Apple Owns TV Right Now. Is That a Good Thing? Plus, ‘Cape Fear’ Series Premiere and ‘Star City’ Episode 3.

Chris and Andy talk about the Knicks' historic playoff run ahead of Game 3 (3:46) before recommending a pair of documentaries in Netflix’s ‘Marty, Life Is Short’ (8:18) and HBO’s ‘The Dark Wizard’ (13:26). Then they discuss the recent abundance of Apple TV shows and what it says about the state of streaming television (15:51). Later, they break down the ‘Cape Fear’ series premiere (22:27) and ‘Star City’ Episode 3 (49:56). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Additional Video Supervision: Sarah Reddy and Jason Arreola Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

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• 1:35Speaker 01

  I need support staff to clear the room. Stand up and walk, now!

• 1:41Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor at theringer.com. And joining me at the studio, the originator of the hashtag #FreeMaxKatie movement, it's Andy Greenwald!

• 1:56Andy Greenwald?

  I don't think you should watch Cape Fear on Apple TV for the murder drama. I think you should watch it for the insightful glimpse into the world of podcasting. The lurid world of podcasting, which is featured early on.

• 2:08Chris Ryan?

  It is. I love prestige television. Vision's concept of podcasting gives me no end of joy. Andy, it's so good to see you Monday in America. What do we have on tap? Game three in New York City for the NBA Finals. The World Cup begins this week.

• 2:22Andy Greenwald?

  I'm happy they shut down those watch parties. I'll tell you that much.

• 2:25Chris Ryan?

  I want to talk to you about this.

• 2:26Andy Greenwald?

  Do you?

• 2:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:27Andy Greenwald?

  This is one of those days. Yeah, we're gonna talk Cape Fear. We're gonna talk Star City. But this is one of those days where you came in shot out of a cannon. And we almost started potting before we started potting four times.

• 2:37Chris Ryan?

  It's a pretty stimulating world we live in.

• 2:39Andy Greenwald?

  Is it?

• 2:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I think there's a lot going on.

• 2:41Andy Greenwald?

  Is this just nithiumentum you're feeling right now? Anything is possible? That's the hardest laugh we're gonna get from Kaya all day.

• 2:50Chris Ryan?

  Kaya, she's sadly taking down all her Pratt Pratt sites.

• 2:55Andy Greenwald?

  Damn. Pratt balls.

• 2:57Speaker 04

  I was one of the people in Santa Monica who was devastated. I didn't actually get to vote for Spencer Pratt.

• 3:03Chris Ryan?

  You can hit us up at the watch at Spotify.com. You can follow us on Instagram at the watch pod underscore. Our lovely production staff was was mostly in Sweden. Well, they were in Sweden, not mostly in Sweden.

• 3:14Andy Greenwald?

  Well, mentally, they were a little checked out.

• 3:16Chris Ryan?

  So we missed out on clipping some incredible culinary conversation that we had at the end of last week's podcast.

• 3:21Andy Greenwald?

  Kai, what are the rules about that?

• 3:23Chris Ryan?

  Mega viral.

• 3:24Andy Greenwald?

  Can you dip back into the vaults? And just like put a little sepia tone on it just from the past?

• 3:29Chris Ryan?

  He's gonna go back and be like, when these guys were talking about Game of Thrones, season five.

• 3:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 3:34Chris Ryan?

  True cooking.

• 3:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, or or he could just do the thing where he runs together like the Oppa research. When we have a guest on that I've spoken ill about their work in the past.

• 3:42Chris Ryan?

  And you just bring up all the clips when Andy's just been like, not a fan.

• 3:46Andy Greenwald?

  Remember that all the silence in those pods?

• 3:49Chris Ryan?

  You can watch us on YouTube at the ringer dash TV. It's just ringer dash TV. I always say the ringer and it's ringer dash TV on YouTube. You can also watch us on Spotify where I hope you listen to us. But you can also find us on other podcast platforms. Some housekeeping.

• 4:03Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 4:05Chris Ryan?

  As some people may have heard last night on the Bill Simmons podcast, I'm going to be appearing on co-hosting whatever a World Cup show on the Adam Friedland show.

• 4:17Andy Greenwald?

  This is a wild turn of events.

• 4:18Chris Ryan?

  I believe it's the Adam Friedland show colon, the beautiful pod is the title. It's a like mini series that we'll do over the course of the World Cup. Adam is is making shows for us now or making shows for Spotify. And now we're gonna do a little bit of a fun kickoff before his new season of its normal show.

• 4:33Andy Greenwald?

  Is he a big football fan?

• 4:35Chris Ryan?

  Un, he is. He is an unreal ball knower, I must say.

• 4:38Andy Greenwald?

  Really?

• 4:38Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Yeah. He likes a phone call. He likes to make a phone call and he likes to just kind of, just kind of be like, here's some topics I have on all football related. But yeah, it's unbelievable.

• 4:50Andy Greenwald?

  By the way, I felt that because that's not what I do. So if this, it's interesting, you, you, you found a, a younger Jewish co-host and um.

• 5:00Chris Ryan?

  Okay, I'm just trying guys out.

• 5:02Andy Greenwald?

  It's noted.

• 5:04Chris Ryan?

  So if you're excited about the World Cup like I am, uh, check that out. That kicks off.

• 5:11Chris Ryan?

  I think we're gonna have an episode up on Wednesday.

• 5:12Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, that's when the World Cup kicks off. So you better get it together.

• 5:16Chris Ryan?

  Do you wish you were in New York City today? The center of the known universe.

• 5:21Andy Greenwald?

  Well, this is tough because as a, I mean, longtime New York resident, uh, I want my friends.

• 5:28Chris Ryan?

  Have you yet eclipsed New York with LA in terms of time span?

• 5:31Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, no, no, we're barely halfway mark.

• 5:34Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 5:35Andy Greenwald?

  But, uh, I can't say I root for the Knicks, but I root for the vibes and I want, I do want New York to win. And I want my friends in the great city to be happy.

• 5:46Chris Ryan?

  It must be tough for you because as a big chemistry merchant.

• 5:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 5:50Chris Ryan?

  As a big.

• 5:51Andy Greenwald?

  I thought this would be after dark, but yeah, go ahead.

• 5:53Chris Ryan?

  No, we can talk about it now because this is something I think everybody is sharing. Everybody has become a Knicks watcher, you know, whether or not they enjoy it or not. And like everything about this team, guys going to college together, dudes doing podcasts together. The Karl Anthony Towns, uh, mom storyline, like everything about it. Jim Dolan's big redemption in New York City.

• 6:15Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 6:15Chris Ryan?

  Shalameh Stiller, you know, like the.

• 6:18Andy Greenwald?

  You, you crested and now we're going to the other side of the mountain, but.

• 6:22Chris Ryan?

  It just seems like if there was ever a team packaged for you, it's this. The only problem is.

• 6:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 6:29Chris Ryan?

  You're from two hours south.

• 6:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. I have, I've said this to you to what I would characterize as open derision, which is two years ago, when it became the Nova Knicks. I was like, we have to be honest with each other. I would kill to cheer for a team like this. This is a dream situation. If only they weren't wearing the, the blue and orange. I, yes, I, I like the vibes. I like the team. I would.

• 6:55Andy Greenwald?

  Watch just Karl-Anthony Towns' post-game interviews where he just becomes like this wise sachem about the great continuum and loving the beautiful sport that he's given a chance to play.

• 7:07Chris Ryan?

  Life and family flows like a river.

• 7:08Andy Greenwald?

  Dude, it's unbelievable.

• 7:10Chris Ryan?

  It's very moving.

• 7:11Andy Greenwald?

  And I'm happy that New York is having a moment. Also, I just realized I have a little packet of granola on the television.

• 7:17Chris Ryan?

  Why do you have that?

• 7:18Andy Greenwald?

  I was just snacking.

• 7:19Chris Ryan?

  Dude, you love a free snack.

• 7:20Andy Greenwald?

  I was just greedy.

• 7:21Chris Ryan?

  You'll just grab something.

• 7:22Andy Greenwald?

  I was like, maybe that'll taste good this morning. Thanks, guys, for keeping that on camera.

• 7:26Chris Ryan?

  I want to say that Sean Fantasy is one of the great loves of my life, you know? And so I want him to be happy.

• 7:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 7:34Chris Ryan?

  And that's where it starts and ends.

• 7:35Andy Greenwald?

  That's really nice.

• 7:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:37Andy Greenwald?

  It also ends at the gate to Citi Field.

• 7:39Chris Ryan?

  And if I have memories of Sean being relatively supportive.

• 7:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 7:45Chris Ryan?

  Of at least the Eagles, not like cheering for them.

• 7:48Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, no.

• 7:49Chris Ryan?

  But just being like, I'm happy you're happy. And so I pass it back to him, the baton.

• 7:53Andy Greenwald?

  I think that-

• 7:54Chris Ryan?

  Of friendship and good sportsmanship.

• 7:57Andy Greenwald?

  Seeing basketball games at Madison Square Garden is awesome. And then it's better if the Knicks are good.

• 8:02Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:03Andy Greenwald?

  And maybe they stay in their own arena, like the fans as well. I think that would be nice. Also, I think it's good-

• 8:09Chris Ryan?

  Oh, instead of coming to ours.

• 8:10Andy Greenwald?

  It's good for our narrative as struggling Sixers fans if they never lose again. But do you think that our president is going to kill the vibes tonight? Do you think that he personally will be responsible for their first loss?

• 8:27Chris Ryan?

  I definitely think that his, whether it's the Secret Service or whatever it is, knocking out all these watch parties and all this street festival vibe-

• 8:40Andy Greenwald?

  Genuine fun.

• 8:41Chris Ryan?

  That they've got going is not cool and is going to frustrate some people. If he went out and did side talk after the Knicks win like a close game three and was like, fuck Trey Young, he'd probably get a third term.

• 8:57Andy Greenwald?

  First of all, you should go into the advisor racket. I think that's not wrong.

• 9:02Chris Ryan?

  If I was just like, shoot this guy full of Adderall and send him out into side talk?

• 9:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 9:08Chris Ryan?

  I think people would overlook some flaws in his administration.

• 9:11Andy Greenwald?

  Tell him what glizzies are. Get him on the uptown number one train.

• 9:16Chris Ryan?

  No, I don't know. I think it's fucked up. Yeah, I wish people were able to go watch and like they like canceled it all the way south to Battery Park or whatever.

• 9:23Andy Greenwald?

  Did they?

• 9:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's like the city, Midtown's basically shut down.

• 9:28Andy Greenwald?

  Man, you love Midtown. That was always your favorite neighborhood to just kind of just walk through.

• 9:34Chris Ryan?

  I love sitting in a cafe in Herald Square, watching life go by. Nobody gives a shit about this.

• 9:40Andy Greenwald?

  I do, this is great.

• 9:41Chris Ryan?

  I do, but like, you know, people come here because they want hard hitting takes on television.

• 9:45Andy Greenwald?

  And Philadelphia sports. This is a little outside of our... So let's... Wait, can I tell you one thing, make one recommendation about television?

• 9:50Chris Ryan?

  Of course.

• 9:51Andy Greenwald?

  Just since we're speaking broadly here, I don't know if you check this out, but there is a documentary on Martin Short.

• 9:57Chris Ryan?

  I didn't check this out.

• 9:58Andy Greenwald?

  It is called Marty, Life is Short, and I recommend it for fans of comedy, for fans of Martin Short, obviously. But it's a great glimpse into a person who seems like a truly wonderful, menschy human being, who is beloved by everyone and is a good performer and a good person and all that. And his history is interesting. It's also at once like very, very moving about how, much like the Nova Knicks, people grew up together. And like this foundational Toronto production of Godspell in the 70s had like Gilder Radner and Andrea Martin and Eugene Levy and Martin Short and all these people that went on to Victor Garber, like all of these. And Paul Schaffer was the bandleader and all these like seminal moments where people were just

• 10:42Andy Greenwald?

  young people screwing around and then they all became something, Catherine O'Hara. But the real reason I have to watch this, and I think I need you to watch this, is it is a damning indictment of how we've conducted ourselves socially as adults. Because the backbone of this documentary is Martin Short's home movies, either in Los Angeles for his, he and his wife Nancy's like legendary Christmas parties, or their summers in their cottage, which, let's be honest, a little more in the cottage, somewhere in Canada, like a lake cottage, yeah. Where they just reliably host Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy, like all of these incredibly famous, funny people.

• 11:25Andy Greenwald?

  And I'm like, they were younger than we are now, just hanging, grilling burgers, jumping in lakes and laughing. When do we get the grilling burgers, jumping in lakes and laughing part of our friendships, or should we have been friends with richer people?

• 11:40Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I mean, there's a lot to unpack here.

• 11:42Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you. I am, I'm shook up. Like, I loved this documentary.

• 11:45Chris Ryan?

  When is, when is the grilling taking place? Like, on a, on a historical timeline?

• 11:50Andy Greenwald?

  I will tell you exactly. Without telling you what year it's taking place, I will communicate it to you. There is a steady cam shot of Eugene Levy grilling burgers with one hand and ripping a dart with the other.

• 12:02Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so this is 90s.

• 12:03Andy Greenwald?

  See?

• 12:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, cuz I'll tell you something. Last night.

• 12:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 12:08Chris Ryan?

  I got, um, some Thai food. And I, like, not, like, what I mean is, I got a noodle dish.

• 12:16Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 12:18Chris Ryan?

  Uh, well, it's like, basically, it's Night Market, and they make a crud trap.

• 12:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 12:22Chris Ryan?

  That's pretty good.

• 12:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 12:23Chris Ryan?

  And some rice. And then after that, I was like, my, my mouth is hot, I'm gonna get some ice cream. I spent $110.

• 12:33Chris Ryan?

  I also went to both places.

• 12:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 12:36Chris Ryan?

  This is no disrespect to Night Market, which is an incredible restaurant, nor the ice cream establishment I went to, which is good but overpriced.

• 12:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 12:43Chris Ryan?

  But I don't think I can host anyone. I can't be making burgers for so many people.

• 12:48Andy Greenwald?

  Because of the cost.

• 12:49Chris Ryan?

  Because of the cost. Because of the cost of food and living. Yeah.

• 12:52Andy Greenwald?

  So basically, what you're saying is, this is another thing that boomers took from us. Country houses, lakes, camaraderie, grilling.

• 13:02Chris Ryan?

  Exactly.

• 13:03Andy Greenwald?

  It is, I mean, you're not, first of all, you're not wrong. Everything sucks.

• 13:07Chris Ryan?

  I'd love to throw my doors open. And nobody wants to come over. Yeah.

• 13:11Andy Greenwald?

  What do you mean, you'd love to, but try us?

• 13:13Chris Ryan?

  I, I just think that, like, in LA, it's just a lot more difficult to make plans than, than it is in New York or anywhere else in the world.

• 13:20Andy Greenwald?

  I'm gonna stop you. Half of these gatherings in the Martin Short documentary are in LA.

• 13:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but they're in the 90s, when there was like, a third less people here, I feel like.

• 13:28Andy Greenwald?

  At the Christmas party.

• 13:29Chris Ryan?

  You read those Joan Didion books, and she's like, I was on Franklin Avenue, and, and then I drove to Santa Monica in 19 minutes.

• 13:35Andy Greenwald?

  You know who's the queen of that is Eve Babbitt. Eve Babbitt is like, well, I woke up feeling a little indolent in Silver Lake today, so I drove to Carpinteria for the morning.

• 13:44Andy Greenwald?

  Must be nice.

• 13:47Andy Greenwald?

  One of these Christmas parties where Martin Short's like doing a little Sinatra song to kick it off. And he's like, who's next? And then someone stands up from the crowd of.

• 13:54Chris Ryan?

  It's Frank Sinatra?

• 13:55Andy Greenwald?

  No, it's fucking, a guy goes up to the microphone and goes, it's me, Glenn Frey, the happy eagle. And everyone's like, haha, Glenn. Then he plays piano for a while and then Sally Field jumps on the piano.

• 14:06Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's nice.

• 14:09Andy Greenwald?

  I appreciate what you're saying about the cost of living. It has skyrocketed, but I also think that you're avoiding the vulnerable truth of the bottom of this, which is that we've screwed up our adulthood.

• 14:17Chris Ryan?

  We have. No, it's no doubt about it.

• 14:18Andy Greenwald?

  It's shaken me up. And yes, is this rarefied air? Like on one of their vacations, Tom Hanks and Martin Short for the, with Steven Spielberg on the Handycam, Ringer friend Steven Spielberg.

• 14:30Chris Ryan?

  Rewatchables third chair, yeah.

• 14:31Andy Greenwald?

  They decide to recreate the last scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with Tom Hanks playing Forrest Gump, which had just released, and Martin Short as Ed Grimley.

• 14:42Chris Ryan?

  And Steven Spielberg directed it.

• 14:44Andy Greenwald?

  Filming it, yes, as they jump off a boat together, saying they can't swim.

• 14:47Chris Ryan?

  That's incredible. I will, where is, where is this streaming?

• 14:49Andy Greenwald?

  This is a Netflix documentary.

• 14:50Chris Ryan?

  Netflix.

• 14:51Andy Greenwald?

  If anyone has any advice on how we can be better adults, having watched this, email Chris.

• 14:55Chris Ryan?

  My only recommendation from the weekend is just that I completed my journey with The Dark Wizard, who is a mountain climber, Dean Potter, four-part documentary about him on HBO, which then sent me down a 100-foot wave-esque rabbit hole of watching mountain climbing documentaries.

• 15:14Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 15:15Chris Ryan?

  So I also watched The Alpinist, which is on Peacock, which is made by the same filmmakers as Dark Wizard, and a little bit of like a Peter Sarsgaard narrated documentary about the history of climbing in Yosemite, which I found on Amazon, but I think it's something in the valley. I can't remember what it is. Anyway.

• 15:31Andy Greenwald?

  All right.

• 15:32Chris Ryan?

  That's a dangerous sport.

• 15:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 15:34Chris Ryan?

  That's where I'll leave that.

• 15:35Andy Greenwald?

  That's always been my sense of it.

• 15:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:37Andy Greenwald?

  You ever, you ever?

• 15:38Chris Ryan?

  Never even an inkling to want to climb a mountain.

• 15:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I.

• 15:43Chris Ryan?

  It's not my business.

• 15:43Andy Greenwald?

  No, mountain's there well before me. It'll be there well after me. I will say the, the greatest compliment I ever received was, and in retrospect, I think it was maybe just like a fishing expedition of friendship, like just sort of a offering a hand. But when I was in Albuquerque, making the show a few years ago, someone on the crew was like. Do you ever rock climb? And I always just said, "Thank you."

• 16:06Chris Ryan?

  For thinking that I might have?

• 16:07Andy Greenwald?

  Obviously, no. But that is the nicest, most optimistic thing anyone's ever said to me.

• 16:11Chris Ryan?

  What's up with those guys, though, man? I was thinking about this, both the 100-foot wave dudes and like these mountain climbing guys. I don't think they actually, quote unquote, exercise like outside of the sport that they participate in. Like, they don't have to lift. And I-

• 16:26Andy Greenwald?

  This is what they said about John Cruck, too. Like, are you saying, what are you saying?

• 16:29Chris Ryan?

  No, Alex Honnold, like, everyone's in a couple of these shots in Dark Wizard, has his shirt off. And I'm like, this dude's cut out of pure marble. Like, this is insane.

• 16:38Andy Greenwald?

  I thought you were gonna do something like that, the discourse about Homer gear. I thought that's what you were gonna say.

• 16:43Chris Ryan?

  What's the discourse about Homer gear?

• 16:45Andy Greenwald?

  That he, like, isn't ripped in that scene in Euphoria.

• 16:48Chris Ryan?

  Well, so what?

• 16:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I'm on your side, man. I'm not body shaming. I thought you were setting up the story to be like, he is an elite mountain climber who tames nature.

• 16:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:58Andy Greenwald?

  You know, and he's ripping darts between pizza bites.

• 17:02Chris Ryan?

  Let's get into actual television, how about that?

• 17:05Andy Greenwald?

  I thought we just named some television.

• 17:06Chris Ryan?

  We did, so Dark Wizard on HBO, Martin Short documentary on Netflix, two recommendations from this weekend.

• 17:11Andy Greenwald?

  All right.

• 17:11Chris Ryan?

  Andy and I also, so we're up to date on Star City, we're gonna talk about that in a little bit. I thought we could jump in and talk a little bit about Cape Fear, but before we did that-

• 17:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:20Chris Ryan?

  Can we just address the fact that most of what we've talked about over the last couple of weeks has been Apple?

• 17:26Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:28Chris Ryan?

  This is out of no great allegiance to their, to their services or products. It's just a reality of-

• 17:35Andy Greenwald?

  They said in front of their MacBooks.

• 17:37Chris Ryan?

  Well, I know, I mean, it's ridiculous, but-

• 17:41Chris Ryan?

  I've, I, there have been various moments when I have felt this. I think the fact that I, you know, we've talked about Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, we've been talking about Widows Bay, we're talking about Star City and Cape Fear. We haven't really talked about Your Friends and Neighbors, Season Two. We didn't keep up with Margot's Got Money problems, but like, it, it goes on and on. The sheer volume of stuff that they've put out, that somehow has wormed its way, not wormed, but like- What do you think is going on here? Like, is this, is this a, we can just outspend and outlast?

• 18:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, we touched on this a little bit on Thursday, but I think that this is the best case scenario of their flood the zone strategy. They simply have more swings every time they come to the plate. They have more things in production. If you go on the list of current, current programming and upcoming, there are, I would say upwards of 20 to 25 upcoming drama and comedy series, many of which are at least intriguing via Logline or Star Power. And those are the ones that are awaiting a scheduled release date. They have so, so much in the chamber. And I think it's, it's raising their batting average. Now, that said, I think they are also rounding into form and understanding better what it is that they do

• 18:58Andy Greenwald?

  and what they can, what sort of, what they can fill in the marketplace. I think that, and we'll talk about this this week, obviously. Like, I think you and I have, we praise a different part of their strategy than the part that might be, I was about to say keeping the lights on, but the lights are fine over there.

• 19:17Chris Ryan?

  The lights are fine, yeah.

• 19:18Andy Greenwald?

  But I, but I, but some of the shows that you mentioned that we are not covering are probably the ones that the programming team would point to internally to say, like, we're getting real traction here.

• 19:27Chris Ryan?

  Certainly your friends and neighbors.

• 19:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 19:28Chris Ryan?

  Which is still the number one show on Apple.

• 19:31Andy Greenwald?

  This is working for us.

• 19:32Chris Ryan?

  According to their own internal.

• 19:33Andy Greenwald?

  This is the thing that we can run up the flagpole and say this whole, this whole, this whole expansion is worth it. We are in the business, I think, of arguing for the fact that Apple, due to its deep pockets, can take a project that is completely airtight when presented to them, like Widow's Bay, and say, we can help, we can help you execute this. Because, you know, we'll get a chance, I hope, to talk to Katie Dipold and Hero Marai about it, but. I can't, I would imagine that many places were interested in taking the meeting and liked the idea of it. I don't know how many of them were interested in location shooting in Massachusetts, a place that is not famous for large-scale productions or tax breaks, you know, in order to get it over the finish line to get it.

• 20:17Chris Ryan?

  That's probably like, we have a place in Canada, you can shoot.

• 20:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 20:21Chris Ryan?

  There's a place, yeah.

• 20:21Andy Greenwald?

  We'll, we'll make it work for you.

• 20:23Chris Ryan?

  Have you thought, have you thought about setting it on an island off of Georgia?

• 20:25Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly that. So, um, or in the case of Star City, where it's like, that's very nice of them to make a show just for us and this podcast. We really appreciate it. Um, so, yeah, I think, I think that that's reflective of what, of their strategy working right now. The flip side of that is, um, this is extremely inside baseball, but in order to watch ahead one week to, we could cover Widows Bay this week because of our recording schedule, I went on their screener site and on the screener site is just these like dusty bones of shows that they've wanted us to watch or wanted people to engage with that are just memory holed. Like the big-

• 21:00Chris Ryan?

  They may be memory holed, but many of them have four to five seasons.

• 21:02Andy Greenwald?

  No, the ones that didn't.

• 21:04Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 21:04Andy Greenwald?

  I'm saying things like, like, like the hilariously insane disclaimer that we covered with Cuaron and Cate Blanchett.

• 21:10Chris Ryan?

  Well, that was never gonna be like more than one season.

• 21:12Andy Greenwald?

  Probably one of the most expensive one seasons ever, I would say, based on everyone's EP fees alone. Um, The Big Cigar, you know, like-

• 21:20Chris Ryan?

  Big Cigar?

• 21:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. This was a, this was a historical show based on one of those Epic Magazine articles that was about like, uh, Huey, uh, Huey Newton and Cuba.

• 21:29Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:30Andy Greenwald?

  There's nothing, I'm not saying these because they're bad. I'm just saying they were like, maybe that's gonna be the thing that we do. Nope, no problem. And you never see the retrenchment because they went all in on the wrong thing.

• 21:40Chris Ryan?

  Yes. I mean, you know, the, the internal marketing, when you look at the app, when you open up Apple TV on your like a, a set-top box, or if you watch it, looking, looking at it on your desktop. It's, there's like a sort of pleasing uniformity to the design of the marketing.

• 22:02Chris Ryan?

  That being said, I don't see a lot of like in the wild, hey, by the way, this is on. But I don't know that a lot of these streamers really participate in that outside of like, say Paramount Plus, who really seem to try to make sure everybody knows that like Dun Rancho whatever is on. Well, I, I think that there's a lot of like, kind of like, we have kind of decided to moat this stuff. And what matters is the service more than the show?

• 22:27Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think that there's also internally a distinction between shows you spend on and shows you gatekeep, quite literally, and that that actually could be a boon to them. So the example, we're going to talk about Cape Fear, which is getting the royal treatment from, I mean, it's on, you know, wraparounds on buses and billboards. And they're trying to draw people to the service based on this show. A show we covered last week that we liked, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, I think is getting the reverse treatment, where it is something that for people who are already within the ecosystem of Apple, they're offering it up and maybe it's an autoplay when you finish a different show that they think might be simpatico. And then it's generating its own level of interest within the ecosystem.

• 23:08Andy Greenwald?

  And the argument for doing that, I would say, is, you know, especially for the way these tech companies budget things. If they spend, you know, if they can break it down to like, we've spent $1 million additionally on top of the production fees for the first episode of Cape Fear in marketing costs. Thus, in order to recoup, it needs to make back its production costs plus this, like a movie would.

• 23:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:31Andy Greenwald?

  You know, and again, that's all gets fuzzy once you're inside of Apple's internal budgeting. All that is to say, if they get X number of watches on a maximum pleasure guaranteed, those are faster return on investment. And that might make them more likely to keep it going as opposed to outwardly spending on it and not seemingly recouping that investment in the outside expenditures.

• 23:53Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 23:53Andy Greenwald?

  It's so opaque.

• 23:54Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 23:54Andy Greenwald?

  And it only makes sense to them.

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• 24:27Chris Ryan?

  I thought it was really interesting, we can get into Cape Fear here. That Cape Fear was, I think, very wisely released in June as, as summer hits, as the temperatures go up, as people are looking for like a sticky indulgent, kind of high-end trashy show to watch. And not for the Emmy consideration, which just ended, I guess, about a week ago. I think voting opens this week, I believe, for the Emmys. Because you would think Amy Adams, Javier Bardem, Patrick Wilson, these people would be like the kind of person you would put forward for an Emmy Award. That being said, I think this show, you can, and we'll talk about, I watched two, Andy

• 25:12Chris Ryan?

  watched one, we can talk broadly about it, we don't want to like spoil things. Obviously is based on, in some ways, one central story, but is based on several different sources of material. So Cape Fear is based on The Executioners, which is a John D. McDonald novel. It's based on-

• 25:30Andy Greenwald?

  From 57 or something.

• 25:32Chris Ryan?

  The film starring Robert Mitchum from the 50s, I believe.

• 25:36Andy Greenwald?

  50s or early 60s.

• 25:37Chris Ryan?

  Early 60s. And then it's also based on the 1991 Martin Scorsese adaptation with the screenplay by Wesley Strick, which was like a famous kind of, not cash grab for Scorsese, but like another one of his, like, I'm going to prove that I am a bankable director as well as like a world-renowned artiste of cinema. And that was like a $35 million movie that wound up making $180 million. It was Nick Nolte, Robert De Niro, and Jessica Lange, and Juliette Lewis in the, in the, in the major roles. And was a huge hit and is, as we've done it on rewatchables, it continues to be a rewatchable

• 26:18Chris Ryan?

  movie precisely because you are caught in a vice grip of tension and atmosphere. You can feel the sweat, you can feel the tattoos on De Niro, you can feel the water like hitting them as they have the

• 26:33Andy Greenwald?

  It's a damp film.

• 26:34Chris Ryan?

  Big finale. And this show is trying to do what several shows like it in the past have also attempted, which is to see if they can reliably, hour to hour, release some tension and then pour it back on so that the people, so the audience is, continues to be engaged and continues to have the sense memory experience of watching Cape Fear, which is kind of the hardest part about this show to navigate is how do you sustain this vibe for this many hours when usually the human body checks out after two hours? When you're just like, I need this to resolve itself.

• 27:13Andy Greenwald?

  And it is not, historically, and by historically, I mean the novel and the two previous adaptations, a particularly complicated story.

• 27:21Chris Ryan?

  No, not really.

• 27:22Andy Greenwald?

  It is really like, you know, an unstoppable object running into an immovable force and then something's got to give. What is your, I know you've done it on rewatchables, what is your personal take on the Scorsese movie? Because my, I have not rewatched, maybe I rewatched it in the 90s when it was on cable. It's a pretty nasty movie.

• 27:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean it's

• 27:41Andy Greenwald?

  Intentionally so?

• 27:41Chris Ryan?

  It's definitely, we're doing on rewatchables this month, we're doing the From Hell genre, which is a largely like 90s based phenomenon, subgenre of thriller that basically does the dot, dot, dot from hell. So roommate from hell, stepfather from hell, nanny from hell.

• 28:03Chris Ryan?

  This is the best possible version of From Hell, and I guess it's the thing from your past From Hell. And I think this was Scorsese, you know, this had been a thing that had been banging around Amblin, and that Spielberg had considered directing himself, and Scorsese winds up doing it.

• 28:21Andy Greenwald?

  A famous trade, right?

• 28:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, this is the Schindler's List trade, right?

• 28:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, they each were developing a project they probably shouldn't have been. And Scorsese and Spielberg swapped Cape Fear for Schindler's List.

• 28:31Chris Ryan?

  Right, and in some ways it worked out for both of them exactly right.

• 28:35Andy Greenwald?

  I would say so.

• 28:35Chris Ryan?

  Because Scorsese gets to show he can make a blockbuster in a really sincere, like, efficient way. It has so much style, and this is the thing that I was thinking about going into this TV series, is that so much of Cape Fear relies on the artistry of the filmmaking, because the people are relatively unpleasant to spend time with.

• 28:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, yeah, it's not a heroic storyline.

• 28:59Chris Ryan?

  And that's not a deal breaker for me.

• 29:01Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 29:02Chris Ryan?

  But it's also not funny, so this isn't gonna be like Succession, or Breaking Bad, or any other series, or Sopranos, or anything where you're like, boy, these are a bunch of corrupted people. Let's watch them get caught like rats in a maze, and then see who gets out. This is like, you're gonna spend 10 hours with these people, and you're gonna be forced to hope that they figure this out, you know?

• 29:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and I think the nature of television requires, despite many, many brilliant creators, you know, valiantly attempting otherwise, television requires some audience buy-in and empathy. And on a very base level, maybe it's because of the time commitment.

• 29:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:39Andy Greenwald?

  You have to want an outcome, which I think is not, that doesn't reflect the best of cinema, frankly. Like, the best movies keep you on your toes, and you can switch allegiances, and you can question your own empathies and all that stuff, but for 10 hours, I'm not saying you have to pick a side, but you kind of have to settle in and root for something.

• 29:58Chris Ryan?

  Right, and now, so this... Rendition of the of the series is from Nick Antoska, who's a TV show creator, who we have talked about on and off over the years. But I'm a huge fan of Channel Zero. He did The Act, which I was less of a fan of what I saw of it. And he's done a bunch of different stuff as an executive producer, as a writer, as a creator.

• 30:23Andy Greenwald?

  He is a very, very good maker of television and producer of content. I mean, that in a really, I mean, in the best, most generous way possible. And particularly because he has a real sense of what types of stories interest him. And he is interested in the horror, in the lurid stories and the sordid stories. And from everything we understand about this, this wasn't necessarily Amblin taking generals on how they can profit from this, sitting in their catalog.

• 30:52Chris Ryan?

  No, he wanted to do this.

• 30:53Andy Greenwald?

  He wanted to do this. And I think the thing that I, starting with with praise, because spoiler, I did not really enjoy watching the show. I think that this is sort of all the way back to where you started. But like, there is a full-froated embrace of a kind of tawdry, summer 80s and 90s blockbuster entertainment that is, you can't half-ass. And I think that that was clearly both inspiration and the goal here. And I think it's why I was also comparing this, maybe unintentionally at first, to last

• 31:33Andy Greenwald?

  summer's version of this, maybe now it's two summers ago, it was Presumed Innocent, which was another like, let's take something from a very specific time culturally that we remember and try to iterate it and, well, for the contemporary streaming era, but also try to hold on to these things that we don't really get in our entertainment anymore.

• 31:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:56Andy Greenwald?

  I preferred Presumed Innocent because Presumed Innocent had O.T. Fugbenly's performance and Peter Sarsgaard's performance, and it had some knowing wit. And I would say that this does not seem to have that. But we can, we can talk more broadly, and I'd like to hear your thoughts about it before I tell you what I was sort of bumping against.

• 32:11Chris Ryan?

  I think that the issue for me was...

• 32:17Chris Ryan?

  How the little tricks that they're playing. So I, I, I basically, I would say that my, my, my broad take on the show is that I thought it was unnecessary and that it was totally make believe. And I also didn't hate it, you know, like I didn't. In the opening moments, I was just like, there's basically two things that happened that I thought were like exactly diametrically, not diametrically opposed. There's one thing where I was like, holy shit. This is really compelling that they're doing this. And then there was something else where I was like, I know exactly what this show is gonna be.

• 32:50Andy Greenwald?

  Do you want me to tell you those two things?

• 32:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:52Andy Greenwald?

  The, the double suicide?

• 32:53Chris Ryan?

  Yep. That was when I was like, damn.

• 32:55Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah. I was like, okay, we're really gonna do this. This is gnarly as hell.

• 32:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:59Andy Greenwald?

  And the second was the family of dead skunks in the pool?

• 33:02Chris Ryan?

  Just even to the whole opening barbecue of.

• 33:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it was phony baloney.

• 33:06Chris Ryan?

  Of Amy Adams walking around with AirPods in and just being like, well, I want my client out of prison. How about that? And I don't know why I made him sound like, uh, made her sound like Andy Griffith, but.

• 33:16Andy Greenwald?

  That's not far from the dialect coach here.

• 33:18Chris Ryan?

  And, you know, Patrick Wilson, for reasons we will soon find out, like looking like an absolute wax statue and then these kids being kids and, you know, like looking at their phones and gaming and, and getting catfished.

• 33:33Andy Greenwald?

  So what do you do when you take a, like a, first of all, I was about to say a beloved franchise like this. It's not.

• 33:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:38Andy Greenwald?

  It's, it's, it's, it's a cult thing. It's obsessed over, it's, it's a specific memory for a lot of people, depending on which version of it you respond to. How do you update it and why do you update it? And I would say that there is an awkward collision between, uh, between the modern and the classic. And it's evidenced by, as you said, the son isn't just moody. He's losing himself in online gaming. The dad isn't just, uh, walled off and keeping secrets. He's microdosing. The daughter isn't just harassed by Max Cady. She's harassed by a rapacious.

• 34:11Chris Ryan?

  True crime podcaster.

• 34:12Andy Greenwald?

  True crime, uh, podcaster. And I think honestly, most egregious of all, in order to understand where we are in the contemporary, uh.

• 34:21Andy Greenwald?

  Political moment or cultural moment, everyone talks about how bad the system is.

• 34:25Chris Ryan?

  Well, so this is-

• 34:26Andy Greenwald?

  A lot of talk about the unfairness of the system.

• 34:28Chris Ryan?

  This is where I think the thread is that Antoska is trying to pull. So, you know, he's got a bunch of really talented directors working on this show. Morton told him, directed the first episode, but then S.J. Clarkson took over one, Reed Morano.

• 34:41Andy Greenwald?

  Amanda Marcellus.

• 34:42Chris Ryan?

  Amanda Marcellus.

• 34:43Andy Greenwald?

  It's an impressive lineup.

• 34:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Um, I think he's most interested, or it seems like he's most interested in asking, the question is, what if Max Cady got out of prison and instead of being feared and rejected, he was tacitly embraced by a emergent, scanning liberal, criminal justice reform community that wants to believe the best in everybody, but-

• 35:09Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 35:09Chris Ryan?

  Wants to believe the best in everybody as long as it gets people to donate to their, their nonprofit-

• 35:15Andy Greenwald?

  Their cause, yeah.

• 35:16Chris Ryan?

  Or whatever, their cause. And I think that that is, um, an interesting concept, but is not, I don't know if it has like 10 hours of legs as a concept. And the thing that drove me actually most nuts in this episode and the first two episodes is, um, not the performance, because C.C.H. Pounder is incredible, but the character that C.C.H. Pounder-

• 35:38Andy Greenwald?

  Noah.

• 35:38Chris Ryan?

  Plays Noah, who is in charge of this, I think it's called the S.J.L.P. and it's like a, basically they go around, it's like a freedom project. They go around like trying to, uh, free wrongly, uh, imprisoned incarcerated, uh, people who have been falsely accused of crimes. But she is like so, uh, blinded by the dollar signs and the press that Max Cady could bring this group if they somehow figure out a way to bring him into the fold here, that it kind of just-

• 36:13Chris Ryan?

  It goes beyond my suspension of disbelief.

• 36:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 36:16Chris Ryan?

  And it's just preposterous.

• 36:18Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it's, one of the things that we love about Widows Bay is that from the very beginning, in the first 15 minutes, Mayor Tom Loftus communicates to the guy from the New York Times that there are no cellphones on the island. And he just said it. And then it's done.

• 36:34Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:35Andy Greenwald?

  And then all the problems of modern suspenseful storytelling are just vanished. They just vanish. And you can tell a story in a more familiar and classic manner. And with this show, they are struggling up against the constant presence of cameras and constant presence of everyone knowing everything about everyone else all the time, while also having to manufacture natural moments for Max Cady to wander into the backyard of the Bodens, for them to have a little tete-a-tete-a-tet in an art gallery off of the main party area of a charity ball. It's kind of hard to do both, you know?

• 37:16Andy Greenwald?

  Like, and also, I think what you're responding to is the fact that, like, Cape Fear is, the previous Cape Fears are smaller, not just because they are either a slim pulp novel or, you know, a two-hour movie, but smaller in the sense that Max Cady isn't a cause celeb in the way that he is on the show and probably would be in contemporary 2026, where everything that he does is broadcast online and in the news media. And I think the show does a good faith effort to bring some of that fanfare and focus to the world. But then it's also like, it's a little discordant then. This is the biggest thing that ever happened. And then Amy Adams is shocked that he's there in front of her. But then he also just takes the mic from her at a large public gathering, wearing

• 38:00Andy Greenwald?

  a beautiful linen suit, which I guess is standard D-issue when you get out of the Georgia penitentiary system.

• 38:07Andy Greenwald?

  It's both big and it's trying to be big and small at the same time, in the way that it's also trying to be short and shocking and also long, serialized and expansive at the same time. That's a central tension that a lot of these- Better shows and worse shows have fallen prey to it than this version of Cape Fear.

• 38:20Chris Ryan?

  So the premise of the series is essentially that Amy Adams, who I think has moved into the kind of Nick Nolte role, the kind of the star of the show, really. Amy Adams was Max Cady, who's played by Javier Bardem, his defense lawyer at his trial. Was it 17 years ago?

• 38:40Andy Greenwald?

  17 years ago.

• 38:41Chris Ryan?

  And very late in the trial, she encourages him to make a plea deal to spare his life from the death sentence. It just so happens that the prosecutor in that trial is played by Patrick Wilson, is this guy Tom Bowden, and they wind up getting together after the trial. She's pregnant with her fiance's baby. But then they, she leaves him and gets together with Tom Bowden, then they start a family. And they have a very successful two lawyer life where they have this huge house in Savannah, Georgia, and seem to have everything that you would want in life. And instead, you know, of course, when you look underneath the hood, everything is decaying and breaking and there are skunks in the pool, essentially.

• 39:24Chris Ryan?

  They hide Max Cady like the shark from Jaws for 90% of this first episode.

• 39:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 39:31Chris Ryan?

  I think it's pretty effective. His introduction as a character is convincing his former mistress or girlfriend to take her own life and confess to the murders of his wife and child, which is why he was in prison in the first place. This exonerates him, gets him out, intrigues this woman Noah, played by CCH Pounder, who then wants Anna to start working with Max Cady and bring him into the fold at this, at this nonprofit that they work for. They are piling on characters in this show. Like, within the first two episodes, Ted Levine shows up, Paul Schneider shows up, you know, Jamie Hector is there, like, they have supersized this thing. And to your point about Cape Fear being tight and small, part of, at least my, my love

• 40:16Chris Ryan?

  of the 91 film, is the feeling of, even though we live in a town, even though we're part of a community, even though there are laws, when you really boil it down, it's us versus him and nobody's coming to our rescue.

• 40:27Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 40:28Chris Ryan?

  It's a little bit confusing and it's a little bit distracting when you have like...

• 40:34Chris Ryan?

  Five different subplots going already and we're two episodes in.

• 40:40Chris Ryan?

  I was curious whether or not you are turned off by the tone of the show or the actual storytelling of the show.

• 40:46Andy Greenwald?

  I actually like the tone and I think that there's an element of it that is just profoundly campy. But whether it is a developmental edict or just the personal taste of the people in charge, it resisted at every turn, which I found neuters Bardem's performance, which is 1 million percent a delicious ham and cash grab. You know what I mean? Like, he's going for it and good for him.

• 41:14Chris Ryan?

  He's going for it, but in a different way than De Niro and Mitchum did.

• 41:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm not, but he's doing it in a very, it's a way that's true to him. He's not changing who he is as a performer. But I think that there is, because I think what makes him always so magnetic is that he presents as this like, certainly on camera, I have no idea how tall this man actually is, but he presents as like this hulking, a physical brute, but he is so sort of sly and as my kids would say secretly zesty, that like that comes out in ways that, or maybe not so secretly, ways that are kind of beguiling and charismatic and sensual. And so I like all that.

• 41:52Andy Greenwald?

  I just can't stand the half-assness of the camp in the sense that, I mean, you have, you have Patrick Wilson, who is a very strong actor, but I think needs to be given, needs to be tipped in one direction or the other. Can't just be ramrod straight with his little belt, talking about cornflakes at Kroger. Like if you're, if you're having him say things like this, if you're doing the dialogue, if you're doing the dialogue that the show is giving you, let him, let him slather some, some, some extra pimento on it. You know what I mean? Don't treat this like this, it's shot so straight faced that we're meant to take all this seriously and worry about these people and the stakes are rising. And I think it's a little bit preposterous. There's a puma in the backyard.

• 42:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:35Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean?

• 42:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:37Andy Greenwald?

  I think they say puma, don't they? Do they say panther?

• 42:39Chris Ryan?

  I thought it was like a, there was a panther attack. Oh, okay. Maybe you're right.

• 42:42Andy Greenwald?

  Well, they do say it regardless. They, they, they preface it and then it shows up or foreshadow it. So I, I had a, I had a problem with that and I just sort of had a.

• 42:55Chris Ryan?

  Full disclosure, I don't know the difference between a Puma and a panther.

• 42:57Andy Greenwald?

  I was giving you time to look and I was like, why is your laptop shut?

• 42:59Chris Ryan?

  I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna over-rely on the internet. I wanna be candid with our audience that I just don't know. You could tell me a Puma was just like a male panther and I would be like, maybe that's true.

• 43:09Andy Greenwald?

  No, I think it would be a Pumo. We were having this conversation with ballerinas right before we started shooting.

• 43:13Chris Ryan?

  Yes, because Mikhail Baryshnikov's daughter is on the show.

• 43:16Andy Greenwald?

  But like, there's these details, right, that I think are just kind of ridiculous, but the show doesn't allow them to be ridiculous. Like, the fact that in the opening moments, Anna is sitting for a filmed interview for, presumably for television. She is a television journalist, right? There's a television camera on her. But as soon as the action moves to the pool, where a family of skunk corpses are being retrieved, the television cameraman runs out with a wide-angle still camera?

• 43:42Chris Ryan?

  Oh, those are actually, now the 4K cameras actually come like, looking like a still camera.

• 43:47Andy Greenwald?

  So he was still videoing? He didn't switch jobs in the middle of the scene?

• 43:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think actually, like, that's a camera right there. That's just basically a real camera. Regular-looking camera.

• 43:55Andy Greenwald?

  These have been cameras the whole time? I thought that was a light. How long has that been there?

• 44:00Chris Ryan?

  We've been on Twitch for five years.

• 44:03Andy Greenwald?

  Streaming, you, me, Janki Rondo, just running 24/7. And like, the little things of like, this set decoration, you know, one thing that drives me crazy, this is what I look at, is when you see rich people's homes and they are just full of large bowls full of artichokes.

• 44:20Chris Ryan?

  Wait a second, I have to talk to you about this.

• 44:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 44:23Chris Ryan?

  The teenage son's room

• 44:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 44:26Chris Ryan?

  is in a completely different architectural concept

• 44:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 44:30Chris Ryan?

  than the rest of the house, and it's driving me insane. He has exposed brick

• 44:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 44:35Chris Ryan?

  and it's like a giant loft that he has somewhere else in the house.

• 44:39Andy Greenwald?

  Well, remember, the story is telling us that there's houses in constant repair and reno.

• 44:44Chris Ryan?

  Well, they don't let people onto another side of the house that they're constantly renovating. I don't know about where this kid's room is.

• 44:51Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 44:52Chris Ryan?

  Did they have seven different architects work on it? Is this like a Borgia's story? Like, what's happening?

• 44:56Andy Greenwald?

  Well, also, like, but then the kitchen has these like palm tree wallpaper that looks like, you know, a now out of business W hotel in New Orleans, right before Katrina. But like, but again, like, I think you are, my thing is this, you are always telling a story with every frame of the show.

• 45:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:13Andy Greenwald?

  And the pilot makes good use of the, the low, heavy trees, enough to make me think that they filmed this in Savannah, which apparently they did not, although maybe they got some exteriors, I'm not really sure. But everything is an opportunity to tell a story. And when you put things in a house that just has these, as you, like inconsistent room to room, without committing to the bit that every member of this family lives in his or her own psychological slash physical space, which is a choice.

• 45:39Chris Ryan?

  I guess that, I could see the argument.

• 45:41Andy Greenwald?

  But make the choice. So that when you're in the kitchen and over the son's shoulder, when you see him taking out like energy drinks for his mystery night out, on the table, there is a beautiful piece of sourdough with two slices cut and like spilling open, as if you were waiting to celebrate the, you know, the breakfast at this Airbnb and it's been cut for you. I'm like, that was a choice you made and you didn't pay attention to it. It's giving us this sort of like moneyed laziness, when I want every frame to compelling and tell us a story. And you were, we're praising the directors. I, I put some of this on, I put some of this on Morton Tildum. I don't know the man.

• 46:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:18Andy Greenwald?

  He, he makes a beautiful picture and he keeps things moving and he does seem to understand the assignment. But there's an element of this, and I apologize especially to my friends who just returned from Scandinavia, but you hired a Norwegian to give us like sweaty, southern funk? It's kind of like me going horseback riding, which is in the sense that I've seen people ride horses.

• 46:39Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 46:39Andy Greenwald?

  And I could probably be lifted up onto the horse and in a still photo or two, I might look like I know what I'm doing.

• 46:44Chris Ryan?

  This is the backrooms thing. It's in backrooms, there's a line about like, this is like describing a dog to someone who's never seen one and asking them to draw it.

• 46:52Andy Greenwald?

  It's kind of that vibe. This is a, it is a sterile and professional recreation of something.

• 46:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:57Andy Greenwald?

  Without the stench and the funk.

• 46:59Chris Ryan?

  There's also a funny thing that I saw, the, the vulture recapper. For the show pointed out that I hadn't noticed and then immediately was like, I can't unsee this now, which is the amount of times they use jump scares for no purpose whatsoever. Like Ted Levine showing up or like, it turns out that's just the gardener or whatever. And like, they're gonna do that to wear down your nerve endings so that when it actually does.

• 47:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 47:23Chris Ryan?

  But part of the issue is that if you're gonna not remove the danger, but like, imagine if Max Cady actually had visiting privileges for all these places and was able to just walk in and out of prisons and people's homes and businesses. The whole point of like, the Cape Fear movie is that he's kind of like this pariah who is basically like, what are you gonna do about it?

• 47:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I, it's, it's, everything he does is a provocation.

• 47:50Chris Ryan?

  And this is more like, what if he could insinuate himself into the progressive weakness of this community?

• 47:56Andy Greenwald?

  Now, I genuinely, good faith, I'm curious about this, that like, I, I, I think, tell me if I'm wrong, because I'm not in this cohort, but like, if you are a particular fan of horror, and I don't mean like, ah, what a, like, get out, what a brilliant analogy for our times, but I mean, like, I like watching people dropped into a shark tank and seeing what the sharks do next.

• 48:17Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 48:18Andy Greenwald?

  There could be that kind of entertainment.

• 48:20Chris Ryan?

  There could be, yeah.

• 48:21Andy Greenwald?

  Um, bad stuff's gonna happen, and it hopefully will be happening in increasingly claustrophobic and horrific ways. So that appeal might be there.

• 48:30Chris Ryan?

  Sure. I, I just, I think the problem is like, when you're also like, and also the teenage son will go on a ketamine journey where he sees an AI version of Max Cady's unborn teenage son.

• 48:41Andy Greenwald?

  Well, when you put it that way, by the way, it's, I'm just noting with interest. Again, I don't have a dog in this fight, but if you brought, you brought up Nepo Watch with Barishnikov's daughter, you have, your silence on the son in this is remarkable to me.

• 48:55Chris Ryan?

  Who's he?

• 48:56Andy Greenwald?

  Kate Winslet's son.

• 48:58Chris Ryan?

  She's really populating a lot of casts right now.

• 49:00Andy Greenwald?

  Kate Winslet, famously, big friend of the Watch Podcast.

• 49:04Chris Ryan?

  Third chair of the Watch.

• 49:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, basically. So whatever, she's done a beautiful job raising these talented children.

• 49:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Mia Ruffield, who was recently in the last Wes Anderson movie.

• 49:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, the Phoenician Scheme. She's very good.

• 49:16Chris Ryan?

  And then your boy.

• 49:16Andy Greenwald?

  Joe Anders, yeah.

• 49:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, okay.

• 49:18Andy Greenwald?

  My boy.

• 49:19Chris Ryan?

  That's your boy. You love his plotline. You love gamers.

• 49:23Andy Greenwald?

  It also-

• 49:24Chris Ryan?

  I don't know what you're getting at. I think that you're trying to build a case.

• 49:28Andy Greenwald?

  Nepo-wise or horror-wise?

• 49:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, like, I don't know. You are. You had a problem with Jane Campion's daughter being in Star City.

• 49:35Andy Greenwald?

  No, I didn't. I didn't.

• 49:37Chris Ryan?

  You had a problem with, who's the-

• 49:39Andy Greenwald?

  I had a problem with Andy Serkis's daughter being in Star City.

• 49:41Chris Ryan?

  And who's the kid who's Evan on Widows Bay? Who's his dad?

• 49:44Andy Greenwald?

  What? He's a nepo baby?

• 49:46Chris Ryan?

  No, maybe not.

• 49:47Andy Greenwald?

  Protect him at all costs. He's fantastic.

• 49:49Chris Ryan?

  Anybody with like that name, I'm like, your dad's probably, you know, Daniel Day-Lewis or something. We, I mean, I don't know if we're gonna continue watching this.

• 49:57Andy Greenwald?

  I know. Sorry, spoiler. I'm not going to be watching this.

• 50:02Chris Ryan?

  This is not the new Euphoria.

• 50:03Andy Greenwald?

  No, but I am interested genuinely in you making-

• 50:07Chris Ryan?

  Every once in a while, maybe I'll do a little update from Savannah, Georgia for you. I think I am going to, I had such a good time watching this with my wife.

• 50:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, say more about that.

• 50:16Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's a really funny show to, not funny, but it is a really fun show to watch and be like, what the fuck are they doing? Now, we may not be interested in this after four hours.

• 50:27Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 50:28Chris Ryan?

  Which would be double the amount of time we've already watched.

• 50:30Andy Greenwald?

  Kingston Roomy Southwick doesn't even have a Wikipedia page, which either-

• 50:34Speaker 04

  He's like a soft, he's a soft nepo.

• 50:37Andy Greenwald?

  Why, thank god you're here, Kay.

• 50:38Speaker 04

  Father is producer, mother is an acting coach.

• 50:42Andy Greenwald?

  So he was just primed for this? He's not-

• 50:44Chris Ryan?

  I don't have a problem with nepotism. You do. You're the one who's like saying like, I don't have a problem with that. I am a product of nepotism.

• 50:51Andy Greenwald?

  I genuinely don't have a problem with it when it's good.

• 50:56Andy Greenwald?

  I like things to be good. It's like, oh, I'm the asshole? When it's good, it's awesome.

• 51:01Chris Ryan?

  I think both of the nepos in Star City are excellent.

• 51:04Andy Greenwald?

  I do too.

• 51:05Chris Ryan?

  Okay, well, let's talk about Star City.

• 51:06Andy Greenwald?

  Louis Pullman, great.

• 51:08Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's right, your best friend is Louis Pullman.

• 51:10Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I just-

• 51:10Chris Ryan?

  That you discovered.

• 51:11Andy Greenwald?

  I columbused him for this podcast.

• 51:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:13Andy Greenwald?

  Turns out Bill Pullman is his dad.

• 51:15Chris Ryan?

  Did you have anything else you want to say about Cape Fear?

• 51:17Andy Greenwald?

  No, I just-

• 51:17Chris Ryan?

  You won't be watching any more of it. You reject the highfalutin way it cast its ranks.

• 51:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 51:24Chris Ryan?

  You wish Patrick Wilson would untuck his shirt every once in a while.

• 51:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, live a little.

• 51:29Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and it's unpleasant.

• 51:31Andy Greenwald?

  I think, I think ultimately, it's that I just find it unpleasant, and I'm not particularly fans of many of the leads.

• 51:38Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 51:38Andy Greenwald?

  That, that's keeping me away, but I am interested in it as a project. And so I really appreciate you going on the front lines. You know what I mean? It's like what Scott Pelley said. He never wore the uniform for this country, but he's been in foxholes. That's you. That's you.

• 51:55Speaker 05

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• 52:25Chris Ryan?

  Let's wrap things up by talking about Star City.

• 52:27Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 52:28Chris Ryan?

  Uh, my enthusiasm for this, uh, remains like a, a burning hot flame. I do want to acknowledge at the top here. So we'll talk a little bit in detail about the three episodes that have aired so far. I felt like in the third episode, I, I detected a rhythm where before I was like, this could be anything and go anywhere. And I have no idea the vibe of, of the show is so intoxicating, but like, you could tell me it's gonna time jump to 84 in episode three, and I'd believe you. It's a little bit more steady as she goes in episode three.

• 53:03Andy Greenwald?

  It does jump, but yes.

• 53:04Chris Ryan?

  It jumps, and there's also big character reveals, but- I wanted to talk to you a little bit about- This is sort of random, but I saw a old Quentin Tarantino interview this weekend. Not the one where he says The Rip is the best movie he's seen in a decade.

• 53:21Andy Greenwald?

  Have you talked to him about this?

• 53:22Chris Ryan?

  I don't have those privileges.

• 53:24Andy Greenwald?

  Has Sean backchanneled with him about this?

• 53:25Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. But I did know that The Rip was playing at the Vista, the movie theater he owns. So he walks the talk. But he was talking about the difference between storytelling and situations. And, you know, he was referring to the movie Speed where, you know, it's like, what if a bus had to go 55 miles per hour? Or would it explode? And he's like, I really enjoy that movie, but it's a situation. It's not a story. Like, those aren't characters. Those characters aren't going on a journey. It's, well, I mean, they are literally.

• 53:54Andy Greenwald?

  They're on a bus.

• 53:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. But like, they don't change over the course of the movie, really, like, that much.

• 54:02Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know. What's-her-name learns to love?

• 54:04Chris Ryan?

  Annie?

• 54:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 54:05Chris Ryan?

  I don't think she was not ready for love. I just think she didn't have a driver's license because she had too many points on it.

• 54:11Andy Greenwald?

  I forgot about that detail.

• 54:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Don't try and get any Speed trivia past me.

• 54:16Andy Greenwald?

  When's the last time you rewatched Speed?

• 54:18Chris Ryan?

  Within the last three years.

• 54:20Andy Greenwald?

  I need to say that.

• 54:21Chris Ryan?

  It's a frequent rewatch.

• 54:22Andy Greenwald?

  I love that movie.

• 54:23Chris Ryan?

  It's an excellent movie. But it is, is it a situation more than it's a story?

• 54:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I'm sorry. We don't need to digress.

• 54:27Chris Ryan?

  And Star City has a very, like, digestible situation. It's a very digestible pitch. It's, you know, what if the Russians landed on the moon first? What would happen to the collective histories of both nations, America and Russia? But also, you know, what would happen to the space programs that they would then go on to produce?

• 54:50Chris Ryan?

  The reason I think I like this show so much is that it's a story. And that they have found a group of actors and created a group of characters.

• 55:03Chris Ryan?

  Where the little revelations about the characters and the little bits of growth and the little bits of change and the little moments of epiphany or catharsis or whatever are so earned and so well drawn. And I'm thinking of two in particular that I just wanted to bounce off you. So in episode two, Anastasia Belkova was the first woman to go to the moon. She's on a promo tour with her arranged marriage husband. Are they married yet by the time they go to Paris? I can't remember. No, they get married when they get back.

• 55:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 55:36Chris Ryan?

  With her fiance Sasha, who's also a cosmonaut. They go to Paris. And it's cool. Like, you know, it's like a cool idea and it's cool to imagine like them doing this sort of propaganda promo tour for the Soviet space program. And they take the moment where they basically find that the one thing that these two people have in common is their disaffection with where they are in their lives.

• 56:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 56:02Chris Ryan?

  Even though they couldn't be more different and she's a little bit odd. And for the first, you know, episode and a half, you're kind of like, I don't really get who this is this person like a product of nepotism because her father is a big dipwig in the party or what's going on?

• 56:15Andy Greenwald?

  Especially because they make the bold gambit of having her be the backup plan to Yanak Matova, who is a firecracker in her limited screen time in the pilot.

• 56:23Chris Ryan?

  And she winds up going on this nighttime odyssey across Paris with her fiance that is fucking delightful and exciting and scary and interesting. And everything from the way that they have to exit a hotel and she takes off her heels to go down the stairs quietly to them like running across the street and she stops to look at the Arc de Triomphe. And he's like, come on, come on. But like she takes this moment to be like, holy shit. I never thought I'd see that.

• 56:50Andy Greenwald?

  Especially here in Lithuania.

• 56:52Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 56:52Andy Greenwald?

  Whoa. I think she was right to call attention to it.

• 56:56Chris Ryan?

  And then they have this like really fun night of drug and booze at all dancing at a nightclub where she is soft recruited, she thinks by the Americans, but it turns out to be a Russian agent or Soviet agent working on behalf of, you know, pretending to be an American. It's test. And then in the third episode, we Have Irina, who is played by Agnes O'Casey, who's the protege of Ludmilla Ruskova, the sort of KGB chieftain. And she's been doing the Lives of Others listening thing on Tanya and Valia. Valia's another cosmonaut. Tanya's his long-suffering wife, who's cheating on him with Sasha. And she's been listening in on them. And then it turns out, surprisingly,

• 57:41Chris Ryan?

  her daughter is being taught by Tanya. She's being taught music by Tanya. And she goes over to her house for coffee and admits something to Tanya. And in the moment where she admits it, not only is it just wonderfully played by the performers, but the sound on the show becomes muddled and muted, like it's been erased. And we find out that that's because Irina's gonna go back to her listening station, go on the tapes of Tanya's listening devices, and erase the part where she confesses something private and personal about her past, about the father of her child. And I thought both of those moments were so earned. And just like, to build up...

• 58:26Chris Ryan?

  It's about the space program, and it's about spying, and it's about national security and all these big, big ideas. But they're finding story in character in a way that I think is really, really wonderful.

• 58:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I completely agree. And you know, there's even more detail in those scenes in the apartment, where, what's her name? Irina is seeing, for the first time, the physical, the set of her favorite radio drama. And she's smelling the perfume that she knows was purchased in Paris. And she's being taken out of it, not just in the sense of like, future scrubbing, but she's hearing the conversations that played in her mind only in this place. And it's really dissociating and powerful. Because we started with quasi-love letter to NBA fandom.

• 59:14Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 59:14Andy Greenwald?

  I need your help on this. I need you to use the sports half of your Grantland binary brain.

• 59:20Andy Greenwald?

  Who is the most, in your opinion, maybe even in this finals, like the most, and I feel like it's probably on the, someone on the Knicks, like the most old school player who is not going to trick you and not dazzle you.

• 59:32Chris Ryan?

  Josh Hart.

• 59:33Andy Greenwald?

  But is just going, right, is just going to go at you and it's going to be basketball.

• 59:36Chris Ryan?

  Josh Hart.

• 59:37Andy Greenwald?

  And that's Star City to me, especially in the third episode, where there is nothing in the mechanic, I mean, the, the setting and the fact that within each episode, they can do a tense Apollo 13-esque space drama is remarkable. But even to use that as a set piece in the third episode where something goes wrong. There wasn't a single moment watching the launch sequence played out over the back half of the third episode where I didn't know something was going to go wrong.

• 1:00:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:00:04Andy Greenwald?

  Especially once the one character space swims to the back to, to release the pressure. As soon as he did that, I, my brain went into like the, the top, you know, you can like change the, the camera angle and I'm watching the all 22.

• 1:00:18Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:18Andy Greenwald?

  I'm mixing my sports metaphors, but I was like, I know what's going to happen now because I have watched television before, but I'm curious how they play it. And the way they played it is right down the middle and perfect with the cuts when you stop hearing from the back and the elation mixed with a sudden discovery and then the slow realization that something has gone wrong. This is, this is textbook. There's nothing particularly novel about it. It's just executed at such a high level. And I felt the same way throughout that episode where it's like, let us explore story in every corner of the world that we created. Because also remember, it is a rare, rare opportunity for producers and TV makers to be told by a rich pocketed benefactor like Apple, yeah, we want more.

• 1:01:02Andy Greenwald?

  So what could they have done with this? Especially when the fact that the Russians' job in the narrative of the other show, of For All Mankind, is established. They're the antagonists. They're the, the rabbit the greyhounds are chasing the whole time. So it was kind of either plug and play, or let's dive in and create rich, rich characters to make the show as much about them as possible. And then. Just put him in conflict, see what happens. And it's, I'm struck by how effective and yeoman-like the show is and how satisfying that can be.

• 1:01:36Chris Ryan?

  The, the sequence that you're talking about, I think is elevated by the, the Valia subplot to it.

• 1:01:41Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, right.

• 1:01:42Chris Ryan?

  So, and obviously, we're talking pretty openly about this series. So if you haven't watched episode three yet, you, you might wanna skip ahead to the next segment or end of the podcast. But it's revealed the Valia is the mole inside of Star City and that he planted basically a transponder or transceiver on the lunar module, which winds up being detected by the Soviets. So they then power down.

• 1:02:08Andy Greenwald?

  They reboot.

• 1:02:08Chris Ryan?

  The module, reboot it, looks like everything's gonna work out. But unfortunately, like, the repowering of it means that the, the hab doesn't, like, the, the, basically, the extender part of it, of the module, doesn't go back in or goes out too early. And in trying to land the, the module back with the space station, that they were the, whatever, the craft at the.

• 1:02:31Andy Greenwald?

  They've aborted the moon landing. They're gonna fly back and Arsene, R.I.P., goes back to.

• 1:02:37Chris Ryan?

  After a, a McBane head, head fake, where Sasha spends most of the episode trying to figure out what he would say in a, in a letter to his loved ones and gives one, gives it one of the letters to his, you know, his illicit affair with Tanya. I thought that part was really great, you know? Like, the, the, the fact that every character has, like, a secret life emergent is, is really cool. It means that, like, nobody's ever fixed on a map. Right now, I think perhaps the best performance on the show is Anna Maxwell Martin, who's playing Ludmilla of Raskova. And we haven't really figured out what her, her bag is yet.

• 1:03:16Andy Greenwald?

  What she's into?

• 1:03:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, like, we don't know, like, her nuances yet because we haven't spent, like, a ton of time with her. She more, like, lurks on the, you know, like, is the, the face in the back or the person who's just like, I, you know, I don't believe you and, but I, I really thought that that sequence wound up being elevated by finding out that it was an act of duplicity or an act of espionage. I did wanna ask you something about where we are, which is three hours into the show. I had a couple of.

• 1:03:45Chris Ryan?

  Wait a second, there, I forgot that we're supposed to be watching Russians. So that, you know, as we talked about last time, all of the characters, all of the characters, all the Soviet characters speak in, speak English.

• 1:03:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:04:00Chris Ryan?

  And speak.

• 1:04:00Andy Greenwald?

  English accented.

• 1:04:01Chris Ryan?

  English accented English. And this is something that Chernobyl did, so it's not uncommon to see this. And I thought even, there was a joke, maybe underneath a performance where, when Arsene is talking about what he's gonna say on the moon, he's basically doing Sean Connery's Hunt for Red October accent.

• 1:04:20Andy Greenwald?

  Uh huh.

• 1:04:21Chris Ryan?

  And I don't know if he was trying to do Sean Connery, or if he was trying to do Sean, but it was a joke that landed for me.

• 1:04:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:28Chris Ryan?

  Do you ever blink and you're like, I'm starting to forget the nationality and ethnic background of the characters that we're watching?

• 1:04:35Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think that that's part of the reason why it's done this way, because it is a pretty quick, sneaky empathy, you know, IED, because it's like, well, they're just like us, just like that Sting song. They love their children too.

• 1:04:49Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:04:49Andy Greenwald?

  Whoa. I think the interesting part was when they were in Paris and they don't speak French, but no one in Paris understands them because they're speaking Russian, but it's English. And, you know, at least from my own personal research efforts, many people in Paris do understand English, even if they pretend not to. Or the fact that when you see them, like when you see Irina transcribing the recordings, she's typing in Cyrillic.

• 1:05:20Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:05:20Andy Greenwald?

  So, no, I think that, I think that the, whatever, you know, prep meetings and design meetings they had were just, to my mind, seemed incredibly successful and incredibly aesthetically integrated. So the language and the way they speak the language works with the production design and the sets and the, just the entire aesthetic of the show is consistent for me, so it doesn't get. Were you concerned trolling? It bothers you.

• 1:05:48Chris Ryan?

  No, it doesn't bother me. I just think that there was one moment where,

• 1:05:52Chris Ryan?

  God, well, which, which episode? Or what scene was it? I think it was when Valia and Sasha are in the stairwell. And he's sort of like, you're being a little, like, you're just a child, like, and you're always joking around, but this is serious. And for a second, I was like, this is about the British Air Force? Like, what am I watching? And I was like, oh, wait, that's right. Yeah, these guys are cosmonauts. And they, you know, and they, they work under Soviet Russian rule, so.

• 1:06:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I, I think that the other thing that's been interesting about it. But it, basically, the show seems to run towards the challenges, which is kind of like my 10,000-foot, almost de facto praise these days, where it's like, well, this is, this, this is where the fences are in the world that they've been given. This is what they've been granted. So what do they do with it? And I think some of the interesting cultural and character-based nuance has come from the moments that we haven't seen yet. When Belikova's father shows up and the way he treats her, the references to Arena's bad marriage, the things that are happening outside of Star City contribute to the idea that though some characters, like, like Valia's wife, who's

• 1:06:55Chris Ryan?

  Tanya.

• 1:06:56Andy Greenwald?

  Tanya, you know, chafing against the limitations within Star City.

• 1:06:59Chris Ryan?

  She wants to dance.

• 1:07:00Andy Greenwald?

  Dreams of Moscow and listen to, listen to records, you know, just really just like us.

• 1:07:04Chris Ryan?

  It's a really cool detail that she's getting contraband LP or singles.

• 1:07:09Andy Greenwald?

  Smuggled in on X-rays.

• 1:07:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that can only be played four times before they degrade. Yeah.

• 1:07:13Andy Greenwald?

  That's pretty cool. My favorite Robert Pollard solo album was also issued only on X-ray. That could only be played four times, but sorry, you missed out. I invited you over to listen to it.

• 1:07:25Andy Greenwald?

  But yeah, that like, there's, there's levels to this society.

• 1:07:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:28Andy Greenwald?

  That Star City isn't some achievement and within its walls, everything is possible. That Star City is an exemplar of the best and the worst of a larger society. And the largest, larger society is knocking at the door in various ways. So I feel immersed. I mean, it's, it's, it's an excellent show. And it is a remarkable pressure valve that it has, that if it starts to feel a little too kitchen sink pot boiler.

• 1:07:50Chris Ryan?

  Dig near the moon.

• 1:07:51Andy Greenwald?

  They can just fucking go to the moon.

• 1:07:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:53Andy Greenwald?

  And when I was watching that moon sequence, I was feeling something that is probably baked into every frame of the seasons of For All Mankind that I haven't watched, which is, man, it's cool to see something in which space travel is really hard.

• 1:08:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:05Andy Greenwald?

  And really scary, not, you know, ah, time to take the cruiser to Naboo or whatever.

• 1:08:11Chris Ryan?

  Time to take the cruiser to Naboo. We can wrap it up there. Thanks to Kaya and Kaya for producing today. And we'll be back on Thursday. I will be half gone. So we're going to talk about Widows Bay together. But then Andy will have the con.

• 1:08:24Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think you'll wear the same clothes on Thursday when we talk about Widows Bay? Because I was planning to.

• 1:08:28Chris Ryan?

  I was gonna turn everything inside out.

• 1:08:31Andy Greenwald?

  That's sick.

• 1:08:31Chris Ryan?

  See you guys on Thursday.