All The News Out of Comic Con, ‘The Agency’ Season 2, and ‘House of the Dragon’ S3E6

Chris and Andy react to the news that LeBron will be coming to the Sixers (0:40). Then they break down all of the news that came out of ComicCon over the weekend including David Jonsson being announced as the new Black Panther (10:42) and the trailers for ‘Lanterns’ (30:20), ‘Neuromancer’ (35:12), and ‘Blade Runner 2029’ (39:34). Then they talk about where ‘The Agency’ succeeded and failed in its second season (45:44) before recapping the latest episode of ‘House of the Dragon’ (01:09:24). Subscribe to the ⁠Ringer TV YouTube channel⁠ here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Engineering and Editing: Jamie Yukich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi there, I am fully charged and here to tell you Toy Story 5 is now on Disney+

• 0:06Speaker 01

  It's been too long cowboy.

• 0:08Speaker 00

  Woody, Buzz, and Jesse are back for a brand new adventure with some seriously cool new tech.

• 0:13Speaker 02

  What? Holy butterscotch!

• 0:15Speaker 00

  You said it Jesse, so save your batteries and watch the global phenomenon at home. And the best part, it's perfect for the whole family. Power up your movie night and watch Disney and Pixar's Toy Story 5, now streaming on Disney+ Rated PG.

• 0:35Speaker 03

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

• 0:41Chris 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, just a kid from Akron, it's Andy Greenwald!

• 0:54Andy Greenwald?

  I thought you'd start there.

• 0:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 0:56Andy Greenwald?

  Despite the weekend. Anything you'd like to get off your chest?

• 1:00Chris Ryan?

  We are gonna talk about a bunch of the trailers coming out of Comic Con, we're gonna talk about the second season of The Agency, the most recent episode of House of the Dragon.

• 1:09Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:10Chris Ryan?

  But I thought we could talk a little bit about LeBron James joining the Philadelphia 76ers, I had a couple of questions for you.

• 1:15Andy Greenwald?

  You mean LeBron James coming home?

• 1:18Chris Ryan?

  I mean if home is a Tribeca condominium that he'll be living in.

• 1:22Andy Greenwald?

  You think he's gonna do, is he officially gonna do the JJ Reddick?

• 1:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but you know what, that's the fucking dream dude. That is the dream, is to commute, I mean I would personally live in Philly and go to New York to work and play, but however you wanna handle it, like I'd love to have two places like that.

• 1:40Andy Greenwald?

  It's true, we can't fault him for that, who among us didn't start in Philly and then live in New York?

• 1:45Chris Ryan?

  And you know who's not gonna care? Philadelphians, honestly like you know that we have our sensitivities, we can get our backs up a little bit, but if LeBron James wants to play for the Sixers, he's welcome to live in New York.

• 1:59Andy Greenwald?

  So let's talk about this, this was a, I received a text message from our buddy Zach Baron, I believe LOL was included in the link that he sent.

• 2:09Chris Ryan?

  8:30 AM Pacific Time.

• 2:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I was dropping off a child at camp.

• 2:14Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 2:14Andy Greenwald?

  And actually stopped about three blocks short of camp, told her to walk the rest of the way.

• 2:19Chris Ryan?

  No you didn't.

• 2:19Andy Greenwald?

  Because I had work to do in the content mines.

• 2:22Chris Ryan?

  See, the thing is is that, I have to tell you something.

• 2:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, okay, this is just us.

• 2:28Chris Ryan?

  I've received more texts from you about like Ben Van Summern than I have about LeBron coming.

• 2:33Andy Greenwald?

  First of all, it's Van Summern, he's recently signed with the Buffalo Bills.

• 2:37Chris Ryan?

  He is a, he was a deep, deep bench backup for the Eagles last year.

• 2:41Andy Greenwald?

  First of all, he was going to be our starting fullback until a ruinous injury on, I think the first play of the season.

• 2:47Chris Ryan?

  But you've expressed way more excitement about way more random things in Philadelphia sports, and I feel like you've sent two texts about LeBron, and not responded to a lot of my memes.

• 2:58Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, I'd like to apologize to you about the memes, they were excellent, you also made a really, really sterling appearance on our all parents favorite television channel, MSNBC, I'm sorry, MS Now.

• 3:11Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 3:11Andy Greenwald?

  The X'd.

• 3:11Chris Ryan?

  Shout out to Hallie Jackson.

• 3:13Andy Greenwald?

  That was a delightful segment.

• 3:14Chris Ryan?

  She's a real one, from Yardley.

• 3:16Andy Greenwald?

  She was really representing.

• 3:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:17Andy Greenwald?

  So you've been great, and I've been enjoying all of your content and memes, I think that, I believe in the adage of-

• 3:24Chris Ryan?

  I was also on the Zach Lowe Show for the Ringer Podcast Network.

• 3:26Andy Greenwald?

  Was he from Yardley?

• 3:27Chris Ryan?

  No. He's died.

• 3:30Andy Greenwald?

  Think global, act local, you know what I mean, I think that this is operating on such a higher level than what I can comment on, I think it's so crazy, I think it's ludicrous.

• 3:40Chris Ryan?

  So this is a little bit of indie rock snobbery on your part.

• 3:43Andy Greenwald?

  Absolutely.

• 3:44Chris Ryan?

  When it's your discovery, when it's a backup fullback, you're like, oh that's cool, I found him, but when it's LeBron James, you're like, oh, I'll let the other ones go to Olivia Rodrigo.

• 3:54Andy Greenwald?

  You have to understand that I have spent 25, four years, how many seasons has he been playing in the NBA?

• 4:01Chris Ryan?

  Uh, since those-

• 4:01Andy Greenwald?

  Since '02 or '03? So I've spent all of that time thinking about him as much as I think about the planet of Jupiter, like it exists, it's fucking enormous, you know what I mean? Like you can't make your solar system without it, but it has had nothing to do with me and my life.

• 4:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:20Andy Greenwald?

  So all of a sudden, he's moving to Yardley so to speak.

• 4:24Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 4:25Andy Greenwald?

  And it's just making me laugh, I think it's great, I think it's exciting, I am super in on this, I am not, shout out to Sheil Kapadia who's debuted a new voice about a guy who's not into this, that's not me, I'm not that guy being like, we're not getting prime LeBron, I think this is hilarious.

• 4:42Chris Ryan?

  A lot of characters have emerged out of this, Zach Lowe introduced stat guy who's doesn't know if there's enough ball and is going through like all the warp and why it's not gonna work.

• 4:53Andy Greenwald?

  I just think you have to, from the psychology of a deeply committed and emotionally disturbed Philadelphia sports fan who over the last few years has really pioneered a new realm of living and dying with every game but not watching them, this is just, what can one do, this is hilarious, and I like the team and the fact that it is a basketball fit, and the fact that someone is going to show up into this completely decade-long dysfunction in the locker room and be like, actually I'm an adult professional, I know how to win, is thrilling.

• 5:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:25Andy Greenwald?

  But also protect the kids at all costs.

• 5:27Chris Ryan?

  Protect which kids?

• 5:28Andy Greenwald?

  Tyrese and Vijay.

• 5:28Chris Ryan?

  Those guys are psyched, they get to play with LeBron!

• 5:31Andy Greenwald?

  I know, so I'm not upset, I don't think he's gonna come in and be like, I need you to trade both of those guys for Kevin Love's corpse now.

• 5:36Chris Ryan?

  He's not gonna do that.

• 5:37Andy Greenwald?

  I said he's not gonna do that, why?

• 5:39Chris Ryan?

  He's a middle-aged man, I just want everybody to know, we're excited, and I think The Watch, one thing we could do in this coming NBA season, since there are 34, apparently, 34 nationally televised Sixers games.

• 5:54Andy Greenwald?

  Did Adam Silver have this, he have like the different shirts?

• 5:56Chris Ryan?

  He was waiting, yeah.

• 5:57Andy Greenwald?

  And he had the button?

• 5:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, um, I think we could make Sixers Watch part of The Watch, but that would involve you doing some tape work though.

• 6:06Andy Greenwald?

  I will say this, I am extremely excited, I think it's gonna be an interesting, what's Zach's character about not sure if there's enough ball? I'm not sure if there's enough me this fall, considering fall is traditionally a time of busier work, office and travel.

• 6:21Chris Ryan?

  Yes, I know, yeah.

• 6:22Andy Greenwald?

  The Philadelphia Eagles, Ben Van Summern's former team, will start playing.

• 6:26Chris Ryan?

  This is what I was gonna talk to you about.

• 6:26Andy Greenwald?

  And, Chris, my beloved Tottenham Hotspur is kicking things off from their return to the top of the table, late August.

• 6:35Chris Ryan?

  If you pivoted from Sixers LeBron to Tottenham.

• 6:38Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just saying, it's gonna be a busy-

• 6:40Chris Ryan?

  There's gonna be a moment in October where if things go according to plan, we have Red October, we have Eagles back, we have LeBron on the Sixers, all happening at once.

• 6:50Andy Greenwald?

  And like, the Studio S2, right? Like are you gonna bring people-

• 6:53Chris Ryan?

  Just put that stuff aside for a second.

• 6:54Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 6:55Chris Ryan?

  Focus.

• 6:56Andy Greenwald?

  Alright.

• 6:56Chris Ryan?

  If we were ever gonna do a Philly live show, it should be then.

• 7:00Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, you're putting me on, yeah sure.

• 7:04Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 7:05Andy Greenwald?

  Let's, can we talk mostly about sports?

• 7:07Chris Ryan?

  Yes, of course, no, everybody's gonna wanna listen to Studio S2 tapes.

• 7:11Andy Greenwald?

  Live.

• 7:12Chris Ryan?

  Andy, this-

• 7:13Andy Greenwald?

  It's very exciting.

• 7:14Chris Ryan?

  This is, we can leave sports there, let's leave the games behind.

• 7:18Andy Greenwald?

  Alright.

• 7:19Chris Ryan?

  And talk about the art and business of entertainment, you can always hit us up at thewatch at spotify.com, we're gonna do a mailbag episode next week, recording it tomorrow, so if you have any last minute questions, but so far, thank you so much for your questions.

• 7:33Andy Greenwald?

  Have they been good?

• 7:34Chris Ryan?

  They have been, there've been several people who've written in to say, dear sir, to you, thank you for giving me space to also feel like The Odyssey wasn't all as good as everybody's making it sound.

• 7:49Andy Greenwald?

  Did I say that?

• 7:50Chris Ryan?

  You had some, you were a little bit more measured, and you were like, that was pretty goofy in places.

• 7:55Andy Greenwald?

  It fucking was, I stand by that.

• 7:57Chris Ryan?

  There's five guys in the world who are like, thanks brother, that really made me feel seen, so-

• 8:03Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not for everyone, but I'm for someone.

• 8:05Chris Ryan?

  If you hear this on Monday, and you send in your email tonight, we may get it for tomorrow's mailbag, so the deadline is coming, the watch pod underscore at Instagram, Ringer dash TV on YouTube, where we are rocking and rolling with the Prestige TV podcast, and today, like I said, some news at the top, there's a bunch of Comic Con stuff, we did not go-

• 8:27Andy Greenwald?

  Did you regret not going?

• 8:28Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 8:29Andy Greenwald?

  You said that real fast.

• 8:31Chris Ryan?

  Here's the thing, I like San Diego, San Diego is one of my favorite music towns, some of my favorite bands have come from San Diego.

• 8:38Andy Greenwald?

  Drive Like Jehu, right?

• 8:38Chris Ryan?

  Drive Like Jehu, Hot Snakes, some bands without John Reese in them, Antioch Arrow, et cetera, but I don't wanna go to Comic Con, I don't think, it doesn't really have, that's a real like, but it just goes on YouTube pretty much like the next day, so like, why would I go to San Diego to do it?

• 8:59Andy Greenwald?

  We went together once, I went in 2004.

• 9:02Chris Ryan?

  I think I went as your like bagman, I was like, you were going to interview the Banshee cast or something, and I was just like, I'll just sleep on your floor or whatever.

• 9:09Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, no, this is a famous story that we don't need to revisit, we had two beds.

• 9:13Chris Ryan?

  That's cool.

• 9:13Andy Greenwald?

  And, but that was the first time I saw it.

• 9:15Chris Ryan?

  Did you take both of them?

• 9:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 9:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I didn't, I'm sorry, that wasn't contradicting that you were on the floor. I just wanted you to remember. No, that was when I, that was the first time I observed in person your podcast sleeping regimen.

• 9:30Chris Ryan?

  No, that's not true. You saw it when we went and interviewed Mogwai in Chinatown.

• 9:35Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, no. Yes, that was the other time we shared a hotel room, but I don't think, we didn't, podcasts didn't exist then.

• 9:42Chris Ryan?

  Oh, and I put pods in.

• 9:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 9:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and then I put my arms like.

• 9:45Andy Greenwald?

  You're like Nosferatu, you just lay back slowly on your bed.

• 9:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:49Andy Greenwald?

  It was unbelievable.

• 9:50Chris Ryan?

  Um.

• 9:50Andy Greenwald?

  But, uh, yeah, that, oh yeah, well, one day we'll talk about that. Mogwai has their big anniversary concert, right?

• 9:56Chris Ryan?

  Thinking about going.

• 9:57Andy Greenwald?

  Well, cause we, that, that's another foundational story. We tell that one less than we tell the Trainspotting one.

• 10:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, somehow Mogwai is not as grabby.

• 10:03Andy Greenwald?

  It's still Scottish, though. Okay, we'll circle back to that. So Comic Con, we went once, we have not been back.

• 10:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that was a long time ago. Um, so what do you have here? You have, are obviously Marvel, kinda singing for their supper. Like, there was a moment here where, I think after that Doomsday trailer, Marvel fans, I think, will ride or die with this, with this crew, no matter what. There, there is a contingent of people who are always gonna be present for this. The projections for Brand New Day are already like astronomical.

• 10:31Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:32Chris Ryan?

  But I think above Odyssey, like, it's, it's gonna make a boatload of money. But in terms of like where things are going, I think there was a little bit of skepticism, it's fair to say, after that Doomsday trailer. So I think they had a lot, they had to get accomplished at their presentation. So we're gonna talk a little bit about that. There are a couple of TV things I wanted to talk about, uh, but we can, we can stick on Marvel.

• 10:53Andy Greenwald?

  You wanna start with Marvel?

• 10:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, because there's a few things here that I thought were cool. For number one, obviously, I think the big headline was that David Jonsson, who, um, industry watchers, and I mean capital I industry watchers, will recognize as Gus from the early seasons of Industry, is gonna play the fucking Black Panther.

• 11:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 11:13Chris Ryan?

  He is going to be the kid from the be, the end of BP2, grown up. Now, uh, eagle-eyed viewers and watchers and listeners or whatever have pointed out that that does seem a bit difficult to do in terms of like, how much does he age? Like, when, what timeline are these movies taking part in? And there's speculation that this will be a post-whatever Doomsday is.

• 11:40Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I believe they've already announced the release date for this Black Panther 3. It's 28, which would be not only post-Doomsday, it would be post-Secret Wars.

• 11:47Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 11:47Andy Greenwald?

  So it would be in Kevin Feige's beloved sacred timeline restoration.

• 11:51Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 11:51Andy Greenwald?

  Where there would be only one.

• 11:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but Shuri is still in it.

• 11:56Andy Greenwald?

  The BP3?

• 11:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:57Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 11:57Chris Ryan?

  Because she's in the Doomsday trailer as Black Panther, right?

• 12:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 12:00Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 12:01Andy Greenwald?

  If this was the hill that you died on, where you were just like, there can only be one legitimate Black Panther.

• 12:07Chris Ryan?

  What, what did you think of the casting?

• 12:09Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think the casting is exciting. I think the, the larger conversation is definitely one of what are we doing here in terms of Marvel? Black Panther is a little bit, um, carved out of that conversation because if Ryan Coogler wants to make Black Panther 3, then they should make that movie. He is on the extremely short list of writer-directors, filmmakers, who move every needle, artistic, commercial, certainly box office. And if this is what he wants to do with all of the, uh, goodwill and industry cred and, and basically market-moving power that he has accrued since Sinners, which was an incredible, you know, bet on himself famously, uh, good, I'm interested.

• 12:52Andy Greenwald?

  You know, I, he would not come back to do a movie he didn't wanna do, even if the fanboys in that room are screaming that trilogies need to be completed or whatever.

• 13:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:00Andy Greenwald?

  And I think what we know from the sadly scrapped original script of Black Panther 2, when Chadwick Boseman was still with us and was going to be starring in the movie, that was going to be a father-son movie. So this is clearly the story, or the, the kernel of the story that Coogler wants to, to tell.

• 13:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:18Andy Greenwald?

  And so this will give him a chance to do it. And I guess I read also some reporting that this casting was done months ago, that they've been quietly building towards this and planning it. And this probably aligns with the timeline where, um, Denzel Washington, either he said it or someone said it, that he's gonna be in this movie.

• 13:34Chris Ryan?

  Denzel is in this movie.

• 13:35Andy Greenwald?

  And now it's been, that's also been confirmed. So the, unlike some of the other things that they've announced, which we're gonna pivot to, if a filmmaker has a story he wants to tell, that's exciting.

• 13:46Chris Ryan?

  I wish that the same artistic vision applied to other movies.

• 13:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, this is what I wanna say.

• 13:55Chris Ryan?

  So just on Johnson really quick, not only is he great in Industry, he was, he has been a guy over the last two years specifically, who is an old school, like when you were watching it, like, if I'm watching a movie with, with like another person or in a theater or with my wife or something like that, routinely gets at, like, they'll be like, who, who was that? That guy was awesome.

• 14:18Andy Greenwald?

  He was in Romulus.

• 14:19Chris Ryan?

  And he, he was incredible in Romulus.

• 14:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 14:21Chris Ryan?

  And he's awesome in The Long Walk, um, with Cooper Hoffman. So he has obviously got something, and I think it's interesting, the qualities that I think he shares with Boseman as a performer, like a kind of centeredness, um, but then there's some differences. You know, he has like a little bit of like, um, uh, I don't know, like, maybe a, perhaps like

• 14:44Chris Ryan?

  a knowability? I don't know, I don't know how to describe it, because Gus was such a distinct character in Industry, and then since then, like, he's played a, you know, uh, a synthetic person in, in Romulus. His Long Walk character is awesome. But in any case, um.

• 14:59Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think.

• 14:59Chris Ryan?

  I think it's great casting.

• 15:00Andy Greenwald?

  I think what's interesting about him is that he's one of the rare cohort of performers who can signal to a camera that what he's doing and what he's thinking are different.

• 15:09Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 15:10Andy Greenwald?

  That both are incredibly, incredibly alive and active.

• 15:12Chris Ryan?

  That's a really good way of putting it.

• 15:13Andy Greenwald?

  And, and I think that he, that adds something, I mean, he's gonna be in a mask for a lot of the movie, but that adds something different to the character and maybe fits into what I could imagine be a theme about teen, not teenagers, 32, but like rebellion.

• 15:27Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 15:27Andy Greenwald?

  Or rebelling against a legend or resisting a mantle of some kind. I think that's an interesting story to tell.

• 15:31Chris Ryan?

  And you know, they have a situation where like immediately they, they, when they, they announce this, they tell the story of casting Johnson and it's gonna be shot on film, I, I'm sure in, in 65 or 70 or some great format.

• 15:48Chris Ryan?

  And you know, Denzel is in it, and you are, you, you immediately start thinking like, can they not move like this for all the other, all the movies? You know what I mean? Like, then this was sort of, I know the original promise of a certain era of Marvel, where it was gonna be, and, and Star Wars to some extent, where it's gonna be like, we're gonna get great filmmakers and tell great stories, and we're gonna merge this amazing intellectual property with their artistic vision. And, and it just seems like that whole experiment is basically a failure. Whether it's people leaving projects like Lord and Miller on solo, or, you know, Edward Wright on Ant-Man, and, and/or arriving at this kind of flattened, pre-vis,

• 16:32Chris Ryan?

  we just need people to get this from A to B, we can't really take too many chances or ever do anything pretty provocative. You know, Thunderbolts being like an exception to the rule, maybe. So I, I just, I, I guess weirdly it was bittersweet, just because I was like, why can't you guys make like badass, like Avengers movies this way? I guess maybe that's like a lot of, of moving pieces.

• 16:54Andy Greenwald?

  A lot of moving pieces. Uh, I think it's a couple of things. One, I do wanna just have a moment to do like a naval burial at sea for a take I was proud of, which was that all of Doomsday and Secret Wars was just part of a long game to reboot the Marvel Universe where Michael B. Jordan is Black Panther.

• 17:09Chris Ryan?

  That's interesting.

• 17:10Andy Greenwald?

  I don't think he wants to do that.

• 17:13Andy Greenwald?

  He might show up in Secret Wars, who knows? But, uh, so I just wanna like salute that, you know, drape, drape that coffin, the flag, throw it off the boat.

• 17:20Chris Ryan?

  I think it's great that Michael B. Jordan does not need to show up in Secret Wars. Like, he doesn't need that in his career.

• 17:26Andy Greenwald?

  I completely agree with you. Don't get me started on the Adam Driver as Mr. Sinister rumors that are bubbling up right now as well.

• 17:35Andy Greenwald?

  So I think it's always worth contextualizing what you're saying, that all, there is a legitimate, there's a legitimacy to that strain of thinking, to those rumors that, like, I, I know, it's, some of it's confirmed, but I'm not, I'm not breaking news here, but like Kathy Kennedy, in her tenure at head of Lucasfilm, literally did meet with everyone. You know, there was the Vince Gilligan meeting, there was many David Fincher meetings, there was Soderbergh meetings. Kevin Feige, I'm sure, has had similar meetings with the, the, the best of the best. And what they discover is that there can only really be one no-Adam driver of these cars. They are too expensive, they are too difficult to maneuver.

• 18:15Andy Greenwald?

  And if a filmmaker like David Fincher comes in and is like, cool, I, and, you know, I, I wanna do the Submariner movie, but I get final cut and I do whatever I want, that's just not gonna work for the timeline. So that's why you end up hiring, in best-case scenarios, like really, really solid workers who can deliver, like what the Russo brothers were when they took them from TV, um, or where we're about to get with, with Sean Levy. It's just not, it's just not consistent with what these things end up having to be for shareholders and for delivery dates and global vis effects sweatshops or whatever the case may be. Black Panther is the one outlier here, because they need him much more than he needs them. And I, I, I think, by all accounts, they have a very good working relationship,

• 18:58Andy Greenwald?

  but if that relationship was ever threatened and, and Feige and Luis Esposito were like, actually, we need to, you know, introduce the new warriors in this movie also, I think Coogler could be like, well, good luck making it without me.

• 19:09Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 19:10Andy Greenwald?

  You know?

• 19:10Chris Ryan?

  And good luck having anybody believe in this if I am somehow not part of it.

• 19:13Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly, so, so it is, it is a, it is a power thing. Now, turning the page to the other announcement from it. I, I, I, again, I wanna say this in a non-snobby or judgmental way.

• 19:25Chris Ryan?

  We listen and we don't judge.

• 19:26Andy Greenwald?

  Sean Levy is a, is a professional people-pleaser.

• 19:30Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 19:30Andy Greenwald?

  Right? I mean, I, I have, separate apart from what I think about the man as an, or the man or the artist, I've never met him, but like, he clearly strikes me as someone who can walk into any room and convince people that he can solve your problems and deliver for you. And he's done that now with Star Wars, cause he's making, he's now wrapped a Star Wars movie, and he's about to do this for Marvel, having done Deadpool and Wolverine, which I think is one of the most odious pieces of pop culture ever released in the last 20 years, but it made a billion dollars. So congratulations to everybody involved.

• 19:57Chris Ryan?

  Did we talk about that?

• 19:58Andy Greenwald?

  I fucking went to LA Live at 8:00 AM and saw it and dragged my ass over here to talk about it.

• 20:04Chris Ryan?

  You can go to movies whenever you want, you know that, right?

• 20:07Andy Greenwald?

  Not with a particular parenting schedule. Do you know what I mean?

• 20:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm just saying, like.

• 20:13Andy Greenwald?

  Theoretically, one could.

• 20:16Chris Ryan?

  I don't remember that episode at all.

• 20:19Chris Ryan?

  Was I there?

• 20:20Andy Greenwald?

  You may have been doing the 2020 NBA redraft episode.

• 20:23Chris Ryan?

  Where I was like, it was fine, you know?

• 20:25Andy Greenwald?

  Like, I laughed. Chris Evans is playing Fantastic Four.

• 20:28Chris Ryan?

  No, I think I was actually pretty mean about it, now that I think about it, about.

• 20:32Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think that that's why you don't remember it? Because there's a part of you that like blacks out like bad mommy?

• 20:37Chris Ryan?

  Other mommy?

• 20:38Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, sorry, flatulent mommy? What do we call it?

• 20:40Chris Ryan?

  Other mommy.

• 20:40Andy Greenwald?

  Other mommy, when you're being mean.

• 20:44Chris Ryan?

  I, I think I'm a little bit more disappointed in the Gosling aspect.

• 20:48Andy Greenwald?

  No, that's, that's why I was backdooring that. That's what I want to talk about. So, so Feige.

• 20:53Chris Ryan?

  There's like, there's, there's, you can have so many different parts of your career. And if, if this is what Ryan Gosling wants to do, it's not like he hasn't given a large chunk of his soul to the art and craft of acting and made really complicated movies and really demand, done really demanding roles.

• 21:10Andy Greenwald?

  He has.

• 21:10Chris Ryan?

  And if he wants to just kind of like spend what I imagine is his early 40s, like, how old is he?

• 21:17Andy Greenwald?

  He's, he's a couple of years younger than us.

• 21:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, like mid 40s, chilling somewhere probably with the beach next to him. And then making movies that his kids will like.

• 21:28Chris Ryan?

  I don't really love that excuse, though.

• 21:30Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 21:31Chris Ryan?

  I mean, like, I just kind of don't want to be challenged anymore and make movies that my kids will like. Guess what, man? Your kids are gonna like good movies soon.

• 21:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 21:39Chris Ryan?

  You can make some of them and they can watch them when they're 18 if they, I'm not saying you have to make Blue Valentine every six months. But like, this whole like, I want to make movies my kids can watch, like, your kids want to watch cool shit.

• 21:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. And there will be a day.

• 21:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:53Andy Greenwald?

  I can attest to this, where your kids will become teenagers.

• 21:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:57Andy Greenwald?

  They'll be like, what have you done with your life, dad?

• 21:59Chris Ryan?

  You made Drive?

• 22:00Andy Greenwald?

  And then they'll be like, and then you made the fucking Fall Guy?

• 22:03Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 22:03Andy Greenwald?

  Grow up, dad. Like, yeah, it, I think it sucks. I think it sucks on, on many levels. On, here's, here's one level. Ghost Rider is stupid. Ghost Rider is a stupid character.

• 22:17Chris Ryan?

  Okay. I have no relationship.

• 22:19Andy Greenwald?

  I have read comic books for much of my life. I have enjoyed Ghost Rider's appearance in comic books from time to time. Ghost Rider is dumb as fuck. Ghost Rider is a guy named Johnny Blaze who gets inhabited by the spirit of vengeance and transforms into a dude with a flaming skull head who rides a motorcycle and whips people with flaming chains.

• 22:43Chris Ryan?

  And.

• 22:44Andy Greenwald?

  And Nicolas Cage has been that role in movies.

• 22:46Chris Ryan?

  And Eva Mendes was in that movie and was married to Ryan Gosling. I just, Ghost Rider play a part in any larger Marvel kind of.

• 22:53Andy Greenwald?

  Every, I mean, every so often, when an interesting writer takes over one of the big franchise titles, one of the things that they do, and this is, I bet you could name like a national side manager who does this with World Cup teams just for LOLs. But it'll be like, now whoever is taking over the Avengers and it's Iron Man, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Ant-Man. Fucking Ghost Rider. And everyone's like, what's Ghost Rider doing here? And then, then that kind of wears off.

• 23:20Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 23:20Andy Greenwald?

  So, sure, but the fact that Kevin Feige is up on stage being like, we've struggled for years on how to bring John Blaze into the Marvel Universe. I'm like, some people are working here, sir. Some people have real jobs.

• 23:34Chris Ryan?

  My job is going to see Deadpool.

• 23:35Andy Greenwald?

  My job is seeing your swill, sir. At eight in the morning, and I'm a parent of daughters who, what did, what did you say? One day will want to see good shit.

• 23:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Who want to watch Only God Forgives.

• 23:49Andy Greenwald?

  Excuse me, as someone whose job it is to talk about movies and television shows with his best friend twice a week, I stand up for the working man.

• 23:59Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway, so that's dumb.

• 24:03Andy Greenwald?

  Gosling being like, this is what I want to do, is also really disappointing and dumb. But the dumbest thing to me is a room full of like hundreds and hundreds of nominal adults screaming and cheering for someone getting hired.

• 24:20Chris Ryan?

  Your dad just came out.

• 24:21Andy Greenwald?

  No, but for real, though. There's no movie here. They're not, they're like, and now we're here to announce that Ryan Gosling has been promoted to VP of International Marketing and Research. And everyone's like, fucking hooray! You got a job. He didn't need the job. There's no movie.

• 24:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:38Andy Greenwald?

  It's an idea of a thing of someone doing something later.

• 24:42Chris Ryan?

  The, the font for the poster and everything.

• 24:45Andy Greenwald?

  Look at, look how you're quietly zagging.

• 24:47Chris Ryan?

  I'm not zagging at all.

• 24:48Andy Greenwald?

  Homer Simpson into the bush right now.

• 24:50Chris Ryan?

  You know what it is, is that?

• 24:51Andy Greenwald?

  It's a fucking Sean Levy movie where he's gonna be a spirit of vengeance, but he'll probably have a soft spot for a kid.

• 24:56Chris Ryan?

  Oh, God.

• 24:57Andy Greenwald?

  Come on, dude.

• 24:58Chris Ryan?

  If there's a kid in Ghost Rider.

• 24:59Andy Greenwald?

  There's gonna be a kid in Ghost Rider.

• 25:01Chris Ryan?

  Do you think he's gonna be?

• 25:02Andy Greenwald?

  Which camera?

• 25:02Chris Ryan?

  Is he a little, a junior ghost? With his head is on fire too?

• 25:06Andy Greenwald?

  Little ghost? You know what would be cool? This is kind of a tangent. I don't know if you ever see these, but there's a great thing on Instagram that pops up all the time. First of all, everything on Instagram, great. Love it. But it's just like a dude in England who rides a bike, mountain bike with his little kid in the front, and the videos are just the kid going, daddy, bus. And he's like, yes, that's a bus. He goes, daddy, flowers. He's like, good, that's flowers. What if that was Ghost Rider?

• 25:28Chris Ryan?

  Is the kid like harnessed or?

• 25:30Andy Greenwald?

  The kid has a little seat on this, and he has his own handlebars.

• 25:34Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 25:34Andy Greenwald?

  So he's riding on the bu, on the bike, and then the guy has like a camera, and that's the video. I could watch that forever.

• 25:38Chris Ryan?

  I like the dude that's up at like before dawn and like rides through Trafalgar Square and kind of.

• 25:43Andy Greenwald?

  John Overity? He's my hero.

• 25:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Okay, sorry.

• 25:47Andy Greenwald?

  I watch that shit live. That guy's the best. Cause he's waking up in London and it's 10, 9, 10 PM here. Can we just, can we sidebar for a second here?

• 25:56Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 25:56Andy Greenwald?

  Here's why I think we're doomed. Just, and it's not about Wolverine and Deadpool or whatever. It's about the fact that you know, and everyone who listens to this podcast know that most of my time not, you know, working real hard is like looking at like London restaurants and pub content on my phone. Like Instagram, like I follow restaurants, I follow whatever. And the way that it gets you is that it constantly, constantly pushes you towards extremity in the worst possible ways. So like, I like to watch James Dimitri go into pubs and order a snake bite, which is beer and cider. And then I'm like, then it's like.

• 26:31Chris Ryan?

  And Black Current.

• 26:32Andy Greenwald?

  And with a little Black Current on top.

• 26:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:33Andy Greenwald?

  Or a lot of Black Current. Then, then I go to like Suggested For You, and it's a guy walking into a Costco in Florida being like, I've got $10. How quickly can I get blackout drunk by chugging this pop off bottle? Now, like, no, no, I, I understand Claude that these both involve men drinking, but there's a, there's a difference here.

• 26:53Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 26:54Andy Greenwald?

  Or like I follow a British restaurant, you know, and I'm like, oh, it looks like they've got a interesting Tandoori special. One day I'd like to visit that. And then the next Suggested For You is, is this American woman being like, the British people are pussies about spice. I'm gonna take their six chicken wing challenge. And then she just starts barfing in the restaurant.

• 27:13Andy Greenwald?

  I don't want to know that. I don't want to see that.

• 27:16Chris Ryan?

  Well.

• 27:16Andy Greenwald?

  I blame Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg.

• 27:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I, I mean, I think that there's probably been greater infractions and crimes.

• 27:24Andy Greenwald?

  Nope.

• 27:24Chris Ryan?

  By, by large tech companies than you being forced to watch somebody puke.

• 27:29Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just saying how, this is, this is the way things go. This is the way we try, this is the trend. This is how we go towards ruin. And maybe Sean Levy directing Ghost Rider is the first, the next.

• 27:41Chris Ryan?

  I will just, to put a, to put a bow on the Ryan Gosling thing, I don't, I don't want him to be sad. I don't want him to be upset and I want him to make money. Like, and those are all great things.

• 27:50Andy Greenwald?

  Me too. He's, he's the best.

• 27:52Chris Ryan?

  That's why he should have just kept making nice guys, because it would have been right in the middle.

• 27:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 27:56Chris Ryan?

  You know, rather than all this, all the way over where every couple of movies, you're gonna get a Project Hail Mary, but then you're also gonna get a, a Fall Guy. Well, a Fall Guy was okay, but like the gray man, um, pretty bad. So, yeah.

• 28:12Andy Greenwald?

  What about the whole, they didn't do, I think we thought, many people thought, many people are saying.

• 28:17Chris Ryan?

  That they would announce the X-Men.

• 28:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I guess they didn't for reasons including they're still holding on to.

• 28:24Chris Ryan?

  Well, they're pretending like the Fox X-Men are gonna live for more than 15 minutes in that movie. No, no spoilers, but that's how.

• 28:31Andy Greenwald?

  No spoilers, but they're like, Anthony Mackie, Paul Rudd, and Kelsey Grammer are all gonna be in this movie for the same amount of time.

• 28:41Andy Greenwald?

  Like, that is.

• 28:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:42Andy Greenwald?

  Everyone's like screaming, so excited.

• 28:45Chris Ryan?

  There was apparently a doomsday trailer, uh, where I, I guess there's more, more to it. And it's like Vanessa Kirby narrating like Doom, Doctor Doom was like.

• 28:56Andy Greenwald?

  Doctor, he showed me his credentials. He's actually a PhD, not a medical doctor.

• 29:03Andy Greenwald?

  He actually, what do you think his doctorate's in?

• 29:06Chris Ryan?

  Um.

• 29:09Chris Ryan?

  Whatever it took to get, what was it, the Sokovia? Like, what was it? Was he like an infrastructure doctor?

• 29:15Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, my god.

• 29:16Chris Ryan?

  To rebuild Sokovia? He's from Latvia, right?

• 29:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and he's like, and probably Sokovia radicalized him. Because if it could happen to one made up country in Europe.

• 29:23Chris Ryan?

  You know, I think they give away why he's radicalized. It took his family, right?

• 29:27Andy Greenwald?

  Who?

• 29:27Chris Ryan?

  Like, some tragedy.

• 29:29Andy Greenwald?

  It's so funny, like, the level of water carrying where they're like, no, no, no. Doom is different as a villain because they took everything from him.

• 29:36Chris Ryan?

  But that's the same as what happened to Thanos, right?

• 29:38Andy Greenwald?

  It's the same as everyone.

• 29:40Andy Greenwald?

  It just, you take everything from me, I become a supervillain.

• 29:43Chris Ryan?

  Um, kind of on the superhero tip lightly, what?

• 29:47Andy Greenwald?

  Did you have any other thoughts about this new footage or about this new? Has it changed? Do you think that they did anything?

• 29:52Chris Ryan?

  I didn't, did the new footage come out? I didn't see it. They were just describing it. I read a description of it.

• 29:57Andy Greenwald?

  Look how fucking far we've fallen.

• 29:59Chris Ryan?

  I don't think that that Comic Con footage has come out yet as of press time.

• 30:03Andy Greenwald?

  Did you see, the only thing that I know, and I intentionally, I don't want spoilers, even if the movie ends up being trash.

• 30:09Chris Ryan?

  Of what?

• 30:10Andy Greenwald?

  Of Doomsday.

• 30:10Chris Ryan?

  But you've read it already.

• 30:12Andy Greenwald?

  I don't think they're doing one to one. There wasn't a story called Doomsday. We think that they.

• 30:16Chris Ryan?

  Oh, but you haven't read, like, the leaks or anything like that?

• 30:18Andy Greenwald?

  No. And, and, look at your face.

• 30:20Chris Ryan?

  I have.

• 30:21Andy Greenwald?

  Doing the wind horse. But all I'm seeing is headlines being like, oh, my god, LMFAO. All the leaks are right. So people are like not thrilled about that.

• 30:34Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I think it's a decent enough story.

• 30:37Andy Greenwald?

  You think it's a decent enough story? What's your PhD, Dr. Ryan?

• 30:41Chris Ryan?

  Public relations.

• 30:42Andy Greenwald?

  No, fucking, that's fucking right.

• 30:45Chris Ryan?

  Um, just to put a cap on the superhero side of things, there was another Lanterns trailer. There was a whole Lanterns event. It looked really cool.

• 30:54Andy Greenwald?

  You can't yada yada that.

• 30:55Chris Ryan?

  I'm not yada yadaing anything. It's a great trailer.

• 30:58Andy Greenwald?

  The trailer is so good.

• 30:59Chris Ryan?

  And it's, we were talking just a minute ago about bringing your artistic sensibility to a corporate one, or not even a corporate one, but one with like an established IP. And I would say at the, on the DC side of things right now, for as much as Gunn and Safran are kind of running DCCU.

• 31:19Chris Ryan?

  I thought this very much felt like an extension of Watchmen.

• 31:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 31:25Chris Ryan?

  And Leftovers and some previous Lindelof stuff. And I thought that was really cool. Now, maybe part of that is because it looks like they shot it, they shot it in Oklahoma, I believe.

• 31:34Andy Greenwald?

  They shot on locations, yeah.

• 31:37Chris Ryan?

  But I don't really know anything about Green Lantern, so this is all, all the, like, Ring and who gets to be what stuff is new to me.

• 31:44Andy Greenwald?

  But that's what I'm curious about, because they, they, they had a teaser that was very grounded, as they say.

• 31:49Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and then this was much more.

• 31:50Andy Greenwald?

  And from what I understand, like, the hardcore fans were like, what have they done to my beautiful green baby?

• 31:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:56Andy Greenwald?

  And then in this one, they were like, holy shit, that's Sinestro in the flesh. And yet, that's an incredibly fine line to walk, which is why I'm really praising the trailer, because I, I thought it was an incredible trailer. It looks like a very, very rare marriage between both sensibilities. But you were coming in cold. Were you put off in any way by the Ring stuff or the space?

• 32:16Chris Ryan?

  No, I think I got it. I think I understand what's at stake and, and what the Ring does. And I, I don't necessarily understand all of, like, which, which every Lantern guy is, but I thought it looked really good. And also the archetypes that these people are playing, like Kyle Chandler playing the, like, a little bit past it, hanging on to the Ring a little hard, Aaron Pierre waiting in the wings, Aaron Rodgers Brett Favre action going, Kelly McDonald.

• 32:42Andy Greenwald?

  And a lot of, you know, you, we were saying, a decade ago, I did the Banshee panel. A lot of Banshee representation here. Ulrich Thompson, who's the villain on Banshee, is playing Sinestro.

• 32:52Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 32:53Andy Greenwald?

  He seems great in the trailer, great fun actor.

• 32:55Chris Ryan?

  Sinestro is the bad guy. Is he also a Lantern?

• 32:58Andy Greenwald?

  He was a Lantern, and he was corrupted by.

• 33:01Chris Ryan?

  Did they take everything from him?

• 33:03Andy Greenwald?

  No, yellow is the bad color.

• 33:04Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 33:05Andy Greenwald?

  So now he's bad.

• 33:05Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 33:06Andy Greenwald?

  And Chris Coy, who is also in The Deuce, is on Banshee.

• 33:10Chris Ryan?

  Garrett Dillahun, Porno Jack Nathan, and Laura Linney. So.

• 33:14Andy Greenwald?

  Come on.

• 33:14Chris Ryan?

  This looks really good, man. Um, that comes August, I believe, 19th, something like that. So it's mid-August.

• 33:21Andy Greenwald?

  I would say the, I would say this is fascinating to us, both because we like the people involved and we like, and we hope for more interesting or thoughtful or creative expressions of the material that everybody is working with. I think it's going to be interesting to look at the ways two, two different levels of collaborations worked with the show when it comes out. One is, we were talking about our friend Damon Lindelof, who is one of the co-creators and worked on season one of the show.

• 33:48Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 33:49Andy Greenwald?

  Also working on season one of the show is Tom King, who is an incredibly accomplished and really innovative, and I think often brilliant comic book writer, who's written arcs on, like, Shade the Changing Man and, and Vision and Batman that have been really groundbreaking. And this is him working in a different medium. And, but the one holding him together is Chris Mundie, who made Ozark.

• 34:10Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 34:11Andy Greenwald?

  That's top-heavy as far as TV shows go, but from all accounts, it was a really successful collaboration. So I'm interested to see whose DNA or what recombinant form of, like, storytelling emerges from that. And then two, I know you were watching, because I know you're a big DCU guy, that you saw that Nathan Fillion's Guy Gardner is in this.

• 34:28Chris Ryan?

  I thought that was, that was long known.

• 34:30Andy Greenwald?

  It wasn't a surprise.

• 34:31Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 34:32Andy Greenwald?

  But that character as being like James Gunn's favorite version of a Green Lantern that he already introduced in Superman, who's just kind of like a very meta, self-aware, joking dickhead.

• 34:43Andy Greenwald?

  Being in this show, which is like, no, we're doing True Detective, and we're not worried about the larger ramifications.

• 34:48Chris Ryan?

  Could that just be like a one-episode, like, one-off? Or do you think he's like going to be showing up at the end of very traumatic scenes and being like, wow, I can't believe this is happening?

• 34:57Andy Greenwald?

  Well, that, the question is, like, what, who, what wins? When you combine two strong flavor profiles? And like, can they shade it differently and present a different version of him, kind of the way that Marvel's going to try to do with Bernthal's Punisher, who we last saw in his one-off special, basically reenacting only the gnarly parts of Infernal Affairs, right? And then now he's going to be like, gee, Spidey, time to tackle the Hulk.

• 35:22Andy Greenwald?

  We'll see.

• 35:23Chris Ryan?

  Two more TV shows that I wanted to talk about that caught trailers from Comic Con. And they, they are united in a kind of vision of the future, so I think they work well. They're retrofuturist TV shows. One is Apple TV's Neuromancer adaptation, which is William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk novel. That has been long, kind of like, many, many filmmakers have tried to unlock this, from Ridley Scott to Chris Cunningham, who directed those Apex Twin videos, to, like, Chuck Russell, who recently passed away.

• 36:00Chris Ryan?

  And, like, I think Mel Gibson was going to be attached to the Ridley Scott version at some point. But people have wanted to make this book for almost as long as it's existed, and it is hugely influential on The Matrix, on tons of stuff. You know, one of the funny things with making something like Neuromancer is that probably every five to seven years, it goes in and out of style, both in terms of the visual language of, like, what's being made now, but also what's happening in the culture in terms of packing and all this other stuff. And I thought this trailer looked awesome. So this comes from, I believe, his name, uh, it's, yeah, it's Graham Roland, who does Dark Winds and J.D. Dillard. And he, I think J.D. Dillard directed it, all 10 episodes.

• 36:44Chris Ryan?

  It's not coming out until next year, but it just looked really cool. Like, I mean, I suppose there are parts of it that kind of looked Fifth Element-y, although for some people, I don't know that that's going to be a turnoff. And Callan Turner seemed like a really stable central force in this, but more than anything, I just thought, like, the trailer is essentially cut like Fincher's Girl with a Dragon tattoo teaser, and it just had a really great vibe.

• 37:11Andy Greenwald?

  I, I mean, I thought it looked great. I think it's, it's impressive, too, to do it from like, basically, from standing still. Like, I did not have anticipation, I did not have expectations.

• 37:22Chris Ryan?

  Do you ever read any Gibson?

• 37:23Andy Greenwald?

  No, I wondered if you, were you anywhere with that?

• 37:25Chris Ryan?

  I think, I mean, I read Neuromancer.

• 37:26Andy Greenwald?

  Did you?

• 37:26Chris Ryan?

  In high school or something like that, or college, but yeah, I didn't understand a fucking thing, no, yeah.

• 37:31Andy Greenwald?

  I think the risk with material like this, that has been so beloved and so influential for so long, is that you come back to it, and it's been stripped mine for parts culturally. I think that's kind of what happened when Peacock finally got around to making an adaptation of Huxley's Brave New World.

• 37:46Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:46Andy Greenwald?

  Which is that, like, that has been, that, that mine, I mean, we're going to be talking about Diamond Mine soon with The Agency, season two, but that had been stripped.

• 37:54Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 37:55Andy Greenwald?

  You know?

• 37:55Chris Ryan?

  Viking had been there.

• 37:56Andy Greenwald?

  Viking had been there already. We were, we were too late. Which doesn't mean the attempt was like, was a bad idea, it's just when you get there and you realize that people get these references already, and convincing them that this is where they came from is tricky. So seeing the Neuromancer trailer, there are going to be people who are like, oh, they're just doing The Matrix, but The Matrix was doing this.

• 38:15Chris Ryan?

  Yes, I thought that was wise on the part of the trailer to have some text that, like, pushed forward the idea of, like, this is the thing that invented all this stuff.

• 38:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 38:25Chris Ryan?

  And I, I just think it looked, I thought it looked really good. You know, one of the things that was neat about it was, even though there's some images that will look very reminiscent of, say, Blade Runner. There's also stuff that, like, the woman with the crazy sharp nails and the glass eyes, like, like, there were some really striking visuals in this that I thought were like, very, very cool.

• 38:50Andy Greenwald?

  I think that the, one of the things, the tipping point for adaptations like this is how you approach the material with hindsight and history. Meaning, if you make it and try to imbue it with the same kind of cautionary, I mean, William Gibson did not write it as a cautionary tale. He's like, always been kind of visionary and future-minded. But you can't approach this text as like, ah, this was a warning sign from the town crier, because we're in a totally different version of actual reality now. But if you approach it as like, the bones here for something very cool and compelling a story are worth doing, then you do it. And it just, the bones are good. Like, the cast is deep and kind of impressive. We've got Mark Strong, Peter Sarsgaard, the guy Dane DeHaan.

• 39:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:33Andy Greenwald?

  Clements Poizie, Andre DeShields from Hadestown.

• 39:37Chris Ryan?

  There you go.

• 39:37Andy Greenwald?

  Big box office hit this weekend, Hadestown. Do you want to talk about that?

• 39:42Andy Greenwald?

  But I, I thought it looked cool. Also, have you ever heard of this guy, Aubrey Drake Graham? He's an up-and-comer, he's a producer on it.

• 39:50Chris Ryan?

  Did he get a piece of this? Wow.

• 39:54Chris Ryan?

  Another trailer that came out, another seminal piece of retrofuturism and, you know, a, a story that we just can't quit is Blade Runner. So we've got Ridley Scott's several versions of the first film, we've got Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049, and then a long gestating, I feel like this has been announced, this was announced a long time ago, Blade Runner 2099, uh, which is a new Amazon series that I believe comes out in the fall, starring Hunter Schafer and Michelle Yeoh. And I would say.

• 40:29Chris Ryan?

  I'm pretty into these two performers. And I really like just saying the word replicants, much like Cousin Richie on the bear. But the idea that this takes place 50 years after the Villeneuve film.

• 40:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 40:45Chris Ryan?

  And I would say they haven't iterated much on the architecture, or look, or feel, or design of this movie.

• 40:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 40:53Chris Ryan?

  Or this story, considering the fact that it would be close to 70 years of time taking place. So I'm curious about it. I'm definitely gonna check it out. But it almost felt like they repopulated the sets and skin of Blade Runner 2049 to some extent.

• 41:14Andy Greenwald?

  When we talk about the agency, and we're gonna talk about it momentarily, we've talked a lot about how it is kind of like an orphan of a different time that somehow survived. It's like little Cal L. That's a DCU reference.

• 41:26Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 41:27Andy Greenwald?

  Sent away from the dying planet. Because it was built, it was put together to be a Showtime flagship show, and is now somehow existing in this like post-Skydance merger Paramount Plus timeline.

• 41:38Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 41:40Andy Greenwald?

  I kind of feel the same way about this Blade Runner show, which exists mainly because there was such, and you know, this is now eight or nine years ago, but like the same, the same like, we must, we must control these rare earth minerals slash IP of like, we must just continue to iterate things that people know and turn them into TV shows that brought us Lord of the Rings, it brought us much of the MCU's failed Disney plus slate. Like, the desire to get something into production was really strong. Separate and apart from whether there was something worth telling or the audience appetite was there for it. And then there are just these other things that just, I feel for the people who made the show,

• 42:22Andy Greenwald?

  because it was, you know, it was pre-strike, they were gonna film in Ireland Belfast, and they had like the sets built, and they were spending their tax credit, and then the strike happened, and they'd spent their money, then they moved the entire thing to Prague. Like, this is very modern television.

• 42:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:36Andy Greenwald?

  And then all of this to debut the trailer and just confirm that it's a limited series.

• 42:41Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 42:42Andy Greenwald?

  Which was, they can tell you that that's what they intended for it to be, but nobody intends for that.

• 42:47Chris Ryan?

  It's also an interesting story to me about who controls this particular piece of IP, because for, there are two things, Ridley Scott, who's getting up there in years.

• 43:00Andy Greenwald?

  But trying to outrun the devil.

• 43:02Chris Ryan?

  But has his hand still on Blade Runner and Alien?

• 43:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 43:09Chris Ryan?

  And I think has sometimes a kind of, not contentious, complicated relationship with letting these things go to other people.

• 43:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 43:17Chris Ryan?

  Now, I don't know how much of it is rumor and how much of it is real, that like, he had a very like, looking over your shoulder relationship to Fede Alvarez on Alien Romulus, and that is partially why Alvarez is not coming back for a new film. And I believe they went through another director, who was also like, I'm not gonna do this if like, if he really wants to do it. But I think what he really wants to do is finish the Fassbender story with the prequels. So, you know, it's just one of those things where it's like, he, for better or for worse, has some sense of ownership over these things, and perhaps actual technical contractual ownership over these stories. So you're not gonna really get any of this stuff done unless you say,

• 44:02Chris Ryan?

  from executive producer Ridley Scott, before the title.

• 44:06Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think he's turning 89 this year?

• 44:08Chris Ryan?

  I do know that.

• 44:09Andy Greenwald?

  That's wild.

• 44:10Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Yeah.

• 44:12Andy Greenwald?

  Is he gonna run for president?

• 44:13Chris Ryan?

  No, but like, when you, when you have older parents, I think you're just like.

• 44:17Andy Greenwald?

  This is what I'm saying.

• 44:18Chris Ryan?

  How the fu, like, my mom couldn't operate Apple TV. Like, how the fuck can Ridley Scott direct Gladiator 2?

• 44:25Andy Greenwald?

  I might have something to do with, you know, anecdotally, we've heard that like, he does have like, someone providing him with caffeinated drinks for half the day, and then maybe a little alcoholic drink in the afternoon. Like, he is on a very like regimented schedule of what he likes.

• 44:38Chris Ryan?

  Me too.

• 44:39Andy Greenwald?

  Honestly, I know, but I think the difference is someone is just there to provide it for you.

• 44:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Must be nice.

• 44:45Andy Greenwald?

  It must be. I think it must be. I, I, I don't know. I don't know. I think.

• 44:52Chris Ryan?

  You a big Blade Runner guy at all?

• 44:54Andy Greenwald?

  I love the first movie. I was pretty into the sequel.

• 44:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. A good Gosling.

• 45:01Andy Greenwald?

  A good Gosling, but again, like, the franchise, I mean, it's in, in the moment, I was like, this is a perfect vehicle for him. And then now in retrospect, I'm like, the, his engagement with the franchise model, I feel like I wish he was doing other things with it, but this is the world that.

• 45:19Chris Ryan?

  Who?

• 45:19Andy Greenwald?

  The Gosling. No, no, no, the Gosling. At the time.

• 45:22Chris Ryan?

  Oh, and he's like.

• 45:23Andy Greenwald?

  If you look at it as a Villeneuve movie.

• 45:25Chris Ryan?

  I see what you're saying.

• 45:25Andy Greenwald?

  You know, like, that, the one, there are the two paths, it seems, for contemporary actors, and they are to do the DiCaprio and just try to only work with the best directors, and, and avoid superhero capes and tights. Or there's the like, look, man, I just gotta, I gotta establish a beachhead here in Sokovia, and then I can do work on the side.

• 45:45Chris Ryan?

  That was always like Sam Jackson said, Bruce Willis told him, get a character that you can go back to every three to five years, so that like, you never have to worry about ups and downs in the box office.

• 45:55Andy Greenwald?

  I think that Pedro Pascal is doing that, but what people don't realize is that character is cinema cellist Alex whatever.

• 46:03Chris Ryan?

  Alex Behemoth.

• 46:04Andy Greenwald?

  In Beh, Alex Behemoth. That at the end of the movie, he opens the cello case and his costume is in there.

• 46:10Chris Ryan?

  Doom is in there.

• 46:11Andy Greenwald?

  And he flies off.

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• 46:43Chris Ryan?

  I wanna talk to you about The Agency, season two. Now, we usually don't do wrap-ups like this, where there's no sort of defined which episodes are we talking about.

• 46:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 46:53Chris Ryan?

  So for anybody who hasn't watched The Agency, season two, you'll find this conversation useless, but we wanted to knock something out that we felt passionate about on a Monday, because I think that Dragon was a bit divisive this week for us.

• 47:06Andy Greenwald?

  Not between us.

• 47:07Chris Ryan?

  Not between us. I mean, like, I think between what they, what they offered up and what we, what we liked about it. So I have a couple of kind of like, superlatives questions about the season itself for you.

• 47:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 47:21Chris Ryan?

  I, I wanted to ask what you kind of took away from the season as a whole. I will say upfront.

• 47:27Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:28Chris Ryan?

  That I thought it was excellent.

• 47:31Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 47:32Chris Ryan?

  It didn't feel excellent.

• 47:34Andy Greenwald?

  What do you mean?

• 47:35Chris Ryan?

  I really did have, I had trouble with the remake element of it, I think. I don't think, I don't think that this is, I wish they had taken more chances. And I wish they had done some different things with the characters, and I wish maybe it didn't feel as like, I was trying to, I couldn't even think of a metaphor or like an illusion, like what is, what is the experience of watching something so specific, being so brilliantly and thoughtfully remade, but so Catholicly?

• 48:09Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 48:10Chris Ryan?

  That you're like, okay, and then I remember, like, Henry does this, and then this happens, and then this happens. And I think when you're watching a suspense thriller, to have all of suspense taken out of it, and this show is made much more like a suspense thriller, rather than the French kind of like, what makes a man a spy? And who is he? And what is he?

• 48:32Andy Greenwald?

  Keep going.

• 48:33Chris Ryan?

  No, you know what I mean? Like, this is much more like, we have to go get Viking, we are in a trap.

• 48:38Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I do think that, and we talked about this with season one, too, that, that one of the slight tweaks, that I think is the smart one, is that when you take a show that is, and we're talking about Le Bureau, which everyone should watch, it's one of the, I don't know, probably one of my top 10 television series ever, definitely the best spy series ever.

• 48:55Andy Greenwald?

  Which is about French, the French intelligence service. And they are not, they are not the biggest elephant in the room. And so when you make the same show about the power that everyone else reacts to, about the CIA, you have to tweak some things. And I do think that the tweaking towards being more of a cut and dry power show and an action show makes sense.

• 49:17Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 49:18Andy Greenwald?

  But that is a very subtle tweak, that is not necessarily, you know, as granular as I think you would like. And I agree with you. My experience with.

• 49:25Chris Ryan?

  I didn't, I don't think they leaned enough into that.

• 49:27Andy Greenwald?

  Well, yeah, I think.

• 49:31Andy Greenwald?

  I think a number of things. I think it is frustrating that a show built on the best bones you possibly could acquire through IP purchasing or transferring and then was kitted out with just a god tier cast. I mean, Richard Gere and Jeffrey Wright on the show-

• 49:55Chris Ryan?

  It's ridiculous.

• 49:56Andy Greenwald?

  Are on a different level than most performers on television and I could watch them forever and I wish that I could.

• 50:02Chris Ryan?

  Richard Gere just doing work a day, like, what do you want? You're in my office stuff, like, but now get out of my office is, it's ridiculous how good he is.

• 50:11Andy Greenwald?

  But also, I'm here for the Gere-issance. I just saw, do you know that he's starring in the adaptation of the Lisa Holliday novel Asymmetry?

• 50:18Chris Ryan?

  I didn't.

• 50:18Andy Greenwald?

  Which is about a young woman's romance with Philip Roth when he was 40 years older.

• 50:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I saw pictures of him filming that. Who's the woman in the film?

• 50:25Andy Greenwald?

  Diana Silvers, who was, she was on, she was in Booksmart.

• 50:30Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 50:30Andy Greenwald?

  She is, she is accurately 40 years younger than him. Comments were so cool about this movie, I gotta say. They were really looking for the nuance in the literary adaptation. Anyway, I'm just saying, late period Gere, where he just, he's still like a completely unique, beautiful and charismatic individual, but he looks so fucking over it, is incredible. It's just like, he got a little extra, he got an extra color in his palette to play with and I think it's amazing. But it is kind of frustrating that a show with so much pre-built going into it, to my mind, having now watched both seasons, really took a while to find its own footing. My experience with it was, I was very impressed with season

• 51:13Andy Greenwald?

  one, very impressed with the cast, very impressed with the accurate adaptation, very excited that people would be discovering an incredible story. But it didn't rise beyond the level of its adaptation. When season two started and it was dumped unceremoniously and we started getting feedback from people who binged it, that it was incredible, it's taken a leap. After three episodes, I didn't fully agree because what I felt was that same sense of like, the best karaoke performance I've ever seen in my life.

• 51:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:40Andy Greenwald?

  Sometime around four or five-

• 51:43Chris Ryan?

  I think when Owen goes to Africa.

• 51:45Andy Greenwald?

  It elevated for me. And suddenly, I noticed that it was doing things, not just in like, differentiating in terms of adaptation, but finding new parcels and packets of ideas and themes and emotion in the softer character moments between scenes. You could feel it at the beginning of season two, when the, you know, Owen is hooking up with Rain, who's the office, who's an assistant in the office and then, you know, the party, where you get a little sense of, and by the way, the Owen character in the French version, as kind of like, the office guy who is just inexplicably an absolute swordsman.

• 52:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:18Andy Greenwald?

  Even after his grievous injury. That's canon, that's canonical. But, but there was just more room to grow there. And like, the Blair character, who's there throughout the season one and then, and I should, I should be saying-

• 52:31Chris Ryan?

  Embrun Razia, yeah.

• 52:32Andy Greenwald?

  I think she's amazing. And I love the way, the cadence that she's chosen to speak in this character, that both, I think, help, probably helps with her accent, because like, almost everyone else on the show, she is English playing an American. But adds a different, very subtle note that suddenly you realize you've been listening to the whole time. So, the fact that it, I sit here, week to week with you, and I celebrate and champion shows that find their footing, that kind of lean into what's working for them and suddenly they're, it's like a fireworks show of an ensemble. It's very odd that a show this expensive and this like, heavily mapped and, you know, and non, it's not exactly an, there's nothing improvised really about it.

• 53:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:14Andy Greenwald?

  But it, that it had, it found a spark 15 episodes into his run, its run is both maddening and also thrilling. Because I thought the run from 205 to 210 was some of the best TV I've seen this year. I thought 208 was just goaded as an episode, on its own terms, with its smaller, with its small tweaks. And it kills me because, I mean, we should talk about the content before we do what I'm about to do, but like, I think this is all we're gonna get and I think that sucks.

• 53:43Chris Ryan?

  I, I wonder if that was maybe in the back of my mind as I, as I finished this season, but yeah, like, this is, this is a strange critique, because what I'm saying is, they did an excellent job remaking one of my favorite TV shows ever. And it's not the same feeling as when you're watching a Star Wars sequel and you're like, this is essentially New Hope. Okay.

• 54:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, oh right.

• 54:08Chris Ryan?

  You know what I mean?

• 54:08Andy Greenwald?

  Like the shadow-

• 54:09Chris Ryan?

  The gestures and the large movements of this story are basically a New Hope. This, this is literally The Bureau.

• 54:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 54:17Chris Ryan?

  And I think because of the genre and because of the literal story that it's telling, at a certain point, like, even if it's, what I'm watching is thrilling, the experience of watching it becomes a little less than average because I'm like, yes, and I know exactly what's gonna happen.

• 54:38Andy Greenwald?

  I think, for me, this is, this is very interesting to me, because that was definitely my reaction through season one. Season two, even as I remembered, and we should probably also say, like, I have not revisited that series, I probably, I would love to re-watch it, but my sense, memory of like, the word, the lyrics coming back to me, is not instantaneous. I did not remember the chess scene that was gonna end the season until like, 209.

• 55:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:04Andy Greenwald?

  And then I got excited about it. For me, the difference was, once I started to feel the idiosyncrasies and specificity of the emotions of these characters, not of the woman in the office, but of Catherine Waterston's Naomi, and who she was and how she's playing the part and what her role in this is, it reinvigorated my engagement with the scene work.

• 55:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:28Andy Greenwald?

  So that I knew broadly, like, what was gonna happen with Hassan Zomini and like, his very bad espionage and why he gets busted and everything.

• 55:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I think also like-

• 55:38Andy Greenwald?

  But in that moment, I was on the edge of my seat again, because I enjoyed that kid's performance and I was just locked in on the stakes for them.

• 55:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:46Andy Greenwald?

  You know, to your point, like, I knew that Danny is getting away, but the show does a couple things that I, maybe they did it in the French version, I don't remember.

• 55:55Chris Ryan?

  I think, I mean, I don't even remember how it would have played out in the French, I don't remember how it plays out in the French version of like, who is Richardson in the French version, and what, how that goes, like-

• 56:08Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I don't think he executes him.

• 56:09Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 56:09Andy Greenwald?

  He, in, in the French version, Malatrou, who is Matthew Kassavitz's character, Martian in this version, is, he betrays France to America.

• 56:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:21Andy Greenwald?

  And the Americans are the, yes, to Buddy Garrity from Friday Night Lights, to the Cowboys, the CIA. And, and that adds a whole other element. Of like, are these our allies or are they just the bullies who we owe things to?

• 56:34Chris Ryan?

  I thought the whole, like, the, the China aspect of, of, of this guy's rise through MI6 was very cool. Of Richardson's rise through MI6 was very cool. I think there were two plots that, that I found very, uh, difficult to like sift through again, which was one, very minor, but Martian's relationship with his daughter, and two, the Danny plot. Because the Danny plot was so close to-

• 57:01Andy Greenwald?

  Let's do one then the other. The daughter stuff was, to my mind, much better this season.

• 57:06Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 57:06Andy Greenwald?

  It was, it was minimized, it was better chosen. Like, I thought that the moments, and they made a joke about whether Fassbender could smile or not, or whether he could laugh or not. The, the agency of season one, and the way they overweighted that, those scenes, I think would have, it surprised me that they didn't actually steal directly from Le Bureau, which if you remember, the entire second season's framing device is him writing his confession diary to his daughter.

• 57:37Chris Ryan?

  While he's in a hospital bed?

• 57:38Andy Greenwald?

  That's season one, well, it's season one, we see, I think it's season one, he's in the hospital selling out to the Americans, but we don't know what he's being, who's interrogating him and why he's in a hospital bed. That's the, that's the conceit. In this season, I believe it's the, it's the confession. I thought it showed great restraint, that it didn't do that for the entire season.

• 58:01Chris Ryan?

  I agree.

• 58:02Andy Greenwald?

  And the things that it did pull from Le Bureau made me excited, like, like, in this case, Poppy's relationship with Dozer, is her name in the American version, but in the French version, the daughter has a relation, a surprising relationship with one of the CIA, one of the minders. And it's sort of like this weird found family thing. I think the show-

• 58:26Andy Greenwald?

  Did such, well, let me address the other thing before we get to the other compliments. The other thing was the Danny plot. I found it broadly as interesting as the first one. And this is, maybe it's just personal taste. I think Sarah Lightfoot Lyon, who plays Danny, I liked her. I was more compelled by her as an actor.

• 58:45Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 58:45Andy Greenwald?

  No disrespect to the Frenchwoman from the original series, but I just thought she has such a vibrancy and, and passion that you see, like, she can play big so that when she's playing small, you're really, really laser focused on watching her. I did think, and I can't tell if it's just the nature of the show. In my mind, the second season was so expansive of Le Bureau. And I remember what felt like really long set pieces and a lot of time spent in Iran in different ways, slow building what that relationship became. And it felt rushed in this season. I don't know if that's rushed because I was fast forwarding in my mind.

• 59:25Chris Ryan?

  Maybe we're like in some weird ways, the wrong people to talk about the agency.

• 59:27Andy Greenwald?

  Probably.

• 59:28Chris Ryan?

  Because like, I don't know that we can untether ourselves to the original show. You know, I'll talk about some stuff that really worked for me.

• 59:35Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 59:36Chris Ryan?

  The entire Valhalla thing and Owen and Robin, I thought was awesome. And I thought tying it into American right wing extremism, but also like letting Owen kind of be this desk jockey who gets cocky and wants to become a field agent, not unlike the, the original series. But Magaro is so good in this show.

• 59:58Andy Greenwald?

  He really is.

• 1:00:00Chris Ryan?

  I specifically really enjoyed his conversations, brief as they may have been, with Harriet Sampson, the Dr. Blake.

• 1:00:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:10Chris Ryan?

  With, I, I thought she brought such a cool quirk to it. I mean, that is one of the things that you really have to get around is the idea of like a therapist walking around a spy agency and getting people who keep secrets for a living to just constantly speak and total vulnerabilities. But I thought her scenes with Fassbender and her scenes in Magaro were, were some of my favorites.

• 1:00:33Chris Ryan?

  But the entire, the Africa, the Central African Republic, diamond mining, Antwerp, like, all of that stuff was really awesome.

• 1:00:43Andy Greenwald?

  Shout out Clay Crawford from Rectify.

• 1:00:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:44Andy Greenwald?

  As Viking. The, you mentioned the, the, the therapy scenes. Like, you and I read these books, spy fiction, and watch these shows for the, for the clear out ISO moments when Len Diden or John Le Carre or recently Oliver Harris can really let us know what's going on with these people. And what excited me about those scenes, especially in the back half of the season, was you could feel the Butterworths starting to, starting to vibe out on that a little bit.

• 1:01:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:12Andy Greenwald?

  And there's the Dr. Sampson scene with Naomi where she says, and I, I wanted to write this down before we did our pod, where she says, "Two sorts of people are drawn to this work, those who wish to be someone else and those who are unable to be a person in the first place." And it's like, my God, that's George Smiley's music.

• 1:01:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean? It's just connecting it to this, to this great tradition of like sweeping, bombastic psychological statements about the broken people who take it upon themselves to fix the world. And the show elevated on that.

• 1:01:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah, the, the, there's a, a couple of moments also spy to spy in, in this season, but specifically there's one, it's kind of when everything is about to collapse on Henry and he and Naomi are walking from the floor into his office and she's like, "Let's go, like, let's bring down Martian." And he's like, "You can't go too soon because of this and you can't wait too long because then you become a target." And he's just like trying-

• 1:02:10Andy Greenwald?

  You miss an apex predator.

• 1:02:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, basically like trying to explain why they have to time their move against Martian perfectly. And they, they don't time it perfectly because obviously the MI6 guys are working against them.

• 1:02:22Andy Greenwald?

  What about Naomi and, and Osman, played by Kurt Eguyan, who's also on House of the Dragon? And like, that, that's an incredible scene where they're both saying, "Let's not do the thing that you do."

• 1:02:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, let's not like play for, play for like-

• 1:02:35Andy Greenwald?

  Positioning.

• 1:02:36Chris Ryan?

  Positioning, yeah.

• 1:02:37Andy Greenwald?

  And, you know, the, the thing about this show, I, again, I agree with you. I wish they went further with this, but it is so, like, all great, truly great spy fiction. It is very unsentimental about the way that people just get crushed up and used. And that's what I meant by like the Danny scene where, you know, the rescue, we kind of knew was going to happen, but the moment of almost needlessly killing the gas station attendant and then seeing the photo of him with his family laughing.

• 1:03:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:05Andy Greenwald?

  And, and there is nothing heroic about what any of these people are doing in a way that I find really compelling.

• 1:03:12Andy Greenwald?

  Broadly speaking, I, I'd like to think that we use our platform here for, for good when possible.

• 1:03:18Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:03:19Andy Greenwald?

  I would like to implore someone more powerful and richer than us to pick the show up and make more. We do not know that it is canceled. It is not officially canceled. There could be negotiations being made right now.

• 1:03:32Chris Ryan?

  And it might not be that Paramount doesn't want it as much as like that now because of the way, whatever reasons, like this, this cast is like, "I, I'm not going to be available for nine months to live in England."

• 1:03:42Andy Greenwald?

  It, it's just strikes me as such an, it would strike me as such a deeply unfortunate fumble. Things happen all the time and good shows get canceled and good stories don't get resolved and good intentions don't get met. But you've put together something here that is not only incredibly special, but is kind of just getting going.

• 1:04:01Chris Ryan?

  That's, it's on the precipice of, of being awesome.

• 1:04:04Andy Greenwald?

  And the difference is, it's not asking some other rich, pocketed tech company or streaming service to take a chance on the Butterworth brothers, who by the way, studios have taken chances on before.

• 1:04:18Chris Ryan?

  Clearly Paramount is, is very much in business with them, yeah.

• 1:04:20Andy Greenwald?

  It's the fact that you have a roadmap. You have three more seasons of one of the greatest shows of all time to draw from. And if your concerns were that the show was too chilly, too cerebral, too this or too that, the end of this season should remind you that the Fassbender action season is beginning. And he clearly likes doing that stuff. And frankly, he, the fact that Matthew Kassivitz was doing it, I found really interesting.

• 1:04:50Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:04:50Andy Greenwald?

  Because it's not the natural fit or what you'd expect. Fassbender seems like he's waited 19 episodes.

• 1:04:57Chris Ryan?

  That dude loves wearing hooded sweatshirts and executing dudes.

• 1:04:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. It just seems like he's waited 19 episodes to go full Prince of Persia. Do you know what I mean? Like, so you have this.

• 1:05:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:06Andy Greenwald?

  You have it all teed up. Let, let them bring it home, Mr. Ellison. Let them finish this.

• 1:05:14Chris Ryan?

  Are you willing to change your, uh, your feeling on the merger if they bring this back?

• 1:05:19Andy Greenwald?

  Well, look, I think we've all, tempers have cooled. There's a cooling off period. We've all paused here. I, but I agree, I will accept-

• 1:05:25Chris Ryan?

  I don't know Rob Bonta.

• 1:05:26Andy Greenwald?

  I will accept a temporary restraining order.

• 1:05:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:29Andy Greenwald?

  On my penchant for class warfare. If they, I, I think we, when we first talked about this, we were talking about how, no matter how we felt specifically about the show or the season, like, we just feel like in a multi-billion dollar global arms race for content, there should be a place for a show like this.

• 1:05:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:48Andy Greenwald?

  But what's maddening is you have it. I know it must be incredibly top heavy and expensive and this cast is outrageous and shooting in five countries and navigating people's schedules and paying George Cludney and Grant Haslaw their EP fees and everything else.

• 1:06:00Chris Ryan?

  Haslaw directed a couple of episodes.

• 1:06:01Andy Greenwald?

  And he did really well. There was some beautiful direction in this episode where like, there was a shot he had where stuff's going down and then it just isolates Naomi in the bullpen. The action was really well directed. It's not an easy show to make, I'm sure, but like, you guys are making it. And, and yet, when I went back to, to review some of the episodes this morning briefly, I, again, I don't, no one knows what this means, but it's not even in Paramount's top 10.

• 1:06:28Andy Greenwald?

  I, I feel like, I'm not saying these, these services aren't on the up and up, but I feel like Apple, at least, is like, if there's a moment for a show to be doing well, they'll give it a little top 10 nudge.

• 1:06:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I, I, you know, this, this speaks to the difficulty in like getting people, everybody who watches Lioness should watch The Agency. You know what I mean? Like that, that should, there should not be a huge disparity between the audience for Lioness coming back next week and, and The Agency. Like, if you, if you enjoy spy stories, if you enjoy complicated people trying to figure out their allegiances, like, you would love this show. But it's a little bit denser and there's fewer action set pieces for sure. And there's way more plot lines. I mean, I started to bill about it this weekend and he was just like, it's just, there's just too many people on the show. You know, and I was like, all right, well, I think at a different time, like, if this was up against like After the Sopranos, you'd be able to follow it.

• 1:07:24Chris Ryan?

  But like, something has kind of changed about the mechanics of watching these.

• 1:07:28Andy Greenwald?

  It, it's also, I'll say that there were, I'm not pretending the show's perfect and I'm not pretending it was a perfectly positioned adaptation. Because I think the thing that really hooks people into Le Bureau is that initially, before it's anything else, it's a love story about star-crossed lovers trying to get back to each other.

• 1:07:47Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:07:47Andy Greenwald?

  And then it becomes everything else. And I think Jodie Smith Turner really steps up in this season.

• 1:07:53Chris Ryan?

  I thought she was quite excellent this season.

• 1:07:55Andy Greenwald?

  I thought she was incredible.

• 1:07:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:56Andy Greenwald?

  And there's a lot more road for that character to travel as well. But I, I have to say that I've never fully been invested, because Fassbender is like, like Paul Lewis seems like a, kind of a chilly prick too. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:08:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:09Andy Greenwald?

  Like, I, I, you don't see him turn it on and turn it off and they don't have many opportunities to rekindle the spark. So I don't feel, as an audience member, the same like yearning desire for this to work despite all of the betrayal and treason. And I think that that might be a necessary building block to get people to buy in so that they can understand. I mean, there's a line, there's a line in this episode right before Fassbender executes Paddington's dad. Where I had to put the subtitles on and he's basically saying, "How long have you been taking the chairman's?" And there's a very specific Chinese word.

• 1:08:42Chris Ryan?

  Rembi.

• 1:08:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, of like the, like quid pro quo, like, like, like, and I'm like, you're asking the audience to unpack that line with or without subtitles. Like, good for you.

• 1:08:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:53Andy Greenwald?

  But that is not a Taylor Sheridan show in terms of what it asks of the audience.

• 1:08:56Chris Ryan?

  I do wonder whether or not I would feel differently about it. Because I think that the Fassbender's casting, for as much as I adore him as a performer, is challenging at times. And I do wonder what would happen if you had gone with like, say, Peter Sarsgaard, who is a very Matthew Cassavitz-esque American actor. And, you know, perhaps a little bit older than you would want to play Martian, but still, like, has that, like, looks like an English teacher, but, you know, moves like a killer. You know, that, it had, there's, you see Michael Fassbender, you're like, you are the fucking killer. You are literally the killer in the David Fincher movie. I have no doubt that you're like, eating protein in the backseat of a car, getting ready to kill the head of MI6.

• 1:09:40Andy Greenwald?

  And when everybody is like, um, you're the greatest liar who's ever existed. I'm like, yes, he is. It's the first thing I think about him. Or, I mean, thank God, you know, Viking, it's a tough way to go, although if you go out doing what you love, and he did love chess and overthrowing African republics. But when he's just like, you are not a weasel. I'm like, yeah, if that guy got off the plane and it's like, I work for a diamond merchant in Antwerp, but I'm not even the boss. I would keep him away from all sharp objects. I would keep him away from magazines, thinking he was going to Jason Bourne my ass.

• 1:10:16Chris Ryan?

  Um, Viking, man, lived as he died as he lived. Uh, let's take a quick break and then we're gonna do House of the Dragon really quick. Okay, we're back. Let's talk about Dragon. Uh, we don't need to belabor this one because I imagine you did not care for it.

• 1:10:32Andy Greenwald?

  Wasn't my favorite hour.

• 1:10:33Chris Ryan?

  Uh, nor was it Malin Joes.

• 1:10:35Andy Greenwald?

  I'd like to hear about this.

• 1:10:36Chris Ryan?

  They, well, you can on House of R. Uh, they, they talked extensively about, last night, I talked to Thrones about like, their issues with this episode, some of which were adaptative. Is that a word?

• 1:10:47Andy Greenwald?

  I'll allow it. Emily Wilson would not allow it.

• 1:10:50Chris Ryan?

  Some of them were just basic storytelling, like, how did that guy get from there to there? And successive scenes. Um, enjoyed the Laris Aegon stuff as usual. Uh, RIP to my guy, Kristen Cole.

• 1:11:05Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I want to talk about that.

• 1:11:06Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Detective Grasso, may you, may you, may you continue to patrol Bucks County.

• 1:11:11Andy Greenwald?

  I don't want to spoil anything, but he survived worse.

• 1:11:15Chris Ryan?

  That's true.

• 1:11:15Andy Greenwald?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:11:16Chris Ryan?

  That's true. Uh, what did you make of this episode?

• 1:11:19Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I, I guess I'm really curious more to hear your perspective, a little bit in the know, a little bit on the outs, you know, because I didn't particularly find, I didn't find anything particularly different in this episode than the ones that have been boring me for the last few weeks. And so I don't really want to belabor those points. It's just, it's a lot more like, now we're here, now we're there, now we're here, now we're there, and court business.

• 1:11:42Chris Ryan?

  My issue with it was just that they're, they're having the same conversations every episode.

• 1:11:45Andy Greenwald?

  Over and over. Particularly the Rhaenyra, Alicent conversations being the same ones.

• 1:11:49Chris Ryan?

  And the Rhaenyra, Daemon conversation. And, you know, like, it's a lot of people being like, what should we do next?

• 1:11:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. And, and holding their breath for the big things they have to deploy. And so you can almost feel the same hand of, no pun intended, of, of plotting that, you know, put the battles at the top and then tries to, basically tries to play with timing and surprise. And you feel that with what happens to Sir Kristen Cole. Um, but I was just sort of, felt very little from that. Like, it did, I, it felt more manipulative to me to have it begin an episode, because what I felt was, the, the, the galaxy brain plotting of like, the audience won't expect this. And yet, what it did was just more remind me that this was a road to nowhere anyway. And, and now, the show has highlighted that. The show has

• 1:12:38Andy Greenwald?

  not pretended, you know, his speech last week about how we're all going on a suicide mission now, did not make it seem like there was a happy ending in store. But the, the, the, the general feeling that I struggle with week to week, and frankly, I'm sure people are as tired of hearing me say it as I am of, of saying it, is like, I feel like the show presents a series of boxes and then checks them.

• 1:12:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Boxes is a word that I want to jump on here, because I think I've tried to articulate this in various ways over the couple of weeks. And this is obviously like, I think that this is my favorite season of the show, favorite. Uh, but it's unfair to compare it one to one to Game of Thrones, but Game of Thrones probably didn't have a spectacularly different scene to scene, um, difference in what people were doing, you know, often talking, you know. Uh, I think what I'm craving is either scenery, or like, I, I wish that more of these conversations could be happening in different places than

• 1:13:41Chris Ryan?

  throne room, chambers, Harrenhal, like, in the dark woods somewhere. Like, part of the thing that made Thrones so great is because they would put these pairs of characters, uh, out on the road somewhere, trying to get from one place to the north, or from Essos back to whatever, and, you know, Dorne and all these places. It was like, such an expansive portrait of this imaginary world, that no matter what people were talking about, it was cool to look at. And it seemed like what they were looking at or where they were would influence the nature of the conversations and change the nature of the relationships. And because so many of these characters are trapped by their own power, I mean, even

• 1:14:24Chris Ryan?

  Ormond has basically been in like, a dining room for three episodes now, uh, smelling things.

• 1:14:30Andy Greenwald?

  Eating or burping. See, they're going in or out.

• 1:14:32Chris Ryan?

  And for as exciting as that sword fight was, I thought that was an awesome scene. I was like, yeah, but it's like, this is, I, I don't know, it's just, this is all happening in one of three places. And I, I think one thing that Thrones really successfully avoided was, even though the battles were huge takeout episodes, I don't really, I, I never really sat around being like, when's the battle gonna happen on Game of Thrones? Until the very end. And on Dragon, I feel like they're almost overshadowing the entire series.

• 1:15:04Andy Greenwald?

  Reverse engineered the wrong way. We were talking, this is the third reference to Banshee in this podcast, Lonnie Perister, who directed and started, I think started his career on Banshee, directed this episode. He's directed other episodes of Dragon. The action sequences are incredibly well done. There are moments, you know, like, just, just like, that, that whole opening sequence where there, there's the ambush and the surprise attack. If, if you were someone who cared deeply about sword or mace combat, you would be so delighted with this episode, you would have nothing else to complain about. That's not my bag. And frankly, coming off of The Odyssey, I'm ready to address all of this town's Foley experts with a plea of like, can we find a different sound for swords entering people's

• 1:15:45Andy Greenwald?

  bodies? Like, I think that we iterated a lot in the last decade, and it's real crunchy now. And you really get the sense of metal on metal into metal on bone. And there's never a stabbing that isn't just like, like, I remember like, doing, when I was in Foley for my show, and you see a character smoke a cigarette, they're like, let's sweeten that cherry up a little bit, you know? And you make every cigarette's sound like it's the greatest, yeah, it's like, you fucking, it's like, it sounds like Matthew McConaughey breathing in True Detective. Um, they're doing that with the sword fighting. And God bless them, but like, maybe we can do something different. Like, we're, we're ready. I don't know what that sound is. Maybe experts will come in and say, well, it's a perfect combination of like, metal on metal and like, wood snapping, and also, I don't know, kittens dying. I

• 1:16:26Andy Greenwald?

  like, that's like, very, very accurate. I'm sure. But, uh, it's, it's, that, that is what the show excels at. And I think that the, the larger thing that will continue to be, I'm not, I'm not pretending. I don't like the show. I've never liked the show. You can tune out now if you want. But I will continue to say that the idea of stakes is still often misunderstood by people when we're talking about television shows. And the reason, one, there are many reasons why Game of Thrones was excellent for a wide audience for many years. But on a very, very, very, um, specific level, its reason for greatness is the same reason why the pit is great, which is because you feel like you were watching something where the stake, not the stakes, where the, um, yeah, well,

• 1:17:09Andy Greenwald?

  in this case, like, the stakes are that the world or someone's life will never be the same after this. In Game of Thrones, it was like, a prophecy is going to change the world forever. Winter is coming, the status quo is going to end, and we are going to tell that story of the end of this version of this world. And we didn't know what, we didn't know where it was coming from, or how it would affect people, but we saw people journeying with that knowledge towards that, towards that end. You know, similarly, like, there's a version of a show like Lanterns, which we're excited about, which would be like, guess what? These guys are space cops. And this year's season is, there's a space cop murderer. Or, it's like, this guy is no longer going to be a space cop, and this is his replacement, and this is the most existential threat these space cops have ever faced in

• 1:17:54Andy Greenwald?

  the history of their space copping existence. I'm leaning in. What are your intentions here? And the fact with House of the Dragon is, the lesson every character learns every episode is that it can always get worse. And what's the meta story here? I mean, a macro story here? I've not spoiled my, spoiled anything, but I've watched Game of Thrones. So guess what? I know the Targaryens fuck up and fail.

• 1:18:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I think that there's elements of, I mean, we really don't need to get into a deep debate about this, but I do think that within those conversations that say Daemon is having with Rhaenyra, or Rhaenyra is having with Alicent, that there's things about the nature of power that I find kind of interesting, and how she could be successful, she would just have to be history's greatest monster. Like, she could achieve everything that she wants, she would just have to burn Tumbleton to the ground. And her reluctance to do that, for whatever reasons, whether it's because she's listening to Messaria, or she's listening to her better angels, I don't think is going to go great for her. Um, and perhaps there, it's difficult to tell a tragedy, because I think that's ultimately

• 1:18:55Chris Ryan?

  what this is. And telling a tragedy on television where half the people probably know the story, and half the people can guess what the story is, and just based on what happens in Game of Thrones, you know, they don't sing great songs about Rhaenyra, the, the sweet and kind, like, you know, like, people are just kind of like, watching, they want well executed.

• 1:19:18Chris Ryan?

  Tragedy then. And, you know, one of the things that I thought was really odd about this episode was the Kristen Cole thing happens in the beginning. I think his viewers are like, I've spent a lot of time with this character. That was a dramatic and sort of thrilling death. And not a single other character on the show knows it.

• 1:19:36Andy Greenwald?

  Great point.

• 1:19:37Chris Ryan?

  And I know word travels in weird ways in this Westeros, where sometimes people seem to know exactly where everyone is and get updates from ravens. And sometimes people are like waiting on information for quite some time. But that just seems like something that would travel the kingdom pretty fast if the Hand of the King, or Queen, or whoever, you know, was murdered in battle. And nobody seems to give a shit. And he has connections to all sorts of people in the show, you know, be it their adversary, their lover, their betrayer, whatever. And I thought that was strange. And I think that's a flaw of the show that they're not like, this leads to that, which leads to that.

• 1:20:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but I mean, I think it's just a flawed construction. They've done a lot of good work this season by putting characters in the same building as each other, which was impossible for them to do last year. So we're getting more of it, but not enough. And I just think, I think your point about tragedies was really interesting because what are some of the greatest tragedies in the history of television? They're the greatest shows in the history of television. The Sopranos is a tragedy.

• 1:20:41Chris Ryan?

  Breaking Bad's a tragedy.

• 1:20:42Andy Greenwald?

  Breaking Bad is 100% a tragedy. The Wire, in a way, is a tragedy. That also found room for, you know, great moments of hope, levity, joy, emotion, all, everything. The tragedy of it is more compelling to me of a show like, and look, listen, I know we're doing, we're like in, entering hour two of a podcast of episode eight of season three of House of the Dragon, and I'm comparing it unfairly to one of the greatest shows of all time about cops in Baltimore. I get this is a little bit ludicrous, but the tragedy of that show is because people want to change things and they struggle because change is very, very hard.

• 1:21:16Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:21:16Andy Greenwald?

  There is a version of Westeros that is that. There's a version of Daenerys that was that, right? Like, that is not, that is not David Simon's proprietary idea, but the show also has to service these moments of made up history and dragons per episode. And I don't, everybody loses a little bit because of that. It's too, it's at once, is at once too broad and too specific in its aims.

• 1:21:43Chris Ryan?

  Well, we won't be speaking about it again until after the finale.

• 1:21:46Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's good.

• 1:21:47Chris Ryan?

  And I think that's for the best. So we'll be back on Thursday, regular show. And then next week, just so you guys know, Mailbag on Monday, Anthony Bourdain special on Thursday, where we'll talk about some of our favorite episodes of his various shows, some of our favorite kind of extra Bourdain pieces of culture and...

• 1:22:06Andy Greenwald?

  Does this mean we won't be covering like the shards premiere in real time? We're gonna have to wait a week on that?

• 1:22:11Chris Ryan?

  I'm going live on Twitch for that.

• 1:22:12Andy Greenwald?

  Dude, that's janky rant, janky rondo.

• 1:22:17Chris Ryan?

  I'll talk to you guys soon. Thanks to Kaya. And we'll be, we'll be back on Thursday.

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