‘Stranger Things’ Season 5 Is Finally Here. Was It Worth the Wait? Plus, ‘Landman’ S2E3.

Chris is joined by Mallory Rubin to talk about the premiere of the first four episodes of ‘Stranger Things’ Season 5 and how the trajectory of the show has changed so drastically over the years (2:00). Later, they discuss ‘Landman’ S2E3 and whether it’s the most entertaining show on television (59:26). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Host: Chris Ryan Guest: Mallory Rubin Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Additional Video Supervision: Donald LoBianco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:19Speaker 00

  I need sports staff to clear the room.

• 1:22Speaker 02

  Stand up and walk now.

• 1:24Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com. And joining me in the studio, my sorcerer, it's Valerie Rubin.

• 1:38Speaker 04

  I thought for sure you'd open with a Landman reference.

• 1:40Chris Ryan?

  I really don't think that would be appropriate now.

• 1:42Speaker 04

  No, okay.

• 1:43Chris Ryan?

  Thank you so much for joining me in the studio today. No Andy today, but we are going to be talking Stranger Things. We are going to be talking our beloved Landman. It's so great to see you.

• 1:52Speaker 04

  What's up, pal?

• 1:53Chris Ryan?

  I know that you guys always are really good about housekeeping on House of Ari, where we can find you. I will just say that you can email the watch.

• 1:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:00Chris Ryan?

  At the watch at spotify.com. And you can watch us on the ringer-tv YouTube channel or on Spotify, where I hope you're listening to us. And please follow us and DM us at the watch pod underscore Instagram.

• 2:13Speaker 04

  I'm an admirer of the Instagram.

• 2:15Chris Ryan?

  Thanks.

• 2:15Speaker 04

  As you know, I'm a longtime fan and admirer of the pod.

• 2:18Chris Ryan?

  Yes. I think Andy's really working the reps on the Instagram stuff. We don't have to get into it.

• 2:22Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 2:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's just, I think he's just setting himself up for a lot of success.

• 2:26Speaker 04

  Okay. Do you think he understands the algorithm better than you do?

• 2:29Chris Ryan?

  He might. I think he has a much more, um, a sublime experience on Instagram. I think he doesn't get tempted by Ponzi schemes.

• 2:39Speaker 04

  Unlike you.

• 2:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, life extension techniques.

• 2:41Speaker 04

  Sure. Sure.

• 2:42Chris Ryan?

  Dead weight.

• 2:43Speaker 04

  Do you want to live forever?

• 2:44Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 2:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, you've never struck me as somebody who would be like tempted by immortality.

• 2:49Chris Ryan?

  Things are going, do you?

• 2:51Speaker 04

  No, not particularly. I have recently been thinking about like, how much longer do I have, though? I'm thinking a lot about how much time is left to like, read books and watch new shows versus rereading books I love and rewatching shows I love, et cetera. I think to myself, how many more times do I have to text my good friend Chris Ryan on Saturday afternoon and say X number of hours and X number of minutes left until Landman?

• 3:14Chris Ryan?

  It's funny that this is, I brought you on specifically because I wanted to talk about Stranger Things with somebody, but I can tell.

• 3:19Speaker 04

  I gotta say.

• 3:20Chris Ryan?

  I've never seen someone more excited to talk about alley larder giving roadhead than you.

• 3:24Speaker 04

  It's why I'm here. It's why I'm here. Um, even though Joanna and I over on House of R have spent months revisiting Stranger Things, we have done a deep dive into the first two episodes of season five. They're available for you to listen to now. Watch. We'll be deep diving into episodes three and four tomorrow.

• 3:43Chris Ryan?

  And I apologize to Jo if I'm about to get dibs on any of your early takes here.

• 3:47Speaker 04

  I, uh, the reason I mention that is in addition to, you know, I hope everyone checks out those episodes is because I have to be honest, when you texted me yesterday and said, would you join me for the watch?

• 3:55Chris Ryan?

  You thought it was gonna be Landman.

• 3:56Speaker 04

  It didn't occur to me that I was talking about Stranger Things, even though obviously that's like a zeitgeist animating rare bit of monoculture. And of course, that's what you wanted to talk about. I just assumed it was exclusively to catch up on Landman.

• 4:08Chris Ryan?

  Three times and he just is like, very good about being like, I'm just not, I'm not current with that show. And I kept being like, maybe your daughters would like to watch it.

• 4:16Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 4:16Chris Ryan?

  He's like, maybe they won't. Yeah.

• 4:18Speaker 04

  Okay. Well, everyone's missing out.

• 4:19Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 4:20Speaker 04

  Everyone's missing out. Not us, though.

• 4:21Chris Ryan?

  Not a lot of people missed out because it was a huge thing, I think, when I wanted to start here, which was that, you know, you made the joke kind of about it being a monoculture experience. It's something that we, um, eulogize a lot on this show. I know that you guys talk about it a lot on your shows.

• 4:35Chris Ryan?

  The idea that basically like everybody will participate in the same thing in the same weekend and that then there would be like a kind of shared conversation.

• 4:41Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 4:42Chris Ryan?

  A lot of that stuff happens online. It happens in a very jagged kind of pockets of fandom, pockets of anti-fandom way. So it's kind of hard to ever feel like you're back in the glory days of being like, what about this Jon Snow kid?

• 4:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 4:56Chris Ryan?

  I think he's got something to him, you know?

• 4:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure.

• 4:58Chris Ryan?

  Um, kind of the Max Bosmer of Westeros.

• 5:03Speaker 04

  Is that so?

• 5:04Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 5:04Speaker 04

  Tell us, go.

• 5:05Chris Ryan?

  But, you know, I was watching this Stranger Things this weekend. So here's what happened. I went up to Portland for Thanksgiving.

• 5:12Speaker 04

  How's the foliage?

• 5:13Chris Ryan?

  Gorgeous up there. And I was staying with my, my wife and I stayed with her best friend and her family. She has three daughters. And we walked in and I mentioned that, I think it was on Wednesday, I was like, oh, and you know, you know what happens tonight?

• 5:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, volume one.

• 5:29Chris Ryan?

  Stranger Things comes out at like five and they were like, they, they were so laser focused as soon as I said that.

• 5:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:37Chris Ryan?

  That they were just like, what time can we start Stranger Things? What time can we start Stranger Things?

• 5:41Speaker 04

  But does this imply that you broke the news to them?

• 5:43Chris Ryan?

  Yes. I think it's like indicated, it's indicative of the like, the both the passion with which like they think about the show, but also like most people in the world are not looking at a countdown clock for when it goes up, I think.

• 5:57Speaker 04

  Right. And this is one of the things, of course, about like airing your show in a non-weekly capacity.

• 6:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 6:03Speaker 04

  You don't have that we're looking forward to gathering.

• 6:06Chris Ryan?

  Thursday at 8 p.m. Be there, yeah.

• 6:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, Thursday at 8 or Sunday at 6 or whatever.

• 6:09Chris Ryan?

  I think they tried with this, but even, even with this.

• 6:10Speaker 04

  Eight episodes with a three-volume drop is as close to weekly as we're gonna get, though all three of these drops are of course over the holidays, which I, I wanted to ask you if you thought that dampened the sense actually of a shared conversation, simply because on the one hand, it's like more opportunity to immediately binge four and a half hours of Stranger Things for volume one, because you don't have to go to work the next day. Amazing.

• 6:36Speaker 04

  Is everybody doing that on day one when they have a pie to eat and some football to watch and a weird uncle to engage at the table?

• 6:43Chris Ryan?

  Weird Uncle was the lost sixth episode of this drop. Lost sister, weird uncle.

• 6:49Speaker 04

  Spoilers today, right?

• 6:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, spoilers for these first four episodes of season five. I will say that like, it felt, it felt fun and I think actually the, the kind of almost the, the like, it being a Stranger Things vacation, which is kind of now how I look at it, really dulled whatever critiques I had of the show. Do you know what I mean?

• 7:11Speaker 04

  Because it's just so fun.

• 7:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but like, I got the experience of watching it with a 10-year-old who's like, stopping every five minutes to be like, is Steve gonna be okay? And then a 15-year-old who's like, so they have offices in the upside down now?

• 7:25Speaker 04

  They built a whole base. Dr. K got that base up in a hurry.

• 7:29Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, yeah, so it was fun to like engage with their brains about it.

• 7:33Speaker 04

  That's awesome.

• 7:34Chris Ryan?

  And, um, it was fun, like every time we would stop, like the younger one would be like, Chris, what, what, it started again?

• 7:40Speaker 04

  So did you end up binging them all in a row?

• 7:41Chris Ryan?

  Uh, no, we watched them over two days.

• 7:43Speaker 04

  Okay, okay.

• 7:45Chris Ryan?

  One Wednesday night and then the other three on Thursday, I think.

• 7:49Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 7:50Chris Ryan?

  Or something like that. Um, and we finished it Thanksgiving night.

• 7:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:54Chris Ryan?

  Um, and I had a lot of fun.

• 7:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's great.

• 7:56Chris Ryan?

  It's, look, I, like, we can, we can get into it, the, for the, the four episodes that dropped over Thanksgiving weekend were The Crawl, The Vanishing of Hallie Wheeler, The Turnboe Trap and Sorcerer.

• 8:06Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 8:06Chris Ryan?

  Sorcerer will be the big one everybody's talking about, I think. And these episodes were largely directed by the Duffer Brothers, except for one, uh, The Turnboe Trap is directed by Frank Darabont.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  Frank Darabont, yeah.

• 8:16Chris Ryan?

  Which is pretty crazy.

• 8:17Speaker 04

  Coming out of retirement, it's amazing.

• 8:19Chris Ryan?

  The Mist, Walking Dead, Frank Darabont. Uh, it picks up a year and a half.

• 8:23Speaker 04

  That's right, after season four.

• 8:24Chris Ryan?

  After season four, which involved, uh, Russia, Kate Bush, and a demon named Vecna. And, well, he has many names.

• 8:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, are you gonna go with Vecna, are you gonna go with Juan, are you gonna go with Henry? Of course, this has become a running joke on the show, too many names.

• 8:38Chris Ryan?

  I think we could add more, you know?

• 8:40Speaker 04

  What do you want to throw out there?

• 8:41Chris Ryan?

  Uh, well, Mr. What's It is now another one that he's grabbed.

• 8:44Speaker 04

  Are you a big Wrinkle in Time head?

• 8:47Chris Ryan?

  No, is that Mr. What's It guy?

• 8:49Speaker 04

  Mrs. What's It is a Wrinkle in Time character, and Holly Wheeler has been holding a copy of A Wrinkle in Time throughout these episodes. She just talks about kamazots with Max. Again, full spoilers. Max is here in the Mind Palace. So Kamazots is a realm from A Wrinkle in Time. So they're doing a... There are a lot... I mean, Stranger Things is always, not just engaged with, but actively courted, owned, worn on its sleeves. It's pop culture references and influences. I think there are, even by the standards of Stranger Things, a number of like really overt ones in these four episodes of Season 5. I think that the Harry Potter comps are inescapable. To me, they have been since Season 2, but they're just so present here with

• 9:32Speaker 04

  Will and Vecna in a way that I don't know if you have any interest in discussing with me, but I will be getting into that on House of R. But Wrinkle in Time is one that they're really putting out there and inviting us to think about. One of the subsequent episodes, not in this drop, is named after a Wrinkle in Time reference, so...

• 9:49Chris Ryan?

  The kamazots?

• 9:50Speaker 04

  Yes. So that's on my mind. I've been revisiting the text, which I had completely, basically forgotten every detail about.

• 9:56Chris Ryan?

  Just thinking about the words you just said.

• 9:58Speaker 04

  Tell me. Yeah. Which of the words?

• 10:00Chris Ryan?

  If I took you... If I showed you a video of this podcast...

• 10:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:05Chris Ryan?

  To you and me in 2016 when this show came out.

• 10:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:09Chris Ryan?

  Would you be like, what the fuck are they talking about? Like, that's not what this show is about.

• 10:13Speaker 04

  No, I would have thought... Okay, on the one hand, in terms of the substance of the conversation, I would have said this feels exactly right. I think the only surprise would have been...

• 10:20Chris Ryan?

  These guys look even better.

• 10:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's...

• 10:23Chris Ryan?

  They've gotten even sharper.

• 10:24Speaker 04

  That's what I would have said. The kids are all four feet taller. And then we have a lot more like gray hair, and one of our cases is just less hair in the other case. Because a decade has passed. I... This is actually like, I had a lot of fun with the first volume of Season 5. I've really been anticipating. I love the show. I kind of can't believe how much time has passed. And so one of the things that's been enjoyable for me about just Stranger Things returning in general and spending a lot of time revisiting the show... But also thinking about the conclusion of this great shared experience is actually like kind of plotting it against the lifespan of The Ringer. So one of the things you're saying, like back in 2016, the season one Barb blog that you

• 11:06Speaker 04

  wrote on the Ringer.com, which people can Google on Find right now, is one of my favorite weird bits of like Ringer lore and a moment in Ringer history where everybody in the newsroom was talking about Barb, everybody in Slack was talking about Barb, and you were like, I've got a blog, and just basically like wrote a reported story from the newsroom about the Barb debate. And then I was thinking about season three, which we actually covered together, we potted about season three, just like seeing Infinity War together.

• 11:38Chris Ryan?

  I remember it like it was yesterday.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  Clearly you don't remember this at all. To me, it was meaningful.

• 11:41Chris Ryan?

  Did we do it on a separate feed? Or were we doing it on the watch?

• 11:43Speaker 04

  No, I think we did it on the watch, and we did it at the chapel at the old Sunset Gower offices in person. And the thing that I have like a great affection and fondness for season three, you don't remember this at all.

• 11:54Chris Ryan?

  I mean, like, I love this dark word stuff, yeah.

• 11:56Speaker 04

  The mall, yeah. And so like, talking with you not only about a new season of Stranger Things, but about like, being a young person at the mall and what that did for you, the first taste of independence. Like, there's been something like that in every season, you know, going to the pool, or what's your equivalent of playing D and D in the basement with your friends? And I just like, I've always liked and been intrigued by the mythology and the lore of Stranger Things, but to me, it has always been just a great, great, great coming-of-age story and story about a bunch of nerds who felt like outsiders finding their confidence through their friendship with each other.

• 12:32Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  It's like a beautiful, a beautiful show in that respect.

• 12:37Chris Ryan?

  It's basically, it's gone from, I think, when I was initially sort of enamored with it in that first two seasons, it was because it was obviously playing a lot of hits for me.

• 12:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure.

• 12:49Chris Ryan?

  Not only in terms of its explicit references, but I thought that they did a really good job of capturing a anonymous Midwestern suburb 80s vibe. And the idea of riding bikes, really, the latchkey kids of parents that are distracted or parents that are working too hard.

• 13:05Speaker 04

  Parents never have any idea where the kids are.

• 13:07Chris Ryan?

  Never have any idea.

• 13:08Speaker 04

  Except for Joyce.

• 13:09Chris Ryan?

  And it's the days before. You know, they expand the cast massively and there's all this like kind of almost science fiction and fantasy involved, pulling the kids into like these bigger, big kind of complicated adventures. And so I just really enjoyed it as like a hangout show. I liked the music. I liked, the kids had a lot of charm. I mean, these things basically live or die based on the casting, you know? And they really did a great job. I mean, regardless of like Millie Bobby Brown doesn't really talk that much in the first couple of seasons of the show, but is quite effective and Wolfhard's obviously got a lot of talent. Like there's, there's a lot going on with this cast. I think that I will, I am obviously seeing it through and I enjoyed watching season

• 13:54Chris Ryan?

  five, but it really struck me how much the last two seasons in particular, but this one specifically has become task oriented. And it is characters talking about, they spend 90% of their time describing an obstacle, scheming a way to get around it, and then an extensive set piece executing that plan. And you could say that's most storytelling, you know, that could be Ozark as well. Like I found they were very, very, very kind of almost trapped in what is the next thing that we have to do? You guys have to run over here while we run over there and then we'll meet in the middle, but of course we're going to get distracted along the way. That's really like what the show is about now.

• 14:39Chris Ryan?

  And obviously the Duffers have gone all in on, on the mythology and the logic and the reasoning behind the upside down and behind like Vecna and what the Hawkins lab was really doing and what like, is there a black hole in Hawkins or something like that? And I think all that's kind of fun and cool, and especially if you're watching it in this kind of a ventized way, you forget about how long it is. You forget about like whether the CGI is always perfect or whatever and whether or not like despite all these rules, like a Kate Bush song can break through time and space to bring someone out of it. But I can't help but kind of be charmed by like whatever remnants there are of the eighties

• 15:23Chris Ryan?

  references and just the, the people generally cast on the show.

• 15:27Speaker 04

  I really agree. I think that like my one note on season five, volume one.

• 15:35Chris Ryan?

  A note in terms of a critique or just a note?

• 15:39Speaker 04

  Something that I was like huh when I watched it for the first time. But I will say on a subsequent watch through the episodes, I felt this way less. To your point about like how task oriented it is. I think like every season, if you actually just broke down. The core propulsive engine of each season and like what each character is is doing and focused on and what the mission is. They're all pretty contained to a certain period of time. There is like an objective inside each of them. We are like on a journey, right?

• 16:11Speaker 04

  These four episodes felt one degree to like weren't an action movie and just missing a little bit of the like slower, quieter moments that I really cherish inside of Stranger Things. Stretch now that makes sense to me because it is actually genuinely the end game. Like it is the final season. We only have eight episodes, albeit far more hours than that left to get to our conclusion. I think there are a couple exacerbating.

• 16:39Chris Ryan?

  Wait, do we have eight? I thought we had like three or four at Christmas.

• 16:44Speaker 04

  There are eight total in the season. So it's four in this first drop, three in the second and then the finale.

• 16:50Speaker 04

  I think like the the fact that we are operating even by the standards of a Stranger Things season on a really tight clock heightens that. So the season, obviously we're getting some flashbacks. We're moving throughout time, we're moving throughout Vecda's memory palace, etc.

• 17:06Speaker 04

  We start on November 3rd. We're marching clearly toward this anniversary, November 6th. The day that Will was taken in the upside down in season one, that is the date we learned in season four that the upside down is frozen in time on that date. Because Nancy, when they went back to the Wheeler's house in her room and looked at her diary, it's like the upside down is frozen in time. When Max is taking us and Holly through the memories, through Henry's memories, and we see like young Joyce, the kids in high school.

• 17:32Chris Ryan?

  Hopper's in it too, right?

• 17:34Speaker 04

  Well, and the Hopper, we see Steve's dad.

• 17:36Chris Ryan?

  And then young Joyce is in the stage play, like I know that there's some like connection there, right?

• 17:39Speaker 04

  Play Oklahoma, and it has the same date, November 6th. This key date that everything is orienting around, obviously crucial. But more germanely in terms of just like, how did these episodes feel? If the entire season potentially takes place inside of three days, it's gonna just have this really like we are definitionally on the clock feeling. And I think the last thing is just like, the characters are all, they've all been working as a team throughout the entire series, but they're like all in the same place now. They're trapped inside Hawkins, they're in this quarantine zone, they can't get out. And so they're like, it's just a little bit less of the separate groups in separate places, which like, to be clear, I think has not always worked well for the show. When Eleven was off on her own in season two, the fuck, the balls of bringing Eight back

• 18:22Speaker 04

  this season is like astonishing to me. I kinda can't believe they did it, but I can.

• 18:25Chris Ryan?

  I respect it.

• 18:26Speaker 04

  Me too, actually. But, you know, like, the, the California crew in season four, you know, Mike and Jonathan and Will and Argyle being separate L and then going to Nevada, et cetera, like, that hasn't always been to the show's benefit, but I think when everybody is like, is your telemetry tag like within the right distance, we're that close together, there are fewer moments where it's just like, we're pausing. When we do pause and you have like Mike talking to Holly about Holly the heroic, or the conversations between Robin and, and Will about like identity and embracing who you are, those are just such lovely moments to me. And I'm like, really excited to see how they find room to incorporate those moments in the final four episodes while we are so on the clock.

• 19:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, let's say this wasn't the final season.

• 19:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:14Chris Ryan?

  Or let's say this had been more of a, it might be the final season, or after this, like, everything is gonna be different, maybe there's different cast or whatever like that. The most compelling aspect of this season to me is definitely in the first five minutes when Maya Hawke is doing this really delightful DJ exposition dump. And so the setup for the episode, the season is essentially that after the events of four, which I have to admit, I have not rewatched four, Russia, Running Up the Hill, like, I do remember it, but the actual, like, what happens at the end, Hawkins gets split in half.

• 19:50Speaker 04

  Vecna has opened his four gates, the earthquake, the, the veins like burst through town, the town explodes.

• 19:57Chris Ryan?

  Now, as Robin gets into, as in her new job as a DJ, she has been an ice cream scooper.

• 20:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:03Chris Ryan?

  And then-

• 20:03Speaker 04

  Family video.

• 20:04Chris Ryan?

  Family video.

• 20:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, they worked at Scoops Ahoy in season three, Family video in season four.

• 20:08Chris Ryan?

  I've met, her career trajectory really mirrors mine.

• 20:11Speaker 04

  Interesting. What, when will she be working at a comic shop? And when will she become a, like, an expert blogger?

• 20:17Chris Ryan?

  It wasn't a comic, it was a record store.

• 20:18Speaker 04

  Record store?

• 20:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:19Speaker 04

  Expert blogger?

• 20:20Chris Ryan?

  Maybe she could invent the internet and just, uh-

• 20:22Speaker 04

  I could see that.

• 20:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:23Speaker 04

  I could see that. Well, she would be a great podcaster.

• 20:25Chris Ryan?

  Well-

• 20:25Speaker 04

  No question.

• 20:27Chris Ryan?

  The early parts of the first episode.

• 20:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:30Chris Ryan?

  Are the most interesting thing to me where it's like.

• 20:32Speaker 04

  I love the first episode.

• 20:32Chris Ryan?

  First of all, it's a, I don't know if it's, I imagine it's intentional. There is, this show is made, over the last couple of years, it went through COVID shutdowns and strikes. So there's been a lot of like, kind of stops and starts to the actual series itself. But you don't have to be a brain genius to see the correlation between a bunch of people living in quarantine.

• 20:54Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 20:54Chris Ryan?

  And wondering whether or not they have a lab leak situation on their hands. Is sort of like, relevant to our reality. But beyond that, I think it would just would have been fascinating to have a bunch of different characters who are like, maybe having different reactions about being trapped in the same town they've always lived in.

• 21:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:12Chris Ryan?

  Or being trapped in with each other. What kind of jobs, how does the economy work? Like, how does like policing and all this stuff in the town work?

• 21:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:20Chris Ryan?

  And instead, they've kind of settled on, these are the Ghostbusters.

• 21:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:25Chris Ryan?

  And they're just always on alert to go to war with a demon in a parallel dimension. Rather than, man, am I ever gonna get out of this town? Or like, kind of like some of the more universal themes that I think it, the show did much better in the first three, but mostly the first two seasons.

• 21:41Speaker 04

  I'm anticipating that that element returns to the fore in the back half of the season.

• 21:46Chris Ryan?

  I see, I don't know, like, are they ever gonna stop having every episode has like, a massive throwdown?

• 21:52Speaker 04

  I think, I don't know, I think one of the things Stranger Things has obviously done really well is like, balance those elements. You know, season three is, I think, in some ways, the least consequential season in terms of advancing the mythology. That was like, the season of the flayed.

• 22:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:06Speaker 04

  But it's one of my favorite seasons, not only because I covered it with you, even though you don't remember.

• 22:10Chris Ryan?

  I do remember.

• 22:11Speaker 04

  Because of the pool, the mall. Yeah, young poof, Billy. But like, because of that blend, you know, you have. Robin and Steve and Dustin and Erica, trapped in an elevator down to a secret base trying to work their way out. That is very action oriented, plot oriented. But the bonding and the conversations that happen in those sequences is like incredible. You build towards something like after Robin and Steve had been tortured by Russian doctors and scientists, that like incredible conversation that they have while still high on the

• 22:45Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:45Speaker 04

  floor of the bathroom, sneaking in and out of Back to the Future. Like, I think the show is expert, actually, typically at maintaining that balance. So something like, okay, Nancy and Jonathan.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  In season four.

• 22:58Chris Ryan?

  Great fall t-shirt on Jonathan.

• 22:59Speaker 04

  Jonathan is crushing it on the fashion front.

• 23:03Chris Ryan?

  More of a Steve guy, but generally speaking.

• 23:04Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, obviously, Team Steve always. Joanna noted in our first House of Our Deep Dive that the Jonathan cardigan this season is really worth like toasting and admiring.

• 23:14Speaker 04

  Nancy and Jonathan in season four were like kind of experiencing a little bit of a rupture in their relationship, the idea of where they would go to college, who was going to end up presenting whom. They had sort of worked themselves into the same point that they initially bonded over out in season one on the shooting range, like, we don't want to end up like our parents.

• 23:31Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 23:32Speaker 04

  Now, they're trapped, like you said, by the necessities and the realities of this quarantine in Hawkins. And so that conversation is on hold. To me, it doesn't make sense to end the show, though, without those issues coming back to the fore. I find the like dick measuring contest between Steve and Jonathan for Nancy's affections and Robin's reaction to it in particular, really amusing and very compelling. That's not the same thing as those characters actually confronting the question of like, does their life make sense to live together?

• 23:57Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 23:58Speaker 04

  I think the best example of what I would anticipate being a slight shift in like energy, pace and focus in the back half of the season, which should be clear, no one alive has seen and certainly we have not seen. So I have no idea.

• 24:12Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 24:13Speaker 04

  Steve and Dustin.

• 24:16Speaker 04

  Finding, to your point about like, should the characters be having a different response to like, what has been going on? I think they are having that, it's just a little subtler.

• 24:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 04

  So like Dustin going into school in his Hellfire t-shirt at the beginning of the season, because he insists on honoring Eddie and remembering Eddie and like, what Hellfire meant to him. And basically saying to Mike and Will and Lucas, like, Will was of course not a part of Hellfire because he was in California, but like, guys, what the fuck? Like, why aren't you doing this too? That's the whole thing, the party stays together.

• 24:48Chris Ryan?

  Well, he at least is going through, like, there's a couple of characters who are going through arcs. Like Dustin is obviously going through something where he's found like a couple of people that he like, has located in the world that he's like, this person got me or I got this person.

• 25:04Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 25:04Chris Ryan?

  You know, and that, that is like, I appreciate the fact that a couple of the characters seem to have gone through like, arcs.

• 25:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:12Chris Ryan?

  There are some who are like, I don't know whether they were gonna just kill Steve in the second season or something and they were like,

• 25:18Speaker 04

  First season?

• 25:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he's just too adorable.

• 25:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're like, Joe Keery, he's the best.

• 25:21Chris Ryan?

  We gotta keep him around for 10 years. So, he's just like, kind of like, a mascot now at this point, like, he is very like lovable, but like, is never really like, has not changed much over the course of, I know you can, you can say like, he, you know, doesn't want to be his dad or whatever, like.

• 25:37Speaker 04

  But wouldn't you say that his, however like consistent Steve himself is, I think he has experienced positive changes as a result of being friends with people that previously, like the cliques of high school would not have allowed him to engage with, right? But I think like something like the relationship between Steve and Dustin is my favorite example in the history of the show. And then you add like Robin to it, Eric, et cetera, of just the show's capacity to surprise us with the alchemy of these pairings and to have the characters really authentically experience that surprise too. So like Dustin's in a place of grief and resentment. That makes sense to me. He's not necessarily like,

• 26:16Speaker 04

  Able to express that.

• 26:17Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 26:17Speaker 04

  That also makes sense to me. Steve and Dustin, fighting, but not talking about why they're fighting. I find very sad to watch in a way that feels like true to life, but not something I want to see for like eight episodes. So by episode like six or seven, I need those two to have a real heart to heart about what is going on, which is obvious to us as viewers, but they have not been able to like completely unlock with each other. And I, I just believed that the show will make space for that.

• 26:46Chris Ryan?

  Well, here's, I guess this is a good way of putting it. Uh, and I'm not going to get into spoilers for Landman, but when I was watching Landman this weekend.

• 26:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:55Chris Ryan?

  I was like, the reason why Landman always feels so weird to be watching is because so much of the television that I watch is on a runaway train track towards the ending immediately. Like it's just like, watch Beast in Me and it's, you're like, when is she going to find out what the truth is? And what is he going to do if she finds out? You know, like, you know, you just are going on this like speeding bullet towards the end. And yeah, you get distracted by side characters or whatever, or new twists, but that's like, kind of where the show is going. Most shows now are programmed to do that.

• 27:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:32Chris Ryan?

  Landman is like, nah, here's 10 minutes about these guys coughing. You know, it's like, it'll just come up with rent. And I was watching it this weekend and I was like, oh, right. Cause that's how you make five to seven seasons of a TV show.

• 27:46Speaker 04

  Landman could go on forever.

• 27:47Chris Ryan?

  Right, exactly. Like they have no pretenses. It's half a sitcom, half a like workplace drama and half an action show. You know, so when you're watching Stranger Things, you can see if they were just like, look, we've got solid gold here. And all we have to do is we can have 45 minutes of something like, that's basically these people having like a little like, kind of mini crisis drama or like adventure over the course of an episode, but really having a lot of fun. And then as long as something spooky happens at the end, they've changed the dynamic of that. They've made this into much more of an action sci-fi show. And all the characters need to be in service of that.

• 28:28Chris Ryan?

  And I think sadly, when you've got people who are, it sounds it isn't like honestly, Maya Hawke and Sadie Sink are. And I love like a bunch of the performers on this, but like Sadie Sink.

• 28:39Chris Ryan?

  In this batch of episodes, I would say is largely wasted, where she has to explain to Holly Wheeler and the audience what the fuck is going on.

• 28:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:49Chris Ryan?

  And even in her very nicely rendered explanation, it is still like, we say the words mind palace like as if that's a thing.

• 28:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure.

• 28:57Chris Ryan?

  Mind palaces are what we say to explain when show creators and film directors decide, it's just happening in this guy's brain. And he can go into like all these different worlds and all these different rooms.

• 29:09Speaker 04

  Sure, yeah.

• 29:10Chris Ryan?

  But mind palaces are kind of hard to visualize.

• 29:12Speaker 04

  Totally, but do you have more, specifically in these episodes, but also I guess generally in a show like Stranger Things, do you have more room for that in your heart? Because that is like core to the concept, right?

• 29:23Chris Ryan?

  Of course, of course.

• 29:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, so like, you know, Eleven's powers, Vecna's powers, their psychic powers, like when Max-

• 29:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's like the never ending story. It's like these, the person reading the book has joined the story.

• 29:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, another touchstone as a reference in the universe, of course. And like, you know, obviously something like the Kate Bush running up that hell has become so iconic and inextricable from the show. And like, what was that used for? It was the, on the Pottercon front, like the Patronus to pull Max out of Vecna's mind palace, this other realm that she had infiltrated. And obviously that's very core to the text of season five so far with like Will and the Hive Mind connection and the Demogorgon cam and seeing through Vecna's eyes and this idea of like, have you penetrated deeper than somebody else knew you would or meant you to? And like, I do think it's interesting, I'm so curious to see like what they land and how effectively they land some of the mythology stuff.

• 30:20Speaker 04

  But for a show that really oriented initially in its early years around the upside down and the right side up, you have Hawkins and you have the upside down. We have like, you know, the fabled Mr. Clark explanation of the flea and the acrobat to help us understand the jump. And like, we have, we're operating ultimately in the endgame here.

• 30:42Speaker 04

  Dimensions outside of that, you know, this like memory scape is a different, obviously related, but like a different thing.

• 30:49Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 30:50Speaker 04

  The visual distinctions of the place that L cast Vecna into in season four in the 79 Masked Harken's Lab flashback, et cetera, like, we're not ultimately just in this upside down, right side up place, though of course, the finale is called The Right Side Up.

• 31:05Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 31:06Speaker 04

  So I just think that's interesting, like, the, the return of eight is also kind of like emblematic, I think, in that sense, because that was, I think, unequivocally, and I think it's, it's not a controversial, like, statement to say it's one of the great, like, failures of the show so far to date in season two.

• 31:22Chris Ryan?

  To do that episode?

• 31:23Speaker 04

  In season two, just, it didn't work, like, that stand, I, I don't think, that standalone episode with L and eight, and just the, at that moment in time, attempt to widen the mythology, but in season four, saying, okay, that didn't land, but that doesn't mean we're not gonna do it, we have something we want to explore here with the other kids. Now, Henry's one, who are all these other kids, and I thought that in season four, the stuff at the lab, the flashbacks, like, L having to kind of unearth these repressed memories of what happened at the lab with all these other kids, you have two as a little minivillain, et cetera.

• 32:01Chris Ryan?

  Can I ask you just a procedural question?

• 32:02Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 32:03Chris Ryan?

  There's eleven, L was the last one?

• 32:06Speaker 04

  Of the kids?

• 32:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, of, of the kids in the initial lab thing, was it, was L?

• 32:12Speaker 04

  Well, I don't, I mean, I think that what happens at the, in the massacre in 79.

• 32:17Chris Ryan?

  Was there more than like 11 kids there? I'm asking because he's got 12 gates that he's trying, or he's got the 12.

• 32:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, he is, looking for his 12 disciples.

• 32:25Chris Ryan?

  And I just didn't know if there were 12, or 13, or whatever it is, like, in the initial lab, like, is he trying to replace?

• 32:31Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 32:32Chris Ryan?

  The ones that he killed, basically.

• 32:33Speaker 04

  That we ever have gotten definitive, like, without question, Brenner had created in his program this many kids, I think, like, after what happened with the massacre, it's obviously, from what we know and understand, kind of reoriented around 11 specifically as like a focus of his training, because all those other kids are dead.

• 32:56Speaker 04

  What are you most interested in at this point? Like, do you care about all of the Vecna and Upside Down centric mythology? Or are you like, I'm here for the Super 8 flashbacks to Will and Mike and Joyce and Will and Jonathan and Will and those relationships? Or is it a mix?

• 33:14Chris Ryan?

  I think I'm actually, there's a third thing that I'm interested in, which is the, like, their sort of flirtation with, like, what did the government have to do with this?

• 33:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:27Chris Ryan?

  And not like, I don't mean that, like, I've been listening to too many podcasts. I just think, I think Lynda Hamilton's cool. Obviously, she's getting used to being in Stranger Things to some extent, but I'm curious about the idea that, of like, what is this Hawkins Lab? And what is?

• 33:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure.

• 33:48Chris Ryan?

  Like, how does the government, like, take over a town and it's not, like, on CNN? You know what I mean? Or like, is there any attention being paid? Is the president involved? I am curious about that stuff, but yeah, like, I think my concerns are a little bit more terrestrial.

• 34:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, okay.

• 34:05Chris Ryan?

  I feel like Vecna's taken a couple L's over the last couple of seasons. And he seems beatable, you know? On a neutral field, he definitely seems beatable.

• 34:15Speaker 04

  No question. Did you like that he, you know, he bulked up? It's bulking season for Vecna. He came out, you know, the duffers have said, yeah, this is like a Vader and Rogue One kind of entrance.

• 34:24Chris Ryan?

  Oh, at the end of the, yeah.

• 34:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, at the end of Sorcerer. He's got the kind of, like, spiky, Groot tree, shoulder pads.

• 34:32Chris Ryan?

  There's also very Hard Home.

• 34:34Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, he literally did the Hard Home, like, Night King raising his army, no question. And I think a very Thronesian few episodes in general, because obviously the wall in the Upside Down. And though we learned it as a circle, thanks to Dustin's math, Steve was like, we don't need to see her work. I'm like, I would love to understand this better. I was never much of a math kid, honestly. You know, the rock face. That Max and Holly are in, that Henry is afraid to go into, won't go into, obviously a key moment in his past being alluded to there. Also, just like a wall, like neither of these walls are made of ice, but they're very throw-ting, and then you had, yeah, the overt Hard Home reference. So that's very fun.

• 35:17Speaker 04

  I'm like definitely interested in all of it. I think the weird, to me, the military stuff and the government involvement. I think when you go back to like the Hawkins lab and Brenner Papa and all that, that's super interesting to me.

• 35:28Chris Ryan?

  But when they've kind of like, just sort of kept it going, even though there's not really a logic.

• 35:32Speaker 04

  Sullivan, the Sullivan crew in season four, and now the Kay Sullivan. Sullivan is still in it. He's the lieutenant colonel, who's now Kay is, we're like, oh, he has a boss, right? That's been the least effective aspect of these past two seasons to me. I think conceptually, it's really interesting, the idea that like, it should be this battle of good versus evil. And like, can we preserve our, not just town, but reality?

• 35:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:58Speaker 04

  And instead, there are people in the military or government around you who are like, actually, are you the problem? I, I think conceptually, that's really interesting. And the idea that then you have this other human obstacle. Also very interesting and very like, kind of like Last of Us to me, that the people end up being, you know, a real consistent threat and foe. I like that idea. I just don't, and I was like, damn, they put up a base in the upside down with a quickness. And they do not seem nearly concerned enough about inhaling these particles.

• 36:27Chris Ryan?

  There's a work from anywhere option there. What do you think the deal is?

• 36:32Speaker 04

  Do they have distributed seating?

• 36:33Chris Ryan?

  Is there like a cafeteria? Do you take your meals in the right side up?

• 36:37Speaker 04

  Great question. How does the temper, you know, we're very, we text pretty often about like, what's the temperature at the office? Very temperature sensitive, I'd say. Given that the wall vine that chokes hop, you know, we learn from Kay, like, and obviously, fire has been a big part of controlling and sending pain waves through the hive mind. The heat, the impact of the heat, the impact of the cold, is that bleeding into the rest of the workspace? Like, that scientist who Ellen Hop accosted and then Hop basically propped up as like a shadow dummy in the closet and that guy just got annihilated by a spray of bullets. Tough day at work for him.

• 37:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I was kinda gonna ask you, like, there is a degree of like 80's action movie, like,

• 37:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:17Chris Ryan?

  people just getting shredded by M16s in this season that I was like, I wonder if kids are like,

• 37:23Speaker 04

  So.

• 37:23Chris Ryan?

  because the kids I was with were like, huh, they just killed all those scientists.

• 37:27Speaker 04

  It's funny, I, like, I thought that season four in that respect was like, super violent and that the horror ratcheted up just because we were seeing teenagers

• 37:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:36Speaker 04

  brutally murdered, like, their bones snapped and their eyes crushed and their jaws dislocated and everything.

• 37:42Chris Ryan?

  It's like Eddie's, Eddie's girl came over, yeah.

• 37:44Speaker 04

  Chrissy, yeah, that was very tough in season four. This, in this season, like, Vecna, um, go in like, finger branch knives through every orifice in someone's face. I'm like, I would have nightmares for a really long time if I were a kid and I saw that. But then I was thinking back, and actually, it was, this memory was, uh, helpfully sparked by seeing when Elle, you know, she times the first jump perfectly, right? The seven seconds to the thunderclap.

• 38:11Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:12Speaker 04

  Miss times the second jump.

• 38:13Chris Ryan?

  In her Josh Brolin outfit, yeah.

• 38:15Speaker 04

  Brolin, yeah, it's a, it's a fun mix of the, the Goonies, certainly some Rambo and like, obviously the Superman.

• 38:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure. Just like, alright, I missed time, I jumped this guard and the watchtower knows I'm here. Sorry. Snap of the neck, really took me back to Eleven, brutally murdering a number of assailants and opponents, but like Brenner's crew, who she just like, eye bleeds at the end of the season one finale. I'm like, we've been casually killing people and stranger things from the jump.

• 38:44Chris Ryan?

  It's true.

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• 40:46Chris Ryan?

  Let's hit like a couple of the big, big moments. And you don't have to go too deep because I know you're going to talk about this with Joe. And now, like, seriously, if you've just been enjoying our conversation for some reason, we will be spoiling basically the things that happened in the fourth episode. So Will becoming Jon Snow, Luke Skywalker, and Harry Potter at the end of episode four. When you saw that it was called Sorcerer, did you have a feeling he was the sorcerer?

• 41:13Chris Ryan?

  Like, do you have a feeling something was coming with Will?

• 41:15Speaker 04

  Yes, and I think, like, something that Joe and I talked about a lot in the run-up to season four was a real desire to see Will more centered in the story again. Like, he's so crucial in seasons one and two, and then really, it just, like, kind of lost in the show in seasons three and four.

• 41:32Chris Ryan?

  He's just kind of like, "You guys aren't my friends as much as I'd like you to be."

• 41:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, and like, I love that scene, actually, in season three, when he says, when he and Mike have that fight in the rain. It's like, "You thought it would be like this forever?" And I was like, "Yeah, I did, actually." And I really love that beautiful conversation between, Will's reaction to the conversation with Mike in the surfer, the surfer bro's pizza van in season four, and then Jonathan's conversation with him in season four is lovely.

• 41:54Chris Ryan?

  It's so funny, they're like, that whole, like, the California, like, surfer stuff.

• 41:55Speaker 04

  Argyle ruled. I still say, "Argyle ruled." So, Will gave us, we got some lovely Will moments, but in terms of, like, how crucial he is to the core mechanics of the story?

• 42:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:05Speaker 04

  It, it just had, had shifted so far away from him in seasons three and four, and so it felt really important to recalibrate that in season five. I think the trailers made it clear that would be happening. His position, even in, like, the poster, made it clear that would be happening. So, not surprised in that sense. I think that the conversation that Robin had with him about finding, like, realizing and embracing that what you need is already inside of you, and then, this is just like, I'm sure you're rolling your eyes, this could not be more my shit. Like, I just, like, really love that, and I think specifically, the idea of Will tapping into the hive mind and kind of accessing his powers that way. I will try to keep this part quick, for your sake

• 42:47Speaker 04

  and your audiences, but like, since season two, on the Pottercon front, everything with Will in the, in season two, remember the idea of, like, the spy?

• 42:56Chris Ryan?

  I think, I think there's quite a few Potter-curious people listening to this.

• 43:00Speaker 04

  The idea of Will as the spy in season two, since season two, I've been talking about this, like, it just was so Harry Voldemort, Horcrux.

• 43:08Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 43:09Speaker 04

  Not even coded. Like, that's just what they were doing. Like, what happened in season two of Stranger Things was the order of the Phoenix Department of Mysteries, like, who's spying on who really, and what is this connection between you, like, allow the villain to do?

• 43:26Speaker 04

  Everything with Max and the music is so Patronus-coded. You don't know what a Patronus is. That's okay. You don't need to. I'm happy to tell you if you're interested.

• 43:34Chris Ryan?

  No, off mic.

• 43:36Speaker 04

  So this idea of like, opening season five, reminding us that Will was first.

• 43:42Chris Ryan?

  And that he's had like this like very physical, almost medical procedural connection to Vecna.

• 43:47Speaker 04

  This literal connection to the hive mind, in addition to this deeper, I think, emotional and like kind of like existential connection to Henry Creel and like, why did Henry choose Will, which I think, I assume we'll be spending a lot more time on in the back half of the season. There's such a like, mark him as his equal, again, like Harry Voldemort comp. If you're interested in more of this, we'll be talking about this for a while in House of R tomorrow. And so this idea of like, actually a power.

• 44:14Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:15Speaker 04

  From that connection, makes complete sense to me. I am curious to see what the balance is in the back half of the season then between L and Will and this fight, but I kind of love-

• 44:26Chris Ryan?

  Because obviously the nosebleed would suggest he has the same powers as L, or whatever, but he's kind of like-

• 44:32Speaker 04

  Well, he's like tapping into the powers through the hive mind, right? Yeah, but yeah, the wipe of the blood from those, just a great, I thought a great touch, really great.

• 44:38Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 44:40Speaker 04

  The fact that like, L is created in a lab, you know, Mike has this, this kind of setup speech to Will about like, but your powers are innate, like you're a sorcerer, you're not a wizard. And then Will and Robin has this message to him about what's inside of you, and then like the memories of, and obviously this is like, of course, especially in the Robin conversations, like deeply connected to Will's sexuality and Will discovering who he is and embracing who he is and like figuring out when he is ready to say that to the world, right? The idea that like, his friends and family, his mom, being in peril, is when he taps into and unlocks that power and that that is actually really different from Eleven's power source, but still, like so much of Eleven's powers are connected to like, parsing

• 45:24Speaker 04

  her mom's memory of what happened there, right?

• 45:26Chris Ryan?

  And getting in a bathtub.

• 45:27Speaker 04

  Got to get in that bathtub. You need the sensory deprivation. All the through line across the seasons of the conversations that Mike and Eleven have had, I'm like, am I the hero or the monster? Right? Like, all of this feels very connected to me in a way that I think is really satisfying in the final season. So, when I saw the word sorcerer, did I know it would be Will? I don't know that I thought about it that actively, but like- Was I, did I think for sure Will would have powers? I don't know, but this feels right.

• 45:52Chris Ryan?

  He wasn't just gonna be like, like the chump at the back of the line being like, nobody's paying attention to me anymore.

• 45:57Speaker 04

  This feels right.

• 45:57Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 45:58Speaker 04

  This feels right.

• 46:00Chris Ryan?

  The revelation that Max is trapped inside of Vecna's mind palace, which is, I, I'm glad that they came up with something because otherwise you've just got Sadie Sink and Akoba and it becomes like Rocky II, basically. Like, you're just like, when are we gonna get this really great performer to join the crew again?

• 46:21Chris Ryan?

  It was cool.

• 46:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:23Chris Ryan?

  I don't know if I get it, you know?

• 46:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:26Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and I'm curious to know what it is about the caves that Vecna can't go into and get scared off by.

• 46:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:35Chris Ryan?

  But I thought her scenes with the performer playing Holly were, you know, sweet. And obviously a lot of like very fable-y.

• 46:43Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:44Chris Ryan?

  You know, Red Riding Hood kinda stuff going on. And that whole kind of setup of you live in this house and you can have any breakfast and anything you want, but don't go in the woods. And in fact, you are being held up in the upside down with like a tube down your throat this whole time.

• 46:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:00Chris Ryan?

  Very interesting, but obviously like this is where I think you build up all these rules and, uh, guidelines to a world and then you're just like, but the power of music, man. That's, that's what'll save you, you know? And it's like, all right, well, sure. You know?

• 47:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's funny cause like my Stranger Things theory brain starts to really activate when I see Henry guide Holly to the mailbox and there's a.

• 47:24Chris Ryan?

  Tiffany tape.

• 47:25Speaker 04

  There's a Tiffany tape and a way to play it. And I'm like, but music is a shield against Vecna. Interesting. Like, you know, I think there's a lot still to unravel and parse there. I was thrilled to see Max. Max is one of my favorite Stranger Things characters. You could never, there was not a scenario where I would have predicted that the Wheeler family was the central in season five. Obviously Holly is like, maybe the main character of these four episodes so far. And then of course, your beloved Karen Wheeler and my beloved Ted Wheeler.

• 47:59Chris Ryan?

  Ted, absolutely peering irons, uh, you know.

• 48:03Speaker 04

  If you have that kind of yard.

• 48:04Chris Ryan?

  And he's playing, this is before like, some of the new golf technology. You know what I mean? Like, he's just absolutely.

• 48:11Speaker 04

  Did you feel really seen?

• 48:12Chris Ryan?

  Stripping it.

• 48:13Speaker 04

  He was like, I pass the bacon, the bacon gets to him, it's gone. Right? He and Karen are having arguments. He's like, how many wine? How many glasses of wine deep are you? Got to go relieve the stress out in the yard. Just get a couple of strokes in. Really CR coded. Um, but I think it's great. I think it's great that the Wheelers are the central because like, every season of Stranger Things, there's some really new central focus. You know, we've got Max in season two, obviously like Billy as well. Uh, Robin comes in in season three, Erica takes on a bigger role.

• 48:40Chris Ryan?

  Dipshit Derek in season five.

• 48:42Speaker 04

  We haven't talked about dipshit Derek yet.

• 48:44Chris Ryan?

  Not a fan.

• 48:45Speaker 04

  I love him. You're not a fan?

• 48:47Chris Ryan?

  No, we did not need another character.

• 48:50Speaker 04

  But this is the perfect, okay, on the one hand.

• 48:53Chris Ryan?

  We, we don't have to get.

• 48:54Speaker 04

  We didn't need another character that connects to what I was gonna say about the Wheelers, which is like, it's smart to me to use characters who actually have been there the whole time and aren't new characters and say, wait, isn't it actually fucking crazy that in basically half a decade of their family members being directly centrally embroiled in a battle for the sanctity of our dimension?

• 49:13Chris Ryan?

  Karen and Ted are just kind of like.

• 49:14Speaker 04

  They have no fucking idea.

• 49:15Chris Ryan?

  They're just like, weird, huh?

• 49:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, and Holly.

• 49:17Chris Ryan?

  Joyce just lives in the snow.

• 49:19Speaker 04

  But a year and a half, Holly in particular, who has witnessed like, the demogorgon coming through, oppressing the wall in the buyer's home in season one, on through all the other horrors that she has seen. You know, the flade moving through the, the treetops in season three at the state fair, et cetera. I like, like, bringing them more to the fore. I'm glad there aren't a ton of new characters, but something like a Derek, the Derek thing is really working for me, first of all, because he's just, I think that kid is really funny and like. We need a little levity. So much of the levity and straighter things in the past has come from like Stephen Dustin and they're, they're both in a mood. They're in a funk.

• 49:54Chris Ryan?

  Well.

• 49:54Speaker 04

  We need some laughs.

• 49:55Chris Ryan?

  Definitely my favorite sequence of the season is the Great Escape stuff.

• 49:59Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 50:00Chris Ryan?

  Like is Robin explaining the Great Escape.

• 50:01Speaker 04

  All the dick jokes, very good.

• 50:02Chris Ryan?

  And Tom, Dick and Harry, the tunnels from Great Escape and just like, uh, those guys doing the whole like, we have to dig a tunnel, get these kids out, this kid's doing guided meditation.

• 50:14Speaker 04

  That's great.

• 50:14Chris Ryan?

  Uh, that was very amusing, but I just was like, this is, we, we just like are, we need to be shrinking the roster and focusing on the people who matter rather than like calling up guys from the minors.

• 50:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, fair enough.

• 50:27Chris Ryan?

  In August here.

• 50:28Speaker 04

  Do you, on the shrinking the roster front, what do you want the, the death toll to be here? Like, do you think we need to see?

• 50:34Chris Ryan?

  Let me talk to you about this.

• 50:35Speaker 04

  Tell me. When Hop walked into the vault again and then didn't die again, are you like, what is going on?

• 50:39Chris Ryan?

  We're doing fucking Wrath of Khan ending 15 times in this show. And I've talked about this a lot on various episodes about various things. This goes back to the first time I was really like able to articulate it to myself was the fake out death of Chewbacca in, what was that, Force Awakens or Rise?

• 50:56Speaker 04

  Rise of Skywalker.

• 50:57Chris Ryan?

  Rise of Skywalker. And the idea that you're gonna take a beloved character, basically go right up until the point of death, show their quote unquote death, have everybody have the emotional reaction and then it's like, oh my God, he's still alive, you know, for whatever reason. And I actually was just like, what, you know, that's mostly was thinking about this in terms of Karen Wheeler, but you're right. Hopper's death procession, full Bruce Willis and Armageddon, seeing his life pass before his eyes, only for it to be like, hey, I found something else besides, behind this door.

• 51:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:29Chris Ryan?

  Was just like, you guys can't keep doing this. And then if you do kill him, it's, I don't know if they're giving it themselves optionality or like what the deal is with this, but it is a note that I think they play a little too hard. Like Karen Wheeler was dead.

• 51:47Speaker 04

  That was like a full on episode of the pit.

• 51:49Chris Ryan?

  This is a 1980s hospital, living under medical quarantine. Now, sure, they could get some military assistance in their, in their trauma surgery.

• 51:58Speaker 04

  It's a really deep neck wound.

• 51:59Chris Ryan?

  But she has a fucking demogorgon claw to the thoracic area of her shit and she's dead.

• 52:06Speaker 04

  It's, she was.

• 52:09Speaker 04

  The ability to just write, to carry on a complete conversation on a notepad.

• 52:13Chris Ryan?

  And where's Ted? Ted just got one gunshot.

• 52:15Speaker 04

  Nobody has checked on Ted, which is tough for Ted.

• 52:17Chris Ryan?

  What do you think of the, like, we're gonna keep doing fake out deaths?

• 52:22Speaker 04

  I'm a little like, I'm experiencing some conflicting, conflicted feelings about it because on the one hand, I really love these characters and I like want them to be okay. I am not, I am not in general, somebody who relates to the idea of like stakes in stories by thinking that can only mean death. I think there are a lot of ways that you can feel the stake. And I think the, Joe and I talked about this for a while, but the overt, like, the Shire can be saved, but not for me, conversation that Mike and Elle had on the rooftop, just feels like it's definitely setting up, whether it's for Eleven or other characters, the Frodo equivalent of like, I actually can't go home again. And I think there could be a parting of the ways that is not just like literal mortality, that would be very emotionally raw for us.

• 53:05Chris Ryan?

  Her and her sister go back to Chicago.

• 53:06Speaker 04

  Not interested in that.

• 53:07Chris Ryan?

  It's an incredible time in music in Chicago.

• 53:09Speaker 04

  Not interested, but I would, a return to like the, the heavy eyeliner and the bitch in would be, would be good. So I don't need people to die, however, and like we have lost characters. We lost Bob, we lost Eddie, et cetera, more than that, but like we've lost people.

• 53:22Chris Ryan?

  A lot of scientists.

• 53:23Speaker 04

  Many scientists, many scientists and many a lab. The Hopper one got me because like.

• 53:31Chris Ryan?

  But that's like the third time it's happened with Hopper.

• 53:33Speaker 04

  The end of season three, like we said goodbye to Hopper. Now, immediately, and obviously time travel is a huge part of this show in general, they've been setting up massive time travel in-game stuff for many, many seasons. They're playing with it, characters have said the words time travel out loud in these episodes so far. Like, some of that is, we're going back in time through these memories and maybe that's the format we'll take, maybe there will be a more literal hour, characters go back into this locked date of the upside down. None of that would surprise me. The end of season three, when we thought Hopper died and then we go through this like very fascinatingly edited sequence where we're moving in and out of time and we're talking about time and Hop's letter, Elle is reading his letter and I'm sobbing, I'm

• 54:15Speaker 04

  weeping, I'm so moved and sad. Theory brain right away is like, are they gonna go back in time and save Hop? Did Hop get out? We had this whole sequence showing us like the. I was thrilled he was okay, but like, we went through that with that character. And then he was okay, so to kind of play with that again, I didn't love.

• 54:35Chris Ryan?

  I just, I hope they don't do it again.

• 54:37Speaker 04

  Max died and then came back. I'm happy Max is here. But yeah, I think, I don't need characters to die, but I, I think they need to be careful with the fake out death stuff. Because then it starts to, you do risk that it starts to feel cheap.

• 54:49Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 54:49Speaker 04

  Or like, a taunt, rather than, yeah, so like, I don't know who's gonna actually die.

• 54:54Chris Ryan?

  You can have character be in peril.

• 54:56Speaker 04

  Which they are constantly.

• 54:58Chris Ryan?

  But I think if you do the like, death montage for a character more than once. It's cheap. So, honestly, Hopper would be one of the more logical people to go on, in this cast.

• 55:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:12Chris Ryan?

  But they have, they have really memorialized this guy. This would be the third time, I think.

• 55:17Speaker 04

  Yeah. It almost made me think, for the first time ever, honestly, I was like, is he safe? Yeah.

• 55:22Chris Ryan?

  I like what you had to say though, but stakes doesn't have to mean death.

• 55:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:25Chris Ryan?

  But it would be, it would, but, but like, there aren't a lot of options when you're talking about a demi-gorgon chasing you. The last thing I wanted to talk to you about, we've mentioned it a couple of times, is The Lost Sister, coming back.

• 55:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:36Chris Ryan?

  That they thought it was Vecna behind the door, it's in fact Calli. I have not gone back to watch The Lost Sister. I remember when that episode aired, being kind of intrigued by it.

• 55:46Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:47Chris Ryan?

  And I liked the creativity to imagine, what else could we do at this time period? And where could we go? And like, theoretically, these people would, from time to time, try to run away from Hawkins.

• 56:00Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 56:00Chris Ryan?

  Try to get away from this shit. And there would be all sorts of different, like, fun executions of this that could happen. And I think they tried that with sending them all to California.

• 56:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:12Chris Ryan?

  But it didn't have the same kind of, because they sent them as a group, because they sent like, a bunch of characters to California.

• 56:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:19Chris Ryan?

  It never really felt like it was as gutsy as like, what if we like, did like, a backdoor pilot of like, other kids out there that are like, L. Obviously, they, they, they backed off of that if that was ever an idea, but they have not fully cashed the chip. Like, they, they brought her back, and they've brought her back and set her up as a very crucial like, element to the last couple of episodes of this series. So, you're largely pro?

• 56:46Speaker 04

  I I guess I would say I admire the chutzpah. And I also admire just like, I think embracing what TV is a medium allows you to do, which is tweak and refine and not just say, all right, that didn't work, but like, why didn't it work? Let's try to make it work this time. I think that because the stuff with the other kids at the lab was so strong in season four, trying to make eight work again is like a noble intent. I would say, so there's some power and like, how could Callie's powers work in the story? Questions I have that are like, interesting, right? And in season two, her powers are different. She basically can like, make people see things that aren't there, right?

• 57:29Speaker 04

  There's like the butterfly, the spiders crawling on hands, making the cops who are pursuing them think that there's like a collapsing rock face in front of a tunnel so they can get away. Then in season four, we're in the 79 flashbacks in the lab.

• 57:43Speaker 04

  And they do kind of just very quickly like nod to and lampshade. Oh yeah, but like, but before eight left, like she's not there for that, right? But all the other kids appear to have the same powers as Alan won. So they kind of like said, no, this is like the power set. They're not maybe different kid to kid. Now, could they change that again? Sure. I'm sort of interested to see where that nets out.

• 58:02Chris Ryan?

  Depending what kind of music you're listening to at any given moment.

• 58:04Speaker 04

  Exactly. Like can L actually, can L and eight team up, basically? That's intriguing. What I'm more interested in and what I am kind of assuming the purpose of bringing eight back is, is to take 11 back to a place of like, oh yeah, one is was one of like, he also was a kid who Brenner turned into a lab rat. And so is he a horrible?

• 58:31Chris Ryan?

  It was somewhat disturbing before he got into the lab though.

• 58:33Speaker 04

  He did have a, there was the Creole massacre. He killed his mom. He killed his sister and he left his father to be tormented in psychiatric ward. Tormented by his demons forever.

• 58:47Chris Ryan?

  It wasn't just like, hey, take my baby. It was like.

• 58:49Speaker 04

  And like, as you noted with the moment with Max saying like, he won't come into this cave and the look on his face, pure terror, like there's stuff we're gonna learn about Henry's past and his kind of further origin story. But in season four, 11, he was obviously trying to like actively recruit her and he was like, let's do this together.

• 59:07Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 59:07Speaker 04

  Then she saw what he did in the massacre and was like, bro, I'm out. Sent him.

• 59:12Chris Ryan?

  Sent him down.

• 59:13Speaker 04

  Sent him through to the other dimension. But she was very much like Papa did this to both of us.

• 59:21Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 59:22Speaker 04

  And so I'm wondering if Eight coming back into the story

• 59:27Speaker 04

  sends Eleven into a little bit more of an empathetic headspace again with Vecna.

• 59:31Chris Ryan?

  Or are they bringing her back because of her specific skillset of being able to like, give people this illusion of a world that they're seeing and like, is that gonna be the, is that gonna somehow be like how they defeat Vecna?

• 59:41Speaker 04

  And I think it also could connect just more directly to what you were saying is interesting to you, which is like the military government aspect, because there's that line from Dr. K to Hopper, like, the other, the other one, like, why are, wait, you brought Eleven here, like, why do you, we don't know at that point who's in the door, behind the door, we just know it's not Vecna, which I did think made Eleven's like, it's definitely Vecna thing, like, kind of inert as a storytelling device. Like, I don't love when we're that far ahead of the characters.

• 1:00:08Chris Ryan?

  Sometimes it feels like they've written themselves into corners and think of that as like, an exciting stimulating exercise.

• 1:00:16Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:00:16Chris Ryan?

  But then it's like, you just threw away like nine scenes of TV because they're so convinced Vecna's just behind a door.

• 1:00:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:00:23Chris Ryan?

  You know, like, it's like, do you, or like, they're like, Henry's behind the door, but Vecna's on, I'm like, but you blew Henry into pieces, so like, you know that.

• 1:00:32Speaker 04

  But then there's the like, but then there's the question of like, well, what, why do they have Eight there? Is it because they're trying to take something from her powers and create other power people? The way that Brenner did with One?

• 1:00:45Chris Ryan?

  Is she, is she, is like, all of her powers, what's creating the upside down? Like, I have no idea.

• 1:00:52Speaker 04

  Is she like, is she, those hedgehogs, those sonic cannons that were destabilizing Eleven? And now we've seen like many devices over the seasons, you had like the collars that Brenner was using, the pill in, in One's neck, that Eleven takes out, now we have these cannons, like.

• 1:01:09Speaker 04

  They seemed to be surrounding eight so that they were stifling her powers. Are they using her to power other things that could combat 11? Like, you know, there are all sorts of questions. I'd say like, I don't need a ton of eight in the final four episodes. This is sort of how I feel. To your point about other characters, I want time for like Max to come back and be with Lucas. I want them to go see their movie, like in the little drawing. I am really invested in Will and the new relationship with Will and Robin and everything with Will and Mike and their friendship. I'm very deeply invested in Steve and Dustin having a breakthrough again and reconnecting emotionally. I just love the two of them.

• 1:01:50Speaker 04

  I'm completely fine with like Nancy and Jonathan saying, maybe let's like go date other people. I would be okay with that outcome. You know, I'd like the Wheelers to be okay, I guess, as a family. You know?

• 1:02:04Chris Ryan?

  That's his ringing endorsement for Ted's medical status.

• 1:02:06Speaker 04

  I hope Ted makes it. I hope Ted makes it.

• 1:02:09Chris Ryan?

  Well, the good thing is, is that we only have a couple of weeks to wait. I think that this is actually, I was skeptical about it. I thought they were milking it. I know that, I don't really know how the finale in movie theaters thing is gonna work.

• 1:02:20Speaker 04

  Yeah. Will you go see it in a theater?

• 1:02:22Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:02:22Speaker 04

  You'll watch it at home?

• 1:02:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Isn't it like two and a half hours?

• 1:02:25Speaker 04

  It's quite long.

• 1:02:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:26Speaker 04

  It is on New Year's Eve.

• 1:02:28Chris Ryan?

  I'm not going to a movie theater to watch the finale of Stranger Things on New Year's Eve. Are you? You hope they screen it? They're not gonna screen it.

• 1:02:35Speaker 04

  There's, I feel like no chance they're gonna screen the finale. That just seems very unlikely to me. Um, will I see it in a theater? Maybe.

• 1:02:40Chris Ryan?

  Can I run through some hits from this episode of Landman with you just really quickly?

• 1:02:44Speaker 04

  I would love it. I, I love this show.

• 1:02:46Chris Ryan?

  This show's fucking batshit now. Like, not now. The tonal jumps in this, this was a very like, kind of taut episode of television in some ways because the scenes don't run as mindlessly long as in the first episode where like the dinner is just 13 minutes and stuff. So you get these disparate elements.

• 1:03:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:08Chris Ryan?

  Any one of which I guess are pretty interesting. I, I have to say, I, I love Ally Larter. I, I do think that it's absurd what her just blowing him like multiple times in this episode.

• 1:03:23Speaker 04

  All right. I don't agree.

• 1:03:24Chris Ryan?

  I'm not here to legislate or body shame.

• 1:03:26Speaker 04

  Of course not.

• 1:03:27Chris Ryan?

  Or sex shame anyone.

• 1:03:28Speaker 04

  I wouldn't expect you to. The only note I have on this, I, there's not a single part of me that needs convincing that Angela would try to suck Tommy's dick in the car, not once, but twice in one day.

• 1:03:38Chris Ryan?

  But when they juxtapose it with a chemical spill, it's kind of off putting. Both, both in terms of taking the chemical spill ser- seriously and any kind of horniness that you could get from Angela.

• 1:03:50Speaker 04

  See, to me, this is why the show is perfect, to go from an opening of like, a bunch of wild boar and hunters have dropped dead from a ca- ca- ca- toxic noxious gas that over the course of the episode Dale will sort of, but not really help us understand multiple times. I'm like, why are they telling you rally can't come down? The thing's not beating it?

• 1:04:12Chris Ryan?

  I think it's like.

• 1:04:13Speaker 04

  They said the gas is heavy.

• 1:04:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:15Speaker 04

  But like there on the ground, couldn't he just run to them and then they all, they have cars and keys? Couldn't they just leave? Like waiting seems so much more perilous. Bad ship. The only actual thing that didn't make sense to me in the entire episode, the only one, was it the cop who, when Angela was given Tommy a blowjob was like, I could give you a citation, but I won't. No, it wasn't that. It was that both times Tommy was like, what's up with all the teeth? And I'm sorry, Angela didn't get where she is by not knowing how to give a blowjob. I don't buy that at all.

• 1:04:49Chris Ryan?

  I don't really know if I have a comment on that.

• 1:04:50Speaker 04

  I think you probably do. What did she say in this episode?

• 1:04:54Chris Ryan?

  He's driving 80 miles per hour. It's Texas. There's basically no speed limit.

• 1:04:58Speaker 04

  Here's the thing that she says in this episode. Your job on this planet is to achieve the impossible. Mine is to properly motivate. That's why God created tits.

• 1:05:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I noted that line as well.

• 1:05:10Speaker 04

  That woman knows how to give a blowjob. Uh, I thought this episode was so wonderfully entertaining and it crystallized for me something that I already knew, but now I'm prepared to say out loud. Is Landman the best show on TV? Of course not. But is it the most entertaining?

• 1:05:28Chris Ryan?

  It is definitely for its runtime, because you just really don't know what you're gonna get in any given scene. You know, and so the way that this episode ends, which I'll spoil this third episode of Landman for anybody who hasn't watched it, which is seeming, well, no, a seeming union of both financial resources, but also just like hearts between M-Tech's oil, the Norris family, and Andy Garcia's cartel-funded investment fund, or investment group.

• 1:06:03Speaker 04

  Danny Morrell.

• 1:06:05Chris Ryan?

  And I'm like, I can't quite tell whether Taylor Sheridan's like, no, this guy is a good guy. This, the cartel accountant is like a decent dude. Or not, like, there is a moment where I'm like, when he's like, trust has to be earned, or friendship has to be earned, I'm like, but like, he owns your family? Like, what are you talking about?

• 1:06:26Speaker 04

  I, so, I thought that both of the really long, like, the really long, we're in the gentleman's club sequence with Danny Morrell, Andy Garcia's character.

• 1:06:36Chris Ryan?

  The cattleman's club.

• 1:06:38Speaker 04

  And the initial scene where Tommy goes to his office, because he's basically like, don't fuck over my son, right? I thought both of these scenes were just like breathtakingly magical, and I-

• 1:06:49Chris Ryan?

  Well, Andy Garcia is Andy Garcia.

• 1:06:51Speaker 04

  He should definitely win an Emmy for this role.

• 1:06:53Chris Ryan?

  He's been on screen for 80 seconds, Val.

• 1:06:55Speaker 04

  Then give him 80 Emmys, as far as I'm concerned, because each second is just resplendent. When Tommy initially walked in, and Andy Garcia walked around the desk and shook his hand and introduced himself, I was like, wait, what is happening? Why do these characters, why are they acting like they don't know each other and didn't have this like, life-altering moment in the finale?

• 1:07:20Chris Ryan?

  Tommy was gonna be killed by the cartel, and Danny saves him.

• 1:07:23Speaker 04

  Intervened, which then it turns out-

• 1:07:25Chris Ryan?

  Which obviously is to blackmail him, yeah.

• 1:07:26Speaker 04

  Is the whole point, right? It's not that they don't remember meeting, of course Tommy saw him on the paper, I was like, oh no, I know who this guy is. It's from Danny Morrell's perspective.

• 1:07:37Speaker 04

  Now we become new people to each other.

• 1:07:39Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:39Speaker 04

  Right?

• 1:07:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Speaker 04

  Calls him Thomas.

• 1:07:43Speaker 04

  I loved the way, the mindfuck of how he talked. To your point about like, wait, does Taylor Sheridan actually think he's like, maybe a stand-up dude?

• 1:07:52Chris Ryan?

  Maybe.

• 1:07:53Speaker 04

  I loved the way that he talked to Tommy about Cooper and consistently was just like,

• 1:07:59Chris Ryan?

  He's good.

• 1:07:59Speaker 04

  Do you think what's really going on here is that you're embarrassed that he identified a market inefficiency?

• 1:08:04Chris Ryan?

  He's just really good at geology and he's not.

• 1:08:05Speaker 04

  He's Billy Bean?

• 1:08:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:06Speaker 04

  And you're fucking not?

• 1:08:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:08Speaker 04

  Like, also, why can't you just be proud of your son?

• 1:08:10Chris Ryan?

  You're Dave Dabrowski. You're just like this well. Hits homers, yeah.

• 1:08:14Speaker 04

  All of that is incredible. And then, yeah, the moment at the end where he basically like makes the appeal, the pitch to Kami. He's like, I invest in people.

• 1:08:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:23Speaker 04

  You know, which of course is something that Tommy is not going to support and not going to want. Or is he eventually?

• 1:08:29Chris Ryan?

  I don't know.

• 1:08:29Speaker 04

  Because they have this $400 million lawsuit. They've got to drill this offshore gas well. They can't find the money in general. Alan, the fucking Alan, just Friday afternoon happy hour. Where's Monty's money? They're actually like this whole, they took 60% they can take over the lease. Dale tells us that the oil, yeah, it's fucking everywhere. It's all, it's at the pooling on the ground and the gas is everywhere. You should, Dale's line to me. I would probably just increase our wrongful death.

• 1:09:00Chris Ryan?

  That was great.

• 1:09:01Speaker 04

  Policy is incredible!

• 1:09:03Chris Ryan?

  Okay, the oil company stuff, the oil drilling stuff. I found the chemical scene, the chemical spill scenes like gripping. I actually think Demi Moore is doing quite good work this season. I would love for her to get out of, I have my glasses on and I'm reading emails and like out in the world a little bit more.

• 1:09:22Speaker 04

  What about just out on her back patio, wailing?

• 1:09:26Speaker 04

  On the slabs? The coyotes meeting her howls.

• 1:09:30Chris Ryan?

  It's basically like a Pluribus episode.

• 1:09:34Chris Ryan?

  And the Norris, specifically the Norris male lineage is interesting to me. I love Ally Larter.

• 1:09:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:43Chris Ryan?

  Angela is a ridiculous. Angely and Angela are ridiculous creations. Do you care about Ariana's career as a bartender?

• 1:09:51Speaker 04

  I don't. I was.

• 1:09:53Chris Ryan?

  This is so Yellowstone, though, to be like now the Patch is a thing and like the bartender of the Patch is actually the greatest bartender of all time.

• 1:10:03Speaker 04

  This is what I was, exactly what I was gonna say.

• 1:10:04Chris Ryan?

  That guy's been getting called an asshole for like.

• 1:10:06Speaker 04

  Barney? Is that his name? I was like, oh, he's just like kind of a rip?

• 1:10:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:15Speaker 04

  Like a little bit?

• 1:10:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:16Speaker 04

  He's just kind of ripped. It was, that was a real Yellowstone sequence. I agree. I am not invested in the slightest in Ariana.

• 1:10:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:28Speaker 04

  So when she broke up with Cooper, even though I did not really allow myself to believe that that meant the end of that storyline, I was content for it to be the end of that storyline. It does not seem that that, that is, is the case and that's okay.

• 1:10:41Chris Ryan?

  Are you invested in Rebecca's wellness journey and her ability to lift?

• 1:10:46Speaker 04

  I am definitely invested in Tommy, who takes more calls in his car than any person in the history of the world.

• 1:10:54Chris Ryan?

  All Tommy does is drive back and forth across. Actually, while we're here, I'm gonna look up the drive.

• 1:10:59Speaker 04

  No talking for at least an hour after a botched blowjob. My head's so fucked up right now. And then Rebecca cuts in. I'm still on the phone.

• 1:11:06Chris Ryan?

  All right.

• 1:11:07Speaker 04

  How does Tommy not know to hang up that call? I guess he says, he explains it right there. My head's so fucked up right now.

• 1:11:12Chris Ryan?

  Midland to Fort Worth is four and a half hours. The way Tommy drives, call it 350.

• 1:11:18Speaker 04

  Well, that would explain why he was like, I have a noon meeting. So I'm like, isn't that late?

• 1:11:22Chris Ryan?

  Tommy is doing. An eight hours a day of driving, at least.

• 1:11:27Speaker 04

  Well, you know, Kami is not wrong when she's like, "It would be good to have you in Fort Worth." They do, they use the plane a lot.

• 1:11:32Chris Ryan?

  They use the plane a lot.

• 1:11:33Speaker 04

  And now I know there's a note on the plane, so that's worrying.

• 1:11:36Chris Ryan?

  The other thing that I think is hilarious about this is while Tommy is doing all this driving and taking all these calls, Cooper cannot get a fucking phone call. Like, Cooper always has to wait somewhere weird, or show up somewhere in a jacket to get a conversation with his dad, even though Cooper's sitting on a billion dollars worth of oil.

• 1:11:50Speaker 04

  I quite enjoyed when Ainsley said that Cooper smelled like hot dogs in this episode. I thought that was great, that made me chuckle.

• 1:11:55Chris Ryan?

  I'm so Stranger Things' pill that I was like, "Oh, I wonder what this story is with Ainsley and Cooper." Like, what do you do? Like, nothing.

• 1:12:03Speaker 04

  His C and D campaign was interrupted by Lady Applejack when I found the heart-to-heart about fatherhood and what you pass down to your sons in cycles and how they repeat between Tommy and Cooper in episode two.

• 1:12:17Chris Ryan?

  Tears.

• 1:12:19Speaker 04

  To be more emotionally impactful than I was quite prepared to confront. I am so interested to see what happens next week, because it's the funeral. You know, we know it's the funeral.

• 1:12:30Chris Ryan?

  Finally get some Sam Elliott. I gotta tell you, being a guest star or a, you know, a season arc on Landman seems like a great gig. Because so far, Sam Elliott hasn't gotten out of a wheelchair where...

• 1:12:42Speaker 04

  He's just looked at the sunset a couple times.

• 1:12:44Chris Ryan?

  Andy Garcia has gotten to wear cool suits and sit down.

• 1:12:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:48Chris Ryan?

  Like, he's sitting at the Cattlemen's Club.

• 1:12:50Speaker 04

  Smoked a cigar, had a couple drinks, has a hot wife.

• 1:12:52Chris Ryan?

  It just seems like what Andy Garcia does anyway.

• 1:12:55Speaker 04

  That's awesome.

• 1:12:56Chris Ryan?

  All right, Mallory, thank you so much for joining me.

• 1:12:59Speaker 04

  Chris.

• 1:13:00Chris Ryan?

  Thank you so much for breaking down Stranger Things with me, I really appreciate it.

• 1:13:02Speaker 04

  A pleasure as always, man.

• 1:13:04Chris Ryan?

  I'll be back later in the week, probably with Andy. We are gonna be talking Pluribus, we'll talk some other stuff, and then we're getting ready for Best of the Year. So, we're doing our late crashes, crashing in some, like, Howlin' Harper, I'm trying to just get everything done before I make my list.

• 1:13:18Speaker 04

  And/or at the top.

• 1:13:20Chris Ryan?

  No spoilers.

• 1:13:20Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:13:21Chris Ryan?

  Bye, guys.

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