TV Roundup: ‘Black Mirror,’ ‘Dope Thief,’ ‘Hacks,’ and ‘The Studio’

Chris and Andy talk about the trailers that were released this week for ‘Fantastic Four,’ ‘Thunderbolts,’ and ‘28 Years Later’ (1:00). Then they talk about whether or not ‘Black Mirror’ is too dark for this current moment (26:15), before running through some of the other shows they're currently watching, like ‘Dope Thief’ (37:41), ‘Hacks’ (51:52), ‘The Studio’ (1:01:25), and ‘Everybody’s Live’ (1:08:58). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Senior Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Production and Editing: Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

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• 1:25Speaker 01

  I need supports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk, now!

• 1:31Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to The Watch: Not Good Hang with Amy Poehler. I am Chris Ryan and I am an editor at theringer.com. Joining me in the studio boycotting Black Mirror until it gets a little nicer out, it's Andy Greenwald!

• 1:48Andy Greenwald?

  Look how spicy, you're starting pod beef?

• 1:50Speaker 00

  Kai is here with her giant Good Hang Stanley cup.

• 1:55Andy Greenwald?

  Hydration gallon.

• 1:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, and you know, it's tough to be, to be feeling like you're put in your place, you know?

• 2:03Andy Greenwald?

  Kai, I don't know if you remember, but we made t-shirts for The Watch in, I want to say, 2017.

• 2:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:10Speaker 04

  I have one, because I'm not like, no one can get it.

• 2:12Andy Greenwald?

  Well, Kaya says she has one.

• 2:14Chris Ryan?

  Yes, yes. Kaya, Kaya has a T-shirt. Kaya also now hangs out with Catherine Han and Amy Poehler on the reg. So that's okay, that's okay. I'm really happy for her success.

• 2:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 2:24Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I'm happy for everybody's success. I'm happy for, um, Marvel Studios. I'm happy for their success.

• 2:30Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, you're turning this into the intro? This is good. Keep steering.

• 2:34Chris Ryan?

  I didn't really have an intro today, so I thought I would just let it rip.

• 2:36Andy Greenwald?

  That's because we're making fun of Kaya for her A-level gig. But you're heading to an A-level gig later. That's why you've got a little pep in your step today.

• 2:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I will be on the Bill Simmons pod unless he's texting me during this and be like, never mind. Uh, I'm going to be talking about the NBA with Rob Mahoney.

• 2:52Andy Greenwald?

  Does he want me to come on to talk about his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel? Just like from a TV critic perspective?

• 2:56Chris Ryan?

  Did you watch that last night?

• 2:57Andy Greenwald?

  No, but I will watch that clip.

• 2:58Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Um, Andy, today we're going to talk about shows that we've kind of started, abandoned. Some of us have watched more of than the other, but these are all the shows that are kind of in between Lotus, Last of Us, and Andor. These are kind of like our major tentpole shows that we've been covering. Although I did see a twinkle in your eye where I wondered whether or not, even, even for a show like ours, would we, are you, do you feel like you want Last of Us every week? You wanted to talk, talk through it every week?

• 3:24Andy Greenwald?

  Do I want it?

• 3:25Chris Ryan?

  Do you want to?

• 3:27Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I, I think I'm definitely not, I'm not giving up on it.

• 3:31Chris Ryan?

  No, I didn't think you would be.

• 3:32Andy Greenwald?

  No, and I think that, look, the, the, the show is, we don't need to relitigate what we said the other day, but the show is smartly designed, right? And so I think that the, the, at least the impression I get and the impression we got from the previous season is that episodes might not follow a particular, uh, expected rhythm or order. It was the third episode of the first season that everyone still talks about that was the, the, the Nick Offerman, Marie Bartlett bottle episode. So, so let's see. Now, does that mean that?

• 3:59Chris Ryan?

  I thought, I mean, you sounded like you were like mid on the first episode, right?

• 4:02Andy Greenwald?

  I was.

• 4:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:03Andy Greenwald?

  But if the second episode is just Catherine O'Hara doing drunk therapy with every member of the town? Episode of the year, baby.

• 4:11Andy Greenwald?

  Like, this show could still service me. Do you know what I mean?

• 4:15Chris Ryan?

  Is there a Bardo in this town?

• 4:17Andy Greenwald?

  Whoa, is this whole town?

• 4:19Chris Ryan?

  Is Joel in a liminal space?

• 4:20Andy Greenwald?

  Is this whole town a Bardo?

• 4:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:22Andy Greenwald?

  A Bardo and Grill perhaps, in the middle of Jackson?

• 4:24Chris Ryan?

  Let's go with you, man. Last night, I got my mind blown by reunited 90s post-hardcore legends, Clickatatt, Akatawi, my favorite drummer. I went to go see my favorite drummer, Mario Rubokaba, who played in Hot Snakes and Rocket from the Crypt and lots of other great bands.

• 4:42Andy Greenwald?

  How'd that make you feel, just like physically, energy-wise?

• 4:46Chris Ryan?

  You know, it's very, it's interesting and actually quite fun to go to a show just to watch one, I mean, I obviously was watching the rest of the band, but like, I was locked in.

• 4:54Andy Greenwald?

  You had horse blinders on.

• 4:56Chris Ryan?

  He's my favorite drummer. And so he plays a kind of like, surf psych style while playing hardcore. So like, there's a lot of like, floor tom roles, you know?

• 5:06Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 5:07Chris Ryan?

  And then a lot of like, heavy.

• 5:08Andy Greenwald?

  Did you position yourself in a kind of obvious slash awkward place in the room just to make laser eye contact with him the entire time?

• 5:16Chris Ryan?

  I did, honestly. Not to be like creepy, but I was just like, I came here to watch this guy drum.

• 5:21Andy Greenwald?

  Did you do the?

• 5:22Chris Ryan?

  Have you ever gone to watch a man drum, specifically?

• 5:25Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, gone? No. I mean, having gone out on the quad during nice days in college, I have been known to experience drumming in a way that I didn't anticipate.

• 5:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 5:38Andy Greenwald?

  But no, I have never.

• 5:39Chris Ryan?

  You've sacked, you've hacked, yeah.

• 5:42Andy Greenwald?

  I know, like, I never went to a Rush show, you know what I mean? Like, I didn't like, I've never zeroed in before.

• 5:46Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 5:47Andy Greenwald?

  Do you do the generational, and by generational, I mean like, Gen X, Gen X cusp like us thing, of being in an indie show and just being like, keeping rhythm on your sternum?

• 5:54Chris Ryan?

  I don't, I never did that. You know that too. You've been to enough shows with me to know.

• 5:57Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe you've changed. I haven't been to a show in a minute.

• 5:59Chris Ryan?

  I usually stand with a knowing smirk. Just think about all the-

• 6:03Andy Greenwald?

  All the other things that you've accomplished in life.

• 6:07Chris Ryan?

  About all my appearances on the Bill Simmons podcast.

• 6:09Andy Greenwald?

  And what you'll say. I love that, though. You're selling yourself short because you've had, first of all, you've had a great week in the pod space.

• 6:15Chris Ryan?

  Thanks.

• 6:16Andy Greenwald?

  You were finally invited on to Second in Command, Tim Simon's pod.

• 6:20Chris Ryan?

  I did, yeah.

• 6:21Andy Greenwald?

  It was nice of him, I thought, you know, like everybody-

• 6:23Chris Ryan?

  This is your bit. I don't really understand it.

• 6:25Andy Greenwald?

  Everybody gets a trophy these days. That's fine. You did great. And then you were also on Press Box. Has that dropped yet?

• 6:32Chris Ryan?

  It has not dropped yet.

• 6:32Andy Greenwald?

  I just want to say, I don't want to step on it, but it did seem like you were having an incredible R version of 13 Going on 30 Day, where you spent the day talking about the golden age of blogging and then went to a hardcore show. It's kind of beautiful.

• 6:45Chris Ryan?

  It is one nice thing about modern life is that you can just sort of, you know, curate and experience exactly like your tastes over the course of a day.

• 6:54Andy Greenwald?

  The closest I've come to that was, uh, over the weekend, I moderated a little Q and A, or I moderated, I had a little conversation with the great Kyle McLaughlin-

• 7:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:02Andy Greenwald?

  At Vidiate's. They were doing a double feature of Kyle Films that he curated, and of course, he chose Dune, the David Lynch version, leading into The Flintstones.

• 7:11Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:12Andy Greenwald?

  And-

• 7:13Chris Ryan?

  Does he play Fred in that?

• 7:14Andy Greenwald?

  What? No. It's John Goodman.

• 7:16Chris Ryan?

  Oh, well, who's he play?

• 7:17Andy Greenwald?

  The villain. Cliff Vander Cave.

• 7:19Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Is that canon, or was that written for the movie?

• 7:21Andy Greenwald?

  I think it was written for the movie. He was joking that that was the one part he ever got from auditioning. Like, he really auditioned and got it.

• 7:29Chris Ryan?

  Who was he up against?

• 7:30Andy Greenwald?

  He didn't say. He doesn't tell tales out of school, but he, uh, it's leaving Netflix soon, The Flintstones, and I feel like most people haven't watched it, nor necessarily should you. But it was wild that the movie begins with him scheming with his sexy secretary, Halle Berry, who's playing a character named Sharon Stone. This is the 90s where it-

• 7:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:50Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway, I only bring this up to say that my version of talking about blogging and seeing a hardcore show is having a friendly conversation with Kyle McLaughlin, and at the end, him giving me bottles of wine from his winery and talking about, um-

• 8:03Chris Ryan?

  Have you uncorked him yet, or are they, how are they?

• 8:05Andy Greenwald?

  I haven't uncorked. He was pouring his rosé. I mean, like, this is my dream, right? Like, my favorite actor from childhood being like, "Hmm, we're making a Chardonnay this year." I'm like, "Oh, tempt me with a good time, Agent Cooper." It was great. He's a lovely guy.

• 8:18Chris Ryan?

  Um, so yeah, we were gonna talk today a little bit about Black Mirror, the, the new season, which came out last week. We were gonna talk about Dope Thief, which Andy is current on. I'm a little bit behind on, but we wanted to do a check in. We were gonna talk about Everybody's in L.A., uh, The Mulaney Show.

• 8:33Andy Greenwald?

  Not called that anymore.

• 8:34Chris Ryan?

  What's it called?

• 8:35Andy Greenwald?

  Everybody's Live.

• 8:35Chris Ryan?

  Everybody's Live, uh, The Mulaney Show.

• 8:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 8:37Chris Ryan?

  That's been airing over the last couple of weeks. Uh,

• 8:40Andy Greenwald?

  We want, we wanted to do episode three of Your Friends and Neighbors, but it's a Friday release, so we'll have to hit it next week.

• 8:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, or, I mean, I, I think we could broadly talk about it, but like, we can talk about it on Monday, and then we also are gonna hit Hacks in the Studio.

• 8:52Andy Greenwald?

  This is a big day for us.

• 8:53Chris Ryan?

  A very, a full, full day.

• 8:54Andy Greenwald?

  You sure you have time before your next appearance?

• 8:56Chris Ryan?

  Do you wanna talk a little bit about some of these, uh, trailers that dropped? Just because these are films that are very much in our, our headspace. Fantastic Four, this is the sort of, um, you know, some footage was released out of CinemaCon.

• 9:10Andy Greenwald?

  And there was a teaser trailer.

• 9:11Chris Ryan?

  And there was a teaser trailer. Uh, this is a very full version of, of the trailer. Kind of gets in a little bit deeper into the story. Much clearer shots of Julia Garner as Silver Surfer.

• 9:22Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm. Still not that clear, but yeah.

• 9:24Chris Ryan?

  I mean, she's, she seems like a Silver Surfer. I mean, what are you looking for?

• 9:28Andy Greenwald?

  I, I wanna know about the detailing. Okay, go on.

• 9:32Chris Ryan?

  Uh, yeah, and a little bit more insight into what the plot points are gonna be, maybe, and, you know, Orie Richards messing with space and look what got him. Uh, also, the final trailer for Thunderbolts Asterix, and then another trailer for 28 Years Later. Let's start at the end. Um,

• 9:50Andy Greenwald?

  Did it occur to you at any point that the, the, um, uh, Girl Power Blue Origin flight might actually be our universe's Fantastic Four? Then they might come back with, I see your face thinking about if you're gonna get in trouble.

• 10:04Chris Ryan?

  No, I'm not gonna get in trouble. I was wondering whether or not you feel like they're happy about doing, having done that. Like, after getting back and having most of, at least, like, the public-facing response to their

• 10:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I say-

• 10:17Chris Ryan?

  achievement being like, fuck you guys.

• 10:19Andy Greenwald?

  I say this sincerely. I, I hope they're miserable for, like, a really long time. I mean, I'll be, I'll be the brave one.

• 10:30Chris Ryan?

  Okay, um, yeah, I don't, I think, I think Fantastic Four has a little bit more lore than the Blue Origin fight.

• 10:36Andy Greenwald?

  True, I do think though, that we are maybe, maybe the world is in a less receptive place to a bunch of fun seekers being like, let's go into space than they would have been in a different moment.

• 10:46Chris Ryan?

  Let's just casually erase the achievements of other women astronauts.

• 10:49Andy Greenwald?

  That's cool.

• 10:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:52Andy Greenwald?

  I thought, well.

• 10:54Chris Ryan?

  I want to start with the 28 years later trailer for a purpose.

• 10:58Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I thought you wanted to start with Fantastic Four trailer.

• 11:00Chris Ryan?

  I don't, you, you sort of interrupted and then started talking about Blue Origin.

• 11:03Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, no, but you were like, Julia Garner is Silver Surfer.

• 11:05Chris Ryan?

  No, but I said, let's start at the end, let's do 28 years later.

• 11:08Andy Greenwald?

  I wasn't listening at that point, was I?

• 11:09Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 11:10Andy Greenwald?

  Sorry.

• 11:10Chris Ryan?

  I'm not going to watch this.

• 11:12Andy Greenwald?

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

• 11:13Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I refuse, first of all, I think that when you're sold on a movie, you can stop watching trailers. I don't know who out there is like, gosh, I was thinking about seeing Sinners, but I gotta see a few more moments from this film.

• 11:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 11:27Chris Ryan?

  To really set me on it.

• 11:28Andy Greenwald?

  Isn't that the kind of movie that could have a beer with me?

• 11:32Andy Greenwald?

  Be like the undecided.

• 11:33Chris Ryan?

  The undecided Sinners attendant.

• 11:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. They do a focus group.

• 11:40Chris Ryan?

  Can you tell me what happens in the last five minutes? Because it's just like, I'm just not sure I want to invest.

• 11:44Andy Greenwald?

  Frank Lunt says like a diner full of people being, I'm not sure if I'm ready to see an original idea in the theaters.

• 11:50Chris Ryan?

  Sinners hid the vampires. Uh, I, um, this is probably along with one battle for after another, my most anticipated movie of the year.

• 11:59Andy Greenwald?

  So let's talk about this because last week, there was a moment, or not last week, Monday, where I was like, Chris, how do you feel about actors playing twins in movies? And you looked at me like I just like said unspeakable things about your family. I apologize. You are on record, on record on this podcast, and I, I should have known how you feel about that. That said, there are some core values that you hold that you only publicize in like minute 31 of a big picture draft. And I gotta be honest, I missed some of them.

• 12:30Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 12:30Andy Greenwald?

  So I didn't know that you felt so strongly about 28 years later.

• 12:34Chris Ryan?

  Do you know how people talk about Avatar? You know, and seeing the kind of James Cameron's technology on screen?

• 12:40Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, sure.

• 12:40Chris Ryan?

  And how mind blowing it is. That's how I feel when Gillian Murphy is in an empty London for the first time? When he comes out of the hospital in 28 days later?

• 12:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 12:50Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I, I thought that movie was mind altering when I saw it. I think, you know, it was, it felt like the indie ethos that we were kind of raised on in the 90s. Uh, applied to a genre movie and then blown up to a blockbuster epic, but still told with this really handcrafted, you know, he was shooting it on a video camera, I think, way, you know, like, and Murphy and Brendan Gleeson in that movie. And David Ecclestone, it was just so terrifying. It was so thrilling and exhilarating. I loved it. I thought 28 weeks later was actually quite good.

• 13:26Andy Greenwald?

  Mm hmm.

• 13:26Chris Ryan?

  Um, but this is such a cool idea for

• 13:30Andy Greenwald?

  It's great.

• 13:30Chris Ryan?

  going back and reviving IP. The fact that they've envisioned it as a trilogy. And I believe Nia de Costa is already in production, if not already done production on the second one. Sadly, they somehow do not have financing for the third one.

• 13:43Andy Greenwald?

  Um, really?

• 13:44Chris Ryan?

  The first two are written by Alex Garland, who I'm obviously very hooked on right now, um, with Civil War and Warfare and a lot of his other stuff that he's been doing. And, um, this cast looks incredible. The teaser is perfect.

• 13:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, teaser's great.

• 14:00Chris Ryan?

  So I don't want to see a bunch of things that are going to hit so hard in the theater, um, on a big screen.

• 14:07Andy Greenwald?

  As someone who, this is going to be a theme today. So I did watch the trailer. Um, please clap. Uh, I love the way you're talking about 28 days later, like, like when Modest Mouse signed to Epic. Like, finally Isaac's vision can be brought to the people of radio. Um.

• 14:27Chris Ryan?

  If you guys could just hear Interstate 8.

• 14:29Andy Greenwald?

  You don't understand. It was always big.

• 14:31Chris Ryan?

  You would vote Sangas too.

• 14:33Andy Greenwald?

  It was your minds that were small. Just say vote Sangas.

• 14:36Chris Ryan?

  I don't know if that winds up.

• 14:37Andy Greenwald?

  No, but it's pretty good. I'm here to report that the trailer hits really hard.

• 14:44Chris Ryan?

  Good.

• 14:44Andy Greenwald?

  And as someone.

• 14:45Chris Ryan?

  If you start describing the trailer, I'm walking out.

• 14:47Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, no. I mean, you're walking out because you gotta go be on Bill's podcast. No, I, I'm the same person that sat here on Monday and I was like, you know what? Maybe I just don't have the appetite for zombie stories. And then I was like, oh shit. You were serious about that?

• 15:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:04Andy Greenwald?

  That's my takeaway and I will be seeing this film.

• 15:07Chris Ryan?

  Um, did you need a final Thunderbolts trailer?

• 15:10Andy Greenwald?

  Here's my question about the Thunderbolts trailer.

• 15:12Chris Ryan?

  Is there any more movie that we haven't seen?

• 15:14Andy Greenwald?

  No, I mean, they've pretty much dropped the, the, the, the coyness about, who the villain is in the film.

• 15:22Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 15:24Andy Greenwald?

  I won't, I don't want to spoil it, but the character that Lewis Pullman plays is a complicated one with an interesting history and publication and they're doing that.

• 15:31Chris Ryan?

  I believe we've actually had conversations about this character on this podcast.

• 15:35Andy Greenwald?

  Well, the character of the Sentry has an arch villain named The Void.

• 15:39Chris Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 15:39Andy Greenwald?

  And The Void is mentioned in this, uh, in this trailer and that's all I'll say. But, uh, what struck me, and I guess I just want your opinion of it. And for full disclosure, I did text, uh, Sean Fantasy this question to get his input on it. But I texted him, uh, approximately 90 seconds ago and I've not yet heard back a response in real time.

• 15:58Chris Ryan?

  You do the work.

• 15:59Andy Greenwald?

  It's kind of like when you called Rusillo during the blue chip spot, you know, like Sean might just show up. You never know what could happen down here.

• 16:06Chris Ryan?

  I like that it's sort of like the way Maggie Haberman calls like a source that is just like, I'm going to press in two minutes. You can either be a part of this or it can be about you.

• 16:15Andy Greenwald?

  He's hovering over the button, like the meme with the sweaty guy.

• 16:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:20Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think it is a sign of utmost confidence or panic? That a movie that to this point has been presented as a ragtag Guardians of the Galaxy meets Suicide Squad, hey, we're just trying to survive here. We're the dregs of the Marvel Universe and we're gonna do our best to have a good time. Flick is pivoting hard to earnest emo, it's up to us to save the world.

• 16:45Chris Ryan?

  Isn't that exactly what Guardians of the Galaxy did too?

• 16:47Andy Greenwald?

  With its trailers, it 100% did. So is it just that playbook?

• 16:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think it's like you tantalize everybody with wisecracks. And then you really seal the deal with this is about friendship and a found family.

• 17:00Andy Greenwald?

  It's the closing message of the campaign. You start with coconuts and you end with, well, coconuts, honestly. But, okay, that's fair. I didn't know, it was, it's such a tonal shift.

• 17:12Chris Ryan?

  But I, you know, this is the thing I tried to get my head around is like, who is a casual fan?

• 17:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 17:19Chris Ryan?

  Who is tracking the narrative of the promotion of Thunderbolts?

• 17:24Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know.

• 17:24Chris Ryan?

  And is like, this is too much wisecracking for me.

• 17:28Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know.

• 17:28Chris Ryan?

  I was gonna see this movie, but is, perhaps it's a little light in the feet. I don't know. There had, there better be some heartfelt moments of friendship in it.

• 17:36Andy Greenwald?

  I genuinely don't know.

• 17:37Chris Ryan?

  They get the final trailer, which is another four minutes of all the other set pieces in the movie. And they're like, oh, it turns out that they had to come together to stop the true evil in the world.

• 17:47Andy Greenwald?

  There aren't enemies, they're a family.

• 17:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that the first part of what you were talking about is the more interesting thing, which is like the inability probably for movies that are this expensive to keep twists hidden. Because a, it's usually something that you can market. It's usually a thing that you would want people to know, like, ooh, you know, Lewis Pullman come through. And then.

• 18:08Andy Greenwald?

  Look how far we done fell.

• 18:09Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 18:09Andy Greenwald?

  I know he's been on the pod, but, and I like him, but.

• 18:14Chris Ryan?

  But yeah, I just don't know when they're, what purpose like a four trailer promo run really serves.

• 18:21Andy Greenwald?

  Either it's just theater at this point, just like marketing department has to keep their job and justify it somehow, or there is some thinking about how they target these, that the audience for these trailers isn't snarky podcasters being like, well, fire this one up and see if it impresses me. But actually, there are potential viewers who have not seen any of the trailers.

• 18:41Chris Ryan?

  In this diner in Trump's country, Trump America.

• 18:43Andy Greenwald?

  Frank Luntz is like, now, please put on these headphones and look at this iPad. I won't explain the asterisk.

• 18:48Chris Ryan?

  Louis Pohlman's in this?

• 18:51Andy Greenwald?

  From Outer Range? Holy shit.

• 18:55Chris Ryan?

  He was great as Bob in Top Gun Maverick.

• 18:57Andy Greenwald?

  We've been wondering what Bob's next move would be. I don't know. The other thing that I, that makes me, I mean, I am eager to see this movie out of curiosity, but also because the other thing this trailer does is what I believe we both said would be a smart move for this movie, which seemed at its genesis to be just like, well, we got these characters from TV, let's do something with them. It seems like Florence Pugh is the star of the movie, and that her character is the connective tissue, and I feel like that is the smartest play.

• 19:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:28Andy Greenwald?

  And that makes me want to see the movie.

• 19:29Chris Ryan?

  I was already gonna see the movie. I don't have high hopes, high, high hopes for it, but I expect to be entertained. Don't really care what the story's about and don't expect it.

• 19:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, you keep talking about set pieces. I'm like, I don't care.

• 19:40Chris Ryan?

  Well, I think that like, the amount that they, look, like, the first time you go see a Mission Impossible movie, I think it's great to feel like you are experiencing it for the first time in the big theater, rather than like, on your phone or on your laptop as you watch, this is how Tom Cruise jumped onto a plane, like, the 50th time. I would like to try to like, get back to maintaining that wonder at, at major movies for myself, because I just feel like when I'm in a movie theater sometimes, I'm like, well, they really did put like 60% of this film in a trailer.

• 20:15Andy Greenwald?

  Well, let's, that's a good pivot to Fantastic Four trailer.

• 20:18Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 20:19Andy Greenwald?

  Because I think there is a level of forethought and care present in the, in the presentation of this movie and its marketing campaign that, that speaks to your point. A lot of attention has clearly been lavished on building a world, a sort of retro-futurist, alt-universe, Jetsons-esque Marvel 1960s. I'm, I appreciate it. I appreciate the, the grain of the film stock and the color palette and the shots of New York and The, you know, the stand-in for the Ed Sullivan Show.

• 20:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:52Andy Greenwald?

  That all feels very lived in and good. And I think with, again, this is, there's a lot of intention to all of this. But I think there was an interview or quotes from the director, Matt Shakman, this week saying about how, and I know this sounds ridiculous, but bear with me. That they were like devoted to like practical effects with the planet eating space god Galactus, who is the villain of the film. We'll see. I was glad they didn't show him other than a foot walking in Manhattan because I think that this, the problem with the Marvel Universe's pivot to the, the grand space operas is that everybody is purple and everybody's enormous and everybody can punch and shoot lasers.

• 21:30Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 21:31Andy Greenwald?

  And it doesn't mean anything anymore. So the idea of treating the villain of Fantastic Four as like a Kaiju, so it's basically like a Godzilla movie, for an Earth that has self-appointed protectors, but really no one to fight.

• 21:44Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 21:45Andy Greenwald?

  It's a smart conception and it does speak to some of the core strengths that Kevin Feige exhibited 10 plus years ago, which is understanding who these characters are and building, like really sinking the roots into the foundation of the characters so that then they can become something bigger, that's more meaningful to more people.

• 22:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Watching this trailer kind of made me wish that the Avengers movies weren't happening.

• 22:07Andy Greenwald?

  The next ones.

• 22:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:08Andy Greenwald?

  That this wasn't already a prelude to something else.

• 22:11Chris Ryan?

  It's not even that as much as I felt like this was one of the first times where I felt like the, I mean, it's not fresh because this is obviously a project or a story that's been told several times on the big screen. And also is one of the most durable titles in all of Marvel. But I found myself like ready for a new world where time starts in this version of the reality. Where Reed Richards is doing what he's doing. And I understand that all those characters will be coming back. But since everything that we have heard about Avengers Doomsday is the gang's back together, literally everyone who's ever appeared in these movies is coming back. The directors are coming back from Endgame and Infinity War. Downey is being recast, you know, as a new character.

• 22:57Chris Ryan?

  All of this stuff just feels like a greatest hits album.

• 23:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 23:01Chris Ryan?

  And Fantastic Four at least had like a patina of new to me, you know, even if it's A, retro and B, has been told before.

• 23:09Andy Greenwald?

  Absolutely. Are you happy?

• 23:10Chris Ryan?

  So I wish this was like almost A D B C and it was like Fantastic Four marks the next chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The other chapters are now closed, but I feel like Deadpool and Wolverine really, uh, that's like the Ozempic pill for them. They're just like, well, now like, look, like if we just bring all these people back and have wink and cameos or whatever, we can just, we can give people this cheap thrill.

• 23:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, absolutely. Um, two, I want to do two quick temperature checks, uh, coming off of this trailer for you. One, are you happy that, um, pregnancy is back where it belongs in the Marvel Universe front and center as a plot point?

• 23:48Chris Ryan?

  Like, has that, is it ever, wait, Wanda, was, was Wanda ever pregnant?

• 23:52Andy Greenwald?

  Hell, yeah.

• 23:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 23:55Chris Ryan?

  She had a, she had that baby.

• 23:56Andy Greenwald?

  She got twins.

• 23:57Chris Ryan?

  Right. Yes. The, she, she had the twins.

• 23:59Andy Greenwald?

  Why did I want to say that in the, uh, the Bud Light voice? Not gonna do, you remember the ad? I'm not doing it. You're baiting me into it. No? Nineties? When it's just like, the, like, the best case scenario for your night out at the bar was twins?

• 24:15Chris Ryan?

  I don't remember that ad.

• 24:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, okay. All right.

• 24:18Chris Ryan?

  I'm serious. I don't remember that ad.

• 24:19Andy Greenwald?

  Just no, no TV in your hotel room for travel baseball. I get it.

• 24:23Chris Ryan?

  I'm too busy worrying about like my hip rotation.

• 24:27Andy Greenwald?

  Sure. Um, okay. Yeah. Yeah. And then, uh, yeah, then there are kids that are like that were in Agatha.

• 24:35Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Yeah. I was, I was being facetious. I remember that. There's been so many momentous pregnancies.

• 24:39Andy Greenwald?

  Do you remember the Maximoff family tree, Chris? Otherwise you're gonna walk over to the Bill Simmons podcast right now.

• 24:45Chris Ryan?

  I'm all good on pregnancy on screen after the pit.

• 24:47Andy Greenwald?

  Fair. I think they've really, okay. My second point is, as someone who put in a lot of work over the last few years to really mainstream the mustache again, how are you feeling about Pedro's cultural dominance?

• 25:00Chris Ryan?

  I can only hope to ever look as beautiful as that man. And when it comes to facial hair and just general like demeanor, you know, um, this mustache that I wear, and I thank you for seeing it and recognizing it, is a product of years of work. Um, and I think it's the quiet work that matters the most. It's the kind where it's not, oh, I'm having rosé with Kyle MacLachlan. It's like, you know, every day I get up. Maybe trim a few hairs.

• 25:28Andy Greenwald?

  Think about drummers?

• 25:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and it's my little friend from COVID. You know, it's like the one that I it's my mustaches.

• 25:34Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, that's the sign that you changed.

• 25:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah, that we all changed.

• 25:39Andy Greenwald?

  Wow.

• 25:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:40Andy Greenwald?

  That was a beautiful answer that I didn't expect. That's the joy of podcasting.

• 25:44Chris Ryan?

  But then I'm like, I sometimes I'm like, wish I should just shave this, you know, like it doesn't really. This is not going to get any more robust. I'm not going to ever look as cool as I want to with it. But it just is like one of those things where you're like, it's just hard to say goodbye to a certain part of your life.

• 26:00Andy Greenwald?

  Huh.

• 26:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:01Andy Greenwald?

  Should we hold some more space for this? This is, I feel like this is the realist I've ever got you on mic.

• 26:06Andy Greenwald?

  You didn't expect that today would be your confessional.

• 26:08Chris Ryan?

  Don't do not clip this, by the way.

• 26:10Andy Greenwald?

  Just like you with your mustache.

• 26:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:12Andy Greenwald?

  Do not clip it.

• 26:13Chris Ryan?

  Uh, where do you want to start with this kind of, uh, round robin of of TV?

• 26:19Andy Greenwald?

  I'll start anywhere. I'm just watching you in, I see reflected in your eyes that you're watching yourself open Instagram. And just be like, god damn it.

• 26:29Andy Greenwald?

  The fact that our podcast, as we've moved to video, has essentially become a rarified prank show for Kaia and the rest of her good hang homies to just get revenge on us.

• 26:39Chris Ryan?

  That's what Poller's in it for. She just wants to see us embarrass ourselves.

• 26:42Andy Greenwald?

  She does.

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• 27:42Chris Ryan?

  I do want to talk about Black Mirror. We can start there.

• 27:44Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 27:44Chris Ryan?

  You made a reference to, um, you know, in relationship to The Last of Us. And I think that this is something that gets brought up a lot with TV shows that have an intense nature to them.

• 27:57Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:58Chris Ryan?

  Uh, is like whether or not your real life is matching up with what you want to see on screen.

• 28:04Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 28:04Chris Ryan?

  Now, I think that there are certain things, uh, first of all, there are certain kinds of personalities where the two don't matter. Like, I can be in a very tumultuous time in my life, I'm fine watching tumultuous things on television personally. I, I rarely am like, no, this isn't the right time for this kind of show.

• 28:21Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 28:22Chris Ryan?

  Um, but your, your mileage may vary on that.

• 28:25Andy Greenwald?

  That's definitely true.

• 28:26Chris Ryan?

  You've talked about that. So, I was watching Black Mirror over the last couple of days and I would describe my wife as mildly engaged, I mean, very much a Black Mirror fan she is, but like, this season she was like mildly engaged and I think we watched, um, Common People, which is the first episode starring Chris O'Dowd and Rashida Jones.

• 28:46Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:46Chris Ryan?

  And then, um, It's Quite Sad. And we kind of dipped in and out, she dipped in and out of some other ones that I, I liked more than others, but I was looking back at the release dates of Black Mirror.

• 28:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that's what I was looking at as well.

• 28:59Chris Ryan?

  Season five came out the summer before COVID.

• 29:02Andy Greenwald?

  Uh-huh.

• 29:03Chris Ryan?

  Season six came out the summer of 23, which now seems like the last good time in our lives. So this is, among the more dystopian, like hardcore, are we gonna be okay moments for a show that basically says you're not gonna be okay?

• 29:22Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, yeah.

• 29:22Chris Ryan?

  To come out.

• 29:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 29:23Chris Ryan?

  And so I, not to blow up her spot yet again, Kai was mentioning, she was like, kind of an intense time to be watching Black Mirror.

• 29:30Andy Greenwald?

  Kai picked the wrong week not to have a microphone.

• 29:32Chris Ryan?

  And I think that I wonder whether that has something to do with the fact that I've had fewer conversations with people about Black Mirror this time around. Now, I like Play Thing because I really ride for David Slade as a director. He directed one of my favorite Black Mirror episodes, Metalhead.

• 29:52Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:53Chris Ryan?

  And also did the Bandersnatch experiment, which I thought was just really cool that they tried that. And Play Thing, this episode, does tie into Bandersnatch via a piece of casting. It has an almost like finchery seven feel to begin with, but then turns into a cautionary tale about a little thing called AI. Don't know if you know about that. Peter Capaldi is in that episode as well as James Nelson Joyce from A Thousand Blows. He plays Stephen Graham's brother on A Thousand Blows, and we loved him.

• 30:22Andy Greenwald?

  Trickle.

• 30:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Common People is quite good. It is laying it on a little thick that it's about a subscription service that keeps upping the fee on its essential medical offering while being broadcast on Netflix. But I thought the way in which they iterate on how that might work out. I don't want to give away too much for people who haven't seen it for yourself, but I thought that was a very somber and well-done episode. And then Hotel Reverie is another one that I thought was pretty cool. That's Emma Corrin and Issa Rae. That's a one that made me kind of realize a little bit more that there are Black Mirror

• 31:04Chris Ryan?

  buckets. And this is the Santa Junipero bucket. This is the timeless but also doomed love episode. You know, you have your kind of aggressive borderline horror stuff that you can do, like White Bear, like Metalhead. There are kind of entire history of you be right back wistful romantic episodes. But yeah, I think that this is a solid season. I have not watched the USS Callister episode yet. A lot of people really liked Eulogy, which is the Paul Giamatti episode.

• 31:37Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, the cast is hard to argue with.

• 31:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:40Andy Greenwald?

  Do you, how do you feel? I mean, this is a tough conversation now because I have not engaged with it, but I. I am finding my resistance less to do with I'm not in the mood for dystopia and more to do with the fact that I don't really feel as open minded. I'll just be honest, I don't feel as open minded as I would like to feel about six new hours of this storytelling in my life all at once.

• 32:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:06Andy Greenwald?

  And I've found that increasingly the case in my relationship with Black Mirror on Netflix. Like, I know ultimately Netflix doesn't care and that if my engagement with the show remains, I'll check one out occasionally and it's nice to have them there in the service. And it's potentially no difference to them whether I suddenly discover something in season five tomorrow than if I had in 2021 or three, whenever that season came out. But something about the way that it drops, this bothers me more than a binge of a serialized show.

• 32:38Chris Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 32:39Andy Greenwald?

  It just makes me want to not deal with it at all, honestly.

• 32:41Chris Ryan?

  Do you think it's because of the length of the episodes or the fact that you already feel under the gun to kind of get to the one that's important or get to the one that the San Juan de Perro or whatever it is? Because usually, you know, each one of these seasons usually has like a standout episode.

• 32:56Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's right. I mean, I don't think this merits a lot, a deeper conversation. It also could just be the fact that as we're alluding to in this overall, this podcast episode, there's a ton of TV right now and it's a busy time. So it maybe I'm not as prepared or I don't have the like the real estate for it. But it's, to me, it's less, it's more that it's, it's not making, it's hard enough to make one decision for what to do with a Tuesday night. When Black Mirror drops, it's like I have to make six micro decisions within the decision.

• 33:21Chris Ryan?

  It's, I mean, like, the easiest way to go about it is honestly just to watch any given episode, probably start at one and just kind of go through them. And if you're like, I like this cast, I'll stick with it.

• 33:31Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not, and I don't want to, this is not a sob story and it's not a hardship to watch great actors, you know, trying something out for Charlie Brooker.

• 33:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:39Andy Greenwald?

  But I, but I, I guess, have they talked a lot about, well, you've talked to Charlie Brooker before too, like, do they like this model for themselves or are they just happy to have the, the, the Medici's funding their project?

• 33:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think that. This isn't, to me, this isn't an unambiguously awesome project. Every two years or so, Charlie Booker comes back with about half a dozen or so episodes of the show. He's got the freedom to do Christmas specials and one offs. He's got the freedom to do interactive experiments. He obviously still has the attention and the interest of a global class of actor.

• 34:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 34:19Chris Ryan?

  Makes these episodes like you're immediately like, I gotta see what Emma Corrin is gonna do in this episode. I gotta see what, what Paul Giamatti, you know, is gonna do in this episode. There's like incredible talent on display. I, I find them to be very well directed and well written still. I, I think there's a certain element of, and I would love to talk to Charlie about this because I think I've brought this up to him before. And he's like, actually, you know, the things that I know about that I think are coming in the future will make your, you know, really like are gonna make your whiskers fall out. But it does feel like we are at one of those inflection points where

• 34:57Chris Ryan?

  reality is catching up with the future.

• 34:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 35:00Chris Ryan?

  And so when you're watching episodes that are largely about AI hacking, biohacking, being yoked to corporations who are then holding your well-being hostage. All these things I think are very much in the kind of the, the air out there now. Watching them happening in a not so distant future on a speculative horror sci-fi show. I don't know, I don't know necessarily that, it's almost like Black Mirror needs to go away for a while and then come back when we're closer to a new era. But I don't want it to because I just like watching Black Mirror.

• 35:41Andy Greenwald?

  Here's the thing that I would say about it, and this sounds more like a preview than anything else. Cause again, I have not engaged with the season yet, but I had, I did go back and read the review that I wrote of Black Mirror back for Grandland in like 11 or 12, like 2011, 2012, after the first season, I think, was airing here for the first time. And it was also, and it's such a different era, I'm basically like, find any way you can to see this TV show. Cause there wasn't one.

• 36:03Chris Ryan?

  Well, that was like one of my, I think when I first found out about it was like reading European, like England football Twitter and people being like, it's time for Black Mirror tonight. And I was like, what are they talking about?

• 36:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, you talk, you told me about it.

• 36:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And he was like, you would, I could, you could go to like these sort of pirate sites to download. Download those early episodes.

• 36:21Andy Greenwald?

  The thing that I wrote about was how it's about technology, but it left me, honestly, one episode left me in tears I wrote about at the time. And what's interesting to look back on those early episodes and to consider them and maybe at some point to re-watch them is that it's not the tech that it predicted so accurately, but it is a certain range of emotions.

• 36:42Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:43Andy Greenwald?

  Because the first episode, everyone's like, oh yeah, the prime minister fucks a pig.

• 36:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:47Andy Greenwald?

  Spoiler, sorry. But what that episode is actually about is a kind of absolute shamelessness and debasement, which is a lot more accurate about our current moment than, you know, a camera in your head that records all your memories.

• 37:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:04Andy Greenwald?

  Or a feeling of absolute despair, or the actual chance of missing your lived life because of distraction.

• 37:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:11Andy Greenwald?

  Which ran through those first few episodes in a way that felt almost quaint. Like, these are, if we're gonna give the show an enormous amount of credit, which we should, and I shouldn't dismiss it just from a, and I hope, I mean, I didn't mean to sound as if I was dismissing it for saying like, oh, I haven't had time to watch it yet. Predicting emotional relevance a decade ahead is more impressive, honestly.

• 37:33Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 37:33Andy Greenwald?

  Than predicting technological advancement. I'll fire it up.

• 37:37Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 37:38Andy Greenwald?

  Wait, before we, I should've said this at the beginning. There is something very service-y. Le Bureau is streaming again in America.

• 37:48Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 37:49Andy Greenwald?

  Sorry, I don't know who's listening at minute 32, maybe I'll say it again next week, but we should've seen that this was gonna happen. Paramount Plus has it.

• 37:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:57Andy Greenwald?

  And the entire series, the French series Le Bureau, one of our favorite shows of all time, I think inarguably one of the greatest TV series ever made, the inspiration, quite literally in many cases, of the agency is now streaming in its entirety on Paramount.

• 38:11Chris Ryan?

  You can also buy the seasons on DVD on Kino Lorber.

• 38:14Andy Greenwald?

  Look at you, old media.

• 38:15Chris Ryan?

  Well, I just, after it went away, I was like, I gotta, that was actually one of the triggers to start, start getting 4Ks in Blu-rays, is that I was tired of

• 38:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 38:25Chris Ryan?

  stuff disappearing from services, things that I thought were like relatively agreed upon as being like important movies, now all of a sudden like, don't have a streamer.

• 38:35Andy Greenwald?

  Like the Flintstones, starting May 1st.

• 38:37Chris Ryan?

  And it's another thing where you're like, I have 10 subscriptions, yet these movies are still anywhere between $5.99 to rent and 12 to $20 to buy. So I'm just like, why am I doing this? Every time Rewatchables comes up, and the Bureau is one of those things. I was just like, I love this show. I will re-watch it at some point. I want to hold on to it. Yeah.

• 38:54Andy Greenwald?

  And I think it's also, for people who haven't checked it out, who are listening at this point in the pod, I think all of our, we did, we did the whole series during COVID, right? And we did it on the pod, and you can find those on Spotify.

• 39:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I could actually, I don't know where I'll share this, but we can put a playlist together of those episodes. And just share the playlist.

• 39:11Andy Greenwald?

  Truth Social?

• 39:12Chris Ryan?

  That's where I usually post, yeah.

• 39:14Andy Greenwald?

  I know.

• 39:14Chris Ryan?

  Uh, would you like to talk about a show that you were more ahead on, or you want to do another one?

• 39:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, we can talk about Dope Thief.

• 39:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:20Andy Greenwald?

  A little bit.

• 39:21Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 39:22Andy Greenwald?

  It's aired, uh, six episodes. The seventh airs tomorrow, Friday, if you're, depending when you're listening to this, Friday, April 18th. And the finale will be next Friday, um, the 25th. I am so compelled to think about and talk about this show, not entirely for reasons that make me happy. Couple of weeks ago, we talked about the premiere, and I stand by it. I think the first two episodes into the third episode of Dope Thief are among the most entertaining, exciting, surprising, fun, high-quality television of the year. Like, I was like, oh, it's fun to have another slot in the top 10 taken this early. That's how high I was on the show, not because it was reinventing the wheel in any way, but because it was giving my favorite actor, Brian Tyree Henry, like a great showcase.

• 40:06Andy Greenwald?

  And it was, it felt like, in its bones, understood the assignment.

• 40:10Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:10Andy Greenwald?

  That it was, yeah, it was a crime show, and it was a crime show set in Philadelphia, so we are obviously on board. But that it was a good hang show, which I think is often overlooked.

• 40:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:21Andy Greenwald?

  Um, the vibe between Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Mora, um, was elite, and...

• 40:26Chris Ryan?

  Very lethal weaponry. I had a lot of, lots of recommend, yeah.

• 40:29Andy Greenwald?

  And just like, the kind of, you know, I- It's we one day, we can have a meta-conversation about how how much of what we are enjoying is relatively simple and straightforward these days. Like, I don't necessarily mean to be a shill for the marketing departments, as we've been already this episode, to be like, you can explain the show on the poster.

• 40:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:48Andy Greenwald?

  But truly mismatched, down-on-their-luck guys get in over their heads. I mean, that's most movies that we like in the 80s and 90s, and it felt like it had that in spades.

• 40:59Andy Greenwald?

  This the the wheels have fallen off this show so intensely in ways that are predictable, but also just kind of disappointing. The quality of everything is still extremely high. But it really reached an nadir with the sixth episode, which I don't need to. I don't need to spoil if we're not keeping up with it, but.

• 41:19Chris Ryan?

  Let me ask you a question.

• 41:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 41:20Chris Ryan?

  Is the main driving force of this series still he's on the run?

• 41:26Andy Greenwald?

  It's yes. So so basically, the the show has this, you know, the premise is these guys are robbing stash houses, pretending to be DEA agents, and then they knock over the wrong house.

• 41:37Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 41:37Andy Greenwald?

  And they basically ignite a massive war between various factions, various criminal enterprises and the DEA. And they are on the run because of it. Fundamental, and this is based on the book Dope Thief by Dennis DeFoe.

• 41:53Andy Greenwald?

  Fundamentally, this show is a movie to a degree that I haven't seen in a while, because the central conceit only fuels urgency for a certain amount of time before you end up.

• 42:06Chris Ryan?

  I was gonna ask.

• 42:06Andy Greenwald?

  With an episode like the one that aired last week, in which a character is having is feverish because of an injury, and is basically hallucinating his childhood for the 19th time, characters he hasn't really met yet,

• 42:23Andy Greenwald?

  teasing the overlap, in this case, it's the Marilyn Ireland character, who's been on her own show for this entire run so far, and just stuck in this neutral of like, well, now we're acting and now we're doing emotional stuff, while the larger stakes go on get put on the back burner.

• 42:40Andy Greenwald?

  This is just it's frustrating to me because.

• 42:44Andy Greenwald?

  It's a great story. It's a great conceit. It's a great production. But it's completely lost its own sense of scale and of itself. It would have been, I think, an excellent movie. Or it could have been a TV series. But there are just some fundamental rules of TV series that make them series that go on for eight hours. It is not eight chapters in a long movie, and it simply can't be. One of the ways that it kind of violates that is that by following these characters, stretching out the most intense moment of their lives, we're stuck in a, dare I say, abarto with them, emotionally speaking. So that people like Kate Mulgrew, who plays Brian Tyree's mom,

• 43:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:23Andy Greenwald?

  has been hammering one note on the piano so long, I can't believe that the entire instrument hasn't collapsed.

• 43:29Chris Ryan?

  Ray, you're all over the place, yeah.

• 43:31Andy Greenwald?

  And that's not a fault of the actor.

• 43:33Chris Ryan?

  Can I ask you-

• 43:33Andy Greenwald?

  That's the character who is stuck in the same thing. And meanwhile, the Brian Tyree Henry character is so far removed from the charming rogue he was at the beginning because he is on the long journey of his soul epic that the show has become. Meanwhile, and in order to make space for that, the character in episode six is basically allowed to suffer for 50 minutes, while clearly all of the people who are out to get him are either listening or driving around the house, but do not choose to converge upon him with violence until he leaves the house for a set piece at episode's end. We shouldn't be asking those questions like, where are the cartels right now? We shouldn't be doing that in a show like this. But by stretching it out to epic length, that's where we are.

• 44:16Chris Ryan?

  Let me ask you about whether the pitch of this show, the sale of this show, like the conception of this show actually winds up hamstringing the show down the line. So I'm gonna pitch you Dope Thief.

• 44:30Andy Greenwald?

  I can't wait.

• 44:31Chris Ryan?

  My version of Dope Thief. So what I want to make is a durable, long-running hangout show between two guys who are down on their luck. These two guys one day realize that there is not a lot of oversight and not a lot of dotting i's and crossing t's among drug dealers. When they are getting invaded by the DEA, when they are getting, you know,

• 44:57Andy Greenwald?

  Infiltrated.

• 44:57Chris Ryan?

  Infiltrated, yeah. So you can essentially run up in their house. These are a bank you can rob, and they can't call the cops.

• 45:04Andy Greenwald?

  Right, well said.

• 45:04Chris Ryan?

  Right, okay. The first few episodes are gonna be leading up to these guys making the decision to do that. We're gonna get a little bit of a picture of their home lives, the circumstances around why they would make a choice to do that, and maybe the end of the first episode is where they've committed their first crime. And then, by the end of the first season, they finally robbed the wrong house.

• 45:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 45:25Chris Ryan?

  And it starts this downward snowball of pressure leading, you know, to them going on the lam. And ultimately, it's a snapshot of a cast of rogues, a rogues' gallery, living in Philadelphia, trying to make ends meet,

• 45:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 45:39Chris Ryan?

  but never forgetting to laugh. Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Mora are gonna be the stars. There's gonna be a subplot of a dedicated DEA agent who's noticing something weird happening with robberies, and eventually, these three things will all come together. But it's built to last.

• 45:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, you've pitched an excellent TV show. Take my money.

• 46:01Chris Ryan?

  But the reverse of this is kind of what happened is, and I don't know, you know, whether or not Ridley Scott was like, "I don't care whether I burn the whole story in the first episode. I'm directing the first episode. I don't know."

• 46:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 46:12Chris Ryan?

  Like, how it works. But by the end of the first episode of Dope Thief, these guys, we've joined them in meteoraz, they're already robbing drug houses. And at the end of the first episode, they are in the deepest shit they could possibly be. They have blown up a farm where meth is being cooked. That person has called them and been like, "You're dead."

• 46:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 46:33Chris Ryan?

  The actual cops are on their ass. They're on the run. They're injured. And they've got to spend the next however many episodes. Like, you can't dial it down.

• 46:43Andy Greenwald?

  No, it's exactly right. And Peter Craig, who wrote the series and is the showrunner, and I think has really done an excellent job.

• 46:52Andy Greenwald?

  Is a screen, is a film guy, he wrote The Town.

• 46:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:55Andy Greenwald?

  And I don't think it was Ridley Scott. I think that this was talent, this is talented people meeting the market and certainly meeting Apple's marketplace where it was pre-strike. So, all this is to say, I don't, I don't, I think it's kind of a, it's kind of like the way we see light from the stars that is actually hundreds of years old when we look up into the night sky. Like, I don't think shows like this are getting greenlit anymore.

• 47:18Chris Ryan?

  We're being so weird on this episode.

• 47:19Andy Greenwald?

  I love this episode. But I, I-

• 47:21Chris Ryan?

  My, that's my mustache, your astronomy, yeah.

• 47:24Andy Greenwald?

  I think, first of all, it's astrology. No, it's not, it's astronomy. Should we do astrology?

• 47:30Chris Ryan?

  I don't, I don't subscribe to it.

• 47:31Andy Greenwald?

  Really?

• 47:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:32Andy Greenwald?

  I've read some things that are very accurate about you.

• 47:34Chris Ryan?

  You've, really?

• 47:36Andy Greenwald?

  Let's do that one week when we don't have TV shows to watch. This wouldn't have gotten greenlit, like Ridley Scott's involved and wants to make an episode, his production company is into it, Brian Tyree Henry wants to do it and Apple wants to be in business with him. Wagner Moore's film career is, is, is starting to explode, like, he's not signing on to a seven-year contract. So, all of the pieces pushed it in this direction and it ultimately ended up being, to my, to my mind, it's, it's disappointing that it's not the best possible version of it, it's the version that was going to get made. When everything about this could have been a really fun, it just could have been a, it could have been a, it could have been a contender.

• 48:19Andy Greenwald?

  It could have been great and instead I think it's gonna end up being something that was noteworthy, that, that it had some really high highs, but is, is pretty disappointing ultimately.

• 48:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I just wonder whether or not, I'm very curious about whether or not stuff is being pitched for its, its stability rather than its flashiness. And that when you pitch something that is like, wow, what a great idea. Like, I wanna see that first episode right now. And then it's like, well, what's the third episode gonna be like? And what's gonna happen on the sixth episode? When, unless we're making 24, there's no way to sustain this kind of electricity.

• 48:56Andy Greenwald?

  But Dope Thief has a massive shootout massacre at a quarry in the fifth episode. Like, they're answering the question, but it's not servicing the characters of the story in a way that I think would make for consistently compelling television. It's continually- Like Wagner Morris Manny, chasing the high despite the damage that it does to itself. And that's, that is kind of a bummer. To your point about who's pitching things like that, absolutely, it is indicative of a shift that is happening behind the scenes where the pitches now or with the questions being asked by executives are how can we extend this? How can we play this out over a longer period of time? But we're still kind of caught in the mushy middle of those two eras of television,

• 49:38Andy Greenwald?

  as best evidenced by the other show that's on Apple's top 10, Your Friends and Neighbors, which, when we talked about it last week, and we're going to continue to talk about it, I think we both were jazzed by the open-ended nature of the pilot. Like, okay, we're locked in, let's see where this goes, and it has a little room to grow. There's some open road, it's already filming its second season. But the show did begin with what the executives clearly felt was the most exciting thing about it, and then said four months earlier, or five months earlier.

• 50:07Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 50:08Andy Greenwald?

  It would be great to find a world where we could actually just chill out and start a show, but I don't know, I don't know when we get there or what the success rate will

• 50:18Chris Ryan?

  I mean ironically, I feel like The Pit is like that.

• 50:20Andy Greenwald?

  The Pit is that, but it's

• 50:21Chris Ryan?

  It's so high concept, but it is like, this can go on forever, and if there's seven episodes or an entire season of The Pit where there isn't a mass shooting, there isn't something, and nothing insane has happened, it's just your daily drudgery, I still would, I still think that you could reach the same dramatic heights.

• 50:40Andy Greenwald?

  Weirdly, this will, this actually is a segue into our conversation to more comedies like Hacks in the Studio.

• 50:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 50:45Andy Greenwald?

  But, but this dynamic between how to pace things, how to, how many times can you ring the bell or like really, really get people, like, that is perpetually the dynamic of TV. And I think that it's sort of, it just remains interesting to me to be on the other side of the prestige mountain and be like, really, how often were we able, like of all the great series, I was thinking about this the other day.

• 51:13Andy Greenwald?

  It's 2025, and I still think that for many people, the Rushmore of TV is some combination of the great difficult men shows, all of which were ongoing, none of which were announced as limited or event series. Sopranos, Wire, Breaking Bad,

• 51:31Andy Greenwald?

  Mad Men.

• 51:34Andy Greenwald?

  How many?

• 51:34Chris Ryan?

  Girls.

• 51:36Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, Girls has a lot to say for it. You're trying to trip me up, but yeah.

• 51:40Chris Ryan?

  I'm not joking.

• 51:42Andy Greenwald?

  But of, when, and we can do this, maybe this is a separate thought exercise, but like of all of the, holy shit, I can't believe they got all of these stars to align to make this limited thing. How many of them are actually in the pantheon of like?

• 51:56Chris Ryan?

  Like how many of them are timeless?

• 51:58Andy Greenwald?

  So like Chernobyl is perfect and incredible. I May Destroy You might be on that list.

• 52:03Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I put True Detective, season one in there. I know that you resist that, but I think for a lot of people.

• 52:09Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I'm not resisting that it's excellent. Yes, I am, but I'm resisting right now because that was continued. You know, and then there were sort of fits and starts, whether they.

• 52:20Chris Ryan?

  So what are you talking about? I mean, Big Little Lies was continued, right? Like, what do we?

• 52:23Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 52:24Chris Ryan?

  What's an example?

• 52:24Andy Greenwald?

  I'm saying how many of the like, holy shit, look what we did and now let's get out of here.

• 52:29Chris Ryan?

  Well, I would put The Night Of in there, but I guess like The Night Of is.

• 52:32Andy Greenwald?

  It's amazing.

• 52:33Chris Ryan?

  It's amazing, but it was also like had a little bit more TV to it where you think about like Totoro is not.

• 52:39Andy Greenwald?

  Had a lot of TV to it.

• 52:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 52:42Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway, we don't need to get into like the existential conversation of it, but.

• 52:47Chris Ryan?

  That's a really good question. Let's readdress that on another pod.

• 52:50Andy Greenwald?

  I think that people kind of forgot it, that like, not that you can just go into a lab and create another Mad Men or whatever. You absolutely cannot.

• 52:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:59Andy Greenwald?

  And whatever comes next as the inheritor of that kind of mantle will probably look and feel different as it should because that, those are dated in ways and certainly, you know, on screen, but also production and like the attitude of the industry. But the shows that people love were not limited.

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• 54:17Chris Ryan?

  I for a long time thought Hacks had way played out its sheet music. Like and that it was kind of going back over notes. And was not a huge fan of the previous season, the third season of Hacks. Yeah. And find myself getting pulled back in this season. Tell me about it. You know, there's still several different shows happening within one show. There is the Deborah Vance home life, like Coyote Poops and... Profound. Yeah, like all of the kind of like domestic comedy that happens with her home. There is the now pretty like permanent Jimmy going out on his own

• 55:01Chris Ryan?

  to start a new management company comedy that's happening about like the town. And then there is the Ava Deborah War of the Roses plot. Yep. I find myself weirdly compelled by the Ava Debra stuff this year. And especially, I think, because they found a fun, cool place to put it, which is this late night, her getting this late night gig and becoming the new host, the first female host of a late night show and something that she's been waiting her whole life to get. And Ava, through machinations, becomes her head writer.

• 55:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 55:40Chris Ryan?

  Against her Debra's will. And I think that this show needed, A, some stakes beyond like, is Debra gonna get back to the top of the mountain? It's like now it's like-

• 55:53Andy Greenwald?

  That's a tough one.

• 55:54Chris Ryan?

  Debra can still fail here, right? Or we don't know what success or failure would even be. And two, it's like, it just keeps the characters off balance a little bit. I mean, you can, you can kind of see an inevitable, like, we did it, high five moment coming. But I think also there's like a tonal way that they're shooting and it feels good to be in LA, they're doing fun stuff in LA.

• 56:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 56:18Chris Ryan?

  So I think I'm kind of-

• 56:20Andy Greenwald?

  Lot of good Glendale content.

• 56:21Chris Ryan?

  Lot of good Glendale content, but a lot of good Hollywood Hills stuff, a lot of good Television City, like the, isn't that where Paramount was, used to be where they're shooting her show?

• 56:30Andy Greenwald?

  Are they doing it at Television City?

• 56:32Chris Ryan?

  Is that where that is on Lake Beverly?

• 56:34Andy Greenwald?

  It was, yeah.

• 56:35Chris Ryan?

  Oh, is it gone?

• 56:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think they knocked it down. They moved, they moved Price is Right to the Valley.

• 56:39Chris Ryan?

  Oh, wow.

• 56:41Andy Greenwald?

  See? If you blink, you'll miss it.

• 56:43Chris Ryan?

  You saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac. Um, I, I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying it. I, I, I, there's, there's jokes that I find are, are kind of fall flat for me, but I, I've enjoyed these first few episodes.

• 56:58Andy Greenwald?

  I think, uh, well, there's one moment in particular in the second episode that cracked me open a little bit and I was like, that's, that keeps me watching. And it's after Helen Hunt's big boss character invites Deborah and Ava to a lovely outdoor dining situation and basically reads them the riot act that like this isn't cute, whatever's going on between you, you don't actually realize how much quicksand you're in here and how how short your leash is basically. And as they leave the dinner, Deborah says kind things to Ava about what she's done for her thus far and then gives her a hug. And the camera, I assume Lucia and Yello directed it, she often does, and

• 57:41Andy Greenwald?

  lingers beautifully on Hannah Einbinder's face.

• 57:44Chris Ryan?

  And she's like, this is all I've ever wanted.

• 57:46Andy Greenwald?

  And she collapses into it like she's finally gotten approval from her mother, basically. And then Deborah's like, smile because we're on camera.

• 57:54Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 57:55Andy Greenwald?

  It's a beautifully staged moment. It's earned, it's built up to, it's beautifully performed and it and it reminds us of like that core infinity stone that exists at the heart of this show.

• 58:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:08Andy Greenwald?

  Across seasons that is that still has a little has more than more than enough juice in it. And I was really happy to see that. Because otherwise, and I was with you on, broadly speaking, I was with you, I was not a big fan of season three and feel like this is a return to a form. I don't know if it's a form that is going to be just, you know, matching the admittedly very high highs of the first two seasons, or if it's becoming something else entirely, which is awesome to see. And I think there's still, there's a lot more road here in terms of like, what's the writing staff going to look like? And then what will actually, how, what will it feel like to make a show?

• 58:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:44Andy Greenwald?

  And what will it feel like watching their version of a show next to watching Mulaney every week? And which is, which is more likely to get axed. We'll, we'll see. I'm reminded often, and I don't say this to give short shrift at all to, to Jen Statsky and Lucia and Paul, who created the show and are show running the show and write many of the episodes and direct them. But there, but Mike Schur is an EP of the show for Universal and. At its best and at its most, hold on now, Hacks does remind me of some aspects of Mike's showrunning DNA. And I love Mike's shows, and from The Office to Parks and Rec, it's a good place. But his shows are often, if we're talking about tension built within

• 59:27Andy Greenwald?

  something, it's between an absolutely amazing and admirable, and I think in a low-key way, radical approach to comedy, American comedy, which is always change, always try the new thing. Parks changed the status quo every year. The Good Place took that to an almost incredible extreme.

• 59:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, like it was almost part of the construction of the show was to destroy the world every time.

• 59:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Mixed with his other impulse, which is to make things very squishy.

• 59:55Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:56Andy Greenwald?

  And that is hard-earned, and I understand where it comes from. I mean, he talks often about like Cheers being his favorite show, and the sitcoms we grew up with, the thing about them, for every one of them, maybe with the exception of Seinfeld, they got softer because we loved the characters. The writers loved the characters, the actors loved playing, you know, and it sort of fell into this pit of like, everybody's happy to be here, where everybody knows your name. And those two poles of Hacks' existence, purely from a, like, just a construction perspective, I find that interesting as it ping-pongs between them.

• 1:00:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:31Andy Greenwald?

  Because it times the fact that ultimately, everybody here is, it's not, it's not show business, it's show friends, I think, is rewarding. And that, and we said this when we were talking about season one, this could have been a very conventional broadcast sitcom of like some nice people figuring it out with Gags of the Week in Vegas, and they resisted that. But the walls are always getting a little jiggly, for me. Like, that at any moment, the spikiness, which is so pronounced in the first two episodes, is gonna go away.

• 1:00:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:00Andy Greenwald?

  So that they can just hug for real.

• 1:01:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Andy Greenwald?

  As long as, the show is at its best, and it will, but then maybe they'll blow it all up again.

• 1:01:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think if anything, it does that cycle too quickly over the course of the series. You know, how many times can these two people betray one another, then also show up for one another in a real way? You know, obviously, that's... There's a kind of tension to it that I think goes above and beyond the typical sitcom tension. If Ava was just Deborah's long-suffering writer.

• 1:01:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:30Chris Ryan?

  Who made, you know, OK boomer jokes a lot and that was it. Like, I think that the show would be fine, but this is, this is, it's the perfect, like, 36-minute comedy plus show.

• 1:01:42Andy Greenwald?

  Comedy plus, well.

• 1:01:44Chris Ryan?

  You know, it's not, I wouldn't call it a dramedy.

• 1:01:46Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 1:01:46Chris Ryan?

  But I would call it a comedy plus. And sometimes I do find, I have to say, there are some of these scenes are, like, really elegantly shot or kind of evocative. Like Deborah driving at night and having to, like, move, like, go around the coyote and, you know, all the stuff that's going on with her psychologically. And then it'll be like poop, poop on the floor jokes at Jimmy's office. And it seems like that's happening in an almost different show.

• 1:02:11Andy Greenwald?

  Sometimes it happens within scenes.

• 1:02:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:13Andy Greenwald?

  Where characters are very heated and then one of them has a witty retort.

• 1:02:16Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:02:16Andy Greenwald?

  And the show stops for the other character to go, hmm, and then it moves on. You know, it's, it's tough to match these things up.

• 1:02:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I know, yeah.

• 1:02:23Andy Greenwald?

  I, I want to come back to at some point your definition of comedy plus because I do think it's really interesting that the dominant comedies of this moment are The Bear and Hacks, neither of which are particularly funny with jokes.

• 1:02:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:36Andy Greenwald?

  Um, and I, and I feel like the people who make them, I mean, Chris Storer would certainly admit it. Um, I think Jen and Paul and Luchia have a background in harder comedy.

• 1:02:44Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:02:45Andy Greenwald?

  But that is not the project. Um, and then to, what's interesting to see is, and we'll talk about it more in the next couple of weeks, but like, Tina Fey is back with a show of four seasons on Netflix that we've both checked out. Um, as someone who has recently been re-watching Tina Fey or Tina Fey affiliated shows, um, just like 30 Rock, just to feel things again because it's so purely funny, but like I was watching with my girls, I was watching Girls 5 Eva.

• 1:03:12Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:12Andy Greenwald?

  Um, which really.

• 1:03:13Chris Ryan?

  It's quite funny.

• 1:03:14Andy Greenwald?

  The jokes are insane and the ratio of them, and it's just joke, joke, and they're at such a high level. It's interesting that Tina's back starring in a show for the first time since 30 Rock. And it is by nature and by design softer, more comedy plus.

• 1:03:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's like a Mike Nichols thing, yeah.

• 1:03:30Andy Greenwald?

  And there's a great.

• 1:03:31Chris Ryan?

  I mean, it is an Alan Alda thing, but it feels Mike Nichols-y, yeah.

• 1:03:34Andy Greenwald?

  There's a, the, I really enjoyed the interview, uh, the cover story of Hollywood Reporter with her. And she's like, I didn't want to do the same thing. Like, it was actually more interesting and challenging to me. Anyway, yeah, just the fact that these are where our comedies are going is that you can look at it and say, this is a triumph of the malleability of the form, that the half hour can be so many things, or you could be like, I guess I have to watch I Think You Should Leave again, because I do like laughing also, and I kind of miss it.

• 1:04:06Chris Ryan?

  Do you want to talk about the studio?

• 1:04:08Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, speaking of laughing.

• 1:04:09Chris Ryan?

  Well, also speaking of Los Angeles and speaking of diving headfirst into the empty pool of Hollywood.

• 1:04:15Andy Greenwald?

  So much diving and falling.

• 1:04:18Chris Ryan?

  We probably, I think the war has already come out, that episode?

• 1:04:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, we're talking about two episodes, four and five, which I think are actually well paired.

• 1:04:30Chris Ryan?

  I have had Ike Baranhold's season tickets since he played.

• 1:04:34Andy Greenwald?

  Conversation I want to have.

• 1:04:35Chris Ryan?

  Since Eastbound.

• 1:04:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:04:37Chris Ryan?

  Since he, I say, I can't remember if this is a deleted scene or not, but it's on YouTube, but the scene between him and Danny McBride where they're talking about him DJing and like who's coming to like their July 4th parties and how Chris Shell from the Real World Road Rules Challenge is going, if we could work out the flights.

• 1:04:58Andy Greenwald?

  This is season two of Eastbound, I believe.

• 1:05:01Chris Ryan?

  Isn't season two Mexico?

• 1:05:02Andy Greenwald?

  Isn't he in Mexico?

• 1:05:03Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:05:03Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, no, he's in minor leagues.

• 1:05:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he's in the, he's Dushenko, right?

• 1:05:07Andy Greenwald?

  Sorry.

• 1:05:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:10Chris Ryan?

  So I have always really enjoyed him. It was fantastic to get a two-hander episode, get away from Matt a little bit on the studio, which is the Seth Rogen character, and Chase Sweet Wonders and Ike Baranhold's are so great, just motherfucking each other the entire, for 30 minutes.

• 1:05:29Andy Greenwald?

  Chris, this is the week Ike Baranhold's became president.

• 1:05:34Andy Greenwald?

  This was infrastructure week on the studio.

• 1:05:38Andy Greenwald?

  It's been funny, the Baranhold's discourse has been robust.

• 1:05:42Chris Ryan?

  Has it?

• 1:05:42Andy Greenwald?

  During the run of the show, because I think he has a very, very high Q rating and is a great guy, Kayak can confirm.

• 1:05:48Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, good hang guest.

• 1:05:49Andy Greenwald?

  I believe he was on Good Hang with Amy Poehler.

• 1:05:52Andy Greenwald?

  And the work he's been doing on the margins of this show is elite, like always funny, always with the right timing, always with the right tone and remark, like just great, great comedic sideman presence, but it was so, it was so well done, this whole episode. The two of them are great. Chase Sweet Wonders was awesome. And I, you said it just in passing, but for the life, for the longer term health of the show, and who knows how many years it has in it, or how many years they want to do it, for Matt, Seth Rogen's character, to be just slightly plausible was really a necessary corrective.

• 1:06:34Andy Greenwald?

  Just because the first four episodes, he's such a buffoon.

• 1:06:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:39Andy Greenwald?

  And Rogan loves playing the buffoon. It's incredibly funny. He, as I was saying, like lunges to the floor or falls to the floor in every episode. But in this episode, where he, just to actually remind both the other characters and the viewers that he has some stature or dignity.

• 1:06:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:55Andy Greenwald?

  And the way that he's just like, when the dude who did Smiles in the office, and he's just like, he just walks out, because he's, what's he gonna have, martinis with Hemsworth?

• 1:07:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. He's also, it's also been a little bit of a correction because I think that they have, as the season has gone on, they're starting to play more into his buffoonery, and less moments of him being like, I love Terrence Malick so much.

• 1:07:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:07:21Chris Ryan?

  So I liked the idea that he had never heard of Owen Klein, the other director, basically, and then was getting swayed, but then allowed himself to be swayed on his sway, and just pit those two people together.

• 1:07:34Andy Greenwald?

  And then ultimately, he didn't care.

• 1:07:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:35Andy Greenwald?

  I, I thought that was excellent. And, and I also, though, I really enjoyed the noir episode, which was the one before where Olivia Wilde and Zac Efron, but it's, you know.

• 1:07:43Chris Ryan?

  Olivia Wilde, not a fan of Blue, Blue Origin.

• 1:07:46Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, has she come out and said that?

• 1:07:47Chris Ryan?

  She waited, yeah.

• 1:07:48Andy Greenwald?

  Did she weigh in? She broke her silence?

• 1:07:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:51Andy Greenwald?

  I noticed, I noticed you're keeping your silence.

• 1:07:56Andy Greenwald?

  You got some prime membership benefits you haven't hit yet.

• 1:07:58Chris Ryan?

  I'm open for an empty seat.

• 1:08:00Andy Greenwald?

  Just to get out?

• 1:08:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I find the show, I, I find the show really pleasurable, and I also just think it's really, we say this every week when we talk about it, but I find it really noteworthy that, of everything that's on TV right now, and even when we're like, oh, Ridley Scott directed this episode, or you're saying, you know, David Slay did Black Mirror, and there's so many talented directors working in the medium, what Rogan and Goldberg are doing with this show is the most aesthetically exciting thing.

• 1:08:24Chris Ryan?

  I mean, it's certainly built into the engine. I mean, you can make an ordinary dinner at Musso and Frank with two daughters not paying attention to their father.

• 1:08:32Andy Greenwald?

  That hit a little too hard.

• 1:08:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:35Andy Greenwald?

  Has a hashtag girl dad.

• 1:08:37Chris Ryan?

  Um, I really also thought having the quote unquote cameos be Parker Finn and Owen Klein in this movie felt a little bit more true to life than Ron Howard and Anthony Mackie and Zac Efron and Olivia Wilde, like that would be a Wednesday at this studio and that kind of, those kinds of shenanigans of like him being like, anybody got you any water yet? And he's just like, yeah, I've crushed like nine waters while I'm waiting here, you know?

• 1:09:06Andy Greenwald?

  What about when he throws the burrito and hits the guy in the golf cart who then drives into the set, which collapses?

• 1:09:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that's a really good, really good joke.

• 1:09:14Andy Greenwald?

  I really enjoyed it.

• 1:09:15Chris Ryan?

  Do you feel like, uh, I don't want to belabor this, but the studio, I think, kind of set its table of, of, you know, will he save cinema or ruin it as the sort of first episode? And then since then, I think has become a little bit more of a reliable laugh machine.

• 1:09:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:32Chris Ryan?

  And also loving homages to different kinds of elements of filmmaking that Rogan obviously loves, whether it's oners or it's noir. And in this case, I think it kind of found its range right here where it's like manic curb.

• 1:09:48Andy Greenwald?

  I, I agree, and I hope that it settles. My guess, based on nothing, we, like we said at the beginning, we are not watching ahead on this show, but because Rogan and Goldberg are, you know, uh, inspiration chasing Ronin, like they, they don't necessarily want to just do one thing. I don't think.

• 1:10:05Chris Ryan?

  Is it Ronin?

• 1:10:06Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 1:10:07Chris Ryan?

  Not, not Ronan?

• 1:10:08Andy Greenwald?

  Like the accuser, Lee Paces' part in Guardians of the Galaxy?

• 1:10:11Chris Ryan?

  No, but like Ronan, like Robert De Niro, like Ronan?

• 1:10:16Andy Greenwald?

  I, I guess I don't know. I, how do you call, what do you say? When you talk, when you talk about that movie, what do you say?

• 1:10:21Chris Ryan?

  Ronan.

• 1:10:23Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:10:23Chris Ryan?

  When you see Robert De Niro, John Frankenheimer's Ronin?

• 1:10:28Andy Greenwald?

  No, it doesn't sound right when you say it like that. But when I'm talking about like, you know, traditionally Japanese wandering Samurai.

• 1:10:36Andy Greenwald?

  Which is honestly

• 1:10:37Chris Ryan?

  Let's definitely clip that.

• 1:10:37Andy Greenwald?

  More often what I'm talking about. Sorry, do you ever, do you remember the State sketch? Where it was like doing a joke, highbrow, lowbrow. And on one side, there's like a bunch of British people talking about what happened in Parliament. On the other side, it's Ken Marino wearing overalls, sitting on a whoopee cushion. That's basically our dynamic, right?

• 1:10:59Chris Ryan?

  Who's who?

• 1:11:00Andy Greenwald?

  Well, if you don't know, you're on the whoopee cushion. Anyway, just that it would not surprise me if at season's end, suddenly it snaps back like a rubber band into being like, this whole thing has been about Matt's journey to save cinema with this one movie. And then a lesson is learned or he fails. And then they'll be like, okay, maybe we'll do this again someday. But we're not sure. When the idea of it being a just like, see you when we see you, we're back for more Hollywood curb. Like, that's fine.

• 1:11:27Chris Ryan?

  That's fine with me.

• 1:11:27Andy Greenwald?

  I would be very fine with that.

• 1:11:28Chris Ryan?

  Do you want to do a little bit of Mulaney here?

• 1:11:30Andy Greenwald?

  Don't you have to go?

• 1:11:32Chris Ryan?

  Well, I'd like to give you your opportunity to talk about this.

• 1:11:34Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think we should, we can revisit it.

• 1:11:36Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:11:37Andy Greenwald?

  But, but, but I, I want to say that it has been really, really interesting watching, uh, week to week and fun watching week to week, the evolution of a show that I love deeply. And I feel like Netflix insanely hamstrung when it came back by removing the thing, by removing the heart and the thing that made it work, which is Los Angeles. Because the, the, the original iteration of the show was everybody's in LA and it was a

• 1:12:03Chris Ryan?

  For the Netflix is a joke.

• 1:12:04Andy Greenwald?

  Consistently a couple nights running, everyone literally was here, comedy people. And so, but the show then took that as a mandate and ran with it as becoming sort of like a bizarro, like local news, public access kind of thing about very, very niche and specific ideas and places and people that make the city more than what it is in the public imagination. And that was so, I, I mean, obviously we live here, so we got maybe some of the jokes, more of the jokes. But I feel like specificity is what makes things funny and specificity is what gets Mulaney interested. Like when he's like, People enough, not enough people are talking about the documentary about the filming of the company cast album, so I'm going to make a 40 minute television show.

• 1:12:44Chris Ryan?

  But that has a different kind of set of stakes when it's like an IFC thing.

• 1:12:47Andy Greenwald?

  But that is his comedy and that is what interests him. And Netflix was like, no, I clearly was like, we want this to be a global event series and maybe we'll stumble into our own Conan or best case Letterman, right? And I don't think Mulaney wanted to necessarily do that. So I thought the first few weeks were a little bumpy as it kind of lost its mandate, but was still making the same show.

• 1:13:05Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:13:06Andy Greenwald?

  Where it's like John Waters and Fred Armisen talking about debt. But so it's like, first of all, I respect it. But in the last two weeks, especially, I think it's sort of found a different rhythm and a different mojo and it's sort of integrated the set pieces in more and lean more into just absurdist comedy, like how men don't actually know how tall they are. I miss the specifics of the LA thing and I wish that they could just be honest and fold it back in. But I, shows like this don't come together in six weeks or seven weeks. And I wonder if at the end of this-

• 1:13:39Chris Ryan?

  Well, neither did Letterman and Conan.

• 1:13:40Andy Greenwald?

  Totally. And I wonder if at the end of this run, will the vibe be no harm, no foul, we gave it a shot? Or like, maybe we're slowly getting somewhere and we're going to keep bankrolling it.

• 1:13:48Chris Ryan?

  Let's hope so.

• 1:13:49Andy Greenwald?

  I, I hope they do, but also like we were saying with Rogan, like, do people who have, do people who really are standing at the Sizzler Bar of entertainment want to just choose one entree from the menu?

• 1:14:00Chris Ryan?

  I mean, that's really the question that we're asking ourselves on this podcast today because we offered up a lot of different bites.

• 1:14:06Andy Greenwald?

  Mm hmm. Delicious bites, I thought. You're still looking at me about my Japanese pronunciation. You're just looking at me so sideways.

• 1:14:12Chris Ryan?

  Uh, thanks, Akaya, thanks for John. We'll be back on Monday talking Last of Us and Friends and Neighbors.

• 1:14:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:18Chris Ryan?

  Um, and I think what we're going to do is think, think of this, doing this live. Uh, Tuesday is Andor and we have a very special episode for Andor. So I think what we'll probably do is wind up releasing three episodes next week.

• 1:14:34Andy Greenwald?

  Wow.

• 1:14:35Chris Ryan?

  What do you think?

• 1:14:36Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it's Akaya's the one with the busy schedule. What's, what's good hang doing next week?

• 1:14:39Chris Ryan?

  Keep that bit going.

• 1:14:42Andy Greenwald?

  I think the bit's great. I think she's loving it.

• 1:14:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:44Andy Greenwald?

  She seems to be really happy about it.

• 1:14:46Chris Ryan?

  Um, thanks, everybody for listening. We'll be back next week.

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