‘Euphoria’ Season 3 Premiere

Chris and Andy discuss the ‘Euphoria’ Season 3 premiere (specifically Andy watching his first episode ever), creator Sam Levinson’s audacious filmmaking style, Zendaya’s stellar performance, and much more (1:00). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Additional Video Supervision: Sarah Reddy Order and it will come. Like today. 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.

• 0:05Speaker 00

  I need sports staff to clear the room.

• 0:08Andy Greenwald?

  Stand up and walk now.

• 0:11Chris 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 with a green apple on his head, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 0:23Andy Greenwald?

  I'm excited.

• 0:24Chris Ryan?

  I'm excited too, man. We are releasing this on Sunday night. It's The Watch. We're really just talking about the first episode of Euphoria tonight, today.

• 0:31Andy Greenwald?

  And by first episode, you mean the first episode ever?

• 0:34Chris Ryan?

  You're like pure driven snow. It's unbelievable. Do you think you have a ton to add besides the fact that it's your first episode?

• 0:41Andy Greenwald?

  How long is this episode?

• 0:43Chris Ryan?

  People can email us at thewatchatspotify.com. They can follow us at thewatchpod underscore on Instagram. You can watch us on Ringer-TV on YouTube. And you can watch us on Spotify, where you can also listen to us. And you can also listen to us on a bunch of other podcast platforms. Greenwald, we are here for a grand experiment. Rarely in the history of this podcast.

• 1:06Andy Greenwald?

  The 14-year history of this podcast.

• 1:09Chris Ryan?

  Do we basically like say, hey, this show in the middle or end of its run that one of us hasn't watched ever before, we're just gonna jump right in. And I think it'll give us a unique, if possibly not particularly functional, take on this show. First episode of Euphoria, the third season, much delayed. In between, Sam Levinson did The Idols. Zendaya made one of the best movies of the year, the drama. She's in Dune. There's obviously like a roster of actors on this show that have pretty much exploded. Sydney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi, et cetera. I have been watching the show more or less since the beginning. I think I caught up on season one a little late. I was a real fan of some specials that

• 1:53Chris Ryan?

  they did, some like one-offs that they did, and really loved season two. I am seated. I'm seated not only for this show, but I am seated for your...

• 2:05Andy Greenwald?

  Seated?

• 2:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:06Andy Greenwald?

  I think men like that turn around.

• 2:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, like, you know, like I have my popcorn and my soda. I just can't wait to hear what you have to say about this, because I don't know what the experience is watching this without the lore, without the context, without anything.

• 2:19Andy Greenwald?

  And I want to be clear. I didn't Google anything. There were multiple times during my viewing of episode 301, where I briefly wondered, perhaps the path, the history of a character.

• 2:32Chris Ryan?

  How does Maddie know her? Yeah.

• 2:33Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know who's Maddie.

• 2:35Chris Ryan?

  Alexis Demme's character.

• 2:36Andy Greenwald?

  Who's Alexis Demme?

• 2:37Chris Ryan?

  Uh, she is the manager of Dylan, the little actor guy. She's...

• 2:41Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, right.

• 2:42Chris Ryan?

  Okay. You did watch this episode. Okay.

• 2:44Andy Greenwald?

  But I didn't know who was a character or not. Like, is that actor guy important? Has he been on the show before?

• 2:49Chris Ryan?

  He hasn't been on the show before.

• 2:50Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, see? This is what I'm saying. Nor did I do my other tried and true method of watching television, which is continually text you during the experience. Now, some might say that I didn't do that because you were onstage in San Francisco talking about Basic Instinct with Mallory Rubin.

• 3:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:05Andy Greenwald?

  But others might say because I was showing great restraint.

• 3:08Chris Ryan?

  Sure. I think this is an experiment. Maybe next episode you'll wanna like, look up some stuff.

• 3:13Andy Greenwald?

  Nope.

• 3:13Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:14Andy Greenwald?

  Here's why. This was exhilarating. I loved this experience. It felt freeing and just, uh, I feel uncaged. And as someone whose opinions are famously caged, get ready. Here's genuinely, what I mean is, what I love most about television, ongoing television, why I talk about it, why I work in it, why I watch it, is that experience of cumulative narrative storytelling. And the, um, the investments that we make in a show, and we make in the emotional lives of fictional people, and in the creators to continue to deliver what we grow to expect from these characters,

• 3:59Andy Greenwald?

  or to surprise us in ways that delight us and rapture us even further. That commitment, that relationship, Chris, can also be a yoke.

• 4:08Chris Ryan?

  Mm.

• 4:09Andy Greenwald?

  It can drag things down. And at its worst, it's what we see with the kind of toxic fandom that exists online, or even inside of our own bitter hearts, where shows cease to be what we want them to be, or more charitably, cease to match the highs with which they announce themselves. And the experience of watching it becomes one of diminishing returns into resentment and disappointment.

• 4:34Andy Greenwald?

  I have been guilty of this in my personal life and I've been guilty of this on this podcast as well, when shows that I have loved missed the mark, or missed the mark perhaps arbitrarily that I have set for it. And it is very, very hard to engage beyond that point. So to turn on a show with no prior knowledge, other than the fact that, I mean, I will cop to the fact that I am aware that this is the chaos menu of seasons, that this was many years in the making, that the wrangling of talent was quite difficult, that there were aborted other versions of the show in which maybe they were still in high school if the timing worked out differently. I think there were different pitches, yeah. There was a detective show we had heard about, which sounded interesting to me. I

• 5:16Andy Greenwald?

  am also aware that the filmmaker, creator, auteur behind the show, Sam Levinson, made the idol. Mm-hmm. I will not be referring to that show again during this podcast, today, during the next five minutes. Okay. No. So to turn on this episode and be greeted with a riot of color and outrageous situations was fun, thrilling, exciting. I didn't have any baggage. I was not laden, I was not weighed down by anything, and certainly not by dozens of tightly packed balls of fentanyl. That's right. That's right.

• 5:56Andy Greenwald?

  Although, stay tuned for the after show, in which, so it was a, you could hear me get excited about this project over the last few weeks, and it actually is super fun. And you can tell me your feelings, coming at it from a different place, but I did, I do have a sense that entering into this season, this premiere with this attitude, is actually helpful. Because if I had investment in these characters as young people over time, and not just, not just the normal time between seasons, quite a long period of time now, since the show debuted, I would probably feel a type of way about where Sam Levinson has chosen to pick up their stories again. As just, I'm entering a new world where these are the stakes and this is the aesthetic

• 6:41Andy Greenwald?

  and this is the tone. Okay, let's see.

• 6:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think that there's been some, well reasoned criticism of this season so far. I've only watched the first one. Critics were given the first three to check out. There's six this, this season. I'm sort of saying like, what is the reason for Euphoria beyond being Euphoria? Like beyond making more of an incredibly successful series that HBO has a financial invested interest in having stay on the air. It's got three of the biggest stars of their generation on it. You really, like, you know, like you can't let that opportunity get away from you. And cracking the story, like you mentioned, has been something that has gone through several iterations, reported iterations. There's

• 7:25Chris Ryan?

  a Kim Masters piece in The Hollywood Reporter that came out after The Idol that went through some of the, you know, at least behind the scenes stuff that was being anonymously, for the most part, talked about, but like that you like mentioned, Rue becoming a private detective, Rue becoming a surrogate mother. What are we gonna do? Is it gonna be like shortly after high school? Is it gonna be a massive time jump? You have to accommodate, you know, these people's schedules, but also them aging, but also their different artistic interests as the years go on. I was kind of curious for you, you know, obviously there's like the, no, it is not jumping into the two towers without ever having heard anything

• 8:06Chris Ryan?

  about hobbits and just being like, I guess now I'm just watching this. Although I do wonder if somebody could do that because there's just like, yeah, it's a big fight. I like it. With this, like, did you find yourself being emotionally caught up in it at all? Or was it simply, wow, what a, what a boisterous, riotous, like daring piece of filmmaking this was?

• 8:26Andy Greenwald?

  It's the right question to ask. I think Zendaya is such a, this is, this is not a hot take. This is a freezing cold take. I think she's an incredibly unique and charismatic star. When she is on screen, like all right movie stars, I'm invested in her predicament. And one of the things that this season, in this episode, does very well is drop us right into a circumstance that is outrageous and thus.

• 9:01Andy Greenwald?

  Completely, it's like, it's like jumping, it literally is cannonballing into a pool. She is, I'm meeting her and she is a drug runner trying to cross the border from Chihuahua into Texas.

• 9:11Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 9:13Andy Greenwald?

  In a manner that is quite risky.

• 9:17Chris Ryan?

  It's purely cinematic. It's like the idea, she drives her car up to this sort of, up this ramp, up to the top of the border wall. She can't get the car to get down to the ramp going down. So she is symbolically stuck between stations on the top of the wall. And the car will neither tip backwards nor forwards. And she has to do this incredible balletic move out of the car and down the ramp so that the car doesn't fall on her at any given point. And there's a bird and it's like a really good silent movie sequence.

• 9:47Andy Greenwald?

  Chris, cinema. It speaks to a point that you made that I was, some might say gently resistant to, others would say outwardly hostile to. In our discussion of a show I said I wouldn't mention again, The Idol, that you were making the case that Sam Levinson, on his own, is a filmmaker to watch, is an interesting director and creator and visual storyteller.

• 10:14Andy Greenwald?

  Separate and apart from the drama and soap opera of that show, this, this opening sequence makes the case for itself on its own terms. And frankly, that was kind of my feeling about the entire episode. Am I particularly invested in the things that seem to motivate him? I would say through one episode, fairly strong trending no. But the way in which he is telling the stories, particularly the Rue story, which maybe this is intentional and maybe this is a good thing, is just so much more compelling than any of the other stories that are a part of the show. And maybe that's an argument for why continuing, you know, season three makes less sense than let's just tell a new story with Zendaya, whatever the case may be.

• 11:00Andy Greenwald?

  I thought that there was such a dynamism and such a flair and, you know, I, I, it's the kind of thing that our old friend Sam S. Mill would often say on the podcast, which is when he approaches things. If the visual storytelling is not just worthy, is noteworthy, is eye-catching, is dramatic, is invested, is full of specificity, he's in. And generally, that's not how I approach television because I'm, maybe it's a conservative mind, or maybe it's just the more writer-driven mind, or maybe I'm just nervous about people who are gonna have to do it 24 to 48 more times. I wanna see if the thing has legs. I don't really care so far with this. The audacity of the opening was enough for me.

• 11:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, this is a show that does not have, or at least to my knowledge, does not have a blueprint. It is not a show about X and Y needs to happen for X to be a complete statement. I mean, I'm sure that this will probably be the last season of Euphoria. I'm, just because of the complications behind the scenes in terms of mounting it. But it can do whatever it wants. I think the heart of the show is Rue's addiction story, and it's been the most gripping parts of it for me. I know people who are like, I liked Euphoria, the fucked-up version of 90210

• 12:24Chris Ryan?

  that it was in the first season, you know, and the kind of post-Tumbler kind of take on teenage dreams that it was in the first season. But it, to me, left the atmosphere when it became a far more cinematic, rather than tell a visual storytelling mechanism of, if I want Rue to run across the city all day for an entire episode, like, we can do that. We can make an episode about that. There are obviously all these other plotlines, but to me, she's the heart and the head of the show. And the stuff that's happening around it, it's interesting to try and make the two meet. And if I had like any problem with this episode,

• 13:06Chris Ryan?

  it's like seeing how they're gonna get those two, like, sort of roads to converge eventually. With only six episodes, I'm sure they'll figure something out. But I really, really, really, really am invested in the Rue character. Her performance is remarkable. And then, you know, as far as like what you're talking about with like the visual aspect of it, not only do I think he's a talented filmmaker, I just really like the way he shoots Southern California.

• 13:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, the light, the yellows, it's really, really dramatic.

• 13:36Chris Ryan?

  And even the more garish stuff, like the, you know, Sydney Sweeney and Jacob Elordi's house.

• 13:41Andy Greenwald?

  Their house.

• 13:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and like the idea of like bulldozers moving sand back and forth.

• 13:46Andy Greenwald?

  And, you know, this was relevant to a conversation we were having in our previous episode about, you know, a completely incomparable show like Your Friends and Neighbors that I'm gonna comp anyway, which is like when characters are having hyper-real, let's say charitably, conversations that I don't recognize as conversations that human beings have with each other. If you put them in like a garish eighties cocaine Narnia, I'm paying a different sort of attention.

• 14:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:14Andy Greenwald?

  Because the hyperreality extends past the dialogue. It becomes the whole point of the scene. So the way that they're living in this place that is like a combination of The House from Wild at Heart and also An Old Age Home imbues the entire thing with a sense of, yeah, cinema, but also of a comprehensive storytelling. You might not like the story, but someone's telling you something.

• 14:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and he's able to push the limits of what's in a frame. So when, uh, when Sydney Sweeney and Jacob Elordi are having their big dinner where she's explaining to him that she is gonna join OnlyFans to pay for her flower budget at her wedding.

• 14:52Andy Greenwald?

  What was the candle budget in that scene?

• 14:55Chris Ryan?

  That was what I was gonna say, is that you could do that and say like, there's low lighting, or there's five candles, and they have like 80 candles going. And that might be why these shows take so long and cost so much. And, you know, the amount of times they may have to go in and whether those are fake candles. But like, it's just pushing it. To the limit of what people can accept, you know, and then seeing like the results of that on screen is pretty impressive.

• 15:22Andy Greenwald?

  If you have, this is a tough argument to make, but I'm gonna try to make it. The best version, I would think, of an opportunity to have a budget, an HBO Sunday Night Show, ascendant stars like Alordi and Sweeney. The best version would be to have something incredibly compelling, because you have all of these, you have the best ingredients at your disposal.

• 15:49Andy Greenwald?

  The worst outcome would be timidity. We have the best ingredients, but I'm just gonna, to make the food analogy, I'm just gonna make a, I'm trying to make a lobster mac and cheese. I'll put some truffle oil on it, you know what I mean?

• 16:03Andy Greenwald?

  The second best option is I'm gonna, you know, paint their faces like I'm a fucking Dutch master, and I'm gonna have them gulping down giant 80s martinis and eat it and shoveling spaghetti into their mouths while they talk about online pornography.

• 16:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:21Andy Greenwald?

  It is a choice.

• 16:23Chris Ryan?

  A widely held misconception that OnlyFans is only pornography.

• 16:25Andy Greenwald?

  I've heard this a few times in this episode.

• 16:28Chris Ryan?

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• 17:01Andy Greenwald?

  I have another cultural comp, but I do think in the service of, if we are even servicing it, like, can I, can I talk about the storylines? And you can, you can tell me or not tell me.

• 17:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I have not re-watched too, so I will do my best, but I am not the keeper of the lore.

• 17:14Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not gonna fact check you, brother.

• 17:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:15Andy Greenwald?

  I don't even wanna know the lore.

• 17:16Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 17:16Andy Greenwald?

  But from my understanding, here's where we're at. I, I knew ambiently that Zendaya's character was named Rue and had addiction issues.

• 17:24Andy Greenwald?

  If I were watching this cold, I am, I would not be aware for addiction issues. I would be aware of the fact that mistakes made in her past have have made it impossible for her to have a future.

• 17:34Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:35Andy Greenwald?

  And that's where she is. So she finds herself outrageously running drugs and being a courier for drugs along with a friend.

• 17:45Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 17:45Andy Greenwald?

  For a mild mannered woman who seems to also have a lot of-

• 17:50Chris Ryan?

  Played Laurie, played by Martha Kelly.

• 17:52Andy Greenwald?

  Who has a lot of redneck farmer associates where they cook or make pills.

• 17:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:56Andy Greenwald?

  At the same time, although we don't yet see the overlap, Jacob Elordi is living with his fiancee, played by Sydney Sweeney.

• 18:02Chris Ryan?

  Cassie.

• 18:03Andy Greenwald?

  And they're living in, as we can't keep describing this mansion, this funhouse mansion anymore, and she is trying to make content so that she can have income as well, both to pay for their wedding and to find value in this world.

• 18:16Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 18:17Andy Greenwald?

  And he is sort of a harried-

• 18:19Chris Ryan?

  He's taken over for his father's construction company and is trying to become a developer building retirement and old age homes in Southern California.

• 18:29Andy Greenwald?

  Sort of like a would be Rick Caruso type, trying to build here.

• 18:33Chris Ryan?

  Sure, that's interesting.

• 18:35Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you.

• 18:35Chris Ryan?

  Way of putting it, yeah.

• 18:37Andy Greenwald?

  We also are seeing Maude Apatow's character working for-

• 18:43Chris Ryan?

  Lexi.

• 18:43Andy Greenwald?

  -a television executive, played by Sharon Stone, making-

• 18:46Chris Ryan?

  On like a CW type nighttime soap.

• 18:48Andy Greenwald?

  A nighttime soap, something that definitely doesn't exist anymore, but sure.

• 18:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:53Andy Greenwald?

  In this world it does. And that's, and then someone else is managing an actor and that crosses that storyline.

• 18:58Chris Ryan?

  Matty is managing one of the actors on LA Nights. Matty and Lexi are still friends. And I will say, one of the hardest thing, times I laughed was when Matty accompanies her client to a premiere and it looks like an Amazon straight to streaming movie called If I May, If I Might.

• 19:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and I believe it's all HBO and HBO Max. And everything's on the Warner Brothers lot.

• 19:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 19:23Andy Greenwald?

  Look, I think.

• 19:26Chris Ryan?

  And that's really, I mean, like, you've got, like, on the surface level, you've got it. So Rue has become basically indentured to Laurie. Over the course of the end of the season, it really turns into the Uncut Gems, second half of Goodfellas, sort of vibe of the show really comes out. And Rue gets in deep with this character Laurie. There's some stuff that I think will be explained later that happened perhaps in between the two seasons. And some of that is going to be related to the character played by Angus Cloud, who tragically passed away in between season two and three, the actor himself. You don't know about Jules, I won't spoil anything about Hunter Schafer's character.

• 20:07Chris Ryan?

  The only thing I would just really say is that the Coleman Domingo diner scene is sort of a...

• 20:13Andy Greenwald?

  It's a callback to the others.

• 20:14Chris Ryan?

  It's a callback, it's like a continuing, a variation on the theme of what their special was. I mean, there was two sort of standalones. One was Rue's kind of trying to accept a power of greater than her part of the 12 steps. And the other is about Hunter Schafer's Jules character. And this conversation that they're having in the diner about Rue kind of needing to get her head around the idea of a god and god being in control and not her is obviously fundamental to her saying, "I thought maybe god might be this other drug dealer, or rather a pimp, who will pull me into this other world and away from Laurie."

• 20:55Andy Greenwald?

  And that's our guy, Mr. Echo.

• 20:57Chris Ryan?

  That's our, I know Mr. Echo.

• 20:58Andy Greenwald?

  Who shows up, where she delivers drugs and uses the bathroom and then becomes friends.

• 21:04Chris Ryan?

  Well, I think she gets, first, she's nearly killed because it turns out that the drugs that Laurie gave her to give to this new guy was fentanyl.

• 21:13Andy Greenwald?

  Or laced with, touched with.

• 21:15Chris Ryan?

  A young woman dies of an overdose.

• 21:17Andy Greenwald?

  And everything in the scene is beyond over the top. And again, because of the absolute DGAF, DGA meets DGAF, which is how I would describe Sam Levinson's aesthetic.

• 21:31Andy Greenwald?

  I'm weirdly, okay, like, even the candle scene, I'm going to get my notes that you're referring to. I wrote, "Ah, this is everything. Looks good is stupid."

• 21:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:40Andy Greenwald?

  But, okay, fine, like, I was enjoying it. And again, when you have...

• 21:44Chris Ryan?

  I still, I still laughed, like, the thing that he does, as much as he gets great images... He knows exactly what people are good at. Or he sees people in a way that I think is very specific. So the Zendaya performance, we can talk about. I'm pretty mesmerized by her at this point. I think just coming out of the drama. One of the things I love so much about her is her lack of vanity.

• 22:06Andy Greenwald?

  Totally.

• 22:07Chris Ryan?

  Is as far as like Rue, who's like run ragged throughout the series. But also like in the drama, like her interest in taking on difficult roles, but like more like roles that fuck with her public persona a little bit.

• 22:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, there's a scene in this episode where, I mean, she is famously one of the most beautiful stars in the world and also one of the most fashionable and always people are checking.

• 22:31Chris Ryan?

  And charming.

• 22:31Andy Greenwald?

  And charming, but my kids are like, love her, but also look for her red carpet looks. Like they want to know that is part of her mythos. And so then for her in this show to be a dirtbag, but also a dirtbag who is placed next to all of the the young women at, what's the guy's name, Alamo's party?

• 22:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:50Andy Greenwald?

  And her just be like, wow, you look great. That's cool. Look how you look. Like that is such, it's an intentional turning everything on its head that works.

• 22:59Chris Ryan?

  Um, so he sees Zendaya in a certain way or their collaboration.

• 23:03Andy Greenwald?

  Sam Levinson.

• 23:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Sam Levinson does. And they've, you know, they, they did a film together, like they've done a lot of work together. And

• 23:13Chris Ryan?

  I, I think he sees like the comedian in Sydney Sweeney. Uh, and I think.

• 23:22Andy Greenwald?

  That, that cut the biggest laugh of our marathon recording today.

• 23:26Chris Ryan?

  Silentest little snort. Um, I think he sees the, the humor in her, in her persona. And I think she is in on the joke, but like 80% in on, on the joke.

• 23:39Andy Greenwald?

  I think White Lotus was that too.

• 23:41Chris Ryan?

  This is funnier to me. Like, her Cassie is funnier to me than the White Lotus thing.

• 23:47Andy Greenwald?

  I, those, I think those are the only two things I've ever seen her in.

• 23:50Chris Ryan?

  I have some other films I can recommend if you'd like to check them out.

• 23:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, please give me a list. Maybe it's movie night with the girls on Friday. Let me know which one I should fire up.

• 23:58Chris Ryan?

  Housemaid, Anyone But You, double feature, yeah.

• 24:00Andy Greenwald?

  Can't wait.

• 24:03Andy Greenwald?

  The, yeah, like, in terms of, like, the setup for Alamo, you know, wearing tighty-whities and a bathrobe in true, like, last act of Boogie Nights fashion, deciding to do William Tell to her, to William tell him if she's a rat or not or worth keeping around, is such a provocation and such an absurdity, and it is entirely, in my opinion, earned by the noise she makes when she survives. Because she is so, to your point, he knows how she's gonna react, and that, you get the sense that she, maybe that's how she laughs when she's surprised by something or delighted by something, or the real her, quote unquote, that people who work with her may know.

• 24:47Andy Greenwald?

  And what comes out of her is so, um, natural and riveting, that that, that, those moments make me excited to keep watching the show. I think, I, I think that there's, big picture, what seems to motivate our friend Sam is, on some level, deeply uninteresting to me. The show, the, the voice of the show, and he writes the show alone and directs it, comes alive on two, two moments to me. One is how stupid writers' rooms and group think are inside Hollywood. When everyone's like, doing like, little snaps up about how we need to do representation right in the show, and he's just like, he's like my parents watching MSNBC, he's like, got him.

• 25:34Andy Greenwald?

  The other moment is when Jacob Alhurti says, "It's hard to build in Southern California." This is a motivating issue, you know, among a certain class of people here.

• 25:43Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 25:44Andy Greenwald?

  I think that I find less compelling. But within that, the comparison that I would make.

• 25:52Chris Ryan?

  You're not a big disowning guy. It's just okay. It's okay.

• 25:55Andy Greenwald?

  That's okay. Look, I've read some compelling arguments in the abundance or, you know, the abundance sector.

• 26:04Andy Greenwald?

  The comparison I would make is Bret Easton Ellis.

• 26:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:08Andy Greenwald?

  Who is a writer who I, despite everything, still have a lot of time for.

• 26:12Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so here's a-

• 26:13Andy Greenwald?

  But the reason I bring it up, and then I'm sorry, I'll let you go, is that the early books that he wrote when he was very, very young and basically the same age as the characters he was writing about. So Less Than Zero and Rules of Attraction. I loved so, so much because, and maybe this was just me also being young when I was reading them. I felt that they were like absolutely like, you know, intentionally provocative and over the top. But there was this like beating heart of universal youth in them or yearning or something or telling the world that it's phony from the inside of that world that I found really, really riveting and magnetic. And I've continued to be interested in him and try to read him even as the books have become paler and paler imitations of that same thing. And even sometimes commenting on them or revisiting

• 26:57Andy Greenwald?

  them. The reason I do it is because his angle and his point of view about this place that we now live in remains so sui generis and it's just, it's just, it's just him. He has his own genre. And I kind of felt the same way here where obviously I didn't watch the high school seasons, but clearly we have moved past high school. And so I'm finding what's being, what motivates him to be like just spinning out from, it feels like the stuff that really motivates someone about the world who has rarely left the 323 area code. Be like, don't go south of the border. It's drug runners and fundamentalist religious people and all of that. And it felt kind of pat and very, you know, not particularly stakesy or gripping.

• 27:42Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 27:42Andy Greenwald?

  But- The point of view on it is kind of compelling and funny and clearly deeply felt. And that, that keeps me engaged.

• 27:54Chris Ryan?

  Every moment that you're like, I think you're referring to the moment where Zendaya is first confronted with the idea that she needs to swallow like 20 balloons worth of drugs.

• 28:04Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:05Chris Ryan?

  Her acting in that scene and her facial reaction to the like, what she has to do, which is pour KY jelly over balloons and choke them down. So she goes and gets her friend Faye to help her.

• 28:17Andy Greenwald?

  Big week for KY. It's on your friends and neighbors too.

• 28:19Chris Ryan?

  Oh, good for, good for those guys. I'm glad they're, I'm glad they're reaching out beyond the.

• 28:23Andy Greenwald?

  They're finally getting their name out there. It's gonna be a big, guys, I'm not, I'm not a financial advisor, but buy lube stocks.

• 28:30Chris Ryan?

  At the, at the hotel I was at, and it was just like a really normal hotel. Have you ever gone into like the Hotel General store and the KY jelly is like lower right-hand corner? And they're just like, just in case.

• 28:41Andy Greenwald?

  Just in case this weekend goes a certain direction. Yeah. That's what makes hotels great.

• 28:46Chris Ryan?

  And I like, but it's just like you and a woman who's like selling like, you know, tourist trap, like couture memorabilia and also toothbrushes.

• 28:54Andy Greenwald?

  You go in there for a magnet, toothbrush, Pringles.

• 28:57Chris Ryan?

  Snickers.

• 28:58Andy Greenwald?

  And a sex toy. It's fine.

• 29:00Chris Ryan?

  Anyways, Zendaya's performance during that whole scene makes it because yeah, it's completely like a cliched, like south of the border. Everything goes upside down. She doesn't have a simple task. Her, her task is to save herself. Um, she gets in her own way. The second she arrives at this place, the one thing she is told by Daryl Brick Gibson is don't do any, don't touch anything you're not supposed to.

• 29:22Andy Greenwald?

  He's, he's, he's given a performance to. I love him.

• 29:25Chris Ryan?

  A second, she is taking off her shirt, dancing with all the girls, hanging out, drinking, smoking weed, even though she's supposed to be sober. California's sober, I guess. Um, so she is a participant in her own downfall. She always has been in the show. She, she wants to feel something, maybe more than she wants to feel clean.

• 29:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Question about that. I know I said I wouldn't ask too many questions about it, but like, is, was your takeaway from this episode that she is clean and sober from the addictions that she, like she was on pills and things in the past? Is California sober like actually how you view her after this episode?

• 30:03Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I didn't think she was like breaking her edge really. I think that she's just in a ton of trouble.

• 30:09Andy Greenwald?

  There is a thing, you know, I was. It is funny how we consider this stuff because I was reading, this will surprise no one. I was recently reading a Scottish crime novel from the eighties. And in it, like the tough but tender police inspector, Laidlaw, is like trying to talk frankly to a woman who's had a tough time. She's trying to get off the heroin and trying to leave the country and start over because she's, you know, in, the Glasgow criminals are circling around her. And he's just like, you look a bit peaked. I'm sorry I put you through this. Let me get you a gin and tonic. And she's like, thank you. Like immediately. And, you know, my, maybe this is just my like modern, you know, brain where I'm like, she shouldn't be doing that.

• 30:50Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 30:50Andy Greenwald?

  When in fact, I think for, for generations and including on this show.

• 30:54Chris Ryan?

  I don't know necessarily that they make an explicit statement when she's talking to Coleman Domingo about the degree of her sobriety and whether or not it's just like off the hard stuff, but still like every once in a while. But like when she was smoking a blunt and drinking whiskey, I, with, with Amos, I was like, well, we're, we're going into some, some dark, dark waters.

• 31:16Andy Greenwald?

  I'm curious about the reaction too, to us talking about it this way because I would imagine that people who are Euphoria fans are going to have much stronger feelings about this season because it does seem like such a dramatic break from the show that they fell in love with. That, that said, what I'm enjoying about it is not the, the visual pyrotechnics of it. It's something that you've been alluding to constantly through this conversation, which is that, I mean, there are two kinds of visually expressive directors. One, one type is just so in love with the images that they make that I, that I find it a little bit airless and it chokes the life out of the thing to make the perfect picture. And then there's the type of director who just, I just fucking love actors, man.

• 31:59Andy Greenwald?

  And knows actors and as you said, can bring out aspects of actors that they see, not that necessarily they alone see, but that they have some unique perspective on. And that was what I was picking up on in this episode. It's just like, I'm going to put these people on the screen and I'm going to let, I'm going to enjoy giving them a chance to enjoy it.

• 32:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:19Andy Greenwald?

  And if I had invested more. Multiple years of emotional and intellectual sweat equity in Rue's sobriety journey, only for it to be this, I might be a little bit ticked, or I might be a little bit impatient with it, but I didn't, so I'm having a good time.

• 32:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I also think that it's become a little bit less grounded in TV reality and is now going into almost like a kind of California dreamscape reality. I think I always appreciate directors who understand a region so natively that like the, they can do a crane shot of a backlot, even though the backlot, they're shooting like, you know,

• 33:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 33:02Chris Ryan?

  They're shooting like just like a nighttime soap or whatever, but he can make that feel like La La Land. And then he can also shoot the desert and he can shoot Calabasas and he can shoot a rundown apartment building, but like he loves it. Like I can see in his, through his eye, the everyday things that he has always kind of been like, no, it's like the, these courtyard apartment buildings are beautiful and the washing machine that's in the separate laundry room is beautiful.

• 33:31Andy Greenwald?

  It's a good point because I think that among the many, many, many criticisms that I had about The Idol, one of the loudest was, I felt deeply that the show just absolutely couldn't decide if it was satire or celebration, if it was like scabrous and judgmental, or it was somehow credulous of like stardom and the power of superstardom in artistry. And at least through this episode, through my completely pure eyes here, this, this felt affectionate. So maybe there, that's why there's a little bit of, of, I would weirdly harmony between filmmaker making his show passionately

• 34:15Andy Greenwald?

  about things that I don't know if I even care about that much, which is backlot shenanigans and expensive real estate opportunities.

• 34:25Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 34:26Andy Greenwald?

  But doing it in a way that is pretty, pretty inspired.

• 34:31Chris Ryan?

  This show is, I wonder if it's the last of its kind.

• 34:34Andy Greenwald?

  How would you categorize it?

• 34:35Chris Ryan?

  Well, to me, what it's become is it backdoored its way from going from like, what if teens, but really fucked up, you know? Uh, to the last vestige of the, uh, like, we'll give Nicholas Wendig Refn a 10-episode show.

• 34:54Andy Greenwald?

  Good, yeah.

• 34:54Chris Ryan?

  David Lynch, you want to make the return? Cool. Like, Carrie Fukunaga, you want to shoot all of True Detective? Cool.

• 35:01Andy Greenwald?

  Director Park Chan Wook? Go off, King.

• 35:04Chris Ryan?

  Well, even he, not, not on Little Drummer Girl, but on the Sympathizer. It seemed like that got like, a little bit taken away from him midway through or there. Like, it did not feel like totally.

• 35:16Andy Greenwald?

  A vision.

• 35:17Chris Ryan?

  All his.

• 35:19Chris Ryan?

  TV is coming home. TV is coming back to being TV. Like, every once in a while, you'll have somebody who's like, I directed all of this or whatever. But like, the idea of television as this grand playground for directors specifically to flaunt in. And I'll say this too. I have been generally pretty underwhelmed by what people who I thought were movie stars have decided to come back to television for, or dip down into television for.

• 35:46Andy Greenwald?

  Totally.

• 35:46Chris Ryan?

  To, to do. I would like to believe that, you know, the opportunities to do long-form storytelling and to play challenging roles and, you know, like as the middle class or the sort of mid-tier genre movie disappears, you get to go do Mayor of Easttown on HBO. I think that's like, what you should do. When I see people who are like, say, you just wanted to be on a fucking TV show? Like, you were beautiful, man. Like, what are you doing? Like, you're Harrison Ford. Like, what are you doing? Like, that stuff, like, kind of, I understand it's like, maybe the hours and the location are better. But it's, it's uninspiring to me.

• 36:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 36:26Chris Ryan?

  To see Zendaya and Sweeney and Alordi be like, we're kind of like, at the top of our game right now in terms of like, what we can get made and what we, you know, Wuthering Heights and Housemaid and Drama, all like, recent, obvious successes. Whether they were contractually obligated or psychologically terrorized into returning to this show, I have no idea. But they seem to be like, invested in doing it. Alordi, I can't quite tell yet. Well, and I, I respect the fact that they're like, now, this is good. This is different. And we're gonna leave our mark on this, and I don't really know how many more of these we're gonna get, so I'm gonna enjoy it while it's there.

• 37:06Andy Greenwald?

  What's the Elordi quote from, that's going around about this season, where he's just like, "Maybe we did something good, maybe, I don't know," like some, some version of that.

• 37:12Chris Ryan?

  Yes, I mean, he is not the most, like, I, I, yeah, I, I think he is a pretty stoic, like, interview subject, I mean, I, he seems like a charming guy, but like, I don't know necessarily that he gives great quote.

• 37:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 37:24Chris Ryan?

  But I also wonder whether he's just like, "I feel like this character really had a conclusion in season two," and so now he's just kind of like, a ghost living out there.

• 37:33Andy Greenwald?

  But also, to your point, like, one of the things that marks, one of the things that marks a successful movie career these days, in the eyes of people like us, not necessarily like, the people who actually hire anyone, because to them, it's like, "How many animated video game characters can you voice this year?" But in terms of the, like, let's say, the, the people that Sean would be tracking and, and put on this list of, of big stars, you know, the, under thirty-five stars, it does seem to be actors who are constantly challenging themselves by working with idiosyncratic directors.

• 38:08Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:09Andy Greenwald?

  And, and the willingness to play in other people's worlds, and the best of the best, and this is sort of the DiCaprio method, you know, are following that, Chalamet and Zendaya probably chief among them, and so, if in that regard, and I, I, I'm, I'm not pulling a full one-eighty here, I'm not putting Sam Levinson, who did make The Idol, in the same category as, um, any of the great ascendant filmmakers of our time, yet necessarily, but I do think that this felt less like George Clooney having to go back for season six of ER because he was under contract, and more like, "I'm gonna go do what, where, for how long? Okay, we'll see. I, I am going to approach this with the same playful spirit

• 38:51Andy Greenwald?

  that I brought to, um, what, what was, I mean, there was the drama he did last year about the north, the great, some, we talked about it, the Australian drama."

• 38:59Chris Ryan?

  Uh, "The Great Walk North," I think.

• 39:01Andy Greenwald?

  God, we're terrible about this, but that, you know, to that, or to Wuthering Heights, or to, um, Frankenstein.

• 39:07Chris Ryan?

  The narrow road to the deep north.

• 39:08Andy Greenwald?

  The narrow.

• 39:09Chris Ryan?

  So we had a couple of-

• 39:10Andy Greenwald?

  Or Priscilla.

• 39:11Chris Ryan?

  Of words in there, yeah.

• 39:12Andy Greenwald?

  You can squint and make that make sense. This is not having to go back and pretend to be in high school, even though you've aged out and careered out for the role that you, that broke you in the first place.

• 39:21Chris Ryan?

  Buckle up for Jules. I assume we're gonna get her next, next episode.

• 39:25Andy Greenwald?

  So Jules is the last remaining major character who, from

• 39:28Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 39:29Andy Greenwald?

  The show, who is, who we have yet to see.

• 39:33Chris Ryan?

  This season, yeah.

• 39:34Andy Greenwald?

  So far this season.

• 39:34Chris Ryan?

  It's Hunter Schafer playing in, and she's a sugar baby in New York.

• 39:39Andy Greenwald?

  Is that a spoiler? Or that was referenced, wasn't it?

• 39:41Chris Ryan?

  It's referenced, yeah. It's in the trailer.

• 39:43Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, can I mention the one, the my favorite scene of the entire episode?

• 39:46Chris Ryan?

  Please.

• 39:46Andy Greenwald?

  I really, really liked Rue as an Uber driver.

• 39:49Chris Ryan?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 39:50Andy Greenwald?

  And I really liked the Batman scene. I thought that was a moment when I could see the purity of the vision of like, we're making fun of LA, but we love LA, but we're also not being too heavy-handed about like, rebuilding the Palisades in the right way, LA. Like, like, like Batman being like, this city, someone in the backseat doing a Batman voice being like, the city has changed and then going out to like fist bump Wonder Woman.

• 40:12Chris Ryan?

  I also liked your, uh, listening to the audiobook of the Bible.

• 40:16Andy Greenwald?

  That was sick.

• 40:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:17Andy Greenwald?

  I think I've been in that Uber, actually. And it really changed my mind about some stuff.

• 40:21Chris Ryan?

  Um, okay, so a shorter Monday episode for us because we just wanted to do a euphoria one.

• 40:27Andy Greenwald?

  And you're gonna be on the road again.

• 40:29Chris Ryan?

  And I am on the road again.

• 40:29Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah, actually, this has already happened at this point, right?

• 40:31Chris Ryan?

  No, I will be on, on route to Denver when you hear this episode, probably. So, uh, shout me out if you see me.

• 40:39Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think, um, when is the show in Denver?

• 40:43Chris Ryan?

  Monday night.

• 40:44Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, so people could still potentially, if it's not sold out yet, you, people could maybe show up for the Zach Lowe show.

• 40:48Chris Ryan?

  Yes, it's myself and Zach Lowe and Tim Hardaway Jr.

• 40:51Andy Greenwald?

  That's my dream blunt rotation right there.

• 40:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:53Andy Greenwald?

  Can I ask you, um, a lot of athletes, Chris, make excuses when they play in altitude and they say that, you know.

• 41:00Chris Ryan?

  I've been thinking about this constantly.

• 41:02Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, so do you think you will be affected? Do you think your performance should be judged differently with an asterisk?

• 41:08Chris Ryan?

  I don't like altitude.

• 41:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 41:09Chris Ryan?

  When I was, when I visited New Mexico, I took note

• 41:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 41:12Chris Ryan?

  Of its, of its effect on me.

• 41:14Andy Greenwald?

  I would say, as someone who, who, who worked in altitude

• 41:18Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:18Andy Greenwald?

  in New Mexico, it's no joke. And

• 41:22Chris Ryan?

  Do, does it take a while for the altitude to kick in? Like, if I'm only there for 36 hours, is it gonna matter?

• 41:27Andy Greenwald?

  I think the main thing, you just need to hydrate more than you think you do. And that if you Like, if you, let's say you'll have a good show and you'll be like, ah, fellows, well met. Let's have a Coors.

• 41:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:40Andy Greenwald?

  The, you know, the mead of the Rocky Mountains. You will have one and you will touch God.

• 41:46Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 41:46Andy Greenwald?

  You will be super fucked up from like one light beer. And that is a really weird feeling.

• 41:52Chris Ryan?

  Do you think you're in Denver right now and just be like, what is this guy talking about?

• 41:55Andy Greenwald?

  I think that every podcast we do. I actually have just like a model listener in an REI coat, drinking a Coors and like shoveling snow, being like, this fucking Nancy.

• 42:07Chris Ryan?

  Thanks for going on this euphoria journey with me. I think it's going to be exciting six weeks for us.

• 42:11Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's gonna be fun. I, this is, we should do this more because it is very freeing to just engage with television this way.

• 42:18Chris Ryan?

  Uh, thanks to Kai Kai and Sarah. We will be back on Thursday with a mega show. It's the finale of the pit. We'll have some Top Chef. We'll have some other TV kicking around. Beef is coming up. So a lot of stuff. Take care.