Is ‘Lanterns’ the End of Superhero TV? Plus, ‘Furious’ E5 and the ‘Lioness’ S3 Premiere.

Chris and Andy preview the forthcoming DCU show ‘Lanterns.’ They talk about the long road to getting the show made and how fewer and fewer superhero TV shows are actually making it to our screens (4:07). Along the way, they react to the first two episodes of ‘The Shards,’ an FX adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's novel (25:48). Later they discuss ‘Furious’ Episode 5 (44:17), then wrap the show with The Watch: After Dark (a.k.a. CR’s thoughts on ‘Lioness’ Season 3) (01:00:45). 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 Kai Grady Studio Production: Sarah Reddy 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 1:05Speaker 03

  I need sports to have 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 the Ringer dot com. And joining me in the studio, he wants his body to do it, not a pill. It's Andy Greenwald. Did you get to that scene in Lioness? I bet you did.

• 1:28Andy Greenwald?

  I did.

• 1:28Chris Ryan?

  I bet you did.

• 1:29Andy Greenwald?

  I did.

• 1:29Chris Ryan?

  Uh, what's up, everybody? It is Thursday in the United States of America. I'm in a good mood. This last part of the week.

• 1:36Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 1:37Chris Ryan?

  Grinded a few out this week, but it's, there's nothing like coming home.

• 1:40Andy Greenwald?

  I think you, you are as exultant today as the New York Times is.

• 1:44Chris Ryan?

  About, oh.

• 1:45Andy Greenwald?

  A week when the left is in disarray.

• 1:47Chris Ryan?

  The left, the collapse.

• 1:49Andy Greenwald?

  So, so much concern.

• 1:50Chris Ryan?

  We're reading different periodicals these days, I think.

• 1:52Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I read the New York Times, but only the version that exists in Lioness, which I cannot wait to talk to you about.

• 1:59Chris Ryan?

  Honestly, dude, it's not that much different. Today, Andy, as we alluded to, we will talk about broadly the first episode of Lioness because I think Andy may have grabbed the parachute a little.

• 2:10Andy Greenwald?

  What do they call it in like, in MMA and the octagon when they're out?

• 2:14Chris Ryan?

  I think you had somebody exfil you. Let's just put it that way.

• 2:17Andy Greenwald?

  I dreamed of getting black bagged eight minutes in. It would have been a relief.

• 2:21Chris Ryan?

  We are also going to talk a little bit about the shards. We're going to talk more extensively about Furious up through episode five. Episode six comes out on Sunday, as does Lanterns.

• 2:31Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, exciting.

• 2:31Chris Ryan?

  And we have a little bit of a prelude to that, uh, to that show because there's a lot of interesting reporting going on. I know we've been banging the superhero drum this, this week, this last week and a half, but.

• 2:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 2:42Chris Ryan?

  A lot of interesting reporting going on around the state of superhero television, which is sort of our ballywick here.

• 2:48Andy Greenwald?

  I thought when you said a prelude to Lanterns, you were going to talk about the glories of Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern, who carried a little Green Lantern.

• 2:55Chris Ryan?

  I gotta admit to you, no, I just know nothing about the Green Lantern.

• 2:58Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just dazzling you right now.

• 3:00Chris Ryan?

  And then I had a couple of other news things for you. I noticed that you have.

• 3:04Andy Greenwald?

  Couple of drinks.

• 3:05Chris Ryan?

  Your trusty task water bottle.

• 3:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:08Chris Ryan?

  You've got a green tea out.

• 3:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, this is the Juliet Littman school of beverages, if I remember correctly.

• 3:12Chris Ryan?

  Are you nursing something here?

• 3:14Andy Greenwald?

  A grudge?

• 3:15Chris Ryan?

  A hangover?

• 3:15Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, I just wanted, I mean, you know, I did have a cocktail yesterday and you never know where that's going to go with me, but it's, I don't think that's exciting top of the pod content. We could save it for, what's the opposite of after dark? Harsh light?

• 3:30Chris Ryan?

  Happy hour?

• 3:30Andy Greenwald?

  That new segment?

• 3:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:32Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, no, I just was like, you know what? I've had my coffee. Maybe we'll have a gentler caffeine during this part of the pod.

• 3:37Chris Ryan?

  It's clean energy. Green tea is clean energy.

• 3:39Andy Greenwald?

  Don't tell Taylor Sheridan that. He'll ban that shit. Can I just do one thing, though? Because I feel like we're doing a weird thing with the show The Agency that we're big fans of, where we are kind of concern trolling and like engaging with some sort of speculative gossip about the future of the show based on like whispers and talk around town. But I want to, I want to say two things. One, we don't actually know anything. And I will say that based on my very little knowing things.

• 4:06Chris Ryan?

  Did you get a brush back pitch from somebody?

• 4:07Andy Greenwald?

  No, the opposite.

• 4:07Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 4:08Andy Greenwald?

  I'm brushing my own pitch back.

• 4:10Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 4:11Andy Greenwald?

  Is that what they say? I better have more green tea. I'll just do the wind horse fingers. I think that it's looking good, from what I understand. I think that The Agency coming back is looking good.

• 4:20Chris Ryan?

  Should we start doing this more?

• 4:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, because here's the other thing. You want to, I would love a brush back pitch. I am actually going to say to whatever camera, does The Agency have a press team? Are their publicists working for the show?

• 4:31Chris Ryan?

  They do. You're, you're refusal to, to engage with the great corporation that David Ellison has built, I, that's up to you.

• 4:40Andy Greenwald?

  That was before his op-ed.

• 4:42Chris Ryan?

  I happen to know several people working in the Paramount Press shop and they're lovely.

• 4:45Andy Greenwald?

  And you know what they do? They represent both sides.

• 4:48Chris Ryan?

  They're sending me Lioness season five.

• 4:53Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway, I'm just saying, I do feel like there's a small subsection of the fandom of this podcast who also like The Agency, who are like, I, my head's spinning listening to these guys.

• 5:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:03Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's going to be fine.

• 5:04Chris Ryan?

  I think it sounds like it's pointed in the right direction.

• 5:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, okay.

• 5:07Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 5:07Andy Greenwald?

  That's good.

• 5:08Chris Ryan?

  Uh, what's not pointed in the right direction is the great experiment where we're going to make a bunch of superhero television to buttress the superhero blockbusters.

• 5:17Andy Greenwald?

  Crushing.

• 5:18Chris Ryan?

  That, uh, that we're going to be populating our movie theaters, you know? Basically, at the start of the streaming wars and, and as Disney threw its hat in the ring and as HBO Max started to take on more Warner Brothers and DC properties, we had this grand plan laid out for us that Lucasfilm and Marvel, I wouldn't classify Lucasfilm as superhero, but broadly speaking.

• 5:42Andy Greenwald?

  Genre.

• 5:43Chris Ryan?

  Genre IP was going to flit between small screen and big, you know? And this obviously also emerged at a time where I think Hollywood was reconsidering its relationship to the theatrical experience in general, uh, because of COVID.

• 5:59Andy Greenwald?

  And, and assuming trend lines were, uh, fixed, right? That if, if the theatrical experience was clearly, um, diminishing, or at least returns were diminishing, then they needed to find that income elsewhere or to engage with audiences elsewhere where they are.

• 6:13Chris Ryan?

  And now we arrive at this moment where, uh, a superhero movie, a comic book film is likely to be one of the biggest, that's just been released, is likely to be one of the biggest films, not of the year, of all time in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. That movie probably has increased enthusiasm for Avengers: Doomsday. I would say.

• 6:35Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe.

• 6:36Chris Ryan?

  Event superhero movies, I think, still can be like incredible.

• 6:40Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 6:41Chris Ryan?

  Ticket drivers. And on the flip of that, when you look around on your streaming services that you were told you had to have if you wanted to keep current with Phase Six or the expanding DCU or whatever, it's crickets. It's dust. Dust, uh, dust bunnies? Is that what those thing, what are the ones that, oh, tumbleweeds. It's tumbleweeds.

• 7:03Andy Greenwald?

  Real, real man of the people here, just.

• 7:06Chris Ryan?

  I've, I've seen Bill Lebowski. I know it's tumbleweeds. And I just think this is such a fascinating moment. So Lanterns is coming on Sunday from a troika of incredible writers from Damon Lindelof, Chris Mundy and Tom King. It also has the sort of umbrella, kind of seal of approval from James Gunn and Peter Safran, who run DC for Warner Brothers. Um, it's, there's an amazing story, kind of told in a couple of different outlets this week about the genesis of this project and how long Greg Berlanti had been working on it and how many different iterations it has gone through over the last like seven years to get it to screen. But when you look at this reporting, it's also talking about like how they're pruning

• 7:50Chris Ryan?

  a lot of the stuff that.

• 7:52Andy Greenwald?

  The other stuff.

• 7:53Chris Ryan?

  We were told was, was coming. So for instance, DC is no longer making The Waller Show, which would have been the Viola Davis-led.

• 7:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 7:59Chris Ryan?

  Series, uh, Peacemaker, no, Suicide Squad spinoff, kind of. They're no longer making Paradise Lost, which was supposed to be a Wonder Woman prequel series.

• 8:10Andy Greenwald?

  Had you been following that? Was that something you were aware of prior to this announcement?

• 8:13Chris Ryan?

  Right. They are making a Skylar Rizzuto-led Jimmy Olsen show, which I think is a very, it's a very smart execution of an idea where the American Vandal guys are making.

• 8:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, this is what I heard.

• 8:25Chris Ryan?

  Kind of docu drama comedy with, about, about Jimmy.

• 8:30Andy Greenwald?

  With Gorilla Grodd or something?

• 8:32Chris Ryan?

  Whatever's in it. It's just, it's like an incredibly smart use of the style of filmmaking that those American Vandal guys do. On the Marvel side of things, there's Vision Quest, The Paul Bettany Show, which is, you know, seemingly been in the works or done or in, in motion for quite some time, at least since the end of WandaVision.

• 8:54Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 8:56Chris Ryan?

  And then if you look around at various websites, it's like, kind of sounds like Marvel TV is going to turn into YA and animated.

• 9:07Chris Ryan?

  Um, with some exceptions, you know, like there, obviously there was a Punisher special earlier in the year. Um, you know, I'm sure that there will be some other live action stuff in, in eventually, but things like Champions and Strange Academy, which Champions is like, kind of like a Young Avengers sort of thing.

• 9:26Andy Greenwald?

  Gone.

• 9:27Chris Ryan?

  I think.

• 9:28Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I mean, Champ, don't make me do this. Don't make me do this.

• 9:32Chris Ryan?

  Have another sip of green tea. I mean, get involved in this podcast.

• 9:35Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. Well, Young Avengers was the Young Avengers, but Champions was a off rebooted, kind of barely remembered LA based super team. So I think that would be like us, Nithiarama and, you know, other like sort of left leaning council members, you know?

• 9:54Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:54Andy Greenwald?

  And we tackle the unhoused issue here. That's what we do.

• 9:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, public transportation. Uh, they have animated stuff like Marvel Zombies, X-Men 97, the second season.

• 10:04Andy Greenwald?

  Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, which is quite good.

• 10:06Chris Ryan?

  Spider-Man. Um, I personally think it would be cool if they did more werewolf by night style experiments, um, or like three episode Sherlock-esque special event seasons.

• 10:17Andy Greenwald?

  Say what else you want.

• 10:19Chris Ryan?

  What else do I want?

• 10:20Andy Greenwald?

  You want another Punisher kills an entire borough of New York special?

• 10:25Chris Ryan?

  I can neither confirm or deny that that happened.

• 10:27Andy Greenwald?

  Did the Paramount publicists send you that too? They just had it worked up with Claude?

• 10:31Chris Ryan?

  Uh, there is not a tremendous amount that I saw in the Lucasfilm Chamber, uh, in terms of being developed for TV. It's like Ashoka, Ahsoka, season two. Um, I'm not sure if the Mandalorian movie killed Mando the show.

• 10:48Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe. I mean, I, I, I think, do you know, do you know what the saddest sight was? Honestly, someone that I really love, respect, uh, and always check for in his projects was like Ewan McGregor on the red carpet for the dinosaur movie.

• 11:01Chris Ryan?

  End of Oak Street.

• 11:01Andy Greenwald?

  Being like, asking if there's going to be an Obi-Wan season two, and he's just like, oh, Hayden and I are so ready for it. There's gotta be more adventures. I'm like, come on, man.

• 11:10Chris Ryan?

  He's like, I have 10 years until I'm Alucynus's age.

• 11:13Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 11:13Chris Ryan?

  So we have 10 years.

• 11:14Andy Greenwald?

  So presumably, so the idea is that he wasn't just making sourdough that whole time and aging in the harsh sun, which skincare now makes me understand that transition faster.

• 11:23Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 11:23Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean? That's more likely.

• 11:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I wonder whether or not, to make this more broadly interesting to people, rather than just like art is champions, going to be, you know, as good as we hope. I do wonder whether or not this move away from developing your own IP and creating like TV based, uh, shared universes and stuff like regardless of whether you enjoyed it in 2022 or not.

• 11:48Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 11:49Chris Ryan?

  Whether this signals like a broader move by a lot of these streamers to turn into opens, not open source platforms, but like, uh, both buyers and dealers.

• 12:00Andy Greenwald?

  There are a lot of industry trends to pick up here.

• 12:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Andy Greenwald?

  A little housekeeping. Vision Quest is premiering in October before Doomsday is shot. Do you know that it features the return of James Spader as Ultron?

• 12:13Chris Ryan?

  I didn't.

• 12:14Andy Greenwald?

  How psyched are you? Wanted to, I mean, live, live reaction. I know there was a big reaction that went viral when you were told that Jalen Brown was now a sixer. Spader is back. Go Kai, get ready, frame it up.

• 12:25Chris Ryan?

  I, I, has James Spader been in a film since Ultron?

• 12:31Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think intentionally, do you think he's been blacklisted or was he like, it can't get any better than this?

• 12:35Chris Ryan?

  Well, he was on Blacklist. Did you, did you mean?

• 12:39Andy Greenwald?

  Of course I did.

• 12:40Chris Ryan?

  Um, what's, what are some of the big trends?

• 12:42Andy Greenwald?

  So Vision Quest is happening and I do think that you can see in just anecdotally, like when Marvel is still trying the last gasp of being like, you know, to really appreciate Doomsday, you have to watch both seasons of Loki and Agatha all along and Vision Quest. And people were like respectfully, no, I don't.

• 12:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:00Andy Greenwald?

  That is definitely the end of something. I think that you can, you, in terms of the, before we get into the bigger trends, like we didn't even get a chance to talk about it because I think news broke when we were recording one of our advanced pods for, uh, for last week, but, um, Disney, uh, canceled Wonder Man season two, and I find that whole thing genuinely.

• 13:19Chris Ryan?

  Despite, despite Yaya Abdul Matin's Emmy nomination.

• 13:23Andy Greenwald?

  I find that whole thing infuriating, to be honest. Like the, both because the first season was wonderful and organically creatively good and had a wonderful response and actually had some industry response, which used to be something that people used as a benchmark for continued success. Um, but I also found it really, really dispiriting just in terms of how cavalier these massive corporations and tech overlords are about creative work. Because this is a show, as we talked about, was in development for years, that they began shooting it, um, as the strike hit in 2023. Um, somehow it, somehow it survived and they finished it and they finally aired it in a, just a dump in January. And then I don't,

• 14:08Andy Greenwald?

  I have no knowledge of the inside of that building, but it does seem like it, at least some of the higher ups at Marvel and Disney were kind of shocked that people really liked it. Like they didn't understand what they had. So what happened subsequently was kind of a scramble to be like, no, no, we're very proud of this and we're going to make more of it. And, and they got a renewal and they didn't get a renewal in a normal renewal window, but they got one. And you have Sir Ben Kingsley and you have Yaya Abdul Matin thrilled to come back. Uh, you have the creator, Andrew Guest, who, who came on the show to talk about it, you know, writing a fantastic season two script and gathering, uh, a room and getting ready to go. And then they decide to cancel it for financial reasons. It's just like, you could have done that in January. It's just mismanagement. And even if it does align with what you're speaking to, which is this larger trend, that they aren't going to be

• 14:53Andy Greenwald?

  doing shows like this anymore. Do you fucking know how hard it is to get a show that is good? Just to get a show that is good?

• 15:00Chris Ryan?

  I don't think they care about shows that are good.

• 15:01Andy Greenwald?

  I think that they do not on a fundamental level, especially if it does not align with.

• 15:05Chris Ryan?

  It's a nice, it's a nice byproduct of shows if they're good and loved, like.

• 15:10Andy Greenwald?

  Now you could also.

• 15:11Chris Ryan?

  Specifically Wandavision, for instance, was one that I think was taken quite seriously, you know, right?

• 15:14Andy Greenwald?

  Right. But the, the first and last shows that they made basically were, were taken quite seriously. And in between, they veered for various reasons, very, very far away from the North Star of what any healthy creative process should be, which is this script is undeniably good, or this is a lightning in a bottle moment and we must try our best to bring it to the screen. Instead, it has been a bunch of years of really like back assward kind of development of let's raid the library for potential IP exploitation, sorry, exploration. Let's, uh, or let's just fill the chamber with all of the story spackle that doesn't fit into the movie catalog because, oh my God, Sam Jackson will do a TV show?

• 15:55Andy Greenwald?

  Sure. Let's do a TV show for him too. Um, it's backward thinking up and down. If this had been the plan from the beginning, which is if we have a wonderful idea for a TV show, we will consider it, but we are not committed to making 10 of these and three of these every year, the three of these being movies, I guess.

• 16:13Chris Ryan?

  There's going to be this further reading assignments for these phases that we've sort of instituted and all that stuff from Marvel.

• 16:19Andy Greenwald?

  Part of that is the trend over the last decade or so to float your publicly traded company and movie studio based on potential future earnings. So you announce that there's an Avengers movie coming in 2027, and then you just point everything towards that. And then the bill comes due later, which is also, by the way, how I managed to come in second in the Lakers bidding yesterday. I just moved a lot of stuff around and got really, really creative with it.

• 16:40Chris Ryan?

  That's what Mark Walter was doing.

• 16:41Andy Greenwald?

  Listen, don't knock the hustle. Which, which, which trend do we want to go into next?

• 16:46Chris Ryan?

  Well, I wanted to talk about the idea that even Disney is talking about being a place where you can subscribe to other channels through Disney plus. And all of these, these services now are going to be in a race to be like, we want to be the place that you spend $40 a month.

• 17:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 17:04Chris Ryan?

  So like right now, for instance, I think, um, if you have Netflix and let's say you have Netflix and like, you've got Netflix for your mom or something like that. Like, because you're like, just don't worry about it, mom. I'll, I'll, I'll pay it and you can just sign in. I think you have to get like the extended family tier or whatever it is. And if you wanted an HD 4K, or if you wanted in like 4K streaming, I think it's close to $37 a month or something like that. Like it's, it's getting up there. This is what we had always kind of talked about was that these things are going to get introduced and it's going to be like $9.99 a month to watch everything on Disney's library.

• 17:42Andy Greenwald?

  Disney launched at $4.99.

• 17:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And so now incrementally over and over again.

• 17:46Andy Greenwald?

  Which is also how, um, crack launched as well, you know?

• 17:49Chris Ryan?

  But you will, you will hit a breaking point for people and they will start going around and being like, well, I need Amazon Prime because I have Prime or whatever. But I don't need, I don't need this and I don't need that.

• 17:58Andy Greenwald?

  The other thing that they do that is just normal is the churn. Like I only need it to watch this show and then I cancel it.

• 18:03Chris Ryan?

  But they're making it so that that is not as easy to do. Not only contractually or whatever, but they're also making it so that if you go and you use Disney or Amazon or Hulu or whatever it is to also watch live sports or also watch stars because you want to watch Outland or something like that.

• 18:25Chris Ryan?

  It starts to become more of a cable box than it is like a closed loop. This is you have to come to Disney plus because we have all of your Marvel stuff and more because we're constantly making new Marvel stuff.

• 18:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think that the there was a really interesting conversation on Matt Bellany's podcast, The Town, last week with a Wells Fargo analyst named Stephen Cahill, who was like, I think Disney should get out of the streaming business. And, you know, they are pot committed at this point, but I thought it was an interesting argument because what he did, not only did he say like, think about how much money they would make by just being like Sony still and just selling their stuff to the highest bidder. And so that Marvel movies would be on Netflix or wherever, and they could be a content creator, which is what they are good at and what they historically have been good at. But the other point was that was interesting was that a lot of these streaming services were launched in an era where Netflix's dominance was so, not just assumed, but such like an

• 19:23Andy Greenwald?

  existential threat to their companies that they felt like they needed to retreat, pull back their troops and shore up their defenses. And the reality is that not that Netflix is fallible, but that there is an ecosystem that can support multiple streaming services. And so, and so there's a different, there's a different, there's a different thought process that needs to go into costs and spending versus return. And the point that he made, which we don't talk about enough because we usually when we talk about Netflix, we're talking about the Netflix shows we like, like Adolescence. We aren't really talking about the broader shift that has saved, not saved the service, but transformed the service. And it's, yes, they still spend millions, billions of dollars producing content every

• 20:05Andy Greenwald?

  year, but a lot of what they produce is the floor is lava and is it cake? And they do that in many countries and that it costs a lot.

• 20:12Chris Ryan?

  You should fire Netflix because what they produce is a ton of true crime and what they produce is a ton of reality and what they produce is a ton of live events. Like, like you can, we can do the gourmet cheeseburger thing if we want, but like, they are churning stuff out at a level that like you would be shocked at.

• 20:30Andy Greenwald?

  And the insane thing about the commitment to streaming that Disney made, that I'm sure some people were on the rampart screaming about, but was that Disney's brand is imagination and creativity and increasingly spectacle, right? It's not just the Marvel movies that cost upwards of $200 million to make and to put in theaters. Pixar movies cost close to that too, just for their, because of their insanely grinding creative process and then actually animating the things. So to go into the TV market and say, the things you get on the big screen, you're also going to get on TV means you're also spending $200 million for an eight episode television show, which is insane, especially if that television show is Secret Invasion.

• 21:10Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 21:11Andy Greenwald?

  So it is a dangerous arms race that they were not prepared to say.

• 21:14Chris Ryan?

  It's the first time I've seen the flywheel break. The flywheel is the legendary Walt Disney idea of like, you know, basically the Imagineers come up with a cool set of characters and story, and then it becomes a movie and then it becomes a ride and people are get to buy merchandise for it and like, you keep going around and like, in this era, the streaming service should make sense because Disney used to control the market on their own home video releases in a way that was really Marlo Standfield-esque.

• 21:44Andy Greenwald?

  That's Bob Chapek's music. That was his shit.

• 21:46Chris Ryan?

  But that was like, we will take Cinderella off the shelves in 60 days and then it won't be back for years.

• 21:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 21:54Chris Ryan?

  So buy it now if you want to have this magical experience in your home. And now it's like, that shit is just all in the streaming service. And I think that they, they encountered something where like, they had to keep feeding it and now it's because they fed it, it's not as special.

• 22:10Andy Greenwald?

  Well, that's true. I mean, I think you're approaching it from, from like a scarcity standpoint, which is true. It's also true in terms of diminishing creative returns.

• 22:18Chris Ryan?

  For sure.

• 22:19Andy Greenwald?

  Which also then hurt their bread and butter business, which is theatrical release. So I think all of this is to say, this is a logical business retrenchment. Like the cartoons work, they service a different audience, and they also provide a kind of collective enthusiasm simmer for other projects. Like there's, I'm sure they have data that under, that would support this claim, but like the, the X-Men 97 cartoon has triggered some nostalgia versus in the exact, and some excitement in the same cohort that needs to go to the multiplex to see the X-Men movie in a year and a half.

• 23:00Chris Ryan?

  How long have you been recording for, by the way?

• 23:01Speaker 06

  Uh, 25 minutes.

• 23:03Chris Ryan?

  And you have not apologized for your misinformation about Charles Melton?

• 23:06Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, I didn't know we were going to do this right now. This is how you, this is how you get me. This is, I believe, the same interviewing technique Martin Bashir used.

• 23:15Chris Ryan?

  Charles Melton turned down X-Men and you say what?

• 23:17Andy Greenwald?

  I say, it's just a shame, first of all, I mourn any time.

• 23:22Chris Ryan?

  You were so certain.

• 23:24Andy Greenwald?

  I mourn any time that two sides can't find common ground. Okay, that is, that is my number one priority in this business and in life. I, I guess I, what I want to know, Chris, is who blinked? You know, did, did Disney blink at the thought of having a generationally talented and good looking guy covered in blue fur for a decade? Or did our guy Charlie Melton say, you know what, there are better things to do than sit in a chair or have like ping pong balls all over me for?

• 23:58Chris Ryan?

  Nine years.

• 23:59Andy Greenwald?

  For nine years. I mean, it is also, thanks for giving me a chance to talk about this, really, I appreciate it. It's a weird part. I mean, Beast, Beast is a weird part.

• 24:10Chris Ryan?

  He's got an arc.

• 24:11Andy Greenwald?

  He does, he has many, you know, they, they've been turning him villainous more recently. How do you feel about that?

• 24:15Chris Ryan?

  I didn't know that.

• 24:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Do you ever, you ever watch the show The Beast in Me?

• 24:19Chris Ryan?

  With Claire Danes?

• 24:21Andy Greenwald?

  That's not the one I'm talking about. It's a Disney cartoon. No, uh, he, yeah, so from, first of all, the mantle from Kelsey Grammer to Nicholas Holt to question mark. It's a bummer.

• 24:35Chris Ryan?

  And I didn't mean to interrupt you, what were you saying?

• 24:37Andy Greenwald?

  I'm, now I'm on a topic I care more about. I, I guess we were just saying that it, there's, other than, what, let's, let's go through it. Wandavision, Loki season one, Agatha maybe, and some of the specials that you're talking about, and Wonder Man. It's not like a legacy necessarily to be that proud of. I do think, I do wonder if this will also affect, there's rumors that it will. It seemed to me that they found something smart with the Daredevil series in that it is a ongoing television show.

• 25:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, well, this is where I wanted to go with this because, you know, I've been, I'm very interested in the ongoing debate of movies versus TV and like, what kind of holds, holds the consciousness captive, holds like the masses captive in terms of like interest, in terms of not only following along with whatever industry and being up on like movies or shows that are coming out, but just where people seem to be deriving the most satisfaction. And I think unquestionably, it seems to be, in a way, it seems to be movies this year, right? Like people seem to be going in droves, enjoying monocultural events and then talking about them for weeks on end.

• 25:52Andy Greenwald?

  I believe this tracks with your year being on the big picture.

• 25:54Chris Ryan?

  I think also there is something weird going on where I, I think, I think there is a little bit of a TV's lost its way kind of vibe happening. I do think that this has been a year where I've been like more surprised when a show is just good, you know?

• 26:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 26:16Chris Ryan?

  Like, I'm like, almost like, oh, a good TV show. Well, how about that? We can still do that, huh? Because we've seen so many things that I feel like are like, holy shit, you guys put this up on a surface? Like, you guys thought this was done?

• 26:28Andy Greenwald?

  Like? Yes, I agree with that. I mean, I think that, again, there's like, if we're, if we're going macro, I think there's the development of things, not everything and not at every place, but development is in a very weird place.

• 26:39Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 26:40Andy Greenwald?

  And all you have to do to look at that is look at exactly like some things that made it to air and some things that get canceled or don't even make it that far.

• 26:48Chris Ryan?

  Well, yeah, honestly.

• 26:49Andy Greenwald?

  I agree with that.

• 26:50Chris Ryan?

  We can even, we can throw an idea in here right now.

• 26:53Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 26:54Chris Ryan?

  Which is The Shards, which I have not checked out yet, but you've watched the first two. A fascinating story where it was in development at HBO for a long time, right? After Bret Easton Ellis released it both as an audio experience and then as a novel.

• 27:08Andy Greenwald?

  A novel, yeah. And I believe Luca Guadagnino was attached.

• 27:11Chris Ryan?

  I'm not even, I, I do know that Easton Ellis was being sort of prioritized as like the creative fulcrum of the show and that he had written the first couple of scripts, but then that relationship seemed to have fallen apart according to Hollywood Reporter and other places you can read.

• 27:24Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, and the last 40 years of Bret Ellis is like a writer who I really like, but he has had a bumpy relationship with adaptation and with Hollywood.

• 27:32Chris Ryan?

  And this is a, well, how would you describe the novel? You like actually?

• 27:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it is a really interesting exercise in kind of meta autofiction in which it is at once a memoir of the main character, Bret Ellis, who is also the main character of Lunar Park and is basically the main character of most of his books, sometimes under different names, living in Los Angeles, going to high school in 1981.

• 27:58Chris Ryan?

  In the valley, right?

• 27:59Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, yeah, and going to, yes, and being in a very rich, fast-moving world, going to Buckley School with his friends, glamorous friends and children of Hollywood, and writing Less Than Zero by night. And in a love triangle and sort of exploring his own nascent sexuality and talking about going to school on the East Coast, which he would then do, and that would become Rules of Attraction. But in The Shards, all of this is set to the backdrop of a particularly vicious serial killer in an era in which serial killers were quite a thing.

• 28:32Chris Ryan?

  So The Shards as a TV show?

• 28:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 28:35Chris Ryan?

  Gets picked up, the rights, or I don't know how it gets transferred, but Ryan Murphy to the rescue, comes in, picks up this project that had fallen apart at HBO, brings it over to FX where he has a longstanding deal and where he's returned to Disney from Netflix, correct? And shoots the first two shards episodes as Ellis had written them essentially, right? More or less.

• 29:00Andy Greenwald?

  From what we understand of this, yes, I mean, the first two scripts of the series are credited to Bret Easton Ellis and Ryan Murphy.

• 29:08Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 29:09Andy Greenwald?

  And mostly track with the novel.

• 29:11Chris Ryan?

  And Murphy directs?

• 29:12Andy Greenwald?

  Murphy directs the first two, yeah.

• 29:14Chris Ryan?

  And then apparently after the second episode, it becomes a completely different show.

• 29:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. Now, we are talking about this at a time when I believe the third episode and fourth episode maybe just went up.

• 29:27Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:28Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not caught up through them.

• 29:29Chris Ryan?

  I'm just basing this off of reviews that were like, starts good, then it goes crazy.

• 29:33Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, and to be honest, and I guess we probably should do a weird loop-de-loop where we come back to previewing Lanterns or why it isn't.

• 29:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I'll get there. This is, we're just two guys talking.

• 29:43Andy Greenwald?

  Come on. I, I, I find this fascinating.

• 29:47Chris Ryan?

  And it may look like I don't have my hands on the steering wheel.

• 29:49Andy Greenwald?

  But?

• 29:50Chris Ryan?

  I do. I do. It's just like, I'm right here.

• 29:52Andy Greenwald?

  I thought this was a Waymo and you were just sitting in the front seat. We all know, Kaya has the real controls.

• 29:59Chris Ryan?

  Me describing to a Waymo what happens in the second half of the first episode of Lioness. Honestly, Waymo would probably see a lot of himself in that episode.

• 30:08Andy Greenwald?

  Well, don't, don't, you keep teasing me with tangents. I'm trying to stay focused today. I find the shards thing totally fascinating for two reasons. One, purely personal reason, like I said last week, I like Bret Easton Ellis books. I like this era of Los Angeles storytelling and it is absolutely a beautiful looking production. And I think Ryan Murphy, we've litigated my feelings about him as a creator and artist, but he is an absolutely talented director. And when he locks into something, when it vibes with his own aesthetic, maybe this is true of any director, but I feel, I feel very strongly about saying this

• 30:47Andy Greenwald?

  about him, it can elevate. And I think his, you know, his, his terroir, if you will, is a kind of trashy Los Angeles in all of its forms, high to low. And so this is perfect for him and he has a cast of beautiful people and needle drops are great. And there's some really cool framing shots and there's, you know, angular minimalist food on big white plates and everybody's drinking and doing cocaine. And so this seems like fun.

• 31:17Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 31:19Andy Greenwald?

  The reason I'm interested in this, exactly what you're saying, because you, okay, so what are you, the question that needs to be asked at some point, but rarely gets asked when there are either network or company mandates, or the whims and desires of a superpowered producer or creator, in this case of Ryan Murphy, is, but why are we making this? And I want to be clear, I'm not doing a thing that I think people.

• 31:41Chris Ryan?

  Like who needed this?

• 31:42Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not saying that, although I think there's a reason to say that in some cases, but I'm not saying that here. I'm saying specifically at the heart of this, why are we making this? And particularly with period pieces, I think that question is worth asking because you can do it multitudine ways, but I would reduce it to broadly two. One is, we are, we are point of view adrift with the characters, not in period, but in their presence. And we are attuned to the universality of their humanity, no matter what the era is and whether they have cell phones or not. And so you're living inside of the moment and that's a beautiful thing. And so, you know, you could say, you could take Mad Men or something as an example of that. Obviously it has something to say about who we are now. It's being made now, but the

• 32:26Andy Greenwald?

  entire show isn't about wink, wink, we actually had to call people on the landline. You know what I mean?

• 32:32Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 32:33Andy Greenwald?

  The other way to do it would be to take a period of time that is deeply understood culturally, emotionally, politically as one thing and comment on it and hold it up as a mirror or as a cracked window or whatever you want to do. The issue with the shards is through the first two episodes is that it is a, it is very, very, very excited to transpose the book to the screen.

• 32:55Chris Ryan?

  Sure. Because Bret Easton Ellis wrote the first two episodes.

• 32:57Andy Greenwald?

  Because Bret Easton Ellis wrote the first two episodes and you can tell that Ryan Murphy, who has a reputation for being, you know, for, for, for having very strong points of view, is clearly a big fan, which is actually sort of sweet. So he's bringing Ellis's eighties to life better than maybe anyone else ever has. But without, I would say, the being a teenager in college is hard universality of Rules of Attraction and certainly without the acerbic, looking backwards wit of Mary Heron's American Psycho. So it is totally flat with voiceover in which the main character, Brett, says things like, back then, we didn't have social media, we had serial killers. So it feels like an incredible pantomime show.

• 33:39Chris Ryan?

  You have to choose.

• 33:40Andy Greenwald?

  You have to choose. I think we're doing okay. Do you know what I mean? And, and so I found that kind of frustrating, even though the second episode I think is even stronger than the first because, and by the way, I have to call you to account for this too. This is not just a one-way thing. As a decades-long Wes Bentley completist, he's doing good work here. He's doing very good work here. In the course of one modernist minimalist lunch with Brett, Wes smokes, I believe, 13 cigarettes and has five different forms of alcoholic beverages. And I don't know if it's intentional or just sloppy editing, but I believe he has

• 34:23Andy Greenwald?

  white wine, red wine, a martini, a glass of brown liquor, and I want to say a cocktail, another, a fruited, a fruited cocktail of some kind.

• 34:32Chris Ryan?

  I would go martini, white, red, brown liquor, if I wanted to put myself in a body bag anyway, but like.

• 34:40Andy Greenwald?

  You can still get after it.

• 34:41Chris Ryan?

  I mean, that's an astonishing run.

• 34:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. But so, and this is all over a course of lunch where there's just like three cubes of salmon and he's like, this is the only restaurant in LA that serves tartar, Brett. You'll love it. So have I sold you on the show yet?

• 34:54Chris Ryan?

  I mean, it sounds entertaining.

• 34:55Andy Greenwald?

  But, but all of this is to say, it is just this slavishly devoted thing that is kind of nothing all at once. And so I'm really interested though, to hear this reporting that after two, it goes fucking full Gaga Murphy verse and apparently is built to run multiple seasons, which is in no way what this project would seem to be. But I don't even want to say what.

• 35:18Chris Ryan?

  But he's really smart. He's, Murphy's gonna make this into the cocaine eighties, FX's euphoria.

• 35:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 35:26Chris Ryan?

  Like teen universe, right?

• 35:28Andy Greenwald?

  If it gets there.

• 35:29Chris Ryan?

  Just like American Crime Story and American Horror Story and, yeah.

• 35:32Andy Greenwald?

  If it gets there, that's actually not a bad play, but it's kind of in a weird way, now we're all over the place, but it, having this conversation makes me think a little bit of what we were saying last week about how FX gave adults a duo, a mulligan, a do-over on the pilot. Like, in a way, you almost wish Ryan Murphy was making his own American Bret Easton Ellis story show.

• 35:53Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 35:53Andy Greenwald?

  Where he could just make it up as he went along.

• 35:55Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 35:56Andy Greenwald?

  But, I don't know, it.

• 35:58Chris Ryan?

  Well, Bret Easton Ellis is no longer on the project. He's very vocally like, I break up with.

• 36:02Andy Greenwald?

  I think he's very not vocal. He said that and then he hasn't said a single thing else.

• 36:06Chris Ryan?

  The reason why I brought the shards up, the reason why I brought that development story up is the same reason why we're talking about these superhero shows, because they often are serving a lot of different purposes and they have a lot of different masters. There is the larger thing that the auteur in chief at one of these labels wants to have Feige, James Gunn, there's a super story that they want to tell, whether it's phased, whether it's thematic, you know, they, they have an idea of what they want to do. Then there are players from networks, from production companies, characters who have become indelible, those stars start to have a little bit more say on what Hulk would or wouldn't do or

• 36:46Chris Ryan?

  whatever. The fascinating thing about this Lanterns show is that Greg Berlanti, who had basically been off on his own with 20 shows on the air.

• 36:57Andy Greenwald?

  The hardest working man at Warner Brothers.

• 36:59Chris Ryan?

  At the CW, right?

• 37:00Andy Greenwald?

  Well, he, he worked for Warner Brothers. All of his shows were on, many of his shows were on the CW.

• 37:05Chris Ryan?

  And was running essentially the Arrowverse, which was like his version of the DCTV universe and had, I think, six or seven shows, eight shows on the air at any given moment. We'd do these massive crossover.

• 37:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, he did Crisis of Infinite Earths on CW shows.

• 37:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes. And had been working on Green Lantern show for a while. And in this article that I believe it's Leslie Goldberg on Anklar wrote, which is just talking about the production or the development process of this story, he talks about. The clashes that he was having with Warner Brothers Television where it came to, you know, they were looking for something more grounded. They wanted a more grounded treatment of this. Like, I think they were looking to make something, sounds like Closer to Watchmen, or something closer to True Detective. And he was just like, that's not what I'm interested in when it comes to this story.

• 37:56Andy Greenwald?

  Now, please excuse me, there's a Scooby Doo live action reboot.

• 37:58Chris Ryan?

  Well, and then, and then they found, they got Damon Lindelof, who did Watchmen, and they got, you know, Chris Mundie, who made Ozark. And they've, they've made this new Lantern show, which I can't wait to watch.

• 38:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 38:12Chris Ryan?

  But is a fascinating, long, kind of winding way to get to, to our screens on Sunday night.

• 38:19Andy Greenwald?

  But I think the, the thing that you can hopefully point to, for the shows that succeed, is an early, early answer to the question, not, who are you making this for? Why are we making this? What is someone, generally the showrunner, or creator, or lead writer, or whatever you want to call it, what is that person passionate about? And can we then get other people on board and all row in the same direction to make the same, the best version of it? You can't do it solely because you want to tick the box of having that character represented, or you want to try to push into television, or have complimentary, whatever. The, the, the, the reporting that I've read suggests that the first person to sort of raise his hand and say, this is what I want to do with this, it was Tom King,

• 39:02Andy Greenwald?

  who is in many ways the least known of that troika. But is a brilliant comic book writer, and also a former CIA analyst. And I feel like that would make him a really good guest for us at some point in the future, if it won't all be redacted. But he, I think I'm as interested in his point of view on the show as I am in the gentle corporate nudgings that put three very strong-minded creators together, and by all accounts, create a very, very happy, additive, expansive, creative process. Now, I think we, and audiences, will be able to tell that. I haven't watched the pilot yet, but I'm very excited to. But ultimately, it comes down to the fact that

• 39:44Andy Greenwald?

  even though, at some point during this process, James Gunn and Peter Safran took over, at some point in the process, they checked in on this. And whatever was said back to them, or whatever scripts they read, passed muster with Gunn's stated intention to have a diverse slate of different types of stories. I say reported intention, because he, I mean, he has said that publicly, but also, kind of until this moment, we haven't really seen the proof of it, because we've just seen Superman, and his, and the very gun-pilled Supergirl.

• 40:15Chris Ryan?

  Yes. And since he has taken over, there's obviously been the Paramount Warner Brothers merger, which is now in, in sort of limbo.

• 40:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 40:22Chris Ryan?

  But it's incredibly difficult to pull something that's like a multi-year storytelling project off, when you've also got the winds of change blowing in the industry itself.

• 40:32Andy Greenwald?

  It's very, very rickety.

• 40:34Chris Ryan?

  Whether it's mergers and acquisitions, or whether it's technological developments.

• 40:37Andy Greenwald?

  But, but so, I, you know, for the, for the same reasons that I thought it was interesting to watch the Renaldo Marcus Green-directed Punisher, one-shot, and then see Bernthal do a different version of the same character in Spider-Man. Seeing Nathan Fillion do Guy Gardner in this series, which I, I would imagine, this is not reported, no one has said this to me, but my, I imagine that when Tom King was like, yeah, I'll do this as a grounded version, at no point was he like, and Guy Gardner will also show up, played by known comedic, charismatic presence, Nathan Fillion.

• 41:12Chris Ryan?

  That's James Gunn's dude.

• 41:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. So here we, so here we are. But like, look, if the end game of all of this, despite like, some personal, again, like some things that I'm pissed off about getting canceled, or I wish we had, if the end result of this, after many, many, many years, and many, many wasted millions, is a more streamlined process, in which only the things that really have that spark or fire make it to air, I think it's a win.

• 41:37Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 41:37Andy Greenwald?

  Because best-case scenario here, you get, now, you and I didn't love Penguin, but I think we were in the minority, and I think the, the majority of HBO Max subscribers felt that the Penguin with Colin Farrell

• 41:50Chris Ryan?

  Literally Emmy-noms, yeah.

• 41:50Andy Greenwald?

  Was a worthwhile inheritor of the Sunday, like, this is HBO, we understand why this is HBO. So there's a reason for this. And I think similarly, Lanterns looks to be in that category as well, which is great. And

• 42:05Chris Ryan?

  But crazily enough, no, no second season of The Penguin yet.

• 42:09Andy Greenwald?

  Well, but again, I think that's

• 42:10Chris Ryan?

  Not even Greenlight.

• 42:11Andy Greenwald?

  But I think that's another good, for me, that's, that's a good outcome. And I'm not saying because I didn't like the show. And I'm certainly not saying it because I don't want the talented people who worked on it to work. I'm saying that if they successfully told a story about this character that worked, I think, it's like with the Mayor of Easttown thing, where like, we, we would fucking love more seasons of that show. But my sense is, the people involved at the time were like, but why would we mess with something that worked? You know, it worked. We did it. We told a story. And we don't say enough of that, separate and apart from the fact that, I mean, I don't know if Colin Farrell wants to put that makeup on again.

• 42:47Chris Ryan?

  I don't know either, yeah.

• 42:48Andy Greenwald?

  But, but look, and by the way, just, just, you know, inside or behind, not even inside baseball, like, up where Brad Pitt sat in the Moneyball movies, when he wouldn't actually watch the game. I say this as someone

• 42:59Chris Ryan?

  He sat in the gym, actually.

• 43:01Andy Greenwald?

  Well, he didn't sit. He was working.

• 43:02Chris Ryan?

  He was lifting, yeah.

• 43:04Andy Greenwald?

  Well, that's what I was getting at.

• 43:04Chris Ryan?

  Okay. But that's down, like, you were like, up in the seats where he's sitting, like he's in the suites. That's not what he was doing.

• 43:10Andy Greenwald?

  No. I, just like you.

• 43:12Chris Ryan?

  Personal best, yeah.

• 43:14Andy Greenwald?

  I, I mean, I say this as someone who is actively, and is and has been working on a Warner Brothers HBO show

• 43:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:21Andy Greenwald?

  That has IP, and I will say that that's not my project, and not my show, but like, this is a, this is a valid and living conversation.

• 43:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:30Andy Greenwald?

  Of like, what, what is the, what is the best reason to be doing this?

• 43:34Chris Ryan?

  I, I, I think what I'm most fascinated by, by all of this, and we can, we can get on to Furious now, but what fascinates me most, and maybe it's a good segue, because I think one of the things I like about Furious so much is it's just a very, very well-thought-out TV show.

• 43:48Andy Greenwald?

  It's such a good TV show.

• 43:49Chris Ryan?

  Is, we made a great grand swing of this kind of hybrid theatrical, televisual storytelling model, both in terms of limited series, anthology series, bringing big, big screen genre to the small screen, even though many people don't make that distinction anymore. But whether it's Rings of Power, or take your pick of any of the super-expensive sci-fi shows that have come and gone over the last couple of years, or these very, very highly valuable properties like Star Wars, Marvel, and DC. And sometimes in the back of my head, I'm like, maybe Greg Valenti had it right, like, the way

• 44:32Andy Greenwald?

  Because he just made a TV show.

• 44:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, because he just knew how to, like, he knew that there was a one-to-one relationship between flipping through an, an issue of a comic book, and getting through a 42-minute television show

• 44:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 44:43Chris Ryan?

  That had some commercials. And that there was a transactional nature, and a fun, like, cool, my story's on, kind of relationship people could have. And it didn't have this, like, fuck, I have to watch the post-credit sequence of Ironheart to understand what's happening on this movie coming out in two years, maybe, you know, like

• 45:04Andy Greenwald?

  Because of Mephisto.

• 45:04Chris Ryan?

  That's right. That's right. I was trying to tell everybody, but, you know, everybody's like, Boyle cried wolf, and then he showed up.

• 45:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Then he, then he fucking showed up. And he was the devil.

• 45:13Chris Ryan?

  Let's take a quick break. We'll come back, and we'll do Furious.

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• 46:18Chris Ryan?

  So we're gonna be talking about Furious through episode five. Episode six will be airing on Sunday. We haven't spoken about it. I think you would watch two when we first talked.

• 46:26Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, I'd watched, I'd watched all the ones that were up.

• 46:29Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so you watched the first three. I'd watched the first three. And um, there's a lot of different places we can go with this, but the one thing I would ask is, you know, as I've been watching this series, I've been thinking about other crime shows that I've loved over the last several years. And I was reminded of The Night Of, which is another series that I think is as interested in the consequences of crime and the reasons behind a crime and also the total cost across a community of people.

• 47:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 47:05Chris Ryan?

  And also had to, at some point in its run, like, solve it. You know, it has to, you know, you can't just have, here's six episodes of a mystery that just befuddled people, you know? Now Furious is much different. We, it's not a whodunit. We know who's doing it. It's a matter of whether or not, like, what this person is doing, is she gonna get caught doing it, essentially?

• 47:32Andy Greenwald?

  There's also a mystery within her own, she's also trying to solve a mystery, the criminal, in this case.

• 47:37Chris Ryan?

  Yes, yes, especially since her memory is spotty and because, you know, so I wanted to ask you whether or not you detected, in the same way that I detected with The Night Of, with True Detective, with various other great crime shows from this, this era, the turn. The turn towards now we act, rather than world building and like alluding to things and really doing character moments that we're, we're turning towards a conspiracy that's being unraveled or what have you. And, and do you necessarily think that's a flaw or not?

• 48:10Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's a great question. I think my answer is no. And I think my answer is no, because in the spirit of all really good, really exciting and compelling genre television, or genre at its best, what we're seeing is the work of a creator who is using a familiar rhythm to create an original melody and play it over the top of it. The thing about this show that I find dazzling is that it, it has a, like, just being on Hulu, just the way that it presented itself, like, you can, the, the log line, it's going

• 48:49Andy Greenwald?

  to attract eyeballs, I think, because true crime, sex crimes, like, these things are the bread and butter, you were saying of Netflix, like, these are, this is a very tried and true investigative stuff, like, this is very tried and true television to get an audience. Knowing that you have that buy-in already, what Liz Merriweather has done with the show, I find so thrilling, because every single scene, a choice is made in it, whether it's like dialogue, whether it's casting, whether it's stakes, that surprises me. Every scene is alive, where I think that generally, when things make that turn, or we notice the turn being made, what we're feeling is the feeling of, well, this driverless

• 49:33Andy Greenwald?

  car at least knows the route. Do you know what I mean? This car has a fucking driver, and the driver has a personality, and the driver continues to do things that go against our expectations, such as, I mean, you could, you could throw up, you could name half a dozen, throw them on the table, and we could talk about them. The fact that, for example, the Alden character, and the fact that Catherine is a fairly attentive and caring professional nurse for this guy, with this particular set of circumstances and relationship to her, I think that's introduced in episode three.

• 50:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:05Andy Greenwald?

  Like, that, that's a no-no from executives and from development.

• 50:09Chris Ryan?

  Campbell Scott popping up in episode four.

• 50:11Andy Greenwald?

  The great, and, and it's not just the character, the Campbell Scott, you, now that we're talking about through episode five, we could talk about that. So in episode four, Hope Davis's character, who we'd seen before, arrives with a lawyer, who I don't believe we'd seen before.

• 50:25Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 50:25Andy Greenwald?

  And it's played by a, you know, Gen X hero, Campbell Scott. So instantly, I'm more interested, you know, the, the casting, whether it's him or the actor, I'll, I'll call it up in a second, who plays Ed George, I'm like, that, I think that's his name, the, the ASAC at the FBI.

• 50:42Chris Ryan?

  The person who had been working with Nora earlier in the decade on the case.

• 50:46Andy Greenwald?

  And, and the number one example is Nora herself, Quincy Bernstein's performance, like, these are all really interesting performers that make you pay attention and are doing things that we're not expecting in every moment. But yeah, you bring him in, and you see that she's doing something, Catherine's doing something, but you don't realize she's hunting him, and that he's going to be the focus of it. Like, there are these little bits of subterfuge that feel thrilling within the larger framework of the story. I would say the same thing for almost everything Alice does in relation to her abusers, played by Jake Lacy.

• 51:15Chris Ryan?

  Marshall.

• 51:15Andy Greenwald?

  Um, it's going to some really, really bold and very, I would say, risky from a storytelling perspective places with it, and going there unapologetically with no breaks.

• 51:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think it's knowing, especially the, the, the sequence in which she essentially sets him up.

• 51:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 51:32Chris Ryan?

  Right, is very knowingly depicted in the same fashion that Catherine's murders are depicted, where she is clocking this person, not monitoring their behavior, figuring out in advance what different things could happen, and is setting them up.

• 51:51Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, there are many ways in which, and I think we are the, we are not the ideal interlocutors of the idea that this is a very, very, both feminist and very female-created television show, but one of the things that the show is absolutely committed to, that I love, is making us as viewers, and as male viewers, understand that when, when Scoot McNary's character, Danny Kelly, or, what's his name, Rob Yang's character, Choi, sort of the hapless FBI agent, when they walk into rooms, they have very, very little to think about, other than their job and maybe what they're getting for lunch. And when the women walk into rooms, instantly they have to think about six dozen things.

• 52:29Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 52:29Andy Greenwald?

  Um, everything from physical proximity, to past history, to how they're being perceived and presented.

• 52:35Chris Ryan?

  How they, yeah, like, like, everything with Catherine or with Alice up until that Marshall moment, there's all this speculation, like, why does she have these bruises?

• 52:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 52:44Chris Ryan?

  Because she's gotten, like, willingly assaulted by a, like, a lover that she met on an internet application.

• 52:51Andy Greenwald?

  And everything.

• 52:52Chris Ryan?

  Internet application.

• 52:53Andy Greenwald?

  She's really finger on the pulse there.

• 52:55Chris Ryan?

  Can I join the CIA, Tom King? I've got, got the furby angel.

• 53:01Andy Greenwald?

  I've got a number of applications on my phone, in addition to my CIA application. Yeah, I, I just think that that is such a subtle thing, and it, and it, and again, like, that is folded into Emmy Rossum's performance as well, which I think has, had surprising layers and reveals to it. And I think that, you know, we'll, we'll see where else it has to go, but there's, I, I think a potential criticism of the first episode would be, you could, and maybe I said this last week, I apologize, but like, you almost could feel how, how much she prepared for this part of an FBI agent. Like, I felt like she was showing us her work. By the time the second episode started, I realized that what we were seeing was Alice's public presentation.

• 53:42Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 53:42Andy Greenwald?

  Of having done the work to be a different person.

• 53:45Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 53:45Andy Greenwald?

  And that there are actually layers to the performance and subtleties that I, you know, that I am only beginning to pick up on and appreciate. The other flip side of it is, and I wonder if you have analogies to this as well, from other crime shows, just top of mind.

• 53:57Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 53:58Andy Greenwald?

  But Catherine, played by Lola Petticrew, it is, it is no small thing, I think, that a villain, the murderer, who does awful, terrible shit, also is granted a full humanity. And it's not a full humanity in the sense, in the cheaper sense that these shows, that shows often do, where maybe like, in between murders, like, they glance at a folded up picture of a family they once had, you know? She does carry a folded up picture, it is not of that. And the tenderness with which she, she's able to access with Alden, you know, is significant. The moments with Hal, the Campbell Scott character, where he is, you know, desperate

• 54:40Andy Greenwald?

  for his life, but also briefly, you can see him reclaim his masculinity in that scene, where he's like, oh, she's just a broken little girl who wants to be complimented.

• 54:53Chris Ryan?

  It is a casting stroke of genius.

• 54:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 54:57Chris Ryan?

  I mean, obviously, you and I are probably in this weird, like, vocal minority of, like, Campbell Scott super fans or whatever.

• 55:02Andy Greenwald?

  Where it's like, he, you're, if the rewatchables had started 10 years earlier, you would have had a Campbell Scott take equal to the Luke Wilson take.

• 55:10Chris Ryan?

  I, I, yeah, I can't even think of what it should be, because he, he is, he is an actor who, there, he does things I don't think you can necessarily teach or scout, like, the, the reason that scene works is because of the tenor of his voice. And he's had that tenor of his voice going back to, like, singles and dying young, but it's that warmth and that sensitivity, that even though this guy is Jay Easton's attorney, who was brought in to clean up a murder scene.

• 55:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 55:39Chris Ryan?

  Uh, he's, he does sound paternally, genuinely interested in Catherine. Now, he's also a lawyer, so I imagine there is, you know, as we see with his fate, you know, like, there's a degree to which it's manipulation, and there's a degree to which, and I think that that's kind of what's really cool about this show, is that there can be these very sincere emotional moments between Alden and Catherine, between Catherine and Rob Delaney's character's daughter, between even Alison Marshall, you know? There is a moment, but that moment is not the only thing that's happening in that scene. Like, what's also happening is this person is being pushed.

• 56:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 56:25Chris Ryan?

  To get something that the other character wants from them.

• 56:28Andy Greenwald?

  This is the thing that I think is really impressive, and again, kind of hard to articulate, tried last week. The show is so deeply about trauma and how we live post-trauma, but it, it contains the imagination and the creative space to show a world in which trauma exists, to show a world in which life exists before, during, and after traumatic incidents. So that it doesn't feel any necessity to hold our hand about how to feel about Marshall. It allows the space for Alice to, to, to show us, through her, through word and emotion and deed and performance, what this person meant to her and her life, and then what happened, which only serves the drama in the sense that it compounds how hideously

• 57:10Andy Greenwald?

  violating and violent and awful what happened was, because we understand the circumstances as a larger story.

• 57:17Chris Ryan?

  It's also very confrontational with the audience, which I really appreciate.

• 57:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 57:22Chris Ryan?

  Because the audience, for these kinds of shows, I include myself in that audience.

• 57:30Chris Ryan?

  Are, I don't know, we're, we're kind of animals. Like, you know, like, why am I watching this stuff as much as I do? Am I talking about that with Lioness? Like, it's like, it's probably not good for the soul to be so interested in the darkest parts of humanity.

• 57:45Andy Greenwald?

  I actually have that written in my notes, but I was gonna say it to you as like a cautionary tale. I was gonna actually be like, intervention.

• 57:51Chris Ryan?

  But, you know, this fascinating aspect of, Merriweather brings you into scenes and you are like, I kind of know where this is going. And I feel weird about watching it. You know, I feel weird watching her, watching Catherine, like, I know what's gonna happen to Hal. I know what's gonna happen to Marshall. I know, you know, what's gonna happen to these people. And like, the worldview of this show is such that I, I think it's like, it's like, you have to basically behave in these certain ways to survive.

• 58:24Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 58:25Chris Ryan?

  But I, I find it very confrontational in a very refreshing way, while never not entertaining and never not provocative. I'm trying to think of how it would be handled. I mean, God, you know, I don't know how a man would have made this show, but like, yeah. But like, I'm trying to think of like, how different storytellers would have handled just the central like mystery, which there isn't, but like, the procedural element of it. And whether or not certain things like Nora's involvement in the 2012 murder.

• 58:55Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, that's, that's always, I mean, that isn't, to your point about like, that's an old piece of story. That's like an old pipe that fit into this. The idea that she is somehow complicit and this is her past and her own failings and all of that. And it's gonna be a trauma for her. What's interesting is the character of Nora and Quincy Tyler Bernstein casting. I mean, we should, for the purposes of like, ongoing bits, which I know we need more of, I, we need like, the, we could call them the Akram All-Stars, after the guy in Department Q.

• 59:22Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:23Andy Greenwald?

  Where it's just like, a single casting choice on a secondary character, not only elevates the show, but makes us fall completely in love with the performer and want more. And she, she is so in that zone.

• 59:35Chris Ryan?

  Totally right. There are multiple scenes where, I would, I would love to know if I'm right about this. I feel like you can see Emmy Rossum being like, holy shit, while she's acting with her.

• 59:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and, and like, a fan of it, like, into it.

• 59:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:49Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think, um, I wanna be careful about this statement, because I think we all remember, um, the film This Is Forty. But generally, I do want to encourage more comedians and comic writers to branch out of their, uh, genre ghetto.

• 1:00:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:05Andy Greenwald?

  Because this is, you know, this is seize weapons once. But like, I am definitely going to like, well, and also the Jordan Peele movies. Like, I do think that there is something to this thing that we've talked about repeatedly ad nauseam, that like, comic, comedy writers pivoting to horror, like, this is Liz Merriweather's like magnum opus in a different, completely different field than New Girl. You know, it's, it's wild to me. And it's clearly done with love and affection for the genre, um, which hopefully, you know, I hope we get to talk to her about that specifically. But this show, I mean, I understand people checking it out, and maybe your mileage may vary about the subject matter, or the way that it's presented, or, you know, some of the,

• 1:00:48Andy Greenwald?

  maybe you get tripped up on the tropes that we're saying are, are actually not what you're supposed, that, that's not the view, that's just the drive. But like, the reason I'm so fired up about it, and I cannot wait to watch the next episode, is because of the spirit of it is so creatively surprising.

• 1:01:02Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:03Andy Greenwald?

  The scene, scene to scene, um, moment to moment, the actor I was gonna say, Danny McCarthy, plays Asak Ed George.

• 1:01:09Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:09Andy Greenwald?

  And just like, again, there are, and I'm sure the, the casting director, we should probably get the name of and shout out. I'm sure there were 20 incredibly capable actors who could have played that part. And been like, this is a small part, but I get it. He's bringing something that makes, every time he sounds funny.

• 1:01:28Chris Ryan?

  It's very strange to imagine that guy leading a health and wellness.

• 1:01:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, well, right, it's given, again, it's the writing is giving him a, the, the character is written to have some surprise built in, but just the way that he smiles, the way that he shut her down in the elevator, the way that she's long gaming to, to upend him is like, it's delightful to watch. It's, it, there's a lot of cat and mouse games inside of the larger cat and mouse game.

• 1:01:48Chris Ryan?

  Anything else you wanted to hit about this?

• 1:01:50Andy Greenwald?

  I love it. I don't know, I, I, I feel like I'm just a broken record at this point.

• 1:01:53Chris Ryan?

  Uh, would you say, after this many episodes, it's, it's, it's in your top five, top three?

• 1:02:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:02Chris Ryan?

  You're, you're, you're a recency baby.

• 1:02:05Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, that is 100% true. Have you seen Weapons?

• 1:02:09Andy Greenwald?

  It's quite good. Might even get some Oscar buzz.

• 1:02:13Chris Ryan?

  Um, we've been podcasting for about an hour and five minutes.

• 1:02:17Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:02:17Chris Ryan?

  We cut, we covered, um, the world of television and movies and this industry and technology in totality. And we've talked in depth about Furious. I, I hope we, people feel like we talked in depth about it.

• 1:02:31Andy Greenwald?

  Well, well, we were kind of thrown by timing, but now we will pick it up, whether, I don't know if it's, is it a Monday or a Thursday show for us?

• 1:02:38Chris Ryan?

  Uh, it'll be a Monday show.

• 1:02:41Chris Ryan?

  So we'll talk about lanterns and we'll talk about episode six of, of Furious on Monday.

• 1:02:45Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 1:02:45Chris Ryan?

  But for now, I'd like the lights to come down just a little bit.

• 1:02:48Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, oh, brother. Okay.

• 1:02:50Chris Ryan?

  Let's get inside the cage.

• 1:02:54Andy Greenwald?

  Did you plan this lighting?

• 1:02:55Chris Ryan?

  It's a lion, but it's a lady.

• 1:02:57Andy Greenwald?

  In the cage with me. Uh-huh.

• 1:03:01Chris Ryan?

  I can only be who I am.

• 1:03:03Andy Greenwald?

  This is good. We should begin with like, this is like a, like a AA meeting, begin with a mea culpa.

• 1:03:07Chris Ryan?

  My name's Chris.

• 1:03:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, I'm an alcoholic for, uh, Zoe Saldana lifting weights and listening to the news, and then saying, pop smoke and going to Ukraine, and arresting or kidnapping a Russian agent who had like a little tracker in his armpit that they cut out.

• 1:03:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:30Chris Ryan?

  How far did you get into this first episode? There's two up, but we're just gonna, we're gonna talk broadly about the third season of Lioness here.

• 1:03:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I, first of all.

• 1:03:40Chris Ryan?

  Did you get to the dogs?

• 1:03:42Andy Greenwald?

  I love you and I, I respect your choices. And I think one of the keys to a healthy relationship, professional, personal, otherwise, is to give each other space, you know, to pursue their, your own passions.

• 1:03:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:53Andy Greenwald?

  You know, without, free of judgment. Unfortunately, this is a critical podcast, so that last part, I don't know if I can make good on. Uh, I.

• 1:04:03Chris Ryan?

  I just wanted, did you get to the dogs?

• 1:04:04Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't get to the dogs. I think I made it to.

• 1:04:06Chris Ryan?

  Just as well, then.

• 1:04:07Andy Greenwald?

  A bunch of people, I, I made it to a bunch of people shooting heavy caliber munitions at and under drones in Ukraine.

• 1:04:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:16Andy Greenwald?

  And then I was like, honestly, I'm 49 years old.

• 1:04:20Chris Ryan?

  Well.

• 1:04:20Andy Greenwald?

  Like, how much time, how much time do I have left?

• 1:04:23Chris Ryan?

  I'm 48, so maybe that's probably like, you know, as like a younger kinda guy.

• 1:04:27Andy Greenwald?

  That's also, that's the secret sauce of all podcasts, you know what I mean? Peanut butter and jelly, like, two different generational perspectives. Let's talk in November and we'll see. Um, there is a scene early on in this, when Nicole Kidman, who's on this television show.

• 1:04:46Chris Ryan?

  With Martin Donovan, who starred in multiple Hal Hartley movies and the film Tenet.

• 1:04:50Andy Greenwald?

  As her husband.

• 1:04:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, the trader, trades.

• 1:04:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, they are having, uh, a light breakfast.

• 1:04:58Chris Ryan?

  Al fresco.

• 1:04:59Andy Greenwald?

  Al fresco, lovely, you know, DC, the district is wonderful that time of year. I'm sure they're safely in Virginia. I don't think the novels of George Pelikanos are occurring just beyond their six acres.

• 1:05:11Chris Ryan?

  Triple funk is playing.

• 1:05:13Andy Greenwald?

  If only, the U Street corridor popping off, Joe, young Joe House, no, contemporary Joe House.

• 1:05:22Andy Greenwald?

  Just down the street, they are having breakfast and Nicole is just staring at a hard copy of the, the Gray Lady, the New York Times.

• 1:05:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:32Andy Greenwald?

  And, um, you know what, I'm just gonna make sure, I'm just gonna do it.

• 1:05:36Chris Ryan?

  It says the end of democracy is a giant headline in the New York Times.

• 1:05:39Andy Greenwald?

  And the picture is like, some clouds, because, like, like some smoke, like someone has thrown a, some sort of smoke bomb, be it a Antifa warrior or 90s era Batman, unclear. Either way, really, what's the difference, dog? That's why the DCU is off TV, the ideas are too crazy. Says the end of democracy.

• 1:06:04Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:05Andy Greenwald?

  Martin Donovan then gives a stirring monologue, which now, I, I want you to fact check me, because as, as mentioned, I, I did have a cocktail yesterday, so maybe I.

• 1:06:15Chris Ryan?

  When did, and did you watch this after the cocktail?

• 1:06:17Andy Greenwald?

  I think they were connected.

• 1:06:18Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:06:19Andy Greenwald?

  In retrospect, I would have reversed it and had the drink after. But I believe he begins a monologue about how the greatest investor in America's universities,

• 1:06:30Andy Greenwald?

  uh, are the Chinese.

• 1:06:31Chris Ryan?

  Foreign nations.

• 1:06:31Andy Greenwald?

  Foreign nations. So is it any wonder that the students of these universities now espouse communist-leaning philosophies?

• 1:06:39Chris Ryan?

  I don't know that he used the C-word.

• 1:06:41Andy Greenwald?

  He says communism.

• 1:06:42Chris Ryan?

  Oh, he does? Okay.

• 1:06:42Andy Greenwald?

  He 100% does.

• 1:06:44Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:06:45Andy Greenwald?

  And he's like, uh.

• 1:06:47Chris Ryan?

  Well, Taylor Sheridan, head of the curve again.

• 1:06:49Andy Greenwald?

  I know. And then he's like, so of course, these reporters, you know, think that they're on to something, when in fact, clearly, they're just all like, he doesn't say this part, but essentially, they're marching to their own little red.

• 1:06:59Chris Ryan?

  Institutions funded by foreign governments that have indoctrinated them to hate the country that they live in.

• 1:07:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and then he's like.

• 1:07:05Chris Ryan?

  That's just one POV.

• 1:07:06Andy Greenwald?

  No, but this is my favorite part, is like, his heart, his version of the David Ellison op-ed, where he's just like, I just call balls and strikes and like to make movies, is he's like, so, anyone who went to college in America or works in journalism is a fucking dirty red.

• 1:07:22Chris Ryan?

  He doesn't say that, though.

• 1:07:23Andy Greenwald?

  No, let me finish, he's like, that said, the real existential enemy is AI. And then the scene ends.

• 1:07:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, no, the scene ends.

• 1:07:31Andy Greenwald?

  And it's like, you can't guess which is it, which is bad.

• 1:07:35Chris Ryan?

  The scene ends.

• 1:07:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I know, because she gets black bagged in her Suburban.

• 1:07:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and then six months earlier, we go back.

• 1:07:41Andy Greenwald?

  And again, it does the thing, one of the other things I respect about Taylor Sheridan is, A, obviously, his politics keep you guessing.

• 1:07:48Chris Ryan?

  They do, though. They do.

• 1:07:49Andy Greenwald?

  Two, two, he is, you know, we're like, well, he's immune to notes. He's also immune to industry trends, because no one made it to like the, what is it? The triple sixes ranch or whatever?

• 1:08:00Chris Ryan?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:08:01Andy Greenwald?

  And was like, sir, sir, tears in their eyes, audiences are turning against the six months earlier conceit.

• 1:08:07Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:08:08Andy Greenwald?

  So he does that, and then, uh, and then we're off to the races. Look, I just think. We all have to express ourselves in different ways. And so maybe this is our podcast version of On the Italian Job Rewatchables, when Van eloquently spoke about a porn adaptation of The Italian Job.

• 1:08:30Chris Ryan?

  That he had imagined.

• 1:08:31Andy Greenwald?

  That he had imagined down to like, he cast it, he had whole, he had visions.

• 1:08:34Chris Ryan?

  Neapolitan crime families warring with sex acts, yes.

• 1:08:38Andy Greenwald?

  Him talking about that in the way that that satisfies his basest urges is kind of, in the face you made, is kind of the face I'm making when you watch this show. Because I'm willing to, I'm willing to, look, the lights have changed.

• 1:08:52Chris Ryan?

  We're not gonna talk about, I think, to be completely honest with you, if I wanna talk about Lioness.

• 1:08:57Andy Greenwald?

  You have some 4chan groups.

• 1:08:59Chris Ryan?

  I think that Van will probably be joining me because Van has called me seven times in the last two weeks. And told me that I'm actually a coward because I hadn't caught up yet because I was on vacation.

• 1:09:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:12Chris Ryan?

  And I was like, look, man, like, when, when we get enough, when we get a foothold

• 1:09:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:17Chris Ryan?

  on, on the front in Ukraine, like, we can talk about it. Like, I wanna see what this is about. Let me tell you something, because I can't believe you quit watching, because I think you missed something.

• 1:09:26Andy Greenwald?

  Small point. If there's any way we could do a hard cut and just start the pod, like, just cut away to you and then Van is sitting here, wearing a tasteful shacket with three drinks, the hardest of which is a day-old green tea, and you just continue the conversation, that's gold.

• 1:09:42Chris Ryan?

  I just wanna tell you about one thing that happens in this episode.

• 1:09:44Andy Greenwald?

  Please, yeah.

• 1:09:45Chris Ryan?

  So, obviously, like, here's the recap of the first episode. Jo lifts weights, takes a shower. Her husband tries to join her in the shower.

• 1:09:53Andy Greenwald?

  But guess what?

• 1:09:54Chris Ryan?

  It's cold. It's cold. And he's like, ah, it's so cold. And she's like, it's good for inflammation.

• 1:09:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Chris Ryan?

  And he's like, so is Advil. And she's like, I want my body to do it, not a pill.

• 1:10:06Andy Greenwald?

  I mean.

• 1:10:07Chris Ryan?

  Open your third eye, brother. You don't know.

• 1:10:08Andy Greenwald?

  That's how I feel about anxiety, but please continue.

• 1:10:10Chris Ryan?

  Um, and then it turns out that, you know, a, a Russian agent is being offered up to them.

• 1:10:18Andy Greenwald?

  It turns out, somehow, a Russian agent has returned. Go on.

• 1:10:22Chris Ryan?

  You, did you see the scene where the Lioness crew goes to Georgetown?

• 1:10:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:10:27Chris Ryan?

  And they all exercise?

• 1:10:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and they're all pretending to be like, and then the best part is, and they're like, guess we're going to Ukraine. They're like, ah, shit. Guess I picked the wrong day to.

• 1:10:35Chris Ryan?

  When they get to Ukraine, this is probably where you turned it off, because they're, they're running to the house and there's all these drones above them.

• 1:10:40Andy Greenwald?

  There were a lot of drones, yeah.

• 1:10:42Chris Ryan?

  When they get to a, like, a cabin and they go down, like, to a bunch of sub-levels, and then they get there and there's a bunch of CIA people, a bunch of army people, US-based. And it's like, well, who's gonna lead this expedition? Because we, we're not gonna use Jo's team. They're not trained in trench warfare, drone warfare. Who's gonna lead us? It's Taylor Sheridan.

• 1:11:03Andy Greenwald?

  I, yeah, I had heard this.

• 1:11:03Chris Ryan?

  It's Cody.

• 1:11:04Andy Greenwald?

  I actually had heard this, and I think I, that may be a reason why I looked away.

• 1:11:08Chris Ryan?

  And he, he becomes then the central character of the second half of the first episode of the third season of Lioness.

• 1:11:15Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 1:11:15Chris Ryan?

  And, uh.

• 1:11:16Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think?

• 1:11:17Chris Ryan?

  He leads a team of Delta guys with German shepherds who eat fucking Russians.

• 1:11:25Andy Greenwald?

  How do you?

• 1:11:25Chris Ryan?

  And North Koreans. It's fucking disgusting.

• 1:11:28Andy Greenwald?

  So you train them specifically? So you have, like, racist dogs to begin with?

• 1:11:34Chris Ryan?

  They are German shepherds. I mean, like.

• 1:11:36Andy Greenwald?

  That's true. That's true. 100%, that's true.

• 1:11:40Chris Ryan?

  It's not like they were like, how did you, how did you make this teddy bear?

• 1:11:43Andy Greenwald?

  How did you take this fucking doodle, this golden doodle, and make him?

• 1:11:49Chris Ryan?

  Um, one of the dogs doesn't make it, though. Back, yeah. And the breeder is quite upset.

• 1:11:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I know, because you know how much hate speech has to filter into the kennel?

• 1:12:00Chris Ryan?

  I, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. When I watch lots of shows, I'm like, how long have I been sitting in front of this TV? It has to have been two hours, and it's like eight minutes.

• 1:12:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:10Chris Ryan?

  And with Lioness, like, time flies by. Like, I, I am engaged. I'm leaning in, you know? I come to this place.

• 1:12:19Andy Greenwald?

  You're leaning in one direction, for sure. I think it's a little bit to the.

• 1:12:22Chris Ryan?

  The thing is, I can separate the art and the artist. I'm sorry.

• 1:12:26Andy Greenwald?

  I guess that makes you the asshole. First of all, I do, I would love to know the background of Taylor Sheridan being cast in that part. Where, like, they did an exhaustive search?

• 1:12:36Chris Ryan?

  There was no background. He's like, I'm playing Cody.

• 1:12:38Andy Greenwald?

  I know. I'm just saying, can you imagine, though, they're like, we've done an exhaustive search of the nation's jarheads, and like, we just can't find anyone with a mortal conviction?

• 1:12:45Chris Ryan?

  Veterans could read.

• 1:12:46Andy Greenwald?

  No, and he's just like, fine, I'll come off the sidelines to do this. Um, I, I genuinely, I was trying to come up with a way to talk to you about this that would preserve our friendship, but also that would not be just negativity. No, no, I know.

• 1:13:00Chris Ryan?

  You can't scare me.

• 1:13:01Andy Greenwald?

  But there's also, like, genuinely, the headlines of our Landman coverage is often like, what the fuck? But every so often, there are moments of bizarre, either it's just like perceptiveness, or, or local color, or some sense of a world that we haven't seen before, before he gets distracted.

• 1:13:18Chris Ryan?

  Oh, you spent a lot of time on the front lines of Ukraine? That's, that's a world you've seen before?

• 1:13:22Andy Greenwald?

  Seen it all before, brother. Uh, every morning, I have breakfast outside and pore over the war coverage in the failing New York Times. People point to, fairly, his, like, he can't keep you guessing. Like, his worldview and the things that he feels strongly about don't necessarily fit neatly into one tribe or the other. And he loves pushing those buttons. And I think the, uh, the college roommate being a big example of that in the last season of Landman.

• 1:13:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:49Andy Greenwald?

  I think the, the problem I have with his shows, and this is genuinely a problem with Landman, is that he always, whether he believes this or not, he always defaults to a complete credulity and faith in the most either rich, in the case of Landman, or the most powerful, in the case of Lioness. And like, the full, you know, the full, like, armament and awe and majesty and destructive power of the United States government if they were just finally, if the woke handcuffs came on.

• 1:14:16Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:14:16Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean? And I find that really boring, because the thing about Landman is, like, the dude, like, the, the, the chief boss, and like, the scene where, like, he has, they have the barbecue, and like, they all show up, like, he's showing people who do a really fucking gnarly job for a living, and most shows are not interested in that.

• 1:14:33Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:14:33Andy Greenwald?

  But the show can't help itself by being like, ultimately, what I'm interested in is the rich guy is gonna, it's gonna work out for him and he's gonna get richer. And his wife's gonna be able to go shopping on a private jet. That bums me out. And so the thing with this show, too, is like, I just wish it had a little more curiosity about the cracks in the world, as opposed to being like, you fucking sheeple don't get it, we need this.

• 1:14:57Chris Ryan?

  I don't really know if I need it to do that.

• 1:14:59Andy Greenwald?

  I don't, I mean, I know I'm trying to put.

• 1:15:02Chris Ryan?

  Like, I think I find it more broadly entertaining to watch a highly violent Tom Clancy.

• 1:15:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I, I understand. I'm trying to put, like, a British barrister wig on Pete Aristolone.

• 1:15:12Chris Ryan?

  I'm not gonna make you watch this. This is, this is not gonna be a running bit on the show. I do think that, for whatever it's worth, at the end of the episode, when they get done with this incredibly violent, like, exercise in Ukraine, they're like, this is, this is way beyond, like, our comprehension of what warfare is supposed to be, like, and at one point, like, one of the characters is like, these guys, it's like, it's like World War I meets Star Wars here, because it's all of, like, these drones and robot, robotic armaments, but it's also people, like, running in trenches. And it's like, so it's like, whether or not it's a realistic depiction of that combat theater, I have no idea.

• 1:15:49Andy Greenwald?

  I do. I would say it gets it about 60%, right?

• 1:15:53Chris Ryan?

  Um, anyway, every once in a while, maybe I'll check in, but, you know, Van and I will, we'll get in the cage together next time.

• 1:16:00Andy Greenwald?

  What are Van's other, like, where else is he gonna take the show when he replaces me?

• 1:16:05Chris Ryan?

  I mean, Van's very busy. I, I can't overly leverage him, you know, like, I need you around a little.

• 1:16:11Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:16:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:12Andy Greenwald?

  Coming off the bench with some, like, high-minded, like, well, Drops of God, season three is back. Let me tell you my porn parody of that.

• 1:16:19Chris Ryan?

  Well, how Jordan historically is like this?

• 1:16:23Andy Greenwald?

  That mean, it's good. It's good. Canonically, it's inaccurate, but I'm willing to make excuses.

• 1:16:29Chris Ryan?

  You know about two things, the Ukrainian front, Green Lantern. That's why you're valuable to me. No, come on, you're my guy. Whatever, we, we take this show together.

• 1:16:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:38Chris Ryan?

  It's, it's a Waymo with two wheels, you know?

• 1:16:41Andy Greenwald?

  So it's a Waymo bicycle?

• 1:16:46Andy Greenwald?

  Except I'm on the front, like, like Titanic?

• 1:16:49Chris Ryan?

  When I was in Portland, uh, the other week, a couple rode by me, uh, on a tandem bike, both wearing, uh, N95 masks. But I was like.

• 1:17:01Andy Greenwald?

  Did you, did you have anything to say?

• 1:17:02Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:17:03Andy Greenwald?

  Did you, did you tell them about woke one?

• 1:17:05Chris Ryan?

  No, I was just sitting in my Honda, rented.

• 1:17:10Andy Greenwald?

  Because you like to be able to move at any time?

• 1:17:13Chris Ryan?

  You never know when they, then the Russians are gonna.

• 1:17:16Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, I get it.

• 1:17:18Chris Ryan?

  I don't even know why I told that.

• 1:17:19Andy Greenwald?

  Just watching those people on bikes, being like, I bet you think dogs aren't prejudiced.

• 1:17:25Andy Greenwald?

  Must be nice. You know who defends that freedom for you? Fucking Lionesses.

• 1:17:31Andy Greenwald?

  You just walk around, just shaking your head, being like, these people have no idea.

• 1:17:34Chris Ryan?

  They have no idea what Zoe Saldana has done for them.

• 1:17:37Andy Greenwald?

  Their $30 sandwiches, their fucking orange wines.

• 1:17:41Chris Ryan?

  I just, you know what it is?

• 1:17:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:43Chris Ryan?

  I can move between spaces there, you know?

• 1:17:45Andy Greenwald?

  No, this is why you are ultimately electable. You know what I mean? Like, you, you could, you could play in both worlds. Like, you may lean that way, but you didn't endorse Francesca Hahn.

• 1:17:55Chris Ryan?

  That's why I froze my eggs, just to sort of, you know, like, you never know what my future's gonna be.

• 1:18:02Andy Greenwald?

  Beautiful eggs.

• 1:18:03Chris Ryan?

  Thanks to Kaya, Kai, and Sarah.

• 1:18:06Andy Greenwald?

  That's a great, that's part of your pitch for the male reboot of Furious.

• 1:18:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:10Andy Greenwald?

  I've got some notes.

• 1:18:13Chris Ryan?

  I didn't say that. I said, God forbid a guy had made that.

• 1:18:18Andy Greenwald?

  God forbid. Sounds like, you protest a little much. Oh, no. Furious, but for him. Who says no?