Why the Warner Bros. Bidding War Is Catastrophic. Plus, ‘Pluribus’ Episode 7 and the ‘Hijack,’ ‘Paradise,’ and ‘Supergirl’ Trailers.

Chris and Andy talk about the second-season trailers for ‘Hijack’ (1:49) and ‘Paradise’ (8:17), as well as the first teaser for ‘Supergirl’ (11:07). Then they break down the ongoing Netflix–Paramount–Warner Bros. saga and the potential ripple effects of each outcome (13:18). Later, they discuss ‘Pluribus’ Episode 7 (42:24), Andy’s thoughts on the most recent episode of ‘Landman,’ (01:04:04) and the breakout success of ‘Heated Rivalry’ (01:07:46). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:21Speaker 01

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• 0:57Chris Ryan?

  I need sports staff to clear the room.

• 1:00Speaker 03

  Stand up and walk now.

• 1:02Chris 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, it's 06 Wayne Rooney and Andy Greenwald.

• 1:15Andy Greenwald?

  See, I don't gatekeep Jim Legacy album cuts.

• 1:18Chris Ryan?

  I didn't gatekeep it, I just didn't know about it, man. It's good to see you, brother.

• 1:22Andy Greenwald?

  Man.

• 1:23Chris Ryan?

  Is this our first time back since you got back? Yeah, right?

• 1:26Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I've been back about 48 hours. I've been awake for about 40 of them.

• 1:29Chris Ryan?

  Cool.

• 1:29Andy Greenwald?

  So.

• 1:30Chris Ryan?

  Very cool.

• 1:30Andy Greenwald?

  This should be interesting.

• 1:31Chris Ryan?

  Greenwald, today on the show, my long promised conversation with you about the Warner Brothers Netflix Paramount.

• 1:37Andy Greenwald?

  I thought there was another conversation coming, I was so excited.

• 1:40Chris Ryan?

  No, because I like, when I was talking with Tim, we were like, I was like, I'm going to talk with Andy about WB Paramount Netflix.

• 1:46Andy Greenwald?

  You know why you had to wait?

• 1:47Chris Ryan?

  Because you're the Wizard of Wall Street?

• 1:49Andy Greenwald?

  And, thank you, and Hitmaker has fingers in too many pies.

• 1:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's true.

• 1:53Andy Greenwald?

  He is across all of it.

• 1:54Chris Ryan?

  Not like us.

• 1:55Andy Greenwald?

  No, he is, he's complicated. I think he knows it.

• 1:58Chris Ryan?

  Andy, we are doing a mailbag to wrap out, to wrap up the year at some point in the next like 10 days, 12 days.

• 2:04Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 2:04Chris Ryan?

  We're starting to get emails, I really appreciate everybody writing and feel free to keep doing it because we're always looking. TheWatch at Spotify.com.

• 2:11Andy Greenwald?

  You think there's some good cues in there already?

• 2:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there is actually.

• 2:14Andy Greenwald?

  Nice.

• 2:14Chris Ryan?

  I actually really was, I thought there were some really thoughtful queries. You can follow us on Instagram at TheWatchPod underscore, you can watch us on YouTube on the Ringer-TV channel.

• 2:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 2:23Chris Ryan?

  And you can watch us on Spotify where I hope you'll listen to us. Today on the pod.

• 2:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 2:27Chris Ryan?

  WB Paramount Netflix stuff.

• 2:29Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 2:30Chris Ryan?

  Pluribus.

• 2:31Andy Greenwald?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:32Chris Ryan?

  Um, episode seven.

• 2:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 2:33Chris Ryan?

  Um, and, uh, we're gonna talk a little bit right now before we get into the dirty business of Hollywood. We're gonna talk about the hijack season two trailer.

• 2:43Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 2:44Chris Ryan?

  Just watched it.

• 2:45Andy Greenwald?

  We watched it together. It was nice.

• 2:46Chris Ryan?

  It's basically, um, the taking of Berlin Pelham one, two, three.

• 2:51Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 2:51Chris Ryan?

  Idris back on a mode of transportation in a shitty situation.

• 2:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 2:56Chris Ryan?

  And I don't know if you've ever seen the video of Zane Lowe watching Fred again make a beat. But this was me watching the hijack trailer. I was like.

• 3:08Andy Greenwald?

  You weren't. It's just like, when the hi-hat came in, when Toby Jones shows up.

• 3:13Chris Ryan?

  Toby Jones. That's when the beat drops.

• 3:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 3:16Chris Ryan?

  Come on, dude. I'll watch. I mean, there's only so many modes of transportation.

• 3:20Andy Greenwald?

  Now, it's interesting that like history does repeat itself, right?

• 3:24Chris Ryan?

  Awaymo is gonna be complicated, you know?

• 3:25Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think it's like, we are old enough now to see just the cycles of things, right? Like fascism was out, now it's back in. Also, speed and the speed two problem, which was where do we go from a bus?

• 3:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:37Andy Greenwald?

  In that case, they made a catastrophic error in choosing a cruise ship.

• 3:42Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 3:42Andy Greenwald?

  Because.

• 3:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:44Andy Greenwald?

  That is not something that possesses speed.

• 3:46Chris Ryan?

  No, the train was right there for them in speed.

• 3:48Andy Greenwald?

  That's what I'm saying. They went from speed to slow.

• 3:50Chris Ryan?

  Maybe they felt like we did the train at the end of speed. So we couldn't.

• 3:53Andy Greenwald?

  They did do that.

• 3:54Chris Ryan?

  They couldn't put a hat on a hat there, you know?

• 3:56Andy Greenwald?

  That's a really, really good point.

• 3:58Chris Ryan?

  But the problem with speed two was, was, was there was no Keanu, man.

• 4:01Andy Greenwald?

  It's Jason Patrick. Yeah. Uh, also, I feel like the last 20 years of Tom Cruise's career has been like a rejoinder to like, you think there are no other fast modes of transportation?

• 4:11Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:12Andy Greenwald?

  So.

• 4:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:13Andy Greenwald?

  All this is to say, super into it.

• 4:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:16Andy Greenwald?

  I would also like to say upfront, um, this has nothing to do with the sponginess, uh, and the time dislocation inside of my amygdala right now. But I have no memory of the television show hijack whatsoever.

• 4:29Chris Ryan?

  We need to know a ton about it.

• 4:31Andy Greenwald?

  No, and I, that's why I loved it. Like even when it was happening, I don't think I really understood the larger plot.

• 4:37Chris Ryan?

  And I think people should give themselves more grace.

• 4:39Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 4:40Chris Ryan?

  And also believe in their own intellect. If you want to jump in on season two of a show, I'm fairly certain like you can figure it out. I feel this way after watching Stranger Things, season five, where it was like, I have no real recollection of what happened in season four or the mechanics of it.

• 4:55Andy Greenwald?

  And you feel okay?

• 4:56Chris Ryan?

  I was fine.

• 4:56Andy Greenwald?

  By the way, just to like to keep you in the loop, because I don't think I've told you this. Stranger Things, boy, it's making a late run in my household.

• 5:04Chris Ryan?

  Ooh.

• 5:05Andy Greenwald?

  Now, I was away.

• 5:06Chris Ryan?

  I feel like I, I, I inceded this.

• 5:09Andy Greenwald?

  Do you want to talk to her about this? Oh, you did.

• 5:11Chris Ryan?

  Because I was like, are you excited to be watching Stranger Things with your kids over Thanksgiving? And you were like, no, that's not happening. Like, they're not interested.

• 5:18Andy Greenwald?

  To be clear, I have been living abroad for much of this autumn. So when you say with my kids.

• 5:23Chris Ryan?

  To be fair, I do not have children.

• 5:25Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not even sure if legally I am still their guardian. However, yes, my older daughter has become completely obsessed in the way that, I know you've been watching it with your dear friends and their kids.

• 5:35Chris Ryan?

  I did watch it, yes.

• 5:36Andy Greenwald?

  So, no, but like, that's part of the experience and that the way, like when we were growing up, this is quite a detour, but like, when we were growing up, a man's word meant something. No, when we were growing up, I think the type of interest that we had in the entertainment we engage with was not the norm. In that, we probably like looked at the credits or we read Entertainment Weekly or Movie Line Magazine, right?

• 5:58Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 5:59Andy Greenwald?

  My.

• 5:59Chris Ryan?

  We were the coolest.

• 6:00Andy Greenwald?

  We were so cool. If only we had found each other across the city. My daughter has watched now two seasons of Stranger Things, which basically makes us the same.

• 6:09Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's also, I would say those are the best two, yes.

• 6:12Andy Greenwald?

  She knows, she knows more about the relationship between like Charlie Heaton and Natalia Dyer than she does about Hawkins.

• 6:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:21Andy Greenwald?

  Like, she knows everything about this show.

• 6:23Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 6:23Andy Greenwald?

  Offscreen.

• 6:24Chris Ryan?

  Can I ask you a question?

• 6:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:27Chris Ryan?

  How does she feel about Joe Keery?

• 6:30Andy Greenwald?

  Wow.

• 6:30Chris Ryan?

  He's quite popular.

• 6:31Andy Greenwald?

  He is, he is very beloved in my household right now. And you should have seen me, in fact, I could recreate it for you, when I tried to leverage just a small piece of coolness.

• 6:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:46Andy Greenwald?

  By telling her I recently saw him star in the Pavement documentary.

• 6:50Chris Ryan?

  Pavements?

• 6:50Andy Greenwald?

  As a lightly fictionalized version of himself playing Stephen Malkmus. I was like, it was meta, but it was effective. He's a good sport. And then that failed so spectacularly and I don't learn my lesson. Like 20 minutes later, I'm like furiously texting her. Joe Keery's Triple J Like a Version cover of a hymn song being like, he's got a good pipes too.

• 7:12Chris Ryan?

  But why don't you just engage with Stranger Things?

• 7:15Andy Greenwald?

  I gotta get a flight.

• 7:16Chris Ryan?

  No, but I know, but this is like the shortcut here is just to watch Stranger Things. You don't have to.

• 7:21Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, I'm ready.

• 7:22Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 7:22Andy Greenwald?

  I'm ready.

• 7:23Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 7:23Andy Greenwald?

  Because that said, she still wants me. She really wants me to be the Wednesday guy, not the band you like the more than I do, the show.

• 7:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:31Andy Greenwald?

  Um, but yes, doesn't matter. I'm, that's the beauty of this, of the catalog titles, right? It's there for me.

• 7:37Chris Ryan?

  When I was hanging out with my wife's best friend's family and I believe 10 year old was like, the only question she had was, do you think that Steve Harrington is going to be okay? And I was just like, well, there's a lot of mixed messaging on that, you know?

• 7:51Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 7:52Chris Ryan?

  But I was like, I'm not going to sugarcoat this for you because the worst thing you can do is lie. The worst thing is he's going to be fine and then I betrayed her. And she was like, because he's going to be my husband. I was just like, okay. Wow.

• 8:06Andy Greenwald?

  People like Will. Will's like a, people think he's hot now. I'm sorry, people in my household.

• 8:12Chris Ryan?

  He glowed up a little bit.

• 8:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 8:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And he kind of, he kind of, he's, he's jacked now.

• 8:17Andy Greenwald?

  Is he doing the same regime you're doing?

• 8:18Chris Ryan?

  Well, he might have some powers. Yeah.

• 8:20Andy Greenwald?

  You know what? I allowed myself to be spoiled.

• 8:22Chris Ryan?

  Did you really?

• 8:23Andy Greenwald?

  I did. Can we just put a button on the hijack thing?

• 8:25Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:26Andy Greenwald?

  We said this at the time, but like, the beauty of that show, it's in the title and it's Idris Elba. Make 10 seasons.

• 8:33Chris Ryan?

  I think it will.

• 8:34Andy Greenwald?

  I don't fucking care.

• 8:35Chris Ryan?

  He's also like, this is a person with a very comfortable relationship with what makes them popular.

• 8:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 8:40Chris Ryan?

  And he's still making Luther, like, you know, they're like, they're making another Luther season. And like, he doesn't seem that, he's not like, oh, hijack is something I didn't in 2022.

• 8:52Andy Greenwald?

  No, he, I, I spoke to someone who'd worked with him actually when I was over there in his home country. And he is as advertised, like everything you think about him is, is him in a good way.

• 9:01Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 9:02Andy Greenwald?

  I think.

• 9:02Chris Ryan?

  He just DJs in Ibiza and it's, and hijack stuff.

• 9:05Andy Greenwald?

  He's, he enjoys his life, I think. And there's other trailers you want to hit?

• 9:09Chris Ryan?

  Paradise, which looks good as shit.

• 9:12Andy Greenwald?

  So season two of Paradise, which was a show.

• 9:14Chris Ryan?

  Quickly recap that, not the plot of Paradise, but like our relationship to Paradise, which was. This was a cool pilot.

• 9:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Chris Ryan?

  This show is insane.

• 9:25Andy Greenwald?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:25Chris Ryan?

  And then the seventh episode, I believe.

• 9:27Andy Greenwald?

  Was better than House of Dynamite.

• 9:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And, actually, I didn't, is it?

• 9:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 9:34Chris Ryan?

  Okay, um, and then I would just say that I, I, I think that they got that message, you know? I think that they got the message that there is a vibe to the seventh episode that maybe they'll carry forward. Now, I don't think that that means necessarily that every episode of Paradise is going to be a banger, but there was something about the second season trailer that I was just like, you're taking yourself a little seriously now, and I like it.

• 9:57Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, so I had a slightly different reaction, not necessarily negative. The thing about Paradise that was compelling, other than the high points that you mentioned, was that it was absolutely batshit crazy.

• 10:08Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 10:08Andy Greenwald?

  And the brakes had been cut in a way that I really kind of admired because if you're, the, the last show that made me feel that way was like the first season of Empire, where it's just like eight seasons worth of plot in, before the third act started.

• 10:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:25Andy Greenwald?

  And I admire that, like, if you're going to make a pop song, make a pop song, like, go all the way in.

• 10:29Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 10:30Andy Greenwald?

  And, and, and, and make it a hit.

• 10:34Andy Greenwald?

  It's a little, here's what I'd like for Paradise, because it just doesn't care about anything other than its own internal logic. I would love it if this new season had no relationship really with the first season. And what I mean is.

• 10:48Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 10:48Andy Greenwald?

  What I mean is, it is a Russian nesting doll of a series where one of the major characters on the show, and I don't think this is, well, I won't say which one, but one of the major characters and major actors on the show is deceased, but has just an, there's an incredible archive. He's like the Roberto Bollanio of characters, right? It's just like.

• 11:06Chris Ryan?

  Jesus Christ.

• 11:06Andy Greenwald?

  It's just like, how many more novels did this guy write before he died? It's just wild.

• 11:11Chris Ryan?

  Wildcat, yeah.

• 11:12Andy Greenwald?

  Just saying.

• 11:12Chris Ryan?

  The papers.

• 11:13Andy Greenwald?

  So, that.

• 11:16Andy Greenwald?

  So what I would like, though, in the second season, because you have a Dan Fogelman, the creator, and you have an appetite for chaos, and you have Sterling K. Brown as the star who can do anything, let this season be like American primeval and don't do fucking load-bearing flashbacks to why we built the silo.

• 11:32Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 11:33Andy Greenwald?

  Make this season the adventure-in-the-wild season. Then the third season could be a completely different show, because you've got the pieces in place and commit to it.

• 11:40Chris Ryan?

  Well, it was never just about the bunker. That's what we learn about in this trailer.

• 11:43Andy Greenwald?

  That's so cool.

• 11:44Chris Ryan?

  What's her codename? I can't remember.

• 11:45Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, Jasbo. No, Coltrain.

• 11:49Chris Ryan?

  Coltrain. That's right.

• 11:51Andy Greenwald?

  Which I believe is also what Gene Hackman calls Danny Glover in Royal Tenenbaums.

• 11:55Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 11:56Andy Greenwald?

  That's probably what it's a reference to.

• 11:58Chris Ryan?

  Um, all right, let's stop dancing around. Let's talk a little bit about the...

• 12:01Andy Greenwald?

  Supergirl trailer.

• 12:02Chris Ryan?

  Uh, if you want to.

• 12:03Andy Greenwald?

  Do you have a feeling about it?

• 12:05Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 12:05Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 12:06Chris Ryan?

  Um, it doesn't take place on Earth.

• 12:08Andy Greenwald?

  Can you... You're offended?

• 12:09Chris Ryan?

  Well, isn't that the whole point? This guy and his relationship, or their relationship to Earth?

• 12:15Andy Greenwald?

  No, they're different people.

• 12:16Chris Ryan?

  I understand that, but like...

• 12:17Andy Greenwald?

  It's not just like the female-friendly version of it, you know?

• 12:19Chris Ryan?

  Uh, well, yeah.

• 12:20Andy Greenwald?

  You're trying to, like, this is Superman for the ladies? Is that your argument?

• 12:24Chris Ryan?

  No, no, no, no, no. My point is that, like, I don't really, first of all, the emergence of a child that she needs to take care of immediately, and like, you guys gotta stop making lone wolf and cub. You gotta, you gotta leave it alone.

• 12:36Andy Greenwald?

  I was with you until I spent the entire autumn away, and now I'm like, give me a child to take care of.

• 12:42Chris Ryan?

  Please. Let me send this child clips of Alex Rosberg documentaries.

• 12:49Andy Greenwald?

  Don't you see? It's ironic.

• 12:50Chris Ryan?

  Um...

• 12:51Andy Greenwald?

  Right?

• 12:52Chris Ryan?

  I thought, it looked cool. Yeah.

• 12:53Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, Illy Alcock, big star, she's gonna be great. Uh, I know you're excited for, for Jason Momoa to play Lobo.

• 12:59Chris Ryan?

  I did think that looked, he's in the trailer, right?

• 13:02Andy Greenwald?

  Briefly.

• 13:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:04Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think I'm just curious if James, the James Gunn sensibility can support an entire cinematic universe.

• 13:11Chris Ryan?

  Or translate to I, Tanya filmmaker Craig Wessby's vision of it.

• 13:15Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 13:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:16Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I mean, I, this, I don't want to belittle anyone's involvement. I have no idea what went on behind the scenes, but this does, aesthetically, this feels so close to what we already saw and to what James Gunn generally does, that it does feel like he is...

• 13:27Chris Ryan?

  It felt, it felt actually a little guardiansy.

• 13:29Andy Greenwald?

  It felt very guardiansy, like, misfit family of aliens.

• 13:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:32Andy Greenwald?

  And guns and swords and pop songs and stuff.

• 13:35Chris Ryan?

  I just, I just, I'm, I'm gonna miss just, like, a bunch of people on Earth being like, this incredibly tall, handsome journalist.

• 13:42Andy Greenwald?

  That's the part you respond to?

• 13:46Andy Greenwald?

  This guy could have chosen any field. It could have been a model, but instead, he's the fourth estate.

• 13:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:51Andy Greenwald?

  Shout out, uh, Friends Central little graduate Anna Noguera wrote that movie.

• 13:55Chris Ryan?

  No way.

• 13:56Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know her, but I'm always trying to look for Quaker school alums just glowing up.

• 13:59Chris Ryan?

  That's cool.

• 13:59Andy Greenwald?

  I want their light within to shine brightly.

• 14:02Chris Ryan?

  And that's one of the tenets of the entire, the entire ideology of Quakerism, right?

• 14:06Andy Greenwald?

  Get the bag.

• 14:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, get that Supergirl money. Um, Greenwald, are we gonna talk about this? Netflix WB Paramount, you were like, you were practically like boarding a plane, ready to start ranting about this. And here's what I want to know.

• 14:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 14:21Chris Ryan?

  The first night this comes out, Thursday night and into Friday morning, it feels like Luca Treaty, where you're just like, I can't believe it. The entire landscape is different. Like, this shockwaves through the industry kind of thing through the town. And then you get a couple of days into it and there's a lot of chatter about like, how long this is gonna take and will this even go through and blah, blah. Earlier this week Paramount launched, uh, a, what was described as a hostile takeover bid, but has now been explained to me by reading, uh, Matt Levine in Bloomberg as not exactly hostile.

• 14:55Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, it's not?

• 14:56Chris Ryan?

  Because it's like they're trying to essentially accumulate enough shares to block the Netflix deal.

• 15:02Andy Greenwald?

  Well, they're trying, I believe, again, we are not.

• 15:04Chris Ryan?

  This is, yeah, this is not what we're gonna be talking about.

• 15:06Andy Greenwald?

  But my understanding is that they're, they're going directly to the shareholders saying, we're gonna pay more. It's just more money. Why is that?

• 15:12Chris Ryan?

  And you should sell us your shares. And then once we have 51% of shares, we control the company, right?

• 15:17Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 15:18Chris Ryan?

  So let me just go through some broad outlines for people who have maybe.

• 15:21Andy Greenwald?

  I'm gonna stretch.

• 15:21Chris Ryan?

  Who've got lives and haven't been paying attention. This is a Netflix made, I believe, a $72 billion offer to buy most of Warner Brothers Discovery, including the film and TV studio.

• 15:31Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 15:31Chris Ryan?

  Which would be Warner's IP, which is the kind of most important thing here, probably. And it's, uh, streaming service, HBO Max, and it's flagship premium channel HBO.

• 15:41Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:42Chris Ryan?

  And in addition, Joseph Adalian just reported that also includes TCM.

• 15:46Andy Greenwald?

  I figured, yeah.

• 15:47Chris Ryan?

  Well, I do think that that is a nice kind of, in notes about like the DGA is gonna have to meet with Netflix to talk about the ramifications of this deal.

• 15:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 15:56Chris Ryan?

  Netflix presenting itself as a steward for Hollywood history is not the dumbest thing in the world.

• 16:01Andy Greenwald?

  They gonna get President of Hollywood Sean Fantasy on board?

• 16:04Chris Ryan?

  No, but-

• 16:04Andy Greenwald?

  They sweet talking him?

• 16:05Chris Ryan?

  The whole thing with TCM is when Zazov is gonna cancel it, PTA and Spielberg and Scorsese were like, "We will, we will like keep the lights on here. You have to like meet us halfway." So I do think that the TCM bit is a nice piece of relationship building with filmmakers, maybe, who haven't traditionally worked with Netflix. Netflix's bid was accepted despite this deep competition from David Ellison and his Paramount Skydance company.

• 16:34Chris Ryan?

  And they will now launch a hostile takeover bid for all of WBD, including the linear cable channels.

• 16:39Andy Greenwald?

  I think CNN is a part of what they want.

• 16:41Chris Ryan?

  And valuing Warner Brothers at $30 a share, even though it was trading at less than $8 earlier this year.

• 16:47Andy Greenwald?

  Now, again, I'm not a Wizard of Wall Street, but that seems like a lot.

• 16:52Chris Ryan?

  This may force Netflix to up its offer. I don't know how that stuff works. The reaction from Washington has been mixed, with Trump suggesting that the White House will get involved.

• 17:01Andy Greenwald?

  Gosh, what?

• 17:01Chris Ryan?

  And says, but saying that he likes Netflix. And he recently went on a tirade about Paramount because they aired a Marjorie Taylor Greene interview on 60 Minutes that you didn't like. And he was like, "This is the same old shit", yada, yada, yada.

• 17:15Andy Greenwald?

  Wow.

• 17:16Chris Ryan?

  Senators, as varied as Republican Mike Lee, who I know is your boy.

• 17:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 17:20Chris Ryan?

  And Democrat Elizabeth Warren have voiced concerns about the deal, so obviously-

• 17:23Andy Greenwald?

  That's cool. Anytime you can get those two on the same page.

• 17:25Chris Ryan?

  The resistance, it's a big 10. And there's, like I mentioned, there's a very informative Bloomberg piece about how Netflix is looking to finance this deal with $59 billion in new debt.

• 17:36Andy Greenwald?

  Nice.

• 17:37Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and I note that, not because I understand what that means, but in my experience and in the, our years of covering this stuff to some extent, when you are borrowing money,

• 17:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 17:48Chris Ryan?

  you need to make a return on your money to pay your note, your pay your interest.

• 17:53Andy Greenwald?

  And to prove growth, it puts a different sort of pressure on you, which is what Zaslav has been existing in there.

• 17:58Chris Ryan?

  There's a direct relationship between that and the way that the IP Warner Brothers is about to hand over to Netflix might get handled.

• 18:06Andy Greenwald?

  Get worked, yes.

• 18:07Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 18:07Andy Greenwald?

  You said, in my experience with debt, I was trying to imagine a time at like Great Lakes Bar where you were like, I understand I don't have money, but you have Rheingold beer. May I please have three more tonight in an exchange?

• 18:21Chris Ryan?

  You know what, you could catch the right bartender on the right night, they might go with that. Uh, I just meant, yeah, I mentioned the debt because the amount of debt that this costs, I think will affect how they treat things like Game of Thrones.

• 18:31Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I mean, that, I mean, Zaslav infamously made the Warner Brothers purchase with debt, which has dominated his mixed stewardship of the company. Because everything has been about trying to prove to a skeptical Wall Street that this can work despite the crushing, uh, debt burden. And the, prior to the, you know, the planned sale, the split of the companies was an attempt to like, like, you know, you love hot air ballooning, like to like, to cut the weight, the ballast, so they could actually soar. And maybe one day end up in Oz, which I believe will now be owned by Netflix.

• 19:05Chris Ryan?

  So, that's where I wanted to kind of start with this. I want to get your broad reactions to the, to the announcement anyway, but I wanted to talk mostly about how this prospective deal, either one of them really,

• 19:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 19:18Chris Ryan?

  might change the way we watch what we watch.

• 19:21Andy Greenwald?

  Well, we'll get, we'll get there for sure. I, I have a, I could, I can give you a semi-positive spin on the Netflix thing and I can give you a negative spin on it. I think it's important before any spinning happens to state the obvious, which is.

• 19:37Chris Ryan?

  You're a big ol' lib.

• 19:38Andy Greenwald?

  Which is.

• 19:41Chris Ryan?

  And you.

• 19:43Andy Greenwald?

  Which is despite past missteps, Graham Plathner deserves a spot on this debate stage.

• 19:47Chris Ryan?

  And you don't think Jon Snow has any place in the Taylor Sheridan universe?

• 19:50Andy Greenwald?

  That's also true. I think it's important to say before getting into any of it, that this entire situation is a fucking nightmare and nobody wants this. Nobody in the world wants this to happen, other than David Zaslove and Ted Sarandos and anyone else who is likely to make another fortune on top of their existing fortune because of it. And that is the life that we, not only the life that we are forced to be living in at the moment, but also the economy we are forced to participate in and now directly connected to even just the casual entertainment that we would like to distract ourselves with. It is noteworthy when the premier shit poster in the Senate, Mike Lee and Elizabeth Warren, who still has my text,

• 20:35Andy Greenwald?

  texts open from my deep, deep belief, perhaps misguided belief in her presidential aspirations in 2020.

• 20:40Chris Ryan?

  It's the last iced coffee you're gonna be a little for, because you gave all your money to Jasmine Crockett. We can do it. We can flip Texas.

• 20:48Andy Greenwald?

  I financed it on debt, though.

• 20:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, good.

• 20:50Andy Greenwald?

  So it should be fine. I'm a Tarrico guy, actually. I think you gotta run the candidate for the place. You know what I mean?

• 20:57Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 20:57Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway, we, let's come back to that. That's gonna be a moneymaker for us.

• 21:01Chris Ryan?

  That's the breakout, yeah.

• 21:02Andy Greenwald?

  It's disgusting. And it's just like, it's the, it is the same situation that we find ourselves in where it's like everything gets slightly sane washed, where there is no winner here, other than those men that you mentioned and maybe their bottom lines. Consumer loses, creators lose, the employees of these companies who will face layoffs and continually shrinking margins and horizons and like, everybody loses, except for the guys at the top. Like, that is the economy we've inherited and these motherfuckers keep slicing it as thin as Paul Sorvino did garlic in Goodfellas and telling us it's a full meal. This sucks.

• 21:40Andy Greenwald?

  That said.

• 21:40Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 21:41Andy Greenwald?

  When the news broke on Thursday, I was weirdly calm because my perspective on it, and I don't think this is, and I'll give you the counter as well. But in some ways, this felt like the least catastrophic option. Now, as I've just, as I've just said, it's catastrophic. The Ellison, Paramount, Kushner Saudi Wealth Fund cohort is a living nightmare, both because of how I feel about how they conduct themselves in the world, but also what it means for how business is done in this country, and who gets to control what, and how much closer we are towards completely oligarch-run state media. That can't happen.

• 22:25Andy Greenwald?

  I also think that, and again, I don't, I don't know the guy, but one thing about Ted Sarandos that I do believe is like, obviously, what's good for the company comes first. But in his other statements and in his other behaviors, like his, like, very almost sweet obsession with Saturday Night Live, and like, going to the, all the anniversary things, and just thinking it's a pillar and institution of, and, and the way that they have in small ways, and certainly in self-serving ways, bankrolled artists, even though the art ends up as just another tile.

• 22:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:58Andy Greenwald?

  Makes me think that this guy does have some, some cultural understanding of and appreciation for Warner Brothers as a studio. It's a really weird world when David Zaslav, who's the Titan of Debt and Dr. Pimple Popper, looks like, you know, fucking Jack Warner, in terms of like, keeping Casey in charge of HBO and greenlighting, you know, allowing, or whatever, and the movies that they've made. That's how far we've done fallen, right? That this is where we're at. But there is a version of it where Netflix bends things to fit their, their mandate, which really will be problematic going forward, because they're like, well, we're not going to touch the movies. The movies can continue to exist.

• 23:42Andy Greenwald?

  Now, Netflix needs movies. It's not just that they like, have a couple and they do well. Like, their internal stuff tells them that, that consumers and subscribers to their product watch tons of fucking new movies on the service, and they need a pipeline for that.

• 23:58Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 23:59Andy Greenwald?

  But they're not, we're not talking about the same things that they talk about on Letterboxd and they talk about movies. And when they say they're committed to theatrical, it means a much shorter window, most likely, if anything at all. So that will matter. I think the other reason why the Netflix one is potentially the best-case scenario is all of the legal roadblocks, that this is a year, two years, who knows how much longer, if it could happen at all. It's sort of, it feels a little beta to say it, but like, playing for time to avoid catastrophe is kind of interesting to me.

• 24:29Chris Ryan?

  Because in your mind, the Netflix deal, whether it goes through or not, means it doesn't go to Ellison until possibly Trump's out of office?

• 24:38Andy Greenwald?

  I also think that-

• 24:39Chris Ryan?

  Is that what you meant by that, though?

• 24:40Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think that stalling, one thing that we have-

• 24:42Chris Ryan?

  So you're on the record as not being for a third Trump term, then?

• 24:46Andy Greenwald?

  Let's see what happens. Let's just look at the facts on the ground and respond accordingly. I think, yeah, I think delay is probably a good thing. I do think, and I don't know if this matters in the case of this, but as we head into a midterm election year and people will be campaigning, I do not think campaigning for more monopolies and more corporate hegemony is really going to be a winning argument.

• 25:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:14Andy Greenwald?

  And that's going to be happening at the same time that the case will be being made to regulators why this should happen. And I think that there's a good chance that something could happen to derail it. There's also the very dark alternate version of this that I've heard a few commentators who know more than we do saying, which is that maybe Netflix is okay either way.

• 25:32Chris Ryan?

  Right. Like that, that if this doesn't happen, at least they, like, at least they like basically screwed up three other Hollywood studios-

• 25:39Andy Greenwald?

  They've frozen three other studios. Well, and while they all continue to eat their dust, basically. That by basically halting HBO Max's, whatever internal development, internal split, whatever they were planning on doing, Warner Brothers Discovery's split of the company, that's a win regardless for them, even if they then end up having to pay out the $5 billion or whatever that was the penalty, I think, within it. So- I don't know. I just, I just believe that there is a version of this where we, because we're old, we feel like hurt and sad at the thought of HBO, this great institution that has made so many of the greatest shows of all time, becoming just another tile. But that ship sailed.

• 26:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and FX is a tile within Disney Plus and Hulu.

• 26:25Andy Greenwald?

  And that's where I was going for it. Like, you could, we could say what you want about the Disney Fox merger, and there's a lot to be said, although I know that the fact that Channing Tatum is now playing Gambit has just allayed all of your concerns, because that's what you were hoping for all along. FX, Iger was good to his word about that. Like, he looked at FX, he's like, "These guys know what they're doing. I will essentially leave them alone."

• 26:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:44Andy Greenwald?

  And FX's corporate culture and creative point of view and aesthetics exist, even though it's now a tile on two different streaming services, on Hulu and on Disney Plus. So, in terms of short term, like HBO is going to be fine for the next one, two, three years. Beyond that, we don't know. The, the negative version, like, against, against, doesn't really, I mean, I feel like it's almost redundant to get into it. But Netflix has made great things, and great, and a lot of great creative people work there, but it's inarguable that it has been a overall malign force in the industry. And the thought of there being three places, basically, four

• 27:29Andy Greenwald?

  places that are even buying shows, like, we all suffer from that.

• 27:32Chris Ryan?

  Do you think that that feels like it returns us to like the 1980s, like the pre-cable boom way of television working?

• 27:39Andy Greenwald?

  No, because there was a law that you couldn't self-deal.

• 27:44Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 27:44Andy Greenwald?

  So, if you were, if you were ABC and you were buying television shows for your fall slate, you couldn't buy shows from yourself.

• 27:54Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 27:54Andy Greenwald?

  So, there were dozens of very robust independent studios and production companies, and, you know, they sold to each other with regularity, and that was all struck down, and now it's all siloed and completely out of control. So, in, in terms of like, limited options, sure, but in terms of what's Populating them, it's very different.

• 28:15Chris Ryan?

  There's the whole side of this, which is, it needs to be stated again, that this will have probably yet another deleterious effect on the employment numbers of specifically Los Angeles and Hollywood and people working on television shows and people working on movies and people working within these industries from business affairs to props, you know, and that that is something that we've been living here for a fairly long time now. And if you've been here since COVID and through the strikes and through the fires, I don't know how many more times this town can get off the mat. You know what I mean? Like, it is really a feeling when you drive through Hollywood, specifically when you talk to people who are working in this industry,

• 28:59Chris Ryan?

  that the train's leaving the station and that the work is happening in Atlanta or in Europe.

• 29:04Andy Greenwald?

  It's in London.

• 29:04Chris Ryan?

  Or in London or wherever, and that things are being shot places on, basically, it was like, it's like watching NAFTA happen again, where it's like, we're just out, we're offshoring all of this work and then bringing it back into the country. And we're losing decades of institutional knowledge about how to make things. And producers who are being raised in this system don't have the same kind of

• 29:33Chris Ryan?

  swagger and belief in the power of what they're doing. Like, it's way more of a numbers game and it's way more of a like, how do we flip this and flip that and flip this? Now, I'm not saying that that hasn't been always what, an element of that in Hollywood, but when you hear stories about, say, like Jerry Bruckheimer and how he's just like, nope, we're gonna, we're gonna get this plane and we're gonna throw it off the top of this cliff here, you know? And like, I'm gonna get that shot and I'm gonna get this actor and we're gonna make sure that this is what the next generation of people talk about for 30 years.

• 30:02Andy Greenwald?

  Rebecca from Landman, because she's really good screaming on airplanes. I do want to talk about that episode.

• 30:08Chris Ryan?

  I worry about all that, you know, and I worry about what this means when we get, when we erase all of this. Because that's, that, that is aside from like the movies, stuff that you see in the, during the Oscars, that's what this is about. It's about like an American craft and an American trade that people have been practicing for more than like a century now, almost, and like, it, it, it matters.

• 30:31Andy Greenwald?

  LA is the new Detroit. And I, I fucking love Detroit. It's a great city with, you know, it still has vibrancy. But in terms of the auto industry being the lifeblood of a world-class place and then just having that.

• 30:42Chris Ryan?

  Do you have to wait two hours to get into a diner in Detroit, or?

• 30:44Andy Greenwald?

  See, this is your best take and you are just throwing it away.

• 30:50Chris Ryan?

  I'll save it for like a mailbag or something.

• 30:51Andy Greenwald?

  It is, I still think, Chris sent me a text that I'm still thinking about all the time.

• 30:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, like, I'm not trying to sugarcoat the past, but, because people here were always driven by money and making money. But it was, there was a sense that a lot of people could make money in this town or in this industry. And even if you weren't one of the very few unicorns who made a fortune, you, a J. Kelly type, if you will, you could make a living.

• 31:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:23Andy Greenwald?

  You could work here. There was opportunity, there was promise.

• 31:28Andy Greenwald?

  Everything in the country is now just so six people can double their wealth. I mean, it's, it's appalling, but like, it does not, this thing that we have been dragged along for, I don't, like, the people just continue to compound mistakes that have become profitable for them. I mean, that's how you buy HBO with debt and somehow sell it for 10 times as much. It's a absolutely rigged game, but it, we are bearing the consequences. And it's bad.

• 31:54Chris Ryan?

  With that caveat about what it could do to the city and what it could do to the industry aside, because I think that that, there would be elements of it if Comcast had bought it, if Paramount had bought it, if Netflix had bought it.

• 32:03Andy Greenwald?

  There shouldn't be a merger here.

• 32:04Chris Ryan?

  You shrink it, yeah, right. I would say that the thing that is the most interesting for me to think about and also scary, but also like, kind of provocative.

• 32:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 32:13Chris Ryan?

  Is the changes that could happen to the way.

• 32:18Chris Ryan?

  The US, but also global audiences get what they want to watch and how they watch it and in what way. Like, we are, you know, everything that's coming out of Netflix is like, we will honor the contracts that Warner Brothers has with its filmmakers. We believe in HBO. That is like a crown jewel.

• 32:38Andy Greenwald?

  What about with its writer producers on magic shows? They gonna honor those?

• 32:41Chris Ryan?

  Who can say?

• 32:42Andy Greenwald?

  Hold on, let me just write a quick email.

• 32:46Chris Ryan?

  But the model for Netflix is binge releases for television shows and very short windows in very limited releases for its movies. And I think that like the loudest voices in the room are like, that's not how it's supposed to go. And Netflix is like, you guys want it to be one way, but it's another way.

• 33:06Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly.

• 33:06Chris Ryan?

  It's actually 98% of this country does not want to wait a week to watch the next episode of what their television show is. And you guys want it to be a week to week thing because you want to be able to build up anticipation about White Lotus. And the idea of Succession or White Lotus or Chair Company being binge releases is kind of mind blowing. And you have to rethink the popularity and the importance of major pieces of-

• 33:31Andy Greenwald?

  It's also a question of how comfortable are they with different philosophies?

• 33:37Chris Ryan?

  Exactly.

• 33:38Andy Greenwald?

  Because there's also two different kinds of people don't want this. There's what you just said, which I think is accurate. The numbers bear out the fact that the Netflix model is now the way people watch TV when they're not just scrolling on their phones. There's also Bob Iger saying, giving a billion dollars worth of IP to OpenAI to say like, go play with Donald Duck. We don't care. Nobody fucking wants that either. But, you know, that's keeps the economy afloat, apparently. So that's what we're getting. That's different. I think that there is a pie in the sky world here where Netflix looked at what it lacked. And we've talked about for years, because it's not a secret, it's not, doesn't take, you know, a brave analytical mind to understand what it lacked, which is the deep bench of

• 34:17Andy Greenwald?

  beloved IP and the potential to grow in areas that are not as dependent on certain market forces like, like basically Disney and Universal during the strikes and during the strikes have theme parks.

• 34:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:36Andy Greenwald?

  And that is a huge profit driver.

• 34:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:38Andy Greenwald?

  Netflix is very, very, very, very much wants to be in that space. And so far, it has the Stranger Things play. You know, and these like event spaces that they've been opening in the mall.

• 34:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and the Squid Game, you know, the sort of execution that they've done at Squid Game.

• 34:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, there's a live Squid Game thing. So they're working towards it. This potentially supercharges that ability for them. You know, there's the, I don't know if you know this, but there's a Harry Potter studio tour in Leavesden. I can't say that I've been there recently, but I have fucking been there recently. And like, that is a huge

• 35:09Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 35:09Andy Greenwald?

  thing. And so this gives them the DC and the Harry Potter and the things that, you know, that they have lacked. And can they, as part of that, understand that there is still, in the same way that The New Yorker still publishes a magazine, but the issues are 9.99 or 12.99 for an issue. Can Netflix honor the fact that there is still a cohort of aging fans who are like, keep our HBO delivered to us the way we like it. And Netflix's longer play is, it doesn't matter how they parcel out the season of the chair company. It's that we will get it afterwards.

• 35:44Chris Ryan?

  Well, I almost wonder whether HBO returns to its Plepler era of, it's a subscription service, you know, and it is a add-on within Netflix that you can have.

• 35:54Andy Greenwald?

  Sure, to have it be that way, yeah.

• 35:55Chris Ryan?

  And, you know, whether or not that winds up being what happens is that HBO shows will be released once a week. You know, there's this level of programming. I personally don't understand why you buy something and then you're like, that just, we're just buying it to preserve it, or we're buying it as like a tile. But, you know, stranger things have happened. Netflix has started to mess with its release schedule with certain things, obviously stranger things, but even like Mulaney and things like that where it's going up once a week. I think it's silly to be like Ted Sarandos said this, said that there's no evidence to suggest that weekly works better than binge release. So that'll never happen now. It might change. It might change because it might be that creators go and

• 36:37Chris Ryan?

  say, I don't want my thing to go up in one night on a Wednesday and have it be over by Monday.

• 36:43Andy Greenwald?

  It would be nice to give them the benefit of the doubt. I think we've, hopefully, like Charlie Brown with the football, have learned by now not to trust these people. I mean, these people like the C-suite.

• 36:52Chris Ryan?

  Everybody.

• 36:53Andy Greenwald?

  Literally everybody.

• 36:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:55Andy Greenwald?

  But I think that Netflix's goal that a lot of people didn't see coming for a long time, wasn't to become the new HBO. It was to become TV. With late night shows, with sports, with a deep bench of all kinds of things.

• 37:08Chris Ryan?

  Yes, absolutely. It's the tissues Kleenex thing. It's like lots of people in this world now turn on Netflix as the way that we used to turn on television.

• 37:15Andy Greenwald?

  So is there a version of that in three years where, to your point, it would, it won't be unlike how, it will be quite unlike, but in some ways it will be similar to turning on TV 20 years ago where there'll be a number of channels, a number of options, and if you pay however many extra dollars a month, you get HBO.

• 37:35Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 37:35Andy Greenwald?

  And you get HBO new shows as opposed to catalog, which are just, you know.

• 37:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I could see them bidding aggressively for the sports rights for any number of major leagues, including the Premier League or the NBA at some point, or NFL at some, like League Pass or at some point. And that would also be like an add-on. And if you want NFL League Pass in your Netflix, it's another $250 a year or whatever. They could charge whatever they want because at a certain point, it's going to be the only place to go look for stuff.

• 38:03Andy Greenwald?

  Guys, I'm looking at the camera. It's bad. It's just bad if the majority of television is owned by three companies.

• 38:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:11Andy Greenwald?

  There's not a good version of that.

• 38:12Chris Ryan?

  I mean, like I watched this happen. I mean, like, there's chilling reminders of what happened in newspapers. You know, I just watched this happen in my dad's industry as he, as he worked for most of his adult life in newspapers. And now the newspaper he worked for is like nine pages long, you know, and it was essentially a consolidation within the industry of several chains buying up all local newspapers. Then it was private equity and debt getting involved with those, those conglomerates. And then it was sell it off for parts or run it at the most bare minimum level to still like scrape Google Ads. But that was an industry that was just like.

• 38:54Chris Ryan?

  It worked. Classifieds and advertising within newspapers paid for really important journalism and really thoughtful journalism and really, really like essential ways of like understanding the world around you. And that whole thing has collapsed.

• 39:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 39:07Chris Ryan?

  Television, you could make an argument, you know, for a lot of the stuff you might watch on Netflix or Warner Brothers Discovery is much more like, uh, it's not essential. You know, it's not essential that we watch White Lotus, the way it is probably that you get reporting on City Hall. But if it goes in the same direction where it's just like, well, could we do White Lotus in upstate New York? Would that be possible? Or Bulgaria? You know, because it's easier to shoot there or whatever it is, like that will be, we'll start to feel that.

• 39:38Andy Greenwald?

  Jared Kushner doesn't want a part of this deal so he can make sure that David Simon can make another mini-series.

• 39:42Chris Ryan?

  Are you sure?

• 39:43Andy Greenwald?

  I am sure.

• 39:43Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 39:44Andy Greenwald?

  That's the one thing I'm sure of.

• 39:45Chris Ryan?

  Jared Kushner was like, I fucking love we own this city, man.

• 39:48Andy Greenwald?

  What generation kills season two?

• 39:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he does.

• 39:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, he fucking does. We're all gonna have to live it.

• 39:53Chris Ryan?

  The only other thing I wanted to ask you about, which we can probably save for like a larger conversation at some point, is my understanding that the way that Netflix does its deals with talent is quite different than the way things were traditionally done and the way that lots of other networks do it. And that is, it's all upfront. There are no backend participation. There's no residuals.

• 40:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, they used to pay like 125% to make up for potential

• 40:17Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 40:17Andy Greenwald?

  earnings on the backend.

• 40:19Chris Ryan?

  I'm just gonna, I'll just say I'm fascinated to see if that changes.

• 40:23Andy Greenwald?

  That is a, that is a huge point to make because, and it has changed a lot under Zaslav, but there was a reason, there was a reason HBO had its reputation as being profligate, let's say, because they were, they, they treat talent very well.

• 40:40Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:42Andy Greenwald?

  Not speaking from experience. No, I mean, I treated fine, but like, but they, they, they pay a premium.

• 40:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:48Andy Greenwald?

  To be premium.

• 40:49Chris Ryan?

  Well, they also have different metrics for what success is too.

• 40:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, although that has had to change a little bit in the streaming era as well. Because- Because everything has sort of turned into one thing.

• 40:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:00Andy Greenwald?

  But that is right.

• 41:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, okay.

• 41:02Andy Greenwald?

  Well, the margins have fallen for everyone. I mean, like, that's the other connection to make with the newspaper industry. And it came up when we were talking about the situation with the strike a few years ago. There was a sense that this, you know, private equity derivatives-based, soul-crushing behemoth had come for this industry. I mean, obviously, it had already come. But there was a, I think, speaking of David Simon, perhaps naively noble thought that because of the strength, relative strength of the unions in this town, that it might be able to make a stand. It did not go like the end of Endgame, I would say.

• 41:40Chris Ryan?

  I will be fascinated to watch the awards season that is upon us. The next sort of big moment in this story, which I will be proved wrong when this is not the case, but I believe is in early January when-

• 41:53Andy Greenwald?

  When Amy Poehler wins Best Podcast for Golden Globes.

• 41:55Chris Ryan?

  Is in early January when I think, I think they have to, like, make some sort of call. I think Paramount sets some sort of deadline with, like, when they need to accept this offer or not. And then I believe the Netflix stuff will stretch into March, provided nothing changes. I've noted with interest, you know, like, clips coming out of the Red Sea Film Festival in Saudi Arabia with folks like Dakota Johnson speaking kind of whimsically about everything. But then on the flip side of it, like, David Marchese had a really good interview with Kristen Stewart recently in The New York Times where she talked about, like, basically kind of wanting everything to be wiped away and started anew, you know, and that, like,

• 42:39Chris Ryan?

  it would make me, nah, I don't know if she was referring directly to the Netflix stuff, but like, was just like, maybe it's better if this all goes away and we start something fresh and equitable again.

• 42:50Andy Greenwald?

  Like Mark Duplass's show that he made for Netflix.

• 42:53Chris Ryan?

  But I'm just saying, like, there are a lot of varying opinions. And if, if people have to go on red carpets and people are doing awards F Y C interviews and talking about all this stuff and they'll be asked about this, I'll be curious to see the response from the creative community.

• 43:07Andy Greenwald?

  I'm very excited to hear the response of the creative community. You know who doesn't give a shit about the creative community? The people making this deal.

• 43:15Speaker 00

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• 44:43Speaker 00

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• 45:00Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk about Pluribus. Episode seven, The Gap. We've got nine episodes this season, so we're rounding second, I guess. Maybe, maybe we're on third, but thinking about stealing home.

• 45:10Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's more, I like it, yeah.

• 45:11Chris Ryan?

  We're not quite in the red zone. But it's clutch time.

• 45:16Andy Greenwald?

  It's right. It's overtime. We're driving. What could go wrong?

• 45:20Chris Ryan?

  Um, this episode was written by Jen Carroll and directed, I noted, by Adam Bernstein. This is one of the most beautiful, beautifully directed episodes of television I've seen in quite some time.

• 45:31Andy Greenwald?

  Adam Bernstein been directing with Vince since Breaking Bad.

• 45:33Chris Ryan?

  He's one of the goats. Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, uh, many other shows, including Fargo. And is married.

• 45:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 45:39Chris Ryan?

  To Jessica Hecht.

• 45:41Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, really?

• 45:42Chris Ryan?

  Goat, New York, character actor, Jessica Hecht.

• 45:45Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't know. Do you Google that or do you just know that?

• 45:47Chris Ryan?

  Sometimes I look at people's personal life section on the Wikipedia page.

• 45:49Andy Greenwald?

  Do you have a parasocial relationship with television director Adam Bernstein?

• 45:52Chris Ryan?

  Talking with our buddy Brian Raftery.

• 45:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 45:55Chris Ryan?

  We, we exchanged, uh, you know, uh, his, uh, noir, uh, recommendations between each other.

• 46:01Andy Greenwald?

  You guys just classic gatekeeping.

• 46:02Chris Ryan?

  Well, no, it's physical media, so you wouldn't understand. And, uh, Brian was like, oh, I've been on this really great Eve, Eve Montand run. Don't read his personal life section on his Wikipedia.

• 46:12Andy Greenwald?

  Skip right past that.

• 46:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I was like, yeah, anybody who was making films in the seventies, I do not read their personal life section.

• 46:19Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's absolutely fair.

• 46:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:21Andy Greenwald?

  It's a long time ago.

• 46:22Chris Ryan?

  It's none of my business.

• 46:23Andy Greenwald?

  None of my business. You know, so the bodies are buried. By the way, this is just also, I, I've never met the man. So I feel like I can, I can continue to assume things and gas them up at a distance. But like, if you talk about the type of TV industry that we would like, there are aspects of what Vince Gilligan does that are just what I think it's how it's supposed to work. One example would be this episode of Pluribus, his show, where veteran director who has done great work with him before is given an opportunity to do things that I don't know if he's had a chance to do before, like one man's solo trek.

• 46:54Chris Ryan?

  Across the Darien Gap. Yeah.

• 46:56Andy Greenwald?

  Also Jen Carroll, I didn't know this, uh, started her career as Vince's assistant and then grew into being a writer on the show, which is again, how this is supposed to work.

• 47:05Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Um, I thought this episode was mind blowing. It's largely silent. Uh, there's a little bit of dialogue in the beginning.

• 47:14Andy Greenwald?

  There's some singing.

• 47:15Chris Ryan?

  Most of the dialogue honestly is, uh, just her talking into the answering machine, asking for Gatorade. But, uh, her being Carol, but it's largely a two-hander than two hands never meet. It's Carol in New Mexico, feeling initially, uh, pretty.

• 47:33Chris Ryan?

  Pretty pumped up about her own bodily autonomy and the riches that are at her feet in terms of working on her golf game. She basically is like living out like a long, like it's like the beginning of when Kevin's home at Home Alone. He's like, I can do anything. I can eat Sundays and watch gangster movies and nobody's going to tell me to stop. She does this with playing golf, with switching from her police car to her Rolls Royce.

• 48:01Andy Greenwald?

  She goes to the hot springs. She goes to Santa Fe.

• 48:03Chris Ryan?

  Goes to Santa Fe, takes herself a Georgia O'Keeffe off the wall, replaces the poster that she has of that painting with the original painting, has a meal out in kind of almost celebration memorial of her lost partner.

• 48:16Andy Greenwald?

  And that looked to me, locals can tell me, there was, I was getting the top of Hotel Chaco vibes, which is where I spent most of 2019. So I just, if anyone knows where they shot it.

• 48:26Chris Ryan?

  But it seemed like meals from across her life, like a meal from Martha's Vineyard. Were those cream puffs? Were they like?

• 48:33Andy Greenwald?

  Perfederals?

• 48:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I don't know. But she was, she was bawling out until she's not.

• 48:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 48:38Chris Ryan?

  Uh, until The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and, and she writes in giant white paint asking for, for them to come back to the others.

• 48:47Andy Greenwald?

  She also fires the firework almost at her face.

• 48:49Chris Ryan?

  Well, yeah.

• 48:49Andy Greenwald?

  I, I gotta say, we are all just vessels for our own personal experiences and emotions. And this episode did remind me of some of my recent behavior in London, where it's like, at first you're like, I can go out to dinner at all the best restaurants on the Vittles list by myself whenever I want. And I can browse these bookstores and things and it feels great. Then you're there a little bit longer, a little bit more alone and you're like, no, I, I must continue this bon vivant lifestyle and eat this perfectly cooked piece of white fish on a pile of brown beans and have this Portuguese wine and choke it down. It's fine. It's fine. And then eventually-

• 49:30Chris Ryan?

  And then you find yourself eating soft broccoli and drinking NA Peroni.

• 49:34Andy Greenwald?

  No, then you find yourself not leaving your apartment, just Deliveroo-ing from Chinatown, drinking NA Asahi, being like, "If the Deliveroo driver stays around long enough, I will hug him."

• 49:46Chris Ryan?

  Bro, I know what you're talking about.

• 49:48Andy Greenwald?

  It's real.

• 49:48Chris Ryan?

  I mean, like, I, you know, my, my wife had to travel back to New York a lot this year, and like, every time she would leave, I was like, "Nobody fucking knows the damage I'm about to do."

• 49:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 49:56Chris Ryan?

  I'm about to get through the world of cinema. I am going to re-watch Lost. I am going to read Anna Karenina. I am going to get in great shape.

• 50:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 50:08Chris Ryan?

  And I just didn't do it.

• 50:09Andy Greenwald?

  Only the last thing I've done.

• 50:10Chris Ryan?

  I just didn't do it. Now, part of that is because, you know, like, the corrupting influence of my smartphone.

• 50:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 50:15Chris Ryan?

  But part of it is also because, like, life's about other people, and it's hard to be an island. And that's what we kind of see with her.

• 50:22Andy Greenwald?

  I loved, I did love that emotional aspect of the behavior, which is that, like, she's, she, and you saw it specifically in the golf, you know, something that I, I feel like you should have covered this with Tim on Monday, because you're both much more passionate about it. You've, golf is like-

• 50:36Chris Ryan?

  I'll be asking Tim about how he feels about Carol's golf swing, because if Carol has six weeks, or how much time passes, 12 days to 48 days.

• 50:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 50:46Chris Ryan?

  If she has that amount of time, she can be at the range all day, every day. And she should be getting dialed. Like, she should be just completely striping it by that point.

• 50:57Andy Greenwald?

  But that what?

• 50:57Chris Ryan?

  If I did that, if I did that, I would like to think that my form would be a little bit smoother, but we can, we can interrogate this.

• 51:04Andy Greenwald?

  So 12 days to 48 days, that's basic, yeah, that was my, my hitch in London before Thanksgiving, basically. And that, that, that sort of, that tracked with my psychological tailspin. I, but, but specifically about the golf, the way it begins with, like, an attempt to achieve normalcy.

• 51:21Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 51:21Andy Greenwald?

  Where she drives to the club and she does things properly, as if the world still-

• 51:27Chris Ryan?

  Even though there's a bison on the fairway.

• 51:28Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly. She is, she is in denial, and she's attempting to regulate herself by re-establishing some baseline of reality.

• 51:36Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 51:37Andy Greenwald?

  And then after a certain amount of time, she's on the top of a parking garage, taking out office windows.

• 51:41Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 51:43Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't quite get there, but you know, one more trip.

• 51:46Chris Ryan?

  The other half of this episode is about Manusos and his journey from Paraguay to eventually New Mexico, one would think, but he gets as far as the Darien Gap, where you have to basically walk 100 kilometers through the jungle and through all this danger. And this is a huge, you know, this is a huge like path that people take to get to this country in the first place from South and Central America. And it's basically the crossing between Colombia and Panama. And he drives from Paraguay through Peru, through Ecuador, gets to Colombia, gets to like the point where people have been dropping their belongings because they can no longer carry them.

• 52:29Chris Ryan?

  A group of others come out and say, please, like, we can get you to New Mexico tonight. Like, let us help you. You need water. You're gonna get stabbed by chunga palms, which I did not know was something I needed to worry about.

• 52:41Andy Greenwald?

  Yo, this is literally what the concierge people at Virgin Atlantic said to me on Monday. They were like, we'll, we'll, we'll get you there. It's fine. It's fine. We'll give you some Bloody Mary flavored chips.

• 52:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:52Andy Greenwald?

  Crisps.

• 52:53Chris Ryan?

  Um, I thought that this stuff was fucking extraordinary. Like, the filmmaking was beautiful, watching this guy. It made me actually think, like, is, is this guy the hero of this show?

• 53:06Andy Greenwald?

  In a more traditional sense, he is.

• 53:08Chris Ryan?

  Well, he's walking and he's like, I am not one of them. I am here to save the world, you know, his mantra that he's sort of saying throughout. And I just thought that this was such a cool, brave, creative, interesting piece of television.

• 53:21Andy Greenwald?

  Do we know where they filmed?

• 53:22Chris Ryan?

  I don't.

• 53:22Andy Greenwald?

  Any of that stuff?

• 53:23Chris Ryan?

  I don't.

• 53:23Andy Greenwald?

  I, I will go on record that that was not New Mexico.

• 53:26Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 53:26Andy Greenwald?

  I feel, I feel very confident that some of those stunning ocean vistas.

• 53:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:31Andy Greenwald?

  Were not, uh, not from.

• 53:33Chris Ryan?

  So what did you think about it?

• 53:34Andy Greenwald?

  I loved the show. I loved this show. I loved this episode. And there are moments that I'm, you know, that I'm eager to discuss. I think that Manusos as a character, and I want to get the actor right, Carlos Manuel Vezca, um, is phenomenal. And so brightly and brilliantly drawn with such an efficiency of, of line that we understand so much about him and he barely talks.

• 53:58Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:59Andy Greenwald?

  Um, you know, the sort of fetishistic, almost leaving of money for every time he takes gas. I also appreciate when shows, especially process-driven shows like Gilligan shows.

• 54:10Andy Greenwald?

  Like, you and I know, because we grew up watching movies, soon to be in the Netflix library, that if you do need to take gas from an automobile, you have to use your mouth to do it.

• 54:20Chris Ryan?

  I don't know if I could do it.

• 54:21Andy Greenwald?

  I wanted to ask you that.

• 54:24Chris Ryan?

  I think I would barf. I just don't know if I could suck gasoline out of, I mean, if put in the position.

• 54:29Andy Greenwald?

  You smoked for 20 years. You could, you could probably.

• 54:31Chris Ryan?

  I could do it. I could do it, but I would, I think at this point, creature comforts are such that I would want like my Toms of Maine right there. Just kidding, a good brush.

• 54:39Andy Greenwald?

  Well, you could help yourself to that.

• 54:41Chris Ryan?

  It's true.

• 54:42Andy Greenwald?

  He, he kept, he kept doing.

• 54:43Chris Ryan?

  His, uh, his speech to the people who are asking to guide him, they were asking, and he's just like, nothing you have is yours. It's all stolen, was so good. Uh, I was just like, this is, also Gilligan, man, again, just finding someone.

• 54:58Andy Greenwald?

  That's like what they used to run in movie theaters in 2020.

• 55:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it was stolen.

• 55:05Andy Greenwald?

  The ArcLight was built on stolen land.

• 55:10Chris Ryan?

  Okay, you like this show, but?

• 55:12Andy Greenwald?

  I, I would say, and I'd be interested to hear what other people think about this as well. Like, I think this is kind of a litmus test and a patience test of how much you want the process. Um, I don't really have like a from the heart, I'm passionate about it, criticism of it, but it did remind me of two things. One, like, I am not a, generally a day in the life guy. Not a big Mrs. Dalloway guy. You know what I mean? Not a Ulysses guy. Like, I don't mind, and maybe this is, and I think I would say this even before I started just, you know, watching British man on the street food reels for most of my lived awake experience, that I don't mind cutting to the most interesting parts of the story and not needing to show every single detail, even though I, you know, I praised the doc review of Better Call Saul to high heaven.

• 55:56Chris Ryan?

  More than I did.

• 55:58Andy Greenwald?

  So, I, I, there are aspects of this episode, and maybe this is also coloring my entire appreciation for this show and what Vince Gilligan does generally, in the same spirit with which I was like, ah, he promoted his assistant, that's wonderful. In that, what I was, pause. The best parts of writer's rooms, not pause, but like digression, not pause like in the Hot 97 sense.

• 56:23Chris Ryan?

  Let me be.

• 56:24Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 56:27Andy Greenwald?

  The best parts of writers' rooms always, always, always are the first two to three weeks. Because it's the most pie in the sky when everyone, in a well-run room, everyone can express all the subtleties and nuance of what excites them about the characters or a character's potential journey that season. And you, collectively you, write symphonies of emotional arc and places for them to go and all these fun little like flavorings and little finely drawn filigrees of like what you could do in a scene if there was room for it. And then reality hits and the network or studio wants outlines and all of the fiddly stuff that you fell in love with most falls away. And that's okay.

• 57:11Andy Greenwald?

  That's part of the process. You know, I had the experience recently over there where it's like there are things that I am passionate about in a particular episode and things that I will remember and mourn and no one will notice it because what the spirit of those pieces got distilled into three lines.

• 57:29Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 57:29Andy Greenwald?

  Near the end of the episode. What Pluribus does is find the space or take up the space for all those little details. So that Carol's, there's room for Carol's golf breakdown, her fireworks journey and her Gatorade thirst. By the way, that is the best flavor of Gatorade.

• 57:47Chris Ryan?

  I disagree, but go ahead.

• 57:49Andy Greenwald?

  This is tearing this podcast apart.

• 57:51Chris Ryan?

  It's lemon.

• 57:52Andy Greenwald?

  It's lemon?

• 57:53Chris Ryan?

  Yellow, yeah. Lemon lime.

• 57:55Andy Greenwald?

  Is that just because it's the original one and you're like, I'm a purist?

• 57:58Chris Ryan?

  I just, I've never been a fruit punch guy before.

• 58:01Andy Greenwald?

  You're the Antonin Scalia of Gatorade.

• 58:04Chris Ryan?

  I've never drank high C. I never really liked Kool-Aid. I've never been a red, red drink guy.

• 58:09Andy Greenwald?

  Because all the fruits are mixed?

• 58:10Chris Ryan?

  I just don't, what is that?

• 58:12Andy Greenwald?

  It's delicious.

• 58:13Chris Ryan?

  Sure, but I think that lemon lime Gatorade is like how you get back on the field.

• 58:18Andy Greenwald?

  That's, you sound like someone raw dogging a 12-hour flight when you say that. That's crazy.

• 58:23Chris Ryan?

  And when I say get back on the field, I mean after you've had nine beers.

• 58:28Andy Greenwald?

  And you try to do the dairy and gap home. Anyway, it's a long digression to say that like, I think I was feeling that in this episode, that I guess at the end of the day.

• 58:38Chris Ryan?

  I totally get it.

• 58:39Andy Greenwald?

  At the end of the day, I appreciate that this show has space for all of it.

• 58:44Andy Greenwald?

  And that is essential to the way he makes TV. There was a part of me that was like-

• 58:48Chris Ryan?

  I wonder if you're reacting to how cinematic it was. Like, so for me, it was, there's a world in which that show, this episode, could have gone very wrong. You know, I mean, it's asked a lot of us this season. I think it's a challenging, I think it's in some ways slow TV. I think it's very much somebody who's like, I don't, I'm not getting notes, or it doesn't seem like it.

• 59:09Chris Ryan?

  But I think that the way that they have sprinkled Manousos over the course of the season, the way that the only times he has talked have been the most profound

• 59:21Chris Ryan?

  insights into who he is as a person. Whether it's teaching himself English on this drive to America, whether it's his rejection of this entire, basically invasion, because of his hatred for his mother and how unlike his mother this woman seems to be.

• 59:39Andy Greenwald?

  Well, he, yeah, and he's contemptuous of any kindness or charity.

• 59:43Chris Ryan?

  And the juxtaposition of that with Carol's kind of like very American consumerist narcissism and her needs, you know, are pretty fascinating. And this guy is basically only like, he only lets the others help him when he can't help himself and when he's basically incapacitated.

• 1:00:03Andy Greenwald?

  And I couldn't tell, what was your reading of the last image we have of him as the helicopter's coming down? Is he waving for help as they told him to?

• 1:00:10Chris Ryan?

  It was ambiguous to me. I couldn't tell whether he was waving them away or waving for help. I mean, clearly he's on death's door, so he needs help. And, you know, I have no idea, I assumed for a second when he backs into the palm, I was like, I think this guy might be dead and this might be one of the all-time like-

• 1:00:26Andy Greenwald?

  Oh my god.

• 1:00:27Chris Ryan?

  But can you imagine if you would just watch that guy for 35 minutes walking and then he dies by slipping into a palm tree?

• 1:00:32Andy Greenwald?

  And we would be on this podcast being like, only Vince Gilligan has the creative stones and corporate freedom to tell a story like that.

• 1:00:39Chris Ryan?

  But I found myself in a very simple way, just like- On like a very basic level, just be like, now I care about this guy. And now I am rooting for this guy and I need this guy to get to Carol. And it might be that, and the way they have set it up is extraordinary, where it's Carol breaks essentially.

• 1:00:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and she, she.

• 1:00:57Chris Ryan?

  And she brings Osha back, uh, and she's like, I need human contact, even if it's not the real thing. And this guy.

• 1:01:05Andy Greenwald?

  Is gonna show up.

• 1:01:05Chris Ryan?

  Is gonna be like, I fucking walked here.

• 1:01:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 1:01:08Chris Ryan?

  Because you said, come, if I want to save the world, and I want to save the world, and now you want cream puffs and hanging out? Fuck that.

• 1:01:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I, I, I do. I think that's, I think you're right. I mean, I.

• 1:01:21Chris Ryan?

  That's an amazing tension to put in a television. That's awesome.

• 1:01:24Andy Greenwald?

  It is, and it's brilliantly and patiently set up.

• 1:01:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Andy Greenwald?

  Um, and I, I also really like the observation you made about, about cultural differences as well as personal differences that, um.

• 1:01:35Chris Ryan?

  Think about like the level of conservation where he's drinking rainwater and she's like, bring me a Gatorade.

• 1:01:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, she's demanding things.

• 1:01:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:42Andy Greenwald?

  Restock a sprouts for me, turn the lights back on because I don't like, because I don't like the coyotes.

• 1:01:48Chris Ryan?

  She didn't ask for them to fix her car. She was like, I'll just take a Rolls Royce. He's walking back and forth up a mountain to keep putting gasoline that he's sucking out of other cars and then leaving money for into his MG, which is his car that he has always had. It's been in his garage, it's under this tarp, like, it's, the, the, the way they're defining these characters is amazing. And with no dialogue.

• 1:02:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and you can also take a step back and appreciate the game board because Mr. Diabate, for example, is quite compelling and we're quite empathetic towards him, even though he's behaving like a bit of a rascal. Like a, like a little bit like Eve Montan.

• 1:02:26Chris Ryan?

  It's just like, there's lots of different ways to live in this world, right?

• 1:02:29Andy Greenwald?

  If you look at his Wikipedia page, you skip the personal. Yeah, there are a lot of different ways to live in this world, a lot of different ways to respond to it. And what is your obligation to any kind of code or morality when everything is gone?

• 1:02:42Chris Ryan?

  Um.

• 1:02:44Andy Greenwald?

  It's a very, very, very subtle kind of show. And I mean, you say slow TV in a way. I think that's really, I think that's really right.

• 1:02:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I was recording rewatchables with Rob and Joe and Billy yesterday. And Rob brought up a really great Ryan Coogler quote, which is circulating because somebody was asking him on the sort of Sinner's Award trail about working on X-Files. And he's like, you know, this is my first real foray into TV. And he was like, I was talking with a TV writer. And the way they put it was a movie is about the most important moment in a character's life.

• 1:03:18Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 1:03:18Chris Ryan?

  And a TV show is about the most important journey in a character's life.

• 1:03:22Andy Greenwald?

  That's right.

• 1:03:23Chris Ryan?

  And you can literalize that for this episode. But I think in general, what they're doing on this show by showing so much, quote unquote, like lowercase a action of like, I am walking over here. I am going to refill my Brita or I am going to go look for this. Is you are, you are participating in this journey. Like, I mean, you get to the end of an episode of Pluribus and you might be tired. You might be bored. You might be whatever. And it's kind of, you know, they're, they're giving you this sort of secondary visceral feeling of what the characters are going through.

• 1:03:56Andy Greenwald?

  It's an interesting way to think about it because I think one of the defining aspects of what makes TV, TV historically, even before the prestige era, is the churn and the change. And you could look at it like a soap opera where everyone has to be dead and then be alive again. Or in professional wrestling where people turn heel and turn hero. And you just have to service the engine of plot over, over time quickly. And we talked a lot about like the comedies of Mike Schur being among the few, or at least being trailblazers in the idea that 30 minute shows could also evolve.

• 1:04:25Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:04:26Andy Greenwald?

  That the most traditional format for comfort and stability, you could nudge towards things and people would respond to that serialized storytelling. If you look at the, the oeuvre, the Albuquerque oeuvre of Vince Gilligan, it is a masterclass in storytelling as evolution or as transformation. How do people become other things? And embracing that as the thesis of the show, whether it's, it's Walter White or how does Jimmy become Saul?

• 1:04:55Andy Greenwald?

  This is a very, very confident snapshot of the most extreme possible context.

• 1:05:03Chris Ryan?

  I also wonder whether or not like, he's talked a little bit about.

• 1:05:09Chris Ryan?

  I think, I can't remember whether he's like, I kind of know where it ends, but I'm not uncertain of how it gets there, or maybe he's not even sure of how it ends. I don't know, but like, I do feel like there is a real, organic, and then this happens, and then this happens, and then what if this happens? Like, in the writer's room and in the writing of the show.

• 1:05:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I, that's something that I would definitely like to talk to him about, because the most, well, there are many, but one of the most famous stories to come out of these shows is that that season premiere, not teaser, but like, the opening scene of the penultimate season of Breaking Bad, I believe, is

• 1:05:46Chris Ryan?

  Of the gun in the car.

• 1:05:47Andy Greenwald?

  With the guns in the trunk and the bacon that spells out 50. And he's gone on the record saying, "We didn't know what we were gonna do with the gun. We like to challenge ourselves." And you're right, like, there are moments, whether, maybe it's the drones, it feels like that to me, that like, someone suggested it, someone made a joke, and I bet they laughed. And just like I bet they laughed when, even Ray Seaborn probably laughed when she went to the set. I thought it was interesting that they built that cul-de-sac that she lives on as a set to avoid fueling another, like, tourism boom, because the Walter White House is a house in Albuquerque. So that's all constructed and they can play with it and keep it as they want. The fact that the failed drone with the misweighted trash is just hanging from the lamp probably will throughout the run of the show.

• 1:06:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31Andy Greenwald?

  It's fun. It's also, I like the show, I was challenged by this episode, but it is very fun to talk about because it deserves the rigor.

• 1:06:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, analysis, yes. Yeah, I think it's pretty sophisticated. I didn't want to take away the Landman commentary game from you and give it to Tim Simons, who watched very graciously his first ever episode of Landman. I thought it was a pretty tender and sober episode of the show, with Rebecca's plot kind of accepted.

• 1:06:56Andy Greenwald?

  No, even that, like, there is a sense. First of all, I put this on Instagram, like, Sam Elliott ate a corn dog.

• 1:07:06Andy Greenwald?

  And the director, like Stephen Kay, I believe is the director,

• 1:07:09Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:07:10Andy Greenwald?

  lingered on his like, on his, his, his tongue coming to like, take in the doll, like, it is quite a visceral.

• 1:07:18Chris Ryan?

  Speaking of slow TV, yeah.

• 1:07:20Andy Greenwald?

  Truly. So I was like, someone is laughing here and I hope it's Sam Elliott. So I'll give it that. I also continue to think that someone stepped in or took on some sort of role in shaping and guiding things because there's just a feeling of like, well, let's put all the characters in scenes together.

• 1:07:43Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:07:43Andy Greenwald?

  And see what happens. You know, like, like the two dudes who live with them. What's his name and what's his name?

• 1:07:49Chris Ryan?

  Well, Neil slash Nate.

• 1:07:51Andy Greenwald?

  Neil slash Nate.

• 1:07:51Chris Ryan?

  And Dale.

• 1:07:52Andy Greenwald?

  And Dale.

• 1:07:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:53Andy Greenwald?

  And Dale is fully methamphetamine addict also now, which was a great scene.

• 1:07:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:59Andy Greenwald?

  Like on TV, in life, the guys that also live in your house probably don't drive eight hours with you to a funeral.

• 1:08:07Chris Ryan?

  I also didn't understand why.

• 1:08:08Andy Greenwald?

  Although you lived in a share house in Boston the day and I bet those guys would have driven with you.

• 1:08:11Chris Ryan?

  I have many men who would drive many hours with me.

• 1:08:14Andy Greenwald?

  Many men.

• 1:08:15Chris Ryan?

  But I didn't understand why they take private planes everywhere. But Tommy couldn't be like, can I use the plane?

• 1:08:21Andy Greenwald?

  Well, because of penance, because he needed to suffer.

• 1:08:25Chris Ryan?

  He wanted to go through pain.

• 1:08:25Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just saying that like, I, I'll accept the incredulity of that in exchange for all of the characters in a scene together.

• 1:08:33Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:08:33Andy Greenwald?

  Similarly, the Rebecca scene was absurd and frankly, a little too close to my own experience on an airplane two nights ago. But at least they were like, if she's here, we need to give her a second type of scene to do.

• 1:08:47Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:08:48Andy Greenwald?

  It cannot only be.

• 1:08:49Chris Ryan?

  Getting phone calls about guys dying at oil wells.

• 1:08:52Andy Greenwald?

  And walking around like a velociraptor that someone has hung a bag on.

• 1:08:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:55Andy Greenwald?

  Like a hat stand.

• 1:08:56Chris Ryan?

  Do you think MTEx has more workplace disasters than other oil companies?

• 1:09:02Andy Greenwald?

  It's a great question. I, I thought you were going to say than other companies, in which case I feel like probably. But other oil companies, I don't know.

• 1:09:10Chris Ryan?

  I don't know either.

• 1:09:10Andy Greenwald?

  It's a volatile space.

• 1:09:12Chris Ryan?

  We've got a couple of balls up in the air right now.

• 1:09:14Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:09:14Chris Ryan?

  You know, I mean, just because of the, the chemical leak, which is still. Ongoing, you know, because that guy's blind now. And then now we have this collision at another oil well, so.

• 1:09:25Andy Greenwald?

  That was dramatic.

• 1:09:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, I'm glad you watched it. You do your homework.

• 1:09:28Andy Greenwald?

  I find that, and I don't want to, I don't want to like say anything rash, like that the show is good. I don't want to say that, but it is, these last two weeks have, my experience watching them was more pleasurable than anticipatory for how much fun it would be to talk to you about them.

• 1:09:48Chris Ryan?

  It's just you being like, you and me, Taylor, we're not so different after all, man.

• 1:09:51Andy Greenwald?

  I also, I texted you, so I burned this, but I was hoping that we could make a pact on the podcast that should one of us expire early, we will cammy each other's grave sites.

• 1:10:03Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. Well, I'm not wasting Pappy Van Winkle on your grave site.

• 1:10:06Andy Greenwald?

  That was extravagant. What about?

• 1:10:08Chris Ryan?

  Wasteful.

• 1:10:09Andy Greenwald?

  What about NA Pappy? Do they have that?

• 1:10:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm sure they do. Pappy Van NA.

• 1:10:14Andy Greenwald?

  Fucking Mr. Pibb. Just pour that shit out.

• 1:10:19Chris Ryan?

  I did want to ask you, you know, I asked, I mentioned to you that the hot, one of the hottest things in TV right now is heated rivalry.

• 1:10:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, hottest in all senses.

• 1:10:28Chris Ryan?

  Which is the hockey show that's on HBO, which.

• 1:10:31Andy Greenwald?

  HBO Max, right?

• 1:10:32Chris Ryan?

  HBO Max, which is incredibly popular, for one thing. For another, is, it comes from Jacob Tierney, who is the director on Shorzy. And again, is from the letter Kenny Shorzy kind of.

• 1:10:46Andy Greenwald?

  Extended hockey universe.

• 1:10:47Chris Ryan?

  Extended hockey universe. This is a adaptation of, I think, a fairly successful novel about a long-running love affair between two incredibly popular hockey players.

• 1:10:58Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 1:11:00Chris Ryan?

  And I thought the show was pretty good, man.

• 1:11:04Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think that if you were going to get me into a hockey show, I think probably the comedy over the melodrama.

• 1:11:14Chris Ryan?

  Yes. But I'd love for you to watch Shorzy anytime you're ready.

• 1:11:17Andy Greenwald?

  I kind of felt like you had me watch this because it's fine. I think I can see why it's good. It didn't draw me in as like, I want to watch a lot of this because I also, sorry to our Canadian listeners, I don't.

• 1:11:28Chris Ryan?

  Care about hockey.

• 1:11:28Andy Greenwald?

  I don't really care about hockey.

• 1:11:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's fine, man.

• 1:11:30Andy Greenwald?

  It just feels cold. Like literally, I'm like, I don't want to be in that room. It combines many of my least favorite things, cold, physical violence, and dental trauma.

• 1:11:42Andy Greenwald?

  Like I, yeah, it's just, those are my, that's my red line. You know what I mean? But, um, but I could see it and see why it's popular. I think I.

• 1:11:50Chris Ryan?

  I think the reason why this show is so popular is it's incredibly graphic sex.

• 1:11:54Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:11:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:55Andy Greenwald?

  Say more about that.

• 1:11:56Chris Ryan?

  I, I mean, it is pretty boundary pushing, I, I think.

• 1:12:01Andy Greenwald?

  Did you?

• 1:12:02Chris Ryan?

  Say more.

• 1:12:02Andy Greenwald?

  Please.

• 1:12:03Chris Ryan?

  Describe it.

• 1:12:04Andy Greenwald?

  Describe it more. I'm gonna close my eyes. Like, pretend this is an audiobook.

• 1:12:08Chris Ryan?

  No, it's like, these two guys really get after it.

• 1:12:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:11Andy Greenwald?

  Well, like, that's what hockey players do. Do you think it is more or less accurate than Rebecca on Landman's one night stand?

• 1:12:18Chris Ryan?

  Well, we didn't get to see her really go, go for it, right?

• 1:12:21Andy Greenwald?

  We did get to see that she apparently has slept with the hangover-proofed heir to the Bed Bath & Beyond fortune.

• 1:12:27Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:12:28Andy Greenwald?

  Because that guy really cares.

• 1:12:29Chris Ryan?

  He's got like a candle for his bathroom.

• 1:12:30Andy Greenwald?

  He's got a candle for his bathroom. He had aromatherapy tabs for her in, in the panhandle or wherever they were.

• 1:12:37Chris Ryan?

  Look, man, like, as you're, as you're finding out, everybody's got a story to them, you know?

• 1:12:41Andy Greenwald?

  It's a beautiful thing. I, I, I would check out more of the show, but I just didn't. Look, it combines all the things I don't like. Character-driven drama and explicit sex. Sorry, those are my red lines.

• 1:12:52Chris Ryan?

  And hockey.

• 1:12:53Andy Greenwald?

  Well, and hockey, sure.

• 1:12:54Chris Ryan?

  Thanks to Kai for producing us today.

• 1:12:56Andy Greenwald?

  Last thing.

• 1:12:57Chris Ryan?

  Kai is too big for us again.

• 1:12:58Andy Greenwald?

  No, well, she's a Golden Globe nominee now.

• 1:13:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:01Andy Greenwald?

  Just like Amanda Seyfried or whatever, so.

• 1:13:03Chris Ryan?

  Wait till, like, it's gonna get all, the, the Amy Poehler civil war, when it's like, does Kai get like an actual statue? You know? That kind of thing?

• 1:13:10Andy Greenwald?

  You think that's gonna be a problem? First of all, Amy seems like someone who would.

• 1:13:13Chris Ryan?

  She would be, she would be such a benevolent.

• 1:13:16Andy Greenwald?

  Take care of her staff.

• 1:13:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:17Andy Greenwald?

  Unlike us, we would be fucking monsters.

• 1:13:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we're like, let's get it down to 64 degrees in this room.

• 1:13:21Andy Greenwald?

  And actually give us one trophy and then we'll just fucking see who takes it.

• 1:13:24Chris Ryan?

  Here's a subscription to Netflix.

• 1:13:25Andy Greenwald?

  And The New Yorker. Um, no, no one's gonna get this at the very end of our long podcast, but, um, just the music things. You were on Bance Plane to do Songs of the Year.

• 1:13:33Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, I did the Best Music of the Year with Yasi on Bance Plane. It was a really fun pod. We talked about our favorite albums in the year and you can find, uh, Yasi did a playlist.

• 1:13:42Andy Greenwald?

  Nice.

• 1:13:42Chris Ryan?

  They did a playlist for Bance Plane. Um, and I know you're, you're bringing this up so that you can talk about your.

• 1:13:47Andy Greenwald?

  I did my 50 Songs of the Year playlist.

• 1:13:49Chris Ryan?

  Yes, thank you for gesturing towards my accomplishments before talking about the playlist.

• 1:13:54Andy Greenwald?

  I both wanted it. I wanted to talk about both, but also I wanted to turn it back on you. So, yeah, Spotify at Andy Greenwald is public, but. Are you gonna release the CR cut? Because I happen to know, I've seen, I've seen drafts of your own playlist.

• 1:14:08Chris Ryan?

  No, I mean, I gave, release the CR cut? You can find, you can find my Spotify profile if you want.

• 1:14:13Andy Greenwald?

  That's not private? You're like, this is the songs I like this year?

• 1:14:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:17Andy Greenwald?

  What is your attitude towards that list? Because like, there's no geese on it. So did you feel like you didn't need to represent?

• 1:14:23Chris Ryan?

  Honestly, dude, like, I mean, like, it's, it's just, I haven't finished it, but like, I don't have as, as particular of, of a set of rules as you do, where it's like, no repeats, no... What was your whole thing? It's like, one, one song per artist, features don't count?

• 1:14:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, so if like, it's, if there's, someone could appear on Playlist twice if they were the, if they were the, the primary artist on one song and a featured artist on another.

• 1:14:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I just, I just forgot to put a geese song on mine. But I also hadn't been like, everybody come look at my songs yet.

• 1:14:53Andy Greenwald?

  I have been like that.

• 1:14:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:54Andy Greenwald?

  I'm obsessed with like, curating this, and you're just hanging out, watching explicit sex shows? And it's just like, there's two types of people in this world.

• 1:15:00Chris Ryan?

  That's why this podcast works.

• 1:15:02Andy Greenwald?

  What do you wanna be? I didn't realize we were really Burt and Ernie, but...

• 1:15:07Chris Ryan?

  Who's who?

• 1:15:07Andy Greenwald?

  Thirteen or fourteen years in, I guess we are.

• 1:15:09Chris Ryan?

  Thank you to Kai, thank you to everybody for listening. So next week, we are going to be doing our best shows of the year. I believe on Monday.

• 1:15:18Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, I'm ready.

• 1:15:19Chris Ryan?

  Um, and then we'll be talking about all of your favorite TV later in the week. We have a mailbag coming up. We have a, hopefully a special episode on Pluribus coming up. And yeah, we'll be with you probably until the last week of December.

• 1:15:31Andy Greenwald?

  And then after that?

• 1:15:33Chris Ryan?

  Who knows?

• 1:15:33Andy Greenwald?

  Who knows what's gonna happen in the, in the new year? I can't wait to find out.

• 1:15:36Chris Ryan?

  Uh, talk to you guys soon.

• 1:15:46Speaker 00

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