‘Avengers: Doomsday’ Cast Revealed, ‘The White Lotus’ E7, and ‘MobLand’

Andy and Chris talk about some TV and movie news from the past week, including the announcement that Marvel stars like Chris Hemsworth, Paul Rudd, and Florence Pugh will appear in ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ (11:56) and the latest on an executive shake-up at Amazon MGM (22:05). Then they break down the penultimate episode of ‘The White Lotus’ Season 3 and its breakthroughs and false breakthroughs (31:54). Finally, they talk briefly about ‘MobLand,’ the new Paramount+ series starring Tom Hardy, Helen Mirren, and Pierce Brosnan (01:06:15). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Senior Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Production and Editing: Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Chris Ryan?

  This episode of The Watch is brought to you by Coffee Mate. Coffee Mate has been searching the globe for flavors that pair perfectly with coffee. So when they heard the new season of HBO's original series, The White Lotus, was set in Thailand, they were inspired to brew up two new flavored creamers, Thai iced coffee and pina colada flavored creamers. They're available for a short time only, so for the love of coffee, go try them now.

• 0:23Speaker 01

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• 0:38Speaker 01

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• 0:54Speaker 03

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• 1:01Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. And joining me on the other line, you know he will go to Muay Thai tonight. It's Andy Greenwald.

• 1:15Andy Greenwald?

  Chris, have you ever been to any kind of like large scale public fighting? I mean, we're from Philadelphia, so yes, we have, but I mean, like in an organized ticket.

• 1:25Chris Ryan?

  I've seen one time, um, what was I T? Oh, I was, I had to do Dora at a body count show in Boston a long time ago.

• 1:32Andy Greenwald?

  You never disappoint.

• 1:33Chris Ryan?

  And there was a mass like fight there. But other than that, I cannot say that I imbibe in combat sports that much like. And I, and I love some meathead shit, but I just don't really go to the fights. But it seemed like Carrie Coon enjoyed herself. It seemed like Guy Talk did not. We're obviously talking about the seventh episode of White Lotus, just taking its sweet little time, getting to the, getting to the season finale. We're gonna talk about White Lotus. We're gonna talk a little bit about Mob Land, which is how I've chosen to say it. New show on Paramount Plus with Tom Hardy. We know we had to do it. Greenwald, it's good to see you, man. I'm in Philly. You're in LA. We're doing this virtually, but it's, uh, it's nice to see a friendly face.

• 2:12Andy Greenwald?

  It's great to see you. I am, for what it's worth, it's not that I'm in Los Angeles. I'm in Sean Fennessey's movie void.

• 2:18Chris Ryan?

  I call it the content cave. Yeah.

• 2:20Andy Greenwald?

  This is my first time recording in this, this completely sealed black box Faraday cage of takes. And, uh, I also think, I don't know if you-

• 2:30Chris Ryan?

  I see a twinkle in your eye. I could see you kinda getting into maybe like-

• 2:33Andy Greenwald?

  I like this.

• 2:34Chris Ryan?

  Tales from the couch with Andy?

• 2:35Andy Greenwald?

  I do like doing the direct address, uh, like, like, um, but like ripping up the script like President James Marsden in episode seven of Paradise.

• 2:43Chris Ryan?

  Let Bartlet be Bartlet, man. Let's go.

• 2:45Andy Greenwald?

  But Chris, I don't know, is this picking up on the, I don't know if this is picking up on the video, but it's not completely empty. There is a Spotify logo here, but there is a plant next to me, which I may be mistaken, but I believe this is the same plant that, uh, uh, uh, Tim Radliff is asking about in these scenes from the next week, scenes from next week's episode of White Lotus.

• 3:03Chris Ryan?

  That plant is challenging everything we know about photosynthesis.

• 3:06Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 3:08Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, there's no oxygen in here, I'll tell you that.

• 3:10Chris Ryan?

  That plant has been sitting next to Sean as he builds syllabuses.

• 3:15Andy Greenwald?

  This movie, this plant breathes cinema. Before we get into everything, Chris, do you wanna, I know you wanna do housekeeping, but can I also wanna hear about your time in Boston with the gang?

• 3:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, uh, so I'm on the East Coast because, uh, the Rewatchables gang did a Boston, almost like a little residency. We did a show last Thursday, me, Bill, Rosello and Sean, did Good Will Hunting at, uh, the House of Blues there, right by Fenway Park. And then Bill, Sean and I hosted like a mini film festival, uh, over at the Coolidge Corner Theater. It was awesome. I used to live down the street from that movie theater back in the nineties, so to be back there was pretty surreal. And we came out and spoke before or after a bunch of movies like The Town, The Verdict was honestly the highlight for me, just to see that on a big screen. Heat, obviously, um, the heads came out. We were there until 1:30 in the morning because Heat started at 10.

• 4:05Andy Greenwald?

  That's too late for Heat. Wow. Did you, did it reveal anything to you?

• 4:08Chris Ryan?

  I think actually Heat started at like 10:30, but it was, I, I feel like we were out really late. Uh, yeah, and then there were some more films on Sunday, Departed, uh, Spotlight and Eddie Coyle. I came down to Philly though, and yeah.

• 4:20Andy Greenwald?

  What do those movies have in common? I, I'm, I'm having trouble sensing a theme.

• 4:24Chris Ryan?

  They were movies that Bill likes. Uh, they're movies that I like. They are Boston movies and/or heist movies.

• 4:30Andy Greenwald?

  I see. Great.

• 4:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so.

• 4:32Andy Greenwald?

  And now you're down, now you're down in Philly and the weather's turned because it was very cold in Boston.

• 4:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's really nice out. Um, I am, uh, I've been, you know, East Coast is the best. East Coast at Spring is the best. Been walking around, listening to Def Heaven, just like feeling 19, you know?

• 4:46Andy Greenwald?

  Are you bullish for Christopher Sanchez's home debut today?

• 4:50Chris Ryan?

  It's against the Rockies, right?

• 4:52Andy Greenwald?

  I think that.

• 4:53Chris Ryan?

  I'll take a piece of that, yeah.

• 4:54Andy Greenwald?

  You just called my bluff. I'm not ready for baseball yet, so I'm not really aware.

• 4:59Chris Ryan?

  I had an experience last night, sports fans of this podcast, of which there were probably three will enjoy this. I went to Bad Brother, obviously, the first night back in town, and they had the Sixers up and just me and CJ who works there just staring at the TV, hoping for a big 20-point loss, like it was 2010 again.

• 5:19Andy Greenwald?

  Can I jump in on this for a second? Because I was also in Philadelphia recently for some family stuff, and I went to, all respect to Bad Brother, but I went to another.

• 5:31Chris Ryan?

  It's okay to mention another Philadelphia.

• 5:33Andy Greenwald?

  I went to another BB. I went to the classic Bob and Barber's, one of the goat bars in the world, and got there on the early side, and they had, right before the band started playing, and they had the Sixers game on the screen.

• 5:45Chris Ryan?

  Was Def Heaven playing?

• 5:45Andy Greenwald?

  It could have been Def Heaven. Does Def Heaven feature the organ stylings of a 70-year-old woman named Pat? If so, I saw them and I loved them. The Sixers were on, and I thought, you know, because I spend way too much time paying attention to Philadelphia sports and sports psychosis, that everyone got the memo that they need to lose every game that they play.

• 6:11Chris Ryan?

  We have to fail for flag, yeah.

• 6:13Andy Greenwald?

  One guy didn't get the memo. One guy was next to me, he was drinking Jack on the Rocks, and he was cheering every hustle play.

• 6:21Chris Ryan?

  You know what? Shout out to that guy.

• 6:22Andy Greenwald?

  That guy was like, I want my team to win, but he was rooting for the Tankapalooza Sixers. He was just like every Quentin Grimes bucket.

• 6:32Chris Ryan?

  My Buddhist monk would be that guy, drinking Jack on the Rocks and just cheering for W's. That's all I want to be.

• 6:38Andy Greenwald?

  True. It's a simpler life.

• 6:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, a little bit of housekeeping, obviously. You can email us at [email protected]. You can follow us on Instagram at thewatchpod underscore. You can watch us on Spotify, where you're listening to this podcast, hopefully, and you can also watch us on the Ringer-TV channel of YouTube, a big platform for video, I've been told.

• 6:58Andy Greenwald?

  Listen, I've got young children. It's the only platform.

• 7:01Chris Ryan?

  Andy, there was a little bit of news here and there that I wanted to discuss with you because we haven't really chatted. We recorded early last week if our memory serves.

• 7:09Andy Greenwald?

  We did.

• 7:10Chris Ryan?

  So we missed the Avengers cast rollout, which was essentially like, were you ever in a Marvel movie at Fox and/or Disney?

• 7:18Andy Greenwald?

  Wait, are you saying that the cast reveal video was kind of like the 90-page arbitration agreements you get mailed sometimes being like, have you ever heard of AT&T? If so, you might be entitled to 60 cents.

• 7:31Chris Ryan?

  Did you stay at Camp Lejeune between 1984 and 1986? And/or have you drunk from the Whisahican? Then you could be in...

• 7:39Andy Greenwald?

  You may be worthy to lift Thor's hammer. Casting of Thor TBD.

• 7:44Chris Ryan?

  So there's that. There's some musical chairs at Amazon, which I thought was pretty interesting. Jen Salkey out, Jennifer Salkey out as a... Is that how you pronounce her last name? I've never asked her in person.

• 7:54Andy Greenwald?

  No, that is how you pronounce it. I can't believe it's never come up, but that's because you clearly just call her Jen.

• 7:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and we're just talking about Def Evan most of the time. And Lonely People with Power, I caught that album. It's really good. It's like my favorite piece of music.

• 8:10Andy Greenwald?

  Lonely People with Power, the Jennifer Salkey's production golden parachute deal at Amazon explained.

• 8:15Chris Ryan?

  So where do you want to start? You want to talk about Avengers? You want to talk about Amazon? Is there anything else you want to chat about?

• 8:20Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I'm super psyched to talk White Lotus, but I do think we should do news, particularly because, let's start with the Avengers stuff, because the streets have waited too long to hear you cook on this. Chris, you were busy last week. You were in Boston, you were pressing the flesh, you were just seeing the people, man of the streets. And you, even on days when you're dialed in, you're not usually that reactionary when it comes to big IP studio stuff. But this one bugged you a little bit. I feel like you didn't love it.

• 8:51Chris Ryan?

  No, I mean, I think it probably goes in tandem with the discussion that's been happening about the Russos for the last couple of weeks because of Electric State, and they're now returning to Marvel. These two news stories that Andy and I were talking about, the Amazon shakeup and the Avengers rollout, kind of are united by the Russos in the sense that the Russos made maybe the signature failure of the previous Amazon administration, which is Citadel, an attempt at like... Basically bootstrapping an entire spy, a global spy franchise from ground up and making it into like, you know, you could have international, you know, international franchises of this main spy show that we could do in all these different languages all over the globe.

• 9:36Chris Ryan?

  And it failed pretty spectacularly and it cost a lot of money. Um, I think, but that, those are pretty, those are pretty unobjected to facts. Um, and you know, the Russus are returning to doomsday and everybody was like, well, this is just, you know, the safe pair of hands are back. We're gonna make this.

• 9:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 9:53Chris Ryan?

  Uh, we're gonna make this the right way and Downey's back and all this other stuff. And it's not that like, I, I think actually like anybody who's like conversant in comic book stuff knows what's coming, which is kind of maybe a different place I find myself now than I did for Infinity War and Endgame where I was actually like somewhat surprised by the snap and some of the stuff that happened in those movies. And, um, I think obviously those two films featured this moment where the majority of characters in the current MCU or that point, the MCU came together to fight this, this evil villain. And that was not necessarily broadcast ahead of time, or if it was, I wasn't reading those, those

• 10:35Chris Ryan?

  message boards. Um, you could conclude that that was gonna happen, but still.

• 10:39Andy Greenwald?

  What were you doing? Travel baseball? What were you up to?

• 10:43Chris Ryan?

  I was at Bob and Barber's cheering for a big, big W over the Raptors.

• 10:47Andy Greenwald?

  Hell yeah.

• 10:47Chris Ryan?

  Um, but yeah, like there was just something.

• 10:53Chris Ryan?

  Okay. I'm gonna make a, I'm gonna make a kind of long, long circuitous analogy.

• 10:58Andy Greenwald?

  I can't wait. I've got a fire analogy. I just.

• 11:00Chris Ryan?

  I was just reading about a TV show that I don't watch called Bosch, which is also on Amazon. And I was reading an interview with a supporting character, an actor on that show. I think his name is Troy Evans, where he was talking about the transition from Bosch to Bosch Legacy, which is the new version of Bosch on Amazon that.

• 11:18Andy Greenwald?

  Well, on Freeform.

• 11:19Chris Ryan?

  Was on Freevee and it also is, it's ending, it's ending this season.

• 11:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 11:23Chris Ryan?

  And he was basically like, we could have just kept doing Bosch, but they wanted to get rid of all the people who had been working on that show for seven years because they're, they had basically triggers in their contracts that said, if you did this amount of service, you got X amount of dollars. And this is for people below the line, behind the scenes, like union jobs. And he was like, we basically like, Amazon essentially scrapped their mothership show to start a cheaper version of the show and then abandoned it when whatever metrics told them to.

• 11:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 11:53Chris Ryan?

  And he was like, we used to shoot like in downtown LA locations. Now it's a lot more on set, stuff like that. And I was thinking about that story and about the way in which a lot of the technology companies that run these studios are looking for efficiencies wherever they can, especially now in 2025, seems to be a big word out there, efficiency. And I was thinking about like the rollout of the, of the major two films of the next five years that are supposed to maybe save theatrical movie going and revive MCU and help Disney's bottom line. And they came up with director's chairs. Like they were like, the best we can do is a shot of all these people who we probably still had under contract to some extent anyway. And we could do director's chairs.

• 12:36Chris Ryan?

  Now I know when they announced Downey, first of all, I'm 47, who cares? Like, I'm not trying to get like in my feelings about how they announce Avengers movies. But I just noted with interest that their version of a huge big fireworks rollout for this cast was names on the back of canvas chairs.

• 12:56Andy Greenwald?

  Also spread out over hours, right? This is, they were doing this on YouTube and it was just lingering over the name of Danny Ramirez as Falcon. Okay. Not my Falcon, but you tell me what you want to tell me.

• 13:11Andy Greenwald?

  But yeah.

• 13:14Andy Greenwald?

  So was there anything about this that like moved any needle for you? Because I guess the big takeaway, there are a couple of big takeaways if you are tracking this stuff, which we sadly are.

• 13:23Chris Ryan?

  Would you have any, do you have any thoughts on what I just said, though? Like, do you think that those two things correspond? Or do you think I'm like seeing a connection that isn't there?

• 13:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I mean, I, I, I think it's, it's a tougher, it's a tougher comparison to lay directly on top of an Avengers movie, because if Disney's spending money on anything, it's this. You know, this is, this is their bottom line, basically.

• 13:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, right.

• 13:44Andy Greenwald?

  For the next two years or whenever the second part of this, this, this two movie series is going to come out. But in terms of, I mean, you can look at it in two ways. There, there is certainly, there's just a lowering of scale and expectation, because director's chairs is super boring and meaningless. And, you know, again, it's not at all about them having an inspired story to tell, although they may well have one. It's purely about just, you know, driving, driving Reddit threads about excitement, about who they got cast, or like just, just stoking the embers of whatever flame remains for the Fox X-Men movies, which is, turned to be a much more durable, heat-producing source than I ever would have expected.

• 14:29Andy Greenwald?

  But, but yeah, I, I think the thing that, that struck me, I mean, look, you mentioned Thanos's snap, right? And like, one of the, one of the incredible things about the Marvel Universe up to that point was that everything was cumulative. Every story built on the bones of the last, on the back of the last story to head towards something. After the snap, which was legitimately, I think, surprising for the majority of the people in the audience. And then the next movie, which I still will cape up for and love, Endgame. Endgame was about going back in time to undo something that happened. And every single Marvel story since the snap has been about going back in time or going in a different dimension and undoing things that had already happened to try to find some residual spark. And.

• 15:15Andy Greenwald?

  There's a version of this movie that may well exist that we, the audience, walk out of and we're just like, man, Florence Pugh is the prince who was promised and she is the star of this movie and they weren't able to do the thing that Kevin Feige proved he could do 15 years ago, which is mint stars. Yeah. That would be cool. The best case argument for this movie, I think, is that the Russos and, um, uh, which one of the, oh, and Stephen McFeely, and I guess Waldron might still be involved to some degree, they have, they have access to the, the nuclear codes, right? They've seen thunderbolts. They, they have seen early cuts of Fantastic Four.

• 16:00Andy Greenwald?

  So my guess is they are looking at those and being like, here's what pops and here's what we can steer towards. And that there's a version of it that might take advantage of the fresh blood and make a new story.

• 16:11Andy Greenwald?

  That's best case scenario. The worst case scenario is this is just the absolute nadir of them being like, we can make anything worth your time by animatronically resurrecting portions of your childhood, or in our case, of our mid 30s. Yeah.

• 16:30Andy Greenwald?

  It's not exactly inspiring stuff. And there was, you remember last week when I was like, if I was still writing long content columns on Tuesdays for Grandland, here's what my take would be? I, I did have another one where it was just like, there was, there was an element of this rollout and maybe the rollout of the next year as this movie goes into production, where I'm like, is anybody feeling this a little bit like 2024 DNC vibes? Where it's just like, all your old friends are here. Podcast Empressario Barack Obama is here. Hillary Clinton is here and we all agree Avengers movies are still good. Vote for Avengers movies. Do you know what I mean? Like, there was some sense of like, we still like stuff, don't we?

• 17:14Chris Ryan?

  It'll be interesting to see, you know, a lot of, a lot of importance is being put on what Superman does at the box office, not only for movies in general, but specifically for this kind of story, and to sort of interrogate whether or not like the comic book superhero genre needs a timeout, and whether or not like the budgets for these movies make it so that they have to be among the most popular movies ever made each time they drop for them to turn a profit. But I think that honestly Avengers has a lot to do, sorry Superman will say a lot about what the appetite for Avengers is because Superman obviously along with Spider-Man and Batman is probably the most recognizable name in superhero storytelling.

• 17:57Chris Ryan?

  And if that can't get the people going, if that doesn't juice people up to get out to the theater, I kind of wonder whether or not Kelsey Grammer being back is not going to do it either.

• 18:06Andy Greenwald?

  You don't think Kelsey Grammer being the key, Kelsey Grammer and 85 year old Jimmy Kellen being key to-

• 18:11Chris Ryan?

  Let's just be very clear, all of those Fox X-Men people are dying like five minutes into this movie, right?

• 18:15Andy Greenwald?

  100%. Wait, I want to circle back to that. I want to zag and go on the record because whenever I go on the record with outrageous takes about summer movies, I'm always right, like with Barbie. And so I wanted, I wanted to put my flag down and say, I think Fantastic Four will be critically better received than Superman and maybe commercially do better than Superman. And I'm pro Superman.

• 18:42Chris Ryan?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna bet against you on the box office. We've been around the Fantastic Four block a couple of times. I think it'll do great, but I think Superman will do great better.

• 18:53Andy Greenwald?

  Can you name the cast of the, can you name the cast and director off the top of your head of the Fox Fantastic Four movies?

• 19:02Chris Ryan?

  You mean the Trank Fantastic Four movie?

• 19:04Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 19:05Chris Ryan?

  Because I can name that cast.

• 19:06Andy Greenwald?

  By the way, it's funny, Josh Trank's getting named later because I did a deep dive in Tom Hardy's last 10 years of filmography, and that is a wild journey. And we'll be talking about that later when we get to Mobland. No, the, the marginally successful Fantastic Four movies, they made two 20 years ago.

• 19:23Chris Ryan?

  Chris Evans?

• 19:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. Right?

• 19:27Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Reese, what was that guy, the Welsh guy's name? Who plays Reed?

• 19:33Andy Greenwald?

  Reese Witherspoon? Matthew Reese Witherspoon.

• 19:36Chris Ryan?

  No, what's his name?

• 19:37Andy Greenwald?

  Jan Griffith? I'm pronouncing his name wrong, but yes.

• 19:41Chris Ryan?

  Uh.

• 19:42Andy Greenwald?

  That's right. You got, that's the harder one.

• 19:43Chris Ryan?

  Who is Sue? Who is Sue?

• 19:46Andy Greenwald?

  I'll give you a hint. She has a skincare line. That narrows it down. Very few actresses from the 21st century have skincare lines.

• 19:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's true.

• 19:56Andy Greenwald?

  But you're the guy that goes to Sephora, so.

• 19:59Chris Ryan?

  Who is the Sue Storm from that? I can't remember who is it. This isn't good podcasting.

• 20:03Andy Greenwald?

  I think this is great. Jessica Alba.

• 20:05Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. Right. And then the thing was like Michael Chiklis?

• 20:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. And can you name Dr. Doom?

• 20:14Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 20:15Andy Greenwald?

  Julian McMahon, the star of Nip Tuck, who beat out.

• 20:19Chris Ryan?

  Well, it was a different time, man.

• 20:20Andy Greenwald?

  Robert Downey Jr.

• 20:21Chris Ryan?

  You know?

• 20:22Andy Greenwald?

  Robert Downey Jr., yes. What Feige suggested Bob Downey Jr. for Doom then. So full circle moment.

• 20:29Chris Ryan?

  It is a full circle moment.

• 20:31Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway, I, but your point that we've been around the block with Fantastic Four. I think that what people might respond to, and I want Superman to do well because I think it's going to be good.

• 20:41Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think what people might respond to with Fantastic Four is the feeling that that trailer gave, which is a little bit of that, oh, Marvel's telling a clever little story. And it's just this clever little story magic that drove people to Guardians of the Galaxy and drove people away from, hey, the president's the Red Hulk. Have you fandangoed yet?

• 21:01Chris Ryan?

  Did you ever see that?

• 21:01Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 21:03Chris Ryan?

  Will you see that? Will you be seeing it before Thunderbolts? Just to connect the tissue?

• 21:06Andy Greenwald?

  Before Thunderbolts, for sure. I need to know, I need to know the status of the executive branch, the MCU, later.

• 21:14Chris Ryan?

  What's the intelligence community facing as we enter the age of the Thunderbolts?

• 21:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I, uh.

• 21:21Andy Greenwald?

  Look, I, I, I, I think that your, your point about these X-Men characters, I think this is a swan song on top of whatever the last swan song was. Because for people who pay attention to this stuff, that what they're building to in Secret Wars is incursions of mult- of alternate dimensions where one, where alternate dimensions get snuffed out one by one, eventually leaving like a, a, a combined world for, I guess, the, the stark variant that is doomed to rule over. So, yeah, I, I, I don't think, people are like, wow, can Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen like, keep up with the, the dynamism on screen of Hannah John Caine? I feel like, I don't think they're gonna be standing up much. I know Patrick Stewart doesn't stand up much as Professor X anyway.

• 22:01Chris Ryan?

  It's not the NFL Combine. I think those guys are gonna...

• 22:06Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think like Channing Tatum skipped the Combine?

• 22:08Chris Ryan?

  It's MCU Pro Day. We're gonna see if McKellen still has that twitch ability.

• 22:15Andy Greenwald?

  I love McKellen so much.

• 22:17Chris Ryan?

  McKellen's 40 speed. Well, I saw Kelsey Grammer, street Randy Mosta guy out there.

• 22:25Chris Ryan?

  Anyway, uh, Amazon thoughts.

• 22:30Chris Ryan?

  Excuse me. I wanted to, uh, draw a parallel between the way that, uh, Jen Salkey's exit from Amazon as, I think, I mean, was essentially Amazon MGM, um, what was she head of? She was the studio chief, Mike Hopkins, who was her boss's like head of video for Amazon, correct?

• 22:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, and rather than like get in the weeds of the org chart, it's worth noting that Amazon is a very, very org chart heavy place.

• 22:57Chris Ryan?

  Well, and they're flattening it. They're, they're getting rid of management all over the company. Um, so it's in, I, I suppose they can use that as sort of a philosophical backing for what they're doing here. But the main point I wanted to make was the fact that this story, as all these Hollywood, uh, executive C-suite stories feature, is a lot of like the successes and failures of the people who are leaving or losing their jobs. Currently, there's a lot of speculation about Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdi at Warner Brothers who run their film division and have been under fire because of some big bets they made on movies. Like Mickey 17 or Joker 2, which was not, I don't think really their, their baby, but they definitely had it on their, on their ledger.

• 23:41Chris Ryan?

  They have Sinners coming up and then One Battle After Another, the PTA movie. These trailer just came out and you may now, please just go, go ham on it.

• 23:50Andy Greenwald?

  No, that's the other thing we missed. Like we, I did, I do wish we could have recorded last.

• 23:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I just want to say like I, this is honestly the reason to live.

• 23:58Andy Greenwald?

  That trailer gave me a jolt of life, a thunderbolt, if you will, but without an asterisk. It's so, it's such a sick trailer and it made me so excited that in the year, this cursed year of our Lord 2025, PTA is back with funny art about revolutionaries. It was so exciting, but it also felt like, I mean, I know, I like the, the headlines, right? Are like, oh, they spent $140 million and it's, you know, it's, they're already hedging their bets and they're already concerned about it and it's the biggest budget he's ever had and whatever. And I do not care. It's not my money, but like it did feel, and no one movie should carry

• 24:41Andy Greenwald?

  the hopes and dreams of everyone, although I am in Sean's, Sean's echo chamber of deep ideas. And so maybe I'm, I'm huffing some of those right now. This trailer to me felt like the best case, like super team, if you will, of classic PTA, certainly, but there were elements of it that felt a little QT and there were elements of it that felt a little WESY, like that last sequence.

• 25:05Chris Ryan?

  A little WA?

• 25:06Andy Greenwald?

  There's a, there's a little bit at the end with DiCaprio and Benicio where they're doing.

• 25:11Chris Ryan?

  Picking up some sense of French dispatch from that?

• 25:13Andy Greenwald?

  Well, there's a little, when he does the revolution thing, which is also what the wolf does at the end of Fantastic Mr. Fox. And then that's animated. You probably never saw it. And then the, and then the carpet rolls over him. I mean, it's just. It's just movies and the only guys who get to make movies and it felt like it's in it's in a conversation with other things, but a little bit in conversation with whatever artistic electricity still exists in the world. And as I hear myself, I'm like, I'm putting too much on this movie, but what else do we have?

• 25:42Chris Ryan?

  Well, what else do we have? I mean, so anyway, my point was basically like, you know, the analysis of the successes and failures of these executives. On the Warner Brothers side, you know, we're talking about millions. This is, this is a little bit of like a simple way of putting it, but I kind of buy it. On the Warner Brothers side, we're talking about millions and on the Amazon side, we're talking about billions. And it struck me just how much you're allowed to lose at Amazon. Or, or maybe even like just the, the numbers that they can play with that even a company as huge as Warner Brothers Discovery can't hit.

• 26:18Andy Greenwald?

  Totally.

• 26:18Chris Ryan?

  And Jen Psaki was overseeing a $9 billion content budget and was able to have failures like the peripheral and, and, uh, and the aforementioned Citadel.

• 26:31Andy Greenwald?

  Or, or, or failures, not certainly of investment, but of return on investment in creative relationships, which it's technically her job to manage, like the Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

• 26:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, right.

• 26:43Andy Greenwald?

  Trust fund, basically, which may eventually result in a Tomb Raider show, but has thus far not.

• 26:48Chris Ryan?

  And some of the reporting suggests that they've had like multiple writers room have not produced a script for Tomb Raider, uh, which is honestly sad just because I want more Phoebe Waller-Bridge stuff and, you know, she obviously worked a little bit on Mr. And Mrs. Smith and then left that project. But in any case, I, I was struck by this very scary thought, which was you, you could convince me or I may be convinced that Amazon and Netflix are capable of just waiting out all these other studios until there's nobody left. And that essentially that might be the overarching philosophy because I often ask myself like, what the hell is Amazon doing making this stuff anyway? I mean, what, what real, if you want to go to space and sell paper towels, like, do you really need to make Reacher? And I do think that.

• 27:34Chris Ryan?

  You could convince me that they can just wait out and outspend and basically take hits for the years until there's this massive contraction in the studio business in Hollywood and then there's really just a couple of technology-based companies left that can actually make stuff.

• 27:51Andy Greenwald?

  Not to go back to circle the same existentially pessimistic drain that we often find ourselves circling these days, but yes, there is no fundamental risk for Amazon, Apple, and Netflix in their endeavors. Netflix maybe a little bit more, but at this point, I think it's hard to make the case that they're really actually in trouble. Part of the, if you look at any company, even companies that we don't really have a lot of sympathy for necessarily, just like on a human level, I mean, these are giant corporations. Even for Disney, for example, to greenlight something, there is some element of risk to shareholder value, to the bottom line. Outside of Jen Psalke making too many bad

• 28:35Andy Greenwald?

  deals and it costing her her job, and by the way, costing her the title and the prestige, but she's getting a golden parachute production deal with a first look at Amazon for whatever else she does next, there is actually no risk for any of this, which you see sometimes in the work, right? Like you kind of, and it's not easy to paint that with a broad brush because it's not going to be in any of the headlines because it was neither an enormous success or enormous catastrophe, but Donald Glover's deal at Amazon made Mr. Mississippi, which is, I think, an excellent show, one of the best shows of last year, Emmy nominated, coming back. It also netted out Swarm, which was critically acclaimed. So there are some things that still sneak through the algorithm and exist, but otherwise,

• 29:19Andy Greenwald?

  yeah, what are they doing with all of that enormous money and privilege other than lighting on a fire with the Citadel Universe or betting most, not betting most of it because they have limitless money, but betting a ton of it on Bond?

• 29:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, it's not exactly inspiring stuff to think about. To your point about, and then the next question, I think, that I was asking that other people might be wondering is like, is this going to change?

• 29:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, right.

• 29:48Andy Greenwald?

  The behavior, or at least the commercial output of one of the largest spenders in the industry. And I feel like the answer that I've gotten back is not really. Amazon's most like, you know, sort of solid lunch pail success have been this sort of like, kind of Sheridan-esque, slightly red tinged.

• 30:12Chris Ryan?

  Bellamy's like called them the guy with the gun shows, Reacher, Jack Ryan, Bosch.

• 30:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, Terminalist. Like, these shows are very successful for them. I believe all of them predate Jen Psalke taking the big job. So they are not things that she could hang her hat on necessarily. And that will go on. Will this affect the big spends that didn't get the return on investment like Wheel of Time, or Lord of the Rings, or Citadel? I don't know. I mean, now they're just going to pour a lot of that money into making a Bond universe, right? So, and I think regardless of the org chart stuff, the impression that Amazon gives for, you know, in this town is that everything is decided by committee anyway.

• 30:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:47Andy Greenwald?

  And to answer your last question from before, which was like, why are any of these people making content anyway when they want to go sell paper towels in space? It's like, it is about, it is about keeping consumers, particularly global consumers, in the ecosystem. So that when you do buy paper towels, you think of it while you're watching the Terminalist spinoff and maybe to mop up the arterial blood that's all around because you've been watching these shows. Yeah. And so you make supplemental purchases once you're within it and you, and you stay on that capitalist team, basically, right? Like, it just keeps you, keeps you locked in.

• 31:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, I think that, I think that they want the same experience that people largely have with Netflix of right now, which is that they associate Netflix with turning their television on.

• 31:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 31:37Chris Ryan?

  And I think that that is, you're trying to get to a place where that is, that is essentially the association people have with your product. I guess it's just, it's troubling. It's also just maybe it shouldn't be surprising at all that you could, you could tell me that within 10 years, the three things on my Apple TV are going to be Apple, Netflix and Amazon.

• 31:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 32:00Chris Ryan?

  Cause that's the only places that survived.

• 32:01Andy Greenwald?

  What about Angry Birds?

• 32:03Chris Ryan?

  Uh, trying to think of what else I have on my Apple TV that's pretty sick. Uh, YouTube.

• 32:09Andy Greenwald?

  I bet you don't have Crunchyroll.

• 32:11Chris Ryan?

  I don't.

• 32:12Andy Greenwald?

  Well, come over sometime.

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• 33:15Chris Ryan?

  Um, let's talk about White Lotus. Let's actually get into some, some actual text reading.

• 33:19Andy Greenwald?

  I'm really excited to talk about this.

• 33:20Chris Ryan?

  I'm excited to hear from you. So you, you were like, I'm fired up. I really want to go off on this. So, uh, penultimate episode of this season. We have really finally the, the, our team of researchers got back to us finally and they're like, sirs, it is an eight-episode season. I know that we've been like This is 111? What is happening? Um, and it was, I would say

• 33:44Chris Ryan?

  If you took this episode and showed it to me at any time over the last six weeks, I would not be able to just say that was definitely the penultimate episode of an HBO show. You know, there was obviously some, there was an element of a denouement to the Rick storyline. But for the most part, I feel like this has been a very slow boil season. Partially, I feel like I'm saying that because we are, we have some awareness of like a pretty big crime that is committed at the beginning of the season, which is teased. So I think maybe that has impacted some of how I've watched it, although you can start to see breadcrumbs leading to a couple of different places. Before we get into the actual like ones and zeros here, what did you, what did you think of the episode?

• 34:26Andy Greenwald?

  I loved this episode. I loved it. I loved watching it. I've loved thinking about it since I watched it. I've rewatched parts of it and it has continued my late season zag in thinking that this is shaping up to be a pretty excellent and I think underappreciated season of television. Now, I'm not trying to retcon my own reactions. Like I thought the first episode was really fun, really engaging, excited to see these great new actors playing these broad characters and just generally happy to be back in a, in a White Lotus resort. I stand by my in the moment feelings that those middle episodes were sort of confusingly

• 35:08Andy Greenwald?

  inert at times and, and, and, and what, you know, I think what we, we reiterated a few times was that like, none of the central conflicts seemed to be evolving in any way. They were sort of stuck there. And I feel like I've earned the right to say this again. I haven't said it in a while. That is a feature, not a bug that I don't think I had appreciated about this season. All seasons of The White Lotus and particularly all Mike White shows are interested in Buddhism. We got dinged by some good faith listeners for not mentioning enlightened when we, when we were sort of saying something similar last week, which in my defense, I, I was not a, I was not enlightened to enlightened when it was on. That was right as Grantland was kicking off, I think. And it kind of fell into the Sons of Anarchy bucket.

• 35:52Andy Greenwald?

  Shows could not be more different, but shows where I was like, oh, they're on and I have all this other stuff to catch up on. But I bring that up just to say that like Buddhism is a constant in, in Mike White's work. And the realization in this episode particularly that Tim,

• 36:11Andy Greenwald?

  Is stuck in, you know, there's a Buddhist word for what he's stuck in, which is a bardo, right? It's the intermediate state between death and rebirth. There's a period of transition and potential for liberation.

• 36:24Chris Ryan?

  I think I learned about that on Severance, yes.

• 36:26Andy Greenwald?

  This is also, on what's that now? I thought you were gonna be like, oh, George Saunders' book, Lincoln in the Bardo. No, you're man of the people, friends of Eddie Coyle over here. I get it. This is not a new concept for White Lotus either. I didn't remember this, but then in thinking about this and reading a little bit, I'd forgotten that when Sydney Sweeney's character shows up in the first season, she's wearing a sweatshirt that says Bardo University, which is not a misprint for Bard College. That was intentional, that I think that Mike White, and he's probably talked about this in interviews I haven't even seen or don't remember, but a resort is a liminal space in and of itself, and a vacation is a liminal space in your life.

• 37:09Andy Greenwald?

  So for Tim to have absolute ruin at the other end of a telephone, at the other end of the flight home, and being perched in it and just stuck, truly stuck, unable to tell anyone and unable to tell his son this episode, fantasizing about killing himself, about killing everyone, that is pretty profound existential stuff that does not track with any kind of normal expectation, particularly of a Sunday Night HBO show of week-to-week development and action. So I think, and I'll quit monologuing for a second, but like, I do think, I do think that this was a, I think it was a beautiful episode, I think it was profound at times,

• 37:52Andy Greenwald?

  and I think it was a really useful reminder that Mike White just fundamentally does not operate like most creators at his level. He's just, he like got backdoored into this role by fixing it, by like putting a body in the beginning of it, and then Casey calling him and being like, can you save my Sunday night schedule during COVID? Like, he doesn't play by the rules that he is expected to. And even like a Craig Mazin, who we're gonna be talking about soon with Last of Us, he has, he's commercially minded in terms of how he builds the character and builds the episode act outs, and Mike White is just still kind of treating television writing the way some people treat like a worry stone, like a little thing in your pocket that you rub and you rub and you rub, and who knows if you ever get a breakthrough or not.

• 38:35Chris Ryan?

  So you think of this show as more of an accidental blockbuster?

• 38:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, but I think it and I think it wears the clothes and I do want to talk about the clothes because we should be doing a shirt ranking this season. The shirts are elite. Like, everyone was like, oh, Lachlan's shirt sold out the other week. Can we talk about Gary's shirt? Those rich oranges and browns and yellows? Unbelievable.

• 38:58Andy Greenwald?

  But, yes, it has that, like, you know, it has the the brand tie-ins and the away luggage and the fantasy element and the and the sort of, you know.

• 39:07Chris Ryan?

  And fan casting it and, you know, getting excited about where the next season is going to be, etc.

• 39:12Andy Greenwald?

  Totally, but like the contours of it kind of remind me, in terms of development, like intentionally so. It reminds me of therapy more than it reminds me of a television show in that these characters talk about their problems and are stuck in their problems. And maybe they learn to observe or note their problems. But do they change their behavior? Will they change before they go back to their lives? Probably not, and that might lead to feelings of dissatisfaction, I think, with what we're accustomed to getting from our television shows that don't usually just mirror the stubborn permanence of our actual lives.

• 39:52Chris Ryan?

  Well, okay, so using the language of therapy, let's talk about a series of breakthroughs and false breakthroughs that happened on this episode. Obviously, the big one would be Rick finally getting his Adigo Montoya moment, seeing Scott Glenn, getting his confrontation with him. Not quite getting maybe the emotional response that he wanted, but obviously getting to some point where he was like, I'm not gonna, I'm not, violence is not the answer here. Vengeance in this way is not the answer. He does kick over Scott Glenn's character's chair, but that's the extent of the sort of muscle he uses. And then he and Frank, his compatriot played by Scott, Sam Rockwell,

• 40:36Chris Ryan?

  who might be stealing the season, run off into the Bangkok night and have a pretty normal Wednesday night.

• 40:43Andy Greenwald?

  In Bangkok?

• 40:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, in Bangkok. And, you know, it all ends with this coke binge party with with a bunch of girls. And, you know, at one point, Rick is offered a line and he just sort of is smiling at the camera. And I saw.

• 41:01Chris Ryan?

  Walton Goggins was like, this is this whole season, I've just been getting my muscles ready for this smile.

• 41:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 41:08Chris Ryan?

  About like finding peace with this character. And I, I thought that was interesting. I saw my colleague Andrew Grotararo was like, I feel like I'm watching a different show on Twitter. He said that about the Goggins quote. And I have a tendency almost, I tend to agree with Andrew where I was like, oh, I didn't take completion from that moment. You know, I didn't take

• 41:29Andy Greenwald?

  I did.

• 41:30Chris Ryan?

  Serenity from that moment. I think I, maybe he's, he's in a serene place for now. But I think that there's like a lot of Rick is going to be in the last episode of the show.

• 41:41Andy Greenwald?

  I'll, I'm just planting flags all over the place. I think Rick is dying in the finale. Uh, and I think his smile of enlightenment is why.

• 41:52Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, I, and I don't mean

• 41:53Chris Ryan?

  Because of what he did at that house?

• 41:55Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I do think it is odd that he, uh, said who he was. He didn't say his name, but he said who his mother was. So I imagine he is in some way traceable. And then he, they escape into the night, but he is still escaping back to the White Lotus Kosemui, which is owned by Kun Jim. Uh, and Kun Jim's wife knows that he's staying there. Um, so I do think that, that there may be some security muscle coming to get, extract him, to use a Russo Brothers word. Um, so I, that, but also I think, and I, and I don't mean to say that I think that, um, Mike White's view of enlightenment means instant death for those who actually achieve it. I do think that the smile was one of

• 42:41Andy Greenwald?

  a letting go of self, a letting go of what he had defined the self and of worldly, not needs, but like, it's, it's, it's very interesting to watch the twin poles of Rick and Frank over these three episodes where Frank's serenity and his self-awareness and his sobriety that got That turned into a meme, a Goggins meme that will outlive this show and probably certainly outlive Rick, was so easily flipped, right? And that this is seems like a different level of sobriety, even if he's still drinking whiskey like it's water. I think that Goggins' performance is astonishing.

• 43:23Andy Greenwald?

  And by the way, last night, I don't think you watched Gemstones right afterwards. I did. And I mean, it's the Shohei Ohtani of Sunday night. Because for people who just let White Lotus roll into Gemstones, this episode begins with Goggins' baby billy character, water skiing naked, just hanging and flapping in the wind. So it is really a journey with this actor. But I absolutely felt the intensity and the gravity of the character's baggage, and I did feel it physically lift from him. I mean, I think it was an incredibly grounded and like physicalized performance, and I thought that smile was, I found it really moving.

• 44:06Andy Greenwald?

  And I found it really, not just moving, like, I found that the collision with Kun Jim to be really significant and impactful. And I wonder if a large swath or just a notable percentage of Sunday Night White Lotus viewers were like, that's it? He had a gun. What, that's all we're getting?

• 44:26Chris Ryan?

  I wasn't like, that's it? He had a gun because I wanted him to shoot him in the head. I, I think that Rick's been an interesting, sort of, honestly, almost like the figurehead of the show this year for me. Like, regardless of how much fun I'm having with the Rat Lifts and the girls' trip, like, his story was very obscured for the first four or five episodes, although I think people were starting to put together like his obvious interest, his like, the story about his father, et cetera. Like, you know, it was starting to become clear. And then, because... He is part of a plotline that we usually don't get in White Lotus, which is this outside kind of adventure, outside of the walls of the resort, or even really adjacent to the resort.

• 45:11Chris Ryan?

  He sort of has become the kind of flagship character for me this season. And I love Goggins. And I think that these have been the most exciting sequences and scenes. And they're the moments where I'm like, oh, my God, I can't feel anything beneath my feet. Like, what's happening now? What's gonna happen next? Is Frank gonna know any of her titles? Or like, what is gonna happen?

• 45:34Andy Greenwald?

  Really.

• 45:35Chris Ryan?

  But I think that there's an element to which this season feels like there's less overlap in a real way of the different guests. And I don't know if I have the actual data to back that up. And so that these almost feel like a collection of short stories that are happening at the same time, rather than one story that involves six to eight people. Obviously, if there's this cathartic, violent event in the last episode that brings together everybody, I'll have all of that to contend with. But that, I think if I had to articulate the thing where I'm like, I'm getting like a 33% charge after seeing certain storylines, it's because I don't feel like they are necessarily interlocking with other ones.

• 46:20Andy Greenwald?

  Let me do a very challenging judo podcast move, which is I want a yes and and yes but. I think on an entertaining entertainment television level, it's an incredibly valid critique and something that sets the season apart from other seasons. And I think something we had talked about in past weeks as well. Has Belinda even laid eyes on the Ratliff's? Or surprisingly, even like the girls' trip? Like, they are in different shows. And I think that has decreased. There's a lot of missed opportunity for character interaction and energy trade offs, you know, that there otherwise could have been. Although like the Ratliff's going to the Gary party, like there are some.

• 47:03Andy Greenwald?

  But to your point, it is definitely, definitely lacking this season. I think the argument to be made why that's intentional. Is because this whole season does seem to be more explicitly about the prison of the self. And so every one of these characters is just at sea in like a personal pain kayak. And not really on a large party yacht and that there's something to be said about. And there's something that is attempting to be said about that circumstance within it.

• 47:31Andy Greenwald?

  That I find kind of interesting, like, we won't spoil it, but I think it's relevant. Just to mention, like, we're going to talk about Mobland in a minute in the first episode of Mobland. And in Mobland, there is a scene near the end of the episode when a character pulls a gun surprisingly on another character and against all logic and against all laws of household maintenance, frankly, fires the gun in a very showy and dramatic way. And that is a scene that is crafted to maximize audiences gasping and entertainment and like, what the fuck, right? And going for the jugular in like a very, very intense way.

• 48:16Andy Greenwald?

  White Lotus is just seems much more concerned with emotions and feelings that are more relevant to our everyday lives and less easily translated into entertaining television like contentment instead of happiness or morality instead of enrichment. I mean, like, the Belinda circumstance where Gary's like, I'll give you $100,000 and we'll both be at peace here. And Zion's like, take it. And I think that, you know, on-

• 48:43Chris Ryan?

  But he's also like, the alternative is that he's going to come after you.

• 48:46Andy Greenwald?

  Right. And on Mobland, you take it. But in White Lotus, like, being hung up on that and being like, wait, this is actually a moment for me, an inflection point in my life about how I want to live, if it's worth living, if I make these choices. And it's going to play, I mean, we'll see what happens next week. There is gunfire, as we said, this is still an entertaining show. But it is giving some, it is holding space for some deep moral conviction, which I think is, again, kind of hard to communicate on TV and might not be to everyone's taste. And then I think also the brilliance of the show is- Some of that, some of that gets washed away in a tide of rosé.

• 49:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I think intellectually and spiritually and emotionally and philosophically, I find the show incredibly stimulating still. Like, and I obviously like enjoy scene to scene, you know, we're talking about critiquing like minor things on somebody who's already made the final four. Like, I'm not really trying to like, say that like I'm out on White Lotus at all, as much as it's been a, an odd experience to have the show be, and it usually is, but, you know, I think the first season had much more broad comic elements.

• 49:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 49:58Chris Ryan?

  I think the second season had a real feeling of like, kind of melancholy on we about being in this incredibly historically relevant beautiful place and feeling so empty inside.

• 50:12Andy Greenwald?

  But there was also campiness and violence and, you know, it had a whole other life.

• 50:18Chris Ryan?

  And cool, I mean, it had Coolidge, it had like, like 20% of any given episode was Coolidge making hay, like, out of any scene she was in. And I'm surprised to be here in season three, saying like, oh, like, I kind of do miss that aspect of the show. Because it wasn't always my favorite, maybe in the moment, you know, I like Tanya a lot, but like, I sometimes would find it a little bit,

• 50:47Chris Ryan?

  like the juxtaposition of Tanya's experience and other characters' experience was a little harsh. But yeah, I'm not trying to say that like in any way like I'm let down by this season as much as I'm still sort of sorting out how I feel about it as like a season as a whole, even if I've enjoyed the episodes individually. We could talk about a couple of other plot lines here.

• 51:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I want to talk about.

• 51:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, let's talk about Piper, because I thought that that had a real beautiful ambiguity to it. I think everybody's got their, their various reads on it. Because of what Lachlan has experienced or conducted over the course of this season, like, anytime he's in bed with a sibling, you're gonna get, we're gonna go to replay, you know, if you know what I mean. And so Piper and Lachlan have gone to the monastery for the night. She's going to have this one experience that her mother wants her to have before she signs up for a year-long gap year living at this monastery and Lachlan offers to come with her. And he seems to take to it more than she does, or rather. He wants to join her in this experience. And as soon as he expresses that, and it's a, it's a great scene.

• 51:52Chris Ryan?

  She's just like, yeah, no. Like she doesn't say that, but she's just like, okay, well, we'll talk about in the morning. And, and it's kind of like backs away from this guy, her brother, who she's basically needed as a security blanket this entire season. What did you make of that scene?

• 52:09Andy Greenwald?

  I think one of the more radical, quietly radical things of the season is that it takes this concept of the fallacy of the self, which is baked into Buddhism and has been repeated in various iterations over the course of the season and kind of extrapolates it to the Western mind and the Western construction of self. And that leads us all the way back to Therapy Island. And no, there's no greater driver of our sense of self or the prison of the self in our lives, in our society than family and our allegiances to family and our obligations to family and the modeling we get from families. And I think the, the creation of the Ratliff's as like a toxic silo, uh, and then dumping them in this place has been really fascinating.

• 52:53Andy Greenwald?

  And, and it's led to some jokes and it's led to some memes and it's led to exactly what you're saying. Sort of brilliantly and subversively being like, wait, are they gonna give each other handies now? Like what's happening here? But in effect, what we're seeing is, I mean, Saxon's disillusionment is happening in real time in a pretty compelling way. But Piper being the only one who has been fairly clear about her desire and her desire is to get the fuck away from them.

• 53:20Chris Ryan?

  She's also the only one who's stayed sober this entire time, pretty much.

• 53:23Andy Greenwald?

  And to remove herself from it. Now, is she free of the self or the construction of family? No, because she tricked her parents to coming with her to, in a sense, give her permission to do the thing that she, legally an adult, already wants to do. So she is trapped to a degree. But the saddest part of it, I guess, is, and it makes me worried about the finale as well, is the Lachlan part of it. And there's elements of Lachlan that I think have reminded me and other people of Fred Heckinger's character, who Sydney Sweeney, you know, berates into a- A closet in season one and ends up kind of the only one who's free on permanent vacation rowing. Right. And is that's the best case scenario, I guess, for for Locky here.

• 54:06Andy Greenwald?

  Because what we see in this isn't necessarily, and you could see it this way if you want, that he wants to do his siblings. It's that he is so empty, he has nothing else and nothing else has been modeled for him. I think the scene when he wolf's down the food is important because he's just.

• 54:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he's like, I don't really have an opinion. I thought I didn't want this, but when you asked me to want it, I like inhaled it.

• 54:28Andy Greenwald?

  And I'm hungry. I'm just hungry for something. And what we're seeing over the course of these episodes is, you know, Tim wants to kill his family to free himself or to free them from their shared obligation of pain. Lachlan, I guess, to a degree, Saxon, wants to fuck their family. At least Piper's just like, no, thank you. No, thank you. And I feel like it's an interesting story vein to be exploring because, you know, every time I open the New York Times, there's either an article about a letter responding to or a book review about a book being like emancipate yourself from your parents. It's the only responsible thing to do.

• 55:10Andy Greenwald?

  It is, but I kind of love the artistic way in which the show isn't about that, but it is becoming, it's revealing itself to be about that dynamic. And then in terms of Piper, not Piper, Parker Posey.

• 55:30Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like we don't give, I'm definitely, I'm definitely gassing up Mike White in this episode. He doesn't need it, but there's an artistry to what he does that is often hidden in kind of directness. And I think building to a place where Parker Posey is at the party and she's like, well, I can get you away from this man. You're only with him because he's rich. When when we know she is foreshadowing her own circumstance.

• 55:55Andy Greenwald?

  It's like, it's like having someone do a magic trick in front of you. We're like, okay, I know I'm at a magic show, but look, you did find my card. It was so beautifully revealed. And I also want to call out, I did re-watch this. When the woman says, "I love him," Parker Posey's face does no less than 16 distinct movements and flinches. Like, it is, I can't imagine how much fun they had in the edit bay. Just watch, freeze frame that scene. When she takes this news in, she takes it in in her jaw, her lips, her nostrils, her eyes, her forehead. Elite face acting.

• 56:27Chris Ryan?

  I liked the fact that all of those kids, well, actually, especially Saxon and Piper, are defining themselves very clearly at such a young age. Like, Saxon's like, "If I'm not successful in business, I literally have no other hobbies." I have nothing else, you know? And Piper has sort of defined herself in opposition to her family. And she needs Lachlan as like some sort of comfort in this world, but like, for the most part, is like, "I reject your materialism. I reject your Judeo-Christian, Southern way of doing things and way of being." And the second anyone wants to join her on that journey, she's like, "Well, I don't want this."

• 57:11Chris Ryan?

  Like, it's not necessarily Buddhism that she's attracted to, it's opposition.

• 57:16Andy Greenwald?

  It's a great observation. And as a, as a great man, my old New York therapist used to say, you know, love and hate are-

• 57:22Chris Ryan?

  I really, I mean, I regret not going to therapy for many reasons, but apparently, understanding season three of White Lotus is number one.

• 57:29Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it is, it helps that love and hate are so deeply connected because they both bind you to someone. Like, you can love someone or you can hate them, but either way, they're motivating your thoughts. And that is Piper's response here. I mean, she, she, she wants to get away, but she's eager to have her brother help her. They're sitting at the dinner table, and it, it doesn't actually say, I don't think, that they're under some sort of silence.

• 57:53Chris Ryan?

  I don't think anybody's talking at dinner, so I think that's why they're probably just trying to observe the ritual, yeah.

• 57:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, there's some sort of expectation. And so, the, the person who's theoretically on a similar mission smiles at her, and she smiles back, but she's immediately then pulled back into, "You're embarrassing me. What are you doing?" Eat the food or whatever to her brother, which is how they probably have behaved at restaurants with their family for years. It pulls you back in-

• 58:16Chris Ryan?

  What do you think he was scarfing down there?

• 58:17Andy Greenwald?

  In a, in a, in a comfortable way.

• 58:19Chris Ryan?

  What do you think he was eating there?

• 58:21Andy Greenwald?

  It looked like a rice ball. I didn't really see the spice element.

• 58:24Chris Ryan?

  What's the big deal? Yeah.

• 58:26Andy Greenwald?

  You know, that, do you think that there was some hidden chilies in there? Or is just, or, or at that moment that the rice ball hit, did he remember what happened on the yacht again? Cause that, those memories keep rolling.

• 58:39Chris Ryan?

  Have you seen their speculation online that Lachlan, in fact, did not take MDMA that night? That he like faked it?

• 58:47Andy Greenwald?

  Palmed it or something? I've not seen that particular speculation. Was that on Breitbart? Was that on?

• 58:52Chris Ryan?

  It's on the Mobland Reddit.

• 58:54Andy Greenwald?

  Steve Bannon's War Room? How did you, oh, last thing. Speaking of giving Mike White even more flowers, even though now he's covered in them. I have not been reading the online chatter, so I don't know if this was predicted weeks ago, but I genuinely was surprised that the Russian guys were behind the robbery in that moment. I was. It never occurred to me. Wasn't thinking about it.

• 59:16Chris Ryan?

  You're a newborn deer, aren't you?

• 59:17Andy Greenwald?

  I thought that was artfully revealed. Has that been just been obvious to everyone?

• 59:20Chris Ryan?

  The Russians committing crimes?

• 59:23Andy Greenwald?

  Hey, I just read the news and apparently they're great. They're our friends now.

• 59:27Chris Ryan?

  If I wind up getting pushed out a window before the next pod.

• 59:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but it's a window like Lori's window, which looks scary, but it's actually.

• 59:35Chris Ryan?

  Uh, there had been, I mean, I, that's just a, I, I think that the Valentine thing had been kind of tipped a little bit beforehand. Yeah.

• 59:44Andy Greenwald?

  I like, I, I like that reveal. I liked it. Lanny and Guy talk. Moog, Moog runs a tight, tight ship. That was a tough, that was a tough, tough talk from her.

• 59:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:53Andy Greenwald?

  About how violence, I mean, I, I must say though, Chris, like I know you and I don't want to put you on blast here, but I do feel like if, if you were Guy Talk's age and you were single and in the market and a woman was just like, the thing you don't understand, Chris, is that violence and fighting are a natural part of life. I think you would propose before the dessert course came. I feel like, I feel like that is an appealing feature for you.

• 1:00:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I, I feel bad for that kid. I don't think he's got the hand he needs to, uh, to close that. Um, it'll be.

• 1:00:28Chris Ryan?

  I I have found the Guy Talk and Mook plotline to be a bit

• 1:00:33Chris Ryan?

  farther down the road than the rest of the stories, you know, like, do you feel like that? You're you're painting a really like interesting picture of this entire season and how all these things are speaking to one another. Do you see that with this these two characters?

• 1:00:46Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I I no, I I care for them and I'm not bullish on Guy Talk's future in any career, let alone being on life.

• 1:00:57Andy Greenwald?

  I would love to see that storyline turn into something other than what the default setting for local staff tends to be in White Lotus shows, which is they just get absolutely pancakes.

• 1:01:08Chris Ryan?

  Railroaded, yeah.

• 1:01:10Andy Greenwald?

  It seems like we're headed that way again, and it's not necessarily like that's not that seems like a fairly accurate storyline story beat to keep hitting, but I would like something slightly different if possible.

• 1:01:22Andy Greenwald?

  But I don't, I definitely don't expect it.

• 1:01:26Andy Greenwald?

  And then, yeah.

• 1:01:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you're right. The girl strip is the only thing we haven't really hit.

• 1:01:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:32Andy Greenwald?

  Tough talk at dinner. By the way, go to a different restaurant. That'll alleviate the mood.

• 1:01:37Chris Ryan?

  Where would you go?

• 1:01:38Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know. Go take a go down by the beach and have some seafood like when they open the menu. I'm like, what new surprises do you think will be awaiting you in there?

• 1:01:48Chris Ryan?

  Sue, is White Lotus all inclusive?

• 1:01:50Andy Greenwald?

  Wow. Uh, great question. I

• 1:01:54Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know. You think they're just running a tab the whole time?

• 1:01:56Chris Ryan?

  I think I would find young Andy hitting the the hotel restaurant a couple of times.

• 1:02:00Andy Greenwald?

  It's not, it's not all inclusive. I'm sure it's not all inclusive. That's why why else would they be upselling the bottles of rosé, you know?

• 1:02:07Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, I guess you're right. So, yeah, I thought that that fight scene was dynamite. I love following Lori out into the night, going to the to the fights.

• 1:02:18Andy Greenwald?

  They're all so well cast. Bib was just eating in that scene, even when only Carrie Coon eats on screen.

• 1:02:22Chris Ryan?

  I almost wish the fight had happened earlier in the season because I would have liked more stuff like that and more getting into the real history of these people rather than pretending to be such tight friends and kind of sniping a little bit behind each other's backs. But it was fantastic. And they're going to be the three that I think I remember the most from the season. I say that without having seen the final one. Any other thoughts before we move on?

• 1:02:45Andy Greenwald?

  I would say that also Therapy Brain would agree with Jacqueline's observations, but probably not best to deliver them like poison.

• 1:02:55Andy Greenwald?

  Darts from a blowgun by your close friend? You know what I mean? Like, we are all the architects of our own disappointment. Uh, and we do choose things that are bad, even if they're familiar, but, you know, you're on holiday. I mean, chill out, order another, order another mango and sticky rice.

• 1:03:10Chris Ryan?

  This isn't even all-inclusive, you know?

• 1:03:12Andy Greenwald?

  She's paying for it still.

• 1:03:13Chris Ryan?

  We still have to settle the amex.

• 1:03:15Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, I, I, I did think the friction was really good. Do you wanna take, is it, do you, are, do you wanna talk at all about what we might, we think might happen? What the, what the obvious fault lines are?

• 1:03:23Chris Ryan?

  I think your, I think your guess that, that, uh, Scott Gweng gang does not just chill in Bangkok, uh, after that incident is probably right on.

• 1:03:33Andy Greenwald?

  Um. Yeah, because what's interesting, and there's so much, clearly, I think so much is interesting, but Kun Jim is just like, I used to be the kind of person who would do anything, and then I realized I am not that person.

• 1:03:44Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I have to ask you about this before we go. Uh, did Greg, Greg never told Chloe that story?

• 1:03:52Andy Greenwald?

  I had no idea what to make of that. Uh.

• 1:03:56Chris Ryan?

  I think the implication is Greg has basically indicated to Chloe, like, I'm gonna kill this kid, but she's gotta set up a pretense for it?

• 1:04:05Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know. I mean, I, again, this is when the show is at its best. It's just like, everything happening in that scene is true, including that Amy Lou Wood is giving the facial reaction masterclass of the year. And I think, I think she might have the best career arc coming out of the show than anyone else. Um, but that, like, everything was true. They're like, don't kink shame. Also, you're not who you think you are. You're pretty fucked up, too. Um, also, I'm just trying to help out this guy. Also, I love him. Also, you're expendable. Also, I'm using you. Also, he's really good in that amazing shirt, just sitting there and glowering. I think that, I, my, my general feeling is,

• 1:04:49Andy Greenwald?

  I would be more surprised than not if Greg slash Gary behaves like a murdering psychopath in the finale. Um, I mean, he is.

• 1:04:59Chris Ryan?

  I think that he actually is, I don't think he was necessarily lying to Belinda.

• 1:05:03Andy Greenwald?

  I don't think he was either.

• 1:05:04Chris Ryan?

  He likes Thailand, he wants to stay here.

• 1:05:06Andy Greenwald?

  He wants no part of any of this.

• 1:05:08Chris Ryan?

  And he just, so, him, him getting deeply involved in a bunch of people who are leaving the next day and starting a lot of problems for himself, I find to be. Hard to believe, um, but, but, but it's, you know, maybe I'm wrong. I just, I thought Chloe setting up Gary as this, you know, sexually provocative, damaged man child was not the vibe I was getting from Gary's previous interactions with Chloe. He just seemed like a jealous guy.

• 1:05:41Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and he also didn't seem like someone who opens up particularly about anything.

• 1:05:46Chris Ryan?

  To Chloe, yeah.

• 1:05:47Andy Greenwald?

  To Chloe, and every episode is a day. So when did this great, um, unburdening occur?

• 1:05:53Chris Ryan?

  Well, he says to her, he was like, I want you to bring them here.

• 1:05:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:56Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and he's basically like, and that's a condition of this little arrangement we have going on.

• 1:06:01Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, we could find out that, you know, there's a bunch of bodies in the back of that house. Like that, that just could be what this is. I, I also think, I think that the Greg Gary storyline ends this season, um, one way or another. So there is a version of this where Guy Talk proves himself to be a crazy, dead eyed shot and capable of violence by shooting Gary and probably losing his job for it, or whatever else may happen.

• 1:06:27Chris Ryan?

  Fair, fair amount of guns coming to the hotel because you've got the owner's bodyguards, Scott Glenn's bodyguards, there's the gun that Guy Talk has. I guess Rick got rid of his gun, but like, yeah, there could be, the Russians have guns presumably, yeah.

• 1:06:43Andy Greenwald?

  And I, and then, and then there's the, what is Tim willing to do? What does he, he seems pretty into dying and not, not going home.

• 1:06:56Chris Ryan?

  Tim should go, as soon as Tim gets his phone back, he should go live on, uh, on X and appeal to President Trump for a pardon.

• 1:07:03Andy Greenwald?

  Oh my God, he, it would be so easy.

• 1:07:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:05Andy Greenwald?

  That's a really, really great point. Do you see your guy?

• 1:07:09Chris Ryan?

  Can we get into Mobland?

• 1:07:09Andy Greenwald?

  Your guy from OZ.com just got pardoned, like?

• 1:07:14Andy Greenwald?

  That's like, that's just, it's beyond parody at this point. It's incredible. Do you think I will ever get official clemency and forgiveness for my True Detective season one takes? Do you think that they will be receptive?

• 1:07:26Chris Ryan?

  No, dog.

• 1:07:29Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's safe to say that some members of the Ratla family will be staying in Thailand, at least one. But

• 1:07:34Chris Ryan?

  Perhaps forever?

• 1:07:35Andy Greenwald?

  Might not be the one that we think of. Yeah.

• 1:07:36Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:07:37Andy Greenwald?

  I'm excited. I'm all in on this season now.

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• 1:08:41Chris Ryan?

  All right, we don't have to spend a ton of time talking about this right now, but I wanted to bring up Mobland, which was released, I think, compared to a lot of other shows relatively under the radar, given the amount of star power that's involved with it. So, this is a series that has had a fascinating development story, one of the more interesting ones to me in recent times. It comes to us via Ronan Bennett, who is the creator and writer of Top Boy, and is, the first two episodes are directed by Guy

• 1:09:11Andy Greenwald?

  And Jackal too. Didn't he do Day of the Jackal?

• 1:09:13Chris Ryan?

  He did Jackal as well, yes. And the first two episodes are directed by Guy Ritchie. So that was one of the main reasons why I was interested in this. The other main reason is that it appeared, at least based on the And it was proven out in this episode that Tom Hardy is like playing a normal person. Now, a very violent, very morally dubious person. Yeah. But in terms of like the Tom Hardy, I'm Venom, I'm Al Capone, I'm, you know, using a voice and wearing a mask and obscuring myself. This is like closer to Tom Hardy in inception than we've had in a really long time. It's more like Tom Hardy in Locke or something like that. And I think he's dazzling in this show. This show is weird.

• 1:09:56Chris Ryan?

  Uh, you can feel a lot of different impulses going on with it. So I wanted to talk to you about this mostly because of the development story and the fact that it feels very much like the globalization of the Taylor Sheridan project. Yes. Um, it's, it was originally supposed to be called The Donovan's and it was somehow going to be a spinoff of Ray Donovan in England. It then was called, I believe, uh, The Fixer or The Associate or both at certain points. Um, it obviously has become its own thing. Uh, and it's very consciously, there's, it's from 101 Studios, which does all the Taylor Sheridan stuff. The title sequence looks exactly like. Exactly like. Kingston or Landman.

• 1:10:41Chris Ryan?

  Um, your guy David Glasser is a EP on this as well. Glasser is the producer, I think, uh, the casting director on this show. It works on a lot of the Taylor shows. So there's a real feel to that and you can tell that they want to make this both a London underground, a London underworld crime story and also a little bit of a succession-y crime family story. Which is essentially, uh, how they do most of the Taylor Sheridan shows where there's like a kind of, there's the war away and then there's the war at home stuff going on. Yep. Um, the show stars aforementioned Hardy, Pierce Brosnan as the patriarch of a London crime family.

• 1:11:21Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Helen Mirren in her second Paramount Plus show is stars as, uh, co-stars as Maeve, uh, Pierce Brosnan's wife. Patty Considine, one of our favorite actors, plays Kevin, who is, uh, the oldest son in this family or one of, one of the sons of this family. Uh, other notable people, Joanna Froggett from, uh, Downton Abbey plays Tom Hardy's Harry character's wife. Um, who else? Dana McTeer's coming. Janet McTeer is coming. So a star-studded cast with incredible pedigree behind the camera with Guy Ritchie and Ronan Bennett and Jez Butterworth wrote the first script with Ronan Bennett.

• 1:12:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:01Chris Ryan?

  Jez Butterworth just got done doing The Agency. And then we get this show, which like has its moments, but feels like the seventh episode of the third season of a show in some ways?

• 1:12:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yes and no. I'm curious about that take. I mean, broadly speaking, I want to say that like a moment ago, we're like, well, Amazon only has this and they spend money on this. And what are they? Like, whether you like it or not, kudos to Paramount for having a plan and sticking to it.

• 1:12:26Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:12:27Andy Greenwald?

  Like, this feels like a Paramount show. And I'm fascinated by how they make their books work if they do, because they throw so much money at talent to elevate extremely rote, often, material.

• 1:12:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:41Andy Greenwald?

  Now, your opinions may vary on Sheridan shows. You may like some more than others. You may not like them at all. I really ended up thinking The Agency was excellent. But there is a smeary sameness to a lot of this. It's not just Jez Butterworth writing on both of these shows with the same production team. It's that the British actor Alex Jennings shows up in the first episode of both Mobland and The Agency as someone who doesn't make it to the second episode. Like, it's, they have something that is working for them. And that is no small thing in this moment. Now.

• 1:13:10Chris Ryan?

  So the version of this show that is Tom Hardy as Michael Clayton of the London underworld is the show that I will watch for 15 years if they want to make it for me.

• 1:13:21Andy Greenwald?

  Agree.

• 1:13:22Chris Ryan?

  Him getting phone calls while he's driving around London and being like, I need you to do this. I need you to do this. My son was out last night with somebody he shouldn't have been. We need you to set up this meeting. We need you to get my maid's mother into a senior citizen home. Like, I'm just along for the ride the entire time. I love that he is, along with Bill Simmons, still dedicated to the plugged-in headphones revolution.

• 1:13:48Andy Greenwald?

  Well, both are powerful men who walk through cities.

• 1:13:51Chris Ryan?

  I think I found in this first episode, the Brosnan Mirren side of things to be like a different show, almost.

• 1:13:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. And frankly, a pretty uninteresting and brutal one. Like, I The best case scenario for something like this is a familiar milieu and like genre and material and vibe, and then it's elevated by the instrumentalists. And Tom Hardy is such a compelling actor, and he makes a million choices in every scene, and 900,000 of them are confounding and are opposite of what many actors would choose. He gets so quiet where most people would get big. He has such a mastery of like, fine motor skills as an actor and a delicacy, even though he's kind of a big, or at least he plays, you know, on screen, he comes across as a big guy. I'm with you.

• 1:14:39Andy Greenwald?

  I love his performance, and I really think there's no harm, no foul in making a show like that. I think his choices are super bizarre, like, over the last 10 years. Like, he hasn't really done much of anything, other than Venom movies and playing around with Peaky Blinders, and then he did make Josh Trank's post Fantastic Four COVID fiasco capone. I guess he has young kids, and he just likes staying at home, and I can relate to that.

• 1:15:03Chris Ryan?

  He said that he had been, he was looking for, he was like, "I'm old and I was tired of never being in the same place." So, like, I think that the-

• 1:15:09Andy Greenwald?

  So that makes sense.

• 1:15:10Chris Ryan?

  London is very, very good to some of these shows right now, yeah.

• 1:15:13Andy Greenwald?

  I would like to be cast on one of these shows and just live in London as well. I think that sounds amazing. But-

• 1:15:18Chris Ryan?

  "All right, Tom, what you gonna do today is you pull up in your Audi and you take out your phone, and then we're done."

• 1:15:24Andy Greenwald?

  Which phone? Which phone, mate? Three. Yeah, I mean, that stuff's fine. Pierce Brosnan is doing, I don't know what he's doing, honestly. It's some really weird choices. He, you know, he is an Irish actor. I guess he's doing an Irish accent, but it is, sometimes veers into Eastern European territory.

• 1:15:42Chris Ryan?

  But he is like the Jon Hamm of landman of this show. He's mostly talking to Tom Hardy on the phone.

• 1:15:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:48Chris Ryan?

  And he's like, he's going for it. And I don't know what, like, if I love, like, that vibe. And Miren is just, like, pickled. She's just walking around with a martini and being like, "You should fucking kill him."

• 1:15:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, you're making it sound cooler than it is. Like, I think that I am of, I basically came out of this with two, two seemingly divergent opinions that maybe aren't actually in opposition. One of which is- I was bummed out at the uninspired meanness of this show and of most shows now. And it is a little bit of a byproduct of Sheridan, but whether you like him or dislike him, Landman also spent 40% of its screen time about a mother and daughter bonding over getting their butts fit and taking elders to a strip club.

• 1:16:33Chris Ryan?

  Sorry, sorry you don't care about fitness.

• 1:16:35Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly. Like, there is not even the slightest twinkle or sparkle of wit or joy or humor in this, and I feel like the world is ugly enough, and for them to be doing this without wit or joy or frankly, much inspiration, like it feels pretty familiar territory. And to see our great, you know, Helen Mirren is one of our great actors, Pierce Brosnan is a treasure and is wonderful on screen, and I was reminded of a movie I love of his that is streaming on Peacock now called The Matador, which is like a, basically, I just did Bond for 10 years, now I'm gonna have some fun, where he sort of subverts his own role, and he's so vibrant and charismatic and fun, and in this, he's an old guy who shoots his friends in the heart.

• 1:17:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I was wondering whether that side of things might be the more of the Guy Ritchie side, because that had a little bit of like a bad gentleman feel.

• 1:17:25Andy Greenwald?

  But Guy Ritchie's stuff is glib.

• 1:17:27Chris Ryan?

  I know, but when you get, that's where I wonder whether there was like, not a behind-the-scenes tension or disagreement about how they were making this thing, but the stuff that's taking place in that big country manner and giving people shit about wearing my wellies and all that stuff, and people walking around drinking martinis all day long.

• 1:17:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that is Lord of the Manor Ritchie stuff.

• 1:17:48Chris Ryan?

  It feels a little bit more like it's happening in The Gentleman, whereas The Tom Hardy Show is him cruising all over London and getting into stuff, and that's, I think Guy Ritchie could make that show as well.

• 1:17:59Andy Greenwald?

  It's a good observation.

• 1:17:59Chris Ryan?

  But Ritchie has certainly started to like indulge in the like lifestyle brand of his stuff a little bit more.

• 1:18:06Andy Greenwald?

  But it definitely feels like Guy Ritchie did not have final cut over this, or was it, this was work for hire in a way, maybe his stuff isn't usually.

• 1:18:13Chris Ryan?

  I think he did the first two.

• 1:18:14Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I'm not even defending him, because I have issues with some of his stuff too, but like The Gentleman, I really enjoyed because it was winking, like at least it was having a bit of fun with what it was doing. And I appreciate that.

• 1:18:21Chris Ryan?

  It's so gonzo too, yeah. It's so over the top.

• 1:18:24Andy Greenwald?

  And, and this is, maybe it's just finding its tone, but the, the oppositional things that, that I was talking about before is one is I just thought it was kind of ugly and mean. But also, I will be watching the second episode.

• 1:18:36Chris Ryan?

  There you go.

• 1:18:37Andy Greenwald?

  Because Tom Hardy trying to maintain a fragile truce in a East London mob war is of interest to me. I did find myself, we, we can save the rest of our thoughts for watching a little bit more, but like, we have seen so, there are so many London crime pilots that we've watched in the last three years. And like, who, who are we to complain? I mean, we, we, it's genuinely what I want sometimes more than I want breakfast is London crime content. But I do think it would be simpler if they were just one shared London crime universe. So we didn't have to learn the new rules about who controls the fentanyl trade every time.

• 1:19:14Chris Ryan?

  I was also kind of bummed out. I was like, God, you guys really do not want fentanyl.

• 1:19:18Andy Greenwald?

  No, exactly. Like, listen to us. But what if instead of, you know, there's the other mob boss whose son goes missing?

• 1:19:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:26Andy Greenwald?

  Couldn't that have been Tracy Ullman from Black Doves? Like, and then we know chronologically where this is happening in London.

• 1:19:32Chris Ryan?

  It would be helpful.

• 1:19:33Andy Greenwald?

  And we know the-

• 1:19:33Chris Ryan?

  Hopefully when, when the tech companies have completely brought all other studios to their knees, they can just flatten all this. And we can have the, the Black Doves, Mobland, shared universe.

• 1:19:44Andy Greenwald?

  No, you have the London crime doomsday into the London crime secret wars. And then at the end of it, you just have the sacred timeline where we understand that the metro police are just uninterested in gun violence. If it happens between certain hours and certain regions of town and, and you understand that at any moment Ben Wishaw might be drinking champagne in one corner of the building. While Michael Fassbender rides his spy motorcycle.

• 1:20:08Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 1:20:08Andy Greenwald?

  But is actually just a struggling author in the other part of London. Like- Is it just me being old that I want that? I just think it would be simpler.

• 1:20:16Chris Ryan?

  No, I think you're right. It's just a question of whether we call it Mobland or Gangs of London.

• 1:20:19Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm. Hmm, well, I'll leave that to you.

• 1:20:23Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Uh, Andy, it was great seeing you today. So on Thursday's show, we'll probably hit the studio.

• 1:20:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 1:20:30Chris Ryan?

  We will hit the penultimate episode of The Pit.

• 1:20:32Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:20:34Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and maybe talk a little Top Chef, which we have not yet. But then again, like, those guys have been stuck in the studio for a long time now.

• 1:20:41Andy Greenwald?

  Truly.

• 1:20:42Chris Ryan?

  They're gonna let those kids see Toronto or what?

• 1:20:44Andy Greenwald?

  I have some thoughts about how the Shein Hard Wig Universal Company is spending its budgets and maybe how they've changed their budgets a little bit. But I was hoping that the, that the, uh, uh, Terlato family of wines could have kicked in enough for them to like, you know, see daylight.

• 1:21:00Chris Ryan?

  Well, Saratoga's having a big moment meme-wise right now. So maybe they've got a little bit, maybe their stock price went up.

• 1:21:06Andy Greenwald?

  And by the way, Dope Thief rolls on and I do wanna.

• 1:21:08Chris Ryan?

  I wanna keep talking about Dope Thief.

• 1:21:09Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe we'll get back to it till it's done, but I do wanna talk about that, too. There's, dare I say it, there's a little too much right now.

• 1:21:16Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Andy, great seeing you. Thank you to Kaia for producing. We'll be back with you guys on Thursday.

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