The Best ‘House of the Dragon’ Episode Yet? Plus, ‘Star City’ Episode 7.

Chris and Andy talk about the World Cup match between England and Mexico (1:10) and the ways the World Cup may be affecting the box office performance of movies like ‘Minions & Monsters’ (8:32). Then they discuss ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 3, Episode 3 (17:13) and ‘Star City’ Episode 7 (38:47). Later, they check back in on ‘The Agency’ Season 2 (52:20). 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

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• 1:35Speaker 01

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

• 1:41Chris 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, fresh off a nine-hour Twitch stream with Jalen Brown, it's Andy Greenwald!

• 1:55Andy Greenwald?

  What do you mean? I just had a colonoscopy.

• 1:58Chris Ryan?

  What's up, brother?

• 1:59Andy Greenwald?

  It's great to see you.

• 2:00Chris Ryan?

  Good to see you, too. It's The Watch. It's Monday. A lot to talk about today on the show. July 4th, Taylor-Swiss wedding, England-Mexico. Where would LeBron James live in the tri-state area if he were to become a Sixer? House of the Dragon, the agency's Star City.

• 2:15Andy Greenwald?

  Good God.

• 2:16Chris Ryan?

  Uh, but I only have an hour to talk to you, so. Just kidding.

• 2:20Andy Greenwald?

  That's exciting.

• 2:21Chris Ryan?

  Um, it's great to see you. The watch at Spotify.com. The watch pod underscore on Instagram.

• 2:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 2:27Chris Ryan?

  Ringer dash TV on YouTube. You can watch us and listen to us on Spotify, which I hope you're doing, but you can also find us elsewhere. I wish they simulcast us on BBC World Service.

• 2:36Andy Greenwald?

  I think that could be arranged. I think we have a fan base over there.

• 2:40Chris Ryan?

  How are you? How is your, how is your England Mexico experience?

• 2:44Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, that was one of the greatest sports events of my life. I mean this sincerely, and I understand what it would do to cheapen the nature of the event, but I wish there was World Cup every day for the rest of my time on this cursed earth.

• 2:56Chris Ryan?

  Specifically, I want knockouts, but I want three of them a day.

• 3:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 3:01Chris Ryan?

  That start at nine and end at like eight 30.

• 3:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 3:04Chris Ryan?

  And I want both the Cinderella teams to win, but also for the best players to keep playing.

• 3:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and I want both teams to do their celebrations at the end because I love all of them.

• 3:13Chris Ryan?

  We had a leader who could make that happen.

• 3:17Chris Ryan?

  Only a guy would step into the, to the void and say, it's me.

• 3:22Andy Greenwald?

  This is actually about me.

• 3:23Chris Ryan?

  Only I can fix it. Only, only he can fix FIFA.

• 3:26Andy Greenwald?

  It's true.

• 3:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:26Andy Greenwald?

  It's true. I mean, when you have, it's just a shame to see yet another institutionally clean organization lose its guardrails. You know what I mean? Like just historically FIFA has always been so delightful.

• 3:40Chris Ryan?

  I seriously, I mean, it is truly like, it's like the heart recognizing its counterpoint in another.

• 3:47Andy Greenwald?

  Beautiful. These two deserve each other.

• 3:49Chris Ryan?

  I just want to say, we were recording this at 10 a.m. on Monday, so the USA plays Belgium in a couple of hours. Insanely bad sports karma.

• 3:56Andy Greenwald?

  The worst.

• 3:57Chris Ryan?

  Like De Bruyne masterclass is incoming.

• 4:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I, I, I think that's likely. I, let's say, let's focus on.

• 4:03Chris Ryan?

  I think it's good. Like, look, every country would do it if they could.

• 4:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, also.

• 4:07Chris Ryan?

  It is, it is by far the most shithouse sport in the world. Like, people have won on handballs.

• 4:14Andy Greenwald?

  Dude.

• 4:14Chris Ryan?

  There, there have been hooters that kidnapped people to win World Cups. I'm just saying.

• 4:20Andy Greenwald?

  I, I just want to say, as a longtime football fanatic. At least as far back as June.

• 4:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:28Andy Greenwald?

  That was a bullshit red card.

• 4:29Chris Ryan?

  Which who's?

• 4:30Andy Greenwald?

  Balligans.

• 4:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:31Andy Greenwald?

  So, but I agree. I usually like to-

• 4:33Chris Ryan?

  So you agree with them on some points.

• 4:35Andy Greenwald?

  I just think nobody's wrong 100% of the time.

• 4:37Chris Ryan?

  That's true.

• 4:38Andy Greenwald?

  Okay? I mean, show me who among us, this is a television pod that is increasingly just a friendship pod, which I think is good for us, but in terms of the television, the World Cup is the best television of the year.

• 4:50Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 4:51Andy Greenwald?

  And I genuinely, I like, most of the time, and I'll make this about me because I rarely do that, I feel bad for me, like when my children won't watch sports with me because I like watching sports. I feel bad for them that they are not watching this. I felt that, if you're listening to this and last night you were like, oh, the Legally Blonde prequel is on Amazon, let's fire that up. What are you doing?

• 5:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:14Andy Greenwald?

  What are you doing with your life? That was so wild. My two favorite countries in the world to visit at each other's throats?

• 5:23Chris Ryan?

  So it does, it does come back to-

• 5:24Andy Greenwald?

  The Andy Bowl?

• 5:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:26Andy Greenwald?

  Come on.

• 5:27Chris Ryan?

  And we're, we're ultimately, ultimately-

• 5:29Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 5:30Chris Ryan?

  On the record right now-

• 5:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 5:32Chris Ryan?

  Who are you cheering for?

• 5:33Andy Greenwald?

  Who am I cheering for the most?

• 5:34Chris Ryan?

  Who were you cheering for?

• 5:37Andy Greenwald?

  That's, uh, England.

• 5:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I can see-

• 5:39Andy Greenwald?

  I've been there more recently and we have-

• 5:41Chris Ryan?

  I can see both sides of the argument.

• 5:44Andy Greenwald?

  Trying to secure the LA vote?

• 5:47Andy Greenwald?

  Incredible. Incredible. The other thing that I want to say about this match, though, it was incredible drama, incredible television, incredible sport, but it was also a match that began airing at 2 AM GMT.

• 6:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 6:04Andy Greenwald?

  And we were texting with people who were-

• 6:06Chris Ryan?

  That's what they call the time zone in England.

• 6:08Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, look, look at you, man of the people. Greenwich Mean Time.

• 6:15Andy Greenwald?

  We were texting with people who were awake for this match and I gotta say-

• 6:19Chris Ryan?

  In England.

• 6:20Andy Greenwald?

  In England.

• 6:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 6:20Andy Greenwald?

  And I got, barely me. I gotta say, if the situation was reversed and whether it was the USMNT playing in a, in the middle of the night for us, or if it was the Eagles, because I tried this last, like, the whole- Super Bowl season of the Eagles. They began that season playing a spirited contest in Brazil. That I learned about via text messages from you and Zach when I woke up in England the next morning.

• 6:45Chris Ryan?

  Uh, yes.

• 6:45Andy Greenwald?

  So like, I'm just saying, I don't have that gear and I don't know if it's a particularly like an age thing.

• 6:50Chris Ryan?

  Do you think that part of the reason the English were able to stay awake is in fact gear?

• 6:54Andy Greenwald?

  Well said.

• 6:55Chris Ryan?

  Have you thought about that?

• 6:56Andy Greenwald?

  Well said. Do you think that all the lads down at the pub weren't just, they weren't on the Guinness all night?

• 7:02Chris Ryan?

  I'll just say this.

• 7:03Andy Greenwald?

  More than that?

• 7:04Chris Ryan?

  I would not be shocked if the last season of industry, the final season of industry is about a coked out trader. Who arrives at work at 7 a.m. and accidentally caused the financial crisis.

• 7:16Andy Greenwald?

  Straight from the pub.

• 7:18Chris Ryan?

  From the session. Yeah.

• 7:20Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. Do you, but do you think you have it in you just purely on vibes? Like just natural, the natural stimulant of enthusiasm?

• 7:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, because honestly, the thing that was almost more intoxicating than the match itself was the buildup. The buildup was so, I, I, it is a real like, I will never quit this app moment was. The pure storytelling chops of the world's collected meme makers, uh, as, as we.

• 7:45Andy Greenwald?

  And also.

• 7:46Chris Ryan?

  I mean, when you, when you watch Harry Kane sing, sing a narco corrido, like you really are kind of like in the loving embrace.

• 7:54Andy Greenwald?

  Two, two of the best.

• 7:55Chris Ryan?

  Of sentient intelligence.

• 7:57Andy Greenwald?

  Two of the best meme creating cultures, I would say. Um, the Morrissey Bowl, as I heard this match referred to.

• 8:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 8:04Andy Greenwald?

  Any final thoughts? I believe Jordan Henderson played for Liverpool, your beloved Liverpool.

• 8:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that was our, like basically the closest thing we had to representation on this team.

• 8:12Andy Greenwald?

  So for people, representation matters, Chris. For people who aren't up on the World Cup and have not hit, skip, skip, skip. Jordan Henderson's performance last night was elite.

• 8:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:22Andy Greenwald?

  He did not enter the match as a player. He was capped in the sense that he received a yellow card for talking shit.

• 8:28Chris Ryan?

  Essentially brought to provide veteran leadership and vibes.

• 8:31Andy Greenwald?

  And what the payoff on that, the return on that ticket was he got a yellow card for talking shit from the bench. And then in the celebration, he slipped and broke his wrist.

• 8:42Chris Ryan?

  He was up on an advertising hoarding during Wonderwall and when he was trying to get down, he fell and seriously broke his wrist.

• 8:49Andy Greenwald?

  Like had to be airlifted to a hospital.

• 8:51Chris Ryan?

  And needed oxygen. I mean, everybody needed oxygen.

• 8:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 8:54Chris Ryan?

  Um, I needed oxygen.

• 8:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 8:56Chris Ryan?

  But yes, uh, and thus Liverpool's World Cup ends. Yeah.

• 9:01Andy Greenwald?

  That's amazing.

• 9:02Chris Ryan?

  What other pop culture stuff? I will say, and I'm sure Sean and Amanda will hit this because I'm stealing Sean's point. I saw him over the weekend and he made this point, which is essentially that you can tell that the World Cup is mega because like Minions was down bad.

• 9:20Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, was it?

• 9:21Chris Ryan?

  And Supergirl continued to be down. Like, I don't, I think this is actually like, I personally forgot that I did House of Our Talk the Thrones. When it came up on my feed, I was like, damn, I did that?

• 9:35Chris Ryan?

  That show is on tonight.

• 9:37Andy Greenwald?

  In your defense, in order to combat altitude in the House of Our studio, you are absolutely gapped on beetroot and Viagra, like the English national team.

• 9:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:45Andy Greenwald?

  Performance matters in everything. Yeah, I mean, look, we're about to-

• 9:49Chris Ryan?

  So I don't know, maybe people haven't seen what was a honestly like awesome episode of House of Dragon that I am excited to talk to you about.

• 9:56Andy Greenwald?

  I also did, I watched that episode before any of the knockout round matches this weekend, so I think it's going to be interesting. Do we have, I heard prior to the weekend that Illumination Animation Entertainment Corporation confirmed that the Minions at no point worked for Adolf Hitler. Do we have-

• 10:17Chris Ryan?

  What?

• 10:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, they were asked about this.

• 10:19Chris Ryan?

  Are the Minions a period piece?

• 10:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, this is the thing. Okay, we'll get back, but I wanted to know if you think they've worked for Carmine Infantino. But, yes, so-

• 10:28Chris Ryan?

  Carmine?

• 10:29Andy Greenwald?

  Isn't it?

• 10:30Chris Ryan?

  Gianni.

• 10:31Andy Greenwald?

  Gianni?

• 10:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:33Andy Greenwald?

  Why do I call him Carmine?

• 10:34Chris Ryan?

  Because you're racist against Italians? I don't know.

• 10:37Andy Greenwald?

  Let me know next time they make the Mundial, okay? Oh, Carmine Infantino was the publisher of DC Comics. It's actually worse. I'm both racist and a big dork.

• 10:47Andy Greenwald?

  This is my Super Bowl-

• 10:49Chris Ryan?

  But you're gonna do the Bill Simmons, "I'm half Italian, so it's okay."

• 10:52Andy Greenwald?

  I promise you, I am not. But I did sleep at Holiday Inn Express last night.

• 10:58Chris Ryan?

  Oh, my God.

• 10:59Andy Greenwald?

  There you go. That's why I thought that. Anyway.

• 11:02Andy Greenwald?

  The minions, it's been established that these small, little, yellow friends have been in existence throughout history and what they do is they find a menacing evil power and bootlick and do whatever they can to serve whoever has been evil throughout history. So there's like funny little shorts where they're helping a mean caveman and then the caveman dies and they're like, ooh, and they go help someone else.

• 11:27Chris Ryan?

  So they're, they're eternal?

• 11:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and this movie that came out this weekend that I also completely forgot about, I believe is a period piece set in the silent film era.

• 11:38Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 11:39Andy Greenwald?

  Like, you know, it's, it's really weird. If you-

• 11:42Chris Ryan?

  I can't believe it only made like 35 million dollars.

• 11:45Andy Greenwald?

  Frankly, I want to protect you from, like, if you peel back the onion here-

• 11:48Chris Ryan?

  This is, this is the line that I draw.

• 11:50Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 11:51Chris Ryan?

  And I shall not pass. I'm not going into the minions verse.

• 11:54Andy Greenwald?

  But so-

• 11:55Chris Ryan?

  I see it, I see like the minions out on the highway, you know?

• 11:58Andy Greenwald?

  You see the big one coming up over Universal City?

• 12:00Chris Ryan?

  I'm familiar with their vibe. I know that like, somebody, who did they, somebody sang Bohemian Rhapsody in Minion, they're, they're saying, like, there's lots of-

• 12:09Andy Greenwald?

  Who, who said that?

• 12:10Chris Ryan?

  The internet. It's like there are jokes about Emily Blunt speaks in Minion in Disclosure Day and stuff like that.

• 12:15Andy Greenwald?

  Does she?

• 12:16Chris Ryan?

  Are you, are you Googling Carmine Fettino right now?

• 12:18Andy Greenwald?

  No, I know everything about Carmine Fettino, the late great.

• 12:21Chris Ryan?

  But yeah, like, I, my only point was just that, like, it was sort of amazing to see an event, an event become so massive.

• 12:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 12:29Chris Ryan?

  And I think between World Cup and people simply using, uh, data centers to power their Taylor Swift wedding snooping.

• 12:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 12:38Chris Ryan?

  Like, everybody stayed home this weekend, or, you know, went, went out to July 4th party, but did not go to Minions and did not go to, did not go see Obsession, probably because everybody on the planet already saw it.

• 12:47Andy Greenwald?

  So this is a headline. Again, you missed this because you could just chalk it up to the World Cup or your lovely holiday travel that we did together, but- Minion, this is a headline from Deadline, July 2nd. Dateline, July 2nd. Minions and Monsters director makes it clear minions never-

• 13:05Chris Ryan?

  Dateline Burbank.

• 13:06Andy Greenwald?

  Minions, no, Dateline, a bunker underneath Berlin. Minions never worked for Hitler.

• 13:12Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 13:13Andy Greenwald?

  Now, did they take a meeting?

• 13:15Chris Ryan?

  Do you have the phone call?

• 13:16Andy Greenwald?

  They were tech avail.

• 13:17Chris Ryan?

  You have the phone call.

• 13:17Andy Greenwald?

  Who, I mean, it also then opens up the follow-up. So were they with Mussolini?

• 13:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly. What were they doing in the 40s?

• 13:25Andy Greenwald?

  Minions and Monster co-writer-director, by the way, do you know the guy that created the minions is named Pierre Coffin?

• 13:31Chris Ryan?

  Uh.

• 13:31Andy Greenwald?

  See, if you, how deep does this thing go?

• 13:33Chris Ryan?

  Cause he's buried under that money.

• 13:35Andy Greenwald?

  Dude, for real, though. He, it was a wild fan theory after 2015's film Minions revealed that they served Napoleon in the 19th century, leading, quote, "many to wonder where they were during World War II." Many, many people are wondering.

• 13:51Chris Ryan?

  Were they on the other side of the French Revolution?

• 13:53Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, it, it's a little bit unclear, but it does say the first Minions movie had them, quote, "hibernating in a cave from 1812 to 1968." Convenient.

• 14:04Chris Ryan?

  Well, actually, you know what? I don't think I actually know. I saw Napoleon and I can't remember. What, what did he do during the French Revolution?

• 14:09Andy Greenwald?

  Wait, you're saying you saw Ridley Scott's Napoleon, but you don't remember the minions role in the film?

• 14:15Chris Ryan?

  No, I don't remember Napoleon's role in the revolution.

• 14:17Andy Greenwald?

  I want to tell you for the record, that movie would have done double the BO. If in the Ridley Scott director's cut. Hold on, shut the whole podcast down.

• 14:28Chris Ryan?

  I haven't seen the director's cut. For all I know, minions are all over it.

• 14:31Andy Greenwald?

  Are they in the director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven?

• 14:33Chris Ryan?

  Um, yes.

• 14:35Andy Greenwald?

  Who would they work for in the Wayland Yutani universe?

• 14:39Chris Ryan?

  Paul Reiser.

• 14:40Andy Greenwald?

  A billion percent.

• 14:41Chris Ryan?

  Paul Reiser is essentially a minion in Aliens.

• 14:44Andy Greenwald?

  This is such, do you know how much money we're making for someone else right now? If you redid the entire Ridley Scott filmography, including fucking Matchstick Men with minions in it?

• 14:58Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, you just, alright.

• 14:59Chris Ryan?

  I'm, I'm just letting you cook.

• 15:01Andy Greenwald?

  I can't, it's too, it's too rich a text, but it would be exciting.

• 15:05Chris Ryan?

  I just wanted to give you some space here, because you're cooking.

• 15:08Andy Greenwald?

  Well.

• 15:08Chris Ryan?

  You're racist, you're doing, you're doing alternative history.

• 15:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 15:12Chris Ryan?

  Minions are showing up in, in Blade Runner.

• 15:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:15Chris Ryan?

  Uh, what did you think of Taylor Swift's wedding?

• 15:19Andy Greenwald?

  Rutger Hauer, the rain falling on him and then the minions slowly ease him into the soil? It's beautiful. Okay, sorry, what?

• 15:27Chris Ryan?

  What did you think of Taylor Swift's wedding?

• 15:29Andy Greenwald?

  Um, wow.

• 15:32Chris Ryan?

  You are sweating.

• 15:32Andy Greenwald?

  I, I'm worked up about this. I think that if, also it's the new lighting that we're not allowed to talk about. If we survive this period of, of history.

• 15:40Chris Ryan?

  The World Cup.

• 15:41Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I might not survive that. I do think that this abomination in Manhattan will be looked back as a nadir. I do. Like a real bread and circuses moment. I find the whole thing really awful, really, really tacky, really awful. I know that doesn't jive with the, with the, with the general.

• 15:58Chris Ryan?

  You know, I, I, I was, I was where you were at, at various points.

• 16:03Andy Greenwald?

  I know, but then what you did was, you focus grouped it?

• 16:05Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 16:05Andy Greenwald?

  You went out into America.

• 16:06Chris Ryan?

  You know what I did, but is when I saw the guest list, I was like, this is, this isn't grotesque, this is just weird. I mean, it is grotesque in a lot of ways, but like, I was like, this is just strange.

• 16:17Andy Greenwald?

  Because when you saw George Stephanopoulos and Kevin Burkhart.

• 16:19Chris Ryan?

  Why is Dean Blandino at her wedding? You know, is, but even Travis Kelsey, is Travis Kelsey friends with the Fox refereeing expert?

• 16:27Andy Greenwald?

  There's a version of this that is like, it's actually when you are this rich and this famous, friendship is a meaningless umbrella term. And that's what you, I think the end result of that is like, we were so happy to be married by our.

• 16:42Chris Ryan?

  Cristiano Ronaldo has just got like a single tear going down his face while he listens to us before Portugal, Spain.

• 16:47Andy Greenwald?

  I hope he listens to us. Um, that's what you get when you have an invitation or whatever it was, it said like, I know the, the postscript, it was like, we were married by our good friend Adam Sandler.

• 16:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:58Andy Greenwald?

  I challenge you to define the, the word friend in that sentence. I imagine that you both enjoy the filmography of Adam Sandler, and I'm sure both of you at some point were introduced to Adam Sandler at a party and you were like, holy shit, you're Adam Sandler. And he was like, zubidoo or whatever.

• 17:11Chris Ryan?

  I'm trying to imagine what my Adam Sandler would be.

• 17:13Andy Greenwald?

  Do it. Do it.

• 17:14Chris Ryan?

  We were married by my good friend, John Bernthal.

• 17:18Andy Greenwald?

  This is right. And he's just like, okay.

• 17:20Chris Ryan?

  Goddamn, I didn't know true love was here.

• 17:26Andy Greenwald?

  Right, we all have our version of like Adam Sandler like the, oh shit, wouldn't that be funny? Mine was the late Rick Carmine Infantino. He could have talked about when he brokered the deal to have Spider-Man Superman cross over once in 1982.

• 17:40Andy Greenwald?

  Do you know what I mean? Like, I find that, I mean Madison Square Garden, all due respect to the mayor of New York, Jalen Brunson, but like, that's not a particularly like intimate or romantic venue.

• 17:51Chris Ryan?

  No, I mean, there is obvious like technical reasons why they did it. It's because they probably, because they filmed it and they're gonna sell it. Which is also strange.

• 17:58Andy Greenwald?

  Also, strange is a politic word.

• 18:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I know that there was like, you know, everything about it was secure. And that was the one way that they wouldn't have helicopters taking pictures and they had the security levels.

• 18:11Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 18:11Chris Ryan?

  Outside and that you could basically get a filming permit that would then shut down Midtown.

• 18:15Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 18:16Chris Ryan?

  On July 3rd, which I'm sure was annoying, but you know, under Big Zo, everything just seems to just keep rolling.

• 18:21Andy Greenwald?

  Everything does work.

• 18:22Chris Ryan?

  You know?

• 18:24Andy Greenwald?

  It's true.

• 18:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I, I think that was my big, I, I looked at the list of the people who had been confirmed to have attended and I was just like, this is just so random. Like, there are just so many people where I'm like, this guy from NCIS?

• 18:37Andy Greenwald?

  It's a, it's a party for famous people. I'm, congratulations. Have a nice weekend.

• 18:43Chris Ryan?

  Okay, let's talk about House of the Dragon, I guess.

• 18:45Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 18:46Chris Ryan?

  On, on Talk the Thrones, which I adore doing with Mal and Joe, and they did a great job explaining some of the kind of in-depth, more textual readings of, of, of this episode. I declared this the best episode of the series.

• 19:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 19:03Chris Ryan?

  You agree with me?

• 19:04Andy Greenwald?

  I, I thought, this is, this is, this is the, the ego.

• 19:07Chris Ryan?

  Pray is, I guess, coming from you.

• 19:08Andy Greenwald?

  No, not at all. The ego of the very siloed. I was like, zag, this was a great episode of TV.

• 19:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:14Andy Greenwald?

  Apparently, not a zag. Apparently, absolute.

• 19:16Chris Ryan?

  I think, I think.

• 19:17Andy Greenwald?

  Conventional wisdom.

• 19:18Chris Ryan?

  I think for, maybe there are people who are like, that was, there might be people who are like, that was boring. And there might be people who were like, but what about X, Y, and Z happening outside of the castle walls or whatever?

• 19:29Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 19:31Chris Ryan?

  I just thought this, this episode lack, had what some of the other episodes.

• 19:38Chris Ryan?

  Lack, which is subjectivity.

• 19:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, well said.

• 19:41Chris Ryan?

  And I find that ironic because even though I have not read Fire and Blood, I think that's the text this is based on. That is famously, or not even, that is written from multiple perspectives, sometimes conflicting accounts. That is a quasi-historical document about this time.

• 20:03Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 20:04Chris Ryan?

  And that's, the show has not really leaned into that. It's never leaned into, this was kind of perceived by this person in this way.

• 20:14Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 20:14Chris Ryan?

  And this was really like the first, in my mind, the first time we ever got to watch the events of a episode take place solely from the perspective of a character who's going through something.

• 20:26Andy Greenwald?

  An entire episode, for sure. Yeah, I would take it a step further. I remember from over a decade ago now, we were doing After the Thrones with Jason and Mal, and especially in their role as big fans of, obviously of the franchise, but particularly of the books, that one of the things that made the book so indelible and attracted such an enormous audience even before HBO got interested, was the very, very specific way in which they were written, which was in quite long, subjective POV chapters.

• 20:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:57Andy Greenwald?

  So that during A Dance of Dragons, or whichever book it was, is that book?

• 21:04Chris Ryan?

  That's what we're doing now. That, I think, House of the Dragon is the Dance of Dragons.

• 21:08Andy Greenwald?

  We, oh yeah, it was like a-

• 21:11Chris Ryan?

  Song of Ice and Fire.

• 21:12Andy Greenwald?

  That's the series, okay, doesn't matter. I'm already discrediting myself. My point is, the books that I haven't read are broken up and there's like a lot of Caitlin Stark perspective.

• 21:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there's a Tyrion chapter.

• 21:21Andy Greenwald?

  There's a Tyrion chapter, and that brings you, you know, it brings you the subjectivity that I think is really, really appealing when you are reading a book, but also can be really, really precious when you're watching a TV show.

• 21:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:33Andy Greenwald?

  So my guess is that this is a meaningful episode, not just for the House of the Dragon superfan, but for the Westeros literati as well. Because this is-

• 21:46Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know if it's close, but at least is tacking towards what drew them in in the first place. And I found it really, really compelling. And I also found it really reassuring, isn't the word, but like, and I think I actually, I'm gonna say something. I like to punt it to the end of our conversation just because it really speaks to the challenge of adaptation at all from medium to across mediums.

• 22:11Andy Greenwald?

  Watching this episode, which had like, not just warmth and subjectivity and interesting and unique perspective.

• 22:21Andy Greenwald?

  It also had flickers of wit. It had more thematic elements to it, political elements that I found really, really compelling.

• 22:28Chris Ryan?

  It's like, the sound design was incredible with like the ticking and the rat scratching and all that.

• 22:33Andy Greenwald?

  And I felt like what you could perceive in this hour of television was everyone in every department.

• 22:42Andy Greenwald?

  Taking their shackles off and being like, no, no, we know how to do this in a more traditional or enveloping way. But we are making a show that has a God's eye fixed perspective and we're doing other things. And to see them sort of.

• 22:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, the God's eye has to be very far away because you gotta shoot the dragons. And the dragon seems to be, I think Game of Thrones was like, the dragons are like the kind of.

• 23:04Chris Ryan?

  The carrot at the end of the, you know, like down the line for, and the stick was sort of the brutal truths about families and politics.

• 23:14Chris Ryan?

  This show front loaded dragons, obviously, and, and like made the bet that it could take advances in VFX. And depict the dragon warfare in a way that hadn't, they hadn't even been able to do in Thrones. I don't, I don't know if I agree that they've succeeded necessarily. But what really struck me about this, and I don't think I articulated this quite well enough on the episode that aired last night. Was I kept saying tempo and it is a fast episode. They, people speak with a quicker tempo.

• 23:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 23:45Chris Ryan?

  But what I admired so much about what Claire Kilner, the director and Sarah Hes, the writer did with this one is.

• 23:54Chris Ryan?

  In any other episode of House of the Dragon, a lot of these scenes would be conducted by two people standing in a static position in a room. And the blocking was pretty vanilla and the like acting was kind of almost like coming back to the direction of single, single master, like over the shoulder, like conversation stuff. And far be it from me to ask for like West Wing set in Westeros. But almost every scene in this episode was either a walk and talk or someone moving around a room in a way that felt unconventional for the show.

• 24:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 24:32Chris Ryan?

  And even something like Alicent coming to visit Rhaenyra. And Rhaenyra's like, how did you make all these decisions? When you were kind of operating as the real head of the, head of the state. I thought that Alicent wandering around the room and being like, this is so weird. Being here with you, like we were team, we were best friends. Now we're kind of enemies, but I'm also counseling you like this is really strange.

• 24:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 25:00Chris Ryan?

  And Rhaenyra being kind of doubled over with menstrual pain and like, you know, like everything that's happening inside of her head and the paranoia that she's got. Even the staging of something like that, where it's just two people who remain relatively static. There were little, um, there were little kind of flourishes that really made those scenes come alive.

• 25:21Andy Greenwald?

  Think about, I think that's very well said and think about how, think about the effect that the dragons had on people in Game of Thrones, like people on the show.

• 25:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:30Andy Greenwald?

  Like because they hadn't seen them or they thought they were mythological or enough time had passed.

• 25:34Chris Ryan?

  Or just for like, they're never going to come back.

• 25:36Andy Greenwald?

  And, and so the what the fuck wasn't overlooked before they started torching everybody. What was cool about this episode. In the absence of dragons and just generally was that Rhaenyra physically was the what the fuck? Because she is someone who was an idea, she was a cause, she was a shadow, a danger, a threat.

• 25:59Chris Ryan?

  She's supposed to be a prophecy.

• 26:01Andy Greenwald?

  And now she's just a lady walking around a house and everyone's like, what do you, what? You know, and she's making decisions and it was like a workplace comedy. The scene with Alison, where Alison is like, well, you killed my father.

• 26:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:12Andy Greenwald?

  Was not, not funny. Do you know what I mean? And I think that was, and it was self-aware enough for that. I, the thing that I, it's something that I noted last week and then I was happy to see played out differently this week. Last week, because of the necessities of plot and moving things forward, the two most powerful people in the realm, Rhaenyra and Daemon, hop off their all-powerful nuclear bombs and then just walk through the castle.

• 26:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:39Andy Greenwald?

  And they, they are thus at risk and, you know, then the stakes shift accordingly. The same thing was happening in this episode, but for much smaller stakes effects, which made it a little bit more,

• 26:52Andy Greenwald?

  I don't want to say relevant, it just made it more palpable, it made it more engaging to me. That her being there and making these decisions and all the decisions in front of her being bad, was much more interesting in the sense of like, she is supposed to be up on high and now here she is brought low and heavy as the head, et cetera, et cetera.

• 27:09Chris Ryan?

  And that there is this like sort of spectrum of ideology that runs through the sort of cohort of people that have brought her to power or helped her get to power. And you've got people like Masari who are like, well, I kind of believed in you because I thought that you were going to be the person to change the way things ran for common people. And then Daemon's like, I believe in you because you're the person who's going to bring the Targaryen line back to its customary place as basically demigods and, and paying no mind to law or whatever, you know? And we should just go around burning up the rest of the world until we get to almost fantastical places, more fantastical than where we were now.

• 27:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 27:52Chris Ryan?

  And the way in which that information is conveyed was so much more. Witty, artful, but also like, forget the idea that these two people are like, "There are men with wings," like a land beyond the sea kind of stuff. It was just very fascinating to see these two who are like, "Well, on one level, you're the only one who understands me, but on another level, you're pulling me right into the direction that Targaryens of the past and Targaryens of the future get pulled into, where they think they're gods, and that way spells doom." So I just thought all of that stuff was so well dramatized in this episode.

• 28:27Andy Greenwald?

  I want to talk about the place, the city on the edge of the world where men have wings. First of all, book me a ticket. Sounds awesome. And are they eligible to play for the USMNT?

• 28:38Chris Ryan?

  They have wings. They're very good playing. We don't have a lot of wingers. We don't have a lot of wingers.

• 28:44Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, that's good. Maybe we misheard. Maybe it's where men are natural wings. Three and D stretch wings. They could play for the Sixers, too. This was something that I said probably too many times when we covered Game of Thrones, but I just felt that it was always important to, not just, not to serve what I wanted to see in the show, but to balance the scales of what, what the stakes were and what people were fighting for or fighting against. And that was to let us know what else they could be doing. Make us understand the choice to continue to march towards King's Landing. When you could, in the case of the original Game of Thrones series, show Arya going east. Show what life is like in these other places. Is it better? Is it worse? Why do they keep

• 29:29Andy Greenwald?

  coming back? Give us a sense of Dorne as being like, "It's pretty nice. Why don't you just stay here?"

• 29:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:35Andy Greenwald?

  So that when Daemon says it, when Daemon talks just what you were saying, when he is grandiose in this episode, it is night and day from when he was grandiose in the previous episode. In the previous episode, he's reciting a prophecy that sounds as romantic as a to-do list. In this episode, he's saying, "Here are all these things that are possible for us now. So what will we do? What, when you can do anything, what will you do?" This, that absolute dogged march towards the Nightmare Throne is...

• 30:09Andy Greenwald?

  Tough when you don't understand the psychology of why characters are doing it, other than the fact that they have always done that, or they have been told they are meant to do that.

• 30:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and she's blinded by a sense of destiny that I think is undermining her ability to maintain alliances, which is really well depicted in the scene with Corlys, which they like finally brings to Steve Chisant off the bench and let him like do a cool scene where he expresses an emotion that he didn't even express when like his wife gets killed, you know what I mean? Like, he gets to say everything that's been like happening inside of his person for like the last two or three years, where he's just like, "You've gotta be fucking kidding me. I am asking you for one thing."

• 30:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 30:52Chris Ryan?

  "I have essentially like backstopped you this entire time against better judgment."

• 30:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 30:58Chris Ryan?

  "And I am saying like, you know, we both know how things happen in bedrooms here. Just call these guys Varian." That's all I'm asking. And she doesn't, because she doesn't want to bring in questions about like, "Oh, so now even bastards get special dispensation, even though that's exactly what her sons have gotten."

• 31:19Andy Greenwald?

  Also, look how nice it is when plotlines intersect.

• 31:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:24Andy Greenwald?

  Like, what he has been doing the last three episodes is the precursor to this conversation. So it carries episode to episode. And I do not mean this as faint praise. It's kind of an echo of what I said after the premiere, which is, the people making the show are very good at their jobs. I think that the overall mission statement may be slightly off at this point. But the fact that they were able to execute a battle that big and then do the very basic stuff, like overlap plot threads in ways that are, that create satisfying, naughty circumstances.

• 31:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:00Andy Greenwald?

  I don't want to discredit that. That is, that is, that is good work, and it pays off when you can just take a breath in an episode like this.

• 32:07Chris Ryan?

  I would, I would love nothing more, I have not seen the next episode. I would love nothing more than if the next episode continued with this pace of momentum, and especially...

• 32:18Chris Ryan?

  This sense of subjectivity, I don't know if this show has enough runway to start hopping around and really diving into, you know, the interior life of Ormond Hightower. I know he is in the scenes from next week rather heavily, and he certainly pulled a fast one on Rhaenyra this week.

• 32:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Chris Ryan?

  But you don't hire James Norton just to do like three scenes where he smells perfume and then walks away. So I'm excited for the emergence of that conflict to come to the fore maybe next week, but I have, I've really come back around on this. I think, you know, I wouldn't necessarily say it gives me anything close to the feeling I got watching Night of the Seven Kingdoms, or especially peak Game of Thrones, but it's a, it's becoming more of a pleasure to watch, I think. What, what, what hopes do you have for it going forward?

• 33:13Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I, I think it is, it is an old school TV move back when TV shows had to make 22 episodes a year, or-

• 33:21Chris Ryan?

  Oh, let's do one about this, and let's do one from her perspective.

• 33:24Andy Greenwald?

  Let's see what else we can do.

• 33:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:26Andy Greenwald?

  Let's see, let's take this thing out on backroads, or see it on the autobahn, or see if it floats, you know, like, let's just see what it is that we have here. It is a luxury in this age of condensed seasons and years between them and expensive post, you know, post-work that's required. So I, I, I feel, I feel seen, I feel heard, I really enjoyed watching the episode. I think that the nuance that they were given, that these characters were given for this one hour will pay some dividends going forward if it goes back into the churn of plot. But I also think the show is what it is. So I feel, I feel happy that we got here.

• 34:03Chris Ryan?

  I guess it just, I thought that this episode, if you're not gonna have, part of the reason why season two kind of fell flat was because everybody was like, okay, when's the battle coming? All right, like, I understand if it's gonna be quiet loud, quiet loud. We have to kind of build up to this battle, but like the way in which it's quiet is so snail paced and so kind of morose and sort of strange and Damon with the tree and all this stuff that's happening and you're just like, okay, okay, okay. And then they don't do the battle, you know, and now the beginning of this season was almost too much battle. I was almost like, that's cool, but like, it's been two years since this show ended

• 34:46Chris Ryan?

  and we pretty much jump in and start a massive naval battle.

• 34:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 34:51Chris Ryan?

  With a character, with many characters whose motivations I have somewhat forgotten. You know, and now obviously you can do your homework and find out, but I think that if they are going to have episodes where they don't have massive army on army dragon on dragon conflict, this is a really good blueprint, but I don't, I mean, obviously the show is done, so I don't, I don't know.

• 35:11Andy Greenwald?

  No, but we're, we're, we are still, God bless us, you know, we still are covering television on this podcast week to week in an old fashioned model. And the truth is the majority of people who ever watch House of the Dragon will watch it when it's done, streaming on, you know, the patio of David Ellison's mega yacht or whatever the case may be. And it may be that much like when, you know, when you, when you said things like, oh, what, what's my reading order for Jonathan Hickman's Avengers? It'll be like, what's the best way to watch House of the Dragon? And it might, may well be to watch it in these chunks and one chunk will be treating last season, the season two as ending two episodes into season three. And then maybe, you know, it'll advise you to take a walk

• 35:55Andy Greenwald?

  around the block, take a break and then pretend it's starting over here and that will be a different experience. And that's okay. It just is clearly imbalanced in terms of the story. Couple of things, in terms of how it was delivered to us. Couple of things, a couple of bullet points for this episode, if I could.

• 36:11Andy Greenwald?

  One, I found it amusing that Dan Fogler is now on the show.

• 36:16Chris Ryan?

  Yes, that's funny. I was like, what?

• 36:19Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it was just funny because he's a fine and amusing and good actor. And he was doing a passable, he was doing a fine English actor. It was totally fine.

• 36:27Chris Ryan?

  No, he was good.

• 36:27Andy Greenwald?

  It was just like a, what? It was kind of a lean in moment. And part of me was like, did we actually run out of British character actors? Because Night of the Seven Kingdoms.

• 36:36Chris Ryan?

  They're on Star City.

• 36:36Andy Greenwald?

  And Star City took them all? And they were like, oh my God, we've called the Royal Shakespeare Company.

• 36:41Chris Ryan?

  We need T'Leveen.

• 36:43Andy Greenwald?

  Is that where we're headed? And I'm kind of here for it. I thought that was amusing. Do you think that King's Landing is ripe for a DSA candidate in the next election?

• 36:54Chris Ryan?

  I think that's what Missaria wants.

• 36:55Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's what she wants too, but she is still, you know, she's just like allying herself with the Eric Adams administration, being like, no, no, we can do some work here in the margins.

• 37:04Chris Ryan?

  I can change from within.

• 37:05Andy Greenwald?

  I, I did really like, again, speaking of things I never thought I would see in a Game of Thrones show. I never thought I would see that cinematic staple giving out turkeys in the hood. Like on Thanksgiving. I really enjoyed that scene as well.

• 37:20Andy Greenwald?

  I also, across 15 years of this show now, one of my favorite things of this world. One of my favorite things remains every so often when someone has a normal name. And then you get a line, like an ADR line of, you still have to kill Darren. Which just sounds absolutely banal.

• 37:39Chris Ryan?

  The hiding a child thing was pretty good.

• 37:41Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, because they hid, because they hid that kid?

• 37:43Chris Ryan?

  They hid that kid because Orman put that kid in the, in the Pierre coffin somewhere. Well, he's not dead, but he just hid him somewhere.

• 37:50Andy Greenwald?

  The real one?

• 37:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but also it's not that hard when only nine people have blonde hair. You just have to get some bleach.

• 37:57Chris Ryan?

  Yes, but it's like, he's also playing on the fact that Alison hasn't seen this kid in years. So it's not like he's hoping that people don't realize like what he's done until it's too late.

• 38:07Andy Greenwald?

  It's also, he, he's really showing deep ball knowledge. Cause he also knows that people haven't watched or thought about the show in two years. And I don't even remember how many kids she has. So when a blonde kid, I was like, wow, guess there's another one and that's him. He's just, he's just the shy type.

• 38:21Chris Ryan?

  Darren is actually like a little bit of a runner for. Fans out there who are like, what? I think he plays a different role in the text. I don't think his actions are different, but I think he's a little bit more present. Or at least people have a better understanding of what's going on with him. And I think that they were like, we haven't cast him yet, you know?

• 38:39Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, like front of mind.

• 38:40Chris Ryan?

  Sort of strange. And there's a couple of characters that it doesn't seem like they're going to introduce because they've sort of maneuvered things so that they can do away with certain, certain characters, but we'll see.

• 38:50Andy Greenwald?

  Like Bob?

• 38:52Chris Ryan?

  Kenny? Yeah.

• 38:54Andy Greenwald?

  Or Stevie?

• 38:56Chris Ryan?

  Christopher Sanchez.

• 38:57Andy Greenwald?

  I, I also did want to say, like, in, in, in the hopes that we can unite one of the more popular shows or worlds we cover on the show with one of the more divisive. I did enjoy, um, Top Chef's King's Landing.

• 39:09Chris Ryan?

  Which one's divisive?

• 39:10Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I feel like sometimes people are like, I'm, I rock with these guys when they talk about obscure ass spy shows on BritBox.

• 39:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:17Andy Greenwald?

  But the fact that they devote 10 weeks every year to cover season 23 of Top Chef might.

• 39:22Chris Ryan?

  Argue about it as passionately as anything in the world.

• 39:25Andy Greenwald?

  It's the only thing I care about. It's the only thing keeping me on, to be honest.

• 39:30Chris Ryan?

  On earth.

• 39:31Andy Greenwald?

  Truly. The King's Landing episode of Top Chef, where all the noblemen were there for the tasting.

• 39:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:37Andy Greenwald?

  And then they brought, and they, but they did this, they fucking did the fine dining, like they all placed it at the same time. And everyone kind of recoiled like most people do at fine dining restaurants these days.

• 39:46Chris Ryan?

  Tom would have been like, did you mean to caramelize the rat?

• 39:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, well, Tom would have been okay with the rat, but there was a little okra on the plate and he didn't like it.

• 39:52Chris Ryan?

  Right. No, he just didn't need another starch.

• 39:54Andy Greenwald?

  I thought that. Too many starches on the rat?

• 39:59Andy Greenwald?

  I, I.

• 39:59Chris Ryan?

  It solved two problems at once.

• 40:01Andy Greenwald?

  Rats and the rich.

• 40:04Chris Ryan?

  And, and needing a, needing a protein for the evening. Yeah.

• 40:07Andy Greenwald?

  Didn't need a protein. I, I enjoyed it. I, I like the line, I'm awash with dilemmas and uncertainties. That's just being alive in America, brother.

• 40:16Chris Ryan?

  Who amongst us? Let's talk a little bit about Star City, which we usually save for the very end because I think we assume it's a.

• 40:23Andy Greenwald?

  Niche.

• 40:23Chris Ryan?

  Not an acquired taste, but a niche offering. And, and you know, it remains in and around like the bottom of the top 10 of Apple.

• 40:31Andy Greenwald?

  Which, we don't know what that means.

• 40:33Chris Ryan?

  I don't know what that means. I would like it to be in the, the top five or the top three because I want it to be renewed because I want to keep watching this show.

• 40:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 40:40Chris Ryan?

  This was an interesting episode because it was a true testament to just my deep pleasure that I get from watching it. Uh, this had a year, a year time jump to start.

• 40:55Andy Greenwald?

  I don't think, I think it was a, it was into the next year. It was referred to as last summer. I think the implication, based on the end of the episode, was that it's been about nine months.

• 41:02Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 41:05Chris Ryan?

  I believe you.

• 41:06Andy Greenwald?

  Gotcha.

• 41:07Chris Ryan?

  And it's worth noting that I think it's becoming a little bit harder to avoid if you're reading about this show. The For All Mankind character echoes, which I didn't know was as extensive, but I think it's pretty cool and interesting.

• 41:22Chris Ryan?

  This was a very melancholy episode of television.

• 41:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 41:25Chris Ryan?

  You know, like a real, like, this is, this is what a sort of authoritarian regime leaves behind in its wake.

• 41:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 41:34Chris Ryan?

  For the people who try to participate in different parts of government and different parts of society and like, get broken because they, they try to fly a little too, too close to the despot sun.

• 41:48Chris Ryan?

  And I, and I, in that, it was great. I thought that the, it essentially followed the same rhythm or rising action as the previous episode. So instead of, and this is spoilers for the season of Star City and for this episode, but instead of the loss of the Venera crew, we've got the possible rescue of them or the possible uh, signs of life. I still thought it was gorgeous, the Rachmaninoff playing as they, as they break down these algorithms and, and start, you know, doing secret channels to Anastasia up in this, in the space station.

• 42:21Andy Greenwald?

  But also it's like, there was a not insignificant

• 42:28Andy Greenwald?

  montage of beautiful classical piano music while a man wrote algebra with a pencil.

• 42:34Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 42:35Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you, Apple. Like truly, like that, I cannot believe they got that through. I don't know how they pitched it. I don't know what it appeared like in the script. But that's, that's not even the first thing to go. That's the thing where you're like, in the room, you're like, it would be beautiful, but we will never have beautiful things in this life.

• 42:50Chris Ryan?

  And

• 42:51Andy Greenwald?

  It was great.

• 42:51Chris Ryan?

  Again, I feel like I'm a broken record, but I, I've said that there's been moments on this show that really play the espionage greatest hits. I thought. Arena going to, uh, going to Raskova's apartment. That brief look into her life of like, kind of wearing this sad tracksuit. And having something in the oven. And then her revealing to Raskova that like, she's been tasked with bugging her. And she's like, you should bug me. And then we're also gonna like, run a, run a double on, on Petroski, who's taken over Star City, uh, was awesome. You know, even if you've seen it before and.

• 43:28Andy Greenwald?

  It was choosing who you work for and why. And who's running who and how no one ever, everything is an op. I will say, just as a sidebar, um, last week, you were wondering if Raskova was veering a little too English when she yelled, "Sort it out." I think discovering her in her flat, dressed like she was in The Verve in 1997, was a real tell as to where her, her allegiances lie.

• 43:50Chris Ryan?

  Just listening to urban hymns. You caught me at a moment.

• 43:53Andy Greenwald?

  You caught me at a very bucket hat time of my life.

• 43:55Chris Ryan?

  Finding out that the drugs don't work.

• 43:57Andy Greenwald?

  Truly, it was beautiful. Uh, please continue your litany of.

• 44:01Chris Ryan?

  We could talk more, I just, my, my headline from this episode is, uh, Joseph Davies, uh, he plays Sergey and, um, he obviously gets like a kind of cool moment at the end of the episode, but his reaction.

• 44:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, thank you for this.

• 44:15Chris Ryan?

  To the entire process of trying to apply for a professorship, uh, somewhere, like at a, at a college somewhere. Which would obviously be a step down financially for him, but would be a break or an escape from Star City, where he has essentially been demoted to the sub-sub basement and they keep moving his stapler, you know?

• 44:36Chris Ryan?

  And then finding out not only that his apartment has been burgled or rousted, but that the guy who was enticing him essentially to make this application was probably spying on him or working against him. And.

• 44:53Chris Ryan?

  Davies' reaction to finding his apartment in this state, because the apartment is really the only, like, his cooking and his music and his books.

• 45:02Andy Greenwald?

  It's his private world.

• 45:03Chris Ryan?

  Is the only thing that he has got that is for pleasure in this life. I thought it was really legitimately heartbreaking and a beautiful piece of acting. And he's probably the fifth or sixth billed actor on this. And that character actually exists in the For All Mankind universe. So I think for some viewers, they're like, this is extraordinary to get to see this guy as a young person. And apparently Davies' performance echoes the older actor's performance as Sergei as he gets older. But I thought it was lovely. And in an episode where a lot of the main faces, Tanya, the cosmonauts, the chief designer are largely off screen.

• 45:41Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 45:41Chris Ryan?

  He really stepped in.

• 45:42Andy Greenwald?

  I love that you shouted him out, highlighted him. I agree. His performance is brilliant and it's understated. And it does what the best acting can do. Because we, who have likely, hopefully, never had our inner sanctum, our private lives, like, tossed like that. He, you could imagine.

• 46:04Chris Ryan?

  This guy's got a lot of zen.

• 46:06Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, no, found some more. How old are these lozenges?

• 46:10Chris Ryan?

  Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 on 4K.

• 46:13Andy Greenwald?

  He wasn't fronting about physical media. He's really about this life that they quietly let themselves out. I think that our gut supposition about how we would feel would be one of anger or sadness or about the mess or whatever our natural pathways of emotion are. What he communicated in that moment was such deep indignity.

• 46:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he puts his hand over his mouth to stop himself from actually expressing an emotion.

• 46:42Andy Greenwald?

  And the camera captures the broken vinyl records and it is a violation. And it is just one indignity stacked on top of another.

• 46:50Chris Ryan?

  He's like, I only have this.

• 46:51Andy Greenwald?

  And you've put me in prison already and you've stripped me of my work and of my purpose. And you've stopped listening to me and you've removed, isolated me from my colleagues. And now you've taken this was beautiful. And the performance was so gripping that I hadn't Googled him before and realized, like Adam Nagidis, he was briefly in Chernobyl. But where we had seen him before was Andor, where he's one of the prisoners on Narkeena. And

• 47:15Chris Ryan?

  No shit.

• 47:16Andy Greenwald?

  And I, I, I'm not saying that like, although I feel like basically this podcast is constantly in service of this idea that Tony Gilroy is uniquely able to draw out nuanced performances from British stage actors, but this performance and the role the character plays on this show is cut from the same cloth as to what Tony did with Andor.

• 47:37Chris Ryan?

  Do you think that?

• 47:37Andy Greenwald?

  Where it's like the private lives of public facing genre storytelling is, it's an incredible feat.

• 47:44Chris Ryan?

  Do you think Andy Burnham should just cut the dole and just say, we've been able to outsource funding for the arts to Tony Gilroy, who will continue to put British stage actors in giant sci-fi epics?

• 47:57Andy Greenwald?

  I would bring it up, but I think Andy Burnham's too busy doing would be viral Instagram things where he's like, they're like Stone Roses or Urban Hymns. That was, he was asked that. Stone Roses.

• 48:07Chris Ryan?

  I think he's calling Carmine Infantino about Kwanzaa's red card.

• 48:11Andy Greenwald?

  And about, and about Martian Manhunter's role in the original Crisis on Infinite Earths. Yeah, I thought that was incredible. I thought it was incredibly beautiful. And I, and I, I would say to your original take on the episode, I think this may have been my favorite episode of the series.

• 48:26Chris Ryan?

  There you go.

• 48:26Andy Greenwald?

  To date. I thought it was, it, it's not just that I thought the tone was so elegiac and interesting. It's, it's of a piece of the conversation we were just having about House of the Dragon, which is like, when you have a show that has a mandate, in the sense that like, the, it was pitched and sold as a companion piece, as a spinoff, as a way to backfill or backfill history.

• 48:49Chris Ryan?

  And also for a lot of people, like you know how this story kind of ends.

• 48:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 48:52Chris Ryan?

  Because we've already into the, I don't know, like the 20th century, 21st century on Vol'nikon.

• 48:58Andy Greenwald?

  On the other show, yeah.

• 48:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so.

• 48:58Andy Greenwald?

  So, so I think that when you accept a job, or you, or you're even the one who pitches it, like the larger assignment is manifest and it's, and servicing that takes up reasonably so, quite a lot of your creative oxygen and your practical budget. So finding the little pockets and the little space to make something that is special and stands on its own is even more precious and even more rare. And last week, when I was talking about the show, I was saying, I did feel a little bit of For All Mankind mission creep, not to diss that show, which I have regrets that I've not kept up on, but my feeling that kind of kept me out of it was that there was this inevitable drumbeat of history, history, history, and it was telling us about it as it was breathlessly

• 49:42Andy Greenwald?

  trying to catch up to what it wanted to say. And last week, there was, I had that sense of like, well, now we're on to this next mission. Now we got to do this. This, the fact that they took a beat, that for a show that was notable for in Episodes 5 and 6, picking up the action seconds after the previous episode ended, like Arena in Tanya's apartment, which was surprising to me that they did that, but it felt reasonable and interest, and not just reasonable, it felt exciting, that after this incredible cliffhanger of a crescendo of the previous episode, that we begin months later, it's just a, it is a really masterful use of-

• 50:18Chris Ryan?

  Oh, and they also just sewed it up by having Raskova's report kind of basically yada yada, what happened, you know?

• 50:25Andy Greenwald?

  It's a masterful use of off-speed pitches, let's say.

• 50:28Chris Ryan?

  There you go, dog.

• 50:29Andy Greenwald?

  You know, of like, oh, now, oh, something has changed. And again, like, I, there was not a single moment in watching this episode that I thought the Venus mission was lost. Because these are three, two, no, with Tadia joining it, I mean, she was not initially in the cast, but the other two are two of the leads of the show. And I'm not saying the show is so sentimental that it can't kill main characters, especially as it turns towards the 21st century, but that story wasn't done. You don't have, what's his name?

• 50:58Chris Ryan?

  Sasha.

• 51:00Andy Greenwald?

  You don't, not just Sasha, the other guy.

• 51:02Chris Ryan?

  Negatius?

• 51:03Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 51:05Chris Ryan?

  Valya?

• 51:06Andy Greenwald?

  Sasha. You don't have, thank you.

• 51:07Chris Ryan?

  Sasha's honest, Valya's husband.

• 51:09Andy Greenwald?

  You don't have them fall in love accidentally and then leave Earth without some resolution.

• 51:14Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 51:15Andy Greenwald?

  So I knew they were coming back. The question is, how do we get there? And I just think it's remarkable when you have creators who are like, let's see, let's solve this problem and see it as an opportunity. I thought it was totally pleasurable to watch.

• 51:26Chris Ryan?

  Recite to get a little George Bush cameo?

• 51:29Andy Greenwald?

  I am always wondering what the Bush family is up to in an alternate history, where, you know, they can sort of shake free of right and left, you know, and just be good sense versus no sense, you know? Apparently, it's an underrated presidency, according to historians.

• 51:44Chris Ryan?

  And I wonder if in For All Mankind, George W. just stays as the Rangers owner.

• 51:50Andy Greenwald?

  And then becomes a painter?

• 51:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:52Andy Greenwald?

  What, I mean-

• 51:55Andy Greenwald?

  Be great.

• 51:55Chris Ryan?

  Hopefully, we're gonna have Matt and Ben, who created the show, on, hopefully, this week.

• 52:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 52:02Chris Ryan?

  And I unfortunately won't be here for that episode, because I'm gonna be in Toronto. But Andy is gonna hopefully be talking to those guys this week.

• 52:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, is this time for some other housekeeping?

• 52:11Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 52:12Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think that if we're able to line this up.

• 52:14Chris Ryan?

  This is exactly where Kaya likes to keep all of our important show announcements at minute 52.

• 52:19Andy Greenwald?

  I totally agree.

• 52:20Chris Ryan?

  When we're talking about Star City.

• 52:20Andy Greenwald?

  You guys clip this, right? This is gonna be good. That we will hold the episode till Friday when the season finale comes up.

• 52:28Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 52:28Andy Greenwald?

  But also, I was gonna say, I had an idea. Let me know how you feel about this, because you're gonna be traveling.

• 52:32Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:33Andy Greenwald?

  So really, I could just do it.

• 52:34Chris Ryan?

  You could do whatever you want.

• 52:35Andy Greenwald?

  But I don't feel comfortable with that much freedom.

• 52:37Chris Ryan?

  Do you want me to drop questions from space and hope that they land?

• 52:40Andy Greenwald?

  Hope they land at the right place? But all the other podcasts find the questions? And then they get mad? I wondered if it would be useful to do a prompt. If there are, I don't know if anybody cares about this stuff. But if there's any, like, super-specific, like, industry-type questions of, like, working in the mines questions for me?

• 53:00Chris Ryan?

  For those guys or for the app?

• 53:01Andy Greenwald?

  No, or just like, we could do an all-

• 53:03Chris Ryan?

  Ask Andy anything?

• 53:04Andy Greenwald?

  Kind of. Is that, but within reason.

• 53:07Chris Ryan?

  Do you do whatever you want to do, man?

• 53:09Andy Greenwald?

  But you know what I mean? Because, because, I don't know, maybe that's interesting to people.

• 53:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there's, there's some, actually, like, there are a fair amount of question for Andys that are inbox.

• 53:17Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, well, I'm happy to tackle the-

• 53:20Chris Ryan?

  Where's your favorite piece of steamed fish you've ever had, you know?

• 53:22Andy Greenwald?

  Well, that's a great question. Cafe Deco is amazing.

• 53:25Chris Ryan?

  Dude, save it for Thursday.

• 53:25Andy Greenwald?

  Western Laundry, though, actually often has, it's kind of deep in Arsenal country now, which is feeling a little iffy for me.

• 53:31Chris Ryan?

  Oh, do you want to announce your Tottenham Hotspur lifelong fandom?

• 53:35Andy Greenwald?

  I don't need to announce something that's been part of me from the very beginning.

• 53:37Chris Ryan?

  I think an Ask Andy Anything pod would be-

• 53:41Andy Greenwald?

  Will you slip in some questions that have been lingering?

• 53:44Chris Ryan?

  Uh, no.

• 53:44Andy Greenwald?

  Just things you've wanted to know?

• 53:46Chris Ryan?

  I got, I think I know the whole story.

• 53:48Andy Greenwald?

  You're good?

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• 55:20Chris Ryan?

  Do you want to talk about the agency at all? I think, I wonder whether or not, like, if you want, I know you're up through three, right?

• 55:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 55:26Chris Ryan?

  I am through five. We both think this season is extraordinary. We have had somewhat similar conversations as we've chipped away at this second season, and they've basically been like, "It's funny to watch this very, very, very thrilling and expertly made..."

• 55:42Andy Greenwald?

  And expensive.

• 55:42Chris Ryan?

  ...like, cover song of a song we adore. And I think that that has disoriented us, but I will say that I am fully loving this season. I would like to ask you a question.

• 55:51Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 55:52Chris Ryan?

  Is any of the methodical way that we are going about this tied not only to the fact that somewhat we know the story in the broad strokes because we watch The Bureau, but also that Paramount has not announced its season three renewal?

• 56:07Andy Greenwald?

  It's not just that Paramount hasn't announced a renewal. It's that they dropped the entire season over a weekend, and, which is not what they did with season one. And correct me if I'm wrong, I have not seen any press. I don't mean like I haven't seen like wraparound ads on buses. I has have the people involved in the show done any press?

• 56:26Chris Ryan?

  I do not have a grand theory of this, but I will say that I have seen on social media, various places, um, a kind of wave of Michael Fassbender on the hardest scene from Steve Jobs. And I was like, why the fuck is that a blog post? And I'm like, oh, because they're asking.

• 56:43Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, he did do an interview about it?

• 56:44Chris Ryan?

  Well, no, they're do, they did junkets. But I think so much of junket stuff now is a guy going in and he's got Catherine Waterston and Michael Fassbender. He's like, I have to ask them about these five movies that they did. Like, I can ask a couple of agency questions, but then it's like, when you were playing David in Prometheus, did you think that you were both?

• 57:04Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's true.

• 57:04Chris Ryan?

  And that stuff all then gets aggregated.

• 57:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 57:08Chris Ryan?

  But then the editors of these sites or these algorithms can just be like, nobody's watching the agency. We can just publish all this Prometheus and Steve Jobs stuff. Now, I don't, that's not like a conspiracy or anything against the show, but I do think it's something interesting about. It used to be kind of like you would go to these things and you would be like, I have 10 minutes. And I can be like, what did you, why did you, what drew you to this role and all that stuff? And now it's like, I have 10 minutes, hold a dog, try a hot wing, and tell me about these three movies that have nothing to do with the agency. So I don't know if it's working for them or not, but like I, I do find that. I have anecdotally heard from people out there.

• 57:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 57:46Chris Ryan?

  Who are like, yeah, like I don't like starting shows that aren't going to finish.

• 57:51Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, for sure. We've heard that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 57:53Chris Ryan?

  You know, this is a dense, complex, adult thriller. That I think is hitting its stride and clearly was a massive investment to get gear and write and Waterston and all these people to do it. Um, to say nothing of the British actors who were all sometimes playing Americans who are.

• 58:12Andy Greenwald?

  Also, they shot the show in London, Kenya and Morocco.

• 58:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Like, that's like 2019 money.

• 58:19Andy Greenwald?

  It's wild.

• 58:20Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and we have the merger coming and we have no definitive news yet. And it's been five weeks. It's been a minute.

• 58:29Andy Greenwald?

  A couple of weeks.

• 58:30Chris Ryan?

  Couple of weeks since this came out.

• 58:31Andy Greenwald?

  Do you feel like I am slightly to blame? Because when we had the entire cast of the agency available to us and I only asked Catherine Waterston 10 minutes of questions about her role in the HBO avant-garde theater show, The Third Day?

• 58:44Chris Ryan?

  I think that might have contributed to some, some soft numbers.

• 58:49Andy Greenwald?

  I don't regret it. Fascinating show.

• 58:54Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's really well observed. I think, um,

• 58:59Andy Greenwald?

  I-

• 58:59Chris Ryan?

  I think this is an interesting conversation in relationship to Star City, too, which also has not been officially renewed, to my knowledge. I know that, uh, Matt and Ben created the show, talked about, like, we're not gonna do decade jumping. We're gonna keep it in the 70s.

• 59:13Andy Greenwald?

  And tell the story of Star City specifically and not get into the Mars-

• 59:17Chris Ryan?

  Like, what, what's it like for a Russian? Like, on the other side of a scene that you've already seen in For All Mankind? But I do think that that there, like, it would be a mistake to just say, like, we have the roadmap for a five or six season show. Presumably, Michael Fassbender committed to that going into this.

• 59:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 59:41Andy Greenwald?

  I, I mean, I think, well, a couple of things. I think it would just, because LeBure- well, more than, more than a few things. LeBure is one of the great television shows of all time. Everyone should check it out. The way that each season builds the world out while also diving deeper into the possibilities already presented by the characters we thought we knew is extraordinary. And just worth watching, whether you love TV, wanna make it, anything. So, the thought of assembling this kind of Avengers and then not getting to do that level of work, knowing what could happen for Jeffrey Wright's character for-

• 1:00:18Chris Ryan?

  John McGarrett's character.

• 1:00:19Andy Greenwald?

  Like, that is a real shame because it's the best of new TV in the sense of its ambition and old TV in the sense of, god, I love that guy. I didn't even notice him for two years.

• 1:00:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:29Andy Greenwald?

  That's a real shame. I, I'll say that the, my interesting experience with this season is that I am finding it incredible. I mean, I love the story because I love the story. I love watching Richard Gere be in a TV show. He's just cooking.

• 1:00:49Andy Greenwald?

  I find, I'm finding it incredibly engaging, both because the story is engaging and because of the pace of the storytelling. I am finding it a little-

• 1:00:57Chris Ryan?

  You're also passionate about ethical diamond mining.

• 1:01:00Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you. Well, and, and accurate South African accent work, which frankly has been absent from our screens for some time.

• 1:01:08Chris Ryan?

  Since perhaps before Blood Diamond. You know, who knows?

• 1:01:11Andy Greenwald?

  Certainly before Blood Diamond. So, congrats to Michael Fassbender for bringing that back. I have found it a little ham-fisted at times this season.

• 1:01:19Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:01:21Andy Greenwald?

  Both in the sense of like, the John Magaro character, Owen, like, being bad at doing spy stuff, and that's sort of textual, like, he's not good at it.

• 1:01:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:32Andy Greenwald?

  But then also, the people around him being like, "I just trust you for some reason, Steve. Let's go to the Central African Republic." That's like, we gotta, we gotta get the show on the road, but also that was weaker to me than some of the other things that are going on.

• 1:01:43Chris Ryan?

  And weaker to you than the Bureau version of it?

• 1:01:46Andy Greenwald?

  For sure. I think the other thing that frustrates me slightly, I do enjoy the Butterworths writing an American cast, talking about American cultural perspectives.

• 1:01:55Chris Ryan?

  Like, "What's up, snowflake?"

• 1:01:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. It's like, "You libtard, snowflake." I'm like, "Why don't you listen to me talk about the English national team for 10 minutes, then we can see how we're square." There are moments that I just feel like are missed opportunities, but the sort of missed opportunities that could become gold over the course of a longer run, like, Jeffrey Wright is so, he's such a brilliant actor, and he's funny.

• 1:02:18Andy Greenwald?

  This show is not written so much for him to be funny, so that when he gets like, a small crumb, like the scene when Fassbender asks him to give him control of Gremlin, the agent they're running in Iran, and he goes, "Let me think about it. I thought about it." That's funny. And like, I wish we could have a little bit more of that.

• 1:02:37Chris Ryan?

  Classic laugh line.

• 1:02:37Andy Greenwald?

  That's okay. No, but him, he makes it funny.

• 1:02:40Chris Ryan?

  He does.

• 1:02:40Andy Greenwald?

  And the show is written in a way-

• 1:02:43Chris Ryan?

  And I love the whole, like, the Catherine Waterston pulling the guy into the one-

• 1:02:47Andy Greenwald?

  That was awesome.

• 1:02:47Chris Ryan?

  Blind spot, and him then going and getting the-

• 1:02:50Andy Greenwald?

  Cause he bugged the blind spot?

• 1:02:52Chris Ryan?

  Cause he's like, "Of course, it's a blind spot. Yeah."

• 1:02:53Andy Greenwald?

  I love that. I just, I wish there was more room for that, but I sometimes feel like that that's the kind of like, spontaneity that comes from more-

• 1:03:04Andy Greenwald?

  Fluid productions as opposed to something that is so like, we have this much time, we are doing it on this budget, we have this blueprint, and we have these very busy screenwriting brothers, and we are gonna execute.

• 1:03:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:16Andy Greenwald?

  Sometimes I appreciate that efficiency in terms of-

• 1:03:18Chris Ryan?

  Tom Hardy's trying to kill one of them.

• 1:03:19Andy Greenwald?

  It's possible. We don't know what's going on off screen. Anyway, all this is to say, we will circle back, we will cover the rest of the season.

• 1:03:25Chris Ryan?

  So we have Thursday's show will be, or Friday's show release will probably be Star City finale related and some Ask Andy Anything stuff. I then think you're out the following Monday.

• 1:03:36Andy Greenwald?

  I am. We have a lot of travel this summer.

• 1:03:38Chris Ryan?

  We do. And I'll do some exciting work that day.

• 1:03:42Andy Greenwald?

  You should do a follow-up.

• 1:03:44Chris Ryan?

  But maybe next Thursday? Are you back next Thursday? We can finish the agency.

• 1:03:48Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think we should, would you want to spend some of Monday fact checking my answers to the questions about me? And just being like, that was a lie?

• 1:03:54Chris Ryan?

  No, I think that you're like a dazzling broadcaster, and I'm sure you'll really do a great job with whatever you decide to do on Friday. And wherever you decide to take this show going forward.

• 1:04:02Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you.

• 1:04:05Chris Ryan?

  Like, Sakaya, Kai, and Sarah, we are gonna wrap up there. We have explained the short-term future of this show.

• 1:04:13Andy Greenwald?

  Sounds so dark.

• 1:04:14Chris Ryan?

  About two-thirds of the way into the podcast. So just go and scroll on back if you want. And we'll talk to you later this week with some more Star City stuff and some more exciting television talk.

• 1:04:25Andy Greenwald?

  Are you bullish on the long-term future of this podcast?

• 1:04:28Chris Ryan?

  Sure. Sure.

• 1:04:30Andy Greenwald?

  Wow. Okay. Great.

• 1:04:34Chris Ryan?

  Bye, guys.