‘The Last of Us’ S2E3, ‘The Studio’ Episode 6, and ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ Episode 4

Chris and Andy talk about the latest episode of ‘The Last of Us’ and how the show is picking up the pieces after a major character death (1:00). Then they talk about the latest episode of ‘The Studio’ and this episode’s similarities to ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ (45:05), as well as the last few episodes of ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ (50:15). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Senior Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Production and Editing: Marcelino Ortiz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

  Observe. The North American dad. 50's. Great polo collection. He enters his vehicle information on Carvana. An offer appears in minutes. Remarkable. He squints, reads it again, smiles and says, dang, that's a good offer. The highest form of approval. No haggling, no hassle. No one called him boss. He's still on the couch. Astonishing. Sell your car today on carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply.

• 1:01Speaker 02

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

• 1:09Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. And joining me in the studio, still waiting for his turn at the post-invasion town council meeting, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 1:24Andy Greenwald?

  Hey, everyone. More of a comment than a question.

• 1:31Chris Ryan?

  Hey, Maria. I know we've got a lot of things going on, but I would love it if people could remember to use the correct recycling bin.

• 1:40Andy Greenwald?

  I thought we were composting now? Did you? We're gonna talk about Last of Us.

• 1:43Chris Ryan?

  What are we composting now?

• 1:44Andy Greenwald?

  Great call. Great call.

• 1:46Chris Ryan?

  And are we sure composting didn't lead to this whole thing in the first place?

• 1:48Andy Greenwald?

  That's what I've been saying.

• 1:50Chris Ryan?

  Have you?

• 1:51Andy Greenwald?

  To myself?

• 1:51Chris Ryan?

  Okay, yeah. Hey, what's up? It's Monday.

• 1:53Andy Greenwald?

  Hey.

• 1:55Chris Ryan?

  We're here. We're Andy and Chris. Two TV talking guys. And we're gonna hit Last of Us today. Little bit of this dude, studio, friends and neighbors to Apple TV projects that we're very excited about. Greenwald, how you doing?

• 2:10Andy Greenwald?

  I'm great, but I wanna turn the... I know you hate it. I wanna swing the camera back to you.

• 2:15Chris Ryan?

  Do you think I hate it?

• 2:16Andy Greenwald?

  You shy away from the limelight sometimes.

• 2:20Andy Greenwald?

  You, Chris.

• 2:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:23Andy Greenwald?

  And Sean.

• 2:24Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 2:24Andy Greenwald?

  Who is currently sending us a lot of friendly texts about Saquon Barkley.

• 2:28Chris Ryan?

  Meeting with Donald Trump?

• 2:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, so.

• 2:30Chris Ryan?

  He golfed with him.

• 2:31Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it's just golf.

• 2:32Chris Ryan?

  Sometimes you get paired with a guy, you know?

• 2:37Chris Ryan?

  Let me tell you something.

• 2:39Chris Ryan?

  I think I've golfed with a lot worse guys.

• 2:43Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I miss?

• 2:43Chris Ryan?

  I've golfed with a lot of his fans as well, you know?

• 2:46Andy Greenwald?

  Do you know what I miss? One of the great things, and I feel like our listeners will appreciate this. One of the great things about being friends with you over the years has been, you know, sometimes you go out in the front lines of parts of the world and society that I don't go, or I am not welcome.

• 2:59Chris Ryan?

  What does that mean?

• 3:00Andy Greenwald?

  No, like you would, one of my favorite genres of stories from you, well, like the Def Heffen concert the other week.

• 3:05Chris Ryan?

  You would have been welcome there.

• 3:06Andy Greenwald?

  No, okay, but I didn't want to go, but thank you for the invitation. My point is, a few, a couple of years ago, you would some, oh, a bunch of years ago, you would sometimes like go to the gym and play pickup basketball, and you would come back with these stories of just getting threes rained down upon you by suburban guys with like hair transplant scars, and it was awesome. And, uh.

• 3:26Chris Ryan?

  That was a long time ago.

• 3:27Andy Greenwald?

  Now, I feel like I'm missing out on the contemporary equivalent, which is your golf pairings with MAGA guys.

• 3:33Chris Ryan?

  I mean.

• 3:34Andy Greenwald?

  It happens.

• 3:34Chris Ryan?

  You don't get to fill out a survey before you, you, you sign up for your tee time.

• 3:39Andy Greenwald?

  So what do you, you just like, you line them up and you're like, so tariffs, huh? Is that, is that what you do?

• 3:44Chris Ryan?

  No, it just, it comes out naturally over the course of a, of a round, where just one guy brings up a, a hot topic. And yeah, one thing I will say is nobody seems to be able to stay off of it, you know?

• 3:54Andy Greenwald?

  What, topics, hot topics?

• 3:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, because I think there used to be probably topics that you could be like, let's just talk about like this Wolves Lakers series, and somehow, politics would still get brought into it.

• 4:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, you say that, but every time you were at a bar in the early 2000s, you would just talk about campus life and academic freedoms and be like, here he goes again. Ahead of his time. Anyway, all of this was intended to say, you and Sean got to go in the Criterion Closet this weekend. I'm so jealous and I want to-

• 4:21Chris Ryan?

  Go in the mobile Criterion Closet.

• 4:23Andy Greenwald?

  And that hasn't dropped yet.

• 4:25Chris Ryan?

  No, it was on Instagram, so you're not revealing anything.

• 4:27Andy Greenwald?

  No, I know.

• 4:28Chris Ryan?

  But on Sunday, Sean was doing kind of like a, like a video, some video stuff, and also like saying hi to folks who were waiting online for hours outside of Vidiot's to go to the Criterion Mobile Closet. You could go in and pick up a few things and take pictures and stuff like that, but it was really like-

• 4:46Andy Greenwald?

  That's so cool.

• 4:46Chris Ryan?

  A gathering of the juggalos when it came to Letterboxd heads. It was pretty awesome, you know, like-

• 4:52Andy Greenwald?

  Did you have a plan? Like, you must have thought about this.

• 4:56Chris Ryan?

  Well, here's the thing, is I wasn't sure if we were going in. I thought we were just like hanging out. And second of all, I didn't realize that it was organized by catalog number. So you don't walk in and you're like, oh, of course, we're under the influence right here. You know, like you're, you're kind of like, uh, and looking around and scanning and scanning and scanning.

• 5:16Andy Greenwald?

  They don't tell you that?

• 5:17Chris Ryan?

  No, I mean, like, I think Sean, I think people know if they know-

• 5:20Andy Greenwald?

  Sean also knows the catalog numbers by heart.

• 5:22Chris Ryan?

  But we helped each other a little bit by being like, you know, what's one thing that is not super, like, popular that you want to get? And I grabbed pale flower. I mean, you'll see, but like, I-

• 5:33Andy Greenwald?

  Great movie.

• 5:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's a great movie.

• 5:34Andy Greenwald?

  That's so cool.

• 5:35Chris Ryan?

  Big influence on Tokyo Vice.

• 5:37Andy Greenwald?

  Really?

• 5:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:38Andy Greenwald?

  It's one of my favorite movies, and yet I never actually watched that show. Sorry.

• 5:42Chris Ryan?

  And you wonder why you weren't invited into the closet.

• 5:45Andy Greenwald?

  That's why I wasn't invited golfing.

• 5:48Andy Greenwald?

  I do wonder, and this is not a conversation for today necessarily, but there are certain things where it's like, when I was a kid, for example, there were a lot of like Nickelodeon game shows where they were basically all supermarket sweeps, but sometimes they were like in toy stores. And I spent hours being like, okay, if I ever get this opportunity, what's my strategy?

• 6:05Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:05Andy Greenwald?

  Never-

• 6:05Chris Ryan?

  Have you thought about that for the Criterion Closet?

• 6:07Andy Greenwald?

  That's what I'm saying. I feel like there are things now in modern life where one has to have a strategy, even if one is likely never to be asked. And one would be Criterion Closet. One would maybe be Subway Takes. Have you seen these videos?

• 6:17Chris Ryan?

  I've seen those, yes.

• 6:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I don't know if, I mean, you give takes away for a living, so-

• 6:21Chris Ryan?

  Well, yeah, I think I also got off my best takes on the hottest take.

• 6:25Andy Greenwald?

  Do you don't think you could recycle them?

• 6:27Chris Ryan?

  I wouldn't. I would never.

• 6:28Andy Greenwald?

  Look at the, you're a professional. God, I love it.

• 6:30Chris Ryan?

  Something of a Ronin when it comes to my opinions.

• 6:33Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't want to revisit that too soon, but I have gotten a lot of positive feedback from the Japanese language admiring society of English speakers.

• 6:41Chris Ryan?

  What about Japanese language speaking society?

• 6:43Andy Greenwald?

  They've been quiet. They've been quiet, but I don't know.

• 6:46Chris Ryan?

  Much like Ronin.

• 6:49Chris Ryan?

  They keep it to themselves. It's true.

• 6:52Andy Greenwald?

  It's true. All right.

• 6:54Chris Ryan?

  Well.

• 6:54Andy Greenwald?

  Um, back to business.

• 6:56Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Why don't we jump on?

• 6:57Andy Greenwald?

  I haven't seen Sinners yet. Sorry. I will see it soon. I just feel like I should tell people because that's what you want to talk about.

• 7:03Chris Ryan?

  No, I've talked about Sinners on podcasts. I was just, I wanted you to have it for your, you know, recommended cultural breakfast.

• 7:11Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, thanks.

• 7:12Chris Ryan?

  You know, like you, you need it so that you can competently comment on like cinema to come, you know, and the box, box office in the state of Hollywood.

• 7:20Andy Greenwald?

  I'm thrilled by its box office resilience.

• 7:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:23Andy Greenwald?

  I do love a resilient box office story.

• 7:25Chris Ryan?

  A second weekend to behold.

• 7:27Andy Greenwald?

  It is, it is, I mean, that is super nerdy, but actually pretty impressive.

• 7:31Chris Ryan?

  Um, I want to talk to you about The Last of Us.

• 7:33Andy Greenwald?

  So do I.

• 7:34Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so obviously last week, this huge momentous episode.

• 7:39Andy Greenwald?

  Wow.

• 7:40Chris Ryan?

  And obviously we are spoiling Last of Us previous and present, if you, if you haven't caught up on it. This is the first episode with a post-Joel show, a post-Pedro Pascal show, and also for the fictional world of the show, a post-Joel landscape. You know, it's essentially, um, you know, Anthony Edwards has sat down and now Nikhil Alexander-Walker, or whoever you want to compare Ellie to, has got to take the ball.

• 8:08Andy Greenwald?

  You have to understand here, I thought you were talking about ER. I thought you were talking about the actor.

• 8:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:14Andy Greenwald?

  And I was like, he did leave the show after 11 seasons and I guess No Wiley stepped up? Or I was like, is he going for Goose and Top Gun?

• 8:22Chris Ryan?

  And he, my, my Wolves metaphor was strained. Uh, I think that.

• 8:27Andy Greenwald?

  I have a more strained NBA metaphor coming up for the show, so go on.

• 8:29Chris Ryan?

  Um, let's do general thoughts. I, I think we can get into like some nitty gritty plot stuff here and I have a couple of. Fun questions about therapy and city government, but

• 8:41Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 8:41Chris Ryan?

  Tell me what you thought of the episode and tell me what you, where you kind of see the show right now.

• 8:45Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I want

• 8:46Chris Ryan?

  It was a huge turning point.

• 8:47Andy Greenwald?

  I want to make sure we have enough space to wander, almost as if we're wandering from Wyoming to Washington State, to talk about this, both in terms of like the experience of watching this show and judging this episode of the show. And then the larger conversation about attempting something like this in midstream and what it means, just in terms of the construction and scaffolding of the show. The former, I think that argument is probably going to be a little more nuanced and positive than my reaction to the former question, because I thought broadly speaking, I thought this was the weakest episode of the series to date.

• 9:22Andy Greenwald?

  Mainly because it, it's not just that it lacked action. I'm not just like, I'm not just a juice head. Like, that's not what I need out of the show, but it really was just like a massive reaction, retrenchment, and then almost hyperspeed, okay, but now this is where we're going. So again, I think that there's arguments to be made for why it's constructed that way and the benefits of just, just ping ponging into something new before the episode ended. But in terms of the lived experience of watching it, I thought it was pretty rough.

• 9:52Chris Ryan?

  Do you think you were reacting maybe to what I felt like was like a, a significant departure from the visual language of the previous episode, which makes sense. You know, Mark Mylott brought in and doing his,

• 10:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:06Chris Ryan?

  You know, kind of a little bit more verite, a little bit more jittery, obviously of huge set pieces in that episode. But I found this almost disarmingly or disorientingly flat and bright and static.

• 10:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, directed by Peter Hore, whose work we've loved. He directed It's a Sin.

• 10:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:25Andy Greenwald?

  The, the AIDS crisis British show that we raved about a couple of years ago. I thought that some of the landscape photography of this episode was really beautiful and honestly kept it afloat for me.

• 10:38Chris Ryan?

  Travelogue stuff is cool.

• 10:39Andy Greenwald?

  But I think you're right to, to point out that last week's episode was compelling on a number of levels. It got a lot of attention for the shock and the plot, but the, this visual storytelling was absolutely elite. And so, and it suited that episode. So it's, it's going to be jarring on a number of levels. I think we can't We can get into the weeds with it, but I feel like we have to sort of address the bigger thing, which is, and here's my strained NBA metaphor. This episode was a little bit like the 24-25 Sixers in that the big man went down early, and maybe the kids weren't where we thought they were.

• 11:16Chris Ryan?

  No, when you say big man, are you referring to the?

• 11:19Andy Greenwald?

  All three players.

• 11:20Chris Ryan?

  Middle linebacker zombie who got incinerated.

• 11:25Andy Greenwald?

  That big man?

• 11:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:27Andy Greenwald?

  No, I think we got him at the end of the first round, actually.

• 11:28Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 11:31Andy Greenwald?

  I think that the Joel absence is really significant. The show is built around, and of course it is, I mean, that's, nobody's denying that the show was presented as a two-hander, and now we just got the one hand now. I think that it is a very, very challenging absence to work around. The main reason why is, before we even talk about Bella Ramsey, I want to talk about Ellie as a character, and, correct me if I'm wrong, maybe you've spent more time re-watching the first season, but in my experience watching the show, the Ellie character has been almost entirely reactive. Maybe the exception is the mall episode, where we learned, you know, it's more of an

• 12:16Andy Greenwald?

  origin story of her trauma and things like that, but she is often, everything, most of the things that she's done is she's been, she's the package, she's being transported, she's the special one, she's everything, she's the potential, she's the avatar, she's the Christ, she's the Messiah, she's really pissed off at all of these things that keep happening to her. And I think we touched on this last week, there might be a really interesting character arc as the reactor becomes the actor, as the person who had the privilege of being annoyed by everything and put out by things has to take on more of the responsibility and burden. But I feel like-

• 12:54Andy Greenwald?

  The show hadn't coached her up to that level as a character. To hang it on her shoulders. And I also felt like, again, late, late season Sixers, where they were just running out 10 day contract guys, being like, maybe someone here will.

• 13:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:09Andy Greenwald?

  Will, will spark the show because of the pre-existing video game and the narrative direction that it has to go in. And by the way, I have no doubt that like, the action will come fast and furious next week and there'll be a whole different thing, set of circumstances to talk about. But like, settling pretty early, the backcourt of Ellie and Dina. And I was like, maybe we need some more.

• 13:30Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's interesting you should bring that up.

• 13:31Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe we need some more people taking shots here.

• 13:33Chris Ryan?

  Know if that is how the game did it. There's definitely been some re-engineering of what Tommy is present for versus what Dina is present for.

• 13:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I did some reading. Tommy was present for the golf game in the video game.

• 13:49Chris Ryan?

  He was in the gallery.

• 13:51Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm. Is that, is that a golf term?

• 13:52Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 13:53Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you.

• 13:53Chris Ryan?

  Um, that's an interesting point that you make. You know, I didn't necessarily feel, if anything, I felt like this episode was the first version of the, and, and obviously so, the first episode of Last of Us 2.0, which is not Last of Us 2, the video game, but a new version of this show. And what we're kind of seeing is this accelerated version of something, say, Lost did very well, which is, all of a sudden you blink and it's a different show with a different cast. Now, there may be some remnants of the first version of it, and there are some ideas that are consistent throughout. But in the same way that, um, you know, you had Jeremy Davies and Elizabeth Mitchell kind of.

• 14:34Andy Greenwald?

  There's the tailies, then there's the whole other, yeah.

• 14:36Chris Ryan?

  You now are getting introduced to the sort of, you know, Krishna guys who are like walking, Hammer Krishnas.

• 14:46Andy Greenwald?

  Do we know anything about them?

• 14:47Chris Ryan?

  I do, but not only with, this is where I want to kind of go with this conversation. There's the, the, the people who are walking the. The path out in Washington and are attacked. There is all these allusions to, and finally, a glimpse of the Washington Liberation Front. There's a little bit of an expansion of the world beyond separate, like, little side episodes, whether it's the Melanie Linsky episode, Kansas City, or the Nick Offerman and Marie Bartlet episode from earlier in the season, and any of the snapshots that we would get here and there. So I thought it was really interesting in terms of opening the aperture, obviously moving the action to the Pacific Northwest away from Wyoming.

• 15:30Chris Ryan?

  I've thought it was very compelling that as Ellie and Deena are on their mission, or on their, on the road, we're not also cutting back to Jackson to be like, and how does the great work go on there?

• 15:41Andy Greenwald?

  We've moved on.

• 15:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:42Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, the show-

• 15:44Chris Ryan?

  But for, for the first two episodes, you know, we meet Jesse, we're getting a glimpse at like, how things work in Jackson-

• 15:51Andy Greenwald?

  Gail's drinking is proceeding apace.

• 15:53Chris Ryan?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 15:53Andy Greenwald?

  I appreciate the show, maybe more than anything about the show, and we, I'm sure with our versions of this that we said in the first season, I do appreciate its lack of sentimentality about how much time we have to spend places and where the more interesting parts of the story may lie. I think that's ultimately a really, really successful thing.

• 16:09Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I saw a funny interview with Pascal. I mean, it was, I think, part of the HBO materials, but he essentially admitted to taking this role because he knew it was finite.

• 16:19Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I'm sure.

• 16:20Chris Ryan?

  But that's a different relationship to a storytelling-

• 16:23Andy Greenwald?

  Was he talking about Mandalorian role or this?

• 16:25Chris Ryan?

  He doesn't have to do anything.

• 16:26Andy Greenwald?

  He's a king for his career choices.

• 16:29Chris Ryan?

  He's like, voice notes.

• 16:30Andy Greenwald?

  For real, though.

• 16:31Chris Ryan?

  Like, where's the baby Yoda?

• 16:33Andy Greenwald?

  Who pays-

• 16:33Chris Ryan?

  Send.

• 16:34Andy Greenwald?

  Who spends more time on a project? Pedro Pascal in The Mandalorian, or Tony Dalton, the time he was on our podcast from a balcony somewhere?

• 16:42Chris Ryan?

  It was-

• 16:43Andy Greenwald?

  On his iPhone.

• 16:44Chris Ryan?

  Go on, yeah.

• 16:46Andy Greenwald?

  Still-

• 16:46Chris Ryan?

  But he was kind of like, I wasn't being flip, but he was just like, yeah, you know, when they told me how long I would have to be on the show, I took the role. Because I obviously have nine other films coming out, but I don't think you're gonna see someone like Pedro Pascal sign up for possibly eight years of a show.

• 17:02Andy Greenwald?

  Correct.

• 17:04Chris Ryan?

  So-

• 17:04Andy Greenwald?

  That's a tell these days.

• 17:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. In any case, I thought it was, I thought, like I said, I thought it was fascinating that we basically turned the entire focus of the show to a different area and to a different story.

• 17:18Andy Greenwald?

  Let me ask you something about that idea. I'm gonna say this carefully because I don't know how I feel about this, but it's something that I'm just trying to suss out and articulate. You mentioned Lost, and Lost could swap casts in and out. It could change locations. It could do flashbacks. It could do flash forwards, flash sideways, introduce statues and all kinds of smoke monsters, all kinds of crazy things. But the central conceit of the show, guys, where are we? Stayed throughout. The Walking Dead, to which the show is compared favorably or not favorably, but you kind of have to bring it into the conversation, did something at the time which felt pretty radical,

• 18:02Andy Greenwald?

  but then in retrospect actually was just a smart way to have a show run for many, many years with a lot of spinoffs, which is after the first, I think it's like in the, the first bunch of mini episodes of Walking Dead, they're trekking to the CDC, and they're not trekking far, right? Because the show starts in Atlanta, I believe.

• 18:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:17Andy Greenwald?

  And they get there, Noah Emmerich is there, and there's like-

• 18:20Chris Ryan?

  Isn't the CDC in Atlanta?

• 18:21Andy Greenwald?

  CDC is, yeah. Yes, the CDC is in Atlanta.

• 18:24Chris Ryan?

  Oh, no, are they going to DC?

• 18:26Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, maybe. I don't remember. Regardless, they're going to find out what happened.

• 18:31Chris Ryan?

  Somewhere in the ACC or the SEC. It is not that much of a conference.

• 18:36Andy Greenwald?

  And with the transfer portal these days, really, is anyone anywhere? My point being, the first few episodes went right at a traditional movie framework, which is this crazy thing happened, and we gotta find out what it is, and maybe we can reverse it. That episode establishes pretty definitively that we're not gonna figure this out. This is, this is done now.

• 18:56Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 18:56Andy Greenwald?

  And so the show is going to be about struggling to make a new civilization or just struggling to survive. The first season of Last of Us, based on a video game, and video games also have a final boss or forward momentum or goal, was this girl is the cure, and we get her to the place, and we fix the world. And then, I imagine, the game ends like the first season in a pretty dramatic, surprising turn of events. One person is worth more than the potential savior of whatever, and there's this burden now, and it sets up the sequel.

• 19:28Andy Greenwald?

  Since that happened, at least in the world of the show, I'm game agnostic. The idea of Ellie's abilities, or the power of her blood, or her immunity is quiet and secret. And the purpose of the show went from she could save everyone to we need to make a new life here, to now we need to get revenge for the guy.

• 19:47Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 19:48Andy Greenwald?

  The overstory of the show has changed pretty radically now.

• 19:51Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:52Andy Greenwald?

  And I feel, I think, a little lost within that.

• 19:56Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so let's get to the conversation that I actually wanted to have.

• 20:00Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, did you have a feeling about that, or is this connected?

• 20:02Chris Ryan?

  It's connected.

• 20:02Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 20:03Chris Ryan?

  I've been thinking, obviously, a lot about this show in comparison to Andor, just because they're both airing at the same time, and they are two versions of doing world-building.

• 20:12Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:13Chris Ryan?

  Andor I would compare more to, like, the Russian novel style, where you have currently, I think, 20 meaningful characters operating in almost as many different planets, if not places. There is 12 hours, or however many hours, of information that you kind of have to be fluent with to remember, oh, this shipping lane, she did that before, he's doing this now, this is bad for Bix because X, Y, and Z have happened, Brasso was doing this, you know, all this stuff that you're kind of always scanning, reading, processing. Ultimately, I think what happens is when you make a show in the style of Andor, or

• 20:58Chris Ryan?

  say, like The Wire, and David Simon shows particularly do this, although I would say We Own the City is different, where all the pieces matter, to use the Simonism, and also, I think the more important thing than the emotional component is the overall statement it's making about what, how life works.

• 21:17Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 21:17Chris Ryan?

  And what life is, and what our time on the world is like. I think Craig Mazin's project is far more interested in the emotional impact of events on characters, and how those emotions motivate different actions.

• 21:32Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 21:33Chris Ryan?

  Whereas, I think Tony is almost looking at things as like, there is institutional pressure, institutional apparatuses that are pushing down on these people until they explode up. It's two different ways of telling a story, but what Craig Mason is doing, for instance, is we get a shot of these people walking on a path, you know, shaved heads, they look kind of cultish.

• 21:55Andy Greenwald?

  Scarification.

• 21:56Chris Ryan?

  Scarification, talking about a prophet, but he's like hiding it a little bit. It's, you know, it's like, we don't know who these people are, we don't know why they're being hunted by wolves.

• 22:04Andy Greenwald?

  We don't know what side we're on.

• 22:06Chris Ryan?

  We don't know what side we're on. And I think that there is an effort to obscure and, you know, kind of use suspense to kick it down the line a little bit and be like, oh, and we're gonna find out who that prophet was, probably in a flashback episode, or we're, we still don't know who's this big bad person out in Seattle who's running the Washington Liberation Fund, all this stuff. It's just two different ways of telling a story, but ultimately, like, I was trying to get my mind around, like, why is this Gail therapist character keep showing up when she doesn't seem like a very good therapist? And now that we've left Jackson, I don't know if we're really gonna learn much about this Eugene situation.

• 22:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 22:43Chris Ryan?

  Her ex, her husband, who is Joel Kild. And I think the reason for it is, is that he wants people talking about their feelings. He wants the, the emotional content of the show to be way more front and center than the how this world works part.

• 22:58Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's very well observed, and it's very generously observed, and I agree with you. And I think that, look, if you have Chernobyl on your resume, you're good.

• 23:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:07Andy Greenwald?

  And you're, you have proven your commitment not only to making something that is artistic, but something that is thoughtful, respectful, and deeply felt relating to tragedy, to world events, to how humans are inevitably the authors of our own downfall. And I think that when the show is at its best, he is able to find a rare marriage between the necessities of contemporary television slash video game plotting and extremity and the more internal types of stories that he wants to tell. I think there is, I think it's significant that when people think about the first season of Last of Us, they talk about the Nick Offerman episode.

• 23:51Andy Greenwald?

  Um, maybe I'm in the wrong. Group chat? Group chats. Maybe people are like, that mushroom zombie attack was sick. But I think that broadly speaking, what was most memorable and what felt most unique about that first season wasn't even just that episode. It was the structural audacity of putting that episode there as a marker of the type of show that it wanted to be, that it could be, that it would try to maybe experiment in getting closer to being on a more consistent basis. So I think your point is very well observed, but in this case, I think the institutional pressures that crush David Simon characters are operating on Craig Mason's Better Angels. Because I think that this is, look, and I say this as someone who literally lives

• 24:32Andy Greenwald?

  inside a wooden horse every hour that he's not on this podcast, but this is the Trojan. This is a Trojan horse. We all are a Trojan horse. Get it? Uh, type of industry right now. People know what I'm, I've used that analogy a hundred times, but that like, he's trying to sneak in a character-based, emotionally resonant drama about trauma within a zombie video game, uh, adaptation. Now, I know, if there are gamer fans listening, the game, by all accounts, is much, much, much more intelligent and thoughtful than other games might be. And it's a, it's painting with too broad a brush to say, oh, it's just a, it's just a, you know, a kid's thing. I, I get all that.

• 25:17Andy Greenwald?

  But this episode in particular should have been the one to really land that plane. I think it's interesting that it wasn't, that actually for me, watching this episode, I felt the gears grinding more than I had in previous episodes because we had to start them here, paying some service to what just happened. So we see Ellie screaming and death and, uh, and then three months later. And then now we're in a different place and now she's willing to eat a cookie and we're gardening and we're having council meetings again. And then we're, we're off to the races, you know? And we're suddenly gallivanting across major swaths of the country in a eight-minute, beautiful, truly beautiful landscape montage.

• 26:01Andy Greenwald?

  That felt video gamey to me in an episode that really had the opportunity to be about regret and trauma and emotional reaction and all those things. Now, you could also say, and maybe we'll be able to say in the scheme of, you know, in the fullness of time at the end of the season, that I don't think Ellie was really processing the trauma.

• 26:22Chris Ryan?

  Well, she's hiding it.

• 26:23Andy Greenwald?

  And raced off and the eye for an eye Hammurabi vibes that are permeating some members of the council, including our guy Seth. For a minute, I was like-

• 26:33Chris Ryan?

  Homophobe Hammurabi is in the building.

• 26:36Andy Greenwald?

  You think Hammurabi was very liberal with his social policies?

• 26:39Chris Ryan?

  It was funny because I was like, Robert Burke has to do something, you know? Did you not bring him on? I loved how he got like mad old because of what happened.

• 26:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. Oh, now he has a walking stick.

• 26:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I thought, I thought he was great, but it was, it was interesting because I was like, I know Seth is gonna have something to say here.

• 26:58Andy Greenwald?

  Can I just sidebar? Robert Burke's star of one of my all time favorite movies, Hal Hartley's Simple Men. And I, I do get the sense, just from the times that it props up on my like social feeds, that the Sonic Youth dance sequence from Simple Men that features Seth has outlived perhaps Simple Men itself, and people should check out that movie.

• 27:19Chris Ryan?

  I think so, yeah.

• 27:20Andy Greenwald?

  That's an awesome scene. Anyway, I was excited, but, but you know, maybe even that says something, like I kind of was hoping Seth was saddling up too, because I kind of wanted, okay, what are, help me find our show now with like a community or without the absence of Joel, is it gonna have to be a team effort, quite literally?

• 27:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:40Andy Greenwald?

  And, and look, next week, we may, I don't know, Jeffrey Wright might show up, or I didn't watch the next on, but I know that there are a lot of other-

• 27:45Chris Ryan?

  Is Jeffrey Wright on the show now?

• 27:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that there are a lot of other great cast members showing up and-

• 27:49Chris Ryan?

  Damn, I know. Who else is on the show?

• 27:51Andy Greenwald?

  But also, the first season established with Melanie Linsky and things like, people can, people can come on and do some good work and not necessarily, they can be there for a good time, not a long time.

• 28:00Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 28:00Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean?

• 28:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:02Andy Greenwald?

  And, and we are, we are, we've got Dever Fever and, and she's waiting somewhere near the Space Needle. So, there might be-

• 28:10Andy Greenwald?

  I don't want to say I complained, but I was critical of the first episode because I was like, "Oh, are we just living in Jackson now?" And clearly, no, we're not.

• 28:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:17Andy Greenwald?

  So I don't mean to sound like I'm having it both ways, but I thought that this episode kind of was emblematic of an existential struggle of this show.

• 28:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:26Andy Greenwald?

  If not my struggle with finding a reason to kind of enjoy it, which is ongoing.

• 28:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think you were probably criticizing something a little bit more specific. I was merely like, kind of drawing this comparison between the two ways of doing large-scale fictional world building.

• 28:41Andy Greenwald?

  I went off on a tangent.

• 28:42Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 28:42Andy Greenwald?

  Let's go back to that.

• 28:43Chris Ryan?

  I don't know which one I prefer, you know? I think I prefer Andor as a show, and it's not one or the other kind of conversation. But I was really interested in the choice, the way that Craig Mason probably has an answer for every single question, and Neil Druckmann certainly does, because it's the world he created and built up. But I find myself very curious about like, Fedra stuff, like just like little details of the world.

• 29:09Andy Greenwald?

  The details, yeah.

• 29:10Chris Ryan?

  And that stuff did come up a bit in the Linsky-Kansas City run in the first season. So I, and you can certainly go online and find out all you want to know about it, including like, the detailed history of like, what cities they took over, and then what rebellions happened against them, and all this other stuff. But I think in the Tony Gilroy version of the show, there's probably like, a Fedra plot.

• 29:34Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:35Chris Ryan?

  You know what I mean?

• 29:35Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 29:36Chris Ryan?

  There's probably like, what drove these people to be this way, as much as just like, self-evidently, like, these people are scarring each other, you know?

• 29:44Andy Greenwald?

  Let me say, though, just in defense of Last of Us. The, one of the great benefits that Tony has in Andor is he is writing to a known end point.

• 29:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:56Andy Greenwald?

  Not just the movie, but Star Wars. Like, every, like, the Death Star that they're building, we know its fate. And that allows him...

• 30:04Chris Ryan?

  Still up there.

• 30:05Andy Greenwald?

  You think it's still up there?

• 30:08Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, wait, are you a conspiracy theorist? About Death Stars?

• 30:11Chris Ryan?

  They faked them out.

• 30:13Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think Tie Fighter fuel doesn't burn steel beams? Is that? Whoa.

• 30:19Chris Ryan?

  What if like the Gosling movie, it's just like somehow the Death Star has returned?

• 30:24Andy Greenwald?

  That would not surprise me. That would so deeply not surprise. Somehow Luke Skywalker is young and hot again.

• 30:30Chris Ryan?

  What do you think of the name Star Wars Starfighter as the name of the movie?

• 30:34Andy Greenwald?

  I think it sounds like an Andrew W. K. album title, and I'm pro. It suggests to me that like the galaxy brain thinking, the galaxy far, far away brain thinking maybe has been snuffed out a little bit over there.

• 30:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:49Andy Greenwald?

  And they're like, you know what's sick?

• 30:50Chris Ryan?

  Starfighter.

• 30:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, like they should just call another one like Star Wars Lightsaber.

• 30:54Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 30:55Andy Greenwald?

  Like.

• 30:55Chris Ryan?

  I would definitely go.

• 30:56Andy Greenwald?

  Look how excited you got when I said that. I, I, maybe they've learned their lesson.

• 31:01Chris Ryan?

  There's a moment in The Accountant 2 where Ben Affleck's character is swinging a fake lightsaber around. And I was like, this looks pretty good.

• 31:07Andy Greenwald?

  They should make a movie about this.

• 31:10Chris Ryan?

  What if there was a Jedi accountant?

• 31:13Andy Greenwald?

  Wait, that's, the Jedis were tax collectors in the first trilogy, so I'm sure there's a Jedi accountant.

• 31:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I'm just, I'm saying that like, like the, all the little filigrees and detail that Tony can do. I mean, first of all, you can't actually compare it to any other experience in TV, both because of who he is and the circumstance and the moment that that got greenlit and Kathy Kennedy letting him do everything. It's, it is one of one.

• 31:35Chris Ryan?

  I'm really not trying to be like.

• 31:37Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, I know, but, but, but I, I think in defense of, of, of Mazen and Druckmann, like they have an ending to their video game. I, I get the sense that they're pushing past that or they're aiming for something bigger here, but they can't count on that for the large percentage of the audience that's engaging with the show.

• 31:52Chris Ryan?

  I'm also really curious about the idea of POV in this show. So obviously, for the most part.

• 32:00Chris Ryan?

  It was Elliot or Joel's point of view. We have, when we have been in any one place with them, we have expanded. This season has shown us a little bit of Abby and her thought process into what she did, but then cut that supply line off.

• 32:18Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 32:19Chris Ryan?

  I'm relatively sure that Caitlin Dever will be back and that we will see more of this character, just based on what I know about the video game, but also about like, just-

• 32:27Andy Greenwald?

  Also, if you were spoiled by the trades as to what her next moves are.

• 32:31Chris Ryan?

  Why? What did it say?

• 32:33Andy Greenwald?

  Well, the show is renewed. Let's put it that way.

• 32:35Chris Ryan?

  The Last of Us?

• 32:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 32:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I guessed. I hate doing the like, what I would have done or what I would have liked is if you'd shown me this, this, or this. I was just very struck by the whole scene with the people walking on that path and outside of Seattle and how little we knew about what was happening and what was going on and we were just getting these little breadcrumbs and how different it is from another style of storytelling that's also on TV. It's why I kind of like brought all this up. I have some other questions I wanted to ask you about this show, though.

• 33:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, let's go.

• 33:03Chris Ryan?

  Do you think Gail is a bad therapist? A. B, intentionally trying to make the mental health of people of Jackson worse? C, has a grand plan and is just doing tough love or a certain school of therapy that's gonna get everybody to the place they need to get?

• 33:20Andy Greenwald?

  What about D? Did you also think that the only beer that survived the apocalypse was Grohlsh? Because of those very specific bottles?

• 33:28Chris Ryan?

  I think they're home brewing.

• 33:30Andy Greenwald?

  I figured.

• 33:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I have some questions about how many guns they have.

• 33:35Andy Greenwald?

  I have so many questions about that, but-

• 33:36Chris Ryan?

  Whether they could afford to lose those to Ellie's magical adventure.

• 33:40Andy Greenwald?

  I thought this too, but at the same time, I just think you can't ever, you can't go broke, uh, um, overestimating, did I get that right? How many guns, alcoholic beverages, and sick Filson and Wrangler fits there are?

• 33:56Chris Ryan?

  That was really funny when she started crying, holding his, the wax jacket.

• 34:00Andy Greenwald?

  God damn, I'd cry over that jacket, too. You gotta save that. Take little golf club holes out of it.

• 34:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:06Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, I think, you know, now I'm thinking about everything you're asking me through the prism of the, your, um, Craig Mason's, uh, Craig Mason's preferences.

• 34:20Andy Greenwald?

  A show about the only therapist who survives the apocalypse? Sign me up. That's, that's the show for me.

• 34:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:28Andy Greenwald?

  That sounds amazing. And I think Catherine O'Hara is, by the way, so good on this and just such a good actor. And we rarely get to see her be straight to drama.

• 34:37Chris Ryan?

  She does, I think she's being put in a such, character wise, it's like, she's just there so that people say the things that they're feeling.

• 34:44Andy Greenwald?

  And they, and to get exposition moving along.

• 34:46Chris Ryan?

  This is why I don't go to therapy.

• 34:47Andy Greenwald?

  That's why you do podcasts.

• 34:48Chris Ryan?

  I'm not interested in participating in that kind of plot, plot armor.

• 34:53Andy Greenwald?

  Plot armor, good for you. Does, does, does Joel's jacket count as plot armor, do you think?

• 34:59Chris Ryan?

  That's a good question.

• 35:02Andy Greenwald?

  I guess my answer to that is, we don't know, because as much as they try to dress it up, and, and this is the thing with the show, right? It's the best possible casting for it. It's the most interesting way into her life and her experience by making her a widow. And Joel killed her husband and she's an alcoholic and she has, we, you know, so it's, it's the most interesting version of someone who doesn't actually get to have that much depth, because the show doesn't have the real estate to investigate it.

• 35:29Andy Greenwald?

  We actually don't know what anyone is bringing to her or saying to her, or if the majority of her sessions end with some feeling of release or a hug or an accusation that she's drunk. It's just, she's a liar, Joel was hiding something. Come, come crack a grolsch with me.

• 35:46Chris Ryan?

  Do you think that the reason why she seems intent on unlocking the secrets of Joel and Ellie are related to what Joel did to Eugene? Or do you think she's just, she's just an ump and she's calling balls and strikes?

• 36:01Andy Greenwald?

  No, I, I mean, I think that the project of the show suggests that like, everyone has their own relatively petty motivation, not petty, but like, human motivations for doing everything that they do, even altruistic concerns. I, I am, I mean, the lingering question about the show for me, maybe this is on your list, is like, okay, so now who, I, I guess Ellie's not gonna find out what Joel did until Abby tells her, basically, like, so that then it complicates.

• 36:29Chris Ryan?

  Deep down aware of what Joel did.

• 36:30Andy Greenwald?

  It's something, yeah.

• 36:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think that she was in and out of consciousness.

• 36:36Chris Ryan?

  During that experience, obviously, she was

• 36:38Andy Greenwald?

  The first one, yeah.

• 36:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, when she was being taken out of Salt Lake City. She asks Joel straight up to his face, like, what happened? But I think that there's a suggestion that there's something uneasy about that. And that's why she was maybe not on the best terms with Joel as he died. And also, like, she seems to have a sneaking suspicion that there's more to like the story.

• 37:08Chris Ryan?

  What does it say about me?

• 37:09Andy Greenwald?

  Can't wait.

• 37:10Chris Ryan?

  That when Dina greets Ellie with the cookies and is like, here's

• 37:14Andy Greenwald?

  You're gonna be mad.

• 37:15Chris Ryan?

  Logo of the guys who got Joel. I was like, that's a cool logo.

• 37:21Andy Greenwald?

  I've been waiting this whole podcast to ask if you had any Washington Liberation Front seven inches.

• 37:25Chris Ryan?

  I've been waiting to find my team in this show.

• 37:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, here we go. This is what I, this is why I keep showing up.

• 37:33Chris Ryan?

  What a diverse looking, fun group of people walking through the streets of Seattle, a city I love.

• 37:37Andy Greenwald?

  First of all, this is reminiscent of your flirtation with the city of Portland. Where you're like, maybe I should live there. Like, you are always coming home.

• 37:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, to myself.

• 37:47Andy Greenwald?

  To yourself in the Pacific Northwest. There's no, no, no question. My takeaway from that scene with Dina was, my God, I don't remember what we talked about on this podcast 10 minutes ago. She, three months later, has complete recall of everyone's name.

• 38:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, she should be a court illustrator. Like, she did a great job.

• 38:06Andy Greenwald?

  It's unbelievable. Like, real talk, like, at our ages, when people introduce themselves to you, what's the percentage you catch the name?

• 38:15Chris Ryan?

  Well, I also am going deaf. So a lot of the times, it's like, that was either Caitlin or Charles. Like, I have no idea. Like, I, it's just like, it kind of goes in and I'm like, I think I got that. But a lot of that is deaf heaven's fault, you know?

• 38:29Andy Greenwald?

  Wow, so this is in the last two weeks?

• 38:31Chris Ryan?

  I am in deaf heaven.

• 38:33Andy Greenwald?

  All right. Yeah.

• 38:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I just thought that was like, that was another snapshot of like a whole other part, you know, a colder corner of this world that I was really fascinated by.

• 38:45Andy Greenwald?

  It is also odd, like,

• 38:49Andy Greenwald?

  The plan is a wild one. If they're like, we're going to a major metropolitan area to find one mean lady who's part of a big team.

• 38:58Chris Ryan?

  I think, well, first of all, they seem to assume that WLF is not that brawlic. And I think this is what happens when teenagers call the shots. It's like, they get a little

• 39:11Andy Greenwald?

  There we go.

• 39:12Chris Ryan?

  A little puffed up. And they're like, we got this. All we need is like, one rifle. It's like, about to run into quite a defense.

• 39:20Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think kids who have survived the mushroom apocalypse have the same water bottle dependency that my kids and contemporary kids have?

• 39:27Chris Ryan?

  Seth's like, here, have some Hardtac.

• 39:29Andy Greenwald?

  I know. It's like, really?

• 39:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and some chlorine tablets.

• 39:32Andy Greenwald?

  You guys seem to have all the creature comforts of home. You can't like, slip a Pop-Tart in there? Hardtac.

• 39:38Chris Ryan?

  Uh, yeah. And then that brings me, my last question is, who would you have been in the council meeting?

• 39:44Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, thank you for asking. I actually took a screenshot. There was, I don't know if you noticed, how many people are on the council? 14? Something like that? No, it's big.

• 39:51Chris Ryan?

  Oh, they lose eight, three, right?

• 39:52Andy Greenwald?

  They lose the votes. But anyway, it's over 10.

• 39:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:55Andy Greenwald?

  One of the more interesting developments of this podcast, as we enter year 14, is that we can no longer count. We're just, no one will ever know how many episodes were in White Lotus, season three. There's no way to ever possibly ascertain how many people are on the council. Who cares? I don't know if you noticed, but I believe he's sitting just to the, if you're facing the council, as we would be, as just members of the society, just to the right of Jesse, there is a guy who kind of looks like the Verizon guy.

• 40:25Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:25Andy Greenwald?

  But, but maybe, maybe he shops, you know, on Larchmont?

• 40:30Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 40:31Andy Greenwald?

  And his whole shit is, huh, that's a little concerning. That's his whole entire shit. I'm sure he's just like, he's a Canadian extra, or maybe he's an actor and you gotta, you know, and they were like, don't speak, because then we have to pay you more, or whatever. But that was entirely me. And I want to know everything about that guy's ability to be on the council.

• 40:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:52Andy Greenwald?

  Did he have to get elected? Did he glad hand? Or was he just like, well, sure?

• 40:55Chris Ryan?

  Did they have an influx of new faces because other council members were killed?

• 40:59Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, damn.

• 41:02Chris Ryan?

  Um, obviously Jesse is taking over like he's showing that his physicality surpassed Tommy. You know, he's able to hammer.

• 41:09Andy Greenwald?

  He was hammering.

• 41:10Chris Ryan?

  Hammer foundation spikes.

• 41:12Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think that there's any element of nepotism? Like, were some of these the children of the fallen?

• 41:17Chris Ryan?

  That's a good question.

• 41:18Andy Greenwald?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 41:19Chris Ryan?

  It's like the Foster sisters are up there.

• 41:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Right? Or like, yeah, I think, or like when, um, Menendez's wife tried to run for his senate seat or whatever. Like, do you think it's kind of like that?

• 41:31Chris Ryan?

  Did she do that?

• 41:33Andy Greenwald?

  Sure. No, no, she didn't. Um, the governor's wife tried to run and, and your guy Andy Kim was like, I don't think so.

• 41:39Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 41:39Andy Greenwald?

  Box her out.

• 41:40Chris Ryan?

  I'm not really that up on New Jersey politics.

• 41:42Andy Greenwald?

  This is, this is a win for you considering we were talking about your opinion on campus activism a moment ago. I'm trying to just muddy the picture? Because part of the legend, right? Is no one really knows what's in the portfolio we're all dragging for. No one knows exactly where you land on the spectrum.

• 41:58Chris Ryan?

  I'll golf with anyone.

• 41:59Andy Greenwald?

  You will golf like Saquon Barkley in so many ways. You've lived in New York, you've lived in Philadelphia and you'll golf with anyone. That was, anyway, all this, that to say is that's my guy. And I was staring at him the entire time.

• 42:11Chris Ryan?

  I, I really enjoyed the guy who was just like, I'm taking this opportunity to talk about my favorite crops.

• 42:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 42:18Chris Ryan?

  That was a very funny bit. Um, yeah.

• 42:21Andy Greenwald?

  That reminded me of Parks and Rec, uh, council meetings. I like that.

• 42:24Chris Ryan?

  I would have been interesting if they had tried to double down on the disorientation, on pushing, pushing viewers after such a difficult previous episode. I was going back and looking at some, how did other great shows follow up great episodes?

• 42:42Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 42:42Chris Ryan?

  Um, I think it varies from show to show. You know, after Connor's wedding is the, it's the kind of Logan's wake episode of Succession, for instance. Um, so there's a lot of like different ways of handling it. I, I went back and looked at that episode of Succession and I was, show's fucking incredible.

• 43:02Andy Greenwald?

  Which, Logan's wedding?

• 43:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. The one after.

• 43:04Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, it's incredible.

• 43:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, the one after where, where Kendall kind of screws over Fisher Stevens and, you know.

• 43:10Andy Greenwald?

  It's all in the townhouse, right?

• 43:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. That's like, I guess that's all I have on Last of Us. I mean, I don't know if you, if you have anything else.

• 43:15Andy Greenwald?

  No, I, I, I think I. As we continue to watch the show, which we will continue to do, I think that there is just-

• 43:22Chris Ryan?

  He said-

• 43:24Andy Greenwald?

  Just putting it out there to the universe, maybe something else will come up, you know? Do have jury duty coming up, so maybe that'll just take me off the board for a year.

• 43:32Chris Ryan?

  Your excitement at jury duty has been noted by me.

• 43:34Andy Greenwald?

  Just when it was happening on Monday mornings and maybe Thursday mornings, otherwise, you know.

• 43:41Andy Greenwald?

  I think that this show is fascinating and as a, for many reasons, but one of which is the like, everything that we bring up and you're comparing it, you know, in ways favorably or slightly unfavorably to Succession, or all the things that it has to do, or the fact that it even has a character like Gail. I continue to feel like this show is the best case version of something that might otherwise just be too challenging to do. Again, I want to be very careful saying that because that is what 80% of screenwriting is these days, right? Not just the Trojan horsing, but doing the best possible version of what it is that is getting made and trying to- So, so I do want to give everyone credit for like, for the casting, for the production design,

• 44:26Andy Greenwald?

  for the, for the time and real estate that it gives to the emotional things. It's the best case version of it, maybe, an episode like this. It couldn't do, because they have to get to Seattle, because we have to kill Abby, because we have to keep moving on and having zombie fights-

• 44:38Chris Ryan?

  Do we have to kill Abby?

• 44:39Andy Greenwald?

  Or whatever. I'm saying that's what their mission is. I'm not saying that the show has to be-

• 44:41Chris Ryan?

  Oh yeah, right.

• 44:42Andy Greenwald?

  I'm saying we couldn't have the episode after Connor's wedding episode. It couldn't be that.

• 44:48Chris Ryan?

  I guess so.

• 44:49Andy Greenwald?

  So, I also would want that, but we can't do it. So, how do we feel about what we had? And for me, it was on more on the negative side of the ledger, just as an episode of TV, because it was so many different things stitched together.

• 45:02Chris Ryan?

  I thought it was interesting, just to, not to belabor my point, but what I was thinking about, there is another version of this show that's like, literally the day after, Ellie is not in this episode and it's about Jesse kind of stepping up to be like, here's how we rebuild. Here's like, all the things that need to get done.

• 45:18Andy Greenwald?

  Here are all the things that need to be hammered.

• 45:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Here are all this, and guess what? I can hammer.

• 45:22Andy Greenwald?

  I can do it.

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• 47:04Chris Ryan?

  Okay, why don't we chat a little bit about... Well, the studio, here's what I have to say about the studio. It's incredibly funny.

• 47:11Andy Greenwald?

  Great take.

• 47:13Chris Ryan?

  And this was the curbiest of episodes, I thought.

• 47:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 47:18Chris Ryan?

  This most recent one.

• 47:19Andy Greenwald?

  This is the pediatric oncologist episode. premiered late last week.

• 47:22Chris Ryan?

  Essentially, Matt, the Seth Rogen studio head character, being confronted with

• 47:28Chris Ryan?

  sort of the bubble that he exists in where movies are the like, like end-all, be-all of human existence and other people outside of movies are often like, "I haven't seen that." You know?

• 47:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 47:39Chris Ryan?

  And it's a funny thing because it's a very specific, I think, Los Angeles experience to be like... Movies, what are you watching? Like, what, have you seen it yet? Have you gone to this yet? Have you, what are you, are you excited for one battle after another? And then people with like, normal jobs are like, oh yeah, no.

• 47:55Andy Greenwald?

  Well, that's true for, I mean, I, I said this a few weeks ago, but that around the time that all three of us, you, me and Kaia, we put our top tens up. I was at a dinner where there were some young people and they were like, oh, asking about what we do. And they're like, oh, we did our top 10 list. And I showed it to one person who was sitting near me and she was like, so cool. I haven't heard of any of these shows. And I was like, pointing at like, The Bear or whatever. It was just like, no ambient knowledge of any of the television programs that we spend months dissecting.

• 48:27Chris Ryan?

  Did that person have scars on their face and a hammer in their hand?

• 48:29Andy Greenwald?

  I took, I borrowed the hammer.

• 48:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I can really take it out of you. Anyway, uh, great guest turn from Rebecca Hall.

• 48:40Andy Greenwald?

  I, I, this, I love this episode, but I also love the episode for what it's showing about this show, which is that they can do so many different styles of comedy, as long as Seth Rogen has a gigantic fall. It's all fair.

• 48:56Chris Ryan?

  I was gonna ask you if you felt like they wanted to make a lot of this show.

• 49:01Andy Greenwald?

  Well, when it started.

• 49:02Chris Ryan?

  Cause in the first episode, I was like, this is cool. It feels like this is like a one and done.

• 49:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 49:06Chris Ryan?

  And that they're gonna make this be very stakesy and.

• 49:10Andy Greenwald?

  I thought so too. Like, it's gonna be about the.

• 49:12Chris Ryan?

  Oh, they must have like, notebooks filled with funny ideas for 30 minute episodes, with this jagoff running around and like.

• 49:21Andy Greenwald?

  I genuinely can't tell. And I think we, I think we said this before, but like, the season finale could answer all of this for us. It could be definitive.

• 49:28Chris Ryan?

  And when that season finale happens in 37 episodes.

• 49:32Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly. I, I like.

• 49:34Chris Ryan?

  Or one more, who knows?

• 49:36Andy Greenwald?

  We don't, we have no idea, is what you're saying. I get it, yeah. I thought you, oh, I thought you were wish casting.

• 49:42Chris Ryan?

  No, I was just.

• 49:42Andy Greenwald?

  If there's four more seasons.

• 49:43Chris Ryan?

  Talking about our inability to, to track the amount of episodes.

• 49:45Andy Greenwald?

  What about our inability to keep track of bits we're doing within a podcast?

• 49:49Chris Ryan?

  Well, I think that's part of the charm. Or it's really the point when you turn it off and turn something else on.

• 49:53Andy Greenwald?

  That's fine. Yeah, I, I, I think that. I don't know. I feel like maybe the best case scenario here is that they are given the grace and space to do it a little bit like Curb. It's not improvised. You know, there's a lot more prep that goes into it. It is extremely directed by Evan and Seth. You know, the oners are just, the oners are spraying out like other things are spraying out in the early going of this episode. And they, but it seems like the kind of thing that they have, there's plenty of material. It seems like it is a very sturdy ship for a lot of different types of comedy. I would love, I would love to just have a steady diet of the show, but the, but the demands on the, like Seth Rogen likes to do a lot of different

• 50:38Andy Greenwald?

  things. Is this the thing that he wants to spend 80% of his next few years doing?

• 50:43Chris Ryan?

  That's a really good question. I mean, he's talked about how for him, Superbad was kind of everything he wanted to say with his twenties and Pineapple Express was everything he wanted to say with his thirties and that the studio is everything that he and Evan want to say about their forties. So one would imagine.

• 50:59Andy Greenwald?

  That's a, did he say that?

• 51:00Chris Ryan?

  He did. I can't remember where and he's, he's done a great job talking about this show, but it may, it may have been on Howard Stern. I can't remember. But I do think that I could see there being more to this. I could see this, you could see a rise and, and fall and rise again of this character. You know, he could lose his job. He could start doing something else. Like there's a lot of different ways you could do this. So you could also tell me that this is going to be 10 episodes. I, I don't really feel like outside of Masters of the Air, Apple's in that business right now. I mean, there are.

• 51:29Andy Greenwald?

  Of one and dones?

• 51:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Like there are series where I'm like, how are you going to keep doing them? They're going to keep making Presumed Innocent, right?

• 51:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. The second season of Presumed Innocent, second season of Sugar. A lot of, yeah, they're, they're tossing the green lights around.

• 51:44Chris Ryan?

  Well, I think that they think if we're going to invest in the show, it's got to be a library play, right? Like it can't just be five episodes, six, eight episodes of something.

• 51:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. I think, I think that's true. I, I, I hope there's more. I think it's, I think it's pretty elite. It's really, really, really funny. Did you? You know, we were talking about earlier, this show took a pretty aggressive stance on golf. I don't know if you wanted to comment on that, considering. No?

• 52:09Chris Ryan?

  I have no comment.

• 52:10Andy Greenwald?

  You have no comment at this time?

• 52:12Chris Ryan?

  I have no comment at this time. It's fine. I know he thinks golf is a boring sport, but...

• 52:16Andy Greenwald?

  And, but, and, the most, quote, "The most boring man he's ever met loves golf."

• 52:21Chris Ryan?

  I will say that you meet all sorts of exciting people out on a golf course.

• 52:26Andy Greenwald?

  Guys who can really change your mind about things, like immigration.

• 52:29Chris Ryan?

  Or challenge you.

• 52:30Andy Greenwald?

  Right, right. Really good.

• 52:32Chris Ryan?

  Friends and neighbors.

• 52:33Andy Greenwald?

  Speaking of golf.

• 52:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:34Andy Greenwald?

  Started with golf as well.

• 52:36Chris Ryan?

  This show, we talked about, the last time we spoke about this show, we talked about its expanding landscape of characters, of plotlines.

• 52:47Chris Ryan?

  We got a new one this week, where...

• 52:48Andy Greenwald?

  We sure did. Suddenly a new core cast member.

• 52:51Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 52:51Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, she was in the previous week's episode, but now she steps to the fore.

• 52:54Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and, um, a real broadening, like, I think it's just getting broader and broader, and I was wondering if that was working for you.

• 53:04Andy Greenwald?

  Broad is right. Um, I, full, full disclose, it is not working for me. This show at all at the moment. Um, I think the, there are a number of way, number of places where it's starting to fall apart for me. Uh, the biggest one was there, this episode, this is the fourth episode, um, in which, uh, Nick thoughtlessly throws an extremely extravagant birthday party for Mel, for Amanda Peet's character.

• 53:40Chris Ryan?

  I mean, she just thinks it's very thoughtful. I just think it wasn't exactly what she wanted.

• 53:44Andy Greenwald?

  So, so what was, so he was thinking only of himself?

• 53:45Chris Ryan?

  No, I think he, that's his love language, his excess.

• 53:48Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm. Was that his style of play on the court as well? That resulted in all those jims. He's just like, "I'll dunk twice on you."

• 53:55Chris Ryan?

  I'm trying to figure out who he's supposed to be. Where did he win that title?

• 54:00Andy Greenwald?

  San Antonio, I believe.

• 54:01Chris Ryan?

  Right, so, but I, maybe he went to like...

• 54:03Andy Greenwald?

  Was he Bruce Brown?

• 54:04Chris Ryan?

  Yukon, like, I'm trying to imagine like who he is and why he would be back in the East Coast like that.

• 54:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I have a lot of questions about why he's doing any of the things that he does. But with that pedigree and resume, but that, at the party, to fill an awkward silence, Coop's sister, Ally, takes a guitar and begins singing a slowcore version of the Thompson Twins' "Hold Me Now",

• 54:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:31Andy Greenwald?

  while all of the incredibly rich dickheads in the audience start swaying and being like, "This is awesome." And I was like, "Okay." That was, that was the cringiest moment of television of the year for me.

• 54:44Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 54:45Andy Greenwald?

  And it was presented with such earnestness that this is working, that this is like effective, this is emotional, this is making me feel things for people who I do not feel things for yet. That was indicative of my relationship thus far to this show's...

• 55:04Chris Ryan?

  Not to, not to go back on this again, that is exactly, asking you to feel things for people you feel nothing for yet is the perfect way of putting some of the challenges that Last of Us has.

• 55:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, oh, I, yeah, yes. Kaya, can we edit that observation and put it in about the other show so I sound smarter?

• 55:23Chris Ryan?

  Actually, just make that the opening statement of the podcast.

• 55:27Andy Greenwald?

  Couldn't you just, Kaya, could you just chop up everything I've said thus far about Chris, about golf, and just make a better show out of it? That's cool. I mean, I, there are other places to, to, to go here, you know? Like, I think broadly, you were saying this, or you mentioned that, like, this is the episode in which Elena, who's Nick's housekeeper,

• 55:46Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 55:46Andy Greenwald?

  is revealed as the person who catches Coop in the act of...

• 55:49Chris Ryan?

  And immediately goes into business with him.

• 55:51Andy Greenwald?

  Goes into business with him.

• 55:52Chris Ryan?

  Amy Carrero is the actress.

• 55:54Andy Greenwald?

  I...

• 55:56Andy Greenwald?

  Found this episode's, not just its, not its interest in the people who actually work for a living in this world and like work for these people to facilitate their luxurious lives, the interest in them, I think is reasonable and necessary and-

• 56:10Chris Ryan?

  Sincere?

• 56:11Andy Greenwald?

  Since, well-

• 56:13Chris Ryan?

  I think it's sincere.

• 56:14Andy Greenwald?

  It, it, yeah, I don't want to, yeah, I'm sure. I don't mean to question the sincerity. What I questioned though was the, um, the way that it was explained, the way like the voiceover again is just like, "It turns out, people from the Dominican Republic have families and opinions and lives and they talk about us." I'm like, uh huh, you know what I mean?

• 56:35Chris Ryan?

  But isn't-

• 56:36Andy Greenwald?

  There is, there is a-

• 56:37Chris Ryan?

  You don't think that that's supposed to be a commentary on him?

• 56:40Andy Greenwald?

  I think the idea that this show is an incisive satire is doing a lot of heavy lifting right now, because right now, I think it remains incredibly unopinionated. And I know that you make a, you pull a face when I say this. Maybe this is what, this is why you succeed in whatever foursome you, you draw on the golf course. Cause people say stuff and you're like, "I have no opinion about that."

• 57:02Chris Ryan?

  I'm like, "Yes, comrade, or..."

• 57:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, or. Who am I to speak on?

• 57:10Chris Ryan?

  United healthcare stock is doing great, you know? Whatever you say.

• 57:13Andy Greenwald?

  I think we can all agree-

• 57:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:15Andy Greenwald?

  That violence in our streets is, well, can we agree?

• 57:21Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think, I can't, the show doesn't seem to want to take a side about these people and their lives of excessive consumption and sloth and disregard, you know? And I'm not saying that the show should be against them necessarily. It should not necessarily be a socialist manifesto about the maids taking over. But if it is going to be about the integrity or the would be integrity or the awakening of some integrity in this main character, I would like to see more of it. Instead of him just sort of floating through the world reacting to people, having the same conversation with Barney for four straight weeks, having the same kind of interactions with his children for four straight weeks, and also then-

• 58:06Andy Greenwald?

  Almost getting arrested, like that was, that's a pretty scary scenario. And he gets attacked by a dog and then he's absolutely immaculate sipping whiskey at the party, you know, a few scenes later, bringing his wife the candy that only he knows she wants.

• 58:20Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 58:21Andy Greenwald?

  Um, maybe the real criticism here, because I do believe that like four episodes in, it's finding its footing and that's fine, um, is that it is trying, it is spread very, very thin, which I think is where you started the conversation.

• 58:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I, I think that this is an interesting example of what's the difference between traditional television writing, especially this last 10 to 12 years, Showtime-esque. We have to have 12 characters having each with a discreet plotline that then overlaps, but that is what eats innings versus it's novelistic. I don't think that the show feels particularly novelistic, but I know that John and Trapper has his roots in that.

• 59:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 59:04Chris Ryan?

  But every time we go and spend time, admittedly with a sort of charming back and forth between Barney and his wife, Grace, about her redesign of their house and how much it's costing him.

• 59:18Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:19Chris Ryan?

  Um, it's time that we're not spending kind of at what's the core tension or story of this show. The story, the show is now about a wide collection of characters, living, spending, loving, cheating, whatever, in and around this Tony New York suburb.

• 59:36Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:37Chris Ryan?

  And also the people who work for them now. That's fine. Uh, I think it loses its momentum of a, I was on top of the world and now I'm at the bottom and to scrape my way back up to the top, I'm gonna have to use any means necessary, which is kind of like the central

• 59:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 59:54Chris Ryan?

  conflict for that main character.

• 59:55Andy Greenwald?

  He's not. Particularly sweaty. You know what I mean? Like, the urgency of it. And it is perhaps unfair to compare shows across, not just genres, but across eras. But, because it is all a question of construction and what type of show you're attempting to make. And it is apples to oranges to a degree. But Walter White's predicament, we are with Walter White, right? And with each choice that he makes. And you feel the successive risk and anxiety of each step down a path. And maybe ultimately, the show is about how for people like Coop, there are very rarely consequences.

• 1:00:36Andy Greenwald?

  And so the consequences, when they arrive, will not only be biting, but be truly existentially shocking.

• 1:00:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:43Andy Greenwald?

  I'm open to that possibility. I think that's worthwhile. But there is a flattening and diffusing element to this type of storytelling that takes us away from that urgency. When you mentioned the Barney and Grace scene, like, Hun Lee's my favorite actor on the show so far. I love the performance. I like the character.

• 1:01:01Chris Ryan?

  You space funny, funny. She's good.

• 1:01:03Andy Greenwald?

  But that scene-

• 1:01:04Chris Ryan?

  That's great.

• 1:01:04Andy Greenwald?

  Was kind of a TV throwaway. It was like, let's check in on these characters. And he's like, I'm brushing my teeth and you should spend less. And she's like, but here are my boobs. And he's like, awesome! And that's the scene.

• 1:01:15Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:01:15Andy Greenwald?

  So what have we learned?

• 1:01:18Andy Greenwald?

  We learned that he's pretty cavalier about dental health.

• 1:01:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:21Andy Greenwald?

  He throws the toothbrush, which I assume that means he's got a neck-

• 1:01:24Chris Ryan?

  A thousand toothbrushes to replace it.

• 1:01:27Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe, but then maybe he should look at his spending. Because toothbrushes, these days-

• 1:01:30Chris Ryan?

  How long have you been using the toothbrush you're currently using?

• 1:01:32Andy Greenwald?

  Thanks for asking. I swapped it out last week.

• 1:01:34Chris Ryan?

  And how, like, would you say that's a rotation of, like, every six weeks?

• 1:01:38Andy Greenwald?

  Every presidential administration I revisit.

• 1:01:43Chris Ryan?

  Wait, so when Biden won?

• 1:01:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that's the thing.

• 1:01:48Chris Ryan?

  Did you change?

• 1:01:48Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't recognize that one. So I actually was quite, quite an old toothbrush. Thank you for acknowledging my struggle.

• 1:01:54Chris Ryan?

  I just did that for Kyle.

• 1:01:56Andy Greenwald?

  Third point. I think they stopped recording 10 minutes ago. And now they're just letting us tire ourselves out.

• 1:02:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:05Chris Ryan?

  We're in agreement. Every, every episode has its charms, but it feels a little bit less like urgent and necessary than it did in the first episode.

• 1:02:13Andy Greenwald?

  And, and look, like, to use another Breaking Bad comparison,

• 1:02:18Andy Greenwald?

  Skylar, as a character, was a challenge for the writers for the entire run of the series. They, I think, tried admirably, and I think that Anna Gunn did great work throughout the show. But I think even they would probably admit that the, the, the circumstance that they set up at the beginning, where this guy is sick AF and, and a criminal, and she's like, "Don't be bad." Like, that's a tough one, and they tried to figure that out.

• 1:02:46Chris Ryan?

  They also walked right into the explosion of online conversation about television shows.

• 1:02:52Andy Greenwald?

  Totally.

• 1:02:53Chris Ryan?

  Skylar, as a character, took on a life of her own.

• 1:02:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and I think the treatment and, yes, I completely agree.

• 1:02:58Chris Ryan?

  I'm sure Vince Scolligan was like, "Uh, like, that's, that's his wife."

• 1:03:01Andy Greenwald?

  No, I bring it up not to, not to, not to criticize him again, because I think they, in good faith, were like, "Oh, okay, well, what, what are some other things we could be doing here? What could it look like?" But at a certain point, you're saddled with the, the dynamic that you've created in the beginning.

• 1:03:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:14Andy Greenwald?

  And, and, and playing that to its, I mean, that's why Carmella Soprano was not that, you know? And it, it's not necessarily a question of like, one is a better performer or not. It's like, the, the way the show was scaffolded, like, allowed her to have more fluidity and more power and whatever. All of that is to say, you and I love Amanda Peet, and as a performer, and the fact that her plot in the last two episodes, so her plot in the first episode, it's a pilot, okay, she's reacting to Coop. Second episode, we learn she has a job. Great. She has a job. They chose for her job to be therapist, so that might be a way into character or observation. Her plot in episode three was, "There are moths in the closet."

• 1:03:55Andy Greenwald?

  And her plot in this episode is, "My boyfriend threw me a big party and it makes me sad." I need a little more meat on the bone. Do you know what I mean? Like, if we're going to be making this a large ensemble piece, I would like some more. And maybe there's, again, this is the fourth episode. But these are some worried-

• 1:04:14Chris Ryan?

  Red flags.

• 1:04:15Andy Greenwald?

  Lot of-

• 1:04:15Chris Ryan?

  Concerns.

• 1:04:16Andy Greenwald?

  Lot of alley, too.

• 1:04:17Chris Ryan?

  Lot of alley. Let's wrap up there. I think we did a great job. So what we're gonna do on Thursday is talk about the next three, so Episodes 4, 5, and 6 of Andor, which are coming out on Tuesday.

• 1:04:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:29Chris Ryan?

  I am excited to have this conversation with you. We can also chat about some other stuff if you would like. We have, next week, Gemstones finale is coming on Sunday. I suppose the rehearsal is out there for us to discuss at some point. I've been waiting for like the rehearsal to kind of like have a couple to talk about, maybe. There's, there's a few things-

• 1:04:49Andy Greenwald?

  Gemstones?

• 1:04:50Chris Ryan?

  Gems, yeah, so I said-

• 1:04:51Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, you did say it. I was, I was just checking what else was coming up. I wasn't listening at that point.

• 1:04:55Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:04:55Andy Greenwald?

  Can we edit that part?

• 1:04:57Chris Ryan?

  No, not at all. I think it's important for people to see you as you really are.

• 1:05:00Andy Greenwald?

  I wanted, the truth is, I was, I was just wondering, like, if you hit the links with Orson Krennic. Like, do you think-

• 1:05:10Chris Ryan?

  I think he would be very entertaining.

• 1:05:13Andy Greenwald?

  See, this is what I like about you.

• 1:05:15Chris Ryan?

  With two beers on the front night. And then when we get to the back night and he's had his fourth IPA, I think it gets a little dicey.

• 1:05:21Andy Greenwald?

  And he starts saying what he really thinks about Gorman. You know what I mean?

• 1:05:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:26Andy Greenwald?

  Is he like, the first beer, he's just like, of course, you know, a beautiful society with lots of history.

• 1:05:30Chris Ryan?

  Comes up to me and talks to me the way he talked to Dedra, and he's just like, you've been so quiet out there. Tell me what you think. And it's like, but if instead it's like, I know there's a great golfer inside of you. Why don't you show him to me? Then that would be inspirational. You know?

• 1:05:43Andy Greenwald?

  It's, it's like, uh, yeah. You know, what they don't tell you on the news is that he's funny. Right? Like, everyone's like, oh, these big, bad Empire guys.

• 1:05:55Chris Ryan?

  I want to just make it clear before we go that I would not golf with Trump.

• 1:05:59Andy Greenwald?

  You draw the line?

• 1:06:00Chris Ryan?

  I would not golf with Trump. We're all having fun here. I don't want anybody to think-

• 1:06:03Andy Greenwald?

  You wouldn't golf with Trump because you respect the office too much and you think he has too much to do, too much on his plate right now with the great work? What do you-

• 1:06:11Chris Ryan?

  That is a great question. It's like, why is he golfing with Saquon? It's like, there's so much fucking shit happening.

• 1:06:16Andy Greenwald?

  No, because you saw his tweet about, or his Truth Social, you're always reporting to me what's on that, about Shador Sanders, right? And he's basically just like-

• 1:06:27Chris Ryan?

  I saw this and I was just like-

• 1:06:29Andy Greenwald?

  But he's a WFAN caller. Like, that's all he wants to be. And if we could just, if Nathan Fielder could just create a rehearsal where he just gets to have opinions about dumb shit, maybe we would have saved ourselves all this trouble.

• 1:06:40Chris Ryan?

  He never wanted, he just wanted to be like Taco Bell, the menu's gotten too expensive for the quality. I hate it.

• 1:06:46Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 1:06:47Chris Ryan?

  That's what he wants to do.

• 1:06:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:06:49Chris Ryan?

  Be a takesman.

• 1:06:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and you, unfortunately, you burned all your good takes already, you said, but you're willing to take one for the team by hitting, where would you go with him? Riviera? What would you-

• 1:07:00Chris Ryan?

  Probably one of his places. I'm never gonna go to one of his places. I hate this conversation.

• 1:07:08Andy Greenwald?

  This is the best thing, because this whole, we're done, but the whole construction of this conversation is that you're amenable and you're a good guy and maybe you could go golfing with monsters.

• 1:07:19Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 1:07:20Andy Greenwald?

  We're also seeing that you're continuing to talk to me?

• 1:07:24Andy Greenwald?

  Even though I'm the monster now.

• 1:07:26Chris Ryan?

  Thanks for listening. We'll be back on Thursday.

• 1:08:10Speaker 05

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