‘The Bear’ Season 5, Episodes 1-3 and ‘The Agency’ Season 2 Premiere. Plus, the State of Comic Book Movies.

Chris and Andy talk about the widely negative critical response to ‘Supergirl’ and what it says about the state of comic book movies (3:22). Then, inspired by the full season releases of both ‘The Bear’ and ‘The Agency,’ they talk about how the binge-drop model affects each show (21:59). Later, they discuss the first episode of ‘The Agency’ Season 2 (34:29) and the first three episodes of ‘The Bear’ Season 5 (46:16). 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 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 am an editor at theringer.com and joining me in the studio is final service chef, it's Andy Greenwald!

• 1:52Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, 86 my takes.

• 1:54Chris Ryan?

  Andy, it's good to see you, brother. Back here in the home of burning insulation in downtown Los Angeles. And I feel good, man. I feel superpowered.

• 2:03Andy Greenwald?

  If you hear a little frog in my throat, it's not hard living. It's pure ammonia fumes.

• 2:11Chris Ryan?

  Um, it is, uh, Thursday. Uh, and what day is it? Thursday, the 25th. So, uh, we're recording this at 10 a.m. The Bear will release this final season at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern. We're going to talk about some of the first few episodes, but more broadly about The Bear as a project.

• 2:30Andy Greenwald?

  But probably if we spoilers through three, because that's the project we've done.

• 2:34Chris Ryan?

  Like, I think a lot of what is broadly available about what this season is about is, is out there. Um, look at your caterpillar eyebrows going up and down. Uh, we're also going to talk about the first episode of the second season of The Agency. But I think both of those conversations will be broad enough that people don't have to get too nervous about spoilers. Couple of things for you at the top. We're going to talk also because The Bear and The Agency wind up being binges.

• 2:58Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, yeah.

• 2:59Chris Ryan?

  Uh, we're going to talk a little bit about the binge model. Um, I also want to talk to you about the DSA rising in New York City.

• 3:07Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 3:07Chris Ryan?

  No, I'm just kidding.

• 3:08Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I was very excited to talk about that.

• 3:11Chris Ryan?

  Going up in rural France. Uh, no, I wanted to just say that you can email us at the watch at spotify.com and you can follow us on Instagram at the watch pod underscore and you can watch us on YouTube at ringer dash TV along with the prestige TV podcast. And you can listen to us and watch us on Spotify or wherever you get podcasts. How you doing?

• 3:30Andy Greenwald?

  Great. Couldn't be better. The, how, how's the tenor been of our, our feedback from the fans on the more bespoke platforms like email? Like, are people, people digging it?

• 3:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think a lot of people are just like, here are my two cents. I would say that's generally, generally where we're at is like people being like, you've, either you forgot to say this or I like that conversation. I'd like to add this as my two cents.

• 3:52Andy Greenwald?

  So we are really running with the my father to film festival strategy.

• 3:57Chris Ryan?

  More of a comment than a question.

• 3:58Andy Greenwald?

  I respect that. Um, I was only saying it because my favorite feedback that I got from the more traditional, you know, I'm, I'm more rough and tumble, like in the Coliseum.

• 4:06Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 4:06Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean? And my favorite thing that was recently posted on our.

• 4:09Chris Ryan?

  On Facebook?

• 4:10Andy Greenwald?

  On our Facebook was, um, wow, does Andy not know Toy Story four was released in 2019?

• 4:17Andy Greenwald?

  And I'd like to turn to the camera and say, I absolutely fucking didn't. Sorry.

• 4:22Chris Ryan?

  What did you say it was?

• 4:23Andy Greenwald?

  I said, I said that I lumped that movie clearly unfairly in with

• 4:28Chris Ryan?

  Oh, COVID releases.

• 4:29Andy Greenwald?

  Lightyear and COVID releases.

• 4:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 4:31Chris Ryan?

  I noticed that when you said it and I was gonna protect you by maybe asking for an edit, but I was like, let him learn from his mistakes.

• 4:37Andy Greenwald?

  No, I appreciate that.

• 4:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:38Andy Greenwald?

  Leave me out there for the second half, even though I gave up a critical error.

• 4:42Chris Ryan?

  Even though there may be a concussion.

• 4:44Andy Greenwald?

  Even though Brazil scored three goals, I have to learn from this goalkeeping error.

• 4:48Chris Ryan?

  Man, um, the World Cup rolls on. What else rolls on? The superhero comic book movie era rolls on.

• 4:55Andy Greenwald?

  Does it?

• 4:56Chris Ryan?

  I, I, I highly recommend people, uh, read Sean's newsletter today about Supergirl and the state of superhero movies and the era that we have been living through.

• 5:06Chris Ryan?

  It's a really great piece. I have not seen Supergirl yet. I, I have been taken aback almost with the, the sort of,

• 5:16Chris Ryan?

  not negativity, because it's part of the job and, and Lord knows I'm sitting across the table from one of the greats when it comes to serving it up.

• 5:25Chris Ryan?

  But it's like, I think people are ready to be done with this and they're certainly ready to, there's no more, no more passes. We're all out of passes.

• 5:37Andy Greenwald?

  You sent me Owen, the veteran critic Owen Gleiberman's review for Variety.

• 5:42Chris Ryan?

  I've always said Gleiberman. Interesting.

• 5:44Andy Greenwald?

  Well, much like my Toy Story four dart throw.

• 5:47Chris Ryan?

  Same.

• 5:48Andy Greenwald?

  I just.

• 5:49Chris Ryan?

  Gleiberman Gleiberman, you know?

• 5:50Andy Greenwald?

  I hesitated. I hesitated.

• 5:53Chris Ryan?

  I sent you Owen Gleiberman or Owen Gleiberman's Variety review, which is

• 5:56Andy Greenwald?

  Send me both.

• 5:57Chris Ryan?

  Old school fucking back of the head pan. It's a real like, let's take Tommy out to get made.

• 6:04Andy Greenwald?

  No, Millie Elcock walked into a room and there was nothing but Mylar on the floor.

• 6:08Chris Ryan?

  So, yeah, and I, and I sent it to you and I was just like, man, the knives are out for this one.

• 6:12Andy Greenwald?

  No, you actually said, because you are a very good texter, you said mortal combat voice fatality. It was a great text.

• 6:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:20Andy Greenwald?

  Great text.

• 6:20Chris Ryan?

  Thank you. And you were like, I feel sad about this.

• 6:24Andy Greenwald?

  I do. I don't know why. I have no skin in this game. I have no shares of Warner Brothers Discovery Paramount plus NORAD Northrop Grumman Corporation. But, and I'm not even a DC guy, you know, as you know.

• 6:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:42Andy Greenwald?

  Shout out Joe House, but. I feel like there is still something about Big Jim Gunn's approach to the DC Universe that I, as a comic book fan, wanted to work. Now, I'm not saying it's all done. Like, if this movie is amiss and tanks, they are pretty pot-committed to this project. It was, I thought it was very interesting that another story that was in the trades this week, as the review embargo was breaking of Supergirl, was that David Ellison went down to Atlanta to the set of Man of Tomorrow to sort of, you know, have a little chat with Peter Safran and James Gunn. And so, at least optics suggests that he's still-

• 7:24Chris Ryan?

  About maybe Superman flying up to the reflecting pool and taking a big drink of the, of the water and be like, "Mmm, that's good water! There is no algae or bleach in it."

• 7:35Andy Greenwald?

  Superman being-

• 7:36Chris Ryan?

  A man saved this pool!

• 7:38Andy Greenwald?

  Superman, no, Lois Lane being the next-

• 7:40Chris Ryan?

  Happy 250th!

• 7:41Andy Greenwald?

  The next guest on Usher Vance's Storytelling Hour.

• 7:46Andy Greenwald?

  I too will pat your knee. It's great.

• 7:48Chris Ryan?

  Did she have a pod?

• 7:49Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know what that was.

• 7:50Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Katie Miller are you thinking of? Stephen Miller's wife?

• 7:52Andy Greenwald?

  No, did you see the clip? This is, "How online are you or are you not?" I feel like Kai's laughing-

• 7:57Chris Ryan?

  You don't want to know where I'm online. Do you know, like-

• 7:59Andy Greenwald?

  What does Adam Friedland send you? Is there a whole other internet?

• 8:02Chris Ryan?

  No, you know what happened the other day is, almost instantaneous to its publication, I was notified by a friend who will, I'll leave him anonymous for a moment, at least, who was just like, "Are you aware?" And it was Taylor Sheridan on Joe Rogan for two hours. And within the first 10 minutes of this podcast appearance, Taylor Sheridan talks about a deaf, possibly autistic horse that he has that sees ghosts, blames the Qataris for indoctrinating young children with trans ideas, and also like takes a giant drive-by on Trump and the rule of, like, how he's not respecting the rule of law.

• 8:36Andy Greenwald?

  This is awesome, because one thing, you are closer to the Sheridan verse than I am, but one thing that is often said to me from people who are remotely in the orbit is- His politics would surprise me. That's actually true. People have said that to me. It's not as cut and dry as you think.

• 8:52Chris Ryan?

  Exactly. I think he believes in.

• 8:54Andy Greenwald?

  He believes in personal liberties.

• 8:55Chris Ryan?

  I think he does. I think he does.

• 8:57Andy Greenwald?

  Who among us?

• 8:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Anyway, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

• 9:00Andy Greenwald?

  This was much more exciting than what I was gonna say.

• 9:02Chris Ryan?

  Be a tearful. Anyway.

• 9:04Andy Greenwald?

  Also, big picture, longtime listeners will notice that I was about to get like real deep in the weeds of the possibilities of like, you know, multi-panel comic book storytelling and you were like, a man was on the Joe Rogan Show. Talking about horses.

• 9:18Chris Ryan?

  And his horse sees ghosts.

• 9:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 9:22Andy Greenwald?

  No, it's just that I still, Superman was a flawed movie as, you know, I mean, Guardians of the Galaxy movies, while entertaining, were probably also flawed in similar ways, but I like his approach to the adaptation of comic books to another medium where he does run towards the things that make comic books specific and unique and often a little bit weird. Like, there's also a flying dog. Like, also, they can be brightly lit, brightly colored, silly things can happen with, you know, it can be, it can be broadly colored in terms of the color palette as well as the pathos, and I like that.

• 9:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:56Andy Greenwald?

  And I also just felt that, for what it's worth, in this fallen world, that is, you know, now that Krypton's gone, that he was, it really did seem like he was building a cinematic universe.

• 10:10Andy Greenwald?

  I don't want to say in an autourish fashion, but in a very, very idiosyncratic fashion.

• 10:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:15Andy Greenwald?

  That these are the projects that he wanted to use to introduce something as opposed to just bringing out the big guns and sitting back and watching the box office rise.

• 10:22Chris Ryan?

  I think it's worth noting that he was brought on with Peter Safran at a moment when the DCEU was still

• 10:29Chris Ryan?

  in mid-flight, you know, so for instance, Supergirl was coming out of the Andy Machete Flash movie, I believe, and it was Sasha Kaya was playing Supergirl and it seemed like there was going to be a Supergirl movie.

• 10:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 10:42Chris Ryan?

  And I believe that might be Anna Noguera's script.

• 10:45Andy Greenwald?

  The original script.

• 10:46Chris Ryan?

  I'm not sure. She, I believe she retains sole.

• 10:49Andy Greenwald?

  She retains sole screenwriting credit and even got a specific shout out in that OG, ONG's review.

• 10:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:58Andy Greenwald?

  Everything I've read about this movie suggests that this is not one script.

• 11:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes, I would, I would, I probably agree with that. The funny thing about this is, is like when Gunn took over, his.

• 11:12Chris Ryan?

  His big, big idea was we're never gonna make one of these unless the script is absolutely rock solid.

• 11:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 11:19Chris Ryan?

  And I just wish like Jiminy Click was there to be like, "Really? Jenny Moore." You know, cuz it's fucking hard, man. They make these, they make these fucking dates.

• 11:29Andy Greenwald?

  You've been a bad boy.

• 11:30Chris Ryan?

  They're like, "You gotta come out this day." It's not shot yet. It's not written yet. It's like, "But we need a DC movie on July, or June, June 28th." And it's like, "All right, lots of things can go wrong between now and then."

• 11:45Andy Greenwald?

  But also they're daisy chaining them in the sense that like, they didn't, they, you could say that it's a vote of confidence, or you could say it's the opposite, by introducing Millie Elcock's Supergirl and her connection to the fucking Superdog at the end of Superman. And then immediately either boosting, or just signaling that Superman is going to be in this movie also, that these are all one thing again. And I do think that Gunn's statement that we're not gonna do this without a solid script is just absolutely sensible. You know, that's our friend Damon Lindelof, that was his plan to, with Star Wars, very, very specifically. "We're not doing this to meet a fan expectation or a release date.

• 12:26Andy Greenwald?

  We're not doing this to satisfy a fictional history or meet a trilogy." The stated goal of that sadly now gone project was, "We are going to make one singular quality film." And anything else good could spring from that. Now-

• 12:41Chris Ryan?

  There's maybe five movies in the history of superhero movies that-

• 12:45Andy Greenwald?

  That fit that criteria. I totally agree. How can you make a single solitary scripted statement of a film that also requires the viewing of many, many other films? I mean, that is also why comic books tend to be ongoing. Issue six. Issue six could be really good, but you kind of have to read five and seven.

• 13:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but that takes like, two minutes to do that.

• 13:07Andy Greenwald?

  To read those?

• 13:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:09Andy Greenwald?

  Swipe it on the app?

• 13:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, if you're just like, "I'm going through it."

• 13:12Andy Greenwald?

  I, the reason I'm being defensive about Anna Garra's script is, I don't know if you know, she is a friends--

• 13:16Chris Ryan?

  No beef with her.

• 13:17Andy Greenwald?

  -school graduate.

• 13:18Chris Ryan?

  I'm, I'm, I don't think that this is representative of her talent.

• 13:22Andy Greenwald?

  Nor the Quaker light within her, which we see and we share. But, but I, I guess I just felt kind of bummed for two reasons. One being, overall, I would like this to be- Fun. I would like it to have a personality because I think these types of movies make a case for their continued existence if they have some creative spark or verve and aren't just boilerplate onto the next one. And two, I do hate when a vitriolic online discourse is met by a, on the other side of the battlefield, met by a good faith, critical panic.

• 14:00Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 14:00Andy Greenwald?

  And then, and then you're not even, you know, the people who hate Millie Alcock or hate a movie about a superpowered woman.

• 14:06Chris Ryan?

  I just want to let you know, I don't hate this because I'm a misogynist.

• 14:08Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly. You hate it because of the script.

• 14:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:11Andy Greenwald?

  Written by a woman.

• 14:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I haven't seen it. It could be good.

• 14:15Andy Greenwald?

  Say more about that.

• 14:16Chris Ryan?

  Well, I just, there's plenty of opportunity for like this to be like, there is a little bit of like, I think a tide building.

• 14:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 14:23Chris Ryan?

  That is led by everybody kind of having their head turned around by obsession in backrooms and the enthusiasm for some of the original movies that are coming and even stuff earlier in the year, like the drama where people are like, I want to go to the movies and see different stories that I've been seeing for most of my life, or stories that look a little bit more like my story, or stories that are just about different corners of the universe or different kinds of people. And I think probably unfairly, movies like Supergirl, which have been probably in some form of gestation for several years and had no idea that someone was going to make obsession and have it turn into the fucking Hootie and the Blowfish album on us. Like, I think they're probably like, this

• 15:07Chris Ryan?

  has nothing to do, have nothing to do with one another, but you can't help but pull them together and be like, the page is turned, man, and you're yesterday's news.

• 15:14Andy Greenwald?

  One thing I like about, unlike the DCUs thus far, one thing I like about The Ringer Corporation is that we do provide content for different age groups and fanbases because I was alerted via Instagram that Danny Heifetz didn't know Gwen Stefani was in No Doubt, and yet you just.

• 15:30Chris Ryan?

  I don't know that he's representative of any generation. He's a very specific kind of person.

• 15:34Andy Greenwald?

  But you, so are you, and you just specifically dropped a cracked rearview Hootie reference about a 2026 film. So, you know, we gotta be who we are.

• 15:43Chris Ryan?

  It's my, the reason I actually mentioned that is like, there is a certain point where you're like, is this people seeing Obsession for the third time? Like, who hasn't seen it that wanted to see it?

• 15:53Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think that there is fatigue? And then we can move on because like, we haven't seen the movie and. I'm curious because I think the next-

• 16:01Chris Ryan?

  You've never stopped us before, brother.

• 16:03Andy Greenwald?

  Get ready for the rest of the year of podcasting.

• 16:07Andy Greenwald?

  Like, I think the next DCU movie is Clayface.

• 16:09Chris Ryan?

  Yes, which I'm very excited for.

• 16:10Andy Greenwald?

  Which is, you know-

• 16:11Chris Ryan?

  Which is, as of now-

• 16:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 16:14Chris Ryan?

  Before Dave flies over to Atlanta to take a look at the cut. As of now is like a hard R horror movie.

• 16:21Andy Greenwald?

  So I wonder if the mistake here, and again, it's premature to call it a mistake, but it seems to be an absolute heat check moment here for the gun-issance. Was the mistake too much Kryptonian James Gunn content back to back? Because that's what he was passionate about. And I think someone is clearly pumping the brakes on let's just have two Batmans at the same time. Which I think is smart for people who aren't following the story to the degree that we are. The Robert Pattinson Batman movie, the sequel, directed and written and directed again by Matt Reeves, just went into production in London many years after the first.

• 17:01Andy Greenwald?

  But during the interregnum between movies, there was talk from the gun-verse-

• 17:07Chris Ryan?

  That there was gonna be like a fun and zany Batman somewhere else.

• 17:09Andy Greenwald?

  That this one is like an Elseworlds, different multiversal Batman that he can do what he wants with, but we're gonna have a Batman that's gonna hang out with Millie Alcock and David Corns with Superman. And that's gonna maybe be based on Grant Morrison's recent run where Batman's son is Robin. And I think they're probably like, let's chill the fuck out. Which I think is probably good advice. But I wonder broadly speaking, to your point about the desire for something organic, authentic, perhaps slightly democratic socialist. Do you think that the element of these movies that might not be hitting anymore isn't the like, the canonical fealty and the demand and the homework, but the shininess?

• 17:50Andy Greenwald?

  Like, is there something, like, do you think there would be an appetite for a little bit more rough and tumble DIY, like the Safdie Brothers Nike commercial aesthetic?

• 18:00Chris Ryan?

  In a Supergirl movie?

• 18:02Andy Greenwald?

  Doesn't have to be Supergirl. I'm just wondering if the shiny CGI thing is passe.

• 18:05Chris Ryan?

  I don't know why it's tracking where it's tracking. From what I can understand by seeing the trailers, I'm like, I don't really know that there's a ton more in this movie that isn't in the trailer. It sounds like this is a girl who's got some trauma, who's got a bad attitude and wears a blondie shirt. And she has like a standalone fight with a guy and saves her dog. And then learns the power of family, right?

• 18:28Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, green light in the room.

• 18:30Chris Ryan?

  Right, but like, I got it, you know, and then, and then, once you sort of get to that point where you're not feeling, one of the things that's sort of been always, like, I've been hitting my head against with a lot of these comic book movies, other than Nolan's Dark Knight, uh, James Mangold's, like, Logan, like, a couple of others, is that they are pretty visually dull to me.

• 18:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 18:52Chris Ryan?

  You know, so, part of the reason why people read comic books is because they're fucking cool to look at, and we've made dozens of movies that look like shit. And I think people might just be getting tired of that.

• 19:04Andy Greenwald?

  That's, that's, I think that's a, a more specifically correct way of what I was trying to ask.

• 19:09Chris Ryan?

  That's just my eye. Maybe there's a bunch of people who are like, I look at two dimensional video games all day, and this is cool, like, you know, I-

• 19:14Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I, I liked Gun Superman because it was brightly colored. Like, that, like, honestly, I was like, this is different.

• 19:21Chris Ryan?

  I had to just get one quick fire reaction from you before we get into the larger conversation for today, which is that there was a truly, like, the egg just cracked, there is no, there, there's no, like, sourcing to this yet. It's in the lower rung of, of the internet movie world reporting. But that Zendaya is in talks to be the new Jason Bourne, whatever that looks like.

• 19:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 19:48Chris Ryan?

  Um, and you say what?

• 19:50Andy Greenwald?

  I say, this would herald an incredible new phase in my parenting relationship to my children. One that I think could probably break things the right way, finally, for me, you know?

• 20:03Chris Ryan?

  Cause they like Zendaya?

• 20:04Andy Greenwald?

  Like is a very soft word.

• 20:06Chris Ryan?

  But you didn't, you did not take your children to see the drama. And you say, and, and why is that?

• 20:11Andy Greenwald?

  Do the Charlie Rose, do it. Uh, I, I did not, I did not, but, um, nor have I shown them the, the Bourne Quartet. You know what I mean?

• 20:22Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 20:23Andy Greenwald?

  And by Quartet, I mean, there are only four Bourne movies that you and I canonically recognize.

• 20:27Chris Ryan?

  Because the titular Jason Bourne movie where he plays a bare knuckled fighter in Eastern Europe.

• 20:31Andy Greenwald?

  Never heard of it.

• 20:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:33Andy Greenwald?

  Didn't happen.

• 20:34Chris Ryan?

  I like Alicia Vikander in that movie, though.

• 20:36Andy Greenwald?

  I like her in everything, but just, you know what, just watch Irma Vep on HBO Max if you want your Vikander fix.

• 20:41Chris Ryan?

  I served that up to you.

• 20:42Andy Greenwald?

  You really did.

• 20:42Chris Ryan?

  Uh, you are excited by this.

• 20:44Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, there-

• 20:45Chris Ryan?

  Well, there's nothing to be excited about.

• 20:46Andy Greenwald?

  No, but there are- There are enough like actual, it's beyond rumblings. Like I, we've heard, we know people like who are in the mix for a next Bourne movie. The conversation that I heard was primarily about like the last time around, getting Matt Damon back involved. That this would, that the plan-

• 21:06Chris Ryan?

  It was gonna be Edward Berger directing it, yeah.

• 21:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and Edward Berger was attached to direct it and that there was, you know, that there was a script and that my, my sense is that that script had a little bit of baton passing potential.

• 21:17Chris Ryan?

  But those always work out.

• 21:19Andy Greenwald?

  Those, like, Mission Impossible, was it, was, what was the one with the first runner? What was that, three or four?

• 21:24Chris Ryan?

  Uh, the Mission Impossible four.

• 21:26Andy Greenwald?

  Was the one that was supposed to be the baton pass.

• 21:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:29Andy Greenwald?

  Um, anyway, I-

• 21:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I would have to say that watching Matt Damon on the Odyssey press tour, uh, it's unlikely to me that he is going to get in Bourne shape anytime soon. And I mean that with all due respect.

• 21:39Andy Greenwald?

  Is he not still in Odysseal shape?

• 21:40Chris Ryan?

  He's like this, like, he is like, I'm so tired.

• 21:44Chris Ryan?

  He's like, and Patton's in it, and I'm like, yeah, mate, that was kind of brilliant. And he's like, I had to walk up a mountain nine takes with an IMAX camera on my back.

• 21:55Andy Greenwald?

  Wow, humbling.

• 21:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:57Andy Greenwald?

  I know you've been doing weight training recently. Do you have any perspective on that?

• 22:00Chris Ryan?

  I mean, like, I'll, I'll be joining him soon, I'm sure.

• 22:03Andy Greenwald?

  With an IMAX camera strapped to your back for an upcoming podcast.

• 22:06Chris Ryan?

  I'm very excited for this.

• 22:07Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, it, it also is smart for Zendaya because one of the keys to her absolute fame and dominance is not just that she's one of the best actors of her generation. It's that she has very cleverly chosen blockbusters, classy blockbusters to associate herself with, and that was-

• 22:24Chris Ryan?

  She is actually having maybe the platonic ideal of a Hollywood, a 2020s Hollywood stars career.

• 22:33Andy Greenwald?

  Agreed.

• 22:33Chris Ryan?

  Where she is kind of going across the spectrum in terms of the size of the role she's taking, but she's never like off the poster, you know? Like, she's always gonna be there. She's working with really interesting filmmakers and more importantly, rather than just being like, just sign me up for whatever you want to make, like, it seems like the drama, the Dune, Odyssey, a Ronnie Spector movie with Barry Jenkins is supposed to be her next thing that's shooting in the fall. And if she does this, I bet-

• 23:02Andy Greenwald?

  And Spider-Man, which is gonna be the biggest movie of the year.

• 23:04Chris Ryan?

  Right. Right.

• 23:06Andy Greenwald?

  Pretty good.

• 23:07Chris Ryan?

  Pretty great.

• 23:08Andy Greenwald?

  Um, I know that you have some takes to get off about Taylor Swift's upcoming wedding, but we could save that for After Dark.

• 23:14Chris Ryan?

  Sure, okay.

• 23:15Andy Greenwald?

  Cause I-

• 23:16Chris Ryan?

  I know you do too.

• 23:17Andy Greenwald?

  Because this is the-

• 23:18Chris Ryan?

  You're about to put the socialist in Democrat socialist.

• 23:20Andy Greenwald?

  This is the one space where I know my children will never hear what I say on a podcast co-hosted by their-

• 23:26Chris Ryan?

  Unless Gail Simmons is on.

• 23:27Andy Greenwald?

  That is true. That, that broke the seal for them.

• 23:29Chris Ryan?

  We have The Bear and we have The Agency. The Bear has, as of recording, yet to be released. The Agency is entire, in its entirety, the second season is up. Let's talk a little bit about the binge model before we get into the specific shows.

• 23:43Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 23:44Chris Ryan?

  And now I can't help but hear Jiminy Click every time I speak, "Let's talk a little bit about the binge model."

• 23:49Andy Greenwald?

  Chris, there's nothing I love more than Jiminy Click, so it's fine. Do it.

• 23:56Chris Ryan?

  Did you ever see the one with him and Larry David?

• 23:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. The one with him and Bill Hader, maybe along with the Eastbound and Down outtakes, my most watched YouTube clip.

• 24:04Chris Ryan?

  Where Hader's just crying.

• 24:06Andy Greenwald?

  Not a star's name, is it?

• 24:10Andy Greenwald?

  As good as it gets.

• 24:11Chris Ryan?

  Um, I guess somewhere someone's got numbers that suggest that this is the best way to do things. For any given, whether it's Netflix, you know, for FX Hulu's purposes, under the Disney umbrella, they have always released The Bear as a binge, I believe.

• 24:31Andy Greenwald?

  They have.

• 24:32Chris Ryan?

  Um-

• 24:33Andy Greenwald?

  And, and, and initially, we took that, sorry to cut you off, we took that as a reflection of their, "we don't know what we have" attitude towards the show.

• 24:41Chris Ryan?

  For the first season.

• 24:41Andy Greenwald?

  For the first season.

• 24:42Chris Ryan?

  Yes. I think it was kind of like, "Would you guys like to check this out? Well, go for it." I think that the show has evolved over the years, over the seasons, and this is the fifth and final season, into one that writes and shoots to be watched in, in a one huge binge.

• 24:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 24:59Chris Ryan?

  One long sitting. So I would highly recommend people, and I've seen seven of the eight, you've watched three of the seven that were made available, uh, seven episodes were made available for critics ahead of time. We have not seen the finale. Um, I would, I would encourage people, if they like The Bear, to watch as much of The Bear as they can in succession. Because I think that's, the desired effect comes from that experience.

• 25:25Chris Ryan?

  As far as the agency goes, uh, both because of the complexity of the plot, the sheer number of characters. I know that that show came out last year, right? Twenty-four?

• 25:37Andy Greenwald?

  Twenty-four.

• 25:38Chris Ryan?

  Again, kind of a House of the Dragon thing where you're like, ah, right, and this guy I would know from where? You know, because like you just have to, you have to like, really assemble all the, all the pieces on the chessboard when you're watching the agency. And I remember now with The Bureau, The Bureau, the show that the agency is based on, I did watch that in a binge. We did pretty much watch five seasons of TV over the course of like two or three weeks.

• 26:02Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it was the pandemic.

• 26:03Chris Ryan?

  Sure, but you could keep all the characters in place. You could remember all the storylines. There were certain things that would emerge that you were like, I can't believe this. That might have a different feeling if you waited a year or so to watch it. So there are different, different angles to this whole thing. But I guess I would start by saying, let's take the agency, because I think we should talk about the agency first.

• 26:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 26:26Chris Ryan?

  But broadly, like, do you think that this model works for a show like that?

• 26:30Andy Greenwald?

  I, I, I want to pick up quickly just your, when you're talking about how we watched it. Like, one of the great pleasures of the contemporary era of television is the opportunity to rediscover and to unearth. And eventually, I think a lot of people do this, I, I, I don't, but like the re-watch.

• 26:45Chris Ryan?

  And so we have too much new stuff to watch.

• 26:47Andy Greenwald?

  Right, but like La Bureau was so delicious because it was all there for us. We were late to discovering it. I believe all five seasons were completed by the time we started. And, you know, when you have a show in your life with your partner, with your life partner sitting across from me, it can be so fun to just soak in it for weeks. And, but that said, you also alluded to this. It does change the relationship with the show. And there are incredible things about La Bureau, the way it would,

• 27:22Andy Greenwald?

  subtly reset every year and be widen the aperture to be about also a different part of the world or a different hotspot or to see the larger game board. I feel like appreciating that would have been different in the moment. Not necessarily better, not, not necessarily worse, but the show contained enough richness to allow for both experiences. What I don't And also, I don't begrudge people who are like, "Well, I've never seen Mad Men. Oh, here it is? Let me dive in." Like, that's great. What I don't understand, and I hope someone might... What's our email address?

• 27:54Chris Ryan?

  TheWatch at Spotify.com.

• 27:56Andy Greenwald?

  Someone, please, let us know about this. Because season one of the...

• 27:58Chris Ryan?

  We did get some cool emails about why CEOs do get paid what they get paid.

• 28:03Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, how they work hard and deserve it?

• 28:05Chris Ryan?

  Kind of.

• 28:06Andy Greenwald?

  Great. That's sorted, then. And by S-O-R-D-I-D. I do want to talk about why I think the binge model is horrific.

• 28:16Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 28:17Andy Greenwald?

  But specifically with the agency, what I don't understand is, it is, in many ways, a feathered fish of development in terms of the bureau was a massive, massive hit within France and respected internationally. The rights to it were bandied about and claimed with a great fanfare by Showtime, right, a few years ago? And the idea was that George Clooney and his producing partner Grant Haslove for Smokehouse were going to develop this, and maybe Clooney was going to direct it, et cetera, et cetera. This was going to be Showtime's, like, really, really big, like, "We're still in the game" kind of thing. During the development process of the show, Clooney clearly fell off of it, as did the existence of the Showtime network.

• 29:02Andy Greenwald?

  So it got folded into being like a premiere offering of the new Paramount Plus streaming service. The Butterworth Bros...

• 29:10Chris Ryan?

  Jez and John Henry Butterworth.

• 29:11Andy Greenwald?

  Right, the show.

• 29:12Chris Ryan?

  Jez is an accomplished playwright and very prolific screenwriter.

• 29:14Andy Greenwald?

  They write every episode and run it. I think Joe Wright directed some of the first season.

• 29:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and Neil Berger, who is a, like, longtime Hollywood director, directed this first episode. And I will say, without even getting into it, this first episode looks like it cost $200 billion.

• 29:31Andy Greenwald?

  To be clear, Clooney and Haslove were main producers. Haslove directed on the first season.

• 29:34Chris Ryan?

  Must be nice.

• 29:35Andy Greenwald?

  It's not like they went... But the first season was released with a little bit...

• 29:39Chris Ryan?

  You look at a script, and it's like, "Well, now I need an EP credit, because I looked at it."

• 29:44Andy Greenwald?

  What town do you live in? Guys, Windhorst Fingers, the opening credit of almost any show we cover, and you can figure out some pretty interesting... Let's call them passive income opportunities. But...

• 29:59Andy Greenwald?

  The cast is so starry. Michael Fassbender, Jeffrey Wright, Jodie Turner Smith, Catherine Waterston, Richard fucking Geer.

• 30:08Andy Greenwald?

  The first season, which was really excellent, was a traditional release model. They released it in December of 2024 and it ran until the end of January 2025. It seemed to do well enough.

• 30:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 30:20Andy Greenwald?

  They had greenlit a second season. It is so profoundly not a cheap show to make. So I have to say, I was shocked to discover not only was the show back with a apparently, you know, not, not a robust marketing and promotional effort, but it was back as a dump on Sunday, all 10 episodes. I still think, and talk me out of it, or maybe just take the opposing viewpoint here. I take that as a insult to the people who made it, and I take it as a sign of a lack of confidence in the show from the Paramount people. That, that is my takeaway. I do not have any facts to support that. That is how I perceive it. So am I old fashioned in taking something that way?

• 31:02Chris Ryan?

  I can see both sides in it. Okay, so I can see.

• 31:05Andy Greenwald?

  He's running.

• 31:05Chris Ryan?

  First season comes out. Michael Fassbender, huge movie star, or big movie star, star studded cast.

• 31:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 31:14Chris Ryan?

  You develop word of mouth by releasing week to week. Maybe, once the second season is done, they're like, our fans are our fans. And we want to service them and meet them where they are and give them 10 hours of stuff to watch as soon as the clock ticks.

• 31:32Andy Greenwald?

  It's not a big tent strategy.

• 31:34Chris Ryan?

  It's not a big tent strategy, but like, how many times have we gone through these TV shows and we were like, is Widows Bay like, and The Pit are the two shows of the last three or four years that I can think of specifically that have had week to week acceleration?

• 31:48Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think you're right to bring that up.

• 31:51Chris Ryan?

  Often than not, it's people being like, man, I feel like I'm so behind on this, you know?

• 31:55Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think you're right about that. I saw, and I, and I'm sorry I can't credit this appropriately, but I did see an article basically saying it's, it's not accidental, or it's not, it's not coincidental, I should say, that.

• 32:08Andy Greenwald?

  The largest like week to week growing shows, if you just look at the growth, not necessarily the overall audience, over the last year or two years have been on Apple. And the argument, and it included Cape Fear in that, which is also apparently growing week to week, even though it's, you know, priced at a different point.

• 32:24Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 32:25Andy Greenwald?

  And it clearly had different expectations than, um, than Widows Bay did. But the argument was essentially that because Apple is a boutique service, it has very, relatively humble, let's say, subscriber base, but unlimited coffers, they can afford the strategy of letting people find their shows and letting word of mouth build. Paramount, I don't have the numbers, but Paramount is in a lower tier than the dominant streaming services. It could just be that they don't have that patience, or they don't have the business strategy to let things develop that way. I'm open to that possibility, as we were, as I was complaining about the other day. All of this is so frustratingly opaque.

• 33:05Andy Greenwald?

  I find it, I find it incredibly annoying as a fan of building week to week.

• 33:11Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 33:11Andy Greenwald?

  As a fan of how I enjoy watching this stuff, especially a show as dense as The Agency. Um, I wish it was otherwise. And, and also I just find it indicative of larger cultural shifts that I'm powerless to stop, but I hate, which is just the, the over stuffing and over indulgence of everything.

• 33:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think that the, the, the only counter I have to that is that I can see binging in the same way that people are like, I get my news from newsletters and I don't go to websites anymore. So basically this idea that you find your fan base and you service them.

• 33:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 33:47Chris Ryan?

  To the max, rather than, we want you to subscribe to our, our network, our premium cable channel, our streamer, and we want to develop a relationship with you where we parcel out things over the course of a year, and you have to wait till Sunday to watch this.

• 34:02Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 34:03Chris Ryan?

  And that works for us, and I think it works for TV shows in terms of, especially new shows, to build them up over the course of a season. But for the pure corporation customer relationship, they may just be like, this is what people want.

• 34:16Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it's algorithmically stuffing them with what they think they, what they feel confident that they know they want. And, you know, I want to talk specifically about the show, of course, but one thing that I've been noticing recently with

• 34:29Andy Greenwald?

  Just how my kids and their friends engage with things. When we suddenly had unlimited options, like when suddenly there was Spotify, or even, you know, before that, wink, wink Napster, right? Like, it was mind blowing for us as people who used to have to search out things. And we had a lot of appetite for what was next, what was behind the next door. Who influenced this? How can I find out more? Because knowledge was at a premium and access certainly was at a premium. This generation, at least in my experience with my kids, and again, like their peers at the moment, the ceiling of that being currently 13, maybe that changes.

• 35:05Andy Greenwald?

  There is no searching. There is no, everything is fed to them.

• 35:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's the difference between, um, I'm gonna go get that, like, at a store and bring it to me in a box.

• 35:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, if my daughter opens YouTube and YouTube already knows everything she probably wants to see, then her worldview is limited by that.

• 35:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:22Andy Greenwald?

  And I, I, maybe it's too grandiose to say it, but I do feel like the binge model is deeply connected to that, or has become entwined with that in terms of expectation. Like, oh, well, you know, I, I opened up the service and it knows I watched the first season and here's the new season, so I will just stay in my Wally pod forever.

• 35:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, we can talk more specifically about the show.

• 35:40Andy Greenwald?

  Let's talk about The Agency.

• 35:41Chris Ryan?

  The bear itself is, I think, made, this season specifically, I think, is made as a four hour episode of television. I think there are some episodic breaks, there are commercial breaks that are in the actual episodes. But I think that if you think about the seven episodes that I've seen, it feels like a complete statement. The Agency is as traditional as Prestige TV gets in its construction. These are 47 minute episodes. We'll talk about the first one here because I had a revelation while watching this.

• 36:10Andy Greenwald?

  Whoa.

• 36:12Chris Ryan?

  I admired and liked watching the first season.

• 36:14Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 36:15Chris Ryan?

  There is something, and I cannot quite put the metaphor together, but it's almost like watching, like, a thing that I love in another room or something. Like, there is, there is an element of, for as excited as I was to see The Bureau remade or interested in it, I was like, but it just feels like I've seen that scene in a different language with different characters. This is a really strange experience. This episode, and we, we can get into a little bit of the discussion about what it is, initially starts and it's tracking along relatively close to the way season two of The Bureau starts.

• 36:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 36:50Chris Ryan?

  Correct me if I am wrong, but midway through this first episode, we are introduced to a new character in the universe of this show.

• 37:01Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 37:02Chris Ryan?

  And listener, the heart rate went up. So basically, like, we're picking up right two months after the first season left off storytime wise. Sami is kidnapped and is being held hostage in Africa. Martian is a desk, now working a desk job at the CIA's London office.

• 37:23Andy Greenwald?

  And is fully a double agent.

• 37:27Chris Ryan?

  Is now working for the British, which kind of inverts what the Malatrou character in Le Bureau is working for the Americans.

• 37:35Andy Greenwald?

  A French agent working for the Americans and for similar reasons, to save his love.

• 37:39Chris Ryan?

  And where the second season, or the, you know, where the Bureau is a little bit more concerned with Syria and goings on in the Middle East and jihadis, this is now getting more and more into Russian paramilitary groups and the Ukraine war. And we are introduced to the, a character midway through the first episode, who's known only as Viking, who is a former US Marine, although one who's got a bit of a fabulous to him, fabulous side to him, a former US Marine who is now working as a henchman for this Russian paramilitary, it's basically Wagner Group, but they're calling it Valhalla in the show. And I was like, oh, this is what I wanted. I wanted a curveball.

• 38:24Andy Greenwald?

  Well, now, to be clear, the Le Bureau has a similar, it is a French national.

• 38:30Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 38:31Andy Greenwald?

  So thematically, the person who we're chasing is one of ours, is the same.

• 38:37Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 38:38Andy Greenwald?

  I did find, and maybe this is also what you're responding to. I leaned in when it was a ex-US Marine at the moment when the show, I think, is beginning to engage less with the like perfectly curated museum piece of Le Bureau and actually digging into what it would mean to be about the CIA right now.

• 38:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:57Andy Greenwald?

  And there's a, to me, the most interesting and most declarative section of this episode, and clearly we're talking about only the first of season two, is the conversation between Jeffrey Wright's character and Richard Gere's character where they're like, man, we used to kick ass and people used to be afraid of us. What the fuck happened?

• 39:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:13Andy Greenwald?

  I thought the collision between that plot beat taken from the first, taken from the French show, but added to the very naughtiness of it did elevate everything.

• 39:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I think rooting it in, there's a bit of a strange experience watching The Agency where the Central Intelligence Agency's office in London is populated by United Kingdom actors playing Americans.

• 39:39Andy Greenwald?

  It's so weird.

• 39:40Chris Ryan?

  With the exception of, you know, there's several Americans in it, but Dominic West and Michael Fassbender are, and the guy who plays Grandma, right?

• 39:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and the kid downstairs in tech who is just like an absolutely, like that is one of the most English faces you could ever, ever capture. Like, that guy would break so quickly under CIA questioning if you put a Greg sausage roll in front of him.

• 40:06Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 40:06Andy Greenwald?

  Or mention having a few drinks at Spoons.

• 40:08Chris Ryan?

  So there's like this odd feeling, but I did like the idea that this Viking character has emerged out of like fringe, like 4chan manosphere, and then through the lens or through the prism of like Aryan Brotherhood, white power, white nationalism in America, to somehow find himself in Africa, working as a merc for a Russian paramilitary group. It's just a really nice like curve ball on making it more like, what would these characters from these countries be facing?

• 40:41Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think it's a really, really complicated production in ways that I think are almost difficult to parse because it is British screenwriters adapting a very, very French show, but more than that, a very, very like 2015 show for a contemporary American television audience about contemporary American geopolitics.

• 41:06Andy Greenwald?

  Some of the adaptations work incredibly well. Some are more stilted, some are still finding their way. I found myself in this episode more drawn to the most familiar plot from people who'd watched the original series, which in this case is Danny in Tehran.

• 41:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:20Andy Greenwald?

  I think Sarah Lightfoot Leon is awesome and exciting in the role. And the peril of that feels a lot more pronounced because she's the agent in the field. That was also beat for beat, what Le Bureau did. And with the setup of who's going to get turned, who's going to become a source, all of that, and the way that the Martian character is going to play with it. I still find, the show is almost like, and this may be why I'm also worried about its future, it is so aggressively complicated and chilly. I'm super into that.

• 41:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:54Andy Greenwald?

  But it is dense. And I still think that-

• 41:58Chris Ryan?

  I think this is the same conversation we had two years ago. And I think we're both responding to Fassbender.

• 42:03Andy Greenwald?

  It's Fassbender.

• 42:03Chris Ryan?

  And they made a choice to send, to make him, to choose him as the actor. I think that he and this period of his acting has settled in on like, I have like a Michael Fassbender guy that I play, who is like a cold, heartless sociopath.

• 42:21Andy Greenwald?

  Who likes racing cars.

• 42:22Chris Ryan?

  And who likes racing cars. And then on the side, in Frank, or in this or that, I might play somebody like kind of more funky and interesting.

• 42:29Andy Greenwald?

  But it is funny that like, we noticed him, we. I mean, like, audiences suddenly were like, who the hell is that? In Inglourious Basterds, because he was everything you're saying, but he was also-

• 42:38Chris Ryan?

  I remember the first time I really became engaged with him was Hunger, the Steve McQueen movie about, you know, IRA hunger strikes. And I was like, this guy is on another level. It feels like he's the next Daniel Day Lewis. But he has kind of settled into the killer Prometheus kind of Assassin's Creed guy. And in this show- So far, I think maybe lacks some of the soul of the character from the original series. Now, that's okay if they let the big dogs in the pen off the leash.

• 43:11Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you.

• 43:12Chris Ryan?

  And that's Wright, Geer, Waterson.

• 43:14Andy Greenwald?

  McGarrett, yeah.

• 43:15Chris Ryan?

  And if they let those people cook, and there is like little, little spots of daylight that like, you don't put, you don't, it's like you don't get Jeffrey Wright to have him throw one inning in the seventh. You gotta let this guy out.

• 43:28Andy Greenwald?

  I love this.

• 43:29Chris Ryan?

  Go. And I think that's coming. And I think you can see that emerging because he is charged with the mole hunt.

• 43:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 43:35Chris Ryan?

  Um, I'm very excited to keep watching the second season.

• 43:38Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, some of the best moments, it's so odd. Some of the best moments of the show are the little throwaways like Catherine Waterston's birthday party.

• 43:44Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 43:45Andy Greenwald?

  You know, the things that the Butterworths are inventing for these people are riveting and exciting. And I hope they do that. I think the best comp, and this is kind of surprising to say, would be Mad Men. Because Mad Men built a cast of real characters, um, broad, funny, surprising, warm around Jon Hamm's central performance.

• 44:08Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 44:09Andy Greenwald?

  Which was defined by, this is not a criticism of Jon Hamm and one of the iconic television roles of all time, but that role was defined by its tightness and its insularity and its reticence. And everything else warmed it up or surprised it. I think that's the best case scenario for the show because Fast Benders Martian is essentially like a blunt object. And the one moment that I didn't like in an, in an episode that I was otherwise like, ooh, the clues in the crossword puzzle, inject this into my veins, was when he is so stressed out about the lack of rescue for Samia that he then, um, F1's his Ford Focus to the top.

• 44:45Chris Ryan?

  Nearly off a garage.

• 44:45Andy Greenwald?

  To the top of a garage and then screams in frustration. And I was like, this seems like an actor note.

• 44:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:51Andy Greenwald?

  Then it does a character note.

• 44:54Chris Ryan?

  I just have to stress again that this show looks like it cost $100 million to make on one episode.

• 44:59Andy Greenwald?

  It looks so good.

• 44:59Chris Ryan?

  They stage a giant shootout in Khartoum. I don't know where they actually shot it, but more than that-

• 45:05Andy Greenwald?

  What doubles for Khartoum these days?

• 45:06Chris Ryan?

  It, I think is shot kind of maybe anamorphic where, I mean, like, I thought that the birthday scene also was so full of life- and so well done, and also was just so great to have Martian trying to pretend to be a human being- while also watching all these people flirt and have champagne and like turn 40 and all this stuff. And he's like, you know, dying on the inside because he's a double agent who's desperately trying to save the love of his life's life. More of that, man. Keep putting Fassbender amongst real people and keep putting him up against brilliant British character actors who will like undo him a little bit.

• 45:46Andy Greenwald?

  We should have this show. We, as viewers of television-

• 45:52Chris Ryan?

  As two white men in our 40s, we deserve this.

• 45:55Andy Greenwald?

  Could something finally be for us? Hello?

• 46:00Andy Greenwald?

  No, but generally, like, there is so much fucking money in the international streaming television space. And this, I mean, La Bureau still exists. I mean, that's the challenge, right? It's still competing with the original in terms of what you could watch on any given Tuesday. But a high-minded, high-quality, high-cost, elegant international spy thriller should just be on the checklist of what is on these services. They are hard to do. There's too much talent here for it to go too sideways. And I hope that the rest of the season, which some people listening may have already watched, fulfills more of its promise, both in terms of an inheritor of the original, but also as its own thing. And then like, let's keep going.

• 46:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. There's this experience that I have not been able to articulate, and I think that it's kind of fun. We've been talking about television together for 12 years or whatever it is, 13 years.

• 46:53Andy Greenwald?

  14.

• 46:54Chris Ryan?

  Uh, 14 years.

• 46:55Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't, that's true. One year I didn't really watch TV and talk about it much with you.

• 46:58Chris Ryan?

  And then I don't really count the Andy Greenwald podcast.

• 47:01Andy Greenwald?

  That's fair.

• 47:01Chris Ryan?

  And-

• 47:02Andy Greenwald?

  Would you like a list of the guests who did count it?

• 47:06Andy Greenwald?

  We'll run it on the side of the screen, Kai.

• 47:09Chris Ryan?

  I, we've spent so much time trying to be like, this is why this show is good and this is why this show is bad. And sometimes you just turn on a TV show and you're just like, I'm not changing the channel, brother.

• 47:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that's generally you with Paramount Plus.

• 47:22Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 47:22Andy Greenwald?

  That is your default home screen.

• 47:23Chris Ryan?

  There's plenty of shows. I am not watching Dutton Ranch. I am not watching plenty of things on Paramount Plus. I stopped watching Mobland. I was just like, I feel like I got it. Yeah.

• 47:32Andy Greenwald?

  You feel like you got the land? You had to lay the land?

• 47:34Chris Ryan?

  Uh, but there is something about, like, I just think The Agency is just really, really, really well made and I would probably be head over heels for it if it was the first time I was seeing this story.

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• 48:16Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk about The Bear. We'll go into depth on it on Monday when maybe you have a chance to, I mean, hopefully like finish it, you know, because, I mean, is that too much?

• 48:26Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, let me just get my iCal for a second. Move some things around.

• 48:31Chris Ryan?

  Look, there's a lot of TV right now. There's House of the Dragon, there's The Bear, there's The Agency. There's, there's, there's so much to love. And.

• 48:40Andy Greenwald?

  Is there? Yeah.

• 48:42Chris Ryan?

  So I've watched the seven episodes. I'm not going to spoil anything. There are a lot of what you would hear from me that would be a spoiler is now widely available in the reviews that are, have been published today and the trades. By the time this goes up, I think the season will have gone up, but I don't have anything to say about the finale because I haven't seen it. I guess I should let you go first.

• 49:01Andy Greenwald?

  The reviews have come out and the reviews seem to have devoured them as the FX press room would like us to devour them. So reviewers are like, boy, the seventh episode's really great. And boy, the other episodes really build up to it. I really think it's important to have a conversation about, sincerely.

• 49:18Chris Ryan?

  Charles Barkley voice.

• 49:20Andy Greenwald?

  About what's happened to the show over the last three years. And it was a massive bummer to watch the first three episodes of the season. I think that there are really strong arguments to be made about the joys of insulated, siloed, collaborative, community-based filmmaking. Like, when you work with your pals and you work on something that you're passionate about, great things can come from that. And the first few seasons are a testament to that, certainly. There are still moments, when watching The Bear, where you see flickers of that affection that the cast and crew have for each other, the deep, almost wordless, understanding that the performers have, or that Chris Storer, the creator and director, has with people

• 50:03Andy Greenwald?

  that he's known in his real life and he's now put on the camera. That's all wonderful. The flip side of that is when you completely make something for yourselves and with yourselves and don't talk to anyone about it, it can choke the life out of something and feel like the most insular, drain-circling exercise imaginable. And I found these three episodes to be a continuation, to be fair, of what's happened in the last few years, which has been an almost outright disdain of traditional television storytelling. Now, I don't want to be here and be the William F. Buckley of streaming television, standing athwart, you know, the fucking Disney Plus logos, yelling, "Stop."

• 50:46Andy Greenwald?

  But there is a reason why television, whether you delivered it as a binge or not, is often broken, story-wise, a certain way.

• 50:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:57Andy Greenwald?

  Why storylines are spaced out over time, why conversations are had in vibrant writers' rooms about, "Where do we go next?" So this does not feel like more and more and more and more and more of the same thing. So the fact that the first three episodes of the season aren't just the same characters feeling glum about the potential professional opportunities ahead of them, in the same spaces, only now it's all over the course of one service, only now it's all over the course of one dark rainstorm in the super, super claustrophobic Michael Mann fever dream stage set of the restaurant.

• 51:34Andy Greenwald?

  I found it, I was just sort of choking watching it. Like, I did not get pleasure out of it, of seeing these people say the same things to each other in sort of stagey, non-story, advancing ways. I was really frustrated, really, really frustrated. And not to make this too inside baseball, but like, and I would say this to, Chris is a great guy, and we love talking to him, and hopefully we'll continue to talk to him in the future. This is in no way personal, but I do find it odd that the show two years ago stopped having any conversation at all with the outside world. They don't do any press, they don't talk about it, they didn't even set up what this season was. It's just like, here's another bunch of hours, and it feels so disconnected from the relationship that I had as a fan, not as a podcaster.

• 52:17Chris Ryan?

  So, you know, I think that's a worthwhile conversation to have.

• 52:22Chris Ryan?

  And maybe that's where we can leave this discussion. I was much more positive on what I've watched, but I was feeling like nervous at the three episode mark. I don't know if your attitude's gonna be changed about it, but I think that this season of television would be greatly, would greatly benefit from not even like a cover story on Jeremy Allen White where he walks us through everything, or a promo binge where they're playing with puppies, talking about their five favorite meals they've ever had. Like, there's lots of reasons why that stuff is actually pretty tired.

• 52:57Andy Greenwald?

  Agreed.

• 52:58Chris Ryan?

  But I do think that it would have helped this season, or helped you watch this season, if they had come out and said, this is about a day in the restaurant.

• 53:08Andy Greenwald?

  If they had come out and said, let me explain how our menu works.

• 53:10Chris Ryan?

  No, but like, being serious.

• 53:12Andy Greenwald?

  I am too.

• 53:13Chris Ryan?

  Like, if it was like, hey, so this is about the pre-service portion of a day, a chaotic night at the restaurant, and the culmination of everything that we have been talking about on this show, and that we are shooting it essentially as a relay race, like, that goes like increasingly up in terms of intensity, to a kind of mirror of the early seasons, of the, you know, the chaos of

• 53:41Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 53:41Chris Ryan?

  of the handheld, sort of like Carmy doing crazy things and yelling at people, and then pivoting it to being like, well, what would happen if Sydney was running this restaurant? And what happens on the night where they're actually working collaboratively? I think that would be A good thing for people to know going into it. Maybe nobody cares and maybe it's like the bear's back and I'm gonna watch it. Or I stopped watching the bear three years ago.

• 54:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and this is the vibe that I know that I'm gonna get from this restaurant, even though now we're using scraps of offcuts. Like to, there's a moment when people start yelling again, as they always do, and it plays off of Sydney's face. This is, I believe, in episode three of the new season. And her face is then intercut with images of all of these people shouting at each other in previous seasons.

• 54:24Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 54:25Andy Greenwald?

  And I'm like, we're really just recycling that as opposed to generating new content. Like, I think there's an argument to be made that when Carmy was locked in the walk-in freezer two, three seasons ago, that he never came out. These are all dream sequences because every single person has been stuck and frozen since then.

• 54:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:46Andy Greenwald?

  Now, again, I would love to, maybe we'll have the opportunity to have the conversation. Like, is this because this was always one story? And then FX and the cast and crew, or everyone's having such a good time, they're like, let's make three more seasons out of this one story. That's the evidence in front of us. But that they're having the same circular conversations, that every character is basically locked in place, and that the only variation so far in this new season is

• 55:14Andy Greenwald?

  an expansion, an IP expansion of Friend of the Ringer Brian Koppelmann's character in the form of his daughter? Like, that's the big addition so far.

• 55:23Chris Ryan?

  I don't think that's his daughter. I think that's like somebody who owes him a favor.

• 55:27Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, another quant who comes in, plays by Elsie Fisher? I'm like, this part of the show is not as compelling to me as I think the people making the show think it is. Similarly, Matty Matheson, being intellectually and emotionally a child and beloved by everyone, is diminishing returns to me, even though, again, I think the people making the show find this incredibly delightful. So, anything to push the ball forward. Instead, we get a Hans Zimmer score on top of it, which is like, honestly, felt like shaving incredibly expensive Alba truffles over Kirkland mac and cheese.

• 56:00Chris Ryan?

  I liked the, I liked the addition of an original score instead of constant needle drops. And I love the music of the bear and I have a, I have the playlist that is all the songs from the bear. But I thought that doing an original score for the season and nailing down the camera and making everything like, the sensation that you're supposed to get is that Sydney...

• 56:24Chris Ryan?

  Is giving people a sense of calm.

• 56:26Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 56:27Chris Ryan?

  And so the camera needs to calm down as well. And so that there are push-ins and there are like quick cuts, but essentially like from what I could tell, like there is very, very little of the usual like bare kind of chaotic handheld in somebody's face giving you a panic attack camera work. It's all like on an axis, you know?

• 56:46Andy Greenwald?

  Just like I don't think, and I don't think the show agrees with me, and I think there's room to grow here, but just like I don't think that a tweezered, uh, antiseptic restaurant that serves a set tasting menu is necessarily better than a sandwich shop. I don't necessarily think three, three extra seasons of Lionel Boyce proving he can be a morose dramatic actor is better than the kind of sweet, slightly more humorous character that he played in the first two seasons. Now he's staring at a candle again, you know, and only and locked in a room with Will Poulter. Now, obviously that might change, but I don't know if that's, that's, that's a different tone, but now it's been the same tone and I don't know if it's necessarily better. Similarly, I think Chris is a phenomenal director and an incredible accruer of talent

• 57:28Andy Greenwald?

  and under, he understands the actors that he knows and loves so well and has brought out shades of people that we had never seen before, even in the show, like what, what Oliver Platt's doing, what Evan Moss-Bacarac is doing. It's, it's, that's still what Abby Elliott does, you know? These are things that I didn't know these actors who I was familiar with could do, and I love seeing them do it. I also know he is absolutely sincere in his Phil McKnowledge and his love of Michael Mann and everything, but this vessel that he has been given by the, by the gods at Disney and FX, isn't a Michael Mann movie, no matter how much music and neon light you put on it, you know? I, I, so my frustration is because I think more than anything, the organic joy of this

• 58:10Andy Greenwald?

  show for absolutely three full seasons, even if the third season was a little bit shakier. Was such a special, special thing. Now, special things don't go on forever in the television or the restaurant industry. But these last two seasons of just so aggressively being something else. I'm finding, uh, well, you can, I'm frustrated. I'm gonna watch more, of course.

• 58:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:33Andy Greenwald?

  And this is where binge drops can burn you. Because by the time some people are listening to me say this.

• 58:38Chris Ryan?

  They're gonna be like, how could you say that if you haven't seen Seven?

• 58:40Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly.

• 58:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:41Andy Greenwald?

  But I'm trying to engage with it as a honest steward of my relationship to what has come before.

• 58:48Chris Ryan?

  There's a strange thing that's going on with this show. And obviously, we've talked a lot about the method of its release. But I think its deepest pleasure is still the, the, the pleasure of any TV show, which is the durational aspect of it and the relationship you build to the characters. And for as circuitous as this road has been to get there, I found myself deeply invested in Marcus, uh, in, in Richie, in everybody's well-being. And I don't know what else, how else to put it that way. You know what I mean? Like, I usually don't have, um, like a, this, this person needs to be okay feeling when I'm watching a TV show and caring about characters in that way. But it does hit you that we've been talking about this show for a long time. We've watched a lot of hours of this show.

• 59:33Chris Ryan?

  I think that we have complicated relationships with the show because on one hand, it's like the best TV can do. And on the other hand, it feels like it didn't quite live up to the potential of the first two seasons. But I think that this fifth season proves it's, it proves its necessity for existing.

• 59:50Andy Greenwald?

  I love that. I can't wait to see it. I just, I think I just cannot believe that the Karmi character has just been bubble wrapped, essentially since season three, locked in the same exact emotional stasis that he's been in. And then when you have him finally say what he needs to say at the end of season four, the creative decision then is to pick up the next day.

• 1:00:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:09Andy Greenwald?

  Where he's still bubble wrapped, hasn't told anyone yet. He doesn't tell anyone else until an hour in. And then let's, let's, let's get people going to where they need to go. And maybe that begins in episode four, and I'll find out this weekend, apparently. Cause I'll be watching the rest of the series.

• 1:00:24Chris Ryan?

  I mean, you just let me know where we're gonna be on Sunday, on Monday morning, you know?

• 1:00:27Andy Greenwald?

  I know where we're gonna be.

• 1:00:28Chris Ryan?

  Here.

• 1:00:29Andy Greenwald?

  Unless another factory catches fire.

• 1:00:32Chris Ryan?

  It was lovely to talk to you.

• 1:00:34Andy Greenwald?

  I can't wait to, I, I, I'm, I'm very engaged in continuing this conversation.

• 1:00:37Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Um, do you feel like when, when we disagree?

• 1:00:41Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:42Chris Ryan?

  That somebody has to win?

• 1:00:45Chris Ryan?

  Do you feel like you need me to come over to your side of the force?

• 1:00:48Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 1:00:48Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:00:49Andy Greenwald?

  Do you?

• 1:00:49Chris Ryan?

  I don't think. No. I mean, you know I don't.

• 1:00:51Andy Greenwald?

  I know.

• 1:00:52Chris Ryan?

  But you're so articulate about your, like, critical opinions.

• 1:00:54Andy Greenwald?

  But that's also helps me, because I know you're wrong. And so I have empathy, you know, because...

• 1:00:59Chris Ryan?

  Sweet simple Chris.

• 1:01:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Chris Ryan?

  Just watching Rogan and Sheridan.

• 1:01:05Andy Greenwald?

  Like, just dreaming of deaf horses, you know?

• 1:01:07Chris Ryan?

  We're gonna get out of here. Thanks to Kai and Sarah for producing today. We'll be back on Monday. We'll probably be talking some combination of House of the Dragon, or The Bear, or whatever, the agency, like, whatever Andy gets Andy fired.

• 1:01:20Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, no.

• 1:01:21Chris Ryan?

  Whatever gets Andy... I want you. I want you to be...

• 1:01:23Andy Greenwald?

  All of those things fire me up.

• 1:01:24Chris Ryan?

  The Steve-O to my Knoxville, you know?

• 1:01:26Andy Greenwald?

  So you're just sitting on the sidelines, being like, "Too old for that shit", while I'm getting just probed?

• 1:01:32Chris Ryan?

  By a dragon.

• 1:01:34Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it's felt like that for the last few years.

• 1:01:36Chris Ryan?

  Everybody have a good weekend. We'll see you soon.