The Emmys Need a Refresh. Plus, ‘The Bear’ Season 4 Preview.

Chris and Andy preview the fourth (and final?) season of ‘The Bear,’ which is premiering this week, and talk about what the show’s legacy might be once this season has concluded (6:21). Then, in honor of the Emmy voting window closing today, they come up with some new categories that might give the awards ceremony a much-needed refresh, like Best New Artist (42:38) and Excellence in Extended Run (46:37). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Producer: 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

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• 0:31Chris Ryan?

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• 1:02Speaker 02

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

• 1:08Chris Ryan?

  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, the RZA, the JZA, Jeremy Allen White, Cynthia Nixon, Old Dirty Bastard and Andy Greenwald.

• 1:26Andy Greenwald?

  Whoa, that Portland air is treating you fine. I like that.

• 1:30Chris Ryan?

  What's up, brother? How are you doing?

• 1:32Andy Greenwald?

  I'm great. You're in Portland. I'm in LA in a dark room with Kaia. I kind of, for the first time, I kind of wish I was McAfee-ing this pod. Not, not the, not the fugitive internet security guy, but Pat McAfee.

• 1:45Chris Ryan?

  But standing. You want to be standing and roaming.

• 1:48Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, no. I just wanted to wear a really deep armhole tank top. Standing is new.

• 1:53Chris Ryan?

  And start multiple beefs with other coworkers? Yeah. Greenwald, today on the podcast, we're going to be talking a little bit about The Bear, which is coming back for its fourth season on Wednesday. The entire season drops on Wednesday evening. And as per usual, Andy and I will be breaking the season up into sections. So we'll do the first three episodes, I think, on Thursday. And then the middle chunk the following Monday. And we'll conclude our Bear Watch that Thursday before July 4th.

• 2:23Chris Ryan?

  It's fantastic to see you. People can reach us at the watch at spotify.com. They can follow us on Instagram at the watch pod underscore and they can watch us on YouTube at the ringer dash TV YouTube channel or on Spotify where they're hopefully listening to us. The other thing we're going to talk about today is the Emmys, which is kind of always at the forefront of the bear conversation since it's been very successful and very controversial as it participates in the comedy category and much to the chagrin of super mad comedy writers. But I feel for them.

• 2:54Andy Greenwald?

  Participates, but yeah, go on.

• 2:56Chris Ryan?

  Like if I was supposed to be in the like point guard competition and I had to go up against Shay Gilchrist Alexander, I guess I would be disappointed. But first, some notes from the field for you.

• 3:05Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 3:06Chris Ryan?

  I want to hear about the Greenwald weekend experience specifically because the reason I did the Wu-Tang intro is because your boy, you.

• 3:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 3:15Chris Ryan?

  Went and saw Wu-Tang last night.

• 3:17Andy Greenwald?

  But I feel like longtime listeners of the pod know that I also saw them like three years ago. So this is not like that out of the ordinary. Like if.

• 3:25Chris Ryan?

  I think you're overestimating how much people pay attention to what we talk about.

• 3:28Andy Greenwald?

  I think that people, there's definitely a fan or two out there that has like a Carrie Matheson slash Charlie Day crazy, you know, grid on the wall, like tracking our movements. Like every day, your movement from the coffee place back to your place. Like they're just, there's like a red thread, like some sweet greens are highlighted. Yeah. Thanks to our buddy Tyler. I saw the Wu-Tang final chamber tour last night at, at the crypt, at the crypt, the crypto.com. Just feels good saying that. Makes me feel like we live in a really successful country.

• 4:00Chris Ryan?

  Now under new ownership.

• 4:01Andy Greenwald?

  Well, not yet, right? The deal hasn't gone through. You know, maybe, maybe the government attorneys will be looking at that, too. Shout out Sherri Redstone. We don't know. We don't know. It was cool, though, to say hi to RZA in his dressing room, which was also the LA Sparks locker room.

• 4:17Chris Ryan?

  Nice.

• 4:18Andy Greenwald?

  And so he was getting ready, listening to Arctic Monkeys, one of his favorite bands, with a giant, like you couldn't remove it from the wall, guide to how to conform your WNBA uniform to league standards, including like your compression tops.

• 4:32Chris Ryan?

  Oh, interesting.

• 4:33Andy Greenwald?

  I don't think, considering he mostly had like velour Yankees garb, I don't think he was attempting to conform to those standards, but it was nice to know that the arena was trying to help him along his path.

• 4:43Chris Ryan?

  What era of Arctic Monkeys is Riz's jam? Is it early Sheffield punk stuff, or is it the more?

• 4:50Andy Greenwald?

  It was pretty croony. I didn't recognize the track.

• 4:52Chris Ryan?

  Loungier stuff?

• 4:53Andy Greenwald?

  I really liked that.

• 4:54Chris Ryan?

  Last Shadow Puppets kind of thing?

• 4:55Andy Greenwald?

  I really liked that band, but it was, he was not listening to the Submarine original soundtrack. He was listening to like the last three albums, which all essentially are one song in my mind.

• 5:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:04Andy Greenwald?

  You know?

• 5:05Chris Ryan?

  Yes. It's the tequila song. It's like the one in the tequila ad that, you know, keeps getting shown.

• 5:09Andy Greenwald?

  No, not that one. Like since then, when they've just been playing piano and he's been crooning.

• 5:14Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay. So like real late period then?

• 5:16Andy Greenwald?

  Deep cuts.

• 5:17Chris Ryan?

  Wow.

• 5:18Andy Greenwald?

  But it was.

• 5:19Chris Ryan?

  Good show though.

• 5:19Andy Greenwald?

  Good show. So nice to see our old friends. You know, people, one of our most memorable early, you know, beats of our origin story was when we drove to Marlton, New Jersey to buy Wu-Tang Forever on double disc.

• 5:34Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 5:35Andy Greenwald?

  In 1997.

• 5:36Chris Ryan?

  With your then-girlfriend.

• 5:37Andy Greenwald?

  What's that?

• 5:38Chris Ryan?

  With your then-girlfriend.

• 5:39Andy Greenwald?

  In the backseat of the Saab.

• 5:41Chris Ryan?

  We were like, shh.

• 5:43Andy Greenwald?

  You wait in the car.

• 5:44Chris Ryan?

  No, we didn't do that. When we were playing it, we were just like, don't chime in.

• 5:50Andy Greenwald?

  They looked so like healthy and happy, and that made me very healthy and happy. I did not feel particularly healthy and happy because they took the stage at 9:15 on a Sunday night and had a light show that basically gave me epilepsy. You know, when I wandered the way in, I was like, this is fine on the way out.

• 6:05Chris Ryan?

  Got that lepsy now?

• 6:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. But I also appreciated that, like in a nod to what the arena felt like, as after he finished, I think it was after he finished performing Method Man, Method Man with Mike in Hand was smiling to the crowd and he said, "If you're white and you say the N-word, you're racist." Don't forget.

• 6:26Chris Ryan?

  How many white people are in the audience?

• 6:28Andy Greenwald?

  It was dark.

• 6:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:29Andy Greenwald?

  But not that dark, so.

• 6:32Chris Ryan?

  It was dark.

• 6:35Chris Ryan?

  Eddie, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about The Bear coming back. I don't really have a lot of personal anecdotes to share. I've had a lovely time up in here in Portland, but the work goes on. You know, I'm never off the clock. I'm always thinking about shows.

• 6:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 6:49Chris Ryan?

  The TV landscape, streaming wars.

• 6:53Chris Ryan?

  I'm excited for this fourth season. You know, I think the third season, I went back and read some of the reviews from like Vulture, The New Yorker, and I'd kind of forgotten about how divisive this show was or this season, the third season was.

• 7:11Chris Ryan?

  You know, whether or not that was a flat out genuine rejection of where the third season went, which was kind of more of the same, I think you could say, or perhaps like stuck in gear for some people. You know, like it was definitely like one of those, the most significant about faces that I've seen in like the critical discourse around the show. Do you recall like the response to the show?

• 7:35Andy Greenwald?

  Well, response like in the culture or within our own potosphere? Because.

• 7:40Chris Ryan?

  Either. I mean, I remember that we liked it.

• 7:42Andy Greenwald?

  We liked it, but we were not that out of step with the seemingly dominant opinion that that was, it was definitely had a different momentum and pace as the previous two seasons. I don't think there were that many, there weren't as many standout episodes. I mean, one of my favorite things about our coverage of The Bear, if we could toot our own horns here, is that when we were going to do the episode of the year, a year and a half ago for 2023, we agreed that we, it should be an episode of The Bear. And I walked away from that conversation prepping forks and you walked away prepping fishes.

• 8:15Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 8:16Andy Greenwald?

  That's how, that's how dominant that season of TV was. But the larger takeaway did seem to be that the show was spinning its wheels to a degree, was digressing in directions that seemed to not jive with what the audience was wanting from the show, like particularly bringing in John Cena as an extra fac, you know, for. For comic relief that the main character of the show, Jeremy Allen White's Carmy seemed to be so stuck in neutral that he had almost receded entirely from the show. People really responded to Carmy's relationship with Molly Gordon's character in the second season and she sort of haunts the third season like a ghost.

• 8:53Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 8:53Andy Greenwald?

  So that was kind of taken from them.

• 8:57Andy Greenwald?

  I think that we said it so many times, it's almost become a cliche, but I feel like we weren't the only ones saying it. That the anecdotal or not, I don't even know if it's anecdotal. I mean, I think it was said in interviews or said by FX executives publicly. That Chris Stor had always told them he had a three year plan for the show and the fact that the third and fourth season were split and but basically filmed at the same time. Gave the impression that there was a lot of filler. So that said, with some time and distance from the season, the highs are still pretty high.

• 9:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah. Why don't I just kind of like run through some broad strokes of what happened on the third season? Just to give listeners a refresher course. It has been a year and I'm sure people are like, oh, maybe I'll rewatch some of it. Season three started with, I would say a divisive and impressionistic episode called Tomorrow that I happen to love.

• 9:45Andy Greenwald?

  I loved it.

• 9:45Chris Ryan?

  Which was essentially an episode long cinematic exploration of the show's themes and characters set to a Nine Inch Nails song for the most part. Uh, I think there were some other music in there, but I went back and watched, uh, Tomorrow a couple of weeks ago and I, I still really love it. You could place that episode basically anywhere in season two or three, and I think it would still be effective, but as a calling card, opening gambit for a season. I thought it was really brave, really interesting, but also I remember asking people if they had seen that episode yet, once the series, it's season had started. And it was basically split down the middle of that was incredible. That was mind blowing. There's nothing like this on TV to what the fuck was that?

• 10:26Andy Greenwald?

  Or that was a very expensive previously on the bear reel.

• 10:29Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Yeah. But I, which is not, uh, that's not, uh, I'm not rejecting that out of hand, even if you tell me that. Like you mentioned, uh, the season featured more characters. So you had facts. You had Brian Koppelman's computer character having a bigger role. And it also featured a lot of non actor, Chicago food scene and national food scene.

• 10:52Chris Ryan?

  stalwarts for lack of a better word the fictional restaurant ever which is where Olivia Colman's Terry character works and that person obviously has a huge role in Richie and Carmy's life that becomes like this kind of meeting point for both the fictional and non and and real life food scene to come together and there's a lot of especially in the finale time devoted to non-professional actors talking about their life working in restaurants and obviously this was filmed coming out of like an incredibly difficult time for restaurants it's still incredibly difficult time for restaurants but a lot of that anxiety and a lot of the frustrations about post covid restaurant life were very evident throughout

• 11:37Chris Ryan?

  the season but especially in those final episodes which may have been distracting for people who were like but what about Claire you know what about this like is the restaurant going to succeed it kind of wrapped up the story that had been lurking in the background for the first two seasons between Carmy and David who is his mentor and tormentor it's funny that that that word is basically connected

• 12:02Andy Greenwald?

  nice

• 12:04Chris Ryan?

  played by Joel McHale Carmy finally gets his moment to confront him and it's an incredibly disappointing experience for him I would say

• 12:12Andy Greenwald?

  it's a little bit like the Cyril Andor showdown

• 12:17Chris Ryan?

  yes

• 12:19Chris Ryan?

  yeah yeah yeah and then yeah some of the highlights of the season included the I O Eta Biri directed episode napkins which centered on Liza Colanzas's Tina character is a flashback episode to when she first joined the beef and she met John Bernthal's Mikey and Eben Moss backer acts Richie and then of course there was ice chips which was the Abby Elliott Jamie Lee Curtis showcase where Natalie gives birth to her first child with the help of her estranged mother and that's kind of where we're at I mean like there is a looming

• 12:57Chris Ryan?

  Uncle like wants his money back for the investment in the bear thing.

• 13:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 13:02Chris Ryan?

  There is Carmy's relentless desire to constantly be changing and innovating and iterating and never rest on his laurels, but that has now become something much more destructive, where he can't have a set menu and he can't, you know, ever be satisfied. He can't ever enjoy himself and can't have a work-life balance.

• 13:24Andy Greenwald?

  Sounds like our Thursday pods.

• 13:25Chris Ryan?

  That's right. And I thought we could talk a little bit about what you were looking for for the fourth season.

• 13:32Andy Greenwald?

  Also, the looming question at the end of the third season, if I remember correctly, is the review, right?

• 13:37Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 13:37Andy Greenwald?

  Like, the bear's finally been reviewed.

• 13:40Chris Ryan?

  He gets the review basically as he's leaving Ever.

• 13:44Andy Greenwald?

  Right, after the Ever closing night party.

• 13:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:47Andy Greenwald?

  Well, the after-party is happening at Sid's apartment.

• 13:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:54Andy Greenwald?

  What am I looking for? I would like, so, okay, here's, I'll use an analogy ripped from the news headlines of my daughter's Pinterest feed, which is, there's a brand-new Nintendo Switch out, there's a brand-new Mario Kart game, which I'm excited, because that's a really fun game, and the innovation this year, from what I understand, I don't have a Switch 2 yet, because I think they're sold out, and like $800 because of the tariffs, is that you can play the racetracks like you always could, but also you can do free-driving mode. And you can drive from Rainbow Road to Koopa Troopa Highway or whatever.

• 14:28Andy Greenwald?

  Season 3 was a long drive from Rainbow Road to Koopa Troopa Highway, and I would like to have a feeling that the car, AKA the show, is back on a track. I love this world, I love this show, I love this cast, and I, you know, I also love the world that the show is interested in, of restaurants and the value of fine dining versus community and ambiance and all the things that the show actually deals with. So I don't actually have a dog in the fight as to what the show is quote-unquote "about", where it's going. There's no landing place that I have in mind. There is, though, I think, I don't think this is just clutching at straws or clutching at pearls to say, like, you can tell when a show is on a trajectory, when it's locked

• 15:12Andy Greenwald?

  in, and I would like to have that feeling again. I've not watched, I've not watched any of the fourth season, so I don't know if it has or not, but that's my hope.

• 15:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, do you think that this is a case of a race, a car that's built to be a race car having to go on a road trip because of its success? You know, I mean, because there's a, there's a world in which those 10 episodes of The Bear that dropped that first season, what was that, 21, 22?

• 15:35Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it's every year, so, so.

• 15:37Chris Ryan?

  But when was the first season, like 20?

• 15:39Andy Greenwald?

  Two, three, four, five, yeah, two, 22.

• 15:42Chris Ryan?

  22? That that first season is like a perfect little statement.

• 15:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 15:49Chris Ryan?

  You know, obviously it ends with like a tremendous amount of, of emotional pain.

• 15:53Andy Greenwald?

  And money in cans.

• 15:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but, uh, I, I feel like the, what Christopher Storres had to do is essentially like redesign the vehicle mid-race and decide like, well, this is actually built for mileage, not for speed. And a lot of the language of the show is about time. Uh, a lot of the thematic stuff is, is tied back to time. Every second counts, clocks everywhere, everybody looking at clocks all the time. And you have that pressure, you're, you're inevitably going to feel like there's a, a ticking clock on the show that there is like a, it's, it's trying to get to someplace. But that's not actually what long-running television shows do.

• 16:37Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 16:37Chris Ryan?

  You know, they have their own tempo and then they have like these digressions and they have side characters. So it's been really interesting because Karmie has not necessarily changed that much over the three seasons, but everything around him has.

• 16:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and I think psychologically, and I know I've said this at some point in the past season's conversation, like, I find that very, very compelling that, uh, we are all ultimately our own worst enemies and we can see the need for change, we can understand it, we can have it shouted in our faces, but until we actually do the hard work, it's never going to happen. In life, I find that very compelling and relatable. On a TV show, it can be tougher sledding. I also think that like it is absolutely the crutch of the TV critic or the podcaster to want to, uh, draw parallel lines between what's happening in front of the camera, what's happening behind the scenes. But one of the things that I find really compelling about TV and the way that it takes over the lives of not just the fans, but also the people who make it is that you can draw those lines, sometimes quite legitimately.

• 17:37Andy Greenwald?

  And I think that one of the challenges of, in the world of fine dining, I think chefs will say this, is. How do you, when you can do anything, meaning you have reached the pinnacle, you have your own, you have backers, financial planning, you have the access to all the best ingredients, and it's an unlimited toolbox, how do you self-edit? How do you express yourself? How do you explain the reason why you're doing this when you could, in that moment, do absolutely anything and people might check it out? You know, we were talking about Top Chef the other week, and like, sometimes those chefs do better, the crazier the restrictions are, because they are just forced into a spot where they have to consider their options and consider the limits of that.

• 18:21Andy Greenwald?

  So, The Bear, you could make the case that The Bear, the TV show, was more compelling and more itself when it was hungrier, when it was grittier, when it was scrappier, when it was an underdog, when these people weren't stars, when it wasn't FX's number-one priority, both to get it on the air for ratings, but also for awards. Story-wise, the challenge of the fourth season is Carmi deciding what he actually wants to do, right? To potentially, in the best case, combine the two strands of his personality, the fine dining of his dreams and nightmares, and then also the beloved sandwich shop out back.

• 19:02Andy Greenwald?

  I will be, I will be the most on board with the show, and I will be on the front lines, you know, psychoanalyzing it, if the show does that. Like, if in its fourth season, it is able to merge the streams of fine dining and fast casual, like, in terms of, you know, episode to episode, this is a fun hang with this group of people, this is a TV show, man, and we love it, with the more ambitious flights of cinematic fancy that Chris likes to do.

• 19:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, to me, it's still among, if not the best-made or best-looking show on TV, you know, coming out of the restrictions, and I think budgetary limits, and also, like, just the sheer speed with which they shoot and with which they, like, assemble these seasons, which is an increasingly rare occurrence for something to be like, yep, we go again, we shoot in the, in the winter, and then we get this thing up in the spring or in the summer. That's really impressive in and of itself, but on an episode-to-episode basis, like, nothing is as well-lit, shot, edited, scored, it just is a pleasure, pleasure for me to watch.

• 20:12Chris Ryan?

  It's funny to hear you talk about like doing that work on yourself and knowing, you know, you can know what you need and you can know what's wrong. But can you change it? And I think that the question I have going into this fourth season is, is it possible to do that yourself? Or do you need something external to come along to change your circumstances for you to change? Because one of the things that I love about this show is how accurately it portrays the way a group of people who work together can love one another in a very specific way. Because you're not actually friends in the traditional sense that you choose to spend extra time with this person. You're working with them, you know, you're

• 20:55Chris Ryan?

  all being paid to do something. You've all got ambitions and you've all got your lives happening outside of work that are influencing like where you are. But I think that The Bear does a really great job showing like Carmen and Sydney don't hang out. You know what I mean? It's really funny because I think the internet can only be the internet. It's like, when are Carmen and Sydney, they are endgame? Like, when will it happen? It's like, no, these people are professional. I would, I would almost go like they are weirdly like they are lovers in so much as like they work together in a certain way. Yeah, but they are not like hanging out, going to dive bars afterwards, getting beers and talking about the Cubs.

• 21:37Andy Greenwald?

  By the way, I think what you just said is exactly right. I think it's beautifully stated. And if people still need more evidence of what Chris is talking about, watch Chris on Higher Learning with Van from last week, because you have just described that dynamic perfectly. One of, one of the all time best performances on a Ringer podcast by both of you. Bravo. And when you guys go to a dive bar together, call me.

• 21:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I will. And you'll be like, I'm sleepy.

• 22:00Andy Greenwald?

  I'm tired. I went to Wu-Tang six weeks ago. Still catch it up. I'm Aziz. Yeah, I, I, I think what you're talking, when you talk about like, the work hang, the good hang, let's remember one other thing before we, because I don't want my, my impression of the season or my experience of the season, and I don't want the coverage of it to be overly influenced by the coverage of last season and the Emmy stuff, which were, which actually leads into our next segment.

• 22:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:31Andy Greenwald?

  What I'd like to say, though, first, and I feel like has almost gotten lost, is

• 22:36Andy Greenwald?

  Every time I say, oh, this isn't this, you know, it's not a traditional TV show. This is like a Michael Mann sizzle reel for a week and then it's something else. You know, The Bear is a TV show because it fucking delivers 10 episodes every year in June. That is what a restaurant needs to do to meet its margins. You know what I mean? You open and you serve people. And we are, I don't even think we are over celebrating the emergence of The Pit. I don't think the Emmys are about to over celebrate it. I think The Pit is incredible. But when we have, as we pivoted to this conversation about how it finally, it seems like everybody remembers. One of the key things about television is dependability and schedule. Uh, and its presence on a consistent basis in your home. The Bear was the first to remember that.

• 23:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:21Andy Greenwald?

  In a, in a major way, not the first, because you know, like what we do in the shadows came back every year too. But in terms of like the relationship to the characters and the dynamic serialized nature of it. The Bear has delivered on that. And so it is a little bit of a like.

• 23:34Chris Ryan?

  Misnomer around the biggest shows, uh, in terms of maybe not necessarily ratings. Cause what are ratings anymore? But in terms of the, the most hotly discussed shows. I think that there is this strange expectation that because they, they, they are these acts of staggering genius. They take many years to assemble and bring back to us. And that was not the case before COVID. It was really not the case before we introduced massive VFX into television shows on a routine basis. And it has kind of just really like invaded the TV space in a way that I think is very bad for TV. And the entertainment strategy guy who does a newsletter, it's part of like the larger ankler newsletter, uh, business.

• 24:18Chris Ryan?

  Like wrote something really compelling about these multi-year breaks between seasons are absolutely killing people. When it comes to their, their shows and the interest level in their shows and. I think that like we need way more bears and pits and way fewer not to dump on a show that got canceled like Wheel of Times or uh you know it shows that take two to three years to come back and you're just like oh yeah now I have to relearn what happened on Last of Us get myself in that headspace like I understand why Last of Us can't come back next year but it should.

• 24:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and I think it also to circle back to I agree with all of that and I think it's going to be a theme of this podcast for the next few years as the industry tries to remember those things and adjust for it.

• 25:03Chris Ryan?

  We're podcasting for the next few years, that's that's great.

• 25:06Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, well, I mean, my name is gonna be on the podcast still, you know, like in perpetuity.

• 25:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:13Andy Greenwald?

  But there will be a.

• 25:14Chris Ryan?

  Stick the takeoff with Andy Greenwald, yeah.

• 25:16Andy Greenwald?

  But.

• 25:16Chris Ryan?

  Nail the takeoff.

• 25:17Andy Greenwald?

  But um.

• 25:19Chris Ryan?

  Sorry, I'll be on highlight learning.

• 25:20Andy Greenwald?

  No, but it goes back to the it goes back to the chef analogy, right of like that is the fundamental challenge for a lot of restaurants, which is how to be the most creative expressive version of yourself and then do it consistently every night forever in order to make your impossible.

• 25:37Chris Ryan?

  How many restaurants have you been to or thought about like where it's just like that first year you can't get a table every night is this memorable night you can't believe you tried this dish and then it's like yeah, man, we can go to Little Dom's, it's okay.

• 25:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, like what lasts like reliable restaurants and this was in our Top Chef conversation, it was in my conversation with Gail, which is like a lot of people who win Top Chef are like, cool, this is great. Now I'm going to, you know, cook at festivals and build my Instagram and just try to make a living that's humane.

• 26:08Chris Ryan?

  And have lots of brand deals, yeah.

• 26:09Andy Greenwald?

  And so there is an element of that in this fourth season where a lot, you know, the cast, the show has created stars in a way that also television historically has done. I mean, Jeremy Allen White was known, but he was not playing Bruce Springsteen in a major motion picture type fame. I O's career is exploding. Eben is the thing and now is going to be in Avengers Doomsday. Chris is making, you know, getting tons of movie offers and doing rewrite jobs and stuff.

• 26:37Andy Greenwald?

  Keeping them within this fold and like them returning and delivering is an open question, you know?

• 26:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:44Andy Greenwald?

  That said, the other open question that, you know, that I, I think there have been, there's people are noticing, there's rumors about is like, this was, everything we understood, this fourth season was supposed to be, or was going to be labeled the final season. That verbiage is missing.

• 26:59Chris Ryan?

  We assumed that.

• 27:00Andy Greenwald?

  We assumed it.

• 27:02Chris Ryan?

  Cause we assumed that this is a three season arc that had been stretched to four. And, and that this would be the final season. There has been no literature to suggest that so far.

• 27:13Andy Greenwald?

  No, which is, which is also amazing because as I was just saying, like, getting this cast together to do anything, whether it's press or film a season of the show is like lassoing cats. So I'm interested in that. We have not, we're not reporting anything. We're not breaking news. We have not even, at least I, I mean, we, whatever context we have it affects, we haven't even asked. But I think that's noticeable and it's interesting. And once we get into the episodes themselves, I think until something is confirmed one way or another, like it's going to be a drumbeat to the conversation. I'm not saying that I will enjoy the first three episodes less if I feel the, uh, the end moving for, the goalposts moving while I'm watching.

• 27:53Chris Ryan?

  Well, I don't know what the goalposts are.

• 27:54Andy Greenwald?

  But we don't know what they're.

• 27:55Chris Ryan?

  I think that's, and I think that that's probably the advice we should all take is, is like, don't expect any, like, there is not like a, will Don Draper reveal his true identity? Who will stop Walter White? Like, we, I, the bear, the restaurant will either continue or it won't. The show will either continue or it won't. But there isn't like a, a anvil hanging over the series anymore to me. Not that there was, but I think it's really hard to imagine them maintaining the emotional intensity of.

• 28:29Chris Ryan?

  Fishes, you know, or even like the early episodes of like the like Carmy's incredible like perfectionism and screaming and and rocking and rolling all over the place like I don't know how many years you could have done that, but it is tracking the way that the these people have changed and evolved.

• 28:47Andy Greenwald?

  Here's the other.

• 28:47Chris Ryan?

  And the restaurant.

• 28:48Andy Greenwald?

  And here's the other thing to keep an eye on. A lot of the show's most successful drama and certainly its most enduring trauma has been about the characters wrestling with their pasts. And a lot of the show.

• 28:58Chris Ryan?

  That's exactly, you know, Catherine Van Arundock made that point about season three. She was probably lower on the season than you and I were, but she mentioned how much of the best of the bear is happening in the past.

• 29:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, exactly. And or the shadow of the past, or the past showing up for friends and family night and wanting a seat at the table, fixing old wounds. And that that's true for every character. I mean, Sidney's relationship with her father isn't damaged, it's sweet, but it hangs over everything that she does in the present. I think a successful season for me would bring the characters up to the present moment and see and not not that, look, again, use the real life psychological lens, like all of us are always in conversation with our past and what was modeled for us and what we're carrying.

• 29:41Chris Ryan?

  Especially the older you get.

• 29:42Andy Greenwald?

  We can't let go of, for sure. But I do think it would be the sign of a healthy drama, I'm sorry, healthy comedy, if the show's stresses, problems, stakes were more aggressively rooted in the present. The review, can they hold this together? Future relationships, including like, and I didn't read Catherine's piece, but I wonder if this came up in it as well. The the Molly Gordon character was a present problem slash gift to Carmy, but the show pushed her into of the past and made her another past problem, another ghost haunting him in season three. So, and I think that, you know, thinking this through out loud in real time, but I

• 30:24Andy Greenwald?

  feel like that sensibility also was a anchor weighing down season three. You know, when we talk about lack of momentum, it's not entirely that it wasn't just getting to the point of the restaurant opening or getting reviewed or whatever, it was also that more and more things kept accruing in the past ledger, rather than moving it forward.

• 30:44Chris Ryan?

  I guess I find that pretty accurate to life, but I don't know whether or not that's great for TV. You know, I find that if you get to a place in middle age, or you know, just in maybe in terms of professional stability, and your day to day is more or less functional, and you're not like, how am I gonna get to the piece of pizza that will be my sustenance at 7pm, which is where I was maybe 20 years ago. I think that you start to think about your past way more because you're like, what made me into this person?

• 31:17Andy Greenwald?

  And it was all that pizza you ate.

• 31:18Chris Ryan?

  And you also have a lot of time, like you kind of have a lot of like, you know, mental downtime, especially if you don't like have a kid, you know what I mean? Like, I imagine for you, though, when you see your kids, you're thinking about like your parents, right? Like, you're thinking about how they, you were raised versus how you're raising your kids.

• 31:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and then the

• 31:35Chris Ryan?

  Not to get personal.

• 31:36Andy Greenwald?

  No, but it's all true. And also the challenge of like, it's a challenge to be present with children as the completely unique people they are, when your brain keeps wanting to pull you back into childhood and be like, project your own, well, I didn't like doing this, so they won't like it. So how do I protect them from it as opposed to letting them have their own

• 31:55Chris Ryan?

  You just let them listen to Wu-Tang. It's just the only way.

• 31:57Andy Greenwald?

  Again and again. The other thing I'll say before, then we can move on, is just, I always have time for this show. And not just because I loved the first two seasons, but the ways that I felt season three dipped, or lost me, or confounded me, there is a, in terms of what I look for in the art that I enjoy consuming, there is a level of like good faith interest in the emotional lives of characters. And the bear never went away from that. Sometimes I went too far into it, you know, or But but I am always interested in the digressions.

• 32:39Andy Greenwald?

  You know, I don't feel because, you know, you've been podcasting with me and been friends with me for a long time. Sometimes I have a very visceral reaction to things that I don't like or that aren't working for me. And the bear never pushes me in that way because

• 32:52Chris Ryan?

  Even when you're like, this isn't working for me.

• 32:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, because it doesn't ever, at least to my, um, from my perspective, it it never does it in a way that is cynical or that is heavy, it is heavy hand, it can be heavy. It's but it's never cynical and it's never for show.

• 33:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:09Andy Greenwald?

  You know, it's it's not, it's always, it's always sort of rubbing the worry stone of who we are and are we okay? And what are we doing? And not throwing extra things at it, maybe other than John Cena, which I still don't fully believe. But the other thing that underlines the history of the show, when they get together to film, is it does seem like a pretty fun, loose family affair that isn't afraid of doing stuff that it wants to do.

• 33:31Chris Ryan?

  If if it wasn't a pleasure to make, I don't think they would make it anymore.

• 33:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think that's right.

• 33:35Chris Ryan?

  Um, you know, the one thing I wanted to ask you about before we get into our fake Emmy categories conversation was the release of the show, which has been something that you and I have kind of, I think, been mad at since even the beginning, although I think it really served the show well in the first season. Since then, you know, you and I have probably been like, why the hell do you wait a year only to have this like one night of watching the bear, basically? And we have enforced our own limits on

• 34:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 34:06Chris Ryan?

  the last couple of seasons of how we talk about it.

• 34:11Chris Ryan?

  Often we talk about like, uh, seasons of shows, usually they're limited series that are constructed as like long movies,

• 34:21Chris Ryan?

  with a little bit of derision. Like you didn't, you didn't do the work necessary to make this a compelling piece of television week to week.

• 34:30Chris Ryan?

  And now we've kind of come into this new era where, you know, what Tony Gilroy did with Andor, which was presenting these three act arcs of different stories. I went back and watched some chunks of the first three seasons of the show. And I have to tell you, I do think it works better as a binge. Because I, first of all, found myself unable to stop. So I would just watch two or three episodes of it, of a, of a season, just without even thinking hitting next episode. But I think when you finally get yourself into the headspace to be, okay, this is the cutting rhythm, this is the shooting style, this is the music, this is the performance style. It's hard to, hard to jump out after 31 minutes. You know what I mean?

• 35:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 35:15Chris Ryan?

  Which is generally around what these episodes run at, you know, with the exception of some really extended, you know, almost like feature-length pieces.

• 35:23Andy Greenwald?

  And I think, this isn't a spoiler, like, the runtimes was, of this season, was released somehow, and that's out there, and it, basically, every episode is 32, 33 minutes, except for one whopper, one 69-minute episode.

• 35:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:36Andy Greenwald?

  Um, yeah, look, I, they are committed to the bit, and I respect it, to-

• 35:43Chris Ryan?

  But I think we thought, maybe, oh, this is like a database decision that doesn't work for the show, and I kinda now, I'm starting to feel otherwise.

• 35:50Andy Greenwald?

  I'm interested in that, because I think database, like, these companies are gonna do what works best for them, and there's unquestionable proof that we do not have access to, that this is a blockbuster for the Disney Corporation in the way that they release it. So, that was never gonna change. As a consumer and viewer, like, and we talked about this last month, Andor had, especially the season two release, had a lot of thought put into it. Andor is an extremely dense and chewy show, and more than three episodes, I think, would have been completely unwieldy. Um, but the three episodes being essentially mini-movies, and being, there being some

• 36:31Andy Greenwald?

  intentionality to what we're given, when we're given it, I really, really came around and liked a lot. I, I, I mean, well, I'll try and pay attention as I get into this season, you know, whether I wanna, whether I want to stop at our artificially decided upon stopping places, but- I still, I guess the thing is, I'd love to see the experiment run. I would love to know what the reception to an engagement with a week.

• 37:00Chris Ryan?

  Two and a half months of the bear.

• 37:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I'm really curious about that.

• 37:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:04Andy Greenwald?

  Especially, yeah, but we're not getting that, so. Do you feel like that is unique to the bear, your desire to just keep going, keep going? Or are there other shows recently?

• 37:13Chris Ryan?

  I, well, I mean, I say, I'm sorry, I misspoke. I, it is pretty unique to the bear. I don't have a lot of shows where I'm like, next one, next one. I, the, the exception really would be also mysteries is if, because Netflix ones especially, like Department Q are so good at putting, you know, you want to click next.

• 37:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, Department Q was, was well crafted for that, and I was just also into it. Do you know what I've actually really appreciated in the last month? Five episode seasons. Now, I, look, we just came off of talking about The Pit, and I'm like, 15, hell yeah. Like, let's go. That's, you know, multiple months of enjoying something week to week. But both Hundred Foot Wave and Sirens are five episodes. Now, we're not here to comment on like the amortization value of doing that for some of these networks. Everything is different, but there was something psychologically quite comforting, knowing that this was manageable.

• 38:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:12Andy Greenwald?

  Would I like more episodes of Hundred Foot Wave? Sure, you know, but five was hitting me different than eight, I gotta say.

• 38:21Chris Ryan?

  Is this a precursor to a new Emmy category? Where like the achievement for a perfect number of episodes?

• 38:30Andy Greenwald?

  That's such a good idea. It's a good segue because.

• 38:33Chris Ryan?

  And it goes to like a data guy at Netflix who's like, yes.

• 38:36Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly.

• 38:37Chris Ryan?

  I nailed the amount of Sirens episodes to order.

• 38:40Andy Greenwald?

  He just shows up blinking, clutching three empties of Monster Energy drink. He's just like, gotta go back to my cave.

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• 40:38Chris Ryan?

  The real reason Andy and I wanted to do this is, you know, for the Big Picture Pod, like their relationship to the Oscars is so pure and it's one of the animating discussions of their pod is, is the award season, the horse race to get to the nominations for the Oscars. What's going to win the Oscars? What should win the Oscars? And the Oscars is this like almost spinal cord of, of like the year of movies for them. And we don't have that really with the Emmys because we don't really, frankly, I think, not respect or believe in the Emmys, but I find like it complicated to judge something from, you know, the second half of last year and the first half of this year. The categories now have become, I think,

• 41:21Chris Ryan?

  a little bit behind the times, behind the television times. And, you know, mostly what people talk about with the Emmys night, aside from like if something rises and becomes like a, a kind of preeminent show, which I think we have a chance that could happen coming out of, of this upcoming season of Emmys, or this upcoming, uh, broadcast of the Emmys in September, the nominations will come out in mid-July, but the voting is open now. So that's why Andy and I thought we would chat about this. Is like this really fucking stupid, is the bear a comedy conversation that has now apparently warranted hit pieces from veteran comedy writers talking about it? And, and I, I'm like, kind of so bored

• 42:04Chris Ryan?

  with this chatter that we decided we would come up with some new categories for the Emmys.

• 42:09Andy Greenwald?

  I, first of all, I'm very happy to turn the page of the conversation from what seems to be solidifying into a two, two take race, which is, is the bear a comedy and what should win instead of it, since other shows are funny? And the pit or severance battle for the soul of what television should look like and how often we should get it.

• 42:28Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 42:30Andy Greenwald?

  I think there are many, many, there are a lot more interesting topics to discuss than that. But we haven't compared notes on this. I think this is such a great idea. I think this is so fun. I've come up with three categories with nominees, but I kind of just want to keep doing this. I feel like just then, that idea of like best runtime, there's plenty, plenty, plenty, plenty of things to do.

• 42:49Chris Ryan?

  All right. So the reason why we're doing this is just because we think there could use, the Emmys could use a fresh coat of paint.

• 42:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 42:54Chris Ryan?

  And it could use a little bit of a shakeup in terms of, uh, what kind of categories they have, what kind of awards they're giving out. This is not to say that there isn't value in the way that they do things. And it certainly is trying to throw its arms around the awkward television year, which is basically a nonstop 12-month, seven-day-a-week, 365-days-a-year schedule. But I do think that these institutions like the Television Academy or the National Basketball Association are a little slow to revise because they think that there's like this overwhelming interest in historical comps and the sort of, you know, like the scholarship around like, oh, like, this show has this many Emmys, this show has this many Emmy

• 43:39Chris Ryan?

  nominations. I just think we can move past it. Like, when Mad Men was on the air, there was like, what, one-tenth of the amount of television?

• 43:49Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, you're doing the eras conversation. I see.

• 43:51Chris Ryan?

  I'm just saying, like, I think TV has changed so drastically and the kinds of shows that are being made has changed so drastically since even the early 2000s that we could actually truly stand to have some new categories beyond the kind of jokey, interesting ones that we're about to throw out.

• 44:06Andy Greenwald?

  I agree, and I think that the Emmys are often very, very guilty of hurting. Like, if a show wins for Best Comedy, it often wins-

• 44:14Chris Ryan?

  It goes on a run.

• 44:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, the actors win, the writers win, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the things that I historically do like about the Oscars, even though on the face of it it doesn't make much sense, is that when there's a large group of Best Picture nominees, there's often like a smaller film, or an arthouse film, or a filmmaker favorite included, which is great for everyone involved, but they also have no chance in hell of winning the big prize. What they tend to win then is the Screenwriting Prize. Like, that's like, Quentin Tarantino has never won an Emmy for directing, right? He's only won for writing. So I think the Emmys, part of the categories I came up with is for just that. Like, there should be a way to share the wealth for shows that are excellent,

• 44:55Andy Greenwald?

  but maybe not the one that's going to move the room, move the industry, and sweep the night.

• 45:01Chris Ryan?

  Why don't you go first with your first new category for the Emmys?

• 45:04Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, I'm also realizing, in some ways, when I'm looking at my categories, I am sort of turning this into the Grammys or the American Music Awards, but I'll explain why in a second. Okay, so my first category, and we haven't compared notes, maybe we'll have some overlaps here.

• 45:17Andy Greenwald?

  Best New Artist slash character. This is going to be confusing because of the seven nominees I have, some are actors and some are characters. And in my world, that's fine. So, for example, my first nominee for Best New Artist slash Character is Akram from Department Q. Alexei Manvlov is a great actor, but I'm giving this award to the character because I want him to be in many more seasons of television.

• 45:41Chris Ryan?

  Oh, interesting. So this will function as more of a, like, it works within the fictional world of the show rather than like achievements outside.

• 45:51Andy Greenwald?

  Well, then also Owen Cooper from Adolescence is nominated, the 15-year-old star. Not Jamie, the actor, because I think he's the best new artist.

• 45:58Chris Ryan?

  How do you determine what, like?

• 46:00Andy Greenwald?

  I want to see the screen, like, the pictures of the nominees, the picture in picture. But the people who are nominated as a character have to dress in character and give their speech in character.

• 46:11Chris Ryan?

  Oh, so Owen Cooper?

• 46:12Andy Greenwald?

  Can just be Owen Cooper.

• 46:14Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 46:14Andy Greenwald?

  He can just be like a humble 15-year-old. But Alexei Manvlov has to get up there pretending to be a guy who used to work in the Syrian Secret Service and speak very politely from notes in a notebook. Also, Sarah Lightfoot Leon, who's an actress who came into our lives this year via the agency and American Primeval. She is not nominated as, what was the character's name? Abish? She's not Abish, she's Sarah. But poor Taylor Dearden has to show up as Dr. King from The Pit.

• 46:42Chris Ryan?

  Okay, I get it.

• 46:43Andy Greenwald?

  You see what I'm saying?

• 46:44Chris Ryan?

  This is an interesting idea.

• 46:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, we shouldn't have led with this one, but I like it. Similarly, Stephanie Koenig from The English Teacher has to go as Gwen Sanders. The character of Gwen Sanders is nominated.

• 46:55Andy Greenwald?

  But Ella Lilly Highland also has to show up as Williams from Black Doves, the 24-year-old Irish assassin.

• 47:02Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so some people show up as actors.

• 47:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 47:06Chris Ryan?

  Some people have to show up as characters.

• 47:08Andy Greenwald?

  Correct, Lola Petticrew.

• 47:09Chris Ryan?

  Based on just basically how you associate them?

• 47:12Andy Greenwald?

  No, what, who I want to reward. So, and also some of the characters have reached an ending point. For example, Dolores Price.

• 47:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:21Andy Greenwald?

  A real life figure in the Irish struggle for independence, played by Lola Petticrew brilliantly in Say Nothing. That is a closed bracketed character on screen and in life. She is no longer with us. But Lola, I think is an incandescent talent. So Lola is nominated. So the nominees are Akram, Owen Cooper, Sarah Lightfoot Leon, Dr. Mel King, Gwen Sanders, a teacher, Williams, an assassin, and Lola Petticrew. And I just, I think that would be a lot of fun. Maybe not for the people who have to show up as a character, but I think it would be a lot of fun.

• 47:55Chris Ryan?

  Also, just like, how do you figure this out with a voting block?

• 47:59Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not worried about the voters. I'm not worried about the voters.

• 48:04Chris Ryan?

  Along those same lines, maybe the inverse of this is, one of the issues that's been, I guess not plaguing television, but it's certainly an interesting change is the,

• 48:16Chris Ryan?

  how short the runs are for shows, even successful shows. We already start dialing them down after a couple of seasons because obviously there's like a question that they have to answer. But also typically what happens if my understanding of television, the business side of it is correct, is after the third season of a show, there are different escalators involved with people's contracts. Often the behind the scenes crew, the below the line crew are expected to get pay raises right after the third season. So it's actually increasingly rare to see shows go beyond three seasons for a variety of reasons. But I want to reward excellence in long running television shows.

• 48:57Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, I like this.

• 48:57Chris Ryan?

  And so basically like my first one is excellence in extended runs. So this would be for more than three seasons. So it'd have to be either rewarding a third season that already has a renewed renewal, or something past it's, so it could be the last season if it's a fourth season. But it has to be excellence and extended runs. And we are taking into account the totality of the achievement of the show rather than was the ninth season good?

• 49:27Andy Greenwald?

  Don't we sound like people trying to explain VAR or something? Like football.

• 49:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, a little bit. But I do think that there is something to be said for, say,

• 49:38Chris Ryan?

  Is this a place where you could reward SVU?

• 49:41Andy Greenwald?

  Right. Okay.

• 49:42Chris Ryan?

  You know, uh, is this a place?

• 49:44Andy Greenwald?

  The, the, the tent.

• 49:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Yes.

• 49:46Andy Greenwald?

  All right.

• 49:47Chris Ryan?

  Is this a place where some long running procedurals could get some love? Where honestly, there are a bunch of Apple shows that are on like season four, season five, where I'm like, damn, I didn't know that, that this show came back, much less had five seasons.

• 49:59Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 50:00Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, so I think that that would be a cool way to kind of celebrate. Cause like, I do think that the, the television academy has started getting a little in love with a show that's on its second or third season.

• 50:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. It, it used to be the Golden Globes would be like Homeland's been on for six weeks. It's the best drama of the year. And that's kind of the function the Golden Globe served would be the hype man for new stuff. While the Emmys were a little bit more austere.

• 50:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. It would just be like Modern Family, you won again.

• 50:28Andy Greenwald?

  But now the Emmys, like the viewing public, honestly, has a very short attention span. And it, it falls in love quickly.

• 50:33Chris Ryan?

  Okay. What's your next category?

• 50:35Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, but do you have any, so do you have any nominees beyond SVU? Or you're just saying that's the category?

• 50:38Chris Ryan?

  Here's the issue with this previous year is that all of our shows from the top 10 of 2024, essentially all of them are either new or within their first three seasons. And then all of my shows from this year that I would say are on some sort of magical big board for end of the year best of. And they're not going to be like that surprising to people who've been listening to the show. I mean, there are things like The Pit and Adolescence and, um, you know, like, like these are the, and/or the series is that like, we've been talking about a lot.

• 51:12Chris Ryan?

  I would say that the only one that really fits into what we're talking about here would probably be Shorzy. But Shorzy will pop up in a couple of other places.

• 51:20Andy Greenwald?

  There's one other one. Industry would.

• 51:24Chris Ryan?

  It will be for, it's just not out yet and it would be for next year, right?

• 51:28Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I see. Yes. Oh, it's not eligible. Even the third season is eligible, but you're not, it has to be beyond that. I see. Okay.

• 51:34Chris Ryan?

  Uh, although I guess in my telling of this, industry would be eligible because it has been renewed for a fourth season.

• 51:39Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. Here are my nominees for my new category. So I have a new category. It would be called television entertainer of the year. And this award.

• 51:47Chris Ryan?

  Is this your Mulaney Award?

• 51:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. But more than just Mulaney. I was thinking about how do we get Mulaney an award because God knows that guy needs more, uh, commendations and attention. But more than that, it's actually my Stephen Graham Award. You know, because I was trying to think of something, a way to recognize people who might slip between the cracks of, you know, bigger shows or being affiliated with, they might be affiliated with smaller shows, but many shows, you know what I mean?

• 52:15Chris Ryan?

  Can I make an edit here?

• 52:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, sure.

• 52:17Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so I think I really like your Mulaney thing, which is your entertainer of the year.

• 52:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but I have, I have six other nominees for it, but go on.

• 52:23Chris Ryan?

  But do you think that there's, you're really saying achievement on multiple shows in a, in a Emmy calendar year?

• 52:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, basically, yes.

• 52:31Chris Ryan?

  Right, so Cynthia Nixon's on and just like that in Gilded Age, Stephen Graham is in

• 52:36Andy Greenwald?

  Thousand Blows and Adolescence.

• 52:37Chris Ryan?

  And Adolescence, yeah.

• 52:39Andy Greenwald?

  Erin Doherty is in Thousand Blows and Adolescence, she's nominated. Steve Carell is in Four Seasons and Mountain Head, nominated this year, he's very honored. Our guy, hardest working man in the UK, Kurt Eguywan, is in House of the Dragon, The Agency, and Andor. And like Mulaney for Everybody's Live, his contributions to SNL 50 and all talk shows that he appears on. Conan O'Brien for his appearance on many talk shows, his travel show Conan Must Go, which I watch regularly and love, and his Mark Twain Prize, which became a show on Netflix. And then the dark horse, bringing it back to the Mulaney show, is my guy Langston Kerman, who is secretly responsible for most of my biggest laughs of this past year.

• 53:24Chris Ryan?

  But is he on screen?

• 53:25Andy Greenwald?

  He is on screen, he was in the bubble suit in the Mulaney interview with Michael Jackson's chimp, which is

• 53:31Chris Ryan?

  I really like Langston Kerman a lot, but this is, this award, this category is really doing a lot of work for your interests.

• 53:37Andy Greenwald?

  I thought that's what we were doing.

• 53:39Chris Ryan?

  We are, but I, I actually think you have two categories here, you do.

• 53:43Andy Greenwald?

  Well, okay, well, we can bring this up with Hollywood Foreign Press or whoever is gonna vet this, but Langston Kerman was on Mulaney, he had his own comedy special, and he was on English Teacher.

• 53:54Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Is he on Abbott?

• 53:56Andy Greenwald?

  I have not kept up with Abbott, so I can't tell you that. I cannot confirm that.

• 54:00Chris Ryan?

  Hold on a second, Kaya.

• 54:01Andy Greenwald?

  Is that, so if Langston Kerman was on Abbott this year, do you grant him entry to this category?

• 54:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he's Darnell on Abbott.

• 54:08Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, right, of course. Okay, so yes. So don't you think he deserves a spot here?

• 54:13Chris Ryan?

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 54:14Andy Greenwald?

  I thought you were trying to-

• 54:14Chris Ryan?

  He could actually be in both of your fake categories here. He could be entertainer of the year-

• 54:19Andy Greenwald?

  And best new artist.

• 54:19Chris Ryan?

  And multi-show utility player, yeah.

• 54:22Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, so you think entertainer of the year should be someone who is just entertaining?

• 54:25Chris Ryan?

  I think that should be Conan, Mulaney, like your boy, Mike Birbiglia, like you can, you can have like, it, it, there should be a comedy outside of-

• 54:34Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, you think it's a comedy category, so like when every year, one supporting player on SNL gets nominated, like, like, um, Bowen Yang gets nominated.

• 54:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:42Andy Greenwald?

  This would give him a chance to win. And you feel like Stephen Graham should not be in this category because you didn't laugh as much during his appearances? Adolescents. Okay, fair, fair. You have another one, or should I go with the last one? What do you got?

• 54:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I have another one here. Um, scene of the year.

• 54:58Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, this is good. That's really good.

• 54:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I thought that, uh, now this would be interesting in the same way that, um, there's, what some people would describe as category fraud going on between the bear and the hacks with comedy, is what happens when an episode is a scene? Like the third episode of Adolescents, right? Uh, what happens when a scene is full of incredibly, uh, virtuistic filmmaking? Like, certain aspects of Severance, like there's multiple scenes in Severance that I think you could put up for this.

• 55:35Chris Ryan?

  What happens when it's, or are we talking about, like, there's scenes in adults, for instance, which I think, I think would get in under the line for Emmys. Probably won't get any Emmy nominations, but I really enjoy that season.

• 55:48Andy Greenwald?

  Saying it will not, but go on.

• 55:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but like there are scenes in adults that are like hysterically funny, but I don't know if like, would, would that really work? Against also the Matt, the Gorman massacre in Andor? Like, can you have those things in the same category?

• 56:03Andy Greenwald?

  I love this idea because the, one of the goals of this whole exercise, right? Would be to shine light on certain aspects of something that might otherwise get ignored. And like, you're pitching me this category. Two, two scenes from Severance, a show that I am famously not the biggest fan of, at least the second season, immediately leapt to the top of the list. Like, the first, the opening scene of Adam Scott running through the endless hallways, and the Door Company's salesman scene.

• 56:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Completely different.

• 56:32Andy Greenwald?

  Completely different. Yeah, one is, one is absolute filmmaking and, you know, incredible filmmaking. And, um, you know, combining VFX and practical, and I've seen some behind the scenes stuff of how they did that. And that is incredible, elite work, and absolutely commendable. And the Door Company scene is just brilliantly shot, brilliantly conceived, funny, disarming, weird, everything I like about the show. Um, and it makes me excited to think that there's an, there would be an opportunity in your Emmys to dole out gold even places that I maybe don't otherwise want it to go. I love that.

• 57:02Chris Ryan?

  Thank you, man.

• 57:03Andy Greenwald?

  Um, okay, the last thing, and this is maybe the most Grammys, in that one of the things that the Grammys does, that I think every year confuses people, but I do think has value, is, uh, Record of the Year and Song of the Year are different categories.

• 57:19Chris Ryan?

  It's a producer award and a songwriting award, right?

• 57:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and the artist, I think, if the artist is not a songwriter, the artist participates in the glory for Record of the Year, but Song of the Year is a writing award. And I think that idea of understanding that there are different, uh, many different kitchens and different cooks responsible for the success of something. And so this is very on-brand for the podcast, but what if we did a showrunner of the year award? And I think it's tricky because the job is so ill-defined, I mean, it's ill-defined in terms of like, pay scale and whether it's a writing or a producing job, and it actually isn't an official title, and I could go on and on about that. But, uh, it is-

• 57:57Chris Ryan?

  Finally, will someone think of the showrunners?

• 57:59Andy Greenwald?

  Solidarity at this moment in American history. Who deserves our attention more?

• 58:06Andy Greenwald?

  But that there's also very different ways of successfully running shows. And, you know, I think that it would be an interesting insight into the industry. And it would really be an industry driven award because only people on this side of the curtain would probably know why to reward someone. So, for example, the, my first nominee for showrunner of the year is Taylor Sheridan. Right? Like, I know you're nodding, you should, some people aren't watching this. They should just hear your voice.

• 58:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. You say it in your most Taylor Sheridan way.

• 58:35Chris Ryan?

  What's so fascinating about this is that there are so many different kinds of showrunners now. Right? So you have guys like Storer, who's directing a bulk of the episodes of the year and is so hands-on responsible for the way a show looks and feels. Then you have showrunners who are like Tony.

• 58:53Andy Greenwald?

  He's co-showrunner with Joanna Kala.

• 58:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but is directing a lot of the episodes. So that's, that's the only reason why I shouted him out. And then you have people like Tony Gilroy, who never goes to set.

• 59:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, well, also Damon Lindelof famously never goes to set. There are very, very different ways to do it. So I feel like, so I picked a couple. I'm going to throw them at you and I'll explain the reasons why. And I think that these are all things that should be rewarded. Taylor Sheridan is the most prolific writer, producer, showrunner on television right now. And he's responsible for multiple hits. All of them are in the key of Taylor, but they, there is a, there is, there is a, there is some variety that he's offering. I would nominate our buddies, Mickey Down and Conrad Kay for this award because they have consistently delivered an excellent show that year over year, to put it in financial terms, has, you know, has delivered an enormous return. Then there's our Scott Gemmell, who is the showrunner of The Pit.

• 59:45Andy Greenwald?

  And I feel like the orchestration of that show to be familiar and bold at the same time and to do things that require a confidence that is really beyond the Ken, I think, of a lot of more contemporary showrunners. And maybe this, this is dating him in the sense that he did work on ER, but saying, I'm going to give you, in episode one, I'm going to introduce you to a dozen people, maybe two dozen, and by the end of the run, you're going to love them. But yeah, I will have to commit to them before there's been any audience feedback to them. And I think that that requires, and John Wells, who is, you know, is the Yoda of showrunners at this point, is the EP on that show as well. It speaks to his bloodline, but I think that that's kind of awesome. I put Tony here.

• 1:00:29Andy Greenwald?

  Because Tony's, you know, like many showrunners, took minimal writing credit on season two of Andor. I think he's only credited with the first three episodes, but of course, everything went through his laptop before it went to air. And as he's proved in his media blitz after the release of the show, like, none of that really happens without him.

• 1:00:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:51Andy Greenwald?

  I put Josh the Tumor for Say Nothing.

• 1:00:53Chris Ryan?

  For sure.

• 1:00:54Andy Greenwald?

  Because I, you know, I think that show is, was underseen, underappreciated, not by us, but I think maybe by the general public. I don't know if it's gonna get any Emmy love, but the degree of difficulty for that show is almost unimaginable because you are film, you are, you are ripping up the still fresh guts of so much generational trauma and pain and making a show that was, I think, respectful and also quite entertaining. I think this is an opportunity for Will Smith of Slow Horses to get recognized for delivering, like, a consistent level of quality every year that is really remarkable. And then finally, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. The studio is eligible this year.

• 1:01:36Chris Ryan?

  Directing and, and running the studio.

• 1:01:38Andy Greenwald?

  And just so brilliantly communicating both their comedy, but also their filmmaking aesthetic throughout an entire show. And by the way, Sal Saperstein was the last man on the nominee list for Best New.

• 1:01:51Chris Ryan?

  I want Ike Barinholtz to go as Sal Saperstein.

• 1:01:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. I think that maybe, maybe, maybe we should push him in because that would be great.

• 1:01:58Chris Ryan?

  I really like that. It's, it's cool too, because it, it gets into the debate of like, what are, what are these people contributing to their shows? Like, is it an overall sense of coherence? Is it a filmmaking touch? Is it a aesthetic that goes across multiple series, like in terms of Taylor Sheridan? I, I love that.

• 1:02:19Andy Greenwald?

  I was thinking, like, there are other ways to look at it too. And this is, and, and the variety of possibilities is what makes this ultimately impossible because you cannot pin it down. And so it's very hard to judge apples to oranges to mangoes to corn chips. Like, it's a very, very wide group of people, wide group of responsibilities. It would be an interesting opportunity to reward people like Joe Barton, who did. Black Doves, who is representative of a particular type of incredibly skilled English showrunner who gets a lot of at bats, you know, but maybe making shorter shows. So Black Doves, Giri Haji, there was a Papa Esse Dhu drama that we didn't even cover. He made two years ago. And that way you kind of can get your arms around someone's whole body of work. What's the name of our guy that we love?

• 1:03:00Chris Ryan?

  Hugo Blick.

• 1:03:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, Hugo Blick. This would be an opportunity when someone has a new show to say like, you are doing something inimitable within the world of TV. And even if, even if one of your shows isn't a home run, you are hitting singles consistently to a way that we would love to celebrate you.

• 1:03:17Chris Ryan?

  That's really smart. Why don't we wrap it up there? I think we got a couple of really good categories. We're always here to give the Emmy notes. And I think what we could do is we could continue to, you know, brainstorm new ones and drop them on the pot as the year goes on.

• 1:03:31Andy Greenwald?

  I think we should, especially once we get the full list of actual nominees. And then instead of bemoaning the snubs, we can just come up with stuff to reward them in our own world.

• 1:03:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. All right. So Greenwald, we'll be back on Thursday to talk about the first three episodes of the new season of The Bear. Hope everybody gets a chance to check those out on Wednesday night. Until then, great to see you. Thank you to Kai and John.

• 1:03:50Andy Greenwald?

  I hope, Chris, that you spend the time between today and Thursday going to a large number of farm to table, let us explain how our menu works restaurants in the Pacific Northwest in order to just get you in the headspace for it.

• 1:04:02Chris Ryan?

  Thank you. Greenwald, great to see you as always.

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