Gents Journey
Helping Men become the Gentleman they deserve to be. This Podcast is part inspiration part motivation. We discuss what it takes to be a Gentleman in the 21st Century. We also talk about how to deal with the internal and external battles that life throws at us. So come be apart of the Gents Journey!
Gents Journey
The Death Of Piece Of Mind: Mid Series Review
Anthony invites us behind the scenes of his gripping crime series "Death of Peace of Mind" in this revealing mid-series review. For fans who've been following Detective Walter Grayson's pursuit of the methodical Green Briar killer, this episode peels back the layers of meaning beneath the blood and evidence.
The podcast isn't just another detective story—it's a psychological excavation disguised as a crime thriller. "It's about confronting the pieces of you you'd rather bury," Anthony explains, revealing how each victim represents a philosophical concept: cowardice, unfinished debts, waiting, false accounting, and trapped identities. The Green Briar doesn't simply kill; he teaches through elaborately staged crime scenes that serve as sermons on human nature.
What makes Detective Grayson so compelling is his unsettling familiarity with the killer's methods. He doesn't just investigate crime scenes—he recognizes them. His partner Laura Black, inspired by Helen Mirren's character in "Prime Suspect" and action star Cynthia Rothrock, suspects Grayson but is torn by their decade-long partnership. Their complex relationship forms the emotional core of the series, with Anthony hinting at untold history between them that will emerge in coming episodes.
The 80s soundtrack isn't mere nostalgia; it's integrated into the storytelling, sometimes bleeding from the world into hallucination, raising questions about whose perspective we're truly experiencing. As Anthony promises to "turn everything up to ten" in the remaining episodes, the central question shifts from the killer's identity to a more disturbing possibility: "When the last page turns, whose name will be at the bottom?"
Ready to dive deeper into this neo-noir world where detectives and killers might be reflections of each other? Leave a comment, share with a friend who needs both entertainment and personal growth, and connect with Anthony through the chat function, email (anthony@gentsjourney.com), or Instagram (@my_gents_journey). Remember—you create your reality.
"True mastery is found in the details. The way you handle the little things defines the way you handle everything."
Hello and welcome to the Gentleman's Journey podcast. My name is Anthony, your host, and today we are doing the mid-series review. You've made it halfway already, guys, to the death of peace of mind, so let's go ahead and let's get into the review. You know I love you. You know I love, as you can see, I I write love letters to genres that I love.
Speaker 1:You know it goes really all the way back. Oh god, like the confidence protocols, right, like I was a huge fan of the series lost and you know the whole island thing that just spoke to me. Or if you look at, oh god, there's so many the Noir, the Last Samurai or the Lost Samurai I should say that was 30s, 40s, 50s, noir stuff. And then you got this gritty crime. You know suspense, drama, and that's what death of peace of mind is. It's like that gritty 80s. You know men were men, women are women, just it's. You could feel the corruption, you can feel just the city itself and you can, just, you can feel everything. And that's what I love about this series that we're going through is that I try to make it as as gritty and as real as possible and like also the inclusion of adding, like a soundtrack, you know adding. You know like all those 80s sounds, and if you're from that time it's, you know, when you listen to those things it really syncs up with the story. Because that's how it's supposed to do. You know, from the very start I'm going to say death of peace of mind. I didn't want to make it this standard crime story Because you know you're thinking like it's probably about just catching like a killer or a serial killer at this point in the dark. But because we always have an angle for self-development, it's about confronting the pieces of you you'd rather bury. You know what I mean and that's why, especially like with him, with grayson, every crime scene feels like an echo, like a signature, a mirror. You know, the question has never been, I should say, who's doing this? The real is, why do these killings feel so familiar? You know so. Every episode, like I was saying, has doubled as a case file and a confession.
Speaker 1:You know the cold opens don't just show us, you know bodies, it sets the tone for the themes. You know cowardice, waiting, debt, identity. You know each murder isn't just an act of violence, it's really a sermon. And as we're talking about that, let's review the victims. So far.
Speaker 1:You have Eli Mathers. Eli wasn't a powerful guy, he wasn't rich, he wasn't really even respected. He was pathetic, he was weak, he was drowning in addiction, selling pieces of himself for one more day. You know his execution was clean, it was almost merciful, but the message left behind was anything. But you know the IOU card wasn't just evidence, it was judgment. Eli symbolized cowardice, the version of ourselves that choose to escape over courage.
Speaker 1:Then you have Victor Ramos. Ramos's name carried weight. He ran numbers, leveraged debts, traded names like poker chips. His tie to Grayson's past isn't a coincidence. The burned IOU, the evidence of a deal never fully closed. Ramos represented leverage gone rotten. You know he was really the embodiment of unfinished accounts, Sin. We pretend are buried, but they're really only a curing interest.
Speaker 1:And then you have Miriam, or Miri I should say. You know Miri wasn't killed for what she did. She was killed for what she believed. She waited for someone who would never return. She held on to hope long after it expired. You know her absence was turned into punishment. You know the records spinning in her empty apartment. You know the mirror etched with words. Those weren't random details, those were indictments. Miri symbolized the cruelty of waiting and how violent absence can feel.
Speaker 1:Then we're going to Victor Hayes, this ledger guy. Hayes was the accountant. Hayes, this ledger guy. Right, you know, hayes was the accountant. You know he was the man, you know, who logged all the debts and sold secrets, right, right, but if you think about it, the ledger that he guarded so carefully, it wasn't protection, it was actually his coffin. You know burned edges, you know the red ink, the arithmetic in blood. Hayes represented the lie that, you know. We always tell ourselves that we can balance our guilt by keeping score. Right. He showed us that numbers really never forgive.
Speaker 1:And then you have Sarah. You know Sarah owned a frame shop. You know she collected faces frozen in time and glass and wood, right. But the green bar shattered every frame but one, and inside that frame was a photograph of Detective Grayson himself, right, circled in red. You know, because Sarah's death wasn't about her, it was about what she represented. She symbolized the versions of ourselves we trap in photographs, the identities we pretend still exist. Her shop was a gallery of ghosts and the killer curated the exhibit.
Speaker 1:So let's get into the two detectives now, right, walter Grayson. Grayson is not just another cop, he's a relic, a man of time, I should say out of time. Really, he's clinging to his cigarette like it's the only steady thing left and, yes, they're all again, you're gonna see themes in this. Okay, outside of grandeur, you're gonna see themes in this. All my people always have some kind of habit. Yes, you are correct, if you're playing, you got the bingo card, it's full, okay, but going back, he clings to a cigarette. Right, he wears suits and a shitty, that's city, I said city, that's shedding them. Okay, he doesn't just walk in the crime scenes, he recognizes them. Every detail, every artifact, it hits him like deja vu. What graces, or I should say, what rattles Grayson to the core really, is the familiarity of all of this. Really, he stares too long at the IOU, the ledgers, the frames. He smokes too much. When the evidence feels personal, right, his silence is stretched like confessions he refuses to make. He's haunted. But what is he haunted by? That's what we still don't know yet, right?
Speaker 1:And then you have Laura Black, who's just that. So I kind of got her from To kind of go with. To give you more of a back story, I'll do Walter first, then I'll go into Laura Black here. So Walter Grayson is oh gosh, what's his name? Hold on a second John Lithgow, that's his name. So John Lithgow, if you recognize, from the 80s, he played in this one movie. It was called Ricochet. It's a great movie with Denzel Washington. I want to say it was in either the late 80s, early 90s, but that's kind of where I got it from. And then, especially, you can see, there's going to be some green bar elements in there too, um, later on. But, yes, uh, I, that's what I creating, the character Grayson, that's what I definitely was looking at as somebody, you know, like John Lithgow, like that's the visual thing.
Speaker 1:Now, secondly, there is you know, when we talk about Black now, right, who I just I just love her dearly. She just makes my heart flutter just because she's such a hard ass and she doesn't take shit from anybody and sorry for my cussing her, but she just doesn't. So there was this show that my mom used to love watching and my dad just loved watching, and it was, I think, on the bbc or something like that. It was called prime suspect and it had, um, helen murin in it. Right, she was just a tough, gritty cop, but she also had a little bit of a soft side, so it's like elements of her.
Speaker 1:And then like cynthia rothrock, which was a huge, you know, 80s, 90s and early 2000s, you know, b movie star, who, just she, was a woman who just literally could kick any guy's butt right, like physically kick any guy's butt right, like physically kick any guy's butt. So like Laura Black is her, you know. But the thing that I love about her is that, like I said, she doesn't take any crap. And I don't know how to write, you know, as I say this all the time, I don't know how to write. A weak woman, that's really hard to say woman, that's really hard to say um. But the thing that fascinates me about black right is that she doesn't always just go out there and just accuse grayson right away. She doesn't do that, but she suspects things.
Speaker 1:Because something that you I really I'm probably not going to say in this series and there might be an origin series that might go more into depth with them, I'm not 100% sure yet, but there's a lot of meat still here is that neither one of them had successful relationships, right, we don't really go into that with Laura or Black, but we do go in it with Grayson, right, but at the same time. But we do go in it with Grayson, right. But at the same time, these two they love each other In their own little weird way. And just to kind of give you a little bit more background, does Laura or does Black really suspect him 100%? She does, but what I think you're going to start seeing here, especially in the later episodes, she's going to try to protect him, right, because she wants to make 100% sure. And the thing about it is, like I said, they and again this will be a little bit more in the next episodes we're going to go in some background with them, but they literally have been together for years, probably close to a decade. They've been partners, right. So you know there's going to be some things where where Grayson did some things for Black and vice versa. So that's why you see so much depth in the relationship and and how much care she has for him.
Speaker 1:So, as we talked about laura, let's get to my favorite character, the green briar. So obviously the green briar is the mastermind behind all of this, right? Because if you think about it like this, when I was writing this I was thinking to myself okay, so how do I do this? So the detectives, they're really just flesh and smoke.
Speaker 1:And the Greenbrier is a philosophy. It isn't just a killer, it's a presence, it's a voice, it's a code. It whispers through IOUs, it burns through ledgers, it etches into mirrors, it stages every scene with brutal ritual precision. You know what you're starting to see? If you haven't yet, is that the green bride. It doesn't just kill, it teaches. You know each body you could say, or each, is that the green bride. It doesn't just kill, it teaches. Each body you could say, or each kill, or however you want to say, it is a punctuation in a sermon. The green bride's monologues they're cold, they're brutal, they're absolute. They don't ask for understanding, they declare truth. Think about it. It talks about death must be paid. Waiting is a sin, photographs are lies.
Speaker 1:If you think about Grayson as a lead detective, he's weary, he's uncertain, he's human. The Greenbrier, he's mechanical, he's methodical, he's maniacal, he's certain, he's in control. And that's the horror of all this. Or the scary part, really, is that you can't reason with arithmetic, you can't bargain with balance. The Greenbrier, really, he isn't hunting randomly. I mean, the best way I think I could put it is he's an auditor, he's auditing.
Speaker 1:And then my other favorite part of this series is the music. I'm an 80s 90s baby, right, so I grew up with a lot of this series is the music. You know I'm an 80s 90s baby, right, so I grew up with a lot of this music. So, like Phil Collins in the Air Tonight oh my gosh, that was one of my dad's favorite songs, tears for Fears. Listen to that all the time. You know Depeche Mode, the Police, simple Minds, talking Heads, joy Division. You know these songs. Sometimes they play from jukeboxes or radios, sometimes they bleed where they shouldn't. And that's the detail to watch, because if the music isn't real, or always real, then whose voice is it? That's what I say, you know.
Speaker 1:So let's kind of go ahead and wrap this up now, okay, so we have five victims, five philosophies. Each murder has been with brutal precision. We have Eli, who showed us cowardice. Ramos reminded us that deaths are never closed. Mary taught us that waiting is its own violence. Hayes revealed that numbers never forgive and Sarah proved that frames are cages. Each scene has been a sermon, each sermon has been a clue. So here's where we're going. The ledger isn't closed, the board isn't full, the green bar's voice is growing louder, black suspicion is sharpening and Grayson's reflection is fading.
Speaker 1:These next five episodes are gonna we're gonna really turn everything up to ten now. Okay, it's gonna be more hallucinations, more mirrors, more evidence that the case is not about bodies. It's about the detectives themselves. Each kill circles closer and sooner or later, the messages will land squarely in their laps. And here's the question. The question is no longer going to be who is the Greenbrier? The question is, when the last page turns, whose name will be at the bottom? So, guys, we are gonna have such such a fun time with this next five episodes and you know, I just want to tell you from the bottom of my heart how much as I just knocked this microphone, sorry guys how much I appreciate every single one of you.
Speaker 1:You guys are support, all the messages that I receive from you. I cannot tell you how much it means to me. So if you want to get a hold of me, actually, let's do this First. If you want to support the show, it's super, super easy. All you have to do is two things Leave a comment on this. It'd be great if you did. Then send this to somebody, did then send this to somebody, send this to a family member, send it to a friend, someone who you know enjoys this kind of stuff, but then also needs to get their stuff together. This will help this, I promise. I promise it will, because that's why you're here, right? You're here to be entertained and also to be a better person, and that's what we're trying to do here at Jen's Journey.
Speaker 1:Okay, now, if you want to have a conversation with me, there's three simple and easy ways to do it, and it doesn't cost you anything. Okay, first way is on the description of this podcast. There's going to be a let's chat function. You click on that. Once you do, you and I can have a conversation about this series, this episode, the 14 other series that are out there and the 200 and almost well over 270 now, plus episodes that we have. Okay, second way is going to be through my email. My email is anthony at gentsjourneycom, very simple and easy. And then, last but not least, you know, is go to my Instagram. My Instagram is my gents journey. So again, guys, thank you so very much for listening today and remember this you create your reality, take care. Bye.