Noah Wyle on the Season Finale of ‘The Pitt’ and the Show’s Unexpected Success

Chris and Andy talk about the first episode of the new Jon Hamm show, ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ (12:48). Then they break down the season finale of ‘The Pitt’ and how this show hit the sweet spot between network and prestige TV (27:38) before they are joined by ‘Pitt’ star and executive producer Noah Wyle to talk about the making of Season 1 and honoring the medical community with the show (46:16). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Noah Wyle 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Welcome to the brand new Zach Lowe Show. That's right, I'm back to have the same in-depth NBA conversations you're used to. We're gonna talk about the games, yeah, the games, the X's and O's, the drama, the trades, the playoffs are coming up. And now, you get to see every episode in full on video on Spotify and on my own YouTube channel. Episodes drop every Monday and Thursday with a collection of guests you're gonna love, so make sure you follow and subscribe to the brand new Zach Lowe Show on Spotify or wherever you watch or listen to your podcasts. Let's go!

• 0:38Speaker 01

  I used to wonder what I missed any time I stepped out of the shop. But with AT&T Business Wireless, my signal stays strong no matter where the day takes me. Like right now, I'm meeting a photography client... ...out here. But I still have a reliable connection, even though I have no idea where I am right now.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  Keep your business connected with AT&T Business Wireless. Visit att.com/5g-network. When the connection matters, it has to be AT&T.

• 1:10Speaker 03

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

• 1:16Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com. And joining me on the roof of the pit, it's Andy Greenwald!

• 1:28Andy Greenwald?

  It's not just us up there today, buddy.

• 1:29Chris Ryan?

  No, man. What's going on, brother?

• 1:32Andy Greenwald?

  You wanna tease what's happening on today's podcast?

• 1:33Chris Ryan?

  It's a special one. Joining us today on The Watch, Noah Wiley. Dr. Robby himself from the pit is here. He's gonna talk to us a little bit about the first season and especially the finale. He was a pleasure to speak with. Noah is like, he's just such a guy, kind and genuine and sincere person. And it was just like immediately you could tell, like, he was, he was a real one.

• 1:55Andy Greenwald?

  It was awesome. And I also should say, you know, off-air, I do have a little red patch on my back that I was concerned about, and he was really kind.

• 2:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:03Andy Greenwald?

  Just take a quick look. You palpated a little bit, you know?

• 2:06Chris Ryan?

  Little bit of housekeeping. You can email us at [email protected]. Follow us on Instagram, thewatchpod underscore. You can watch us on Ringer-TV on YouTube. You can watch us also on Spotify. I have a lot of stuff, like, just kind of news and notes at the top. We're also gonna talk a little bit about Your Friends and Neighbors, a new show on Apple TV.

• 2:22Andy Greenwald?

  Plus, guess what?

• 2:23Chris Ryan?

  What?

• 2:23Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like there's some connective tissue between the pit and your friends and neighbors, and I'm excited to weave for you.

• 2:28Chris Ryan?

  This is what it's all about. It's all about me. It's about me kind of just dribbling the ball up the court and just making sure you're set up in the spot you like.

• 2:35Andy Greenwald?

  Here's the thing. Right before we hit record, we were joking about how we are entering the time of the offseason. Well, there's always an offseason. In whatever sports offseason it is, there's like a rash of videos of like Ben Simmons flexing and dunking in the gym. Be like, Ben Simmons is gonna be a problem this season.

• 2:53Andy Greenwald?

  My version of that was yesterday, you know, where I was just crushing tape. I was just watching show after show after show.

• 3:00Chris Ryan?

  You tried to get out of it by asking me to get a beer.

• 3:03Andy Greenwald?

  I did. I did. But then I felt like I was showing up for you regardless. So I just want you and our listeners to know.

• 3:10Chris Ryan?

  It's not for me. This is not like, you're not doing me emotional labor. Like, you get paid to do this podcast, right?

• 3:17Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it's an ongoing negotiation, but, you know, I believe in showing up regardless.

• 3:22Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Um, I want to talk to you about something a little bit outside of our purview.

• 3:27Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, okay. You're just gonna throw this to me. Okay.

• 3:30Chris Ryan?

  I mentioned this maybe at the end of last podcast, but I do think it's worth talking about.

• 3:34Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 3:35Chris Ryan?

  Which is the fact that a company called Colossus

• 3:40Andy Greenwald?

  Uh huh.

• 3:40Chris Ryan?

  has reanimated dire wolves, long extinct.

• 3:43Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, I did want to talk about this.

• 3:45Chris Ryan?

  And what this means for the Game of Thrones industrial content complex and also, you know, I mean, humanity, the fact that we can reanimate long extinct animals. And also, like, I need, I need to tell scientists something.

• 4:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 4:03Chris Ryan?

  I know you guys are-

• 4:03Andy Greenwald?

  You want to talk to camera, direct to camera?

• 4:05Chris Ryan?

  Right to you. I know you guys are under a little bit of fire right now, right?

• 4:09Andy Greenwald?

  That's fair.

• 4:10Chris Ryan?

  So I'm not trying to pile on and, and far be it from me on an episode where we're also talking to Noah Wiley, who has made an entire television show that's trying to stress the importance of objective medical fact. I'm not here to tell you guys how to do what you do. But if you are working at a company that's actively trying to reanimate dire wolves, and you're like, God, we got three of them. What a fucking huge win for us. And it's high fives and everybody, maybe you crack open a cold one.

• 4:40Chris Ryan?

  And somebody goes, hey, man, what should we name these dire wolves? I don't think Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi is the message you want to send. Cause that makes it feel like you kind of lost the tail on the dire wolf already. And then they're like, we've got a 3,000 acre farm. These dire wolves are just roaming. I'm like, this is how it starts, dog. It starts with Romulus and Remus and Khaleesi, not, this is how Jurassic Park starts.

• 5:07Andy Greenwald?

  We're gonna make a park, is what they're saying. Okay, so a couple of things. First of all, I really was surprised that of all the problems inherent in this, naming rights was your big one.

• 5:15Chris Ryan?

  I just think it's like, sometimes scientists, like, they dare, they dare nature to punch back.

• 5:21Andy Greenwald?

  I see. I thought you were saying that they should-

• 5:23Chris Ryan?

  And like, you don't have to give this dire wolf, like, two mythical names and one name from Game of Thrones.

• 5:29Andy Greenwald?

  You would have preferred like, Quicken.com wolf.

• 5:31Chris Ryan?

  No, just like, Spot, Archie, and Frank, you know?

• 5:37Andy Greenwald?

  I want to unpack all those choices.

• 5:39Chris Ryan?

  I think you, you limit the possibility of-

• 5:42Andy Greenwald?

  Of revolt.

• 5:43Chris Ryan?

  Of revolt. When you keep it to like, ah, come on, like, let's domesticate these dire wolves.

• 5:48Andy Greenwald?

  If Spartacus's name had been Jerry.

• 5:52Andy Greenwald?

  Problem solved.

• 5:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:54Andy Greenwald?

  You named him a sick name like Spartacus.

• 5:56Chris Ryan?

  Do you see what I'm saying?

• 5:56Andy Greenwald?

  I do.

• 5:57Chris Ryan?

  It's kind of like, it's like, I think Elon does this a lot where he'll like, get a product and then he's just like, it's the Cybertruck or whatever. And it's like, I don't know, you're pushing us towards Blade Runner 2 fast.

• 6:07Andy Greenwald?

  I see. Pump the brakes.

• 6:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:09Andy Greenwald?

  I'm with you on all of your points. Um, first thought, best thought, has anyone checked on Mallory?

• 6:15Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I haven't checked on her. I talked to her yesterday, but this didn't come up. Yeah.

• 6:19Andy Greenwald?

  Somehow this didn't come up. I've gone on a different-

• 6:22Chris Ryan?

  This is true, by the way. There's like, you can, now, also, I would say that there's a New Yorker article about this. I think there's a bunch of other articles. And then Slate wrote a, what's like, the problems with the dire wolf reanimation?

• 6:35Chris Ryan?

  They zagged.

• 6:36Andy Greenwald?

  I'm waiting for someone to do the problems with the dire wolf reanimation discourse.

• 6:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:41Andy Greenwald?

  What you, what everyone's getting wrong.

• 6:43Chris Ryan?

  About dire wolves? I didn't know that those were real things, by the way.

• 6:46Andy Greenwald?

  Dire wolves?

• 6:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:49Andy Greenwald?

  I can't pretend that I did either. First of all, I do think the dire wolves have been really silent about the impact.

• 6:57Chris Ryan?

  Well, they were extinct.

• 6:58Andy Greenwald?

  Some of Trump's recent executive actions. Oh, like, that's an excuse now?

• 7:02Chris Ryan?

  This is their first president.

• 7:06Andy Greenwald?

  That's true. I'm gonna segue in a way I was already going to. Same way with my second child.

• 7:12Andy Greenwald?

  But I've gone on a different journey with this because, you know, anyone who is a parent will relate to this, that like you basically spend a day as a parent, like, running a light dust buster through news and culture for anything you could potentially tell them.

• 7:26Chris Ryan?

  Oh, to like have something that, yeah, did you see Olivia Rodrigo did this?

• 7:30Andy Greenwald?

  Right. And then often then, six minutes later, it's just like, just the sounds of chewing, you know? So it's like, what else can we bring into this? So I was like, guys, funny story, you know, science, that class you don't like? Guess what those rascals have done now?

• 7:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:44Andy Greenwald?

  And older daughter thought it was interesting, thought the picture was cute. Younger daughter, at four in the morning,

• 7:54Andy Greenwald?

  I can't sleep. Okay, why? I was having no trouble. I can't sleep because of that thing you told me. I'm like, about Olivia Rodrigo dating Louis Partridge? She's like, the wolves.

• 8:10Chris Ryan?

  Because she thought they were outside?

• 8:11Andy Greenwald?

  She was so upset, I think, just on a, like, a conceptual existential level, that then I had to do a little more digging. And you under, these are not actually reanimated dire wolves, right?

• 8:20Chris Ryan?

  They like rearranged the DNA of gray wolves, right?

• 8:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, first of all, I love how blasé we are about that. Oh, it's just another jerk off DNA rearranging. Get back to me when you do something real, Poindexter. It's, it's not, no, yes, they were just like, what if these wolves had different colored fur? And then they're like, look, everyone, it's Prometheus. The dire wolf. Anyone have any notes? No, we're just gonna leave it here. No one said where the island was either, right?

• 8:51Chris Ryan?

  Where?

• 8:51Andy Greenwald?

  Like, it's not an island, but like, the park where they're keeping them? They're keeping it real quiet?

• 8:55Chris Ryan?

  I would imagine it's in Norway.

• 8:58Andy Greenwald?

  Well, you can imagine all you want, but they didn't say, you know, why? Mu Deng.

• 9:03Chris Ryan?

  What's that mean?

• 9:03Andy Greenwald?

  That guy got too popular. They don't want press and paparazzi coming to these dire wolves.

• 9:07Chris Ryan?

  Well, I don't even, I mean, these guys have like more, more space than I could even dream to have.

• 9:11Andy Greenwald?

  These wolves?

• 9:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:12Andy Greenwald?

  I know, do they? How much we pay, how much we pay for square footage? Did you see Colossus's hit list for what's coming next?

• 9:19Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 9:20Andy Greenwald?

  So apparently on their docket are the dodo bird, which is cute.

• 9:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:25Andy Greenwald?

  You know, I mean, it's, I feel like that could trend.

• 9:28Chris Ryan?

  I think we need to just worry about the birds we do have.

• 9:30Andy Greenwald?

  Like, because they're coming for us?

• 9:31Chris Ryan?

  Or because they're like, you know, they're, they get hunted, they're, they go extinct, like, yeah.

• 9:36Andy Greenwald?

  And 5G power lines, right?

• 9:40Andy Greenwald?

  You said it, but I'm not shaking my head. Oh, and the woolly mammoth they're interested in.

• 9:46Chris Ryan?

  Now, where would you put that guy?

• 9:47Andy Greenwald?

  Where?

• 9:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:48Andy Greenwald?

  Like, on Earth?

• 9:49Chris Ryan?

  Could you engineer a woolly mammoth to be like, I'm in Miami?

• 9:52Andy Greenwald?

  Now I'm thinking about, like, what was that? We brought this up before, but in the 80s, there was that surf brand that had like all the animated animals surfing? Like, the monkey on the, so, so now I'm thinking about like, what if a woolly mammoth could surf? Listen, if that was our problem in the world, these woolly mammoths like the beach too much.

• 10:09Chris Ryan?

  Well, he just wants to be somewhere where entrepreneurship is valued.

• 10:14Andy Greenwald?

  I kind of, we have to move on, but I do want to know about like, your point about this is the only president they've known? Like, do you think someone has to sit down and explain like founder culture to these wolves? About like, here's how the economy works now? It doesn't.

• 10:29Chris Ryan?

  Does anyone know that?

• 10:30Andy Greenwald?

  It doesn't, but, um, that's awesome.

• 10:32Chris Ryan?

  So that was my big thing.

• 10:35Andy Greenwald?

  Any other disciplines that you'd like to lecture before we get into?

• 10:38Chris Ryan?

  No, I was wondering whether, like, you would sort of say just to psychologically prepare yourself for Last of Us? And that's coming this Sunday, we'll talk about it on Monday, whether or not... Uh, I, I see you nodding cut out of the corner of my eye in a way that means you don't want to talk about this. But I will say that I rewatched Andor with my mom.

• 10:56Andy Greenwald?

  I, I love talking about things you do with your mom. What are you talking about?

• 10:58Chris Ryan?

  So we, we rewa- I was like, not gonna do that. I don't typically go back and rewatch seasons, but I thought she would really get a kick out of it. And I did find it helpful. And I do resent, uh, but also acknowledge the usefulness of refreshing yourself about a show that was on two to three years ago.

• 11:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 11:17Chris Ryan?

  But I don't know if I'm gonna do that with Last of Us.

• 11:21Chris Ryan?

  I feel like I remember pretty clearly what happened.

• 11:23Andy Greenwald?

  You sort of get it. I think the other thing that might make the, might make a small distinction, and yes, we will be talking about that show on Monday. Is that from everything I've gathered about the second season, it picks up five years later. It is not a what's the next second of these people's lives.

• 11:39Chris Ryan?

  You should play the video game with your younger daughter, see how that goes over.

• 11:42Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just, just thought you'd find this an interesting conversation. You know those mushrooms on the pizza? Well, guess what they're doing to them?

• 11:51Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, yeah, um.

• 11:53Chris Ryan?

  Or standing outside your bedroom going click, click, click, click, click.

• 11:57Andy Greenwald?

  Is that?

• 11:58Chris Ryan?

  The clickers.

• 11:58Andy Greenwald?

  Is that the clicking sound of the, from, from the show Last of Us?

• 12:01Chris Ryan?

  You should rewatch it, dude.

• 12:03Andy Greenwald?

  Have you re- have you, have you watched ahead yet? Have you watched Last of Us yet?

• 12:06Chris Ryan?

  I was not granted a screener.

• 12:08Andy Greenwald?

  Wow. That's awkward.

• 12:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:11Andy Greenwald?

  Do you want mine? No, I, I definitely wasn't. I definitely wasn't.

• 12:16Chris Ryan?

  Um, nothing much else for you. I, I just wanted to say A Hundred Foot Wave is coming back.

• 12:21Andy Greenwald?

  That's so cool. I didn't-

• 12:22Chris Ryan?

  In May, I think?

• 12:23Andy Greenwald?

  So they've basically just been camped out at Nazaré, just filming our guys this whole time. Like, just since the first season, they've just been accumulating new footage and-

• 12:32Chris Ryan?

  Well, I wonder where else they went. Don't they usually have like, we went over here for a while and then of course it was, it was Nazaré season. But I, I, like I've, I've said a hundred times, I hope Chris Smith makes 50 seasons of this.

• 12:43Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like I should rewatch season two, though. Just to get the-

• 12:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, just to see where Nicole's head's at.

• 12:48Andy Greenwald?

  Don't get me started. Um- Our queen.

• 12:50Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk about- Why don't we do your Friends and Neighbors as like a little bit of a preview?

• 12:55Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 12:55Chris Ryan?

  Then we'll talk about the finale of The Pit, then Noah's gonna join us. So if you want, you can skip the Friends and Neighbors part if you haven't watched it yet, or if you're gonna watch it but wanna hear us later about it. We'll keep that brief. Talk about the finale, talk about The Pit, season one, and then we'll get to our interview with Noah.

• 13:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and for what it's worth, for your Friends and Neighbors, I think it's a show we're gonna keep coming back to and talking about, so generally light preview. I don't think we're gonna spoil anything.

• 13:16Chris Ryan?

  More premise than anything else.

• 13:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 13:19Chris Ryan?

  Friends and Neighbors is a new show on Apple from Jonathan Tropper, writer and creator of the show. Really interesting career. Has done some shows that you really love, Banshee and Warrior. Also is a published novelist, very, very, kinda has his hand in a bunch of different parts of Hollywood. He's done blockbuster feature script writing for The Adam Project. He's kind of persisted in making these adult-minded drama dramedies, like This Is Where I Leave You, and it's done, obviously, like I mentioned, some TV stuff, but kind of is a very much hot screenwriter of the moment, even though he's been in the business for a very long time.

• 14:02Andy Greenwald?

  Including being brought on to the Star Wars universe.

• 14:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so he's got a Star Wars script, he's doing an adventure movie with John Cena, like it's just, it has a lot of stuff going, but this seems like a very personal project to him, and also very much like a statement of purpose from him. It is a dramedy, I guess. I'd say it's a drama with some funny elements.

• 14:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 14:25Chris Ryan?

  Starring Jon Hamm in his first leading TV role since Mad Men.

• 14:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 14:30Chris Ryan?

  Pretty significant there, obviously, he's been on Morning Show, he's been on Land Man, but this is the first time that he has led a show and it is, you watch these episodes and you're like, goddamn, Jon Hamm's getting out of that car, and then he's going into that building, like he's carrying every scene, he's almost in every shot. That alone, honestly, is worth the price of admission, but there's a lot of other stuff to recommend about this show. What did you think of it?

• 14:51Andy Greenwald?

  Well, let's say, so two episodes are premiering tonight from a nine-episode first season, significantly, and we'll circle back to this point, it's already been renewed for a second season, which I think is going into production this month. Premise is pretty, pretty gangbusters and great. Hamm plays Andrew Coop, Cooper?

• 15:12Andy Greenwald?

  Um sidebar, do you know a lot of people who are called their last name nicknames by even their wives and like closest people in their family?

• 15:21Chris Ryan?

  And also, I just don't have a cool last name for that. Like, you could call me Ryan, but no, there's no like Chris Ry Ryan, like that wouldn't work.

• 15:28Andy Greenwald?

  No, but also like when we go out to dinner, Phoebe's not like CR, pass the bread rolls. You know? I mean, unless I'm missing something, right? That doesn't really, doesn't really work. I also honestly, on some level, I resent a little bit the lengths that this character goes to avoid being called Andy. You know, I just feel a little like, okay, um, we, we do the best we can. Anyway, he is a, what Tom Wolfe called a master of the universe.

• 15:56Chris Ryan?

  Investment banker, stock trader, yeah.

• 15:58Andy Greenwald?

  Who finds himself sort of over leveraged with a wife and kids and an increasing series of expensive houses, um, just to keep up basically with his friends and neighbors. And in the pilot, uh, he's now suddenly divorced and loses his job and, uh, turns to robbing said friends and neighbors.

• 16:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:18Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, in order to continue his, um, his lifestyle. And I have to say, I'm glad we're talking about this show, uh, and an episode where we're talking about the pit.

• 16:28Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 16:29Andy Greenwald?

  Because there was something truly exciting and fun for me about firing up a show that was designed to go multiple seasons. And also was already planning on its second season. It would be back in a year. There's a, it's an old fashioned feeling, right? That like, okay, yeah, let's see how far this thing can go. This has got a strong cast. It's got a strong premise. It's got a voice. And that feeling of like getting on the ride was, is at this point, it's like a, um, market inefficiency, how few times we get to do that. There was an expansiveness to the show and

• 17:10Andy Greenwald?

  the voice and the world that was honestly kind of exhilarating, knowing that all of the irons being put in the fire in the first hour, and there may be a few too many, we can talk about that. Um, they, I'm not already doing the mental calculus of how are we going to land this in six hours? How is this going to be resolved in seven hours? That was really, really fun for me. Um, and for it to come out of the gate with a lot of confidence and wit and Trumper, as you said, like knows this world. Has stakes, emotional stakes in the world and is just a clever and good, but also efficient and let's keep things moving kind of writer. I was super in, even though I think we probably have a few bumps in the early.

• 17:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think it was, um, the thing that I responded to the most was The Voice. And there's a lot of The Voice because Jon Hamm narrates a lot of the.

• 18:02Andy Greenwald?

  He sure does.

• 18:04Chris Ryan?

  With these highly stylized, very cynical, kind of, um, like, just really like calloused kind of, here's what it's really like and here's what the problem is and.

• 18:17Andy Greenwald?

  And what are we doing?

• 18:18Chris Ryan?

  And I almost admired the distinct, distinctiveness of his POV, which honestly is like incredibly rich white man who's got woman troubles and money troubles, like, but you actually, for the most part, in a lot of like contemporary television, I think that that, that gets sanded down a lot. And I think it is getting sanded down on this show a bit.

• 18:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think that's what we both want to talk about.

• 18:41Chris Ryan?

  The sort of state of the anti-hero is a really interesting conversation to have about this show versus where it came from with Sopranos, but then specifically with Bad Men, because we're talking about Hamm.

• 18:55Chris Ryan?

  You know, and it's also interesting to think about Coop in relationship to Don Draper, because Don Draper is purposely such an enigma.

• 19:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 19:05Chris Ryan?

  And Coop is enigmatic, but is constantly telling you.

• 19:09Andy Greenwald?

  He's telling you how he feels and what he thinks.

• 19:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and what he feels.

• 19:10Andy Greenwald?

  And we're seeing every aspect of him. And also, and I think this is, this is not my favorite aspect of the show, it constantly is pre-apologizing for him potentially doing behavior that is not great. Like, and it's pulling its punches in that way that I, and I find that kind of, honestly, I find that aspect off-putting. The Don Draper part of it, this is the other way that I think the show is similar to The Pit. When The Pit premiered, um, we were like, there are some actors who should not run away from their strengths.

• 19:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:39Andy Greenwald?

  There are some actors for whom playing a certain archetype is incredibly rich, there's depth to it, and there's more depth as they age or as they're put into different circumstances. And then you can play with something that most shows don't even get a chance to sniff, which is the audience's pre-existing investment in this person in this type of role that they carry with them from one role to another. So when Dr. Robbie shows up in the pilot of the pit, anyone who spent the 90s watching ER is like, I trust this guy.

• 20:06Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 20:06Andy Greenwald?

  So then what do we do with that?

• 20:07Chris Ryan?

  So when Jon Hamm gets in a Maserati?

• 20:09Andy Greenwald?

  When Jon Hamm is sitting at the end of the bar nursing a whiskey, I'm like, yeah, he's been there before.

• 20:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:15Andy Greenwald?

  The show, I think, very boldly does not hide the Don Draper-ness of it. Like, there's a shot early in the pilot where he's in a suit surrounded by people who aren't dressing as nicely as he is. So he's a little bit out of step with the times and they crowd around him on an elevator as he's leaving an office. And I'm like, yeah, I've seen this shot before and I like it. I think it's very interesting also to consider what a quote unquote alpha male looks like from the 60s to the 2020s.

• 20:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:43Andy Greenwald?

  And how some things stay the same, some things are quite changed, and how maybe the middle of all of this has just been eaten away. I really like that aspect of it. And he also, you know, Hamm seems like a great guy and seems like a good actor. I mean, I know he's a good actor, but also he seems like a good sport to try things like he did in Fargo, like he did in Landman. But he's in his bag and he seems really animated to be in the show in a way that is very compelling.

• 21:09Chris Ryan?

  I think what you're seeing on this one is there's basically like three different things happening. There's a midlife crisis show that's happening that's being largely narrated and acted out by the Hamm character and is about his malaise and his feeling of disconnection as he's, you know, living in a rented house while his ex-wife Mel, played by Amanda Peet, lives or dates a ex-NBA player.

• 21:32Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:34Chris Ryan?

  Who she had cheated on him with. He, Coop, has a fling going with a recently divorced woman, played by Olivia Munn, the character Sam. And then Coop is sort of alienated from his two teenage kids who don't really notice the fact that he no longer lives at the home that they live in. So there's like a family thing going on. Then there is a secondary story, which is the Dissent into crime. And this kind of, and that is also heavily narrated. So we're getting a lot of explication about like how this guy's feeling. And it's very interesting because that is these trap doors that takes him into different parts of New York City and different elements.

• 22:17Chris Ryan?

  And, you know, he's going up to the Bronx to fence stuff. And it's, that's fascinating. Then there is the third layer of the show, which I respectfully will describe as like shrinking, but in Long Island, where it's a bunch of people who are orbiting this family or this man and their love, love lives and their wants and desires and some B, C, D, E plots. I probably am least interested in that part. You know, this like sort of expanded community, you know, suburban drama. But I get why they're doing it because it provides a lot of story stuff. What did you think of the kind of like the three different shows?

• 22:59Chris Ryan?

  Or did any of those feel tonally off to you?

• 23:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. And let me then also say, we are kind of unused to shows that can find their footing. This, as we said, has been renewed. They're making more and there are enough smart people in the creative team that I think that the version of the show that we see at the season finale, two months from now, might be addressed or even improved on in future seasons. Like even the shows that this wants to be in the pantheon with. I'm not saying this is like a Hall of Fame show, but it is decidedly and with a lot of intention, trying to be a difficult man show, basically, or an heir to that throne. And those shows, you know, some of them had amazing pilots, but they definitely weren't the shows that they ended up with, they ended up being in the first few seasons. So I'm willing to accept some bumps along the road.

• 23:49Andy Greenwald?

  Particularly because when the show hits and there are a couple of scenes in the pilot and there's the opening of the second episode that I think I'm like, oh yeah, this is the Maserati version of this and I am completely locked in. What's interesting, and we know nothing about like actually the development or behind the scenes of this, but. It's hard, it's hard to watch the show, the first two episodes and not feel a familiar hand of Apple and their, what I imagine is their notes giving process or their priorities within it. Part of that is like every pilot from the last 10 years, from every over noted pilot from the last 10 years. The pilot begins no less than four times.

• 24:32Andy Greenwald?

  It begins with a flash forward and then it goes back slightly in time, then it goes back slightly less in time, then it catches up to where we are.

• 24:39Chris Ryan?

  Then it goes back all the way to like his youth. Yeah. We get some de-aged ham.

• 24:43Andy Greenwald?

  And all of this.

• 24:44Chris Ryan?

  Try doing that, Colossus.

• 24:45Andy Greenwald?

  You ask my friends in Parma, nobody wants de-aged ham. The, would that, again, this is, I'm saying this with like, hopefully some degree of like, of empathy for this, like, that is a note. I mean, it's just everyone's note from pilots. I do think, I do think that, I think it's starting to turn a little bit where now when executives see a script that says something exciting six months earlier, they're like, okay, this is actually.

• 25:13Chris Ryan?

  We believe you, you can put it at the end of the season.

• 25:14Andy Greenwald?

  This has now reached the point of cliche.

• 25:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:16Andy Greenwald?

  But what that comes from is a very real existential terror that if you don't hook people with something interesting or tell people what the show is in five minutes, they're just gonna go back to YouTube or whatever else they're doing. It feels not confident at this point, you know, especially when you have a show with this pedigree. So that was kind of a bummer. And then similarly, like, the pilot has so much to do to introduce this world, this character, why he is the way he is, what he's going to be doing in series. That's another sort of indicator of where this show exists in the century of television development.

• 25:55Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 25:56Andy Greenwald?

  Because it, it used to be, Chris, that like, a pilot could be a premise pilot where like, we would meet him on the day that he discovers his wife is cheating on him and that he loses his job and then blah, blah, and then the show begins in the sec, the series begins in the second episode.

• 26:10Chris Ryan?

  But they have to have him rob somebody in the first episode.

• 26:13Andy Greenwald?

  That is a no-no. We have to show.

• 26:14Chris Ryan?

  And when they say rob, I mean, he's like stealing from their homes when they're not there.

• 26:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 26:17Chris Ryan?

  It's not like he's pulling heists.

• 26:18Andy Greenwald?

  It's not, it's not give me the loot, but with Jon Hamm.

• 26:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, so we have to show people what the show is. So I'm sympathetic to all that. I get it. And it mostly does it with as much grace as possible.

• 26:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:30Andy Greenwald?

  Similarly, the end of the first episode introduces Jon Hamm's Coop's younger sister who has some mental health issues and is heavily medicated and goes off her meds. And he's the only person caring for her, which might prove to be interesting plot wise and story wise. And definitely gives the actors a different color to play with.

• 26:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:49Andy Greenwald?

  But mostly in its presence in the pilot feels like a note being like, I don't think we like this guy. We have to make him likable, even though he's going to do bad things. And that rankles a little bit.

• 27:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:00Andy Greenwald?

  But the, but I will say after all this sort of slightly critical monologuing. I, Chopper's writing is really good. And the other thing that's really, that he's really, really good at is writing smart, good stuff in this ecosystem. You were mentioning his, his larger CV.

• 27:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:17Andy Greenwald?

  This seems, he seems to be willing to play ball as long as they're playing the game that he wants to play. And I think that bodes well for the series.

• 27:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think we'll definitely be keeping an eye on it. The first two episodes go up Thursday night, Friday morning, or whatever the Apple kind of release schedule is. So we'll probably hit this next week, uh, next Thursday and, and talk a little bit more about it in depth.

• 27:37Andy Greenwald?

  Also Amanda Peet back.

• 27:39Chris Ryan?

  Amanda Peet's great.

• 27:40Andy Greenwald?

  My guy, my guy, Hoon Lee from

• 27:41Chris Ryan?

  I thought he was awesome.

• 27:42Andy Greenwald?

  From Banshee, awesome actor.

• 27:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:45Andy Greenwald?

  Awesome actor.

• 27:45Chris Ryan?

  He plays a Coop's business manager.

• 27:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, he's great.

• 27:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:49Andy Greenwald?

  And the, and the carbon Burnson sans just continues.

• 27:52Chris Ryan?

  Well, what, what else have we got on the sans?

• 27:54Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, he was in, um, uh, the Emma Stone, uh, Nathan Fielder show.

• 28:00Chris Ryan?

  That's right. Excited for the rehearsal?

• 28:04Andy Greenwald?

  Um, I'm getting a lot of, uh, getting tagged in a lot of stuff.

• 28:07Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 28:07Andy Greenwald?

  So that's fun for me.

• 28:08Chris Ryan?

  Um, let's talk about the finale of the pit. And, uh, obviously spoilers for this, it's going up Thursday night. The pit finale will air this evening. Um, remarkable season of television, one of the best shows of the year. Huge accomplishment to kind of find this balance between the urgency of a limited series. But the

• 28:35Chris Ryan?

  Slow descent into and then loving like embrace of the waters of long form television. Uh, obviously has been renewed. I think it's probably going to come back as early as early next year.

• 28:48Andy Greenwald?

  I think they want to keep a yearly schedule.

• 28:52Chris Ryan?

  This, you know, you know, I think this season peaked and culminated with the pit fest shooting and the what the, the, the, the ER that had to do to react to that. So in terms of it's like, you know, the adrenaline shot. I think you're asked to go on the same arc as the doctors. And this episode is a lot of about them coming down from the day. And so in, in some ways it's, it's a very, uh, it's a very like sort of sensory. It's, it's, you're following the same sensory journey that they are because it's not a TV episode that's about like breaking through the other side and like, oh my God, there's like one more case we have to solve. It's really just like the measles thing, right?

• 29:36Chris Ryan?

  And the coat tan with the emergent, with the guy who works at the hospital who gets crushed by a truck.

• 29:41Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 29:42Chris Ryan?

  But for the most part, a lot of like kind of contemplative scenes, trying to figure out like where to go from here. What did you, what did you think of finale?

• 29:49Andy Greenwald?

  Um, I texted you after I watched it and we watched it last week to get in front of our Noah interview. I believe I wrote, this is the only good show. That may have been hyperbole.

• 30:00Chris Ryan?

  You?

• 30:01Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I'm not prone to it, but the experience of watching the show was so engaging and so joyful. In the like, it woke up parts of my TV watching brain and more importantly, heart that have just been dormant for a very, very long time. I, I could probably count on one hand, the number of shows that were created with a specific target in mind to try to split the difference between the prestige era and the opportunities of the prestige era and the ambition of the prestige era and the just bare bones. We know how to do this practical nature of storytelling in the broadcast golden era. And they did it, like they actually did it.

• 30:47Andy Greenwald?

  For, um, creative and legal reasons, we won't say that this is a natural heir to any show that we loved in the nineties starring, um, Noah Wiley. But This is the science and magic that Jack Donaghy talked about. And I mentioned that quote when we talked to Noah too, so I'm sorry for repeating myself. But like, they did that. I find that so, so remarkable.

• 31:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:09Andy Greenwald?

  I think for me, the most striking thing about this finale was that it didn't continue. The sense of pacing, right, that you were referring to is so masterful. It didn't try to top itself by ending with another bang or another series of bangs. And yet, I wrote in my notes and when watching it, that this, the experience of watching the finale was for some reason the most stressful I had all season. Now, to be fair, I did turn off the episode where the child drowned, but beyond that. And the reason why wasn't because of the intensity or the gore or the realism of any medical case. It was because people who I've grown to love through my television screen,

• 31:53Andy Greenwald?

  in this case, Doctors Robbie and Dr. Mohan, were completely on edge and near crash. And I was so emotionally invested in their well-being. And I was just praying for them not to screw up.

• 32:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:10Andy Greenwald?

  And that felt like old-fashioned TV in another way too, and also like a kind of a magic trick, that the doctors became the patients in terms of my empathy moment to moment with them. Mohan, like, being so clearly near a crash and so, coming so close to inserting herself into opportunities to insert things into people.

• 32:29Chris Ryan?

  As she's like basically running on pure adrenaline, yeah.

• 32:32Andy Greenwald?

  Which is how, I think, I think, didn't we do three pods in one day once? So I feel like we can relate. I, I, I thought that was, I thought that was incredible.

• 32:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there's a couple of scenes I wanted to talk to you about. Well, there's, here's one thing I just want to mention. The introduction of the night shift.

• 32:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I've never seen anything like it.

• 32:53Chris Ryan?

  During the shooting, you know, the Pitch Fest shooting and these new doctors coming on and the fact that now I am as into Ellis and Shen and Abbott as I was into Langdon Santos Whitaker.

• 33:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 33:08Chris Ryan?

  Is incredible. That was 12 hours into the show. All of a sudden, we get like a half a dozen new faces to meet.

• 33:16Andy Greenwald?

  The only comparison I can make off the top of my head was the introduction of East Dillon halfway through the series run.

• 33:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but that was like, we started a new show.

• 33:25Andy Greenwald?

  Three years into the show.

• 33:27Chris Ryan?

  New season, yeah.

• 33:28Andy Greenwald?

  They did this in one season.

• 33:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:31Andy Greenwald?

  With no feedback. Like, again, the leap of faith, and we talked to No about this to a degree, but like, they didn't know when they planned this and wrote it and cast it and shot it, how we, the audience, would feel about McKay or Collins and how we would feel about them being there or not being there, let alone how we would feel about their replacements.

• 33:51Chris Ryan?

  Well, I mean, I think everybody started the first few episodes and generally speaking, people were like, man, Santos is gonna be a tough hang for like 15 hours.

• 33:58Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 33:58Chris Ryan?

  You know, she's just constantly going up to people and being sarcastic. And then as her plot developed over the course of the year, I thought it was completely fascinating. And then she gets this grace note at the end with Whitaker by inviting him to come live with her, which is still true to her character.

• 34:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 34:13Chris Ryan?

  But I thought that she was an amazing character. She wanted to be one of my favorite characters on the show.

• 34:17Andy Greenwald?

  Not just that grace note, think about the previous grace note. Like, this, it's just masterful orchestra conducting. The patient that she's consumed by in the finale, the kid who overdosed and she can't diagnose, my lizard TV brain was like, he's going to be revealed as the co-conspirator of the shooting.

• 34:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, when you told me that, I was like, are you sure you're not on Reddit?

• 34:39Andy Greenwald?

  Well, that was my, that was my Reddit lizard brain. And that plotline was created to give her something empathetic to do.

• 34:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:51Andy Greenwald?

  To take her on a journey, which is as it should be, right? But there are still some vestigial, like, just knee-jerk, broken-brained stuff that even I can't quit in terms of watching television and processing it.

• 35:04Chris Ryan?

  The, uh, the two kind of exhale moments of the season take place. One basically repeats the opening. The opening of the first of this whole first season where Robbie finds Abbott up on the roof a little too close to the edge. And they have a daytime conversation at at 7 a.m., 6 a.m., whatever it is. And now we're at 9 p.m. and Abbott finds Robbie up on the roof and they have a conversation about what they just experienced that day. I thought that was a beautiful piece of acting by both actors and a beautiful piece of writing. I love the fact that Robbie was like, just please stop talking. You know what I mean? Like, and

• 35:44Andy Greenwald?

  Noah gave us some good insight into that scene that we don't want to step on.

• 35:46Chris Ryan?

  Don't want to step on that. I also really adored the the conclusion of Dana's arc on this season. Her putting the pictures in her like part like the perfect jean jacket that that woman would be wearing and kind of like silently cleaning out her desk in case she's not coming back. And then her last conversation with with Robbie, you know, in front of the pictures of all the doctors who had passed away.

• 36:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 36:14Chris Ryan?

  And I thought that that was remarkable. The Langdon stuff is going to be really interesting. I'll be very curious to see two things in the second season that I wanted to ask you about. One is how many plot lines, you know, can continue over from the first season, specifically Langdon and his, you know, need for rehabilitation.

• 36:35Andy Greenwald?

  And for what it's worth, Scott Gamble apparently just blurted out at a panel last week that season two would be 10 months ahead.

• 36:42Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 36:43Andy Greenwald?

  At over 4th of July weekend. And Noah speaks a little bit about that.

• 36:46Chris Ryan?

  And then also the broadly speaking, like whether or not Robbie is going to be Jack Bauer. And they're going to kind of keep putting him through the wringer or is he going to be Abbott one season and someone else is kind of in the center. Like, it'll be really interesting to see what they do with that character and whether they're like, yeah, on another day, it might not be the craziest day of all time.

• 37:13Andy Greenwald?

  Well, the other thing that they can do now by building out their cast and ensemble is that the 15 hours, I mean, already, so basically they had said, we'll do 12 hours to mimic a 12 hour shift. And our guy Casey Poyes was like, Give me 15. Give me more hours of the show. And so then they were like, well, this is going to go longer than a shift. So what do we do? By building out the night shift characters, they can do a split shift season. And maybe that's where they're headed. It doesn't, they, it won't require emergency overtime in the emergency room to keep some of our main characters there or to keep characters around. Right. Which is a really smart save for them and solve for them going forward.

• 37:53Andy Greenwald?

  I think the Langdon stuff is worth noting and worth tracking because ultimately the show is really, really invested in a kind of boots on the ground, sober realism to as much as it can be. I mean, obviously the cases, there's a lot of cases and there's a lot of variety to the cases and, and that's the fun. I mean, if you know what I mean in terms of like story creation, that's fun. But this isn't the kind of show, and it's reassuring to know that it's not, that if Langdon comes back and acts heroically, Robbie's going to be like, forget protocol and procedure. I trust you now because you were, you know, you went through it with me. So I, I'm curious, I think like that told us everything we, we need to know in terms

• 38:36Andy Greenwald?

  of being concerned about storyline. I also just loved the, well, let's talk about two things. You, you said the measles thing happened at the end, you know, it, but I do think one of the biggest messages of this first season and one that I'll, that, that really sticks with me is that there is no off season, there is no end of episode, there is no pause for an emergency room in a major city. Yeah. That was so artfully done about the measles stuff. And that was, you know, written and filmed before it actually became. Before the big comeback. Ripped from the headlines. So it predicted, yeah, measles summer was that it was deployed both in service of Jesus

• 39:20Andy Greenwald?

  Christ, this never ends, but also so that it would be twinned with Robbie's absolute work to the bone. So he, he does behave kind of like a lunatic. Yeah.

• 39:32Andy Greenwald?

  And then that the show gave us, remember like week two or three when we were still just trying to feeling our way through it? Like, we really liked it, but I feel like you mentioned early on, one of your favorite types of storylines or scenes in ER would be like the doctor shooting hoops on the weekend, or, you know, Carter or Dr. Green waiting for the L.

• 39:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:52Andy Greenwald?

  In the snow.

• 39:54Chris Ryan?

  Getting to see their apartments, getting to see like random little things. Yeah. What car they pull up in.

• 39:58Andy Greenwald?

  Pretty artfully done that it gave us insight into Whitaker's actual home life, such as it is. Santos's attitude, also her talking about where and how she lives, and then the scene in the park to let everybody have.

• 40:12Chris Ryan?

  A beer.

• 40:13Andy Greenwald?

  A post-shift beer. We were joking about this. I'm like, could you imagine how good that hit?

• 40:20Andy Greenwald?

  You know?

• 40:21Chris Ryan?

  The first one, I wouldn't even count as a beer.

• 40:23Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 40:24Chris Ryan?

  The first one would be like, it would just be gone instantaneously and then I would be like, and now we start.

• 40:30Andy Greenwald?

  The first one, I said, like, you would, you would just crunch down on like a Skittle.

• 40:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:34Andy Greenwald?

  Like, I don't think you have time to open it.

• 40:37Andy Greenwald?

  Also glad to see that our home state apparently has, has, uh, has more lax open carry laws for, for drinks.

• 40:45Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Well, I think they're pretty permissive. Although, I mean, like McKay almost got put in jail.

• 40:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, they let her go. And then the cops come back around and they're like, look, we saved a lot of people. Can we drink this Iron City, please, on my walk home?

• 40:57Andy Greenwald?

  Did you, I thought it was also very, very subtly done, the reveal of Abbott's prosthetic.

• 41:04Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 41:04Andy Greenwald?

  Right? Which suggests.

• 41:05Chris Ryan?

  I thought that was very, very tasteful.

• 41:06Andy Greenwald?

  We've been talking about how he seems to have military training or experience and that was, that was borne out.

• 41:12Chris Ryan?

  I just, the only thing I was, I was really hoping for was Collins being like, I just turned my phone on.

• 41:17Andy Greenwald?

  Like, hey, hey, guys, what's up? I forgot my hoodie.

• 41:23Andy Greenwald?

  What's the line that Robbie says? This place will break your heart, but it's also full of miracles.

• 41:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:30Andy Greenwald?

  Speaking of things that will break your heart and also full of miracles, before we get into the Noah thing, I did feel like it's relevant to the pit conversation that a lot of talks that I've had like in the last week, two weeks, three weeks, like general meetings, meetings on projects, I have just conversations with people in the industry.

• 41:47Chris Ryan?

  No big deal.

• 41:47Andy Greenwald?

  There is a, really. I'll let you know when it becomes a big deal, but there is a tiny, tiny, I know this is rare for this moment in world history, a tiny flicker of optimism. And it's not necessarily tied to, oh, my friend's getting a deal, or this show is going, or this is actually being shot here. I thought it was interesting and significant that a lot of these conversations are tied to a few shows are hitting now. A few shows are working now.

• 42:15Chris Ryan?

  We're in a pretty, we have an embarrassment of riches for the first time in a while.

• 42:19Andy Greenwald?

  But it's not just that we're so, you and I are busy like watching shows and we have a lot of things to watch. It's that specifically shows like Nobody Wants This at the end of last year, the pit is referenced all the time, adolescence, obviously. And I think in a, we'll know in a week or two, but if your friends and neighbors joins this, but like.

• 42:36Chris Ryan?

  And I think you can expect The Last of Us to be a gargantuan hit.

• 42:40Andy Greenwald?

  The Last of Us will be a gargantuan hit, but the reason I'm mentioning those four shows is that they are, you know, the Crichton Estate may disagree, but they are original ideas that were developed and executed to a degree of success that has been given beyond return of investment from the people.

• 42:56Chris Ryan?

  And the pit and Nobody Wants This shoots in LA.

• 42:58Andy Greenwald?

  And they shoot in LA. And what those successes do is actually, can, it can grow in the sense that.

• 43:07Chris Ryan?

  It's a copycat industry. So if it's like.

• 43:09Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, you're, you're, you're, no, no. What I'm trying to say is the executives. Green light and take a bet on something relatively original. That can potentially prove to the actual mega lords of industry who in tech lords who control all this now, that we should trust these guys a little. That sometimes we can let them cook and develop something and maybe they'll give a little.

• 43:29Chris Ryan?

  Good luck with that.

• 43:30Andy Greenwald?

  I know. I'm saying that generally in the world, we are clinging to any hopes.

• 43:34Chris Ryan?

  I thought you were gonna say that there was gonna be like 15 more hospital shows.

• 43:38Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, there already are. We're ignoring Pulse. Like, there already are. The copycat thing will never go away and sometimes relatively good things can come from that. I just mean that at a moment when we're just like clamoring for any flicker of of hope, I thought it was interesting that the conversations that were hope based weren't that had some degree of optimism were somehow, somehow holding on to a kernel of creativity. Where most, to be honest, most even 50% optimistic conversations have really just been about like, well, you know, Minecraft is a hit, so maybe there are other video games. That generally is how these talks go, but these shows in particular have sparked a different kind of conversation.

• 44:16Chris Ryan?

  I think also, I would say like, you know, I mentioned this to Noah, so I don't want to get too into this, but like Adolescence in the Pit are the kind of defining shows of the year for me right now. And I think part of the reason why people have reacted so strongly to both of these shows for very different reasons is that they are seeing things that replic- you know, they're closer to real life and contemporary life and some of the issues that people deal with on a daily basis, the characters on screen seem like characters you might know or people you might meet. And I think it's a much wider spectrum of human behavior going on.

• 44:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 44:57Chris Ryan?

  And honestly, I would even say that about White Lotus as well. For as much as White Lotus is considered this like far off, only the highest up of the 1% can afford to go to these things, that's true, but the behaviors within those families, some brothers jerking off brothers aside, like.

• 45:16Chris Ryan?

  It's about friendship. It's about families. It's about love. It's about betrayal. It's about, what am I supposed to do with my life? And it's not, doesn't have to be about like, we need to solve this video game puzzle to get to the next level to then tease the next season and possibly three spinoffs of whatever. And I think that style of storytelling has a place. Some of those shows are incredible. We're gonna be talking about Andor in April, but at the end of April, but it's been really cool to see stuff that looks like life on screen.

• 45:50Andy Greenwald?

  I love, I love that as a manifesto. I believe in it. I also, which camera's on? Tune in Monday for our review of a video game show about zombies. Also, quick follow up before we get into Noah.

• 46:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:01Andy Greenwald?

  If the Colossus Corporation, and you're not a shareholder, right? Like, we should disclose those things.

• 46:05Chris Ryan?

  I'm actually not even sure.

• 46:08Andy Greenwald?

  Fair, after this week. Had they announced that they had two new dire wolves and their names were Dr. Robbie and Amanda Peet?

• 46:15Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 46:15Andy Greenwald?

  Would your whole opening monologue have been different? Would you have been like, let's?

• 46:19Chris Ryan?

  I wouldn't be here. I would be petting dire wolves.

• 46:23Andy Greenwald?

  I love it.

• 46:24Chris Ryan?

  All right, let's get into our interview with Noah Wiley.

• 46:26Andy Greenwald?

  Noah Wiley was here.

• 46:27Chris Ryan?

  Noah Wiley. Let's go.

• 46:28Andy Greenwald?

  That was great.

• 46:30Chris Ryan?

  All right. Thanks to Kai for producing. We will be back on Monday talking Last of Us and a bunch of other stuff. Thank you for listening to The Watch. Thank you to Noah Wiley.

• 46:38Chris Ryan?

  And thank you to you, Andy Greenwald.

• 46:40Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, am I still here for this part?

• 46:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, sure.

• 46:41Andy Greenwald?

  I thought we were pretending I wasn't. That's why I was being quiet. I thank you, Chris.

• 46:44Chris Ryan?

  Thanks.

• 46:46Speaker 01

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• 47:06Speaker 02

  Keep your business connected with AT&T Business Wireless. Visit att.com/5gnetwork. When the connection matters, it has to be AT&T.

• 47:16Chris Ryan?

  We are very honored to have Noah Wiley joining us here on The Watch. We've been huge fans of this show all season, Noah, so it's a real pleasure to get to talk to Dr. Robbie himself here in studio.

• 47:27Andy Greenwald?

  You can't tell.

• 47:28Speaker 06

  But I'm blushing.

• 47:30Andy Greenwald?

  We can't tell. We're on video, I think.

• 47:31Speaker 06

  Then you can't tell.

• 47:32Chris Ryan?

  I'm gonna make you blush a little bit more because a couple of months ago, we finally, after 13 years, opened up a consistent email inbox for the podcast.

• 47:41Andy Greenwald?

  To be clear, Chris opened it. I've still not been given access.

• 47:44Chris Ryan?

  But the first thing I think around when we did it was right when the pit was coming on. And so it's a small sample size. The amount of emails that we got, not about us, not about like, hey, great joke, Chris, you know, bad take, Andy, anything like that, from medical professionals emailing two idiots from Philadelphia who have nothing to say about, you know, the healthcare industry, being like, you guys, thank you for talking about the pit. This show is the realest thing we've ever seen. It represents actual daily life of emergency room doctors and nurses of the healthcare industry right now. And how much it meant to people in that space was mind blowing.

• 48:28Chris Ryan?

  And I can only imagine you get that every day, like when you're walking around and like, what's that like to feel that kind of response? Because people like something, people don't like something, but to have something mean something to people must be pretty intense.

• 48:41Speaker 06

  It's somewhat multi-layered because I'll be honest and say that a lot of the response that we're getting was tied to the intentionality of project. This is what I wanted to have happen, but I always want this to have happened, and it never happened.

• 48:58Speaker 06

  You always want the work to have impact. You always want to have it resonate. This particular time at bat, it was a little bit more important than than usual because of the stakes involved and the people that we're talking about. But I also, I also think it speaks to the, to the volcanic amount of pent up emotion among practitioners who have been suppressing a lot since COVID. And not been able to give context to it to their families, not been able to give context to it to themselves. And then suddenly you put something on TV that just pulls the cork and it reminds them enough of their daily life that it opens the floodgates or allows people. Able to turn to their spouse and say, is this really what you do all day?

• 49:41Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 49:41Speaker 06

  Is this what you see? And so it's that feeling seen, feeling heard aspect that feels really, really gratifying and really rare. So I didn't, I wanted it, I didn't expect it. Now that we're getting it, it's pretty intense. And every day, my inbox is a bit of a lightning rod for people sharing experiences and letting me know what the show brings up for them. And that's really gratifying and powerful.

• 50:06Andy Greenwald?

  I would imagine that since your time on ER, medical professionals have come and talked to you about things. Or people who are not medical professionals have come and asked you to look at rashes they have or other things on their body. Is it fair to say that maybe the, the, the change in perception of the medical field during COVID is one of the things that led you back into scrubs?

• 50:27Speaker 06

  Hundred percent. I stayed out of scrubs for the longest time.

• 50:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 50:31Speaker 06

  And had no interest in putting a stethoscope around my neck. Mostly because I felt that that was hallowed ground and traveled road. And I didn't think I could do it any better. And neither did John or Scott Gemmell and John Wells. So even when we got back together to talk about the need of telling another story in this arena, all we were hyper conscious of was fucking up the legacy. And, you know, embarrassing ourselves in the attempt. And at that time, a lot of shows were rebooting themselves and the optics of it were really kind of inelegant. It all looked like kind of going for one more squeeze on the old cash cow. And that's not what we were trying to do.

• 51:12Speaker 06

  So we were very thoughtful about how to go about it and just decided, let's hide ourselves in accuracy. Let's embed ourselves in realism and try to push the envelope on, on what we can do and show that we were never able to do and show because of standards and practices of working on a network. Now with the streamer, you have a lot more colors to paint with.

• 51:33Andy Greenwald?

  That said, you know, this show, The Pit, is literally not ER, just also legally not ER.

• 51:40Speaker 06

  Thank you for saying so.

• 51:42Andy Greenwald?

  But when it was described, even just the log line, and we heard about it, I feel like I, and I regret, I regret this. I think it was clearly a mistake, but I think there was kind of a knee jerk assumption that, okay, now it's on streaming. So now they can show more. So the show is going to be more gory or more in your face or more intense. The other side of it was, oh, they're just trying to recreate, and I say this all the time, the 30 Rock joke about let's recreate 1997 by science or magic. Can you talk about the process of making a show that does show things that ER couldn't show and uses words that ER couldn't show, couldn't say, but also The Pit never, ever forgets the humanity of the characters and week to week was reminding us of why we fell in love with TV in the first place. And I think it's a really remarkable balancing

• 52:26Andy Greenwald?

  act that you guys were able to pull off. It's something that is radical, it is intense, it is new, but it feels like coming home in a really wonderful way.

• 52:33Speaker 06

  Well, I have to give a lot of credit to John Wells for that one. I think, you know, because you're allowed to play with all these new toys doesn't mean you should. And so discretion and taste become, you know, the operative words. And John has always had incredible taste and he's always been extremely knowledgeable about storytelling. And that's, that's what comes first. More than any of the toys comes the heart of the story and the heart of the character. Even when he directs, he comes into the scene first and says, okay, what's the point of view here? Who do I care the most about in this scene? And let's organically block the scene from, from that point. So it's always

• 53:15Speaker 06

  inside out with him. And I think that audiences have gotten extremely sophisticated in their viewing habits, extremely adept at recognizing narrative tropes and, and devices. And John doesn't even care about how smart you are. He's just going right for your heart and it works.

• 53:35Chris Ryan?

  You know, the, the genre itself, the television medical show is very durable. I, I watch them for the detective shows. I watch them for the soap operas. But I noticed really early on, talking with friends about this show, that for as much as it obviously shines a light on what's going on in the medical profession, that it, it occurred to me in a way that it hadn't before, how everybody is touched by illness, injury, whatever it is. Like you have been in the hospital, you've got somebody in the hospital.

• 54:05Andy Greenwald?

  You're going to say goodbye to someone.

• 54:06Chris Ryan?

  You're going to say goodbye to somebody in the hospital and how. I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before, but it is like the great uniting church.

• 54:14Andy Greenwald?

  Also because we're old now.

• 54:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I know, right.

• 54:16Speaker 06

  This is the Universal Arena. This is where it all happens. You know, it's so funny, we did a storyline in episode four where we had adult children saying goodbye to their elderly parent. And then in episode 11, we had a birth. Birth and death, pretty ubiquitous experiences for all of us. And yet it would seem like we revolutionized something by showing it in real time. Yeah, we've watched death all the time on television. We consume it daily. And yet, when you slow it down to actual pace, it's very jarring. And when you photograph what birth really looks like, it seems to be mind blowing.

• 54:50Chris Ryan?

  Well, I wonder whether or not the two shows that have really defined this year so far for me are The Pit and Adolescence. And I wonder whether or not people are craving, seeing not necessarily even themselves as much as their stories, or seeing things that they recognize from their lives on screen in a way that maybe they hadn't over the last couple of years.

• 55:13Speaker 06

  I think that's fair. I mean, there's a lot of great stuff on TV right now, and I'm enjoying a lot of it. But sometimes when you're living in dystopian times, you don't want to double down with your content viewing on dystopian fare. So you're, I have a feeling that The Pit is benefiting a little bit from being a lighthouse at the moment and reminding people that there are very heroic people out there in the trenches, who are going to continue to treat people who are ill and sick, despite how many broken parts they may have. They're coming to work every day to patch ours together.

• 55:44Andy Greenwald?

  Episode four, I'm glad you brought it up because we wanted to ask you about that specifically. That was an episode that hit like a freight train. And I know that you were, you know, you've been creatively involved in the entire project, but I believe you were the credited writer on that episode.

• 55:57Speaker 06

  I wrote four and nine.

• 55:58Andy Greenwald?

  And can we use that episode as a way to talk about your increased creative involvement in the show?

• 56:04Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 56:05Andy Greenwald?

  And why that was your story that you wanted to tell? And even how you ended up putting the beautiful Hawaiian saying into the episode, which I think has spread like, and people are referencing this episode and that, that message quite a bit.

• 56:17Chris Ryan?

  And you've written on the last couple of shows you've done, right? Falling skies.

• 56:20Speaker 06

  I have. I wrote more subversively on falling skies.

• 56:25Andy Greenwald?

  What's up with the skies falling?

• 56:26Speaker 06

  I believe it's uncredited writing.

• 56:29Speaker 06

  But it gave me the confidence to think that maybe it's something that I that I thought would be good in a scene, could play in a scene. And then when librarians and leverage came around, I jumped at the chance to be part of those staffs. And it's not an easy college to break into, especially when you come in through the acting door. But I really love it. I love that I can do it from home, around my kids and my wife. And I love going into kind of a fugue state with it. And I love the collaboration of a writing room. I love the pollination of ideas and the politics of the room. It's all very interesting to me. And I'm extremely gratified to be working with this group because they are tremendously talented.

• 57:09Andy Greenwald?

  And specifically, the Hawaiian saying, is that something that you would come across in your life? Did you bring that into the room?

• 57:15Speaker 06

  It was a hybrid. Well, episodes are assigned randomly. I didn't know that I'd be writing a second one, and I wanted an early one so I could get it to bed before we started production. So Scott Gemmell, our showrunner, wrote the first three. And then I took the first available one after that. And there are things that are on the board, outlined beats that you're trying to hit. I had been invited to participate, not participate, but to observe a taping of this online educational compendium called MRAP that was founded by a man named Dr. Mel Herbert, who's a technical advisor to our show. And while I was watching them tape this segment, I met Dr. Ira Bryrock, who wrote a book called The Four Things That Matter

• 57:58Speaker 06

  Most, which is a compendium of experiences that he has had as a physician attending end of life and recognizing that these four significant things, simple things, if said, can really aid people in the grief process. His Four Things That Matter Most is based on Ho'oponopono, the Hawaiian ritual. They're slightly different, but I wanted to blend them together because the book is terrific and the ritual is terrific. And I have received a lot of mail from people who are either experiencing end of care with their parents or have recently lost a parent. And they said that that was extremely healing for them. So I was really happy to put that out there.

• 58:42Chris Ryan?

  Let's go a little bit under the hood with how the show gets put together, both as a writer and then as an actor and working in production.

• 58:48Speaker 06

  Cool.

• 58:49Chris Ryan?

  Told mostly, more or less to the second in real time, it feels like with some, you know, like 40 second gaps or whatever between episodes. So how does the structure, the act breaking, the actual script of an episode of The Pit differ from a typical episode of television that you've acted on?

• 59:08Speaker 06

  The very first difference was we hired Nina Russo to build us a set before we started to write. Because of the real time format, we needed to know how long it took to get from one room to another and how wide the hallways were going to be. And whether you'd be in a sightline from one room to another. If we were going to try to write for something that required it, it couldn't be arbitrary. We couldn't hand a blocking plan to a director during their prep that didn't work logistically. And we couldn't put three or four people in the same room. So we had to make sure that all, everything was spaced out.

• 59:42Andy Greenwald?

  You can't be writing towards, sorry to cut you off, you can't be writing towards a Dr. Ravi and Langdon collision, argument like that, screaming fight, unless you know you have a place for them to be having it.

• 59:52Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 59:53Andy Greenwald?

  That's remarkable.

• 59:53Speaker 06

  Exactly. So that was atypical. We had a big blueprint on the wall that we all took home with us that we memorized to make sure we understood the set and its spatial relationships to time. And then it is Dr. Joe Sacks' turn to open up what he euphemistically calls his tickle trunk and share with us the benefit of his four decade career in emergency medicine and his sphere of relationships. And we just start talking about cases. And then he organizes expert meetings with, there's an organization called Hollywood Health that Roberta Kruger runs. And she brokers, talks with people from every aspect of healthcare.

• 1:00:36Speaker 06

  So if we want to know about trans rights in healthcare, this, we talked to GLAD. If we want to know about the recovery road for a physician addicted to narcotics, how to get your license back, we talked to an expert on recovery. We talked to people that deal in IT ransomware for hospital protections against bad actors. We talked to everybody. And the last question we asked them is, what would you like to see on TV? You know, what is it that isn't on TV that should be? And what would be really bad for us to put on TV that would be counter current to your work? And then we just take all of that and start breaking it out. As we talked about earlier, because of the 15 hour

• 1:01:18Speaker 06

  Format, we have to break all the season in one at once. There's no sort of making it up as you go or course correcting. So we kind of need to know where we're going to end, where everybody's mini arc is going to take them, how this day is going to affect them all the way down to the smallest, smallest day player.

• 1:01:37Andy Greenwald?

  I think that what you're just speaking to is the thing that I can't get over. And you may have heard us talk about this again and again, week after week is there's a commitment to the project that you had to make so early on. And we're sitting here, you know, in week 11, week 12, week 13, feeling the accumulated relationships between the characters, between ourselves and the show. And we feel them paying off, paying off. But you, you know, sitting in on the Warner Brothers lot, months, years before we're actually seeing this, have to make a bet that we are going to care about Dana as much as we do by the time that she is assaulted. That we are going to, the shoes that drop in the finale, and we can talk about some of the specifics, are going to hit.

• 1:02:19Speaker 06

  That was even more of a balancing act when we talk about the finale.

• 1:02:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:23Speaker 06

  That's because we went to Pittsburgh in September to shoot our exteriors, which meant we shot Robbie walking into work, Robbie chasing David down the street, going up to the Hillipad to get some blood.

• 1:02:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:36Speaker 06

  And Robbie on the roof with Abbott.

• 1:02:39Chris Ryan?

  Did you do the exteriors of like the ambulances arriving for Pitfest in Pittsburgh? Or was that?

• 1:02:44Speaker 06

  That was all St. Joe's exterior ambulance bay in Burbank. So.

• 1:02:48Andy Greenwald?

  But you're saying you shot both sides of the Robbie and Abbott.

• 1:02:50Speaker 06

  I'm saying the same day we went up and shot Robbie and Abbott in the morning. And then we waited for the nightfall. And then we went up and shot the scene at night and then went across the seat and saw the scene in the park. The scene in the park and the scene on the roof were just sides. They weren't scripts. We didn't have those written yet.

• 1:03:06Chris Ryan?

  Are you really?

• 1:03:07Speaker 06

  In September, we were still writing, I think, episodes five or six at that point. But we needed to audition actors with scenes that showed the full range of their emotional abilities. So we wrote sides that reflected heavy emotion. So we could cast Sean Haddish, so we could cast all these wonderful actors. But when I was on the roof with Sean and he said, nice speech, wish I'd given it, there was no speech written. I had no idea if I was talking to the press, if I was talking to myself, my, you know.

• 1:03:33Andy Greenwald?

  It also adds color to Robbie saying, please stop talking.

• 1:03:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:03:38Chris Ryan?

  Let's like make this.

• 1:03:39Speaker 06

  A little bit more minimal. But we shot this lovely scene and it turned out so well. We were like, okay, that's where we have to get to. We gotta get Robbie up on that roof. And so for that part, for 13, 14, and 15, it was being very mindful of where we needed to land the plane and making sure we lined up the runway appropriately.

• 1:03:57Chris Ryan?

  How much did you guys allow for the possibility that, you know, something that happens on TV shows sometimes, which is that somebody blows your mind or does something that you didn't know that they could do or is funnier than you expected.

• 1:04:09Andy Greenwald?

  Chemistry sparks between two characters.

• 1:04:11Speaker 06

  That happened a little bit. There was a little course correction and a little enhancement of relationships. And there were some players that got bumped up as they proved themselves to be incredibly. The character of Donahue, for example, as a Brandon came into to his wardrobe fitting and stopped by medical boot camp to watch what we were doing. And then he just hung out. And then when we needed anything done, he just jumped in and volunteered. And I remember saying early on, I really like this guy. I like his attitude. We should throw him some, some stuff. And then he nailed his first couple of scenes and it was like, okay, let's write more for him. He's great. And so there's a little bit of that promoting from within and it was very much a meritocracy. And as you're watching people's strengths and weaknesses, you kind of want to lean into their strengths and away from weaknesses.

• 1:04:57Speaker 06

  But this cast was so solid, there weren't many weaknesses.

• 1:04:59Andy Greenwald?

  But one of the things that I'll, it taught me about watching TV and what I love about TV is that names like Abraham Ben Ruby and Deezer Dee, like these are names that are burned into my brain because these people were with me and with us every week and they were not the credited stars of the show when ER started. And so I wonder how much of that institutional memory you and John carry over into this. Because now it's not just that, you know, Dana, for example, or any of the other nurses or the security. I'm like, I love these people. I love Princess. I want to know where they are at any given moment. It's that then two thirds of the way through your show, the night shift shows up and I'm like, I would watch a series about Dr. Shen. That's fine. I love him.

• 1:05:37Speaker 06

  Where's he been? Come on, smell spinoff there.

• 1:05:41Andy Greenwald?

  But like that.

• 1:05:41Speaker 06

  Having nurses talk in Tagalog, having those guys betting on the ambulance crash reinforces what is true about hospitals. Which is they are run by support staff, nurses and techs and PAs and RTs run emergency rooms. And the doctors try to keep as many patients going through there as possible. But they really are the fabric of the place.

• 1:06:04Chris Ryan?

  I read an interview with Catherine Lanasas.

• 1:06:06Speaker 06

  Did you see I mentioned RTs? RTs are very unhappy with us. We don't have any RTs on the show.

• 1:06:10Chris Ryan?

  Oh, no.

• 1:06:11Speaker 06

  They're letting us know. Season two, RT revenge.

• 1:06:14Andy Greenwald?

  Season two revenge.

• 1:06:15Chris Ryan?

  Season two, the pit, Cole and the RTs.

• 1:06:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:17Chris Ryan?

  I saw Catherine Lanasas did an interview talking specifically about the arc that her character goes on. But just in general, about the freedom, the collaboration that she had to come up with a backstory for Dana. And I was curious about, to the extent that you can share, like, did you do the same work on Robbie? And?

• 1:06:36Speaker 06

  Yes and no. It was more, it was interesting when we started to write the show, it was okay. Do we wake up with Robbie? Where does he wake up? Does he wake up in an apartment or a townhouse or a house? Is it clean? Is it nice? Is he alone? Is he with a dog?

• 1:06:50Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:50Speaker 06

  What's on the wall? Does he take a shot of whiskey or a protein shake? Every question you ask, you define the character, but you're also limiting the character to a degree in terms of his relatability to the audience. And so the decision was, no, we'll get to know him in his professional capacity, because that's how a patient would get to know him. And as the day progresses, you learn more and more little nuggets about his personal life, but not so much that you're pigeonholing him, identifying him, you know, or not being able to relate to him. So I, I kept a lot of that very vague, but personally built a very inner rich

• 1:07:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:25Speaker 06

  life and backstory to feed the emotional journey that I was going to be going on.

• 1:07:30Andy Greenwald?

  Who do you feel, who do you credit most with? And maybe it's a shared, uh, shared credit with the balancing act that the show does so well between the necessary happenstance of fiction? Like, um, McKay's, uh, ex shows up with a broken ankle with her son. Like, that's, it's a TV show. Of course, people who are connected to our doctors are going to walk through the doors while we're watching the show. But also what I found to be a really admirable, uh, commitment to randomness at times as well. And that played out with, you know, David is not responsible for Pitfest. There was a misdirect at the very end that I really welcomed, which is the overdose patient that Santos is treating. My TV brain is saying, he's the co-conspirator of the mass shooting.

• 1:08:13Andy Greenwald?

  He's, this is, there's something here, they're showing us something. And the thing you were showing us was that Santos can be human, you know, in that way, and can relate to someone and heal someone on a personal level, which we had not seen. So who do you credit with that balancing act of like, you know, we have to generate plot, we have to have coincidence, but also we have to-

• 1:08:30Speaker 06

  I would give it jointly to the personalities in the room. I think that's how we all complement each other so well, you know? Scott Gemmell has a wicked sense of humor and is really great at writing dialogue and humor. Simran Bedewan is a masterful storyteller when it comes to sort of interpersonal relationships and plotlines. And then you've got Dr. Joe Sacks going, "Keep it real, that's not what we do, that's not what we say, that would never happen." So it's this wonderful balance. And then you say to Joe, "Well, not to you maybe, but you know, there are a lot of kinds of doctors out there." So it's this sort of, we all, we have checks and balances on each other. We all know what it should be in the end, and I think it's a cross-pollination of everybody's input that gets us to that balancing act.

• 1:09:15Speaker 06

  And then the final editor, the final arbiter is John Wells. Everything goes past him and he, if it passes his muster, it gets on TV.

• 1:09:23Chris Ryan?

  With the, let's talk a little bit about sort of like the last couple batch of episodes, obviously Pit Fest, but then one of the things that I really treasured about this season was the slight decompression. And you're kind of going with these people for as much as when you walk into that hospital with Robbie and you're getting his kind of like, "All right, I'm looking at the board and I'm prepping people and everything." You also get the slow kind of decompression of the day, which might run counter to the way a TV season is necessarily structured where it would, maybe Pit Fest would be one episode, that's the penultimate episode, and then there's like a cliffhanger of a finale.

• 1:10:03Chris Ryan?

  So how important was it to honor, I guess, the original structure of like, this is a day in the life, not necessarily a season of TV? Because that's what it felt like, and I think it was more powerful for it.

• 1:10:16Speaker 06

  Initially, we were pitching a 12-episode season to match a 12-hour shift. And Max asked for 15 because they wanted a larger episodic order, and then Pit Fest allowed us to kind of expand the narrative into 15 hours. We-

• 1:10:31Speaker 06

  Ask me that question.

• 1:10:32Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's just basically like, I love the fact that there were essentially two episodes to come down from Pitfest.

• 1:10:39Speaker 06

  I think it would have felt irresponsible of us to end on a cliffhanger after the investment that we'd asked for all season long to stay with us in real time on our feet. Once we get to go home, let's all go home.

• 1:10:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:50Speaker 06

  And let's all go home and reflect on what we've all been through. And when we come back, it'll be farther downfield and this will now be in everybody's consciousness, right? Robbie had Adamson. Now we all have it Adamson. We've all been through Pitfest. And how we bring these characters back and walk them through the next stages of their lives and careers. As long as we stay truthful to the who are they and where are they and why are they? I think we'll be in good shape. So the resistance to feel the need to blow something up, to go bigger and better in the second season, that's what we're feeling right now is, oh, my God, what are they going to want to see now? And it's hopefully they'll just want to see some more sutures and they want to see some more human stories and some more what's happening out there.

• 1:11:34Andy Greenwald?

  I think that the pacing of the last few episodes gave us what's lingering with me is one of the more powerful images and moments, which is, you know, all the red tags and pink tags and Pitfest has been mostly processed through to the OR. And then it's time to open it up again. There is no off. There is no end of episode really in life or on your TV show.

• 1:11:56Speaker 06

  No, just another shift coming through and they'll never get ahead of the problem. You can't get ahead of this problem. There's always going to be a full waiting room right now. There's always going to be boarding patients and they're always going to be understaffed. That's the new healthcare.

• 1:12:10Andy Greenwald?

  You mentioned, and I feel like we're skipping around the finale. I do want to ask about the finale, but I do, you talked about the temptation to go bigger for season two. I believe you and the creative team confirmed a few days ago that we're jumping 10 months.

• 1:12:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, Scott.

• 1:12:26Speaker 06

  You ask a good Canadian a question and I guess he feels compelled to answer it. Some of those like, oh, we're just giving up everything, are we?

• 1:12:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:33Speaker 06

  Yes. It's been confirmed. We're going to jump about 10 months into the future and plot the show July 4th weekend, holiday weekend.

• 1:12:40Andy Greenwald?

  Is the temptation?

• 1:12:44Andy Greenwald?

  Similar to what you were saying before about showing Dr. Robby before or after the shift, has there been much conversation that you feel comfortable sharing about whether the first episode begins an hour before the shift? Whether we are at home with people more, whether we go more into their lives?

• 1:12:58Speaker 06

  Well, I don't mind confessing, this is a wonderful example of how smart Scott is. I came in season two and thought, okay, well, 15 hours, it's an unwieldy number. I wonder if we could play with something kind of creative where we just take that first hour and call it Commute. And basically, we pick five characters, get a sense of what their home life is, that they have to leave and compartmentalize in order to get to work. How do they get to work? And we end that first hour with the time card punch. And then on the back end, we bookend it and we get a sense of closure and how you have to compartmentalize the day to walk into their family lives. And Scott liked to be... And all the other writers were nodding. And Scott goes, "Yeah, I don't know, you know.

• 1:13:41Speaker 06

  We'll probably have to do something like that if we go four or five seasons." But if we... If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I like rules. Rules are meant to be broken and they're really there to service the writing. But I think our discipline this year is to do what we did last year, but better.

• 1:13:56Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's wise. I feel compelled to share this with you. If you haven't seen it, I mentioned it on the pod last week. But one of the favorite... This is already a cursed phrase. One of my favorite tweets recently was this. I don't know if you saw this. "Season one episode of a medical drama. Professional and personal tensions are high during a stressful day at the hospital. Season nine episode of a medical drama. There's a new patient at the hospital and his name is Dracula."

• 1:14:23Speaker 06

  Dr. Accula.

• 1:14:25Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly.

• 1:14:27Chris Ryan?

  No, it's not like... Actually, not a terrible idea.

• 1:14:30Andy Greenwald?

  But like, that is...

• 1:14:31Speaker 06

  That's an Ed Wood.

• 1:14:32Andy Greenwald?

  But there is a reality to that in terms of like...

• 1:14:35Speaker 06

  Oh, 100%.

• 1:14:36Andy Greenwald?

  But you do have a...

• 1:14:37Speaker 06

  We were dropping helicopters in Ambele to pay by 15 on the Ark.

• 1:14:40Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly.

• 1:14:41Speaker 06

  Yeah. But I think that's another... Networks like spectacle and to bring viewers back, you need to tell them it's bigger and better than ever before. That kind of hype and hyperbole is intended to all programming. And hopefully we'll have a good sizzle clip package to sort of sell the show with season two, just off of the drama that you find in an emergency room. And the fact that you already care enough about these characters to care about how they're going to be successful in their careers and in their day.

• 1:15:14Chris Ryan?

  Do you look back when you see like, say, the kind of commotion that's happening around Taylor Dearden, right? Is there almost like a full circle feeling for you where you're like, man, I remember when I was her age and entering this kind of, this world of being on a hospital show, but also my character becoming kind of larger than life to people?

• 1:15:36Speaker 06

  Yes, yes, not specifically with Taylor though, because Taylor has grown up in and around this. So she has a little bit of her 10,000 hours in early. I feel that more with somebody like a Shabana Aziz, or even to a certain extent, Patrick Ball, where I'm watching, or Garen Howell. Even though these guys have done work before, really good work. This is a whole new sort of experience. And it's wonderful to watch. It's wonderful to watch them handle it so well. I was very grateful to the fact that I had Anthony Edwards, George Clooney and Eric Lussell, all 10 years older than me, acting like a big brother and steering me away from trouble and steering me back into professionalism. I've tried to be that sort of available resource,

• 1:16:21Speaker 06

  but it's amazing how little they need it. They're really sharp.

• 1:16:26Andy Greenwald?

  This might be a tough question to ask since you're so involved in every facet of the show. But I just wonder if you have a moment and you ever step back and consider, not just the strength of your performance and your ideas that you contribute to the show, but you being on the show in terms of audiences' relationships with you, Noah, the actor, playing a doctor in our lives, and what you bring to us, giving us the opportunity to see you do it again. I don't know if that's a very meta question.

• 1:16:53Speaker 06

  No, no, it wasn't lost on me. Well, first of all, I was extremely grateful that Max Green led the show with me in the lead. I was surprised at that. But I knew what attendant baggage I bring to playing a doctor. And I knew that I was going to already. Be able to trade on a history of trust and goodwill. And that was part of the thesis, you know? We're presenting somebody that, oh, he's a good doctor. Oh, he's a really smart guy. Oh, he's really compassionate. Oh, look how empathetic he is. Oh, he's so capable. Wow, he's so dedicated. He doesn't even have time to pee. This guy is fantastic. This guy is great. I want him to be my doctor. Oh, shit, he's on the ground.

• 1:17:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:32Speaker 06

  Oh, shit, he's crying. Like, he's human. He's frail. He's fragile. He's a good metaphor for our healthcare system and even the best practitioners. So that was the arc we were going for. And I made it easier to have that arc play out because of the goodwill that audiences already kind of bring to the table with me.

• 1:17:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but I love the way Abbott and Robbie get inverted by the end of the day. Where, you know, not only very real, like on the roof wise, but you kind of realize by 14 or 15, Robbie's not being reckless per se, but Abbott's like, hey, man, take a sec, you know, like you don't have to show the measles case parents.

• 1:18:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, he's flying on autopilot. And he has no filter, no professional mask anymore, no ability to be politic. He's, and no ability to go home after this shift and lie to himself and say, there isn't a problem. So where we go from now is him accepting or resisting treatment, all the different modalities of treatment available, which one is going to take effect? And to underscore that doctors aren't always the best patients.

• 1:18:44Andy Greenwald?

  I was looking over at the notes that I was writing when I was watching the finale, and I was struck by the fact that I wrote, this is the most stressful episode of the season for me, even though one of the reasons I was enjoying it so much is that I felt like I understood the show, I trusted the show. I didn't think a car was crashing into the ER. I didn't think that there was going to be some secondary mass casualty event. What was stressing me out more than anything else was that Robbie, and to a lesser degree, Mohan were losing it. And that the loose cannon, what you were just describing, that something could go wrong for them.

• 1:19:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:16Andy Greenwald?

  Was what was animating me and making me sit on the edge of my seat. It wasn't the medicine anymore. It was the people.

• 1:19:21Speaker 06

  No, you don't want them to say or do the wrong thing. You don't want them to get hurt. And you see how fragile they are at that point.

• 1:19:29Chris Ryan?

  I only have one more question, which is, what's a cric tray?

• 1:19:33Andy Greenwald?

  A cric tray?

• 1:19:35Chris Ryan?

  Every time somebody was like, start a cric tray, or I'm gonna get the cric tray. I was like, it doesn't seem like I ever want to hear those words.

• 1:19:42Speaker 06

  All about the airway in the emergency room. Are they breathing? Airway breathing, circulation, the ABCs of emergency medicine. So when you're trying to get an airway and there's any kind of occlusion and you can't get a tube through, then you have to do, you have to make your hole a little lower. And that's like, and the cricothyroid is where you make your incision to put.

• 1:20:04Chris Ryan?

  The surgeons are so quick with.

• 1:20:06Speaker 06

  Don't you remember on MASH when Hawkeye did it with a ballpoint pen?

• 1:20:08Chris Ryan?

  I do, but.

• 1:20:09Andy Greenwald?

  I'll never forget it. But Chris, to be fair, patients who come into the pit ER, they're pretty chatty. I feel like they don't seem to mind what they're hearing. Maybe that's because the ketamine, ketamine hits like.

• 1:20:19Speaker 06

  Every time John Wells is asked about, you know, so now you know a lot about medicine. What's it like when you go to the hospital? He says terrifying. I know just enough to know what they're talking about and I can't do anything about it.

• 1:20:29Andy Greenwald?

  My biggest medical question isn't so much the, you know, the, the education, the, literally the crash course that the cast had to have to use these words and make it sound like they've used them a hundred times. And the practice movements, which are so amazing, and we take for granted. I mean, that goes back to ER, the choreography of it. It's how many pairs of rubber gloves did you wear?

• 1:20:47Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, I was gonna ask.

• 1:20:48Andy Greenwald?

  In 2024.

• 1:20:49Chris Ryan?

  If the hand sanitizer was real.

• 1:20:50Andy Greenwald?

  How are your hands?

• 1:20:51Speaker 06

  Well, I'm conscious of waste, so I try to reuse gloves as often as possible. So I'll take them off in the scene, then I'll pick them off the floor and turn them right back out.

• 1:20:59Andy Greenwald?

  What does Dr. Sax think about that?

• 1:21:01Speaker 06

  It's not the most sanitary thing that we do. But then we got all that hand sanitizer sitting right there. That was, you know, from the jump, you gotta, you gotta wash your hands on the way into a room and you gotta wash your hands on the way out of the room. And we did that because we couldn't do some of the other things that are ubiquitous in hospitals. Like we couldn't all wear masks all the time. You wouldn't see our faces if we wore masks as often as you should wear a mask in a hospital. So to underscore the need to stay hygienic and clean, we used the hand sanitizer, a lot of gloves.

• 1:21:31Andy Greenwald?

  Again, we're not hunting for spoilers, but we are curious about you and your curiosity and your creative mind here. What are you hoping to show with Robbie in future seasons or do with him in a second 15-hour shift? I think that, you know, just to use as an example, it wasn't just the collapse that was so meaningful, it's that he fell back on the shema and that there is a glimpse of some belief system that was echoing or still, you know, in his brain.

• 1:22:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, to me, that's the elegance of giving just a nugget every once in a while. Is in episode four, Robbie says, you know, that he's Jewish, but he kind of, it's a throwaway line. And then in another later episode, somebody asks him about, is talking to God, and he says, oh, we haven't spoken in a while. Another episode, you find out he was raised by his grandmother, but he never mentions his parents. You've got three pieces of information, that he's Jewish by faith, but it's an estrangement, and it's tied more to a grandmother than it is to how he was raised by his parents. And then, when he's on the floor in his deepest despair, he falls back on something that he recited with his grandmother for comfort every day. And it's a very basic prayer.

• 1:22:41Speaker 06

  And that was my way of showing him, reaching for any lifeline he could find, even if it's a semblance of faith, which felt really appropriate for the character. But again, was just, just specific points, just to tell a sort of very subtle version of a story. And then in season two, whether that takes more prominence or not, we're discussing now.

• 1:23:05Andy Greenwald?

  I wondered, not to circle back too much to that one moment, but why Whittaker? Why is it the Whittaker that?

• 1:23:10Speaker 06

  That was another great conversation, because it could have been anybody that walked in. But at the same time, when you're showing extremes, I want, in that moment, I want to see the youngest doctor who's first aid, and he's wide-eyed, and he's naive, and he's aspirational, to see what it looks like on the other end of your career. And that, to me, that polarity was really poignant. And who else could get Robbie up, except somebody who has the innocence of believing that he can get Robbie up?

• 1:23:39Andy Greenwald?

  The bloodhound, yeah.

• 1:23:41Speaker 06

  It's, I throw a look at him like, as he extends his hand to me and said something that felt like, like, "We need you out there, Captain." I remember thinking that Robbie would think, "You really think you can help me? That's so cute. That's so cute." And then we threw in that, I love that little beat. Garen and I always found something wonderful to play physically with each other. When he helps me in my feet, I just loved shoving him away from me. I just thought that was the most Robbie-esque thing I could do.

• 1:24:09Chris Ryan?

  As if that kid hadn't taken on enough bodily fluids over the course of the season.

• 1:24:13Andy Greenwald?

  I also, I hate asking this, but I feel like, can he never use his real accent in an interview again? Because I feel like we, I just-

• 1:24:19Speaker 06

  It's disconcerting, right?

• 1:24:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:21Andy Greenwald?

  First of all, this is incredible American accent.

• 1:24:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:24:24Andy Greenwald?

  And I just think, you know, again, you know, you don't need to say who said this to you, but I feel like we would prefer it if he just stuck with it, just for at least the next few years.

• 1:24:31Speaker 06

  It's, well, Shabana as well with her thick Australian accent. And Tracy's an English woman.

• 1:24:37Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, her accent's really good, too.

• 1:24:38Chris Ryan?

  Her accent's great.

• 1:24:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, they're all phenomenal. It's, when you work with actors who are doing an American accent, on top of all the medical jargon and stuff, it's sort of like, okay, you're, that's the, you know-

• 1:24:50Andy Greenwald?

  What's the Ginger Rogers?

• 1:24:51Speaker 06

  Backwards and in heels.

• 1:24:54Andy Greenwald?

  Now we're just doing, now we're just in the fan cast.

• 1:24:56Chris Ryan?

  I wanted to ask a little bit about, like, the, at the end of this season, we find out that Whittaker sometimes stays upstairs. I think that there's a lot of unexplored space of the pit. You know, there can be kind of like a pit, like a hostel up there. You guys could have-

• 1:25:12Speaker 06

  That was the only time we left the floor, except to go to the Hillipad. And it was such an internal debate about whether to do it, whether that was a slippery slope. But we felt earned, because we, you know, there's a lot of students who are housed insecure right now, who are living, if they don't have a car, they're couch surfing as they get through their medical education. It's a big problem. There's a lot of unhoused people going to USC. John Wells's wife is involved in a project trying to get housing to, to students. So, that was one of the storylines we cared a lot about.

• 1:25:43Andy Greenwald?

  Is that, is it, is it safe to assume that where Whittaker was staying on the higher floor, that's next to Dracula's lair? And we'll be, we'll be seeing, that's an Easter egg, right? We'll be seeing in future seasons.

• 1:25:54Speaker 06

  Exactly, it's awfully creepy.

• 1:25:55Andy Greenwald?

  I know Chris was, I, I feel, I'm sorry I'm asking this for you, but I know Chris was particularly motivated by Dr. Collins' do not disturb functionality on her phone.

• 1:26:02Speaker 06

  Deep sleeper.

• 1:26:03Andy Greenwald?

  Very deep sleeper.

• 1:26:04Speaker 06

  Deep sleeper that calls.

• 1:26:05Chris Ryan?

  Did that get kicked around at all?

• 1:26:06Andy Greenwald?

  But also, that was an interesting choice, because her character made such an impact. It's a beautiful performance, the relationships that she has with Robbie, with everyone. And she's very, very good. And then she really doesn't come back. And I wondered if that was, is that scheduling? Is that showing us how much?

• 1:26:21Speaker 06

  Well, the whole end of the season is just removing bearing walls from Robbie's life. You know, he leans so heavily on Collins and Langdon, and then you take them both away from him. He leans so heavily on Dana, and then she becomes compromised. And then his one last relationship to Jake is severed when he can't save his girlfriend. So it's really, it was more of a, let's take away all this guy's support system and have him out there. If she had been there, I think she would have been maybe one of those voices that could have reached him. And we didn't want him to be reachable.

• 1:26:52Andy Greenwald?

  Wait, last thing.

• 1:26:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah?

• 1:26:54Andy Greenwald?

  There, obviously, the way that Pitfest plays out on the show is horrifying. I did have to ask you, who played Pitfest? What was the event? Because it does attract a very diverse crowd of like MDMA kids and clowns.

• 1:27:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:10Speaker 06

  Somebody posted that very question and called attention to just what a diverse group of people would come through.

• 1:27:17Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it's beautiful.

• 1:27:18Chris Ryan?

  A jam band, a new metal band.

• 1:27:21Speaker 06

  We're assuming it's a multi-stage.

• 1:27:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:23Andy Greenwald?

  I see. No, right, there's the balloon animals and...

• 1:27:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, we've got the petting zoo, and the kid rides over here. That's what the clown is for, and then all the kids doing MDMA and raving over here.

• 1:27:34Andy Greenwald?

  It's a beautiful vision.

• 1:27:34Chris Ryan?

  During the afternoon, too, so it's kind of an afternoon rave. Noah, man, thank you so much for coming by.

• 1:27:40Speaker 06

  Oh, my goodness. But I told you guys before, thank you. You were early champions of the show, and you were beating the drum early. And I can't thank you enough for your enthusiasm and support. It really means a lot.

• 1:27:51Andy Greenwald?

  We appreciate it. It meant a lot to us as people who think about this stuff and watch this stuff, to have a show that thought this deeply and beautifully about serious things. What you said a moment ago was what we were, was in our heads this whole time. We watch so much death on television, but we rarely have shows that consider what that means in our actual lives. So, thanks to all of you.

• 1:28:11Speaker 06

  My pleasure, my pleasure.

• 1:28:12Chris Ryan?

  Thanks for coming on.

• 1:28:13Speaker 06

  Thank you.

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