‘Furious’ Penultimate Episode and ‘Lanterns’ E2. Plus, ‘Lioness’ S3E4 With Van Lathan.

Chris and Andy break down the penultimate episode of ‘Furious’ and the question unanswered as we head into the finale (1:16). Then they break down the second episode of ‘Lanterns’ and the ways it improved on the pilot (22:12), before Chris is joined by Van Lathan for ‘Lioness’-watch and to talk about why this is one of the most exciting shows on right now (32:32). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Additional Video Production: Sarah Reddy, Oscar De La Luz, and Jon Jones 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

  Your credit card company is hoping you don't hear this. They're charging you 21% APR interest, making it hard to pay down your balance. A home equity loan from Rocket Mortgage could cut your interest rate by more than half. So you could wipe out your high-interest credit card debt with the equity you've built in your home without touching your current mortgage rate. See how much you could save at rocketmortgage.com. Rocket Mortgage LLC licensed in 50 states. NMLS Consumer Access.org number 3030. Call 8004-ROCKET for full program details.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is now streaming on Disney+.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  What are you waiting for? Hop on.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  The must-see galactic adventure comes home on Disney+.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  This is the way. Our only chance is to work together.

• 0:47Speaker 02

  I like this kid. Always wear your seatbelt.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu now streaming on Disney+. Rated PG-13.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  I need sports staff to clear the room.

• 1:08Chris Ryan?

  Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. Joining me in the studio, he would argue Christ was the first political assassination. It's Mandy Greenwald.

• 1:25Speaker 05

  What's up?

• 1:27Chris Ryan?

  What's up, everybody? Monday for The Watch and we are going to be talking about Lanterns. We're going to be talking about Furious, but we're also going to be talking about me and Van's beloved lioness. They call this podcast Between Third Chairs.

• 1:40Speaker 05

  Wow. Between Third Chairs. Us in a really intense battle for third chair, the big pick.

• 1:46Chris Ryan?

  So what we're going to do is I recorded with Andy a little bit last week so that we could talk about the Sunday shows, but Van, it's awesome to see you.

• 1:55Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:56Chris Ryan?

  And we're going to be back a little bit later in this podcast to discuss lioness right after this.

• 2:03Chris Ryan?

  Andy, we're here to talk about the seventh episode, the penultimate episode of Furious. I want to get your thoughts on the second episode of Lanterns, although I imagine I'll talk about it a little bit with Van.

• 2:13Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 2:16Chris Ryan?

  Why don't we start at the ending of Furious? So obviously spoilers for this penultimate episode that aired last night. We've got the finale coming in a week and triumph is a weird thing to ascribe to this series, like feeling triumphant at the end of it. And obviously like with another episode to go, I think there are a lot more shoes to drop and probably a lot more tragedies to befall one, if not more of our characters. But as Catherine approaches Jay Easton's house, as we've found out, the Epstein-Ghislaine relationship between Jay and his daughter.

• 2:57Chris Ryan?

  And Rihanna's We Found Love begins to play again. I was, it's a testament to the show that I was like, fuck, yeah, let's go. Like, that's not an emotion that I expect to experience while watching a series about what this is about, but I think that there's something very powerful about, about like the recurrent theme of that song and also like this arc for this character, even if it does wind up being tragic.

• 3:25Andy Greenwald?

  When we talked last week about why the show is spectacular, we were talking about tropes and I think we were talking about them in the sense of, well, you know, rip from the headlines, murder mystery shows have to hit these certain beats. And I think it almost could take on the power of defensiveness to trying to explain why some things about the show might feel familiar and why that's actually a good thing in this case. I think it's important then, when you're talking about an episode as spectacular as this one, which continues in my mind to elevate the show into the very top echelon of series of the year.

• 3:59Andy Greenwald?

  It's not just detective tropes that this is playing with. It is playing with, first of all, comedy. It remains incredibly funny and remains capable of dropping jokes like, like Choi's, you know, just face, but also like his one-liners or his incredulity moment to moment inside of what should be an otherwise incredibly tense episode, but playing with the same kind of like adrenaline manipulation that some of our favorite action movies do. And this was based on an 80s movie, but the sense that like, oh, wait, they're going to team up now? Wait, they are going to tear down the patriarchy, just the two of them? Rip apart a system? Use people as Nora teaches her to do in a way that might get the kind of victory that

• 4:43Andy Greenwald?

  only happens in TV shows and movies?

• 4:47Andy Greenwald?

  It's incredibly canny. And when she says, when Nora says that to Alice, it's what we do. We use people. I couldn't help but think that Liz Merriweather and her writers are a little bit thinking about what they do in a writer's room.

• 4:59Chris Ryan?

  That's a really good point.

• 5:00Andy Greenwald?

  They're manipulating us and they're using our empathy and our, and our interest and our dopamine to get us to feel certain ways about characters and scenarios that might otherwise appall or surprise us.

• 5:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:11Andy Greenwald?

  And I, I love it. Use me.

• 5:13Chris Ryan?

  There's a level of sophistication to this show that I just think is really, really, really worth pointing out. I'm sure people could point to dozens of other shows and be like, well, they do this and this, but I'm just saying like, there are visual motifs.

• 5:28Chris Ryan?

  There are lines and, and sort of images that the dialogue evokes that don't necessarily correspond to characters knowing that the other is talking about that, but is they're bringing up these ideas throughout the episode or throughout the season. I was struck by, you know, when Emma, the Hope Davis character, and now we know why Hope Davis took this role.

• 5:53Speaker 05

  I was going to text you the same thing.

• 5:55Chris Ryan?

  Because often in prestige television these days, you'll be like, oh, okay. Like that seems like a, like a kind of tiny part for such an accomplished actor, but I guess everybody.

• 6:05Andy Greenwald?

  Everybody in New York's got to work.

• 6:06Chris Ryan?

  Everybody wants to work. And then you, you find out why. When her character and the totality of her character's, you know, complicity in her father's perversion and violence is, is made clear, that she is in fact procuring these girls for him at this point. She goes out into her garden when her father is doing whatever he's doing with a very young woman. And she starts like putting her hands in the soil of her garden and like squeezing the dirt and hands and hands as a kind of first responder or censor to trauma and to the brain not being able to totally process what's going on has been something that Emma

• 6:51Chris Ryan?

  has done, something Catherine has done.

• 6:54Andy Greenwald?

  Catherine can't feel things in her hands.

• 6:55Chris Ryan?

  These aren't even my hands when she's in the shower with Alice. And Alice's trauma response to what Marshall did to her often manifests itself in her shaking hands, you know, when she's trying to get her, her anxiety under control. It's a little thing, you know what I mean? It's nine out of 10 shows don't bother with a detail like that because yes, maybe one character can exhibit that, but like, you don't need to do it. It's just something that I was like, I can't wait to hear Liz Merriweather talk about this. I can't wait to hear about like what it was and how the different actions of the hands between the characters is going to kind of like connect to the character themselves.

• 7:40Andy Greenwald?

  And the needle drop in that moment is, I don't know if that's Loretta Lynn or it's someone similar, but it's, it's a, it's a version of In the Pines, the traditional song that Nirvana sang in Unplugged that is deeply unsettling. And I, I'm, I'm running out of superlatives to talk about the way that everything is in concert with the show. Why it's not just, I'm like loving the scene, loving this performance, loving this episode. Everything is serving the same type of storytelling. Ariel Marx, who we shouted out the first week is the composer of the music and the music has continually signaled to us to be disarmed, to be surprised. There are moments when the score seems to settle into something more appropriate to like a tense moment or a family moment, and then it kind of mutates in a jazzy or surprising way and, and twists itself.

• 8:25Andy Greenwald?

  This episode, and I believe next week's finale are directed by Corey Finley, who directed a movie called Thoroughbreds. And as far as I can tell, like, I don't know if this is someone that Liz knows or has worked with before, but to step in to the penultimate episode.

• 8:40Chris Ryan?

  If I remember correctly, Thoroughbreds has a very. Lose Merryweather sensibility when it comes to like mixing comedy into these things.

• 8:47Andy Greenwald?

  So aesthetically, a good hire and clearly simpatico and said the right things. But still, when you bring in episodic directors for hire for something as crucial as the final block, you don't know what you're gonna get. This episode begins with an absolutely elite framing of ambulances and cop cars swarming at the shelter through the streets of Manhattan. And I was like, goddamn, this is an action show, too. It's doing all of it. You know, it feels like kind of, I can't tell if it's a sign of like how excellent I think this is to focus on the blocking. But when both Alice and Marshall are brought to the hospital in the opening moments, and then Danny and Marshall's mother, who's played with outrageous ferocity and also specificity.

• 9:29Andy Greenwald?

  This is not a character we know or have seen by the veteran stage actress, Constance Schulman. Like, that collision is explosive. And it's framed, you know, they blocked it so that both, it's like people, each boxer has their cornerman who's in a hospital bed right now.

• 9:45Chris Ryan?

  And they're shooting the show, I think, with anamorphic lenses or like it's widescreen. It's taking advantage of like a probably modern standard that most people are gonna have these very wide televisions and that you can play a lot with the frame where TV used to be much more like kind of vertically framed it, like aspect ratio.

• 10:03Andy Greenwald?

  Speaking of taking advantage of New York theater royalty, Constance Schulman, married to Reed Bernie, great stage actor who pops up in these shows time to time, and they are the parents of Gus Bernie, who was one of the stars of Something Very Bad Is Gonna Happen.

• 10:15Chris Ryan?

  I did not know that. How about that?

• 10:17Andy Greenwald?

  I like to make the connections for you.

• 10:19Chris Ryan?

  You know, that little moment you mentioned at the beginning of this episode, I think is something that a lot of TV shows can learn from. You know, I will sometimes find myself being taken out of shows when I feel like it's obvious, like, oh, like, there's supposed to be a riot going on as Homelander walks off out of this courthouse, but like, there's 50 people there. Or, you know, maybe they've spent too much money trying to recreate like what a traffic, you know, a car chase is gonna look like. Or, you know, if you were making a future film of that, this episode, you could have like, so many different locations within New York City. But all they do to communicate the chaos that has started from this shooting, from

• 11:04Chris Ryan?

  Catherine shooting Marshall, is the sirens going by. And in New York City, that is a real feeling of like, you'll be like, walking down the street, or you'll be about to cross the street, and all of a sudden, five cop cars and ambulance fly by, and you're like, oh shit, I wonder where that is, you know?

• 11:19Andy Greenwald?

  And then you go get your $10 latte.

• 11:21Chris Ryan?

  Right, exactly. Or in our day, a $2 Ryan Gold.

• 11:26Andy Greenwald?

  Who can say whether we've degraded and fallen as a society?

• 11:30Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk a little bit more about the Easton side of this. One of the things that the show has done, and it took me a while to maybe get my footing with it, is it has been very plain about the mystery. Like, it's very, it's very, the cards are up, turned up.

• 11:45Andy Greenwald?

  To a point. We still don't know who killed her friend.

• 11:50Chris Ryan?

  No, I know, but like, I meant, we always knew who Catherine was, and we always knew more or less who did it to her. And it's been a matter of not who done it, but will the people who had it done to them get their revenge? And this was a twist. You know, I mean, obviously, like we said with the Hope Davis character, you see her casting, and you're like, she's gonna do three scenes?

• 12:17Chris Ryan?

  And, you know, this is why you hire her, is because their scene in his safe room, basically, where he is still holding on to child pornography, even after she has tried to rid the entire house of it as the cops are on their way, and unbeknownst them, Catherine is on her way.

• 12:39Chris Ryan?

  Is just extraordinary. And, and I mean, I don't think I've, I don't know if I've ever seen anything like that, like that specific confrontation.

• 12:47Andy Greenwald?

  Well, also, again, it's a level of confidence to know the totality of the story you're telling and how you want it to land to, like you said, you cast Hope Davis because you know the part has more room to run. You cast Peter McRobbie, who plays Jay Easton.

• 13:01Chris Ryan?

  Who's been in everything.

• 13:02Andy Greenwald?

  Brokeback Mountain and...

• 13:03Chris Ryan?

  Daredevil.

• 13:05Andy Greenwald?

  He's a, he's a working, talented actor. But he's also perfect in the sense that if you cast James Cromwell or something, the audience is gonna be like, I know him, and I know he can be nefarious, so I know he's coming back. The show played a really interesting bait and switch with audience expectations, where we are told that this guy is hiding things, but because we're focused elsewhere, the level of malevolence isn't fully present because we haven't spent time with him. So you have to, you have to trust that you can make the investment to pay off later. And the scene between the two of them, and I believe this is the first episode where we've seen the two of them share the screen with no one else.

• 13:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, in the past, the only other scene that...

• 13:46Andy Greenwald?

  Scott had been there, or Alice was interrogating them, or Danny was interrogating them and questioning them. So you get a scene with two actors who have never been alone on screen before, and he tells her that the code to his child porn safe is his daughter's birthday.

• 14:00Chris Ryan?

  It's her birthday, yeah.

• 14:01Andy Greenwald?

  And the entirety of the series lands on you and the audience like a fucking emotional anvil. That is not easy to accomplish with our not our normal avatars. And it's doing something that feels almost obvious, in the sense that all of the women in this show carry water, carry trauma, carry sin for the monsters in their proximity. But to do it with a degree of artfulness and subtlety so that it can sneak up on us and then wallop us the way that scene did was masterful. I thought it was incredible.

• 14:37Chris Ryan?

  Another scene I wanted to highlight from this episode was Alice's confrontation with Catherine in the bathroom of the hotel room, motel room.

• 14:46Andy Greenwald?

  Also, the phone ringing the other room? Awesome.

• 14:49Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 14:49Andy Greenwald?

  That's been done before, I don't care. I loved it.

• 14:52Chris Ryan?

  That's, to me, was like, that's Emmy Rossum's, like, Emmy highlight reel right there. Was like that, like her just being like, what if I let you go? You know what I mean? Where would you go? Would you go to his house? That was extraordinary, I thought. And like, she has now like, fully become, like, I think she has synthesized all the lessons of like humanity from Danny and manipulation from Nora, and seeing how the game is played, and does something that like, you know, she's like, I'm already persona non grata in the PD and in the FBI. I'm gonna fucking, and I'm gonna get this case solved, you know?

• 15:33Andy Greenwald?

  And it's personal. Again, I don't mind that, that we talked about what is the, what is going on with Danny and the video file and all of that. It works for what the show is communicating to us. You know, it is, I think it is a sign of a failed fiction if it pushes the audience out enough to start nitpicking and questioning why things are connected. It's like, when Tolstoy wrote a novel, he wasn't like, well, Levin and Anna will never meet and have nothing to do with each other, I'm just gonna tell you two stories at once, because that's more accurate to my experience in 19th century Russia.

• 16:02Chris Ryan?

  Anna and Levin, like, two stories that don't really interact.

• 16:05Andy Greenwald?

  That was, it sounds better when it's written in Cyrillic.

• 16:09Andy Greenwald?

  I also, by the way, shout out to, obviously, we're wearing the same clothes as last Thursday, but shout out to that podcast. Alice, this episode also fully becomes me watching the Sterling Point pilot, and she's like, get these fucking pears out of here. So she's a good TV critic as well.

• 16:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:25Andy Greenwald?

  I thought, this episode introduced the concept of Nora Oki, in which Nora goes and sings a meatloaf song, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and Quincy Tyler Bernstein continues just like, in absolute terror. This is like catnip for, I would imagine, for both of us. But in that bar, when drunk Nora explains, really explains what it is that we do. It is, this is their FBI agents, but it is pure CIA. We love and talk constantly about spy shows and spy books and thrillers in which inevitably emits the action and the global intrigue and chaos.

• 17:06Andy Greenwald?

  One character says some super sick shit to the other one, like, you know, we are, I wrote down, we use people, that's what we do. We are inhuman in defense of humanity. We become evil to fight evil.

• 17:18Chris Ryan?

  Reminded me a lot of the Edward Norton speech in Born Legacy.

• 17:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, yes. And, again, that is the sign to me of a well-constructed fictional vehicle, because there's room for Nora to be painful, believable, but also sing in the middle of the penultimate episode and just drop, you know, intellectual heat rocks like that, too. It can do all of those things, and very few, very few multi-season shows can pull this off, let alone eight episodes that, you know, we were not checking for and dropping on Hulu. It's awesome.

• 17:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I was thinking, I was trying to think about like how this one kinda came together. I don't think I've ever seen Black Widow. Have you, the film that it's based on? I wonder if this was just something that was sitting in some IP library that got developed that way. I did wanna ask you about one more specific moment from this episode, because I thought the care with which it was handled, but also the candor with which it was handled, they had to have both. And that's the sort of reveal after the end of last episode, that there is this, that there is a child pornographic video with young Alice on it, and that Alice has been made aware of this by Danny, when she kind of reaches across to be like, take me to, let's

• 18:38Chris Ryan?

  get the fuck out of it, let's blow this town, let's go to the beach. Like, I think I love you, you know, blah, blah. And he's like, I gotta tell you something. And he tells her about the videos, and he tells her, you know, and her reaction to it, and the way that Rossum hardens, but doesn't like...

• 19:00Chris Ryan?

  It's just a very specific, like, detailed, studied, rooted in the character reaction. This is a person who I think even when they are open, or even when they are vulnerable, I think it's in some ways a mask that they are wearing.

• 19:18Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I want to talk to both, all of the creators about it if we get the chance, but just to continue with that theme of what you choose to make up in a fictional story and what you choose to research and be right about. And I think that moment in the previous episode in 106, when Catherine was like, "The thing about the shower, you weren't lying about that."

• 19:38Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 19:39Andy Greenwald?

  I think that the beauty of the way this show is constructed is that there are things they are quote unquote lying about. I mean, there are, there, you know, Choi, you know, the way that Ed George smiles and walks through the office, a lot of the-

• 19:53Chris Ryan?

  His concern for people's wellness, yeah.

• 19:55Andy Greenwald?

  Sure. But also just like some fictional filigrees that make it a fun show, like some comedy moments.

• 20:00Chris Ryan?

  All the stuff with Danny and Alden, you know.

• 20:02Andy Greenwald?

  So, yes. So, it's lying about that. Or it's lying about maybe the coincidence of all of these cases stacking on top of each other in a perfect way to, you know, enrapture and to trap everyone. But it's not lying about how, to my view as an audience member, I cannot speak to the veracity of people's lived experience, but like the way that Emmy chose to respond and deliver that performance as Alice, who being exposed in that way by the person she has just become vulnerable to struck me as not lying. And I think that's a delicate balancing act. And also just, you know, we don't know where the last cards will fall, and there might be more coming. But when we watched, when we talked about the first three episodes, I think we were actively wondering how the show was playing with or not playing with familiar tropes and familiar expectations.

• 20:47Andy Greenwald?

  And you were like, you know, I think you just casually threw out the idea that Danny, that Scoot McNairy's character, would either, you know, meet a terrible end or prove to be not the good guy that he seems to be.

• 20:57Chris Ryan?

  I felt like he had some live forever Evan Peters, Maraviestown vibes.

• 21:01Andy Greenwald?

  He still might. But if the only card left to turn of, between these two characters, is that they love each other, but the ugliness of history, the world, expectation and perception will forever keep them apart.

• 21:14Chris Ryan?

  It's almost more tragic.

• 21:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. And a much harder bar to clear.

• 21:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, in that same case, you know, plenty of things, the stories that we love culminate with somehow every character arriving on the scene at the same time. I mean, that is literally how LA Confidential ends, you know. The way that they are doing it, I can't wait to see how they play that out. I legitimately have no guesses as to what's gonna happen, how they want, what their final statement about the nature of justice and revenge is going to be, what a conclusion for this Alice character looks like. I don't know, they may very well be making another season of this, I have no

• 22:00Chris Ryan?

  idea. But they are doing another trope where it's like, the criminal, various factions of cops and the even bigger criminals are all waiting in a big spooky house, you know, and we're gonna have a showdown of guns drawn, but also like, we want to build a case and we want to get to the systemic issues here. It's, it's, it's pretty awesome that they're, that they're driving right into that.

• 22:26Andy Greenwald?

  I just think there's a really, ahead of it, and we'll see how it resolves, but I just think there's a really important lesson here for writing in general, which is like, you could get together and you could try to galaxy brain a different box for everyone to go into at the end, a different shaped story. Or you could accept that there's one really, really good shape, and then try to surprise people with what they do once they're inside of it.

• 22:49Chris Ryan?

  And this is the whole thing with the like detective novels that we've been reading for most of our lives, is like, there's really just the one story, you know, and even within that story, there's like, kinda marks that you have to hit, because that's what people buy these mass market paperbacks for. It's how you execute those things and what you want to say in those familiar settings that, that really matters. I wanted to give you a couple of minutes if you wanted to just sound off on, on Lantern's episode two.

• 23:18Andy Greenwald?

  I just wanted to ask you to begin with, I didn't prep you for this, so I don't think you necessarily have to have an answer, but I couldn't come up with one. I, I think there are very, very few series in which the second episodes are just incredibly, like, far superior to the pilot. Second episodes historically are-

• 23:35Chris Ryan?

  Incredibly difficult.

• 23:35Andy Greenwald?

  Incredibly difficult, because you've had, it's like second albums, you've had a lifetime to do the first, and then you've got a couple of weeks to pull together the second. And more often than not, second episodes are just retreads of the first again, having cleared your throat and maybe with a bigger sense of who's recurring and who's a guest star and where you're going with it. That, I'm not saying that was the, what happened behind the scenes with Lanterns, but what I loved about this episode, and I, you know, respectfully liked and was intrigued by the first episode, I loved the second episode. And the reason I loved it is because it relaxed into being what it's going to be in a way that felt really, really good and very, very exciting. Because this was an episode that had time for like, again, I understand now there's gonna be eight episodes of this because they split Hal and they split John, and they had different storylines, and they had different

• 24:19Andy Greenwald?

  challenges, and they had different reactions to those challenges. Helped me understand them better as characters and helped me understand how we're going to get six more hours of story out of this. But this was also an episode that had time for the incredibly mundane and incredibly ambitious. Meaning, you texted me, you're like, "Oh shit, Kelly McDonald put the reading glasses on."

• 24:40Chris Ryan?

  So, I am who I am.

• 24:41Andy Greenwald?

  Amazing scene, though. I was also like that, both because I also was a 19-year-old that saw Trainspotting in the theater, and also because this is a woman who has a job, who lives in a place, and is choosing to engage with things in a certain way. But the other thing was, at the end of the episode, when it's already had one of the, my favorite scenes of the year, which is the Paul Ben Victor, "Do you know what a manhunter is?" scene, which we should talk about. Hal Jordan puts on his, his special green suit, flies into space, goes to a space prison, and fucking redskin, mustachioed Sinestro is there, and guess what? He's just a dude, too.

• 25:21Chris Ryan?

  Well, and he's also like, the real problem is your boy down in Nebraska.

• 25:25Andy Greenwald?

  If you went to TV writing school, I feel like this episode, the, the last five minutes of this episode should be shown in a lecture format delivered by Damon and Chris Mundie and Tom King about like, how to best use the week-to-week deployment structure of an HBO show. But, again, like-

• 25:46Chris Ryan?

  There's a flip side to that, though, too.

• 25:48Andy Greenwald?

  Let's hit me.

• 25:50Chris Ryan?

  You're right. They did everything you're supposed to do with the second episode, which is to start to separate or untangle and let fly different plotlines. I thought separating Hal and John was so important. Up until now, we've only seen John with his parent, his dad in a flashback. And then, the rest of it has been a enjoyable but somewhat repetitive conversation with Hal of, "All right, Junior, you're not ready for all that yet," you know, and one dalliance with Zoe in the truck.

• 26:21Andy Greenwald?

  He keeps saying they slept together. I didn't clock much sleeping.

• 26:25Chris Ryan?

  To separate them, I thought, like, pumped air into the entire series, because then you get, Hal is a different guy, interacting with different people in different circumstances. The ranch scene is incredible. The hospital scene with Kelly McDonald is awesome. The town hall scene is awesome. And then, the payoff is John comes back, and they're outside the motel, and Hal's drinking beers, and when John starts asking about manhunters, you just get that great moment of Hal taking his, his arm brace off. So I just thought, this is where this writing staff kind of is like, this is why we're Hall of Famers?

• 27:09Chris Ryan?

  Is because those scenes of John at Hal's house, or Hal at this town hall, like, could be kinda boring. Like, they, or they could be kind of, you know, like, all right, just like, I know what's going on, like, we're just trying to wait for this guy to get back. He's gonna get the lantern, he's gonna come back to Nebraska. You really wind up enjoying the journey this way. And, not for nothing, that was a really fun, cool car chase scene, where they, two guys fall out of the back of a van and race each other through the middle of highway traffic.

• 27:44Andy Greenwald?

  I will say the show is very bullish on the human body, well, although we find out not everyone's human, but their ability to hit pavement, jumping out of cars, it's we're now two for two.

• 27:52Chris Ryan?

  Well, I don't know what's going on with either of those people.

• 27:54Andy Greenwald?

  The aliens know, but I do know that-

• 27:56Chris Ryan?

  But John, I don't know what's up with him either.

• 27:58Andy Greenwald?

  I know, they both have the sickest jackets in the universe, and they never take them off, and they never seem to scuff them in any way. But, I, that scene where a bunch of bald aliens tie him up in a office, and then, you know, veteran character actor Paul Ben Victor delivers a speech about how there is a creature that is the worst thing that has ever existed in the universe, doing mini Holocausts on every planet it comes to, and it's living in Nebraska, was so-

• 28:27Andy Greenwald?

  First of all, it was just beautifully staged, beautifully delivered, but it did the thing that the genre shows really struggle with, which was I was all the way in feeling stakes, feeling spooked, feeling disturbed by it. And in that, it was tying into, I think, one of the other important antecedents of the show, which is X-Files, which is this idea that there are so many conspiracies laid on top of conspiracies and so many people here who know more than you do, and they aren't talking to each other, and there's layers to this.

• 28:55Chris Ryan?

  So it's just such an expert way of handling IP where they're like, yeah, here's all this DC stuff. And you can totally be like, I've been waiting to hear somebody say, man, I've heard in a television show for my whole life. Or you can just be like, cool. So we get an Agatha Christie show where they're gonna have to find-

• 29:10Andy Greenwald?

  They have 48 hours to find a killer.

• 29:12Chris Ryan?

  Scooby Doo this guy. And on top of that, like, all of the mechanical stuff that Hal does with the dead bodies to be like, huh, this metal detector didn't go off when I walked through with a-

• 29:22Andy Greenwald?

  It's great.

• 29:22Chris Ryan?

  -piece of my car. So now I'm gonna feel like, what is it detecting then?

• 29:26Andy Greenwald?

  It's doing something that is incredible. Each side of what it's, each side of the divide that it's straddling is hard to do. And they are believable, engaging, emotionally real superhero stuff. And I'm outside of the matrix and I'm desperate to know what's going on inside of it, kind of conspiracy thrillers. It reminds me a little bit of, this is a really, really deep reference that I don't think many people will remember at all. But 20 plus years ago, the writer Jeff Jensen, who wrote about Lost, Free W, and then worked with Damon later on Watchmen, he, he wrote four issues of a comic from Marvel that they called X Factor, in between X Factor being just an X-Men book. And it

• 30:05Andy Greenwald?

  was basically about government investigators investigating mutant crimes. And it, it was, I remember it being decent and admirable, and they didn't really stick with it. But I thought of it for the first time in 20 years-

• 30:18Chris Ryan?

  I'm sure Damon saw it.

• 30:18Andy Greenwald?

  -watching this episode. Because it's like, what does it, it's, you know, the, the James Gunn thing that he introduced for the DCU is like gods and monsters, right? And it's just like, when you watch Superman movie, there is a delight in living in a world where these technicolor things and dogs can fly. There's this flip side of it.

• 30:38Chris Ryan?

  Is that what Hal flew over? Is that the Fortress of Solitude part of the-

• 30:41Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't even notice.

• 30:42Chris Ryan?

  Like the big ice crack in the ice there?

• 30:45Andy Greenwald?

  I guess so.

• 30:46Chris Ryan?

  I was just curious.

• 30:46Andy Greenwald?

  I was looking up to the stars, like Hal. But the flip side of it is you do a show like The Boys, where you're like, this is debased and appalling, and we have to be on the side of humanity here, you know? This show is doing something where it's like, yeah, okay, so you plug in the ring with a lantern and there's a guy in a space prison. Okay. But at the end of the day, we're all just dudes here trying to make, trying to, trying to figure it out.

• 31:07Chris Ryan?

  I also just love the fact that they're taking, like, I'm sure this is canonically accurate for the lantern stuff, but I, one thing that sort of played my adolescent brain in the last run, I think of Marvel specifically, is a kind of vagueness of power.

• 31:25Andy Greenwald?

  Totally.

• 31:26Chris Ryan?

  It's like, I just shoot shit, like-

• 31:27Andy Greenwald?

  Purple swirls.

• 31:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly. And I'm sure they all have like, their logic to them, but like, when watching on big screen, just like, so like, you just have power beams that, you know, like, you just have like an aura or whatever, like, and I love the fact that he has to recharge the ring.

• 31:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Who among us?

• 31:45Chris Ryan?

  Walking through a city all day. You can like hit the trunk and get like a little juice from it, but like, he has to, he has to recharge-

• 31:52Andy Greenwald?

  And he has to say his little, his little poem, too.

• 31:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:54Andy Greenwald?

  His little, his little credo.

• 31:55Chris Ryan?

  Cool. You like lanterns?

• 31:57Andy Greenwald?

  I really like lanterns. I was trying to think of, just to say to your point, like Wandavision, a show like Wandavision, even if, you know, ultimately, I don't know if I loved it, but like, what I admired most about it, especially the early episodes, was it took seriously the idea of having more time to think about something and give it some emotional grounding and investigate it and have an opinion about it and a point of view. Specifically, this woman, her powers, what she can do with them and what they've done to her and also to the world around her. And then you would see, because you would see her in an Avengers movie, and it's like, oh, no, Ultron, Wanda, quick. And she's like, red beams! Or something. Because that's not what it's about. It's about the fight and it's about whatever else is coming. Lantern seems to understand the assignment that if

• 32:40Andy Greenwald?

  you have time to think about it, use the time and think about it and have an opinion about it. Not just like, cool, he can counterfeit money and also fly in space.

• 32:48Chris Ryan?

  Right, right.

• 32:49Andy Greenwald?

  Although both of those things are pretty cool.

• 32:51Chris Ryan?

  Do you let yourself get carried away into being like, okay, so then who, who of what, who we've met so far is alien, possibly an alien?

• 33:01Andy Greenwald?

  No, I just, I just stopped on the threshold of, that's so cool. That, that someone is bad.

• 33:07Chris Ryan?

  I think that's healthy.

• 33:08Andy Greenwald?

  And they're, thank you. I'm trying to change.

• 33:10Chris Ryan?

  Thanks so much for joining me on the watch.

• 33:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, the show you and Van do to talk about.

• 33:15Chris Ryan?

  Me and Vandy Greenwald.

• 33:16Andy Greenwald?

  I think I like that more than he will like that.

• 33:20Chris Ryan?

  I think I'll enjoy it.

• 33:21Andy Greenwald?

  You think?

• 33:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm gonna try it out on him. Thanks for coming on.

• 33:24Andy Greenwald?

  You know what? You're welcome.

• 33:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:28Andy Greenwald?

  I hope you have me back sometime.

• 33:28Chris Ryan?

  See you two days.

• 33:29Andy Greenwald?

  No problem. Can't wait.

• 33:32Speaker 00

  If high interest credit card debt is keeping you up at night, you're not alone. Interest rates as high as 21% APR can do that to you. Rocket Mortgage can help. A home equity loan from Rocket Mortgage could cut your interest rate by more than half. So you could wipe out your high interest credit card debt without touching your current mortgage rate. See how much you could save at rocketmortgage.com. Rocket Mortgage LLC licensed in 50 states. NMLS Consumer Access.org number 3030. Call 8004-ROCKET for full program details.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is now streaming on Disney+.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  What are you waiting for? Hop on.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  The must see galactic adventure comes home on Disney+.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  This is the way. Our only chance is to work together. I'm alive, this kid. Always wear your seatbelt.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu now streaming on Disney+. Rated PG-13.

• 34:32Speaker 07

  Bonjour, compadre. It's the

• 34:36Speaker 07

  How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget, the Priceline app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, all of those deals in a bundle. Deals, game day deals, concert trip deals. No one deals more deals than Priceline. Hold your horses, there's more. The app lets you filter hotels by neighborhood, vibes, star level, and amenities like pools and spas and beachfronts. Wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting me off.

• 35:02Chris Ryan?

  The most memorable gifts aren't found, they're made. Zazzle is a custom marketplace where you pick any product. A mug, a card, a tote, a phone case, and make it personal. A photo, a name, an inside joke, the kind of gift that actually fits the person. That's what 30 million customers have been coming back to Zazzle for over 20 years to find. Right now, save 25% on your first order at zazzle.com. That's zazzle.com. Make it z-amazing. All right, brother, what's up? Thanks for joining me.

• 35:35Speaker 05

  No problem, man.

• 35:37Chris Ryan?

  You're the only person I can really talk to about this.

• 35:40Speaker 05

  Lioness?

• 35:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think so. I mean, Andy tried twice and I think we got a little bit derailed. I wish he was here today, though, because there's the first thing I want to talk to you about with this show, which has aired four episodes of its third season, is something that I think he would be adept at discussing, which is like the structure of this season.

• 36:02Chris Ryan?

  I think that this in some ways is the most successful season of Lioness because it's the season that has involved the most characters most directly. If there is a flaw to the idea, it's that they are running an agent who's doing most of the stuff in some far flung place in typical past seasons of Lioness. Now, everybody is kind of in play, right? Like, and the way that they're dramatizing that is with this two timeline structure of this season, which is honestly fucking bonkers, the way they're running this.

• 36:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:33Chris Ryan?

  On a basic level, how is your tracking of this season going in terms of like, this is happening now, quote unquote, versus this is happening six months prior?

• 36:44Speaker 05

  So I'm not having any problem with it at all.

• 36:46Chris Ryan?

  Me neither.

• 36:47Speaker 05

  Because I think

• 36:48Chris Ryan?

  But we're, we're close watchers.

• 36:50Speaker 05

  We're close watchers. But I think the tone of the two different timelines is so distinct.

• 36:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:56Speaker 05

  One is obviously Joe in this perilous situation where she's being tortured. And that's her name, Jo, right?

• 37:05Chris Ryan?

  Jo.

• 37:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, where she's being, you looked at

• 37:08Chris Ryan?

  D Lioness.

• 37:09Speaker 05

  D Lioness.

• 37:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:10Speaker 05

  Where she's being tortured. And, you know, she's away from her family and everyone's trying to get to her. And there's a tense, tense sort of almost powder keg of a situation that exists of a, of a, of a tone that exists during that time, right? Because like, her being captured by the Russians means everything can fall apart. And

• 37:32Chris Ryan?

  They really lay that out in this episode.

• 37:33Speaker 05

  In this episode, for sure. In the other timeline, she is free and at the focal point of trying to understand how deep the rabbit hole goes. So when they switch back and forth, and they don't really tell you.

• 37:45Chris Ryan?

  Nope.

• 37:45Speaker 05

  They go boom, boom, boom. Like, at the end of this episode, Nicole Kidman's character goes back to talk to the husband, which is, shout out to that guy.

• 37:54Chris Ryan?

  TVM.

• 37:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, because a shout out to him because he is playing the most sensitive, vulnerable, yeah. And he's doing a good job of it, but he looks like he should be one of the Delta Force guys, right? When you, when you look at it. And they don't, the only time I was like, huh, where are we? Is they don't tell you which timeline they're in.

• 38:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you could only tell because in the six months prior timeline, the past timeline, they're living at like a military base.

• 38:23Speaker 05

  Right.

• 38:23Chris Ryan?

  But the house that they live at, at the military base is not altogether different than the house they look like in the suburbs. I think it's like, you know, Andy talks a lot about Taylor doesn't get any notes. And that Taylor, in his way, is like, what happens when nobody is like, that's not clear? Hey, this is a little complicated. Why don't you just tell this in a linear fashion? I'll be really curious to see, once this season concludes, whether or not this dual timeline thing makes sense. Because you could just as easily, at the sixth episode or at the end of the fifth episode, be like, we've concluded this first timeline and now Zoe Zaldania has been kidnapped. You know, like at the end of it. And then the second half of the season is getting her back.

• 39:08Chris Ryan?

  My understanding, or at least my guess about this, is that something is going to happen, obviously, in this earlier timeline, in this past timeline, where they're working with this Ukrainian double agent to assess what honey trap, honeypot traps, or whatever they've got going on with senators and professors and all these things. That's going to blow up in their face and that's why she gets taken later? But, you know, I mean, in the meantime, the only thing that's hard to track is like, well, at what point would like, wouldn't, wouldn't it just have gotten out? Kind of like, so I, I don't know. But I've, I have a bunch of questions about this season for you.

• 39:44Speaker 05

  So the interesting thing to me is how these two timelines relate to one another. Like, at first I was thinking, did she allow herself to get captured? Was all it is like a ruse so they, she could get to the inside and learn something about? That seems to not be the case now, uh, cause.

• 40:02Chris Ryan?

  She seems pretty upset about being there.

• 40:03Speaker 05

  She seems pretty upset about being there. She's getting Chinese water torture. And then the political blowback that could come from this is so severe. Like this geopolitical destabilization is so severe. It doesn't seem like they would play with that.

• 40:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it would be, it'd involve Iran, Israel and Hezbollah and all this stuff. According to the geopolitical world of lioness, although I suppose plausible enough.

• 40:26Speaker 05

  Right. So the thing that I love about this season more than past seasons is I was actually getting sick of the, alright, we're gonna take you, we're gonna make you a lioness and you have to turn your back on everything you love. Can you do it?

• 40:41Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 40:41Speaker 05

  I was like, I didn't want to go back to that well again, right? And so making this, orienting this around Joe and like how important she is, it kind of deepens your understanding of the character, how much trade craft she has in her head, how important she is. Just the, the high stakes nature of what it is that they do, mission to mission. And how her family, even though we always knew that they were on the outside, they had this relationship with her, almost like the relationship that I would imagine a wife has with an NBA player. Well, you know what happens on the road, but it's better off that you just don't ask. Cause we need Nike contracts.

• 41:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:25Speaker 05

  And what happens when the girl on Instagram goes, guess what? In Portland, after the game, now that's broken. Now you gotta have the real family talk. And that's what's happening with her. What's happening with her right now is that the girl from Instagram came to the front door. And now the thing that the family always knew, the fact that she was living this really dangerous sort of soldier's life, they have to contend with it in the front of their minds. And that is also interesting.

• 41:57Chris Ryan?

  They do so, or Joe does so in the six months prior plotline. Even though they are living on a military base, she gives her surgeon husband, like a Glock.

• 42:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, she's a go learn how to shoot.

• 42:09Chris Ryan?

  And he's like, we both took oaths. I took the Hippocratic oath and she was like, your oath is basically useless or nobody else has that oath in the world. And I was like, this is just like, I think the thing that's funny to me about this.

• 42:24Speaker 05

  That scene is hilarious. Hold on for a second. Don't try to like, we love, we both love Big T, man. That's a funny scene.

• 42:30Chris Ryan?

  It's like, there's multiple scenes that are funny because the thing that's been happening recently on this show is that someone will just do like a prolonged podcast monologue.

• 42:41Speaker 05

  Yes, I know.

• 42:42Chris Ryan?

  And nobody is like, what?

• 42:44Speaker 05

  What the fuck are you talking about?

• 42:45Chris Ryan?

  Like when they, when Joe's getting tortured and this dude is like, we dropped COVID on you so that you would realize you had no freedom and now you want a fascist dictator and that's what, that was the whole plan. And Joe's just like, you know.

• 43:00Speaker 05

  Those, but then Joe has one as well.

• 43:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 43:03Speaker 05

  So those are getting.

• 43:05Chris Ryan?

  Wants your country. Yeah.

• 43:06Speaker 05

  Those are getting much more pronounced. Do you remember the Truman Show?

• 43:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, of course.

• 43:10Speaker 05

  Do you remember the Truman Show when Truman's wife does that commercial?

• 43:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:15Speaker 05

  And he goes, what the hell are you talking about?

• 43:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:19Speaker 05

  Like, who are you talking to? Like, at this point, he knows that he's in the television show.

• 43:23Chris Ryan?

  They let, like, the Russian ambassador or diplomat that Byron goes and meets within a restaurant, uh, at one point in this past episode where he's just like, just runs down the five talking points of Russia about the Ukrainian conflict where he's just like, that belongs to us.

• 43:39Speaker 05

  That used to be our bread basket, the whole nine.

• 43:41Chris Ryan?

  And all, and just like, they're just corrupt, like grifters over there. And Byron's just like, yep.

• 43:46Speaker 05

  I, I just keep waiting for somebody to go, yo, man.

• 43:51Speaker 05

  What are you doing? Like, what, like, what are you, like?

• 43:55Chris Ryan?

  It would be great if we could be on this show as like data entry dudes and like somebody would be talking, like Kyle would be like, and that's why I did an extrajudicial killing day. And we were like, what? What'd you do?

• 44:09Chris Ryan?

  God, I forgot to tell you, you gotta pay up for fantasy football. But did you see you kill the Russian diplomat? In front of everybody in a, in a fucking airplane?

• 44:19Speaker 05

  It's like, it's, it's like, when she was giving him the whole, the, the world's always been like this. Like, I wanted him to be like, I wanted him to just straight go, bitch, are you out of your mind? What are you doing? Like, what are you talking about? Like, I don't give a fuck. I'm a doctor. I don't want to kill.

• 44:34Chris Ryan?

  That's actually the thing is nobody on any of these shows is ever like, what the fuck are you talking about?

• 44:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, because.

• 44:39Chris Ryan?

  Or even, I respectfully, I disagree with some of these things.

• 44:43Speaker 05

  Right. So, and then the thing about it for me is over the course of the season, it almost feels like, and this is the interesting thing with lioness, the interesting with lioness is I'm of the LA lefties.

• 44:58Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 44:59Speaker 05

  Like the true LA lefties and they are loving this show. Like they are loving the 92%. I'm talking about a lot of black ladies that I know. That are going out, we talking about Kamala Harris, Jasmine Crockett, my sisters in the 92%. They love.

• 45:19Chris Ryan?

  Kamala and Jasmine liked lioness?

• 45:21Speaker 05

  I don't think that they do, but I think that a lot of the women that I know love them are loving this show.

• 45:26Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 45:26Speaker 05

  Number one, it has a strong black female lead who is in control of a whole, who's busting ass. And number two, it doesn't feel like the world is too big for her. It doesn't feel like anything is too big for her. She always seems like she's in control. But it's interesting to me that the show is so heavy handed with its obvious, and we've talked about this before ad nauseam, it's obvious political programming, but it doesn't take away from any of the narrative of the show. You almost feel like this is the way those people would have to think.

• 45:55Chris Ryan?

  I think that, you know, it's funny because I was, I was thinking the other day, you, you read a lot about like what's hap, what happens after Trump to the right and what happened. And I, it's like, I saw somebody be like, this shit all dies with him. Like there's nobody is like particularly uniquely charismatic as him. And he's like this figurehead of this movement and the second he goes away, it goes away. And I was like, I don't agree with that necessarily, but what I really don't agree with is that, like, this sort of like, I know better, because I saw something on the internet once, like mentality will not go away. And you could kind of feel like the bones of that sometimes in this show of like, people just

• 46:36Chris Ryan?

  being like, yeah, this is what COVID was. That's what Hezbollah does. And I'm like, where'd you read that?

• 46:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:42Chris Ryan?

  You know what I mean? Maybe some of the things that they say may even have like a gradient of truth or, or, or interest, but like, I'm like, what are your, where are you sourcing this from?

• 46:52Speaker 05

  Can I ask you a question? Is there a part of us, deep down, like take James Bond, for example. Like James Bond gets told in the movie, your license to kill is revoked. And that's like a big deal.

• 47:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:05Speaker 05

  We're like, oh shit, James Bond just can't kill anybody who, who he wants in the swords. He's gotta get that back. He's gotta get his license to kill back. Who is James Bond if he just can't kill somebody when he needs to kill him?

• 47:15Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 47:15Speaker 05

  Because isn't there a part of us, no matter what we think, that believes that certain people like have to be like James Bond, that certain people have to be like Joe, that they have to be like how.

• 47:27Chris Ryan?

  This episode kind of articulates that. I think so that in the world of like espionage fiction and movies and TV shows, there's like a trope of, and I think it's true for a certain era of, of spycraft or whatever, where there were like London rules and Moscow rules and Berlin rules. And they were different. Like you didn't, didn't do certain things in certain cities because the governments of those cities or the governments of those countries would allow it. These were the things, like if you go to Moscow, it's gonna be like this. If you go to Berlin, it might be like that. But in London, we don't do that. You, it's all like following each other, but there's no hardcore violence that is beset, befalls upon people. And I think what this show is trying to do is that,

• 48:09Chris Ryan?

  that, that whole, like a lot of other things, that order, those rules have been done away with by guys like Kyle, who are operating with a green light from people like Caitlyn to get what they need no matter what. And that, you know, like Kyle, like that scene is pretty electrifying as like a thriller scene, but his justification of it, while he hilariously like just downs a bag of almonds is, you know, the entire premise of what I'm talking about, that the idea of like the old rules are not applying to this.

• 48:41Speaker 05

  And also though, he, in that scene, I think that's a scene that illustrates what's so good about this season of the show. In that scene, he just knows more than they do. Because this show does something that I don't know that I've seen another show be able to do, which is separate the spheres of expertise between different levers of like the government, right? So the Delta guys are there. And when you are like taking a guy in Ukraine, nobody beats the Delta guys, right? But then the spy guys know the rules of the spy stuff.

• 49:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:17Speaker 05

  And so then the soldiers who are essentially her hammer, those guys like Green Beret Marines, all of those, they're in the dark there.

• 49:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:24Speaker 05

  And then she's in the dark when the upper level government people are negotiating.

• 49:30Chris Ryan?

  Like here's what we are and are not willing to like give up or do.

• 49:32Speaker 05

  Right. Like, like, and then the secretary of state is actually at his wits end when he says, we gotta tell the president, Morgan Freeman, we gotta tell the president.

• 49:41Chris Ryan?

  Freeman's in this show.

• 49:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, but it pops up every now and again.

• 49:44Chris Ryan?

  He pops up a lot. They may have block shot him out, but like Morgan Freeman's in this show frequently.

• 49:50Speaker 05

  Yeah. So he's like, gotta tell the president. I disagree. The guy who's the, the director, the deputy director of the CIA, yeah, he, I don't see how you keep up with all of these names. I give you credit.

• 50:01Chris Ryan?

  I know Byron, I know Caitlyn. I don't know Morgan Freeman's name.

• 50:04Speaker 05

  I, I know Kyle, Caitlyn, Joe.

• 50:07Chris Ryan?

  I know, uh, I know Cruz.

• 50:11Speaker 05

  That I watch the show for.

• 50:12Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, Bobby.

• 50:14Speaker 05

  Right. So everyone has different jobs and those jobs run afoul of each other, but they're.

• 50:22Speaker 05

  They're playing together in this like.

• 50:24Chris Ryan?

  Oh, Josie's the other lioness.

• 50:25Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, I like that. Okay. They're playing together in this like brutal symphony to where everyone wears kind of each other's mistakes and has to also make up for it. Like that scene from the last episode where the two Delta guys go to the lady's house and she's in the Ukraine and they're trying to extract it. Just the show is.

• 50:49Chris Ryan?

  And then they're like, sorry. Sorry, it could be easier.

• 50:53Speaker 05

  We're sorry.

• 50:53Chris Ryan?

  Um, if I could compare this, I realized this yesterday because like it's such a, it's so easy to watch this show. Like when I do it, I'm just like, I can't believe it's over already. And the.

• 51:06Speaker 05

  I was bothering you on vacation.

• 51:08Chris Ryan?

  Last time I felt that way where I'm like, I can feel my blood quicken as I'm watching a TV show. I think I haven't felt that from a TV show since 24.

• 51:18Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:19Chris Ryan?

  Where you're like, I wish there was another episode right now. I can't wait till next week, et cetera. But even in Lioness, when it's like stupid scenes of people talking with each other, just the crazy shit they say. I'm like, I'm actually dialed in on this because I want to hear what nut bar thing Michael Kelly is going to say to a Russian diplomat or to whoever, you know, what's Caitlyn gonna say to Neil when she's like, fucking man up, your wife's been redacted, you know, like.

• 51:50Speaker 05

  The 24 comparison is interesting because 24 comes out in, I guess, the afterglow or the remnants of 9/11.

• 52:01Chris Ryan?

  The war on terror, yeah.

• 52:02Speaker 05

  And so you're wondering, what would guys like that, guys that would save.

• 52:07Chris Ryan?

  What would Jack Bauer do if he could listen to podcasts?

• 52:10Speaker 05

  If he could listen to podcasts, right? Like how, who are, who are those guys, right? And then this show comes along. Yeah, it gives you that. And in this situation, there's so much happening. So when you hear Iran, Hezbollah, Israel, Russia, the United States, at first we were talking about Mexico.

• 52:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:30Speaker 05

  And Mexico's connections to China and all of this stuff. You believe this. You believe that, once again, this is how these people would have to be.

• 52:38Chris Ryan?

  The funny thing about it is that there's so many things where it's clear that whether it's because Taylor Sheridan wants to say something that he believes about the world or whether there's just, there needs to be verisimilitude. So you've mentioned Hezbollah and you mentioned this and you mentioned that, but they never mentioned Trump. Like there is a, there is a hole in the middle of this that is like, who is this, like when it was written Biden was president, like initially. And it's not that I expect them to acknowledge Trump by name because that would date the show in more significant ways than mentioning the Middle East or mentioning Mexico or mentioning China. But it is, it is interesting that that that is like skipped over.

• 53:16Speaker 05

  So it's interesting and I think it's intentional.

• 53:19Chris Ryan?

  Of course.

• 53:20Speaker 05

  Because I think that Trump's brand of politics, in a way, even amongst conservatives, is still really singular. And it's.

• 53:32Chris Ryan?

  It's transactional.

• 53:33Speaker 05

  It's transactional and toxic in a way that doesn't lend itself to, we are preserving freedom. This is for the greater good of the way of life of America. Trumpism isn't really that. So if you inject that into this, it becomes about the will of Donald Trump and not about the kind of bird's eye view that the show wants you to operate with.

• 53:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:55Speaker 05

  So this is really an appeal for old school conservatism. The neo cons of like 1987 and in 1997.

• 54:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 54:06Speaker 05

  The people that said, you know, we just gotta go in and do bad shit sometimes. This is like almost from their world. Like even in this show, they almost hearken back in this episode, they hearken back.

• 54:17Chris Ryan?

  To the Cold War.

• 54:18Speaker 05

  To the Cold War.

• 54:18Chris Ryan?

  When they're, and when that woman's like, I don't remember the Cold War and Caitlyn's like, me neither. It's just what I imagine it was like.

• 54:24Speaker 05

  Oh, I would imagine it was like, like I was in school when I was going, I imagine it would be like that. But it almost feels like they want that.

• 54:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:31Speaker 05

  Like, that's how they feel about it.

• 54:33Chris Ryan?

  Because it was like, that was one, that was a time when it was two ideologies that were very clearly like opposed to one another that were on like, it was just like, you believe in this and we believe in that. And then like, we're going to do all this stuff globally to like, have this chess game about it. In any case, I wanted to ask you about a couple of different characters on the show, specifically, uh, the lionesses. They, they've been, it's, I, I can't remember a show that's done this before where they'll have somebody be basically the focal point of a season of TV and then become part of the supporting cast.

• 55:13Speaker 05

  Right.

• 55:14Chris Ryan?

  And so Josie, which is last season's lioness and Cruz, who was the first season's lioness, are now just like, A, in love.

• 55:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 55:22Chris Ryan?

  I'm happy for them.

• 55:23Speaker 05

  I'm just saying.

• 55:23Chris Ryan?

  And B, part of the crew that rolls around, even though Josie is just essentially the helicopter.

• 55:30Speaker 05

  Pilot.

• 55:30Chris Ryan?

  Pilot.

• 55:31Speaker 05

  Marine girl.

• 55:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And they go to a nightclub as part of an undercover operation.

• 55:36Speaker 05

  Sensual.

• 55:37Chris Ryan?

  Did you think Joe was like, what are they doing? Or was she like, no, great acting. You guys are doing great. Like, is their relationship secret?

• 55:44Speaker 05

  I don't think it's secret. I think that the show.

• 55:48Chris Ryan?

  I mean, who would understand a lioness better than another lioness? You know what I mean?

• 55:51Speaker 05

  I think that we see them in their intimate moments, their sizzling intimate moments. It's fantastic. And I think when Joe looks at, when Joe looks at the rest of her team, sometimes she looks at them as kids.

• 56:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:03Speaker 05

  And she's like, I'll let them do their thing.

• 56:05Chris Ryan?

  Do you think that was a, um, accurate representation of nightclub life?

• 56:10Speaker 05

  I don't know. I thought that, when that scene first started, I thought that they were in Moscow. That looked like John Wick was about to bust in that bitch. I'm like, where is that at?

• 56:16Chris Ryan?

  Well, the funny thing about this season is of all the things that are confusing about it, the addition of longitude and latitude, as if I need the longitude and latitude of Baltimore. It's like, I, I, I'm familiar broadly with where Baltimore is. And it's like, even when you throw up the longitude and latitude of a Ukrainian battlefield, I'm like, I'm not going to.

• 56:37Speaker 05

  That doesn't help me.

• 56:38Chris Ryan?

  I'm not going to Google Maps and entering that. Like, I believe you.

• 56:41Speaker 05

  But that's just, that's just like for the, we're fucking soldiers, bro. This is the way that we talk. But even in that, you know, the lionesses and like Joe's crew and the things that they do, sometimes it almost feels like it's dragging the show down at this point. The show has such an energy that moves forward based upon, it's just not the same show it was from season one to season two.

• 57:07Chris Ryan?

  I think that's good. That's what TV used to do.

• 57:09Speaker 05

  Of course. All of the tension was in, will they be found out? Will this op work? Now, all of these things are so much broader and more dramatic.

• 57:18Chris Ryan?

  I could have swore that the lioness program was like, once you finish your mission, you're retired.

• 57:23Speaker 05

  It hasn't happened.

• 57:23Chris Ryan?

  They have to like, you have to disappear because it's so dangerous.

• 57:27Speaker 05

  Well, the first thing we see is Joe like blowing up.

• 57:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know what I mean? So, so like, I didn't know, but now they just, they're collecting lionesses.

• 57:36Chris Ryan?

  Um, it's an incredible series. It's an incredible show. It's problematic. It's also like one of the most entertaining things that's been on the last couple of years.

• 57:45Speaker 05

  Did you say, do you know that like, I, I don't know.

• 57:49Chris Ryan?

  You want me not to say it's problematic?

• 57:51Speaker 05

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

• 57:52Chris Ryan?

  Is that what you're gonna say?

• 57:53Speaker 05

  I'm just saying, the show does feel like a release in a way for me. It feels like a vacation for me, having to be either hypercritical or, uh, I, I, it, for preservation right now, being politically aware, I would not, I'm not discouraging that for anyone. But it almost feels like.

• 58:17Chris Ryan?

  Tavol outlets?

• 58:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's like, back in the day, you're watching like, my dad used to love westerns. And the politics of a western aren't very good.

• 58:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:26Speaker 05

  But they are what they are. And the fucking fastest gun wins, the dude, he kills the bad guy, then that maids he gets the girl, right? It's, it's, it's simple in its construction, but you just like release into the world. And I don't really think about a lot of these things when I'm watching the show. I'm educated enough to know that some of the shit that's being put out there is kind of Taylor Sheridan's bullshit. Like, he, like, I love Taylor Sheridan, but he made himself the most badass Delta guy.

• 58:58Chris Ryan?

  Said.

• 58:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:59Chris Ryan?

  To, to Bill, I fuck with people and I put this stuff in these shows to drive people crazy, you know? Like, I think he has, I think he is just like in a unique situation where his success has given him the artistic freedom to basically make what he wants. And what he wants to make is a hyper modern Hunt for an October type.

• 59:21Speaker 05

  Certainly.

• 59:22Chris Ryan?

  Tom Clancy show.

• 59:23Speaker 05

  I'll say it more concisely, which people always want me to do, but sometimes I struggle to do. I was unaware that I could still be confronted with politics that I didn't believe in or agree with and not be offended by them.

• 59:39Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's a good way to put it.

• 59:40Speaker 05

  It's just been so long since that was a thing.

• 59:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:44Speaker 05

  That watching this show almost kind of reminds me of a time when someone would say something and I would be like, that's bullshit, but it wouldn't ruin my whole day knowing that they were around.

• 59:54Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 59:54Speaker 05

  And so like, a lot of the shit that I hear in this show, I, I'm like, that's, that's probably not the way I look at that.

• 1:00:06Speaker 05

  But it doesn't mean I go, D platform, turn it off, cancel Paramount, you know what I mean?

• 1:00:11Chris Ryan?

  No, it's entertaining, it's a good thriller. It's just, it's weird that there's a thriller that has like about nine minutes per episode of just like-

• 1:00:19Speaker 05

  They are going, they did it like four times in this one.

• 1:00:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 05

  Joe did it to the guy, then it happens at the dinner or whatever. Then it happens again, Joe gets one off to the Russian torture guy and he gets one off.

• 1:00:32Chris Ryan?

  Husband that like-

• 1:00:33Speaker 05

  You don't know shit.

• 1:00:34Chris Ryan?

  And you think that I'm some distiformity and this like disgusting outgrowth of like a military industrial system, but she's like, what about Jesus? What about how we killed this Pharaoh? You know, like, and it's just like, I guess that sometimes I'm just like, yeah, you're right. I just want to turn my burn off and be like, damn, they killed a Pharaoh like that too.

• 1:00:54Speaker 05

  What about the fact that she knows the complete human history of political assassination? From the beginning, does, does that ring more true? Or does that seem like some bullshit that would be in a model odd that like somebody like that would know? Cause to me, when I looked at that, I'm like, well, if she truly believes this, it almost would make sense.

• 1:01:15Chris Ryan?

  That she has like justifications in her head. And it's like that, and I think that is what like the characters tell each other is that they are like an essential component of a functioning society.

• 1:01:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:26Chris Ryan?

  Uh, before I let you go, I just wanted to get your lanterns talk. Your thoughts?

• 1:01:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:30Chris Ryan?

  Like, uh, two episodes have aired. Andy and I chatted a little bit about that. I thought this episode was fantastic. Um, and I thought, um, I was curious whether or not you, you were like surprised at anything about this show or whether or not there were elements of this show that like you took any issues with, or whether you're just like blindly like, I'm, I'm all in on this.

• 1:01:56Speaker 05

  Uh, I legitimately, two things about the show. Two characters haven't had a handle on a superhero like this since Hugh Jackman and Wolverine. Maybe Tony Stark, Iron Man, like this Jon Stewart and this Hal Jordan ring so accurate and true to me that the entire world of this show can be propelled by those two performances. Aaron Pierre is something else, bro. Like he legitimately does like small things in his embodiment of a character that just make you completely believe in the character itself.

• 1:02:32Chris Ryan?

  The difference, he's a very subtle performer.

• 1:02:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, he is.

• 1:02:36Chris Ryan?

  And he's a great action star and he's a great actor. But I was talking to Andy about, you know, if they had kept him in Nebraska

• 1:02:46Chris Ryan?

  and the whole show is like this slow progression of him being like, whatever you say, sir. But kind of a little bit, you know, with an edge. I think that would have been fine, but the fact that they sent him out on an adventure and he came back changed. And the way that he is performing those changes, I thought in the, at that motel parking lot scene was so good. The exhaustion, the, that he's like, I'm over you, I'm over your bits. You know what I mean? I'm over like all of this and whatever he saw that they showed him, but the Manhunter did like, I just thought it's like, it was really expert writing, but it was even more so like a really wonderful, wonderful piece of acting.

• 1:03:24Speaker 05

  I think the decision in this show to ground it

• 1:03:30Speaker 05

  then makes the, the, uh, you know, you're, it, it makes the storytelling about relationships and expectations. And that is just how you get to know characters, man. It really doesn't matter how much CGI you have. Whatever story that you have are, is going to be about relationships and expectations. What the characters expect to get, what they actually get, what they think they know, and then what they find out. And it's difficult to do that with superheroes sometimes because you want to see the Green Lantern make a gigantic fist and then punch somebody in the face with it. But that's not what you want. You want to see the hero's journey of the Green Lantern and understand how that ring, which comes from this extraterrestrial, uh, space protecting guild, right? How that changes a person's orientation with the rest of humanity.

• 1:04:14Speaker 05

  And that's, this show is starting there and working to everything else. The decision in this episode to have Hal's ring lose its charge.

• 1:04:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:25Speaker 05

  And so, I mean, that's happened in the comics before it happened in Greenland.

• 1:04:28Chris Ryan?

  He's like, go get my battery.

• 1:04:29Speaker 05

  Go get my battery. So you gotta go get the battery to come and charge my power back up. Like that's your deal. How do you keep yours, which is what he does with the bird the entire time? How do you keep your power by going to get something to charge up my power? To exalt me. And then he's still got to be useful in the town without the ring. The ring is not a source of Hal Jordan's power.

• 1:04:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:54Speaker 05

  His fearlessness, his guile, his wit and intelligence is. I just think the show is like operating in that way to a degree that I really did not expect it to be able to.

• 1:05:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And you've got a collection of very experienced, very, very, very good writers.

• 1:05:09Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 1:05:09Chris Ryan?

  Who were able to make, um, Hal and Carrie in the hospital room or Zoe and John at the diner or, uh, the Garrett Dillahun character making, but I can't remember. Him on the horse and, and Hal at the gates there. Those, those scenes sing.

• 1:05:28Speaker 05

  Scene work.

• 1:05:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, man.

• 1:05:29Speaker 05

  It's just scene work. Doesn't matter how, how, how fast you can fly. Scene work is gotta come first, like, and the fact that this show is actually like penetrating into a different audience and making people care about the Green Lantern. It's doing really well right now.

• 1:05:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And I think also like for some people, DC stuff generally, but Greenlanders specifically is something I just, I honestly don't know anything about it. Like I, I didn't, I don't have a priors, I don't have a Hal Jordan, Jon Stewart, anything on a favorite lantern. And so I'm watching this and I'm, I'm enjoying both sides of it. I'm enjoying the like stated, true detective, grounded mystery of it. But I also am finding the like extraterrestrial element pretty entertaining.

• 1:06:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:06:12Chris Ryan?

  Um, so they're doing a great job with it. Uh, thank you so much for coming by. Um, Higher Learning, Ringer Tailgate, Midnight Boys, Van Lathan. Thanks for joining me on the watch. We'll be back on Thursday. Thanks to Kai and Kai and Sarah and everybody for producing. Talk to you soon.