‘Euphoria’ and ‘Hacks’ Say Goodbye. Plus, ‘Star City’ Takes Off.

(00:00) Chris and Andy talk about the ‘Euphoria’ series finale (02:22) and the choices behind Rue’s ending. Then they discuss the finale of ‘Hacks’ (49:47) and how its ending differs from Euphoria’s much darker sendoff. Later, they break down ‘Star City’ (01:02:27), the new For All Mankind spinoff, and why it’s one of the most exciting shows they’ve seen in a while. Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Stefano Sanchez Additional Video Supervision: Sarah Reddy Order and it will come. Like today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  I need sports staff to clear the room. Stand up and walk now.

• 1:11Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. And joining me in the studio, guessy yes to scrap that Coleman Domingo Roland Thunder remake, it's a degree vault.

• 1:26Andy Greenwald?

  Absolutely the opposite.

• 1:27Chris Ryan?

  No, it's all time.

• 1:29Andy Greenwald?

  It's hot right now.

• 1:30Chris Ryan?

  It's the hottest it could possibly be. Gruemel, great to see you today on The Watch podcast. We are going to talk about the conclusion of a little TV series called Euphoria, which ended last night with an hour and 45 minute series finale, as HBO has announced that that was the end.

• 1:46Andy Greenwald?

  What a three-month journey it's been for some of us.

• 1:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and so we're going to talk about Euphoria. We are also going to talk about one of my favorite new shows that I have seen in a long time, Apple TV's Star City, a spinoff of For All Mankind, but something altogether different and cool to talk about.

• 2:05Chris Ryan?

  There's a couple of other things, but I think Euphoria is definitely the headline. First of all, you can hit us up, the watch at Spotify.com. Instagram is the watch pod underscore. You can watch us on YouTube at the ringer dash TV. Along with the prestige TV podcast who went live last night to talk about Euphoria. I wonder if Joanna and Rob knew that that was going to be in an hour and 45 minute episode before they, they signed up for that, but they did a great job and they had some really great takes on the show.

• 2:31Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think the Germans have a word for that feeling you get when you turn on an episode of television and see one colon 45?

• 2:39Chris Ryan?

  How often do we see one colon 45? It's among the longer episodes of TV I can remember.

• 2:44Andy Greenwald?

  I have some thoughts on that, yeah.

• 2:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there is. I wonder if there's a German word for that feeling that I had when we had to go live for Talk the Thrones while the Sixers were still playing the Raptors in 2018.

• 2:59Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I didn't have to do that.

• 3:00Chris Ryan?

  I did, yeah.

• 3:01Andy Greenwald?

  Wow. What was the word, do you think?

• 3:03Chris Ryan?

  Scheit.

• 3:05Andy Greenwald?

  That's bad, man. That's bad.

• 3:07Chris Ryan?

  Okay. And then, you know, we might touch on like the end of hacks and like what, where HBO is at right now.

• 3:13Andy Greenwald?

  You're taking me on a journey today. I love it. How was your, you have anything else for your weekend?

• 3:17Chris Ryan?

  No, like we could do, we can do that for watch after dark.

• 3:20Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, you want to get right into it?

• 3:21Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Let's talk about how we felt about this finale.

• 3:25Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 3:25Chris Ryan?

  I guess I'm going to start here because you had the more unique viewing experience, these being the only eight episodes of Euphoria that you've ever seen. Did you leave the finale satisfied?

• 3:39Andy Greenwald?

  I found this hour and 45 minutes to be a relatively perfect encapsulation of my three month journey in that I found it by, I won't say exactly equal turns, but certainly some in each camp, I found it exhilarating, hilarious, outrageous, ridiculous, frustrating, bordering on infuriating. That was my journey this year. Before we get into the specifics of that, I think it's important, if you don't mind. I think we could just go right at the main story here.

• 4:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And for people who are just taking a little dance with us here, this is going to spoil the final episode and thus the season of Euphoria.

• 4:18Andy Greenwald?

  And thus the series, which has now been confirmed.

• 4:22Andy Greenwald?

  I thought that the almost, certainly tragic and the almost undersold death of Rue was artful and deeply upsetting. In ways that really highlight the fact that even in my limited engagement with the show, it was very clear that the heartbeat, certainly no pun intended, of the series is Sam Levinson's relationship to addiction and to his particular worldview on the scourge of drug addiction in contemporary American society.

• 5:02Andy Greenwald?

  And for it ultimately to take the form of this like beautiful, radiant, charismatic, surprising, hilarious, life-seeking protagonist, for her to go out with not even like what we've come to experience in media, hopefully, although potentially in our actual lives, of ODing and coming back and struggling, but just the automatic existence life switch that is fentanyl.

• 5:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:31Andy Greenwald?

  Was a gut punch, but I also thought that was really, really, I thought it was a powerful use of his medium to communicate what this drug does, you know, and then it built on, and by building on that, it had the almost landman-esque Ali explanation of what happened and what's happening in America during what appears to be his last.

• 5:51Chris Ryan?

  Very much his last AA meeting.

• 5:54Andy Greenwald?

  Meeting. And we can talk about that, and I have a lot to say about the Coleman Domingo thing, but I really want to hear your thoughts on the extinguishing of a character that has meant a lot to you into the series, but I found, and we can talk about the artfulness or however you found it to be, of the dual, the choose your own adventure morning, that we see a fantasy morning that then spins out quite clearly into a last moments death nightmare, but like I did find that, if you just scoop that out, I found that effective, but also I found that was a moment when, as an audience member, I felt very in tune with what I believe the creator to be intending.

• 6:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I don't think that I necessarily expected it just because.

• 6:37Chris Ryan?

  It ultimately, I thought, I thought it Euphoria was, was, was rounding into being Rue's story.

• 6:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 6:43Chris Ryan?

  You know, and I guess it was. And also, this is sort of silly, but like, I was watching Bill's Instagram over the weekend and, and his daughter Zoe had, had a good point on one of his walk-in talks where she was like, well Rue's the narrator. So how would you, how would you break that, that sort of level of storytelling?

• 7:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 7:03Chris Ryan?

  All of this is being discussed by Rue in some sort of kind of omniscience.

• 7:08Andy Greenwald?

  There is a cinematic tradition of posthumous narrators.

• 7:10Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Yeah. I mean, she, she doesn't quite achieve Sunset Boulevard here, but yeah, there is some of that.

• 7:18Chris Ryan?

  I was deeply moved by it. I, I think that

• 7:23Chris Ryan?

  oh, there are other shows that would have broadcast her death much more clearly in so much as there would be like a sacrifice that she needed to make, whether it was for Ali, whether it was for one of her friends, for Jules, whether it was to do the last good thing that she could do. And in her fantasy and in her imagination, I think she is doing that. She's coming through.

• 7:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 7:48Chris Ryan?

  For Fez, who came through for her. I think the fact that the actor who played Fez, Angus Cloud, passed away after a battle with addiction.

• 7:58Andy Greenwald?

  But specifically, if I'm not mistaken, he would, what ended his life was fentanyl-laced.

• 8:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And Sam went on PopCast, the New York Times, Pop Culture Music Podcast with John and Joe, and talked about

• 8:13Chris Ryan?

  how, and he has spoken at length about how like, if he were using today, the way, in whatever capacity he once did, there's in all likelihood, he would be dead because there is this silver bullet and bullets out there that like take addicts out in this kind of

• 8:33Chris Ryan?

  vengeful almost way. I I just found myself like really going along on that journey and I thought that the two best actors on the show

• 8:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 8:45Chris Ryan?

  got an incredible showcase. The Rue and Ali

• 8:51Chris Ryan?

  relationship was the most meaningful one to me probably of this series. And in a lot of the ways that Rue kind of fantasizes about what she wants her last day to stand up to, which is being there for Fez, reconnecting with her family, going back home. I think that Ali's final act, which rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

• 9:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I I'm eager to talk.

• 9:13Chris Ryan?

  Is in and of itself a fantasy.

• 9:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 9:16Chris Ryan?

  And I think it I do think it quote unquote, happens in the world of Euphoria.

• 9:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah, but.

• 9:21Chris Ryan?

  But I think that turning into Dirty Harry, Rolling Thunder, Taxi Driver, and you know, even the Rolling Thunder, which is like this very well loved B movie from from the 70s. I don't know if you can call it a B movie, but Tommy Lee Jones and William Devane and about a returning soldier who is, you know, takes vengeance on those who take advantage of his family.

• 9:45Chris Ryan?

  That was a very knowing nod. Sam has, when he did his Euphoria Film Festival at the American Cinematheque in LA, the one that he spoke for was Dirty Harry. So I was like, oh, that's why, I guess.

• 10:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 10:02Chris Ryan?

  And I think that that is probably honestly a fantasy of the people who have lost

• 10:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 10:07Chris Ryan?

  their children, their loved ones to fentanyl, is that someone should pay for what what is happening.

• 10:12Andy Greenwald?

  So I thought I completely agree with you about that. And I think that the most sympathetic is the wrong word, but the the most maybe empathetic, the most attempting to be attuned to the journey of the show and the creative process of the show take that I can give is that this entire thing and made really made clear the season, which is the one I watched, but you can speak to whether this hangs over the entire series. But this is a project is a personal labor of love for someone who clearly throughout his life, and not just because of his his parentage and where he grew up. Has found both escape and meaning in in art, but specifically in cinema.

• 10:49Chris Ryan?

  Who among us?

• 10:50Andy Greenwald?

  And truly, look what we do for a living.

• 10:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:52Andy Greenwald?

  And so we did note throughout this season particularly, that everything felt a little bit like kids playing dress up. I mean, these are 23 year olds supposedly set loose in this, you know, sinful hellscape of modern Los Angeles. And sometimes it struck me as very discordant and like the other day, and I called it like, you know, Bugsy Malone in stilettos. And other times you could sort of understand what the fantasy was doing for these characters. So my my most generous interpretation of the end, without getting into dismissing it as just like sub Tarantino,

• 11:36Andy Greenwald?

  almost pastiche schlock was that.

• 11:38Chris Ryan?

  The Alamo stuff.

• 11:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, which what which always it kind of was, is that the entire season is a referendum on the fact that in 2026, or whenever the show is set, most addicts.

• 11:49Chris Ryan?

  2024.

• 11:50Andy Greenwald?

  Most addicts do not get second chances. And so Rue's embrace of religion, Rue's embrace of a new life, Rue's constant just miss being missed by shotgun shells, like her constant near misses are not actually a hero story. These are just the last moments of thrashing in the net that's already caught you.

• 12:08Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 12:08Andy Greenwald?

  And that if you look at where she was, she hadn't made it very far at all. I mean, she was sort of toggling between these two almost obscenely cartoonish extremes of violence, the Nazis and then the cowboy gangsters at the strip club. And all of that being said, what happens in the last 30 minutes or 40 minutes of the show is a character who, you know, on Thursday, I was saying, I wish there was a spin off that was just Ali doing his work. That this character, slow show.

• 12:40Chris Ryan?

  Well, depends.

• 12:41Andy Greenwald?

  Well, what's the thing, his previous one? That his saying, that Rue being the, the, the last straw for him. And him immediately then take, picking up a drink, quitting meetings, sawing off a shotgun and doing what he does. That it was in some ways like giving this character who has lost so much and has been burdened by so much. The grace to also lose himself in cinema where he becomes Dirty Harry and he can do something on screen. That no one in the messy, complicated real world can do, which is shoot addiction in the head until it explodes like a B. Character on The Boys.

• 13:19Andy Greenwald?

  That I think, as I'm, as I'm pitching you on that sharks, like, do you buy that emotionally? Does that make sense to you? I'm not saying that it, it worked for me, but I found that, I find that argument that has come into my head more compelling.

• 13:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. You know what's funny is that I think that you, when we intellectually like get into like the project here and what? What this, so your description of that second half of the episode and I'm, let's put aside the searcher's prayer. Coda.

• 13:54Andy Greenwald?

  I, I, let's bring it back. I do want to talk about that.

• 13:56Chris Ryan?

  That, that, I found that incredibly moving.

• 13:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 14:01Chris Ryan?

  The bar, the, the silver slipper sequence with Ali and Alamo.

• 14:07Chris Ryan?

  I think is like, it's one thing in, in, when you describe it or when you talk about like, this is the best possible version of it. And I think the, one of the things that. It was difficult about this entire season is that I can tell you that, but it's also got like eight Brazilian butt lift jokes. And like a runner with a white dog and, you know, a kind of hat on a hat with Matty being there as well.

• 14:35Andy Greenwald?

  And Super Bowl MVP Marshawn Lynch getting his dick shot off.

• 14:38Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Which he was very disappointed not to actually do that stunt, as I learned from the after, after show.

• 14:45Andy Greenwald?

  Did you stick around for that?

• 14:46Chris Ryan?

  I did, yes.

• 14:47Andy Greenwald?

  You do the work.

• 14:48Chris Ryan?

  Well, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't getting, uh, what was the one that we just, like, I missed the credit sequence of?

• 14:54Andy Greenwald?

  Oh yeah. And you hadn't even seen it. Uh, it was the, the pit.

• 14:57Chris Ryan?

  The pit. Um. It's one thing to describe it and then it's another thing to experience it. And I think that during that, it is set in a strip club and I get it. But like, there are elements of it that I think are distracting it from its pure power. You know, and that the, it kind of diminished the impact that I think it could have had. There's also just like storytelling stuff.

• 15:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 15:20Chris Ryan?

  That I don't think he took care of. I don't think he properly set up Bishop turning on Alamo.

• 15:25Andy Greenwald?

  That was not set up.

• 15:26Chris Ryan?

  I don't think that it's clear what Rue's friends know about Rue's death.

• 15:34Andy Greenwald?

  Or what it means to them.

• 15:35Chris Ryan?

  And whether like Maddie ever puts together.

• 15:39Andy Greenwald?

  That it was her.

• 15:39Chris Ryan?

  I told Alamo that Rue was a DEA informant and then days later she's dead.

• 15:45Andy Greenwald?

  I will jump on one thing with that. And I don't know why.

• 15:48Chris Ryan?

  Well, I guess everybody is just assuming that Rue overdosed.

• 15:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm not, I don't want to carry too much water for this because I think that ultimately for me as a storytelling mechanism in an episode of television, it failed.

• 15:58Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 15:59Andy Greenwald?

  I was, but as we've agreed, like we were moved by, and I think I deeply respect the decision to handle the end of the main character, the way he handled it. And I think that there's an interesting conversation to be had and will continue to have it about whether it is illuminating or ultimately kind of simplistic to have both a director, a creator and characters lose themselves in the extremity and artifice of cinema as opposed to actually staying in the uncomfortable place that the show flirted with. But I will say that I, the way that, so like the way, the entire way the season came together, again, we're going to choose to use the high minded version of it, which was this was all a vision as opposed to, man, this was what he could string together, considering the cast availabilities and all the budgetary stuff.

• 16:41Andy Greenwald?

  Not budgetary stuff, meaning like he didn't have enough money, but like what it would cost to mount X, Y or Z thing.

• 16:46Chris Ryan?

  Well, I just, I just don't know whether Hunter Schiefer was available. You know what I mean?

• 16:50Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly.

• 16:50Chris Ryan?

  Doesn't seem like it.

• 16:51Andy Greenwald?

  What I mean is if you look at it that way, you can, there's a, there's a positive spin and there's a negative spin. And when you, of course, listen to Sam Levinson talk, it all seems like the vision came together. I find that hard to believe because Rue is the main character of the show and yet kind of haunted the show in a weird way in the margins, existed in a different show and never really crossed paths with anyone else to leave a meaningful mark emotionally that landed on other characters, which is a hallmark of serialized television. That said, you could say, and maybe he said in interviews that I haven't seen yet, that was always the point. Because Rue is the main character. When she shows up to Maude Appetit, what's her name?

• 17:26Chris Ryan?

  Lexi.

• 17:27Andy Greenwald?

  Lexi's house, you know, and is sort of going on and on about the DEA, from Lexi's perspective, this is someone she knew four or five years ago, who she opens the door to, but then doesn't think about in the intervening weeks and months.

• 17:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:38Andy Greenwald?

  So when you hear about it, it is, like you said, it's like a, that's a bummer, but in a way, I've mourned her already.

• 17:44Chris Ryan?

  Yes. And I think that when Lexi and Maddie are talking about Rue, or when, I can't remember if it's Lexi or Cassie talking about Rue, and Maddie not cruelly says she was a drug addict, you know, it's, I think perhaps her friend group at that moment is like, ah, the phone call we were always expecting finally came.

• 18:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 18:07Chris Ryan?

  And what a tragedy, and don't put together that, in fact, she probably took like one or two Percocets for the pain of her hand.

• 18:16Andy Greenwald?

  I think likely one.

• 18:17Chris Ryan?

  One, and that was...

• 18:18Andy Greenwald?

  Because he made a show of taking, from a different batch of taking one and giving her one.

• 18:22Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Yeah. Because he took the one, which was, you know, that was probably actually, like, when you look back on that episode, I guess it's been, it was kind of broadcast that that's what was gonna happen to Rue.

• 18:31Andy Greenwald?

  Well, also his joy of her being employee of the month and doing a great job.

• 18:36Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 18:36Andy Greenwald?

  In the first conversation they had since he...

• 18:38Chris Ryan?

  A bit rich, yeah. Where to go from here? I mean, I guess...

• 18:41Andy Greenwald?

  Well, do you want to talk, I'd like to hear your thoughts on both the violence, you know, just in terms of that turn for the character of Ali, but then also the turn back in a way of going to the homesteader stuff. And I really want to, I'm really curious your take on the show's almost Old Testament interest in the Old Testament, in the sense that it, I cannot tell if it is skeptical, credulous, mocking, true believer, or if it is just what it seems to be, which is a creator, or either for his own life, or thinking of his characters.

• 19:23Andy Greenwald?

  Grasping on to something like you would a life preserver in the middle of the ocean in that it's like you'd never thought about a life preserver before until you were drowning. Because the way like I thought the weakest scene by far in the episode is Lexi.

• 19:38Chris Ryan?

  Lexi and Cassie.

• 19:40Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, the other thing is, I don't want to be unkind, but like Zendaya and Coleman Domingo and my guy Adwale Akinoi Akbaje, who plays Alamo, are exceptional actors, doing exceptional work on the show, even when I don't love the material. Some of the other cast members, particularly the ones we're talking about in the scene, are quite weak, in my opinion.

• 20:01Chris Ryan?

  I just don't know that they had a ton to do. Yeah.

• 20:03Andy Greenwald?

  Or they don't know what to make of it. Maybe they weren't given sides. They didn't know where they were in a story. But that scene where she's like, you ever read the Bible? Was tough sledding for me. But I'm wondering how you felt about all of that.

• 20:13Chris Ryan?

  Here's, I'm gonna make the case for it, that the show's interest in and the characters' emerging interest in the Bible is in and of itself, not altogether different than Sam Levinson using these sort of pre-established, much beloved cinematic tropes and forms. Spaghetti westerns, B-movie vengeance thrillers, Douglas Sirk melodramas.

• 20:41Andy Greenwald?

  Hollywood pictures about Hollywood. Sunset Boulevard.

• 20:44Chris Ryan?

  You know, Antonioni, like, close-ups of people's crying faces, you know, like, these kinds of things that I think, as a kid who is largely raised by screens, like, I identify with the need to like, look at real life and think about what movies I've seen that can explain it.

• 21:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and to mitigate your own emotional.

• 21:08Chris Ryan?

  And it's like a disassociative kind of thing, which frankly, is also what drugs are about. Like, drugs are a way of pulling down the shade and existing in a completely different world for a while, where your brain is moving fast, or slow, or is feeling no pain, or whatever it is. So, I get it. I, your mileage may vary on how you feel about Maude Apatow as a performer. I think her reading of it as. I hate to use the Didion, we tell ourselves stories in order to live stuff, but that the Old Testament is no different than Dirty Harry.

• 21:43Andy Greenwald?

  All Spotify podcasts are using the Didion reference way too much.

• 21:47Chris Ryan?

  That the, the Old Testament is no different than Dirty Harry. It's a story you tell yourself to like, understand why bad things happen to people you love.

• 21:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and that, yeah, that, that sex betrayal and violence.

• 22:02Chris Ryan?

  Goes all the way back.

• 22:03Andy Greenwald?

  All the way back.

• 22:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, when they be begatting people left and right back then.

• 22:07Andy Greenwald?

  Begats? Bring your begats to the, yeah.

• 22:12Chris Ryan?

  The idea of like Lexi just being like, man, these guys are just begatting left and right.

• 22:16Andy Greenwald?

  This is great.

• 22:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I, this is why I think I have more tenderness towards this, like, completely unwieldy, impossible finale than that I expected, or maybe anyone listening expected, is because, I, I don't know, I, I felt, all, all any of us are doing is trying to tell ourselves a story to keep the, the scaries away, to get, to, to get rid of the anxiety, or to mitigate the anxiety, or delay the anxiety. And he is reaching for primal stuff, the most primal human stuff when he brings the Bible into it.

• 22:54Andy Greenwald?

  There was a feeling of just like, the, the Texas family as the, wait, this is really what Rue wants? This isn't a bit? And then, no, these people are her heaven, in a way.

• 23:08Andy Greenwald?

  Was confounding, because there, it was a level of sincerity that in my limited engagement with this show, felt quite surprising and untrustworthy. It was revealed to be quite trustworthy at the end.

• 23:22Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 23:23Andy Greenwald?

  And interestingly, where Ali is, at this point, he's Martin again. And he, as he said earlier in the episode, he's been a Christian, he's been a Muslim, he's been a drinker, he's, you know, he's been almost everything. And it's almost as if the horror of everything that he's seen and done has scoured him clean. And he arrives, you know, like a, like a pilgrim, basically, to this nothing desert place. And he is not ostensibly religious, but then when he says grace, and he's with this family, and they're holding hands, and he sees Rue, he's a believer again in something.

• 23:55Chris Ryan?

  Yes, I thought that that was the most effective.

• 24:01Chris Ryan?

  Use of a cinematic reference point that this episode had for me, which was framing Ollie as Ethan from The Searchers multiple times, as the outsider who can't come in to this domesticated.

• 24:15Andy Greenwald?

  Ways dressed, yeah.

• 24:17Chris Ryan?

  Peace palace, essentially, you know, and, and, and I thought he very knowingly was doing that framing and then to have, you get the, the last image of him outside of the barn, um, and the little girl comes up to him and is like, that's actually essentially Rue's spirit reborn three months ago, and it's a miracle that this cow had a baby, but here it is.

• 24:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 24:41Chris Ryan?

  Bringing him in and then, you know, uh, this shows relationship to religion and what religion can and does mean to people, I think sometimes is fast and loose. I also am not a religious person, so it's not really like my place to speak on what it means to the characters when I don't really have.

• 25:01Andy Greenwald?

  No, but.

• 25:01Chris Ryan?

  A spiritual life, so to speak, but there is something very, if you listen to the words and if the moment is right, there is something very calming and peaceful about prayer, you know, and especially that.

• 25:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 25:16Chris Ryan?

  The grace that they say at that table and like, that to me was like, this is the baseline. This is what all humans should hope to strive to achieve. And even though those, I believe if I remember correctly, like those people had some pretty, some political opinions, maybe that I don't agree with, you know, earlier in the season, but the idea that it's like, you know, we basically remember the dead. May their memory be a blessing.

• 25:43Andy Greenwald?

  That specifically I, made me sit, sit up a little bit.

• 25:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:46Andy Greenwald?

  Because that is, uh, traditionally that's a Jewish saying when people pass away. And I, I appreciated in that moment that if we were talking about.

• 25:55Chris Ryan?

  Got him.

• 25:57Andy Greenwald?

  Finally, some representation in Hollywood.

• 25:58Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 25:59Andy Greenwald?

  Um, no, but that like. Martin, at this point, is a pilgrim who has moved through everything. Yeah. And when he's praying at that moment, I took that to mean he is now forming a collection of things that are meaningful to him. I also can't help but, you know, think that Sam Levinson put that in because the Levinson family probably has said that when they have lost people in their lives. And I found that moving. I found that like interesting and expansive in its engagement with the religion. And, you know, I think there's a secondary step here that, that maybe the story of Euphoria is that Rue wasn't able to, because of her addiction, because of her illness, was not able to achieve. But like, prayer and religion, this is maybe just getting older.

• 26:43Andy Greenwald?

  I think it become, has become more interesting to me, too, both because of the ability to like, connect to anything bigger than yourself. Yeah. And get out of your own head, but also that like so much of what we talk about, and not just us in Los Angeles, but I think there's like a secular religion that is getting better about telling people to practice gratitude, you know, which is essentially saying a prayer, it's just maybe not to anybody. And that there is a certain, and actually certainly in Los Angeles, there is a very strong spine of that type of belief out there. And the fact that the show, up until the very end, maybe, existed in a much more Old Testament binary, heaven and hell, but you've never gonna, you're never gonna see heaven, was holding it back in a way. Yeah.

• 27:27Andy Greenwald?

  Like, I don't know, I think that I'm, I'm engaged with this finale, there's a plenty that I didn't like, and if we could get into it, if we wanted to, but I'm much more engaged with it, and this is a me thing, not a Euphoria thing. But there were aspects of this season that really rubbed me the wrong way and activated me in a way that only things that I find to be spectacle-driven or cynical do. And there was a sincerity to the main thrust of this episode and to the grace it was handled, despite this silver slipper thing, that makes me feel, look, whatever you say about this show and about this guy and whatever he does next, and whether you make me watch it on the podcast or not, he believes it. You know what I mean? Like, there is no lack of courage of convictions here. So I want to be,

• 28:13Andy Greenwald?

  that's another reason why I don't, I'm trying not to be as reactive as I normally might be to things that drive me insane.

• 28:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I also, I think I have gone back and forth where I was like, uh, you know, in the beginning of the season, I was like, my, my selling point on Euphoria is it's never boring.

• 28:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, the first episode got me because it was like the shot of her teetering on the wall. Like, that was cinema. That was awesome.

• 28:34Chris Ryan?

  And that can be damning praise because that can't be the only thing that art does is stimulate some, you know, some frontal lobe stuff for you.

• 28:45Andy Greenwald?

  The way drugs do?

• 28:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yes. But I didn't think that this episode was boring. I thought it would be, it was able to do things where you were like, oh, of course, of course, this is what had to happen. But also be like, I had no idea that this was going to happen. Like, in the back of my mind, I was like, Ali's gonna try and save her in a shootout of some kind, and his sacrifice is what finally sends her down the right path, or something like that. And I should have thought more about the fact that they had kept the Fezco character canonically alive on the show. I should have thought about the, the sort of plot that they had kept going with him about

• 29:27Chris Ryan?

  escaping and that this, that that moment when she's woken up and he doesn't see the pill bottle that is right in front of her, and they're talking about this escape, and she goes running out the door, that that, that wasn't real. And that when she starts seeing images from her own childhood, that that was obviously the last moments of her life.

• 29:47Andy Greenwald?

  The, the, the inclusion, we sort of glided past it, but the inclusion of Fez, a character I've never seen, was, I thought that was really remarkably done. And, um, and again, a sign of my...

• 30:00Andy Greenwald?

  Complicated relationship to the show where when it says like escaped inmate escapes via parkour and I was like this show will do anything to perpetuate itself.

• 30:10Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 30:10Andy Greenwald?

  When in fact, what it will do and again, in that moment, like there have been, there have been in the history of television, there have been sadly multiple tragedies where cast members have passed away or have for whatever reason been unable to continue on with the show or the show has continued on without them. And the show tries to build that into the show world with very mixed results. And I thought this was one of the most touching and human ways that I've ever seen it done.

• 30:36Chris Ryan?

  You could see it was like a very personal story to him.

• 30:38Andy Greenwald?

  It made the show, that was, that was canonical, I guess is what I mean to say. What happened to Angus MacLeod is the story of the show. And I, you know, and Sam Levinson has said in interviews that like, it changed his idea of what the ending was going to be. So I thought that that was a pretty powerful tribute.

• 30:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And then, I mean, just to put a bow on the ending, I thought, you know, in, in The Searchers, the John Wayne character cannot come back inside after what he's done. Like he is kept outdoors and in the wild as America starts to build like its community and its towns and its, its sense of like society, like guys like that get left behind. So to have this end with Ali being brought inside to the dinner table, I thought was a striking difference in, it's an inversion of what like the imagery suggested initially.

• 31:38Chris Ryan?

  And, and it takes a, it takes a reference point and says like, my thing is, is like this. I, I loved that. I, the, the season ended. Um, I, I think I've, I have seen some, some discourse about the, the last shot of the American flag billowing and being like that this was somehow like MAGA coded or that like the end of the, you know, that the end of the episode was like overly conservative. It's not what I got from it. You know, I did not that, you know?

• 32:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. To me, the, the flag is commenting on the transformation. There is a, if there is any optimism, and it's certainly streaked with grime, but if there's any optimism in the worldview of the show, it is that transformation is perpetually possible.

• 32:29Chris Ryan?

  In both directions.

• 32:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I'm interested in his sense of like, can people change? Because the Nate storyline, again, if we're going to consider this to be a season of television, we need to bring in everything.

• 32:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we need to talk about all of this stuff.

• 32:40Andy Greenwald?

  And so if you consider that storyline, I think that the message was no. Like people's demons, if they are evil, in the sense, again, in the binary sense that Ali says in this episode, you're either helping the world or hurting it, then you cannot change. No matter how much you dress up, or no matter how much good you intend to do with your senior center or whatever. But, you know, whether you are an addict like Ali, or you are a, you know, an OnlyFans model, you can change your presentation, you can transform quite easily and not just be accepted, but in the most American form of reward, you can get paid for it.

• 33:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I also think the dark side of that is that when you're a kid, the world feels more like, even if you're, no matter what, I think, economic strategy you come from, the world feels like a playground to some extent. Like, you don't make a distinction between work and play. Like, it's just existence, you know?

• 33:38Andy Greenwald?

  Everything is a hustle.

• 33:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, until homework starts getting due, and then some of us rise to the occasion and some of us don't, at this table. But as you get older, I think you still use the tools of your childhood to give your life shape and to give your life meaning. And another charitable way I could sort of understand Cassie, Lexi, Maddie is, you know, you talked about them playing dress up, you talked about it being like Bugsy Malone. I think that you could make the argument that that's what life is, is...

• 34:12Andy Greenwald?

  Fake it till you make it.

• 34:13Chris Ryan?

  You basically are doing like this mimicry. You are doing like, I guess what I have to do is take the things that come naturally to me and see if I can make any money off of them. And for Lexi, it's telling stories, and for Cassie, it's taking pictures, and for Maddie, it's shaping those pictures and shaping like the way people perceive women. And for Nate, it was real estate, you know?

• 34:36Andy Greenwald?

  It sure was. If only for those zoning boards.

• 34:40Chris Ryan?

  And the zoning boards killed him in the end.

• 34:41Andy Greenwald?

  Who do you think he's voting for in the mayoral election?

• 34:43Chris Ryan?

  I don't, I mean, if he votes, we're gonna have some controversies.

• 34:48Andy Greenwald?

  Great point. Great point.

• 34:50Chris Ryan?

  Um, we could talk a little bit about some of the other plotlines. I think, uh, it's really worth noting that Hunter Schafer does not speak in this episode. I think you could make, look at that and be like, it is a beautiful final moment of wordless communion between two characters who loved one another very deeply in, in, in Jules and, and Rue. Uh, you could also say Jules's last words to Rue were kind of like, this isn't gonna happen, so knock this fantasy shit off. Like, I'm here, this really works for me. I'm happy, quote unquote. Um, what did you think of, uh, her Medusa painting?

• 35:29Andy Greenwald?

  I am not really, I don't feel qualified to comment on the character or the storyline, because the character didn't really exist this season and didn't really have a storyline.

• 35:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:38Andy Greenwald?

  So that my response to it-

• 35:39Chris Ryan?

  I believe one scene with any other characters besides Ellis, the plastic surgeon and Rue.

• 35:44Andy Greenwald?

  Well, there was the wedding.

• 35:45Chris Ryan?

  That's what I mean.

• 35:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that's it. Yeah, exactly.

• 35:47Chris Ryan?

  Um, and it was my favorite scene between, uh, any non-Zandaya characters was the Nate and Jules conversation.

• 35:55Andy Greenwald?

  Which again, I think was in many ways, one of the most TV scenes in that it paid off something that had occurred over multiple seasons. So I, I don't feel qualified to comment on the performer, the performance, the character, really, other than to say, I am not a fan of fictional painters expressing their emotion through paintings, because inevitably, they are not going to. I don't think you're, I, I don't know if they're gonna get the effect that you wish you would, could get from them.

• 36:27Chris Ryan?

  They, they probably should not have shown the painting, sure.

• 36:29Andy Greenwald?

  The, the, the painting seemed sort of silly to me, as did the sort of, like, this is the, the sort of self-

• 36:35Chris Ryan?

  Can you imagine if Ellis was like, what the fuck is that?

• 36:37Andy Greenwald?

  What are you doing? But like, sort of like, the, the, the, the, like, there's more power in the silence and the expression of art, and the painting was like, you were serious about that? Like, that, I, I didn't get that, and it felt- I mean, this is, this is the thing that I think is ultimately certainly a challenge for me. And I would imagine whether it's, you know, on, on your dial, it's more or less, or maybe it's not articulated. But like, I think one of the real challenges of the season, and I guess it was an unavoidable one, is that it is ultimately a tweener. It was neither here nor there. It was neither committed to being a full throated continuation of a serialized television show that had a lot of character and emotion equity built into it,

• 37:17Andy Greenwald?

  nor was it able to fully commit to being a, what I, you know, responded to in the trailer, which is a fuck you guys, this show is something different now.

• 37:24Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I think it definitely committed to the latter.

• 37:26Andy Greenwald?

  It committed to the latter in terms of, in terms of its service to the audience. But the fact that some of these character strands were continually attended to, even limited, like my, what I'm trying to say is either do it or don't.

• 37:39Chris Ryan?

  No, I completely agree with you.

• 37:40Andy Greenwald?

  Like, I understand that Jules is part of Euphoria and Hunter Schafer is part of Euphoria, but there was no room for that character this season, frankly, regardless of schedule.

• 37:50Chris Ryan?

  You know what, I was kind of, I was watching it and you, you know, there have been shows that I think we either have a sense of how they were made or what sort of challenges went into making them, or, you know, we are aware of like scheduling mishaps or, or issues that plagued the show.

• 38:09Chris Ryan?

  I think the best possible version is when it comes out and it's like Exile on Main Street and it sounds like everybody's in the room.

• 38:15Andy Greenwald?

  You stop asking the questions.

• 38:16Chris Ryan?

  You know what I mean? Like, it sounds like everyone's playing in a room, but in fact, it's like one guy's in France recording on an answering machine and.

• 38:23Andy Greenwald?

  But the art speaks for itself.

• 38:24Chris Ryan?

  But the art speaks for itself. And I don't know that all, all the time Euphoria was not Exile on Main Street. I think that the Jules and Nate plotline specifically felt like they took place in a different working environment than the rest of the show this season, and I think it was to its detriment. I want to talk to you a little bit about the fact that the show makes the choice not to do a bad news relay about Rue. And not to do, which is a term we sometimes throw around on the show about.

• 38:57Andy Greenwald?

  It's the Broadchurch.

• 38:58Chris Ryan?

  It came from Broadchurch, but it's basically each character finding out the same terrible news and having a.

• 39:04Andy Greenwald?

  An Emmy reel.

• 39:04Chris Ryan?

  An Emmy reel for it.

• 39:07Chris Ryan?

  I thought that was cool. I.

• 39:11Chris Ryan?

  Think you like, we talked about like, you could make the argument that to Matty and Lexi, Rue's sort of a crazy character from their past that is every once in a while will pop up on somebody's couch, but that this wasn't a big shock. But Levinson kind of went through a lot of plot bullshit to get Lexi to tell Matty

• 39:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 39:34Chris Ryan?

  that Rue was working for the DEA.

• 39:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 39:36Chris Ryan?

  And then Matty told Alamo, and the only real acknowledgement of that seems to be when Ali says, "I'm here for Rue," or Rue Bennett sent me. Like, they get a reaction shot from Matty, but it's not like, "Do you realize what happened here?"

• 39:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, no, it doesn't land. I mean, I think this is, I think you're articulating an example of what I was trying to say bothered me. Like, it's a tweener. It's like, you're servicing-

• 40:02Chris Ryan?

  Certain TV things.

• 40:03Andy Greenwald?

  Certain TV things, but then ultimately, you kind of don't care about them. And it makes sense to me, and this, I mean, is a truly, I mean, this is a compliment, why when Sam Esma used to come on the show and he was praising Euphoria for its directorial vision and its aesthetic consistency, because like Sam, both Sams write and direct everything. You see things on this show, like you did with Mr. Robot or Sam Esma's other things, that are contemptuous of some TV tropes. And it allows you to separate and make, engage with the material and make observations like we're making about like, well, it may have felt sudden or brutal or cruel to dispatch Rue the way that, that the show did, but

• 40:47Andy Greenwald?

  the show is actually telling you something about our engagement with protagonists and how we imbue hope into them when everything about their circumstance is telling you it's hopeless, you know? That's not, that's not traditional TV. Traditional TV would walk up to that edge and then maybe like the Hacks finale, still give you all of the, the gushing emotion that is kind of your reward for watching the show. Euphoria didn't do that, and it leaves us making references to the searchers and to Jewish prayers, you know, which is cool. We don't usually do that, but I think that the fact that it maybe was an ill-fitting, ill-fitting clothing this season, that it was still in the skin of a serialized

• 41:31Andy Greenwald?

  television show, and most people engage with it that way. And I think they were, my sense is that people were either quite confused or quite pissed off

• 41:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:41Andy Greenwald?

  by some of the storytelling choices.

• 41:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, the choice not to show Rue's mother receiving the news, the choice to not have anybody else finding out about this, to see Storm Reid's characters, Rue's sister, finding out about this, to...

• 41:56Andy Greenwald?

  She, I mean, I think the thing-

• 41:57Chris Ryan?

  I think that that feels like more like, that feels like more like something went wrong rather than a choice that was made.

• 42:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. That said, Sam can go on a podcast and say, "You're misreading the show. It is ultimately about the ways in which addicts in our lives are dead before the coroner comes."

• 42:18Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 42:19Andy Greenwald?

  You can say that, and I've been carrying water for those arguments in this podcast, but you can't say that as a coming over the top argument-ender to people who have engaged with a serialized television show with a certain set of expectations. They're not wrong. Just because you can intellectually articulate why you did something does not invalidate the emotional reaction-

• 42:42Chris Ryan?

  Well, this is what I'm kind of trying to work through on the, in this conversation, is like, how can I watch something that fundamentally doesn't work on so many levels-

• 42:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 42:49Chris Ryan?

  -that I still feel like it worked for me emotionally and intellectually in some ways? You know, like, I guess it just made me think about things that I usually don't think about when I'm watching television.

• 42:59Andy Greenwald?

  Including, "What the fuck are they doing?"

• 43:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:02Andy Greenwald?

  "Why are they doing this?"

• 43:03Chris Ryan?

  But it made me think about addiction in a lot of different ways, and it made me think about the American West in ways that I hadn't really thought about in a while, and it made me think about, um-

• 43:14Chris Ryan?

  Forgiveness and why we go to the movies and all these things. And I was like, this is good, man. Like, this is bigger than I thought it was gonna be. It was, it meant more to me than I thought it was gonna be.

• 43:25Andy Greenwald?

  I also felt continually, and I'm not saying this as a negative, but like, a writer-director in a movie can have his or her one to two dozen hinge points, exclamation points to express like scenes, moments, vibes that are crucial to understanding what that vision is. And the connective tissue in 90 minutes or two hours isn't really as important as we often think it is. Unless it's, you know, why did, why did Palpatine suddenly return? Like, if it's a personal story, you don't, you don't, you shouldn't ever watch them as a redditor. You watch them being carried along by someone trying to tell you something.

• 44:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:08Andy Greenwald?

  And I think where the limitations of the auteur model are evident in a show like Euphoria are you can absolutely hang a constellation of these really bright, powerful shining star moments that moved him and that tell the story that I think he clearly wanted to tell. The connective tissue between them was often either convoluted, ignored, underbaked.

• 44:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, straight up, yeah, like the previous episode, finish your point, I'm sorry.

• 44:34Andy Greenwald?

  And just to say, that's why people have writers' rooms. I am not saying Euphoria would be better with a writer's room. It's just irrelevant to make that point. I'm saying, and sometimes the conversation creep of a writer's room can overthink everything until it's just mid, you know? But like, there's a moment in this episode that surprised me in ways that I was really excited by. Like, I still don't understand, and I never asked you, why Laurie is the way she is and hangs out only with Nazis on a farm? I don't understand that.

• 45:03Chris Ryan?

  Her season two, like, she emerges in season two as like, I believe like a local drug dealer that Fez is working with. I haven't re-watched season two, so some of this is just patching together memories. But her character is more like...

• 45:20Chris Ryan?

  The layer of drug culture that you experience when like you are getting serious, you know?

• 45:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, all of a sudden, this is the person behind the person.

• 45:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and like, it's not just dime bags and eight balls. It's like, there's somebody who is like, I'll give you this if you give me that. And like, she, her and Alamo emerging as these two basically satanic figures in the desert. I think it was almost like, it's almost disconnected from who Lori was in the second season.

• 45:49Andy Greenwald?

  All that to say that like, the moment when the guy who rodeo ropes Rue.

• 45:55Chris Ryan?

  Harley, yeah.

• 45:56Andy Greenwald?

  Early in the episode, when the scene is built, because we've seen all the same movie Sam Levinson has seen, that we understand he's going to reach for his gun and go out in a blaze of glory and everything's gonna pop off. When he doesn't, worked. That was a moment of, I took, I took notice of that.

• 46:13Chris Ryan?

  Apparently, this show is also about the healing power of dogs.

• 46:17Andy Greenwald?

  Of animals. Yeah, exactly. The dog told him not to do it.

• 46:20Chris Ryan?

  But I just was like, okay.

• 46:22Andy Greenwald?

  But like, we are also at the point with the show where I was just like, that is, that is a decision and a statement that clearly has some significance to the creator and to the larger project. And then it goes off the rails. You know, she has this dramatic hanging up, like there's, then it goes crazy to get to the next one of those little pegboard points.

• 46:41Chris Ryan?

  Fucking, like, it's so funny because we're having this kind of like, clear-eyed, full hearts conversation about this episode. And it, like I said, plastic surgery, Brazilian butt lift, Lori blows her pants out when she hangs herself. Colostomy bags, plastic surgery in Mexico, fentanyl with scorpions printed on it. And Marshawn Lynch getting into a threesome before he gets his dick blown off. I mean, it is so like.

• 47:10Andy Greenwald?

  Clip that, cowards.

• 47:11Chris Ryan?

  Explo- it is exploitation, exploitation core, you know? And so it's funny to also be like, goddamn, like, this brought me to tears. It is funny. It's, it's just like, I guess that's the high and low that he's working with.

• 47:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 47:25Chris Ryan?

  And it really, really, really pissed people off in some ways, but I, even though you're the newcomer to this.

• 47:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 47:32Chris Ryan?

  I just, I wasn't mad. That Lexi, or Nate, or Cassie didn't have like three more story beats at the expense of all the Wayne, uh, Faye and Laurie stuff. I mean, like, I don't know why he did it necessarily, or I think it could have been a little bit more evenly distributed, but...

• 47:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, I didn't understand what, I, but I, I also, because I didn't know, I, I couldn't, I didn't feel, I didn't want to spend time with really any of these other stories, but I also, that's not for me to say, I'm coming in late and maybe that some of the scenes or some of the, the continuation of their stories was, was important-

• 48:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:09Andy Greenwald?

  -for the viewers. But I also think like, the, I keep looking because I never want to get his name wrong, but Adewale Akunue Akbaje, if he wasn't on this show in that role, it would have been a catastrophe of historic proportions. Because the character is preposterous. Somewhat intentionally preposterous. But to go from Rue's death, to have him giving a disquisition on the power of female anatomy and the role that's played in his life, was borderline insulting, honestly, to what the show was. And ridiculous digression, or maybe not digression, for what that character has been. And, you know, he, he came on the show like a cartoon and he went out like a cartoon, but there was

• 48:49Andy Greenwald?

  an actor playing him who brought real gravitas and swagger and dark charisma and humanity to it, which is maybe the best we can hope for. I, I, I think that, you know, like, I know this sounds crazy, but I feel like, I feel like the show got away with even more this season-

• 49:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:07Andy Greenwald?

  -by casting, and, and Daryl Brick Gibson too, in that, in part of Bishop, who, he brought some, some gravity and soul to a character that was mostly reaction shots, and then suddenly had exposition in the last 15 minutes.

• 49:21Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:22Andy Greenwald?

  You know, it, it got away with a lot-

• 49:25Chris Ryan?

  Did you understand why he turned on Alamo?

• 49:27Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, I think because of Maddie?

• 49:30Chris Ryan?

  But was, did he seem particularly enamored with Maddie before?

• 49:35Andy Greenwald?

  Before she liked his dog?

• 49:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, okay.

• 49:37Andy Greenwald?

  Not that I could tell. I mean, he was watching everything.

• 49:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but I thought he was mostly focused on Rue and was the one who's like, my spidey senses are tingling.

• 49:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, not.

• 49:46Chris Ryan?

  But there's something up with this person who's now just all of a sudden.

• 49:49Andy Greenwald?

  Empathy for this person.

• 49:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:50Andy Greenwald?

  Now, that's the other, I think ultimately, the reaction is one of frustration because maybe Daryl Brick Gibson will do an interview where he's like, oh, we shot all these scenes where, you know, Bishop's sister died of a drug overdose and it triggered him, or whatever, and she's the one whose dog it was. And that's what I was playing, but we didn't show it. Or, you know, you get away with it because he's a cool looking actor who did the fucking thing, scene to scene.

• 50:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:16Andy Greenwald?

  And then you get by on again with the sort of surface artifice that the show can also skate by on. Either way, we'll never know the full answer and we have what we have. And I maybe the best way to put a bow on it is we're never getting anything like this again. Like, we're never getting anything like this again.

• 50:32Chris Ryan?

  So that's actually a pretty good segue here. I mean, I, I hope people enjoyed our, our rather unique perspective on this series this, this season and, and, you know, it was a fun experiment.

• 50:43Andy Greenwald?

  It was a fun experiment at the beginning and end.

• 50:47Chris Ryan?

  I'll also just mention that not unlike when Succession and Barry ended on the same night, I believe. Wasn't that the same night?

• 50:55Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's right. I mean, you, you were a kickin' around Europe at the time.

• 50:58Chris Ryan?

  I was. Uh, Hacks also ended this weekend.

• 51:03Chris Ryan?

  I'm gonna just say one quick thing. I know you didn't get a chance to see this yet, but I know you've also read about it, so I'm not spoiling anything for you. But this will be spoilers for Hacks, which we have not discussed.

• 51:14Chris Ryan?

  It was, uh, really interesting watching this with a, an avowed fan of the show, my wife, who I think was quite moved by the ending and was like, that was very satisfying. And I, I kind of have come in and out, like, as Hacks has gone on, I have like, kind of, I'll watch an episode, maybe miss two or three, watch an episode and feel like I'm on top of what's happening.

• 51:38Chris Ryan?

  And.

• 51:40Chris Ryan?

  In its own way, Hacks is not unlike what happened with Euphoria, where it brings in a relatively unexpected, though somewhat broadcast, plot turn where Deborah gets, has cancer, that her amass has returned and she's decided that it's going to be, she's going to choose to have assisted suicide in Switzerland rather than go through treatment. So her and Ava go on this sort of last lost weekend in Paris. It's actually quite beautiful. Like, you know, obviously Paris is just incredibly cinematic and filmable.

• 52:15Andy Greenwald?

  And just ran into Amanda Dobbins. She said the same thing.

• 52:17Chris Ryan?

  I bet. And then, you know, they're going back and forth, making jokes about dying. And Deborah has the revelation that she in fact has more jokes to tell, more work to do, and that that is a substitute. That is essentially like standing in for, she also loves the people around her.

• 52:34Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 52:35Chris Ryan?

  And has learned to be a part of a community and is gonna go and try, you know, clinical trials of new drugs for cancer. And, you know, as I was watching it, I was feeling like I was getting a little Chewbacca'd, like.

• 52:49Andy Greenwald?

  Explain that, because that is still important to us. That was, no, that was the truly odious Rise of Skywalker.

• 52:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and Rise of Skywalker, there's like, you basically spend five minutes thinking Chewbacca has been blown up and.

• 53:02Andy Greenwald?

  But somehow Chewbacca has returned.

• 53:03Chris Ryan?

  But somehow Chewbacca has returned and I got really mad on a podcast where I was like, you can't manipulate people like this. Like, you prepare them for the possibility that characters, people die. You take them through that experience and then you tell them, actually, psych.

• 53:18Andy Greenwald?

  And you get everything, you hoard, you're like, you're like Colin Robinson on What We Do in the Shadows.

• 53:26Chris Ryan?

  Energy vampire.

• 53:26Andy Greenwald?

  You're an emotion vampire.

• 53:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:27Andy Greenwald?

  You have stolen people's feelings and then said, JK.

• 53:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. So I, it's interesting to look at the two in comparison. In some ways, Hacks was a much more complete, satisfying and watertight finale. But it does, Euphoria does what Hacks didn't do, which is say. Well, what if, what if what we are actually telling you is, is going to happen, it happened? You know, with a main character and how would people feel about that? I think Hacks killing Debra would be like quite controversial. So I understand why they didn't do that, but it, it was interesting to see them play with stakes that were so severe.

• 54:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 54:08Chris Ryan?

  And then decide to back off in the last minute.

• 54:10Andy Greenwald?

  I cannot criticize Hacks for that decision from the perspective of someone who has just been advocating for the unspoken covenant between television creators and their audience. I think that there is, and this can be, this can hamstring creators creatively over the long term, but I do think shows, you know, I've said this before, teach you about themselves and tell you what they are.

• 54:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:34Andy Greenwald?

  Even before they've reached the precipice of choosing an ending. And the worst endings tend to be the ones that betray that core belief at the last moment in search of something extra or something else, or, or in this case of some creators wanting to play a higher note they've been allowed to play on the keyboard of their show for this many seasons. Hacks, the reason I didn't stay with Hacks is nothing to do with the, what I believe to be even from a distance, the consistent, the consistency of Hacks. People like Phoebe and the millions of other people and Emmy voters who love it are like, one of the reasons this show continues is because year in and year out, Debra and Ava are delivering.

• 55:13Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 55:13Andy Greenwald?

  And the tone of the show is delivering and the stakes of the show are consistent. That's really, really hard to do. What I tapped out when I realized that the show's most provocative ideas about Debra being a monster, about show business being a gaping maw of whatever, was always going to be fixed with hugs and understanding before we run it back again.

• 55:35Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 55:35Andy Greenwald?

  The constant breaking up and bringing back together, well done artfully, was too much of a yo-yo for me and reminded me of, I mean, Mike Schur is an executive producer of Hacks, but he, it's not his show, you know, Paul Downs and Lucien Yellow and Jen Statzky did, did the damn thing and ran the shit out of enormously successful beloved show. But Mike Schur is an executive producer of it and there's a tendency that it reminded me of ultimately. That, and he's made some of my favorite shows of all time. Parks and Rec, and Good Place particularly, Unimpeachable, except for the one little thing, which is what I'm trying to articulate, which is every so often, the softness and the gentleness and the schmaltziness and the optimism start to like overwhelm.

• 56:19Chris Ryan?

  The TV news too.

• 56:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and that's not a sin. The shows are good because there is a Leslie Knope and there's a Ron Swanson. And when they start hugging, that's when it starts to get a little... Anyway, so that was my reaction with the thing, but like, the reason why I walked away. But when you're describing that finale to me, I think I would have been incredibly frustrated by it, but frustrated for the same reasons I'd been frustrated for three seasons. And ultimately, that was the show.

• 56:47Chris Ryan?

  Sure. Also, you know, it's hard to watch when you're just like, the bear is just clearly much funnier.

• 56:53Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly, exactly. Where are the laughs in comparison?

• 56:57Chris Ryan?

  I was just gonna go through HBO's like current slate right really quickly.

• 57:03Chris Ryan?

  So you've got, I would say these are the sort of ones that are like, kind of not propping up, but like are the flagship sort of titles for HBO right now, which is White Lotus, Returning, Currently Shooting in the South of France, Task, We Know Is Coming Back, Night of the Seven Kingdoms, critically, I believe commercially very successful, new iteration of Game of Thrones.

• 57:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I actually was gonna reference it when we talk about Star City.

• 57:29Chris Ryan?

  Good. Gilded Age, The Pit, Rooster. These are not all shows that we have love or talk about necessarily, but shows that I think are doing well for HBO and are in current production. And obviously, I guess Dune Prophecy, which with Dune 3 coming and...

• 57:47Andy Greenwald?

  I was just laughing. It's like, I guess, obviously.

• 57:50Chris Ryan?

  Well, they brought it back and it's a Dune show, so I'm kind of like, it bears mentioning. Then there are the shows that are winding down or ending. Industry, House of the Dragon, Last of Us. Last of Us still may be on the air for a couple more years, but I think our...

• 58:07Chris Ryan?

  They're probably like thinking of ways to start bringing the ship back home.

• 58:11Andy Greenwald?

  I think they said four, didn't they?

• 58:12Chris Ryan?

  They did. I don't, I don't know how long that's gonna take, but. And then, you know, Half Man and DTF. We didn't talk about Half Man. DTF, we talked about briefly, but those seem like one and dones.

• 58:25Andy Greenwald?

  I, I, I'm surprised. I mean, I don't know. I don't have insider knowledge on this, but, and I know it wasn't for us and it made, made people quite frustrated, but it does seem like DTF was a success ratings wise and internally.

• 58:38Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 58:38Andy Greenwald?

  And so I, I have no idea about their HBO's relationship with Stephen Conrad or Stephen Conrad's desire to do any, but like you could do DTF Des Moines. Like, I, that could be White Lotus.

• 58:49Chris Ryan?

  Sure. Or you could do another Stephen Conrad show, which I think is what I, I would like to see.

• 58:55Chris Ryan?

  And then they have, uh, Lanterns and House of the Dragon on the way imminently and Harry Potter, obviously at, at Christmas time. It's an interesting moment because, you know, like I think we have, uh.

• 59:07Andy Greenwald?

  Do you want me to talk about if Peeves is in it?

• 59:08Chris Ryan?

  If who?

• 59:09Andy Greenwald?

  Peeves.

• 59:09Chris Ryan?

  Who's Peeves?

• 59:11Andy Greenwald?

  He wasn't in the movies.

• 59:12Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 59:13Andy Greenwald?

  So that's two ways you haven't ever encountered this character. Go on.

• 59:18Chris Ryan?

  We've done state of HBO conversations before. I think a lot of the slate looks very strong. It really doesn't matter because it's, it, it can't be repeated enough. They have been purchased by Paramount.

• 59:30Andy Greenwald?

  You also, I think, left out the most interesting returning show on the HBO network, set in Delaware County about a task force.

• 59:38Chris Ryan?

  I said task force, yeah.

• 59:40Andy Greenwald?

  Sorry, I was blanking out.

• 59:42Chris Ryan?

  I'm, we're having a problem, not you and I, but like,

• 59:46Chris Ryan?

  you know, when I was doing the buried alive thing, when it last, last episode and I was like, hey, everybody, like, tell me who you think the best buried alive. Like mine's definitely Kill Bill. And I got 10 million emails that were just like Beatrix Kiddo from Kill Bill. And I'm like, I know I said that.

• 59:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 59:59Chris Ryan?

  Unless I was having a stroke and didn't say that, but.

• 1:00:02Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 1:00:03Chris Ryan?

  Maybe I'm not

• 1:00:04Andy Greenwald?

  Only a few of the emails were from me.

• 1:00:05Chris Ryan?

  Distinctive enough podcaster. Yeah.

• 1:00:07Andy Greenwald?

  It's fine.

• 1:00:08Chris Ryan?

  Anyway, I just thought I would mention that these two shows are ending. Uh, that, that Euphoria, which obviously was a intermittent presence in HBO's lineup and Hacks, which has been a very consistent presence.

• 1:00:22Andy Greenwald?

  Well, Max has its two Pitt, um, adjacent

• 1:00:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Andy Greenwald?

  series coming. There's, there's the, the police show.

• 1:00:30Chris Ryan?

  Is that Catalina Island?

• 1:00:32Andy Greenwald?

  No. What is that? Oh, is that the family show?

• 1:00:34Chris Ryan?

  No, that's the one about a guy, a sheriff on Catalina.

• 1:00:38Andy Greenwald?

  Is, is it about him policing the Catalina wine mixer?

• 1:00:41Chris Ryan?

  I hope so.

• 1:00:43Andy Greenwald?

  No, there's the Milo Ventimiglia show.

• 1:00:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there's a cop show.

• 1:00:46Andy Greenwald?

  And then there also is, there's a family drama, um, being led by

• 1:00:49Chris Ryan?

  That's brilliant, yeah.

• 1:00:50Andy Greenwald?

  Ray Romano. Yeah. So I, I guess not, like, we just, we just kind of did our best to find the positive in Euphoria. So I don't want to do any more, um, what's the term the kids use? Glazing? But I do think what you described is actually a best case scenario. I think in terms of, um, industry position of a network that has a very, very steady floor.

• 1:01:15Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:01:15Andy Greenwald?

  And it's a very different floor than HBO had 10 years ago, or certainly 20 years ago, in the sense that it is built on more mainstream facing stuff that works like Game of Thrones stuff and DC stuff and, um, you know, Bill Lawrence comedy, Rooster, and then also all of this, you know, broadcast minded, all those things on Max. The optimist case for that is Paramount, or whomever in the end, but probably Paramount, is buying something pretty solid.

• 1:01:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:50Andy Greenwald?

  And that there is room, uh, to iterate on top of it. And there's room for Casey to, to, to say to, um, all of the Ellison's, perhaps in some sort of like, you remember when on Righteous Gemstones, when the gemstone siblings would receive people sitting on their three thrones? I imagine that's

• 1:02:09Chris Ryan?

  That's how the Ellison's do it?

• 1:02:10Andy Greenwald?

  That's what it, that's what it'll be like, where it's like, Larry Ellison and the young Ellison.

• 1:02:16Chris Ryan?

  Meghan?

• 1:02:16Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, no, not Meghan. What's our guy?

• 1:02:19Chris Ryan?

  David?

• 1:02:19Andy Greenwald?

  David Ellison.

• 1:02:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:20Andy Greenwald?

  And then maybe like Scott Bessant or whatever. Being like, actually, it's a good sign for the economy that everyone's poor. And anyway, Casey could be like, there's actually room here for me to take a little money off the top for like three more somebody somewheres or a bigger artistic splash.

• 1:02:33Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:02:34Andy Greenwald?

  But do you feel like it's an end of an era in a different way?

• 1:02:36Chris Ryan?

  No, I mean, I think it's an end of an era because of the corporate machinations. I don't think, I think, I think if anything, the end of Succession and Barry should, should show us that we shouldn't do this kind of like, what's HBO gonna do now that Hacks is gone? It's like, I think they'll figure it out.

• 1:02:49Andy Greenwald?

  We just did it.

• 1:02:49Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 1:02:50Andy Greenwald?

  You think we shouldn't do the thing we just did?

• 1:02:52Chris Ryan?

  No, I think that the reason to, to be like, I wonder what's gonna happen next for HBO is because they are gonna be part of a different corporate parent. Not because they, they continuously, you know, and they morph, they, they change. There's, there's always gonna be these like HBO 2027 is not gonna look like HBO 2021. But, you know, we always wind up kinda coming back home.

• 1:03:14Andy Greenwald?

  Did you mention Harry Potter in the list of shows?

• 1:03:16Chris Ryan?

  I did, man. Yeah, yeah. Is that where peeves?

• 1:03:19Andy Greenwald?

  Beavs, yeah.

• 1:03:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Peeves or beavs?

• 1:03:22Andy Greenwald?

  Were you doing the Arrested Development bit? Beads. Bees?

• 1:03:26Chris Ryan?

  Um.

• 1:03:27Andy Greenwald?

  It's beavs, man.

• 1:03:27Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk about a show before we get out of here that I fucking love. Uh, and I did, I, I knew I was gonna like it. I didn't think I was gonna be blown away by it the way I was. We're talking about Star City. This is a, I, I guess it's a spinoff. There are characters in Star City that appear in For All Mankind.

• 1:03:47Andy Greenwald?

  Played by different actors, I think.

• 1:03:48Chris Ryan?

  Different actors. It's, it's set in the sixties in Russia, then the Soviet Union. This comes from Matt Walpert, Ben Navidi and Ronald Moore, who are also in charge of, of, uh,

• 1:04:01Andy Greenwald?

  For All Mankind.

• 1:04:01Chris Ryan?

  For All Mankind, although I believe Walpert and Navidi basically do the brunt of that.

• 1:04:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, they are the showrunners of both of these projects.

• 1:04:08Chris Ryan?

  Um, and.

• 1:04:12Chris Ryan?

  I'm gonna say this, and I don't really have a way of making this statement true, but it's how I feel.

• 1:04:19Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:04:19Chris Ryan?

  Is this, uh, the Andor of For All Mankind: Star Wars?

• 1:04:24Andy Greenwald?

  Wow. Um, okay.

• 1:04:28Chris Ryan?

  Uh, they Chernobyl'd this. This is, uh...

• 1:04:31Andy Greenwald?

  It's a hundred, it's rare to see a project of such deep, deep influence, but also kinda get away with it.

• 1:04:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so it is Russian characters speaking in English accents portrayed by English-speaking performers, for the most part, I believe. Uh, it starts Reese Ithens as the chief designer of the Soviet space program. Uh, Anna Maxwell Martin as Ludmilla Ryskova, uh, a KGB intelligence, uh, officer who oversees the security of that space program. And then it's got a bunch of performers that I am either now fans of or never seen before. Um, so we have Agnes O'Casey playing Arena, who will turn up on For All Mankind eventually. And she is, uh, Ryskova's new protege at the KGB.

• 1:05:21Andy Greenwald?

  Oh wait, so this character is on, the reason it's a different actor is because it's an older version of the character on For All Mankind?

• 1:05:26Chris Ryan?

  Apparently, I think that they showed up on, she shows up in season four. Uh, Alice Engler, uh, who plays Anastasia Belikova, the first woman in space.

• 1:05:37Andy Greenwald?

  First woman on the moon, Doug.

• 1:05:38Chris Ryan?

  Sorry, on the moon.

• 1:05:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Adam Nagatis and Sally McLeod, they play Valya and Sasha respectively, who are two...

• 1:05:44Andy Greenwald?

  And Adam, we know because he was one of the firefighter buddies on Chernobyl.

• 1:05:47Chris Ryan?

  That's right. And there are some Chernobyl faces on this show. The, uh... I mean, this is not really like a piece of cultural criticism. I like, uh, watching trained English, Irish, Welsh, and otherwise actors imbuing scripts with just incredibly lived-in performances immediately. This feels like a 70s conspiracy thriller.

• 1:06:13Chris Ryan?

  With a sci-fi, a plausible, realistic sci-fi bent. It's an alternative history of the space race for all mankind is told from the US perspective. This is told from the Soviet perspective. And what you get in the first episode is essentially, um, Raskova is leading a mole hunt. Inside of the space program.

• 1:06:32Andy Greenwald?

  Star City.

• 1:06:33Chris Ryan?

  Star City. Um, and when the prospective first woman on the moon is thought to be a spy for the Americans. She's replaced by Anastasia Belikova, played by Engler and, uh, because it's thought that Anastasia will be more pliant to the, the party's needs. Um, and meanwhile, so that, that whole like going up to the moon with a woman is, is happening.

• 1:06:58Andy Greenwald?

  And it's quite tense and well shot and.

• 1:07:00Chris Ryan?

  It is gorgeous. Nick Murphy directed this first two batch, this two episode batch that went up. Um, and then the second episode, which I don't want to get too far into, cause you haven't had a chance to see it. Uh, is about Anastasia's victory and promo tour. And, um, the ways in which they are using her to sort of as a propaganda piece. But deepening the mole hunt and Irina's, um, being pulled into the dark side of security work for the KGB. I don't know if there is a light side of security work for the KGB. Yeah.

• 1:07:36Andy Greenwald?

  Sort of the, the light fun.

• 1:07:37Chris Ryan?

  Who's like the Luke Skywalker of the KGB?

• 1:07:40Andy Greenwald?

  Guess we're gonna find out.

• 1:07:41Chris Ryan?

  Um, the show is fucking awesome. It uses, uh, in much the same way Chernobyl does, the brutalist, decaying textures of.

• 1:07:53Andy Greenwald?

  Lithuania.

• 1:07:54Chris Ryan?

  They shot in Lithuania.

• 1:07:55Andy Greenwald?

  Hell yeah. Shout out Lithuania.

• 1:07:58Chris Ryan?

  To just give everything this kind of like light, cigarette smoked on, moldy, decaying, the lights don't always work feel. And yet at the same time, you know, you're watching, um, this moment of great.

• 1:08:17Chris Ryan?

  Optimism and idealism and to see it sort of broadcast in this different way and both, two different ways. One, if the Soviets made it to the moon first, but two, in this way in which like every victory is also a thing that needs to be controlled.

• 1:08:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:08:33Chris Ryan?

  A thing that needs to be interrogated, a thing that needs to be buttoned up, whereas on the US side, everything is sort of this expression of a new kind of American exceptionalism.

• 1:08:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:08:42Chris Ryan?

  And American imperialism.

• 1:08:44Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it's beautifully characterized in the scene in which the chief designer is rewarded for his absolutely outrageous victory, but it's in an empty room and he has to give the medal back.

• 1:08:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:57Andy Greenwald?

  Paul Spriggs is the name of the production designer who previously worked on Sex Education, which is a very different palette.

• 1:09:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:03Andy Greenwald?

  So Bravo, production designers, unsung heroes of all television.

• 1:09:07Chris Ryan?

  So for as much as this is, first of all, I just want to get your general thoughts on the episode you watched.

• 1:09:11Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I kind of want to, I loved it and I, I can't wait to watch more. I, this may seem counterintuitive, but my reference point for watching the show was actually Spider Noir, which we talked about last week, which is to say, I no longer understand what gets greenlit and what doesn't. Nothing makes sense to me anymore. For All Mankind, which is a sturdy show in terms of its, I believe, its performance and the engagement that it gets for Apple, is not a hit show, I think, by any metric, even within Apple's own, you know, not many people have Apple despite its ubiquity and its unlimited budgets. So

• 1:09:51Andy Greenwald?

  the fact that that series is getting a Russian-centered spinoff back in the 60s, in many ways telling the B-side to a story that was the story of the first season of For All Mankind, which was eight years ago.

• 1:10:05Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:06Andy Greenwald?

  It's fucking crazy. Like, spinoffs, spinoffs in their best case don't retain the full audience of the mothership.

• 1:10:13Chris Ryan?

  With re-siphons and anal Maxwell Martin leading it.

• 1:10:16Andy Greenwald?

  Leading it. And without any attempt to make this. Sex.

• 1:10:21Chris Ryan?

  It's not like Russell Crowe is playing this guy. You know what I mean? It's like, they didn't.

• 1:10:24Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 1:10:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:25Andy Greenwald?

  There seems to be an understanding that this is going to be mostly an artistic, frankly, project in the shadow of a show that isn't, hasn't set the world on fire. Now, maybe this will be a wonderful outcome for everyone where what we felt about the first episode or two episodes will be borne out by the rest of it. And then it'll have a sudden surge and may, you know, become incredibly popular in its own right. And we'll do our best to make that happen. But it's wild to me. Is it a, is it? And secondarily, I think we should say for people listening, you do not need to watch For All Mankind, I think, to engage in the show.

• 1:11:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I watched the first two and a half seasons of For All Mankind.

• 1:11:04Andy Greenwald?

  I watched the first two seasons. I was talking to my daughters about it on the way to school because they asked what we were talking about on the podcast. And then they asked me to tell them everything that happened at the end of Euphoria.

• 1:11:12Chris Ryan?

  How did you do that?

• 1:11:13Andy Greenwald?

  I mostly focused on the laxatives that Wayne took because that kind of humor always sells, especially on the way to school.

• 1:11:20Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:11:21Andy Greenwald?

  The premise of For All Mankind remains elite and so cool and so compelling and such a great use of television to be like, no, let's do this and let's really, really try it. But I found it too big and too ambitious and I just didn't enjoy the watching of it as much as I admired it. I don't think you need to have watched it to watch this or to appreciate it. I just spent half this episode being like, how are we getting this? This is wild. But I should not question it. I'm glad they're spending their money on this.

• 1:11:51Chris Ryan?

  The, there was something kind of like, and I don't, I don't mean this as a blanket criticism of a show that I haven't watched in a couple of seasons. I've kept up with what's kind of happening on All Mankind, but I.

• 1:12:04Andy Greenwald?

  So For All Mankind, from what I understand, every season is a decade leap forward into this alternate history.

• 1:12:08Chris Ryan?

  They're in the 90s, I think now.

• 1:12:09Andy Greenwald?

  Or into the 2000s. And now there is a full colony on Mars.

• 1:12:13Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:12:13Andy Greenwald?

  Because the idea of For All Mankind, the fundamental like rupture in our space and time is that the Russians won, which is what we see happen in the opening moments beautifully and brilliantly. I mean, pilots are hard. The opening moments of the show are so excellent at bringing you into everything that the show is going to be about and also making you understand something if you are a fan of the other show, that you're going to be seeing it from the other side.

• 1:12:35Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and it's like the paranoia and terror that then mixes with a moment of triumph is really, really excellent.

• 1:12:42Andy Greenwald?

  And the domestic versus the just a completely different perspective on it. It's so, so, so well done. But that the idea that in For All Mankind, this loss of the space race led to an American obsession of catching up, which led to a completely transformed second half of the century into the new century in which space is everything.

• 1:13:00Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:13:01Andy Greenwald?

  As opposed to something we did and we won and we moved on from.

• 1:13:04Chris Ryan?

  There are these character moments and I, you know, I want you to watch the second one and then we could talk about it in more detail, but what I will say is that I'm sure if I did like a forensic scouring of what's happened on For All Mankind, I could come up with like a pretty solid synopsis of what's going to happen on Star City.

• 1:13:25Chris Ryan?

  But there are these character beats that I find enchanting. Enchanting in a way that like kind of reminds me of Battlestar, Ronald Moore's Battlestar Galactica of like, you start out and you think this is going to be the mechanic. I get it. And you're like, oh my God, I had no idea like this is where we were going to wind up. And even some of the cosmonauts are being given character depth that you just didn't, you know, you would not necessarily need to imbue the seventh guy on the show with this like, this is what I want, but this is who I am. And this is the frustration that comes along with it. It's, it's really, really top notch TV and I'm really excited to keep watching it. I think you're going to adore the second episode.

• 1:14:08Andy Greenwald?

  Even more.

• 1:14:09Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I think so. Yeah. And if I had a critique of For All Mankind, even though I, you know, I like Joel Kinnaman as a performer, I'd like a lot of the people who are on it. There was a certain kind of like, it's not like a falseness. There was always aware that I was watching people on a TV show.

• 1:14:32Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:14:34Chris Ryan?

  And it felt like dress up and this doesn't, even though there is a complete. Artifice to the fact that all of these people are Russians speaking English.

• 1:14:45Andy Greenwald?

  The least generous take on that is that they found the Chernobyl filter that works. It's a filter on the show, the way they speak accented English as Russian, the way Russian sounds in English, you know, referring to people as chief designer, which actually is more common in Russian than it would be in in English. But we under we speak this fictional language now.

• 1:15:05Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:15:05Andy Greenwald?

  And they they're doing a great job of doing a show in that language. It's not just mimicry.

• 1:15:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:14Andy Greenwald?

  We got a couple of things on the cast, a couple of small notes.

• 1:15:16Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:15:16Andy Greenwald?

  One, happy to see Elliot Salt, she plays the other listening person. Remember she was on Slow Horses in like two seasons ago.

• 1:15:26Chris Ryan?

  Damn, that's a.

• 1:15:27Andy Greenwald?

  This lady, recognized her immediately from that. Love seeing these people get good work.

• 1:15:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:32Andy Greenwald?

  I'm paying close attention, partly because, as you know, I'm constantly on nepo watch. Ever since we started this podcast and I've looked across at you, you know, it's nepo watch and.

• 1:15:42Chris Ryan?

  I stand on the shoulder of giants.

• 1:15:44Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, who amongst, I mean, what other critics were willing to shit on Godfather two, you know, in a way like, imagine he would have killed on a podcast. So I think we have to talk about the fact that Alice Engler is clearly the daughter of.

• 1:16:01Chris Ryan?

  You have to defend this.

• 1:16:02Andy Greenwald?

  No, I don't actually.

• 1:16:02Chris Ryan?

  Atticus Finch.

• 1:16:03Andy Greenwald?

  This is actually fun for me. No, she is the daughter of Jane Campion, who is the great director. She was in Top of the Lake, her mom's TV show. She's awesome. I don't actually have a take on this. It was just funny to see that.

• 1:16:13Chris Ryan?

  It is.

• 1:16:13Andy Greenwald?

  And as it was funny to see that Tanya Miranova, who's one of the cosmonaut's wife, who's keeping up a little something on the side, is Andy Serkis's daughter.

• 1:16:21Chris Ryan?

  I did not know that.

• 1:16:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Her name being Ruby Serkis didn't give it away.

• 1:16:24Chris Ryan?

  The the character who I think is is has been the one that has blossomed for me the most is is Alice Engler's Anastasia character.

• 1:16:32Andy Greenwald?

  She is a, the nepo thing is a joke, especially when we're talking about a dedicated artistic person like Jane Campion and her family. Like, I'm not really worried about the benefits of the leg up she got in the Kiwi film industry. But it's actually.

• 1:16:47Chris Ryan?

  When she's like at auditions, they're like, top of the lake, must be nice.

• 1:16:51Andy Greenwald?

  No, the piano, huh? When did your mom show you that?

• 1:16:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:57Andy Greenwald?

  No, I think that as an actor, she is surprising. In her presentation, in her line readings, in what she brings to it, and this is just through one episode, that like you notice.

• 1:17:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:07Andy Greenwald?

  And that's especially noteworthy casting, I think, in a show in which the aesthetic is primary, that everything is kind of brutalist and gray and there's snow and you can't do pops of color to distinguish, oh, that character wears a saucy scarf. That's telling us something. No, they can't do that. So casting becomes even more important.

• 1:17:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:25Andy Greenwald?

  And the contrast that the show does between her and the cosmonaut that she replaces within the episode is expertly done.

• 1:17:32Chris Ryan?

  Yes. We will continue to talk about this. The third episode goes up on Friday, so maybe, maybe we'll talk a little bit about episode two on Thursday, but I think we'll probably consistently chat about this show throughout its season, if I had to guess.

• 1:17:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and then we're gonna hit maximum pleasure. We're gonna stay in the apple.

• 1:17:48Chris Ryan?

  Apple's just got us. We do nothing but serve our big brother.

• 1:17:53Andy Greenwald?

  Tim Apple.

• 1:17:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so Widows Bay on Thursday, Top Chef on Thursday, maybe a little bit more Star City.

• 1:18:00Andy Greenwald?

  Kristen said this is her favorite episode of Top Chef this season.

• 1:18:03Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:18:04Andy Greenwald?

  Did you know that?

• 1:18:04Chris Ryan?

  I did not know that. That's good to know.

• 1:18:06Andy Greenwald?

  I also heard, this is just now we're just into Reddit stuff, but like, a P A who worked on the show said that, said that the edit actually helped Seeker, because it was much worse.

• 1:18:17Chris Ryan?

  The edit of his behavior during the jury, or is it the edit of like his cooking?

• 1:18:22Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, the jury, like his.

• 1:18:23Chris Ryan?

  So that he crashed out? And that they were like, let's be decent about this?

• 1:18:27Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm. Release the Seeker cut.

• 1:18:29Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:18:30Andy Greenwald?

  That's, that's my hill.

• 1:18:31Chris Ryan?

  Seeker stands. Hit us up about your man.

• 1:18:33Andy Greenwald?

  Tell us. Just, just tell us about what it's like eating melted chicken.

• 1:18:38Chris Ryan?

  Thank you for watching Euphoria with me. Thank you for podcasting with me today.

• 1:18:41Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you for inviting me.

• 1:18:42Chris Ryan?

  We're gonna be back on Thursday, and everybody have a good week.

• 1:18:46Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.