shoe and a signed napkin behind; the developer is threatened on top of flammable film; the 'Hans out of a million' line; Hitler fetching his own gum; Shoshana's filmed message is in English
In the discussion (12)
Approx. transcript time · 01:14:54Read transcript
- One host has no nits; another opens with a big one: Kino is the German word for movie theater, so Operation Kino is not a subtle code name for a mission anyone overhearing could figure out; OPSEC for the Nazis is not high order, with everybody important put in a theater the size of the Bowery Ballroom guarded by little more than Wanda, where any Italian filmmaker can walk in off the street.
- Rewatching, a host was briefly confused about why Landa let the two Italians into the theater, having forgotten that he purposefully allows them to bring the dynamite in to take care of the Nazi command; the nit is that his decision is already made, though his following through on killing Bridget in the interrogation delays the realization until his exchange with Aldo.
- What about everybody else in the security unit: there is a mountain-sized pile of flammable film and literal dynamite around people's legs, visible to the naked eye on the stairs, which prompts a John Hamm (as transcribed) joke and a reprimand for having dick on the brain.
- Two explanations offered: it is the end of the war and the Nazis have checked out, their famous rigor fallen away, or the movie is bad; the hosts take the first, since you cannot get 90 minutes into a rewatch and decide the movie is bad because the Germans lacked security.
- Hickox is said to have been writing a book on G.W. Pabst, whom he calls German, but Pabst is Austrian, just like Hitler, and he still got the cosign from Fennec (as transcribed) and Churchill despite the error; when fact checkers at the Ringer make mistakes, the response is 'there's the door' and a photo of John Hamm (as transcribed) to go.
- Wilhelm's table at the Maximilian birthday celebration cannot hear the next table and is not suspicious at the switch to English, even though the scene's tension rests on the others in the room being mortal peril; the party freely conducts a sensitive conversation and the neighbors hear none of it, and things go awry only because Hellstrom enters after they yell at Wilhelm and because of the strange accent; Wilhelm's drunkenness is perfect, like hitting peach schnapps at a high school party.
- Without wanting to be insensitive about being shot in the leg, a host objects that Bridget, in agony and terror, leaves behind not only her high-fashion footwear but a napkin bearing her kiss and signature; the defenses are that this is just movies, she is not a trained agent who knows how to clean a scene, and Aldo needed to get out of Dodge rather than sweep the room.
- The Landa-as-Sherlock-Holmes affectation of pipe, hat and uniform is loved, but is it Sherlock Holmes if her name is literally on the napkin; maybe he is not as smart as he thinks, and the modern version is sending a tweet instead of a DM, like the Ray Allen tweet he said was hacked; she should have signed BVH; Landa's clout score and self-edited wiki page are joked about.
- The nitrate film is extremely flammable, yet Shoshana and Marcel throw the developer onto what is basically a bomb to convince him and threaten to put an axe in his skull; the 'Hans out of a million' line (as transcribed) does not make sense; and a host cannot shake Hitler having to get up in the middle of the movie to get his own gum when nobody will fetch it for him.
- Teased by name that the Hitler gum complaint will be the social pull-quote for the episode, the host answers that this is a category of the podcast and she is taking the mission seriously. — Mallory Rubin
- It is odd that Shoshana's message in the film is in English given how little of the movie is; it is a filmic flourish and an obvious homage to The Wizard of Oz, her face created in light through the smoke, and English makes the movie's most critical sentiment easiest for the intended audience, with the victory over Germany seen as the victory of the English-speaking West; whether it also says Americans are the best filmmakers is doubted, since Tarantino might favor the Italians or the Japanese, and the movie is about how we define ourselves.
- Earlier, during internet research, a host saves one item for picking nits while another admits to having no nits to pick at all.