‘The White Lotus’ S3E2, ‘Severance’ S2E6, and ‘Zero Day’

Chris and Andy break down the latest episode of ‘The White Lotus’ (1:00) and power rank who their favorite groups of characters are so far (18:53). Then they talk about the last two episodes of ‘Severance’ and how one of things the show seems most interested in is bodily autonomy (31:24). Finally, they discuss why, despite the all-star cast of Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, and Connie Britton, ‘Zero Day’ is a major miss (48:12). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Senior Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Production: Chris Thomas and Stefano Sanchez 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.

• 0:00Andy Greenwald?

  I ain't sports staff to play in the room.

• 0:03Chris Ryan?

  Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. And joining me on the other line, his idea of wellness is a cold pint of Guinness and some good theater, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 0:23Andy Greenwald?

  I've had the best Spotify wellness week I've ever had.

• 0:26Chris Ryan?

  What's up, man? Good to see you.

• 0:28Andy Greenwald?

  This feels great. You're in Spotify LA. I'm in Spotify UK.

• 0:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 0:32Andy Greenwald?

  Things are much classier here, I have to tell you. Just had some tea. They actually had fruit here. That was different.

• 0:40Chris Ryan?

  Is there like a, is there British Kaia? Is it like Innes and Outies? Kaia doesn't know that she also lives in Los Angeles.

• 0:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, the weird thing about British Kaia, she just reads a lot of modern novels.

• 0:52Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 0:53Andy Greenwald?

  It's like, it's incredible how different they are.

• 0:57Chris Ryan?

  Greenwald, it's great to see you, man. We've been away from folks. We didn't do a show last Thursday. Just some quick housekeeping. Watch us on ringer-tv on YouTube. You can watch us on the Watch feed on Spotify as we are on video on Spotify. Follow us on Instagram, the watch pod underscore. Email us at the watch at spotify.com. I now memorize all of those data points. It's.

• 1:21Andy Greenwald?

  Chris, is my feed available only on spotify.co.uk or is that?

• 1:26Chris Ryan?

  You have to get a VPN and bounce the signal around a couple places. Much like the cyber attackers in Zero Day, which I think we are going to talk about a little bit, the new Netflix show. Andy and I are also going to talk about White Lotus, but I thought maybe, do you want to talk, start at Severance? Do you want to do a temp check at Severance?

• 1:43Andy Greenwald?

  No, I want to start with White Lotus.

• 1:45Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay. Let's start with White Lotus.

• 1:47Andy Greenwald?

  Or, or do you want to talk, like, do you want to do any cultural check-ins of the general, like, I mean, I know we have a lot on our plate.

• 1:53Chris Ryan?

  We have a little bit of a clock today. I'm trying to think if I had any mad, crazy observations over the weekend. It was, it was a kind of a hoops-heavy weekend in the Solo Ryan household. So if you want to talk Ant and you want to talk Shay and you want to talk Jimmy and Steph, I'm here. But, no? Okay.

• 2:13Andy Greenwald?

  No. I mean, basketball's dead to me now.

• 2:15Chris Ryan?

  You want to talk about Liverpool?

• 2:15Andy Greenwald?

  I have 50 events the last week. Liverpool ascendant? That's nice.

• 2:19Chris Ryan?

  You know what was cool yesterday is Liverpool essentially, we're not going to say they clinched the title because mathematically they did not, but they beat Manchester City at. At a head yesterday.

• 2:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 2:30Chris Ryan?

  And I was like, oh, God, this feels so good. This feels so good. And then my former colleague Kevin Clark hit me with a tweet that I had not seen, which was a picture of our new FBI director Cash Patel, walking down the halls of justice, wearing a Liverpool tie.

• 2:49Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, is that better or worse than when I found out that Justice Samuel Alito is a diehard Phillies fan? Do you know what I mean? It's just like, how big is our tent?

• 2:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I know, I know.

• 3:01Andy Greenwald?

  I want to give a small shout out to one of the rare pleasures, not rare pleasures, one of the unique pleasures of London, which is the chance to see the Bard, to see wonderful productions of Shakespeare, starring mostly actors from the Avengers films.

• 3:16Andy Greenwald?

  I saw Much Ado About Nothing with Loki and Captain Peggy Carter. It was great. They're phenomenal. And actually, I must say, I feel like their mass market fandom brought a very, very excited and rowdy crowd.

• 3:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:31Andy Greenwald?

  To the Drury Lane, and it felt really like lively in a good way. It was really, it was terrific.

• 3:36Chris Ryan?

  Lot of call and response on Shakespearean?

• 3:40Andy Greenwald?

  No, but I'll say, well, first of all, the whole production, it's awesome, was directed by Jamie Lloyd, and it's very like dance pop, so they were playing basement jacks like in the theater before it started, which really makes more sense, I think, when you're not seeing a matinee, although that did not stop the ladies from, once they checked their, there were a couple of ladies in the theater, once they got their ticket scanned, they went straight to the one of the multiple bars, and were just getting espresso martinis down before the show started. But the show is very like self referential, so Hiddleston is definitely like hamming it up a little bit, and then there actually is an element, I feel like I can spoil this, because I don't know how many of our listeners are really seeing Shakespeare for the, you know, the reveals.

• 4:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, right.

• 4:20Andy Greenwald?

  For like, the Redditors are really like, have their theories about what Benedict's really up to.

• 4:24Chris Ryan?

  I think Hamlet's dad might be an issue here.

• 4:27Andy Greenwald?

  Are we sure? This guy's on the up and up?

• 4:32Andy Greenwald?

  He says he was his mom's friend.

• 4:35Andy Greenwald?

  There's, they actually have Loki and Captain Carter cutouts as part of the show.

• 4:39Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 4:40Andy Greenwald?

  They steer right into.

• 4:41Chris Ryan?

  Does Disney get a piece of that?

• 4:43Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think I just blew up the theater Royal Adъръй Lane's whole shit?

• 4:47Chris Ryan?

  Someone in Burbank is like, knuckles crack. Time to sue England.

• 4:53Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, sure. So that was fun.

• 4:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so we have, it's funny you should mention the, the people, redditors and reveals and stuff like that. So what we're talking about today are these three shows, White Lotus, Severance, and Zero Day.

• 5:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 5:09Chris Ryan?

  And I definitely think I would recommend not watching these three clustered together. Because what happens is, especially with Paradise, kind of by the dashboard light over there, like on Hulu.

• 5:23Andy Greenwald?

  Paradise just got renewed, by the way.

• 5:25Chris Ryan?

  I saw that. Uh, as a personal statement, I think I may need to take a timeout from Paradise, if only for this reason, Andy.

• 5:33Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 5:34Chris Ryan?

  A man can only have so many shows that are entirely premised on like the mystery.

• 5:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I'm ready for this talk. Let's do this.

• 5:41Chris Ryan?

  And, and the creeping, crawling, like inch by inch, like, we didn't know this about that guy. And.

• 5:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:52Chris Ryan?

  I sometimes forget, because you and I love these kinds of shows generally. We love chatting about like, oh, what do you think's gonna happen here? And what do you think that meant? And stuff like that. Historically, like, you know, we wanted to know who killed Laura Palmer. We wanted these, these crazy kids to get off that island.

• 6:11Andy Greenwald?

  And then get back.

• 6:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I wanted to know what method of torture Jack Bauer would use that broke the Geneva Convention. That was my mystery box. But.

• 6:22Andy Greenwald?

  I felt like there was a little callback to 24 and Zero Day, but, but we'll get there.

• 6:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. But it's kind of interesting to watch multiple shows at the same time and realize that there's really the part of your brain that it's mostly engaging is guessing and trying to keep up with or get ahead of the plot. And I'm not sure it's my favorite way to watch TV. It's certainly not the only way I like watching TV. Do you understand what I'm saying, though, when you?

• 6:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, so I think that there's been a movement. I mean, there's a word for this kind of thing now that you hear in a lot of different fields, and it's gamify, right? Like, how can we gamify this experience? How can we make? And you hear it a lot like in the people who work in these larger companies when they're trying to develop their IP for amusement parks or for even for theatrical events. It's like, how can we draw the viewer or the audience member or the customer in?

• 7:16Chris Ryan?

  Well, apparently, it's Spaceman Jackson espresso martinis is how you.

• 7:19Andy Greenwald?

  That's all I need. And for me, to be clear, it was watching the people drink the espresso martinis. That is, it was 2 o'clock in the afternoon. I like to have my espressos before it and my martinis after it, and then the theater in the middle. But I do think it is a potentially, okay, whether I like it or not aesthetically or artistically is one thing, but it does seem to be, there does seem to be some intentionality behind it in terms of how do we stand out? How do we get people to pay attention? How do we get people to put down their phones or make having their phones part of the experience because they're cross referencing things and looking things up on Reddit or asking questions? Like, these are all artillery in the war against the entropy of our attention. So I kind of

• 8:03Andy Greenwald?

  get it. I think, though, what you're also responding to is the balancing act. And in all three shows you mentioned, I think they're they are of varying degrees of quality. I am fans of them in not in the same way. But I wonder if what you're saying, while we're talking for as long as we're talking about them generally, is that you feel the creep of gamification even in a show like I'm gonna Guess White Lotus, which, for example, I have never once watched for the mystery. I'm not saying it's wrong to do it, but I don't really care. I watch it for the vibes.

• 8:33Chris Ryan?

  I'll take it a step further and say that I felt the creep when I was watching The Pit most recently. We're not going to talk about The Pit today, but I was like...

• 8:39Andy Greenwald?

  That's because I haven't recovered from the last episode.

• 8:42Chris Ryan?

  I think I'm still looking for the kid with the kill list. You know what I mean? Like, and I'm like, why am I trying to solve this show that routinely hits like these incredible heights of? Of dramatic honesty in some, in some moments.

• 8:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 8:59Chris Ryan?

  Where like, why am I trying to like, piece together some sort of like, you know, grand plan of the pit? Which also got renewed, we should mention.

• 9:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 9:09Chris Ryan?

  But yeah, when I watch White Lotus-

• 9:10Andy Greenwald?

  Your original moment of that, Chris, sorry to step on you there, but your original moment that listeners will remember is when you just couldn't wait for Reed Richards to show up in New Jersey in Wandavision. Like, you still aren't over that, and maybe every day since then.

• 9:22Chris Ryan?

  It hurts so bad, and so good. Uh, okay, so let's talk about White Lotus in this respect. I find myself, when I'm watching the Walton Goggins plot, for instance.

• 9:30Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:31Chris Ryan?

  Um, which is, uh, this guy Rick, who is in, at the White Lotus, but seems to have ulterior motives for being there.

• 9:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 9:41Chris Ryan?

  And he is with his, uh, his girlfriend Chelsea, and they're, they're beefing, although she seems to be this angel who never really, uh, takes the bait when he is, he's being, uh, an old, old hag about stuff.

• 9:54Andy Greenwald?

  He calls her an idiot, and she's just sort of-

• 9:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah, and she, he, she's just like, "Oh, you're no fun." But I, um, I guess I find my, I found my brain going towards trying to solve him, rather than let it play out, and enjoy the moments and enjoy. And maybe that's because some of those scenes with him specifically, with Rick specifically, feel like there's something missing, or there's something that I don't know. So that obviously activates that part of your brain. But it isn't like, um, just watching Alexandra Daddario get read to by Sydney Sweeney, you know, which, you know, it's, you don't necessarily, it's not like, "Oh, what an amazing portrait of these women in these, these different parts of their lives."

• 10:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I thought you were just choosing a very particular Reddit fetish that maybe I wasn't aware of.

• 10:47Chris Ryan?

  Sydney Sweeney reading? R. Sid's reads? Yeah.

• 10:51Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, probably.

• 10:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:53Andy Greenwald?

  Um, well, okay, so, but like, so let's take the general ques, the general conversation aside, and talking specifically about White Lotus. Like, I, I really love this episode, I've loved both episodes this season. Um, I think-

• 11:06Andy Greenwald?

  Again, certain viewers mileage may vary. Like, I've never watched any of these seasons for the mystery. And in fact, I found the rhythms of this episode to be, you know, kind of soothing. And if not, a little bit intoxicating because so little, quote unquote, happened. Like, there's the suggestion of mystery. There's the very clear underlining of the potential fissures, like between the three female friends, like what their criticisms of each other are. And then Leslie Bibb is the sort of willing hinge point between the two of them. But specifically with the Rick thing, I feel like there's pretty much just as much mystery there as you're interested in, right?

• 11:50Andy Greenwald?

  Like, in his kind of failed meditation session, which I thought was a really, really well-written and performed scene, he's like, what is it? He says, basically, that his father was killed, right?

• 12:01Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 12:01Andy Greenwald?

  That his mother, he didn't know his mother, and his father was killed. So that takes off the major theory from the first episode off the board, that the husband of the White Lotus owner is somehow his mysterious father. Instead, now it seems like maybe that's the guy who killed his father, or there's some criminality connected to it. That's, I didn't feel like I needed more than that to understand, you know, where he was moving to.

• 12:25Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:26Andy Greenwald?

  And I don't know, maybe there's something about, like, the tropical torpor of the place that's just keeping me super calm.

• 12:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:32Andy Greenwald?

  About any of this?

• 12:34Chris Ryan?

  I felt like this was almost episode 1A, and what this episode did really well was convey jet lag and convey different ways, how different people sort of cope with jet lag or get over jet lag. And I know that wasn't even explicitly what's on, like, none of the characters are like, "I'm so jet-lagged, I have to do X, Y, or Z." They're definitely getting used to being there. But people treat disorientation with different things: alcohol, drugs, sex, exercise, being miserable, shopping, you know? That's what we see on display there.

• 13:10Chris Ryan?

  I guess my major question was, you know, you talked about how you've watched White Lotus in the past, how much you love this show. I also love this show. Do you expect to laugh at this show?

• 13:22Andy Greenwald?

  At or with?

• 13:24Chris Ryan?

  Uh, what's the difference when it comes to this? Well, I guess, you tell me.

• 13:29Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I mean, I guess I wondered, and I feel like my question was kind of leading, because I think there are moments that, that Mike White is particularly skilled at navigating. And like, this is kind of baked into the Jennifer Coolidge of it, which is like, is she, does she just exist in a more broad comedic universe? And we're sort of laughing at her foibles? Or are we actually empathizing with her and feeling with her? But I feel like what you were asking was like, do I enjoy the show as a comedy?

• 13:54Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 13:57Andy Greenwald?

  I do, and I think that there's different types of laughter within the show, because there is the outright laughter of some of Parker Posey's performance choices and some of the lines that she delivers. But I also feel like there's a very, very specific kind of laughter that Mike White engenders, which is recognition. Like, the moment when, like, the Leslie Bibb hinge moments that I was talking about, when she like, when they're like, oh, we love her, we love her. We don't always love her.

• 14:27Chris Ryan?

  The second the other person leaves, yeah.

• 14:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and then when it happens again, and she pivots and says the same thing in the other, you know, in the other direction. Or like, the Rick and Chelsea scene, when they obviously have their own, they have their own issues and fissures in their relationship. But as soon as they're in the presence of a, I guess, nominally worse couple, that bonds them together.

• 14:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that gets them excited.

• 14:51Andy Greenwald?

  Like, that is, that is a classic feel better about your partner type situation, when the other partners are worse than you are. So like, that was funny, but it's not like a ha-ha sitcom-y ha-ha.

• 15:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think that there are things where I'm laughing at the characters, or I'm laughing at the situations. But yeah, there isn't necessarily, I don't know, I don't know why I even asked that question. I guess, I guess it's the absence of Coolidge. It's the absence of Jennifer Coolidge, who was more clearly, in the first season especially, but also like, going, you know, the gays are trying to kill me, like, like. Had comic moments that were that were very clearly showcased as people are going to laugh at this and with this.

• 15:35Andy Greenwald?

  The thing that I'm feeling the absence of more this season so far through two episodes is, well, let me rephrase. It's not really the, it's the absence of something that I noted in season two, but maybe it's better to say that it feels a little bit more similar to season one, because season one was claustrophobic by design because it was filmed during COVID and so they were just making a show in a silo with each other. I'm sorry, I should be careful because there are actually many shows on the air right now that are in silos, including Silo and Paradise. So I mean, more specifically, they did not venture outside of the four seasons very often. Season two, though, was notable because it had a kind of a different momentum that broke from that tradition. And specifically, I'm not thinking about how Jennifer Coolidge and then the, what's his name, Leo Woodall

• 16:20Andy Greenwald?

  character, like they ended up further into Italy as their adventures, or further out at sea as their adventures developed. Specifically, the F. Marie Abraham and Michael Imperioli, you know, finding their family roots thing. Like, for them, the White Lotus property was a home base to venture out into the countryside or to explore the country with varying degrees of success or recognition. So far, other than Rick's plan to go to Bangkok, which I guess we know from the next on or the this season on might actually come to fruition, the only thing that takes these people out of their yoga paradise is Piper's so far not really explored mission to the monastery, right?

• 17:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:01Andy Greenwald?

  And so the fact that it's suggesting that all of the story is going to take place behind these not so secure walls is a feeling that I don't know, I wouldn't say I'm bumping against it, but I'm noting that. And I wonder if that's by design, because it's kind of a throwback to what the show originally was, or it's something that's going to explode later in the season, or maybe it's a reflection of, once again, like the specifics of production, like because they're on a beach on an island, this is where they were going to be filming.

• 17:32Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk a little bit about the Ratliff's. I think that this was an episode where I noticed that this is a group of people who have all the signifiers of a certain class of a certain amount of wealth. Are very tight knit, to say the least, in some ways. But each one of them has like a very obvious. Well, all right, I'll keep it loose to the mother and the father and the oldest son have like a very clear problem, like a vice that they are barely concealing and in some ways celebrating. So you've got Saxon, who's basically constantly tugging at his crotch and taking Adderall. And

• 18:13Andy Greenwald?

  It's prescription.

• 18:14Chris Ryan?

  Sure, sure. I'm sure and I'm sure Parker Posey's benzos are all prescription. And then you've got the Jason Isaacs character who is involved in clear like financial crimes. And did you know that the voice on the other end of the phone there was Kiwi Kwan?

• 18:34Andy Greenwald?

  It did sound very familiar.

• 18:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Deadline wrote an article about it last day. So I wonder if that's just like a cameo from him or if he's going to actually show up. That would be incredible, but I just, I'm, I'm watching the pill intake, the, the hints of incest, the financial crime and a lot, a lot on the field for those guys.

• 18:55Andy Greenwald?

  The incest stuff is super weird. Like I, I do think that we could do, I do think The Ringer is uniquely set up for us to do a podcast only about the Ratliff family in which all the commentators are only children. So it would kind of be like Jacques Cousteau, like exploring the unknown world. It'd be you, me, Bill, Amanda, like, I feel like there's a lot of us, right? Who could just bring absolutely no insight to this conversation about how things are in certain families. I like the dynamic because the rest of the show, I mean, they're the largest group. So the opportunities for cross commentary, for looks, for like intramural beef and relationships, and I don't even mean the potential romantic ones, is pretty rich.

• 19:40Andy Greenwald?

  And so every time they're on screen, it just feels like it's livelier. There's more going on. I also Just feel like they're a pretty exciting declaration of how good Mike White is at casting. Like whether it's Parker Posey, who many of us have always loved, Jason Isaacs, who most of us are like, oh, he's always good. To people like Sam Nivola, who's a son of actors I like a lot, Alessandro Nivola and Emily Mortimer. Or Sarah Catherine Hook, who I've never seen before, but I think she's great at Piper. Or maybe his master stroke for the season, and I do emphasis on stroke, maybe emphasis on master.

• 20:17Chris Ryan?

  I can tell you kind of want to get back into blogging about TV because your puns have really kicked it up a notch in the last.

• 20:22Andy Greenwald?

  I think the other difference is that we're recording this after a full workday and it's 5:15 for me. So like, I'm finally going. Like, I feel like we've been recording early in the morning and I thought I was more of a morning person. I think I'm wrong.

• 20:33Chris Ryan?

  That would be great for me. I hate the mornings.

• 20:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but the people, they want our takes, you know, we just can't deny them.

• 20:39Chris Ryan?

  Sure. They're just saying refresh.

• 20:42Andy Greenwald?

  They just can't wait.

• 20:45Andy Greenwald?

  Like, I say this with as much respect as I can and with all the caveat that he might be a lovely person. But like Patrick Schwarzenegger's performance is disgusting, like in the best way. He is hideous. He is loathsome. And so either Mike White saw something in this man and drew it out. Or he's delivering just an incredible performance. And I don't mean to suggest that he is a bad person. I do not know him. But I just mean that like it is, it is what this show can do best with casting and with just putting, just smearing something on the lens that is just really, really, really potent. Is that, what is your power rankings of the groupings after two weeks?

• 21:28Chris Ryan?

  I think I like watching Jacqueline, Kate and Laurie the most. Like I would like to spend the most amount of time with them. And perhaps their issues with one another are the most kind of not, if not relatable, at least like recognizable to me and like group friend dynamics and.

• 21:47Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 21:47Chris Ryan?

  You know, vague midlife crises, but also like competitive, like where have we landed in our lives?

• 21:56Andy Greenwald?

  Do you and Zach have a side text group to talk about how I'm talking about the Eagles during the season? Is this how I'm going to find out? I mean, I wouldn't blame you. I am. I'm not well. I just wondered.

• 22:08Chris Ryan?

  No, no, no.

• 22:10Andy Greenwald?

  Can I ask you one other thing about that storyline, those three?

• 22:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:15Andy Greenwald?

  How do you, how, how do you feel generally? And how does watching them make you feel about the post dinner, post bar, extra drink? Because Carrie Coon's character is just like Lori, she just has the wine glasses and the extra bottle in hand as soon as they get back to their room. And you were asking me over the weekend why you thought I was having such a good experience in London this fortnight?

• 22:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:42Andy Greenwald?

  And I do think it's because I finally, at the ripe old age of the age that I am, that I don't even want to say anymore, learned that it's not even about following hippies to a second location. It's drinking at a second location that really messes up any trip, especially with jet lag. You know what I mean? Like, you can have a pint at the pub, but don't come home and be like, I'll just finish this off.

• 23:01Chris Ryan?

  But this is, this goes against Liam Gallagher's, like, I don't go out for just one adage.

• 23:07Andy Greenwald?

  So.

• 23:07Chris Ryan?

  If we go out, we go out for hundreds.

• 23:10Andy Greenwald?

  Do you generally live your life according to Liam Gallagher's adages?

• 23:13Chris Ryan?

  Do you think that, are you saying that it's the second location or the amount of beers?

• 23:18Andy Greenwald?

  I, I, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna get into the weeds and argue with you about amount of beers. You know, I, I, I don't judge. I'm just saying, the killer is the Lori.

• 23:26Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 23:26Andy Greenwald?

  Because they've been drinking all day, then they have drinks at dinner, and then as soon as they get back to their room, she's like, Whispering Angel, anybody? Like, it's just free flowing. And for what it's worth, when what's his name, the German manager is like, how did you all sleep? And they're like, we slept amazing. I was like, please tell me, please tell me your vitamin routine, ladies.

• 23:45Chris Ryan?

  That's ambient and white wine, man. That's how it goes.

• 23:48Andy Greenwald?

  God damn, I guess that really works.

• 23:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I like, I think I like watching Jacqueline, Kate and Lori the most. I think the Ratliff's are the most, um.

• 24:00Chris Ryan?

  I guess like the most dramatic, just because they've got like this weird sexual thing going on. There's, they're a family in crisis. They just don't know it.

• 24:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 24:09Chris Ryan?

  And then I think with Rick and Chelsea, it's just why they are the way they are has not been explained yet.

• 24:17Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 24:18Chris Ryan?

  So I'm waiting for that to, so I guess I'm, I'm waiting. And then the, the kind of the X factor here, which we only get like, I believe, two scenes of it in this episode is, is the Natasha Rothwell Belinda character, the returning character from season one. It was interesting. I saw some online discourse about whether or not White Lotus season three was taking place before season two, like on a timeline. I truly don't think it is.

• 24:42Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 24:43Chris Ryan?

  But she, her presence, uh, what, what her kind of like, where she is now after Tanya, uh, after that experience. And, you know, obviously she recognizes Greg, uh, and then, or at least seems to have some sort of like, I think I know that guy. In the scenes from next week, she, she does actually walk up to him. And yeah, I'd be like, I think she's sort of the X factor and what, whether she starts interacting with these three groups will probably bring a lot of the drama together, but I have not watched ahead.

• 25:15Andy Greenwald?

  I agree. I would also say the Greg scene, the Greg Rick dinner scene was really good. It was also like, the most transgressive thing in this television show thus far is not the brothers eyeing each other's butts. It is not speaking to someone at the dinner table next to you. Like the, the fact that they're both just being alpha dickheads.

• 25:37Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I just think they're just being exhausted sex tourists. Like I can't tell what they're doing, but I think the implication is that Greg and Chloe have met through an escort service, right?

• 25:47Andy Greenwald?

  It's beyond implied. I mean, it's the, yeah, that's what, um, Rick says, but, but beyond that, I just mean that they are being very, very rude to each other. And I guess it's because they, neither of them wants to talk about what they actually do for a living to get there.

• 25:58Chris Ryan?

  Nobody wants to.

• 26:00Andy Greenwald?

  But, um, but by the way, the, this, this guy talk and moocarager will not stand. Like protect guy talk at all costs is basically how I feel about this.

• 26:09Chris Ryan?

  Maybe not the best security guard though.

• 26:12Andy Greenwald?

  But a great guy and like, what do you value more?

• 26:15Chris Ryan?

  I think if Guy Talk was on a Taylor Sheridan show, I think he would have been demoted.

• 26:19Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, so do you think?

• 26:21Chris Ryan?

  He gets, he gets completely distracted by Valentina, then like the guys like rush in to get the jewels, you know, like, I mean, you gotta, you gotta really always be frosty when you're, when you're manning a post.

• 26:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but in that moment, he's being offered tickets to like a cool martial arts competition. So you gotta like,

• 26:39Andy Greenwald?

  I was reading, there's a really good interview with, with the actor, Thaimi, I'm so sorry, I'm gonna, I'm not prepared to say his Thai surname, as we say here. And it's in Vulture and this guy is, first of all, is fascinating. He was an actor in a lot of martial arts movies. He was like a finalist on like a America's Got Talent singing competition in Thailand, but then has basically been a bodyguard full time for the last few years before he got this job. And so he was both, he was told not to look too buff because he's actually super buff. I think he's doing a great job being charming.

• 27:14Chris Ryan?

  I have that same issue where like, when I do this pod, I feel like I have to, I have to mask my muscles.

• 27:21Andy Greenwald?

  Your muscles?

• 27:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:22Andy Greenwald?

  But then also he was giving advice on the bodyguarding because that's, that's what he's been doing before this.

• 27:28Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 27:29Andy Greenwald?

  That is an unlikely arc. Actor to singer to full-time bodyguard to star of popular American television show.

• 27:36Chris Ryan?

  For sure. For sure. I, I don't think we're really in the like, what are we doing here? What's this season about? What's, what, what are we like, where are we going? I, I'm happy to be floating along right now. I, obviously I think they're focusing on wellness and the idea of fixing yourself and repairing yourself. I think the metrics that the, the three women have and how like they all got told the same thing about how special they are and, you know, obviously the different reactions that the people in the Ratliff family have to various efforts to heal them

• 28:20Chris Ryan?

  and what they want out of those things, whether it's sexual pleasure or transcendental experiences or whatever. But it's just kind of like, I, I have not like formulated any kind of like, obviously White Lotus is about this this season. Thoughts?

• 28:35Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think the, to me, the most, the most important scene, if you're going to use a over insulated word is Rick's. Rick's treatment session with Amrita.

• 28:44Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 28:44Andy Greenwald?

  Right, where she's basically saying, you know, for people who've explored anything in the world of meditation, like, pretty, you know, 101 stuff about like-

• 28:53Chris Ryan?

  Oh damn, dog.

• 28:54Andy Greenwald?

  The version-

• 28:54Chris Ryan?

  Didn't know we were gonna get meditation splained here.

• 28:57Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not saying I'm good at it, I'm just saying that the idea that like, we create the self and that the self might be a prison, I'm sorry to break it to you, live on air, I'm curious to see what Liam Gallagher would say about that, is, is pretty-

• 29:10Chris Ryan?

  He would say, "We're going out, we are going out for hundreds."

• 29:15Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just saying that then, that the, it's a great thesis statement, or antithesis, antithesis statement for this show, because every single character on any season of The White Lotus is just profoundly trapped by the prison of their self.

• 29:31Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 29:32Andy Greenwald?

  And generally unable to get out of who they are, whether they're, you know, in every season, characters go on vacation and become themselves, like, no matter what, they, who they were is following them.

• 29:45Andy Greenwald?

  And that, in particular for this season, feels even extra charged, because what we're seeing at a retreat that is dedicated not just to escape, but to that, that sort of impossible, modern idea of wellness, is just how much free will and free choice just gets in the way of it, where like, day one, they're like, "We encourage you to live present, moment to moment here, and be undistracted, please give us your phones," and then they say, "No," and they're like, "Okay."

• 30:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:12Andy Greenwald?

  "Could you just talk here?

• 30:13Chris Ryan?

  Right."

• 30:14Andy Greenwald?

  "Could you move a little bit further out?" And similarly, like, you could spend half of your day being massaged, or whatever, but she's, you know, Parker Posey still takes, gobbles a couple of zannies before, to do her own relaxing before the relaxing, everybody's drinking all day. That, that, that shot of Jason Isaacs just pounding the treadmill, while, while a wall of glass protects him from absolute jaw-dropping natural beauty-

• 30:40Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 30:40Andy Greenwald?

  -was phenomenal.

• 30:41Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 30:41Andy Greenwald?

  Like, I, I, I just, I know we're gonna steer into other shows now, I feel like, to your large, I, I'm so interested in your larger question about like, how each of these shows engages with us, like, and wants to gamify itself, or distract us, or, or demands attention to parts of the show that might not, or an engine of the show that might not be a priority. White Lotus is experiential in a different way for me. Like, I am very, very at peace while watching the show. I'm not tempted to not just run my brain, but even to like second screen it. Because the scenes are very sharp and very well observed and very consistent. You know, he just knows how to move us from scene to scene. And I always feel like the scenes are, this is very granular, but like, I feel like all the scenes are of a very smart length.

• 31:24Andy Greenwald?

  Like, they convey the information, they convey the character, and then we move on.

• 31:28Chris Ryan?

  Would you say that, uh, what would you, how would you describe the length of scenes in Zero Day?

• 31:34Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, should we, should we segue?

• 31:36Chris Ryan?

  No, I want to talk about Severance first. We haven't spoken about this since, uh, basically our conversation after the, uh, the kind of, um, not a bottle episode, but the-

• 31:47Andy Greenwald?

  The Ortbo.

• 31:48Chris Ryan?

  The Ortbo, the adventure into the woods. And we've had two episodes since then, Trojan Horse and Attila. I think, this is where I'm at, this is where I'm at. And we're gonna talk a little bit specifically about Attila, I think. But this has been a really interesting lesson this season for me about the usefulness of thinking about theme versus thinking about story. Because I think when this series started out, I, it was a pretty obvious and, uh, aptly timed allegory about, you know, the increasingly numbing capitalistic society that we all live in and our participation in, uh, our, our work

• 32:28Chris Ryan?

  and the elevation of the corporation to the place of state or church in, in society. And I, I think that that was, maybe, you know, you kind of tell yourself like, that's why I'm watching this show. It's because of that, you know? And then as it becomes more of a sci-fi puzzle to be sifted through and, and kind of pieced together and admired in that way, I probably had a little bit of a hard time adjusting to that.

• 33:00Chris Ryan?

  But at the same time, I wonder whether or not this is a much better television show than the first season. You know what I mean? Like, if the first season was about this, this sort of allegorical experience of this traumatized man who is trying to bifurcate his life to find peace during his workday because his outside life is so pained because of the loss of his wife. The second season, I don't really know, like, I guess I don't really know what it's about, but I do kind of wonder, I do find it more entertaining, if that makes sense. And so I guess it's an interesting transition from this idea of like, well, this show is clearly about a post-COVID world, or, you know, like, our life, lives, like, now, to

• 33:42Chris Ryan?

  this show is about this guy trying to solve a puzzle, and these characters trying to solve a puzzle. And I, I was curious whether or not that made sense to you, or whether you felt like you were watching it in similar ways.

• 33:54Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's a very generous and, I think, interesting observation.

• 33:59Andy Greenwald?

  I do. I, I mean, look, I, people, I don't need to-

• 34:02Chris Ryan?

  That's exactly what they told Tommy in Goodfellas before he thought he was gonna get made.

• 34:08Andy Greenwald?

  I don't want to re-litigate it.

• 34:09Chris Ryan?

  I'm not relitigating anything, yeah.

• 34:11Andy Greenwald?

  No, I mean, I, I genuinely feel that this show, and its very, very many talented creators, are not interested in the things that I'm interested in. And so I need to accept that, which is hard for me. And I think it's harder for me, for some of the reasons that you've alluded to, like, it's harder for me because I think there's a, there's so much potential there, there's so many things that are intriguing there. The, the, the version of season one that you're sketching out, that I think was appealing to me, is that this felt, the idea of severing yourself from your, the drudgery of the job you had to do in this cold and unfeeling landscape that we all actually have to exist in, is fascinating and chilling because it feels-

• 34:54Andy Greenwald?

  It feels potentially possible. Like, to that end, if they were working for Amazon, I think it would be a really, really compelling and interesting show, or an Amazon analog. They're working for a magic company that speaks in codes and raises goats. That feels less interesting to me and less applicable to our world. Now, the other thing to note that I that is that the first season was made not just into a vacuum of COVID. It was made into a vacuum of, I wonder if anyone will like this or respond to it. That question has been answered. And so the second season is coming from a place of, we are now telling a larger story. And that that story may change or escalate or whatever over the next multiple seasons, which is a different thing.

• 35:38Andy Greenwald?

  So to say that, so for me to be like, it's not interested in what I'm interested in now. And I don't like what Lumen does. That all could be, that could all change in the next few episodes. And I'm, I'm on board to, to, to see if that's the case. But I think the thing that's newly frustrating to me as the season unfolds, and we've now seen six episodes of 10, so we're past the halfway mark, is that the things that it seems really, really consumed by,

• 36:07Andy Greenwald?

  the thing that it seems really consumed by is bodily autonomy. Right? Like, who has a right to a body?

• 36:13Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 36:13Andy Greenwald?

  How many people can live in a body?

• 36:15Chris Ryan?

  That's a really well, that's well, that's a good summary of it.

• 36:18Andy Greenwald?

  But, but weirdly, it's like, to me, it's like, only half interested in it? Because, like, for example, and I'm not, let me be clear, because I know this might get, I'm just gonna get railroaded regardless, but like, I don't think Severance would be better if this entire episode was about Helly dealing with the, the abuse to her body, or the lack of autonomy she had in her choices in having sex with someone, you know, when she wasn't present in it. I think that would be a very, very challenging show to make, and maybe even more challenging to watch. But they kind of nudge up against the glass of that.

• 37:00Andy Greenwald?

  And, and the takeaway was, that's cool that this vessel was used to, to sex somebody. I'd like to do it too. So then they go do it under a desk. And I'm like, Again, I understand why for the show to flower and have lots of plots like they need to do whatever they the innies need to be able to do whatever they want.

• 37:21Chris Ryan?

  Well, they're also it creates an incredible love triangle between only two people.

• 37:27Andy Greenwald?

  Well, two, well, but wait, wait, just to finish that thought, it's like, I understand why they're allowed to run free for plot and story reasons, but they're just running free and fucking under desks.

• 37:38Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I mean, like, I have to assume at this point with the the sheer lack of work that they're doing.

• 37:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 37:46Chris Ryan?

  That they're, and like, I, one of the things, I mean, like, I, I don't really get tripped up on this, but I would have to imagine in a company like that, it, not that there's companies like that, or that they're like, you would just be under observation. You would be aware.

• 38:01Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 38:02Chris Ryan?

  That these hall passes and these, this assumed freedom that you have is actually part of the experiment.

• 38:09Andy Greenwald?

  Or Patty Arquette's right, and ever since she left, standards are really slipping, you know, because, because our man Seth's just like trying to get his paper clipping better, trying to improve his paper clip skills. Yeah, I, so anyway, this episode, though, did steer it towards this idea of love triangles or quadrangles or rectangles amidst multiple people with with fewer bodies at play, right? And between those two, I found the Dylan love triangle with his wife much more interesting and spicy and compelling and kind of affecting.

• 38:48Chris Ryan?

  I was the exact opposite.

• 38:50Andy Greenwald?

  I really, so I like that. I think Merritt Weaver's performance is amazing, and I find there's a core of sadness there because it is based on something, to me, that's kind of tangible. Like, we don't really know Audi Dylan at all, but the sense that he's kind of a loser in some ways, or carries that feeling, or that is present in all versions of the show, upstairs and downstairs. So that communicated everything I needed to know. The other storyline, where, you know, baby, baby human innie Mark and Helly, who know all about doing it to each other, but what do they not know, like continental drift?

• 39:32Andy Greenwald?

  There's like some term, I forget what it was, there's, there's, there's some scientific term.

• 39:37Chris Ryan?

  They've never seen the sky. I mean, like, there's all sorts of like, yeah.

• 39:40Andy Greenwald?

  They. Are super into each other. Audi Mark is still hung up on his completely personalityless and on I just his wife, the whole thing with Gemma, like I just don't buy any of it.

• 39:56Andy Greenwald?

  But now Audi Helly is also into him.

• 39:59Chris Ryan?

  I where she's trying to establish whether or not he's trying to reiterate, you know, like that they that there is there.

• 40:04Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 40:05Chris Ryan?

  I think that that's the thing is that.

• 40:06Andy Greenwald?

  But you found that more compelling that.

• 40:07Chris Ryan?

  Well, I like the Chinese restaurant scene a lot. I like the idea that like, what is there a desire that transcends these two sort of sides of your personality? And is there a quintessential part of both of these people if they are like the same person as they are inside and outside that is just drawn to one another? But I think at this point, like, if you go back to Helena observing Mark and Helly kiss over and over and over again.

• 40:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:36Chris Ryan?

  I I don't find it out of pocket that she's like also A stalking, but also B, you know, just watching Mark a lot. Now, there may be a reason for that because they have a sense that he's starting to, he's starting a process that they're either going to try and stop or that they're trying to manage or that they're ultimately in charge of. I think that there's a lot of stuff going on that I I am just like Lumen in all of its kind of completeness would need to know about all of this stuff.

• 41:05Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it it it a lot of this also is, you know, I don't need to say this every week, but but I do like the show, the pilot is dazzling. And then they made a series, potentially multiple season series off of a dazzling pilot. So a lot of the choices we make, we a lot of, sorry, a lot of the the the choices we see on screen are the result of, well, okay, if comma then scenarios. And what I mean by that is like a noted to death version of Severance. And I'm again, I'm not saying this because I say it would be better. I'm saying it would be more traditional and maybe easier than to expand outward from as opposed to do what Severance does, which is bring us in at the middle and everything. All the tendrils are going, mystery tendrils are going up and down at the same time constantly, which I find destabilizing.

• 41:50Andy Greenwald?

  So the more traditional version of it. Would be the arrival of the everyman to the severed experience.

• 41:55Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 41:56Andy Greenwald?

  Right?

• 41:56Chris Ryan?

  POV character.

• 41:57Andy Greenwald?

  And that's a POV Mark character learning. What the pilot did is Mark is already established and has been doing this for a while.

• 42:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:04Andy Greenwald?

  Helly is the POV character. Which is really interesting. But then Helly has a reason to being there because the, sorry, Helly's reason for being there becomes enormous because there's the incredible gotcha surprise of season one that she's in, that she's in Egan. So the if then becomes, well, if Mark is already there and if we want this big surprise that Gemma, his wife, has been taken from him in the Audi world and has been put into proximity with him at work as Mrs. Casey. So if all of this is true, then Mark has to be the Messiah. Mark has to be a superhero. Mark has to be the most important person. He has to be Neo, exactly. Which may, I'm sure they have a, they have a plan for that, right?

• 42:48Andy Greenwald?

  Like, and we are going to see that unfold, but it's an enormous weight to put on a character that remains otherwise kind of opaque.

• 42:56Andy Greenwald?

  And you started to see the seeds of the then storytelling with the Cold Harbor being everything to this company and his unique ability to do it. But it's, let's just, let's just say it's untraditional. And I don't want, I don't want my observation to be that I prefer, I wish it was lamer or wish it was simpler. I'm just saying that there's all this storytelling that is if then, like, and just stacked on top of each other.

• 43:18Chris Ryan?

  I think you wish it was a movie because if in the movie version Dylan and Irving would be like, Mark is the one. You know what I mean? Like, everybody would recognize Mark's importance. And the question would be, is Mark going to fulfill this path or walk down this path? And instead, we actually have, like, I think one of the reasons why the show remains interesting is because each one of these characters actually thinks they're Neo. Like Dylan thinks he's like the great detective, but also like killing it as an innie and also wants to see his Audi's wife. And, you know, the only person like Audi Dylan, I guess, is kind of like, I suck and I can't get a job at a door factory. Irv is like trying to put together this grand conspiracy.

• 44:02Chris Ryan?

  I think that the obfuscation of what he knows and what he's doing and what he's understands is, is the thing that probably annoys me the most because you've got somebody at Turturro's level and Walken's level doing those scenes together where it's Irving and Burton Fields and they're having this dinner and it's. It's opening up so many questions about like, well, so Burt was at Lumen for 20 years and like, you know, what-

• 44:26Andy Greenwald?

  And severance has been going on longer than we-

• 44:28Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and like, what's going on with like, this idea that you would go to, you could get severed to find salvation, to find-

• 44:36Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, that was another huge idea dropped in the middle.

• 44:38Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 44:39Andy Greenwald?

  And that was, that was cool. So this was your man from Fringe, John Noble.

• 44:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:43Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, as Fields basically saying that Burt, their long, happy marriage was slightly unhappy at times.

• 44:51Chris Ryan?

  Bad dude, yeah.

• 44:53Andy Greenwald?

  And so he severed because their church leader, the minister, I don't remember what they said.

• 44:59Chris Ryan?

  It's basically like-

• 45:00Andy Greenwald?

  Leader of their congregation.

• 45:00Chris Ryan?

  We didn't want to spend, I didn't want to go to heaven without him, so I needed him to be saved.

• 45:06Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, that was, that was a wild choice.

• 45:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:08Andy Greenwald?

  And I, I welcome that. And by the way, I'm really glad you mentioned the door salesman scene because I love that so much. And so I, I, I just want to touch, it's not touching grass. I just want to touch the thing that I liked so that I don't get shocked. Um, I thought that was a, but I, that was an example for me, the, the, the Burt and Irving scene. I, I hear you about these two great actors just sort of parroting prompts, like mystery prompts to each other without ever actually getting to the thing that they're talking about. But they're so good at acting and the idea was so big that I actually preferred it.

• 45:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:47Andy Greenwald?

  As weird as that is, because when the show becomes about reaching into Mark's head with calipers, uh, I'm-

• 45:54Chris Ryan?

  That's the part I don't like. That, that, that's like, that, that is just the part where I'm like, and I, I can kind of see some strands of like where the doc, you know, like, and people have talked about this online and stuff like that, like, has the doctor already done this process? And that's why she's always like hungry and eating and he's now hungry and eating is because like this-

• 46:15Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:16Chris Ryan?

  Process like awakens some sort of appetite. Like, I, I like, like, some of the discourse about this plot, but I find the plot itself of this woman just like living in his basement and doing brain surgery on him, like, kind of crazy. And then honestly, I, I, I know that there's some affection for the Devin and Rickon characters and the plot, but like-

• 46:37Andy Greenwald?

  I don't understand.

• 46:37Chris Ryan?

  I don't understand how someone as straight shooting as Devin-

• 46:44Chris Ryan?

  Is married to Ricken and also like, just kinda like, okay, Mark, I guess you gotta go back to Severance, go back to Lumen, and you're not gonna answer the phone for three days or whatever. Like, there's something, like, I think that that part of it is why, maybe it's my version of what you're reacting to, where I'm like, just lose this extra layer of bullshit to concentrate on the main, keep the main thing the main thing here.

• 47:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, there are, thank you, Jalen Hertz, Super Bowl MVP for that quote. But like, yeah, again, it's like, that feels like a writer's room problem to me, which is, we've introduced these characters in season one, how do we serve them in season two? How do we make them make sense and calibrate them as the wildness increases in the main storyline? And I guess I only say that to say that it's a heart, it's always a challenge. And sometimes even, you know, even like, laypeople viewers can see when certain storylines are not ascending with others, they're not gaining altitude at the same ratio. Just the last thing, that Chinese restaurant scene was beautifully shot.

• 47:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:48Andy Greenwald?

  And it did, Mark's ordering and appetite did remind me how I used to behave at Red Hot 2 in Park Slope, like, on Sundays, after we'd been out Saturdays and watched the Eagles all day Sunday. Like, there was a, I did have a, kind of like a severed integration flash at that moment.

• 48:07Chris Ryan?

  Let's take a swerve here and talk about Zero Day, because we only have a few more minutes to go. I'm sorry to do this to you, but Andy had been like, oh, we're gonna watch Zero Day? Are we gonna watch Zero Day? And I was like, yeah, like, I'll check it out. I had to admit that the great silence that greeted this show broadly made me sort of be like, oh, I bet this one, I bet this one is not gonna, like, kinda clear the takeoff platform. And I guess it doesn't, but it is one of the more fascinating pieces of political entertainment that you will see this decade.

• 48:46Chris Ryan?

  And I didn't, I don't mean that I like it as a TV show, but as a kind of repost to what people assume the Taylor Sheridan universe is like soap operas for red states. This is truly like the resistance MSNBC fever dream come manifest. Like, it is unbelievable what is going on in this show in a lot of different ways.

• 49:13Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, we should say, because we do, you know, sometimes people do listen to us for, you know, essentially like financial wealth management advice with their time. Like, I, I think the show is, I agree that it's fascinating. I'm not dropping your thread. I think it is politically, uh, wild. I also think that it is very bad and very clumsy in ways that are kind of shocking. And I also think that it may be the greatest cast ever assembled.

• 49:41Chris Ryan?

  It is almost, uh, obviously the greatest cast ever assembled for a show.

• 49:47Andy Greenwald?

  Just to run through it, this is a thriller from, uh, from, uh, Eric Newman, who is one of the showrunners of Narcos or Narcos Mexico, I believe. And Noah Oppenheim, who was running NBC News when the Ronan Farrow stuff happened, I believe, and left his post. Uh, and the idea is a ex-president played by, uh, noted television star Robert De Niro, is called in to run the investigation when a terribly deadly hacker attack has, it causes a massive casualty, cyber attack. Um, so the rest of the cast is Lizzie Kaplan, Jesse Plemons, Joan Allen, Connie Britton, Bill Camp, Dan Stevens, Angela Bassett, Matthew Modine, Clark Gregg, Gabby Hoffman, and that's just through two episodes.

• 50:32Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Now- You should say, like, you know, De Niro plays President Mullen. Let's just talk a little bit about what President Mullen's up to. President Mullen is a aging president who declined to run for a second term while grieving his son.

• 50:50Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 50:52Chris Ryan?

  He is married to a federal judge who is possibly going to be up for a Supreme Court position.

• 50:59Andy Greenwald?

  I think she's nominated to a federal judgeship.

• 51:02Chris Ryan?

  Okay, and they have a leftist congresswoman daughter named Alex.

• 51:05Andy Greenwald?

  Named Alexandra. Like, let's really run at it. Yeah. Who, who often differs with her father, who is a paragon-

• 51:12Chris Ryan?

  So we've got Joe Biden and RBG having AOC as their daughter. We've got Dan Stevens playing quite clearly a Ben Shapiro, Tucker Carlson hybrid.

• 51:24Chris Ryan?

  We've got-

• 51:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, he also clear- he filmed all of his scenes, I think, with his own wardrobe on an iPhone. At least through two. And I respect it.

• 51:31Chris Ryan?

  Um, it is unbelievable, like, the kind of-

• 51:37Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, and President Kamala, right?

• 51:38Chris Ryan?

  Oh, right. And then Angela Bassett is the current president, President Mitchell. Um, there is something about the, like, the language and the tone with which this is written that makes it feel like, um, basically an Atlantic magazine explainer about what a cyber attack would be like. You know, like-

• 51:56Andy Greenwald?

  There's that, yeah.

• 51:57Chris Ryan?

  People speak almost entirely in exposition. And on top of that, they speak almost entirely in explanation. So there isn't any of, like, the kind of high-level jargon that you would expect from, like, a panic room kind of, "We've got to understand, like, the levels of this situation." It's almost entirely, like, this straight-talk express of honestly trying to explain to the viewer why they should be concerned about what could happen during Zero Day, but it is almost entirely concerned with the political reaction to Zero Day and not, like, the thousands of people who die during a cyber attack.

• 52:39Andy Greenwald?

  It's an afterthought. There's some, like, some, like, footage of trains derailing and some explosions and things. I mean, for what it's worth, this is also a show that presents President Mullen as, like, a deep thinker, prosecutor, and investigator who has a remarkable quirk of filling notebooks with his keen observations-

• 52:58Chris Ryan?

  He takes notes on a criminal conspiracy.

• 53:00Andy Greenwald?

  And then it shows his notebooks. For real, though. But his, but his notes, when we see them, are, "This man is a general." And then there's an arrow from it, and it says, "U.S. Army?", question mark?

• 53:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:09Andy Greenwald?

  And then it says, "Yes." Then it's, like, "Eats lunch." And, like, so he's just writing down facts-

• 53:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:14Andy Greenwald?

  Which is, you know, no shame in that, but I don't see what the genius is. The thing that is so wild is you rarely get to see a show that so expressly missed its moment. So the foundational ethos of this show, I mean, I, I think it fails as a character study, I think it fails as a thriller, I think it fails as an action entertainment, I think it kind of fails as a, well, in the 70s, lots of famous people did, like, The Towering Inferno, and that this, a Netflix miniseries is the modern-day equivalent of it. But no way does it miss bigger than having a show that, that its central ethos is, "This isn't who we are." Which is what President De Niro gets to say in front of cameras.

• 53:54Chris Ryan?

  Oh, down on Wall Street, practically like in the shadow of 9/11.

• 53:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and a place where it's just like, let's blame the Russians or radical leftists. But really, we need to come together. And I'm like, this show has been released into a moment when it is very clear that this is exactly who we are. So watching this show is a little bit like when my dad calls me, like, hi on four hours of MSNBC.

• 54:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:17Andy Greenwald?

  You know, and I'm like, this is not, this is ringing real, real false right now. But then on top of it, it also then like tries to make it a psychological thriller. At the very end of the first episode, it's like, to keep, to keep the analogies in my family, the first episode alone reminds me of when I take my young children to like a 16 handles yogurt place, when the choices are fill this bucket with anything. Like, that is, it's not that it's paralyzing, it's the opposite of paralyzing. Like, every flavor gets at least one pull.

• 54:50Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 54:50Andy Greenwald?

  As does every topic. And I'm like, I don't think ultimately it's better because you tried everything. And that's kind of the way I feel about this show.

• 54:59Chris Ryan?

  I want to talk more about it as we get deeper into it, but.

• 55:02Andy Greenwald?

  We're watching it?

• 55:03Chris Ryan?

  Oh, no, we don't have to watch it. I think the last thing I would say is just, your point about Towering Inferno was really good. I was also just gonna say, it's directed by Leslie Link, a gladder, who's like a veteran television director and has done a lot of cool work before. There's something like, it's very weird how much this looks like, like a, like a very flat TV show.

• 55:27Chris Ryan?

  And I don't know why that wound up happening, you know, whether it's because they just couldn't do a lot of setups because of the, you know, the scheduling issues with the cast could probably come in for like a certain amount of time and then they had to go. But it's wild, man. Like.

• 55:42Andy Greenwald?

  There are weird, there are weird things where you're like, I think you're on to something where it's like they were trying to make a meal out of whatever ingredients were in the kitchen or available to them. Cause there's some stuff in the end of the first episode into the second episode where it's like, just like sort of very stylized suggesting that the president is having nightmares or is not fully in control of his faculties.

• 56:00Chris Ryan?

  Maybe he's senile.

• 56:01Andy Greenwald?

  And, and they do a thing where it's like he's in his office and then the shelves are empty. And then four books come.

• 56:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he's filling his mind palace. Yeah.

• 56:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. And I'm like, this isn't as exciting as you think it is. It's like, similarly, the second episode spends a weirdly large amount of time explaining how they got the real estate for the zero day commission. You know, they're like CIA estate.

• 56:21Chris Ryan?

  We've decided to take over this hotel.

• 56:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. And they're like, and also we have the hotel across the street. And also we're plugging in monitors. I'm like, that wasn't my number one concern. Like you could have just walked into a building and been like, zero day commission, let's go. Similarly, like President Mullen's cell phone, without really any, uh, any explanation, has its lock screen changed to the zero day commission.

• 56:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I wonder if they issued him that phone. Like that was one of the perks.

• 56:47Andy Greenwald?

  It doesn't, no, cause all of his numbers are in it. It just doesn't strike me as a thing that this president would spend a lot of his time doing.

• 56:52Chris Ryan?

  When he's like going through his contacts, he's like, let me call Mossad.

• 56:56Andy Greenwald?

  Let me call Mossad. You know what? First, let me switch the wallpaper on this bad boy. Um, I, I, I will, I think we should keep watching it. I also think charitably that actors take projects for many, many reasons. And maybe some of these actors got a call and it was like, would you like to spend the summer in New York City getting Netflix money to work with Robert De Niro? And I feel like that is an easy yes.

• 57:20Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Greenwald, we gotta wrap it up here. It was great to see you. Thank you to Kaya and CT for producing and we will be back on Thursday in some capacity.

• 57:29Andy Greenwald?

  I love that. I might not be with you, but we will have a show and I will be back in America by next Monday to really get back into it.

• 57:35Chris Ryan?

  Take care, guys.