The Top 10 TV Shows of 2025

Chris and Andy talk about the tragic passing of legendary filmmaker Rob Reiner and his indelible impact on Hollywood over the years (3:30). Then they look back at this year in TV (14:14), run through a handful of honorable mentions (28:49), and reveal their top 10 shows of 2025 (55:41). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Additional Production Supervision: Jon Jones 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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• 0:46Speaker 00

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• 1:17Speaker 01

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

• 1:23Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me in the studio, the best of the year, every year, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 1:36Andy Greenwald?

  Do you want to do a top?

• 1:37Chris Ryan?

  I did a little Liam Gallagher there.

• 1:39Andy Greenwald?

  Did you?

• 1:39Chris Ryan?

  You know, just like a little like, oh, backed away from the microphone.

• 1:42Andy Greenwald?

  But were you leaning in, looking slightly constipated and then leaning back?

• 1:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:45Andy Greenwald?

  I'm going to go out on this year the way I came into it, provoking Oasis fans.

• 1:49Chris Ryan?

  I saw what might've been a fake Liam Gallagher tweet where he said, "I'm doing Pilates, drinking sparkling water and got addicted to reading."

• 2:00Andy Greenwald?

  I think that was my tweet. What are you talking about? Fake Liam Gallagher tweet? That's my 2025?

• 2:06Chris Ryan?

  Uh, it's good to see you.

• 2:07Andy Greenwald?

  Do you want to do, like, at the end of this pod? Or maybe Kaia could do it, like, top 10 performances of me on a top 10 pod on this pod? Like, what year was my best?

• 2:17Chris Ryan?

  Oh, like, across, I mean, I have some plots on that.

• 2:21Andy Greenwald?

  Do you answer that too quickly?

• 2:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I've got Goldsberry making your shot chart right now. Andy, today is our annual best TV of the year episode. We're gonna do it a little bit differently this year, so we're excited to talk to you about that. Before we get started, housekeeping.

• 2:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 2:34Chris Ryan?

  Inbox, Instagram, YouTube. It's the watch at Spotify.com. We're doing a mailbag to end the year, so please set us up. We've got some great questions so far, but we can always use some more. Instagram, the watch pod underscore, if you want to follow us there. YouTube, you can watch us on Ringer Dash TV. You can also watch us on Spotify, where I hope you're listening to us. Here's our schedule right now. So today, obviously, we're doing best of the year. Thursday, I think will be a normal podcast, if it's not our mailbag. But you'll have an episode on Thursday.

• 3:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 3:02Chris Ryan?

  I believe you will also have episodes Monday and Thursday next week.

• 3:06Andy Greenwald?

  Wow.

• 3:07Chris Ryan?

  We shall see. And then we're gonna be off for the last week of December, early January. We'll be back on the 5th, I believe it is. What else do I have to tell you?

• 3:17Andy Greenwald?

  I definitely wanted to say that I appreciate how, you know, Kaia did her best to make our Instagram real stuff, like, very sticky. You know, like, very controversial. And I feel like last week, Kai kind of did some really nice reputation shaping to make me more like the older, mailer, less informed Kyla Scanlon. It was like, real business-y.

• 3:39Chris Ryan?

  Let me explain how money works.

• 3:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, which I don't understand at all, or know, nor am I qualified to opine on. But I really appreciated that guy.

• 3:48Chris Ryan?

  I guess, I'm curious, like, why? This seems to be the central preoccupation of your life, is what our watch to social media strategy is.

• 3:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, because it feels very invasive. Like, I, you know, for years-

• 3:59Chris Ryan?

  It's invasive, you're a podcaster.

• 4:00Andy Greenwald?

  Well, okay, but that used to mean that we would go into a dark room-

• 4:04Chris Ryan?

  Yes, I know.

• 4:05Andy Greenwald?

  And talk.

• 4:05Chris Ryan?

  I could be, like, missing a tooth.

• 4:08Andy Greenwald?

  And that was fine. Now, like, on a weekend, I just happened to open up my old Apple phone, and the first thing I see is this stupid face being like, mad because I wore that shirt two weeks ago.

• 4:19Chris Ryan?

  You know what you can do? Mute yourself. Mute the watch. Unfollow us.

• 4:23Andy Greenwald?

  Why would I mute the watch? It's like, collaborate with us on this reel. Like, everything is promotion, man. You know?

• 4:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I have an uncomplicated relationship with it, you know?

• 4:32Andy Greenwald?

  With fame?

• 4:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. That's why you can find me at the Red Sea Film Festival.

• 4:38Andy Greenwald?

  What better place for creativity and expression of the arts?

• 4:41Chris Ryan?

  I'm stalling because I don't want to do this at the top. We should probably acknowledge the really, I mean, what a just absolute fucking trash weekend.

• 4:49Andy Greenwald?

  This is a dogshit weekend.

• 4:50Chris Ryan?

  But, you know, Sunday, news broke that Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle were murdered at their home in Los Angeles. And this story is, it's obviously tragic and heartbreaking and also kind of pushes beyond belief, as many headlines do over the last few years. And there's really like, I mean, I can talk a little bit, we can talk a little bit about Reiner, who I think his affability and his gregarious public persona almost betrayed the enormous importance and influence and, you know, a body of work that he has contributed to entertainment over the last

• 5:33Chris Ryan?

  half-century longer, both as a filmmaker and as an actor. I was going through his filmography yesterday, and I'd kind of even just forgotten that he was recently on The Bear. And when you go from All in the Family to The Bear with Stand By Me, A Few Good Men, and When Harry Met Sally, and Princess Bride in between, I mean, unbelievable life and career.

• 5:54Andy Greenwald?

  And to place him in just an unbelievably, unbelievable and unbroken chain of American entertainment from his father Carl.

• 6:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:06Andy Greenwald?

  And thinking about

• 6:09Andy Greenwald?

  Rob Reiner, growing up in Los Angeles, best friends with Albert Brooks, whose father was also like coming out of that like post vaudeville performance.

• 6:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:17Andy Greenwald?

  Lane and the way they took that baton and made what had started as sort of niche, kind of very Jewish comedy and then like became like the language of comedy and the language of togetherness and button pushing, socially aware entertainment for decades.

• 6:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:37Andy Greenwald?

  Is really moving and honestly makes this kind of blow like really, really hard to swallow, both on a, on a personal level for someone who, whom we didn't, didn't know. Although I, I did, I did have, I did spend time with him once, which I don't know if we've ever talked about.

• 6:51Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 6:52Andy Greenwald?

  But, but also just, just as part of our shared cultural memory.

• 6:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:56Andy Greenwald?

  This is a horrific tragedy.

• 6:58Chris Ryan?

  And, and, and an absolutely garish end to a life. Like, you know what I mean?

• 7:02Andy Greenwald?

  It's appalling.

• 7:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's really, really, really sad.

• 7:05Andy Greenwald?

  This is meaningless, but I, I just had this like this, I got shuddered thinking about like, I don't want Mel Brooks to know about this.

• 7:11Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 7:11Andy Greenwald?

  I don't, I don't want this.

• 7:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:13Andy Greenwald?

  This is so awful.

• 7:16Andy Greenwald?

  A couple of years ago, I was, I was, I don't know how this happened, but I became like the de facto moderator for this producer, Dan Lynn, he's now head of film for Netflix.

• 7:25Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 7:26Andy Greenwald?

  When he was an independent producer, he, very community oriented kind of guy. And he would have these like, like salons with filmmakers or cultural people and for an invited guest list. And, and I moderated a few of them and that's how I got the chance to be on like on a dais with Richard Donner before he died, which is really cool. And one that we did was the anniversary of Castle Rock Entertainment. So it was all the founders of Castle Rock, including

• 7:51Chris Ryan?

  Very cool.

• 7:51Andy Greenwald?

  Rob Reiner, and it was just like these old, extremely successful

• 7:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:55Andy Greenwald?

  men, and it was really moving to see the way that they talked about working with each other and like, how they picked the Seinfeld chronicle script off the slush pile or whatever. But it was also incredibly fortunate and memorable to be in the same room with a guy who was so completely comfortable being himself.

• 8:14Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 8:14Andy Greenwald?

  Everyone gravitated toward him. Everybody wanted stories with him. Everybody wanted to share their stories about his entertainment that they loved. Very familiar with this, very used to it, very comfortable being professionally, uh, Rob Reiner, but.

• 8:27Andy Greenwald?

  The gravity and the presence of a person like that who has lived such a deep life that went that burrowed and furrowed and burrowed into every aspect of our cultural memory since we were alive is just.

• 8:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, in some ways, like, you know, obviously, he's thought of as a different kind of filmmaker, but like he and Spielberg honestly have as much to do with like the way that.

• 8:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 8:50Chris Ryan?

  Shaped my ideas about like what happened on big screens when I was a kid and really like, I think I can look at like several of his films, Sure Thing, Stand By Me, and then A Few Good Men as, and to some extent Princess Bride as like these little like markers in my life, you know what I mean, like of like, yeah, high schooler, you know, maybe a somewhat more self-aware late teenager thinking about like my life. It's just an incredible contribution.

• 9:19Andy Greenwald?

  We're not even talking about, we didn't even talk about When Harry Met Sally, or we didn't talk about.

• 9:22Chris Ryan?

  That's right, yeah. Or American President, yeah.

• 9:25Andy Greenwald?

  It also speaks to a kind of, whenever we in our aging cusp Gen X or whatever we are way mourn the death of a monoculture, I think at its best, sometimes what we're thinking about is a Rob Reiner movie, which sort of.

• 9:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:43Andy Greenwald?

  Moved, it's like an Overton window of like what was the most mainstream entertainment possible.

• 9:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:49Andy Greenwald?

  And they could be gentle, like Stand By Me was, or they could be as he matured as a filmmaker, like A Few Good Men is a big meaty prime rib of American entertainment, of the type that isn't really made anymore.

• 10:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:02Andy Greenwald?

  It was made for everyone to be like, oh, that's a compelling adult movie with movie stars in it. It's not like a small fiddly thing on the margins, which is the sort of thing that gets nominated for Oscars these days, nor is it Avengers Four.

• 10:13Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 10:14Andy Greenwald?

  It doesn't exist anymore, but he was the bedrock of that kind of entertainment for our life.

• 10:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he'll be missed and just an absolutely terrible loss. Why don't we take a quick break and then we'll come back and we'll do our 10 Best of the Year. Okay, man. Uh, here we are. It's the 10 best of the year time. Now, uh, here's, here's a little bit behind the scenes stuff.

• 10:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, this is good. Process is everything. Process over results.

• 10:38Chris Ryan?

  Well, okay, so this, this episode is historically one of my favorite ones to produce over, you know, to do with you over the years.

• 10:44Andy Greenwald?

  I thought you meant like in the Lindsey Buckingham way, like you also produced it?

• 10:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:48Andy Greenwald?

  Like, guy, it's like you're leaning over on the board.

• 10:50Chris Ryan?

  Andy, you just gotta take Andy down just a little bit.

• 10:52Andy Greenwald?

  Way down.

• 10:53Chris Ryan?

  Um, this is where I talk about lioness. Uh, um, so what happened is I was about midway through this year. I started to get a sneaking suspicion that you and I were gonna have very similar lists. So similar, in fact, that it would be a little bit of a boring podcast. Alarmingly, I went back through the last four, five, six years of our show. And I looked at these lists and in the, especially post-Sam Esmeil era, and Sam obviously is a beloved part of this pod.

• 11:22Andy Greenwald?

  I have a statement from Sam.

• 11:24Chris Ryan?

  Do you really?

• 11:24Andy Greenwald?

  For today's pod, yeah.

• 11:25Chris Ryan?

  Did you do some reporting?

• 11:26Andy Greenwald?

  I did. I did. Boots on the ground reporting.

• 11:29Chris Ryan?

  Like nuzzy style or?

• 11:31Andy Greenwald?

  Well. How it's, how it started. Yeah. I mean, I don't know how it's gonna end. But yes, in the sense that I fired off a text to him as I was getting in the car this morning to come.

• 11:41Chris Ryan?

  And he responded.

• 11:42Andy Greenwald?

  He did.

• 11:42Chris Ryan?

  That's nice of him. Uh, do I wanna know what it is before I say this or after?

• 11:45Andy Greenwald?

  No, let's finish our.

• 11:46Chris Ryan?

  Sam was an invaluable part of these episodes because he broke up our group think. Now, Andy and I cannot apologize because we've just known each other for a really long time and we have very similar tastes.

• 11:59Andy Greenwald?

  It's probably why we're friends.

• 12:00Chris Ryan?

  And you can kind of hear that over the course of the year on the pod. Now, often what will happen is there's like six, five or six shared shows.

• 12:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 12:07Chris Ryan?

  Four or five, um, you know, uh, personal choices.

• 12:12Andy Greenwald?

  And placement can vary.

• 12:13Chris Ryan?

  I kinda had a feeling even up until the last couple of weeks that we were gonna have like pretty much locked in. Lists. I thought maybe it would be more interesting this year is to present a top 10 that is the watch's top 10.

• 12:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 12:30Chris Ryan?

  And we also, I did, we did ask Kaya if she wanted to contribute and she will be correcting the record at certain points, but for the most part did not want to do her own top 10.

• 12:39Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't ask her, for what it's worth.

• 12:41Chris Ryan?

  Well, I asked her before we started the show.

• 12:43Speaker 04

  I did not have enough time to.

• 12:44Chris Ryan?

  There you go, see, somebody.

• 12:46Andy Greenwald?

  Did you notice that I didn't ask you for yours? I apologize.

• 12:48Chris Ryan?

  Well, honestly, it's like, you can either be nominated for a Golden Globe, or you can watch fucking television. You can't do both.

• 12:54Andy Greenwald?

  What's beautiful about this is like, originally, I think Sam dipped out of participating in this because he was like, making a movie.

• 12:59Chris Ryan?

  Yes, he was watching too, he wasn't watching enough television.

• 13:02Andy Greenwald?

  Because he was making a feature film and Kaya had to dip out because she is nominated for one of Hollywood's major awards.

• 13:06Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 13:07Andy Greenwald?

  And yet, you and I, the work goes on. You know what I mean? Like, we don't begrudge anyone their success.

• 13:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:14Andy Greenwald?

  Year in, year out, here we are.

• 13:16Chris Ryan?

  Um, so what we're gonna do is Andy and I have chosen five, call them honorable mentions, call them 10 to 15, call them also, also our most loved television of the year. There will be no repeats on that.

• 13:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, we each picked five wild cards, so to speak. I think that if we, and maybe it would be useful to, to share at some point, like, I think each of us had, did, did generate an individual top 10. Some of the five on our wild cards were on our top 10.

• 13:42Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 13:43Andy Greenwald?

  But.

• 13:45Chris Ryan?

  We decided to make a Borg-style.

• 13:47Andy Greenwald?

  In the spirit of consensus.

• 13:48Chris Ryan?

  In the spirit of flurbus.

• 13:50Andy Greenwald?

  In this, beautiful.

• 13:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we love these shows.

• 13:53Andy Greenwald?

  This was inspired by being, by Senator Cory Booker posting a video of the five living presidents in 2009 in the Oval Office, being like, we wish each other well.

• 14:02Chris Ryan?

  You, you really, your algorithm is incredible.

• 14:05Andy Greenwald?

  Do you know what my algorithm is?

• 14:06Chris Ryan?

  It's just you and Dem senators.

• 14:08Andy Greenwald?

  No, it's actually all soup content. It is all soup. Some of it is in Italian, but it is all people making variations of the same chicken soup, and I watch all of it. It is just slop. Just pour it into my mouth.

• 14:21Chris Ryan?

  It's slop, it's soup slop.

• 14:23Andy Greenwald?

  It is wild. Okay, so this is, this is Sam S. Mail weighed in.

• 14:27Chris Ryan?

  And he said this was okay for public consumption and attribution?

• 14:30Andy Greenwald?

  You know, I assume.

• 14:32Chris Ryan?

  Well, if you text a reporter.

• 14:33Andy Greenwald?

  You text a public figure.

• 14:34Chris Ryan?

  Exactly.

• 14:34Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean?

• 14:35Chris Ryan?

  Exactly.

• 14:36Andy Greenwald?

  Um, as, as Mark Sanford learned, you know.

• 14:40Andy Greenwald?

  It's all fair game.

• 14:43Andy Greenwald?

  He said, "This message is more to you and Chris," that's me and you, "not to," and this is what he said, "my dwindling, nonexistent watch fanbase," which is far too self-deprecating.

• 14:53Chris Ryan?

  I'm glad he's keeping up on the...

• 14:54Andy Greenwald?

  It may be dwindling, but it is vocal.

• 14:56Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 14:56Andy Greenwald?

  It is a strong, strong vocal minority. "My hope is your number one is Andor. My fantasy wants it to be The Chair Company, but the correct answer is obviously..."

• 15:07Chris Ryan?

  The rehearsal.

• 15:08Andy Greenwald?

  Good job by you!

• 15:09Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 15:10Andy Greenwald?

  Good job by you!

• 15:11Chris Ryan?

  Which was the last time he did this, I think it was 23.

• 15:15Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 15:16Chris Ryan?

  Rehearsal. That was also the year that he spent an hour boring a hole into us.

• 15:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 15:22Chris Ryan?

  The rehearsal was his number one, so I'm not surprised.

• 15:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 15:26Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so, let's talk a little bit about the year in television.

• 15:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I'd like to.

• 15:30Chris Ryan?

  I have a couple of different places we can start.

• 15:33Andy Greenwald?

  So, we're gonna do our, we're gonna talk about the year, we're gonna do our fives, our spicy fives, and then we're gonna unveil the top 10.

• 15:39Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 15:39Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 15:40Chris Ryan?

  I thought that this was an excellent year in television and that the best shows of the year and the best TV of the year, I would put up against any TV from this decade.

• 15:50Chris Ryan?

  I have had years where there are 25 to 35 shows that are in the conversation.

• 15:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 15:58Chris Ryan?

  I found it very, I found very little room in the top 10 this year.

• 16:02Andy Greenwald?

  I felt the same way.

• 16:02Chris Ryan?

  I felt like the shows that I loved, the shows that I had a tremendous amount of respect for, kinda just staked their claim, and it was, there was no moving them off the block. Not unlike André Drummond.

• 16:16Andy Greenwald?

  So, resurgent this year?

• 16:18Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 16:18Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 16:20Chris Ryan?

  So, I mean, how did you feel in terms of the dispersion? And in terms of like, how many shows were competing? How many shows you considered for this?

• 16:28Andy Greenwald?

  I was grateful when we shifted to, like Wheel of Fortune, to the, let's just give him R, S, T, L, N, and E method of doing this list, because I was struggling. And last year, notably, I just had a shrug emoji on my list. I put Three Body Problem on my list just for the lols, because I liked the idea of what that show was. I enjoyed watching it. Some of it was excellent and some of it was awful.

• 16:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:51Andy Greenwald?

  And I found that engaging and that is, um, that's fun. That's a fun zag. I think people loved it.

• 16:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, people were just like, this guy, Andy, gotta have him at a dinner party.

• 17:01Andy Greenwald?

  Electric. You never know what he's gonna do next. But it was also, you know, in the fullness of time, I think it was an admission of kind of a relatively weak year that I could indulge something like that.

• 17:12Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 17:14Andy Greenwald?

  That was not the case this year where if we hadn't, if we hadn't broken it up, I was really struggling with what I was gonna put on and what I was gonna leave off.

• 17:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 17:21Andy Greenwald?

  I think that the highs, and I think you and I will quibble about some numbers, but you know, between four and six were just, not just locks for this year, but would, would compete in most years and we can make a case for greatness.

• 17:35Chris Ryan?

  I would say four, I would think would be on every critic's list.

• 17:39Andy Greenwald?

  Should be, honestly.

• 17:40Chris Ryan?

  Two of them, I think are no duh, we were always gonna love this.

• 17:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 17:45Chris Ryan?

  And then there are a few that we just obviously were very passionate about. I am, I am a little bit self-conscious about the fact that it's becoming a bit of a rhetorical crutch for me to be like, this is already on my top 10 25 times over the course of a year, but I am sitting with the goat.

• 18:01Andy Greenwald?

  I was gonna say, this is.

• 18:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, who declared presumed innocent.

• 18:05Andy Greenwald?

  The show of the year.

• 18:05Chris Ryan?

  The show of the year.

• 18:06Andy Greenwald?

  It solved television last year.

• 18:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:09Andy Greenwald?

  It was a great pilot.

• 18:10Chris Ryan?

  You know, I say that about the consensus and I say that about, oh, these four shows should be on every critic's top 10. Kind of a fascinating, critically, at the end of the year, I found it just a fascinating variance between critic to critic.

• 18:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 18:24Chris Ryan?

  You know, I think that our list will have a lot of similarity with, say, Alison Herman at Variety, who used to work at The Ringer. I thought, um, there are some others that I was just like, damn, I don't even know if I watched that, you know? I tried my best to check in on some stuff. I will admit that I did some cranning, um, in the last couple of weeks. But for instance, Daniel Feinberg had Mussolini's Son of a Century, which is a movie series directed by Joe Wright, about Mussolini and his rise to power and eventual fall.

• 18:55Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, spoiler.

• 18:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, sorry.

• 18:58Andy Greenwald?

  That was an alt-history.

• 18:59Chris Ryan?

  That was his number one show, Hollywood Reporter.

• 19:00Andy Greenwald?

  Damn.

• 19:01Chris Ryan?

  Like, there is, there is a lot of like, I like, this is what I liked this year going on. And I think that, that probably speaks to.

• 19:10Chris Ryan?

  A, you know, the strength of the year.

• 19:14Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:14Chris Ryan?

  If, if people can feel passionate about a bunch of different stuff. And also, I think maybe the, the lack of, I mean, maybe it's just the lack of critical consensus that we're experiencing, and that's the same thing for film right now, as, as we see an Ella Mackay critical revival four days after it's been released.

• 19:30Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I mean, I, I, first of all, I'm, I'm here for the, I am ready to have a conversation about that. I would go out of my way to see that movie.

• 19:36Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 19:37Andy Greenwald?

  Um, you know that about me. I think that there's two, not to, not to critique the critics, but I do think there's different spirits with which people can do these lists. And for example, Robert Lloyd, who's the television critic at the LA Times, I think year to year has a list that everyone should check out because it's not just that he is contrarian, because I don't think he is at all. I think that he's celebratory, often of things that, I mean, I, I, there, I learned about the existence, like you, you were just saying about the Mussolini Show, like on Robert Lloyd's list of the LA Times. I learned about some animated shows that I'd never heard of, a show called Damascus, a black science fiction show on Tubi.

• 20:11Chris Ryan?

  Oh, right.

• 20:11Andy Greenwald?

  I learned about a show, well, you had mentioned this to me, but I didn't even realize this, the Cooper Rife Show, How, Howland Harper.

• 20:17Chris Ryan?

  Which is very good.

• 20:18Andy Greenwald?

  Which I have not checked out, but I wish that I had. I think that it's, broadly speaking, it's good for the medium when some of these lists look like top 10 record lists from 20 years ago, where it's just like, I am making a strong case, not for this indie record, not because I don't like Beyonce, but because this moved me in a way that I'd like to communicate to you. So that's very cool to see. I think that at the, at the top, what we are seeing coming out of the five-year death spiral of COVID and the strikes, we are seeing TV get some of its swagger back in a new era, in terms of like, we can make things that work for right now, that hearken back to classic relationships with television shows, but feel of the moment, feel there's

• 21:01Andy Greenwald?

  a reason to be getting behind these things. And, and I'm not only talking about The Pit, which obviously is on our main top 10 list.

• 21:10Andy Greenwald?

  There's also, this is also the year when I think I'm starting to feel not just my age, but the age of the medium and the age with which we talk about it. Because I look at the way that my kids engage with culture. And it's not that my older daughter doesn't watch TV. She was very adamant that I mentioned that Wednesday, season two, was her number one show of the year.

• 21:33Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 21:34Andy Greenwald?

  Even higher than Summer I Turned Pretty, season three. But that for her, new TV shows are kind of, it's like everything has slipped a rung. New TV shows are events, the way movies have become events.

• 21:46Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 21:47Andy Greenwald?

  But they otherwise don't really compete with the endless churn of vertical videos, which is how people watch and engage with the world now.

• 21:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think it's like, what we're gonna see is that, you know, you have people who don't know life without the internet. And then you have people who don't know life without smartphones. And soon we'll have people who don't know life without binge watching and without that kind of personalized curated algorithmic relationship to what is quote unquote on TV. The idea, I don't even know if your daughters could operate a cable guide button. Would like, would they even know what, like, would they just be like, what do you mean? I have to wait a half an hour to watch this movie?

• 22:31Andy Greenwald?

  What do you mean I have to press down, down, down, down, down to get to the next screen?

• 22:35Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 22:36Andy Greenwald?

  That's asking a lot.

• 22:37Chris Ryan?

  So that'll be, if we're doing this pod 10 years from now.

• 22:41Andy Greenwald?

  I mean.

• 22:42Chris Ryan?

  If we are.

• 22:43Andy Greenwald?

  I can't wait.

• 22:45Chris Ryan?

  Kai has eight Golden Globes.

• 22:47Andy Greenwald?

  It's not just Kai, it's like Kai is gonna-

• 22:49Chris Ryan?

  She's beaming in from Kawhi.

• 22:51Andy Greenwald?

  But Kai is gonna have a Pulitzer Prize. Like, everyone who touches this goes on to greatness. The coaching tree of this pod is amazing. But, you know, we don't do it for the glory.

• 23:00Chris Ryan?

  That's right. We're just waiting for Liza to drop part 98 of Telos.

• 23:04Andy Greenwald?

  Liza or Lizzo?

• 23:05Chris Ryan?

  Liza.

• 23:06Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. I just, I misheard you.

• 23:08Chris Ryan?

  I just, I thought we were joking about those, those wacky kids.

• 23:10Andy Greenwald?

  I don't joke about the fourth estate. I take it very seriously.

• 23:14Chris Ryan?

  One other thing that I would note that is, you know, for as much as you and I loved a lot of the same stuff, I think that it's worth interrogating whether or not- Not liking things is contagious.

• 23:25Andy Greenwald?

  Ooh.

• 23:26Chris Ryan?

  Uh, so there were a few shows this year that, and this, this is actually born out of a chat I was having with, with Joanna Robinson about end of the year lists. And she pointed out quite rightly and not at all pointedly, like she was just like, I think I was a little bit higher on some of the big tent stuff than you guys were. And that would obviously be say like Severance, you know?

• 23:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 23:47Chris Ryan?

  Or, uh, Last of Us, or in, she didn't specifically name these, but White Lotus, Alien Earth. I think that we're always open to loving any of that stuff. You know what I mean? And there's various reasons for why we didn't for each one of those shows. But those are all pretty successful shows that we like, liked or disliked to varying degrees that probably won't wind up on our top 10s maybe in our honorable mentions. Trying to think of what else was really interesting about it. You mentioned actually something, oh, and you know, I would actually throw, um, The Bear in there as a show that I think is a little bit stuck between stations right now of what it used to be and what it might surprisingly become with the fifth season.

• 24:33Chris Ryan?

  I was pretty, uh, I think I was like a little bit of an outlier on, not an outlier. I was a little bit on an island with the fourth season, third season. And then the fourth season, I think I found a bit challenging in places, but ended, I thought on a quite searing note. You mentioned Helen Harper and some of the disparate far-flung places you can find television. I'd say the same thing goes for the international pipeline, which is always really interesting. We have some stuff on our top 10, but there continues to be discoveries, especially on Netflix, all the time. Uh, you know, where you just find out that Stefano Saluma made a, uh, a mafia show set in Florence. And I was like, like, I didn't even get a note, like, you know?

• 25:18Chris Ryan?

  Like, it's like, these things don't get publicized as much, but they are out there. They are in the, they are in the stacks. You just gotta look for them.

• 25:24Andy Greenwald?

  Also, there's things, there's like a Channel 4 sitcom called Big Boys that is beloved by people that I, that I've become friendly with in the UK. And I've checked it out. It's really, really good. It, I think it appeared on, maybe it was on the New Yorker top 10 list. It's interesting to me that like you would think with so many streaming services desperate for anything that it would have found a more consistent home to get some promotion, but it hasn't.

• 25:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:49Andy Greenwald?

  There are just shows that still don't get here somehow, and the state of the medium worldwide is fairly strong.

• 25:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and the Alan Harper thing is really interesting. I mean, we talked a while ago about whether it was possible to have an independent television scene.

• 26:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 26:07Chris Ryan?

  And I think Alan Harper was pitched all over town. I mean, Lily Reinhardt, who's the co-star of the show, has talked about this, about just being mystified as to why like, nobody seemed interested in a show that dealt with this. It was just like, it's not like reinventing the wheel. It's a very straightforward like family drama show.

• 26:24Andy Greenwald?

  Mark Ruffalo's on it.

• 26:25Chris Ryan?

  And Mark Ruffalo and Betty Gilpin's in it as well. And it's very good, but I can't remember exactly how it wound up on movie or how they went about shooting that. But Reeve is like an accomplished independent filmmaker who knows how to make things cheaply. But, you know, I don't know necessarily whether like, we're going to be here in three years from now and then the consolidation is either wiped out, the nascent idea of like, hey, maybe we can fund this cheaply and then sell it.

• 26:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 26:50Chris Ryan?

  Or whether or not there will actually be a little bit of a thriving independent television scene because of that consolidation, because people are going to choose to like, hey, if I can get $3 million to do it like this, maybe I can then sell it upstream somewhere.

• 27:05Andy Greenwald?

  I genuinely don't know, and this is probably a better conversation to punt into the new year, just in terms of like, industry stuff, but like, I don't have an answer for you in terms of scripted television, because it is so expensive to make, and the margins are so specifically what they are. But I have just been trying to pay more attention to the ways that vertical video churn has changed expectations for comedy, and specifically because of the natures of my algorithm for like, food television, which I'm passionate about.

• 27:34Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 27:35Andy Greenwald?

  And, you know, as someone who got really into the Food Network in like, the late 90s, and has been watching like, Iron Chef, and then Top Chef, and all this stuff. That was pretty cool. You were at bars. But I was like, oh damn, Mario really cooks that live. I'm sure he's great in his personal life as well.

• 27:54Andy Greenwald?

  The, mm, the spotted pig. I wish I could go upstairs.

• 28:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, the, just how, just without, almost effortlessly, people have made cooking look completely different and super appealing

• 28:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:10Andy Greenwald?

  in 90 seconds with like a GoPro attached to their forehead versus all of the bells and whistles that are required on television. Or even just like on a more specific level, like the way, like the Topjaw content, which is very on brand for me, it's very British and restaurant based. But the, I, I, I love watching that stuff. I think that guy Jesse is incredibly charming.

• 28:30Chris Ryan?

  Have you watched his Apple show?

• 28:31Andy Greenwald?

  And I watched some of the Apple show, which he is a very charming host. It's very well made. I, I like food content, but it does feel-

• 28:39Chris Ryan?

  You want him standing on the street being like-

• 28:40Andy Greenwald?

  Well, because-

• 28:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:42Andy Greenwald?

  The, the framing of that show is that Michelin stars are, you know, the most important thing in the world for diners or restaurateurs or whatever. And they do matter for a certain 1% of the 1% class of both diners and people putting up money for restaurants. But it just feels so completely detached, A, from most people's lives or interactions with food, such as the kind that we see on Topjaw. But, but also just detached from what, the, the, the, the relatability and the pleasure of the food content of just like, here's someone making a soup as opposed to manufactured drama of like, I need to like-

• 29:19Chris Ryan?

  Will he or won't he get this star, right?

• 29:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, we need to tweezer this quick, more quickly. So an anonymous person can say, oh, I, I noticed that that was a sore leaf and thus you are-

• 29:27Chris Ryan?

  Has Topjaw come here?

• 29:29Andy Greenwald?

  To LA?

• 29:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:30Andy Greenwald?

  Why would they come here?

• 29:31Chris Ryan?

  I don't know.

• 29:31Andy Greenwald?

  They would go to Houston, Pasadena.

• 29:32Chris Ryan?

  Interview me about my favorite slot bowls.

• 29:36Andy Greenwald?

  Genuinely, yes.

• 29:37Chris Ryan?

  Your CR outside of Goop Kitchen.

• 29:39Andy Greenwald?

  Glove, glove, glove.

• 29:40Chris Ryan?

  That was $70.

• 29:42Andy Greenwald?

  That's the thing. Don't come here. Like, there isn't anything good here. This place is a wasteland.

• 29:48Chris Ryan?

  Anything else, top notes about the year?

• 29:52Andy Greenwald?

  No, I think we should get into it. I feel like we can have, I think we can, we can express ourselves through the beauty of shows. Five to one on our honorable mention list. And I, I'm gonna start a little spicy.

• 30:04Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 30:05Andy Greenwald?

  A little controversially.

• 30:06Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 30:07Andy Greenwald?

  English Teacher on FX, English Teacher, season two.

• 30:10Chris Ryan?

  Do you want to speak to the controversy and spiciness?

• 30:12Andy Greenwald?

  I do.

• 30:13Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 30:13Andy Greenwald?

  So, uh, English Teacher, season one, one of the best new shows of 2024.

• 30:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:17Andy Greenwald?

  One of the best new comedies to emerge in a long time. And season two, a very, very confusing narrative and experience. I'll, I'll say that, uh, on screen, just in terms of the television show, I continue to love this show. I think it is pound for pound, one of the funniest things on TV. I think that like the performances from Stephanie Koenig and Carmen Christopher and Rico Colatoni, the entire ensemble, Jordan Furstman this year, especially in a, in a more, in a bigger role. Just in the kind of ensemble you dream about getting in a comedy with a very, very specific and unique to itself rhythm of jokes. And like the season premiere, especially where the kids don't want to do Angels in America

• 30:59Andy Greenwald?

  because they don't get it, but they want to do a COVID musical is so, so funny. And just like the sweet spot of what this show is.

• 31:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:07Andy Greenwald?

  I think the season petered out a little bit, although it rebounded in the finale. Um, what I genuinely want to present is I loved the show and I do not understand what happened. So big picture of what we can speak to is that last year, when the season one was airing, New York Magazine ran a, an expose on reported bad behavior of Brian Jordan Alvarez while working as a, sort of before his glow up into mainstream entertainment, when he was making web series and YouTube. It was a very deeply reported and passionately reported piece that was essentially, could be boiled down to a he said, he said, about whether some bad behavior on set was consensual or was it ever okay? Unclear, right?

• 31:48Andy Greenwald?

  Actually, I don't want to say unclear because the behavior does not seem great.

• 31:50Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 31:51Andy Greenwald?

  There was a comment, uh, from Brian Jordan Alvarez in response to it. And then the show, I believe, had already been renewed or then was officially renewed, went into production on the second season. The second season was dropped into a absolute black hole, press silence.

• 32:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there was no press for it.

• 32:07Andy Greenwald?

  There was no press for it. Weren't, I, I wasn't able to ascertain exactly why I did not catch up on the show because I was traveling most of the fall and I only just finished it in the last few weeks. I feel like this show deserved better.

• 32:19Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:20Andy Greenwald?

  I can't say because I don't know what happened, but I do feel like it is a great injustice that the show is gone, that no one spoke to why it is gone, no one spoke to what actually happened. It seems like an enormous disservice to, like I was saying, Sean Patton, Stephanie Kane, the great cast of this show, that all of their work seems to have been washed away. Is it because Brian didn't want to do press for it? Is it because FX didn't want him doing press for it? Is it because they couldn't agree on a press strategy for it and they just wanted it all to go away? Was there ever a fair shot for this show in the second season? Should it have gotten one? I don't know. I am not here to adjudicate the moral behavior of the people who make the art that we like.

• 33:01Andy Greenwald?

  I just feel like this is a great, it's just greatly unfair that we don't have a full understanding of what happened here and

• 33:09Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 33:10Andy Greenwald?

  beyond that, it's a bummer because the show is fucking funny and I liked having it in my life.

• 33:15Chris Ryan?

  I thought the second season had, maybe not the highs of the first season, but it had a consistency for me, like, and also maybe settled into what it could have been for years to come. It kind of was like, okay, we don't need to have a like crisis or will the school close kind of thing. In fact, the second season often made fun of the sort of like big swings sometimes shows make where everybody thinks like the principal is gonna be retiring.

• 33:41Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, or even like

• 33:43Chris Ryan?

  In 15 years.

• 33:44Andy Greenwald?

  What's the name of the kid who's like a YouTube kid who's in the class who's one of the funniest, you know, background players and there's a sense in the finale of like, you're graduating and he's like, actually I failed, so I'll be here next year.

• 33:53Chris Ryan?

  Right, right. So it's a shame because it's like obviously got legs. I really, honestly, I gotta admit, like, I don't even understand, I don't even want to get into like what that article was about and like what he did or didn't do.

• 34:06Andy Greenwald?

  The thing that I think that I struggle with, and there are things that are more important than us liking comedies that we have on our TV. I'm not trying, I don't want to get aggregated for coming down too hard on one side of what could be sexual malfeasance on the set of something.

• 34:20Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 34:21Andy Greenwald?

  My understanding of it though, and again, no one's talking, so let me know if I'm wrong here, but my understanding is nothing Was nothing, no bad behavior was related to this production with all of these people working on it and giving it their best. And it's a bummer. It's just a bummer. I'll miss the show.

• 34:39Chris Ryan?

  I will go for my number five now. And this is a show that we briefly talked about, that you tapped out on, but that I found myself pretty gripped by and will say was for me, the class of a pretty popular genre right now, which is trash prestige. And that is The Beast in Me. Oh, that major list. Yeah, I would not call it trash. I mean, I thought it was quite, quite well done.

• 35:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 35:03Chris Ryan?

  And features two, like, really towering performances, although Claire Danes' lip quiver has now become full memed, fully memed. And so like-

• 35:12Andy Greenwald?

  I think they're on to her.

• 35:13Chris Ryan?

  Women on their peloton are being like, doing the Claire Danes lip quiver. This is just a really well-done, gripping, like, New York thriller. You know, and I thought that Antonio Campos offered like, a really cool visual sensibility to this show, as a director I like a lot. And it had, for as much as it was like, it just took me back to some of the like, heyday of the prestige thriller-

• 35:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 35:42Chris Ryan?

  Prestige, You Done It, stuff that we were kind of really enjoying up through Presumed Innocent last year. All Her Fall, obviously, is like, a huge hit this year. There's been a bunch of shows this year, some having to do with the Murdoch murders and some having to do with like, plastic surgeons run amok. But this was mine. This is one that I really found like, at the end of every episode, I was like, I kind of want to start the next episode. And had the mechanics of pulp, but the prestige of two of the best actors you will see on any kind of screen in Claire Danes and Matthew Reese.

• 36:16Andy Greenwald?

  And our shared fantasy that New Yorker writers are celebrities.

• 36:19Chris Ryan?

  And have sick houses and, yeah, and-

• 36:21Andy Greenwald?

  It's really nice for us for that.

• 36:22Chris Ryan?

  Maybe they do.

• 36:23Andy Greenwald?

  I-

• 36:25Andy Greenwald?

  I don't begrudge this choice at all. I think that even in my limited sampling of it, like, this is an example of something done, something elevated.

• 36:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:34Andy Greenwald?

  It doesn't, it didn't need to be this stylish. It didn't need to have these performances going off like this. And anecdotally, in conversations with civilians who watch television the way normals do, probably no one listening to this podcast, people loved the show.

• 36:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:50Andy Greenwald?

  Like, this was something that people were excited about. Even with, like, even at a little Hanukkah get-together last night, cousin was like, this was the perfect show for me to watch with my mom. And that is not a small praise.

• 37:02Chris Ryan?

  I think this was, this was a show my wife and I loved watching together and had, and would like parcel it out so that it was like, okay, we're gonna watch one, then we're gonna watch, like, you know, like, we're gonna watch, we're gonna, like, make this last two weeks, but we, you know, we could have finished it in one night.

• 37:19Andy Greenwald?

  Well, speaking of love, my number four is a show that I cannot really sit here and make a strident argument for on just like the aesthetic merits, but I love Platonic on Apple TV.

• 37:33Chris Ryan?

  You do not have to argue with me about this.

• 37:35Andy Greenwald?

  I think that there is probably a part of me that would like to give a long and winding impassioned speech about how it is in the public interest, the public trust of these giant corporations to, like, give Cooper Ray, for whomever, the opportunity to make shows and make art within, you know, like, to be the new De Medici's. That said, if they just wanna, like, set, if Apple just wants to set aside a couple hundred million every year for Seth Rogen to make two television shows forever, and this is one of them, great.

• 38:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:05Andy Greenwald?

  Great. This was, this was my comfort food show this year. I didn't binge through it. I just had it when I wanted to. And I love Rogan in this, I love Rogan in this period of his life and his career. We're gonna get to him, I think, on our shared list. I love Rose Byrne as a comedian, and the show made me very, very happy, even though it is the least honest about Los Angeles or Southern California driving entertainment product since collateral.

• 38:31Chris Ryan?

  Well, it doesn't, the, towards the end of the season, like, Traffic really hinders people getting to and from certain places.

• 38:39Andy Greenwald?

  It hinders people when necessary. But there are moments in the show that would make anyone who has spent any time here gasp. Like when Seth Rogen says, I guess you're right. I guess I have to go confront my ex fiance in San Diego. Do you want to come with me? And Rose Byrne's like, I have a large event tonight. My career is dependent on it here in the city that I live in, Los Angeles. But sure, let's hop on the five.

• 39:02Andy Greenwald?

  Do you know what I mean? Like that is that. So the show is a comedy slash fantasy, but I just.

• 39:07Chris Ryan?

  I really love Platonic as well.

• 39:09Andy Greenwald?

  It's really.

• 39:09Chris Ryan?

  And I'm glad that they're going to continue to make that.

• 39:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, please keep making it.

• 39:12Chris Ryan?

  I would like to be able to acknowledge that there's been a costume change in this last cut. And I am wearing a hat that says, Ask me about my Lord and Savior Conrad Fisher. I'm not going to get too deep into the summer I turned pretty, which is an honorable, honorable mention. So I will have six on my honorable mentions, but I did want to mention.

• 39:31Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, we're just changing the rules now. Oh, okay. That's fun.

• 39:35Chris Ryan?

  But I just want to just briefly mention that of all the shows that were kind of like water cooler shows or sensations this year, the one I got the biggest kick out of was the summer I turned pretty, which wound up coming out. I think it was over from like July to September, mid September, or something like that. And really did become kind of like hysterical kind of thing to wrap the week around and be like excited about like, is she going to choose this guy or is she going to choose that guy? And those crazy kids and cousins and Paris. Uh, and I just really enjoyed it. So I wanted to say also because I have the hat.

• 40:07Andy Greenwald?

  But you didn't enjoy it enough to put it on your actual list.

• 40:09Chris Ryan?

  No, I just wanted to say that the hat is, you know, it's not, I'm not faking it. I did watch the summer I turned pretty.

• 40:15Andy Greenwald?

  This is how you stay popular. Do you know what I mean? You just, you are attending to every single demographic.

• 40:20Chris Ryan?

  My real number four, and I guess I'm.

• 40:22Andy Greenwald?

  I started this podcast by being like, I'm here to defend and potentially indefensible show.

• 40:29Andy Greenwald?

  And you're like, who got, who here likes candy? I sure do.

• 40:33Chris Ryan?

  God damn, that Conrad, man.

• 40:35Andy Greenwald?

  God, I just do all of this wrong. Like, I really need to rebrand for 26.

• 40:41Chris Ryan?

  Um, my number four this year was Slow Horses. I'm a little bit boxed in because I kept saying Slow Horses was gonna be on my top 10, but I stand by this. It, it would probably be pretty high on an individual list. I don't know if it would get top six or seven, but it would be on my top 10.

• 40:58Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 40:59Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I thought this season was awesome. And I've talked before about how I maybe made the mistake of watching this together, bunched up as a binge on its screeners rather than the week to week release schedule that it was, uh, parceled out at. But that is, I only did that because I found it so damn addictive and so exciting to watch. This is a much more London-based group hang-up, uh, season after a somewhat more far-flung one or a separated one from this previous season. I thought Oldman's best moments in this season were among the best of the series in its entirety.

• 41:34Andy Greenwald?

  I agree with that.

• 41:34Chris Ryan?

  And I don't wanna take its consistency and high level of quality for granted. Um, and so I, I have this season, which was season five, I believe, of Slow Horses as my number four pick of the year.

• 41:47Andy Greenwald?

  Not on any part of my list, but I agree with you that I am grateful for the show and Oldman's speech was a top 10 TV moment of the year.

• 41:54Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 41:55Andy Greenwald?

  Speaking of taking things for granted, I have to put White Lotus on my list.

• 41:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 42:01Andy Greenwald?

  Shout out to your favorite podcaster Ezra Klein. Like, this is abundance. It is an abundance, it is a sign of abundance.

• 42:10Chris Ryan?

  Did you just come up with that?

• 42:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. If we get White Lotus on our TV and everyone's just like, oh, it's not good enough.

• 42:18Chris Ryan?

  I, yeah.

• 42:18Andy Greenwald?

  Nitpicking it, it's not, you know, it, it didn't land every single part of its storyline. Like, the fact that the show not only exists, but is now one of the more beloved and probably profitable franchises in modern TV is shocking to me. It's stunning to me. And I-

• 42:39Andy Greenwald?

  We could do a whole podcast and we did multiple podcasts of all the nits one could pick with season three and we could if we did a ranking of the seasons, I don't know if this would be higher than three, but the highs were remarkable, whether it's Parker Posey, Jason Isaac's performance, the Walden Goggins renaissance that we saw, the Sam Rockwell speech, the Carrie Coon speech, but like, I think it is no small thing to have an all-star game, basically every year of some of the best actors of our time, exploring the stuff that one interesting, creative filmmaker wants to explore. And I found it, I enjoy this job of covering TV more when the White Lotus is on. I thought it was a really exciting season.

• 43:24Chris Ryan?

  It's, it is definitely, regardless of whether I felt like this was a weaker season than the first two or not, it still has so much to think about and so much to talk about on every episode. Every, every episode of the show has got something to, to really like, consider. And if anything, I'm judging Mike White harshly because I'm like, I didn't necessarily know if the three, three separate plot lines ever like, kind of tied into a knot. I think it had interesting ideas in each one, but they totally felt like a little bit disparate for me in terms of like, previous seasons.

• 43:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I agree. And I'm very curious to see that he's returning to more comfortable ground, literally, like, I think they're filming in the, the French, I don't know if it's the south of France, but they're filming in France, in a beautiful location. And there may, I think, because I think a lot of people bumped on the kind of exoticism 101 of like, what it would mean to be in Thailand, which I, I enjoyed because it was a show about people who don't leave a resort in Thailand and get some spa treatments. So it'll be interesting to, if this upcoming season is considered a return to form or just kind of a retreat, but either way, the rumors that, that Helena Bonham Carter is The first person, the rumor is that she's the first person cast in it and it's just like,

• 44:42Andy Greenwald?

  he doesn't miss. Yeah. People who, like if there was, if he just has like a little like, you know, Moneyball scout sheet of like the people who should be on the show and like, what if I could recreate Jennifer Coolidge?

• 44:52Chris Ryan?

  Did you see that video of the guy trying to recreate the Boyd Holbrook? He's like, we could sign this guy for $10 million or we could use Boyd Holbrook and recreate it in the aggregate. Yeah.

• 45:01Andy Greenwald?

  That's it. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. All right.

• 45:03Chris Ryan?

  Um, okay. So number three for you is White Lotus. Number three for me is a show that we did not really talk about this year, uh, which is Blue Lights, a BBC show that you can watch on BritBox and I just thought I would shout out as probably the best cop show going right now. The most run it long running or running cop show going. Not about cops who run, but just, it's not a limited series.

• 45:25Andy Greenwald?

  Got it. How does it feel about athletic cops?

• 45:28Chris Ryan?

  You know what? In Belfast, sometimes you gotta run.

• 45:31Andy Greenwald?

  Sometimes you do.

• 45:31Chris Ryan?

  Uh, this is a show about three probationary officers, um, navigating the current day, the, the, the present day of Belfast and the, the drugs, the organized crime, the secretarism. Um, that, that is still present in that day. I think it pairs very interestingly with Say Nothing as a series to watch together. But this is from Declan Law and Adam Patterson. Uh, each, each season, it's on its third season this year, is six episodes. Um, and it is incredibly digestible, thrilling. I'd say it has like a little bit of homicide life in the streets,

• 46:11Chris Ryan?

  character study, observational qualities, and a little bit of the more, um, taught thriller, British procedural like, uh, line of duty. And so it's really great. You can watch it on BritBox. I highly recommend it. I think the third season is probably my favorite and I really wanted to highlight it in this list.

• 46:30Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. My next one would absolutely, these top two on my list would be on my top 10. Uh, without doubt. Uh, I have to shout out the chair company. Um, Tim Robinson and Zach Kanan's absolutely unhinged.

• 46:43Andy Greenwald?

  It's not even a comedy anymore. It's just a portal into a completely different upside down universe.

• 46:50Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 46:51Andy Greenwald?

  Of, in which like the most banal Midwestern mall developer, played by Tim Robinson, can just slide into a shadow world that is David Lynchian in the best possible way. No one else is making art or entertainment like Tim Robinson is right now. We spoke about it just a few weeks ago, so I don't want to repeat myself. But it's so much more than let's just do another comedy series. It is absolutely a very, very odd, dramatic conspiracy thriller.

• 47:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:30Andy Greenwald?

  That is also, minute to minute, one of the most surreal and funny things that's been on TV in a long time. And it makes me really happy that the show's been renewed. And it makes me really happy that, from everything I've gathered, that the HBO team, whether it's Amy Graviti, who's head of comedy, or Casey, who's head of the network, understand that this isn't just like, let's take a flyer on a guy who's buzzy right now, because we also like the 11-minute friendship outtakes.

• 47:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:55Andy Greenwald?

  With Tim and Connor. This is them doing what HBO does best, which is we are going to invest in a very, very unique voice who is ready to level up.

• 48:04Chris Ryan?

  Do you think that your affection for this show makes you reconsider your aversion to Nathan Fielder? Or do you consider them like completely different flavors?

• 48:15Andy Greenwald?

  I genuinely think that my, I think I need to get over my allergy to Nathan Fielder, mostly because I just, I just can't stand the fact that people have approached me in front of my children and asked for pictures with me. That does leave a mark.

• 48:30Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 48:31Andy Greenwald?

  But that doesn't mean that I can't take responsibility for falling down on the job and not engaging with what Sam S. Mail says is the best.

• 48:38Chris Ryan?

  I have that problem, but it's Nate from Landman. They're like, you seem like a great lawyer on Landman.

• 48:43Andy Greenwald?

  You seem like a great housebound lawyer.

• 48:46Chris Ryan?

  My number two, is that where we're up to?

• 48:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 48:49Chris Ryan?

  My number two is Death by Lightning, a show that we touched on earlier. Year is historical television done at the highest, highest level. And two central performances from Michael Shannon and Matthew McFadden. That I thought were among the best of the year. This is another Netflix series. This one comes from Mike Mikowski and is executive produced by Benny Alfon Weiss. The series is directed by Matt Ross. I thought that, you know, while some of the,

• 49:23Chris Ryan?

  you know, there are moments where I'm like, I know that this isn't like shot in Washington DC or Philadelphia or whatever, you know what I mean? Like there are some parts of it that feel.

• 49:31Andy Greenwald?

  Shot in Budapest or something, wasn't it?

• 49:33Chris Ryan?

  There's, there's, there's an Eastern European air to some of it.

• 49:37Andy Greenwald?

  Like me.

• 49:38Chris Ryan?

  But the performances and some of the ideas that they kick around and the idea of obsession and the idea of political ambition and the idea of using politics as this kind of stepping stone to fame. I think there's a bunch of shows this year that dealt with politics and tried to make commentary on our contemporary moment by using either genre or history. But I thought this one was probably the one that worked best for me. I think, I think I would recommend it to anyone who's even passingly curious about like dad TV. Just because it's not that big of a commitment, just a few episodes.

• 50:12Andy Greenwald?

  Four episodes.

• 50:12Chris Ryan?

  And an excellent, excellent act of adaptation.

• 50:16Andy Greenwald?

  Apparently too much for some dads because I loved the show. I still haven't finished it.

• 50:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:22Andy Greenwald?

  Which is probably the only reason it's not on my list. Also, I think we were trying not to step on each other's toes here, but I completely agree with you and I think it is a remarkable blueprint for how to make period pieces feel electric.

• 50:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I also, getting through the fourth episode, I was just like, I don't know how many shows need to be longer than this.

• 50:41Andy Greenwald?

  It's a lesson, isn't it?

• 50:43Chris Ryan?

  Well, because when I'm watching Blue Lights, I'm like, this is perfect. These six episodes are perfect, you know, like I don't really have, I wasn't sitting there being like, ah, really, really, what could have been eight, you know?

• 50:55Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it would be. If it would be great to see a move towards broadly speaking in television. An understanding by the various streamers and by the creators who for many reasons often want more episodes.

• 51:11Chris Ryan?

  Get paid.

• 51:11Andy Greenwald?

  To get paid more.

• 51:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, of course.

• 51:13Andy Greenwald?

  It's just such a but such a.

• 51:15Chris Ryan?

  I get it.

• 51:16Andy Greenwald?

  The industry is much more difficult to navigate on a professional level now, so that does make sense. But it would be great if we could fix this up in the new year and let shows be what they need to be.

• 51:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's interesting because like out of coming out of the merger talks and acquisition talks the last couple of weeks. There's been a lot of emphasis on what the customer wants.

• 51:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 51:33Chris Ryan?

  And I do sometimes think that that is not exactly right, you know? Like I think what it is is like you want more minutes spent on the platform.

• 51:41Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 51:42Chris Ryan?

  And so that, you know, you might take a six episode show and be like, let's make it nine, let's make it 11, whatever.

• 51:47Andy Greenwald?

  And we'll get to it. Nobody is like, the pit is too long.

• 51:51Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 51:51Andy Greenwald?

  The pit was a perfect length and that's 15 episodes.

• 51:54Chris Ryan?

  We'll get to that. Your number one honorable mention.

• 51:56Andy Greenwald?

  So my number one honorable mention, a few weeks ago, I mentioned revisiting something that we had touched on briefly and really, really getting drawn into it. That show is Families Like Ours, which is Thomas Winterberg, the Dogma Filmmaker's television show is on Netflix. A very big international co-production that filmed all over Europe. This would have probably crashed my top five.

• 52:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:18Andy Greenwald?

  Or is in my personal top five. I found it so haunting, so compelling, I thought about it nonstop for people who don't know what it's about.

• 52:29Chris Ryan?

  Or remember, yeah.

• 52:30Andy Greenwald?

  Or remember, it is a Danish language, original television series about a moment when Denmark has looked at the looked at the data, looked at the rising sea level and it's like, living in this peninsula nation is no longer sustainable. Thus, we will be shutting down the country and everything that comes afterwards. And it is the most human dystopia I've seen in a long time. It is a horror show in which there is almost nothing surreal. I say almost because god damn it, Thomas Winterberg. I know you're an auteur, and I know you're a European auteur, but you got so close to making something without a magic boy who could see sadness in the future. Like, you got so close, but he couldn't resist. It was right there for him.

• 53:14Andy Greenwald?

  Basically, an unsupernatural series about something that felt so plausible that it is deeply, deeply uncomfortable to watch at times. And I think that you watch the first two episodes and you see this, like, perfect Scandinavian life, and the only hint that things are going wrong is the camera lingers on bodies of water sometimes. It never showcases, there is no, like, 2012, like, tsunami crashing. It's just that inevitably, this is going to happen, and they're trying to be responsive to it. It's engaging because, you know, even today, we're like, well, the Scandinavians have it figured out. They're very reasonable. This is a problem that is not going to be reasonable. And I think the other thing, and making it a very, very human-based family drama,

• 53:58Andy Greenwald?

  which it is, it basically follows the extended members of one family as they try to make sense of this and then rebuild their lives in a diaspora of Danes. It is not an environmental catastrophe show. It is an immigration catastrophe show, and those two issues are very connected. But the idea of being stateless, of being paperless, of trying to be with the people that you love, or even what it would mean to be from a place, is extremely relevant to everyone. And the show can be clumsy at times, but I just really, really admired the swing. And found it really, really engaging in a way, to our actual lives in a way that a lot of what we watch to escape into does not manage to measure up to.

• 54:39Chris Ryan?

  I thought it was a wonderful series. Again, we decided no same picks, but it probably would have been on mine. My number one is Shorzy, the fourth season of Jared Kiso's, honestly hysterical hockey comedy. I've talked about it in the past, Manzukas has come on to talk about it.

• 54:58Chris Ryan?

  This is about the titular character, Shorzy, uh, trying to figure out his life off the ice. Uh, it's the, the first three seasons of this series captured the kind of, uh, fall and rise of a small, a semi-professional, um, Sudbury, Canada, um, hockey team and follows a sports movie script pretty well and would be an excellent long sports film. This has all of the deadpan comedy that Letter Kenny had, but it is much more, much more of a like journey than Letter Kenny sometimes seemed frozen in time. Uh, and I went and saw the cast of Shorzy play hockey against a bunch of retired LA Kings for charity yesterday at the, at the Crypto Arena.

• 55:43Andy Greenwald?

  Wild to me.

• 55:44Chris Ryan?

  And there were 7,500 people there.

• 55:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 55:47Chris Ryan?

  On a Sunday afternoon.

• 55:48Andy Greenwald?

  You were all wearing vests.

• 55:50Chris Ryan?

  Most of us were wearing, well, most people were wearing Shorzy jerseys.

• 55:53Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 55:53Chris Ryan?

  Uh, or Shorzy sweatshirts, but I was really, really struck by the like, I don't think I've ever done anything like that outside of like a Comic Con where I've like gone to an event where just like fans are there. And there is also this weird on Kenny Valley where like the cast is playing, they're just playing hockey, like pretty well.

• 56:15Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I'll take your word for it.

• 56:16Chris Ryan?

  But it was, I was just like, you get, you start to lose like, I know it's a TV show, but it almost seemed like this team from Canada was like barnstorming kind of. And, uh, they did a couple of bits, but it was just really, a really fun event. And I don't think I've ever seen anything like that. And I've never really quite seen anything like, every time I say Shorzy on this podcast, people like DM me, set the tone.

• 56:38Andy Greenwald?

  This is so sweet.

• 56:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:39Andy Greenwald?

  This is the closest I've ever seen you to being a Disney adult for something.

• 56:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:43Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean? You keep it pretty 100, like you never get too high or too low, but like you're pretty into this.

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• 58:45Chris Ryan?

  So that's our fives, right? Okay, let's start with 10 here and we'll try and move briefly through some of these because

• 58:52Andy Greenwald?

  We've talked about these a lot.

• 58:53Chris Ryan?

  We've talked about these a lot, but at number 10, I had us with Department Q.

• 58:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 58:57Chris Ryan?

  This is Scott Frank's detective series that debuted on Netflix. I don't know whether it's gonna have a second season.

• 59:04Andy Greenwald?

  It is having a second season. It is. Weirdly, it, and I'm sure Scott is nothing if not forthcoming with us. He can explain why it took so long, but yes, it was officially renewed.

• 59:15Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so Department Q is the detective show set in Scotland starring Matthew Good as an English detective living in Scotland who gets his own department in a Scottish police department.

• 59:26Andy Greenwald?

  Cold case department.

• 59:27Chris Ryan?

  To do cold cases. It is what Scott does best, which is take tropes and cliches and stories and push on through to the other side with them. So you have your complicated detective who must heal thyself. He in and of itself has got like, he's Sherlock. He has his Watson. He has his group of people working with him. There is, you know, a missing woman who would normally be just off screen in most detective shows that she is given almost to a sort of

• 1:00:02Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe too much.

• 1:00:03Chris Ryan?

  Painful amount.

• 1:00:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:05Chris Ryan?

  She's given a lot of screen time. What did you, what did you think of Department Q in retrospect?

• 1:00:09Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I think it was a fantastic watch. I think it is exceptional and like a hallmark of this era where we can have a certain type of entertainment, which is a Scandi noir, of which there are dozens, both in their native languages. This is based on a very popular Danish book series, but also like BritBox and Acorn, like that's what they do.

• 1:00:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:30Andy Greenwald?

  But then to have one of our great screenwriters and filmmakers, like, you know, who, we obviously stand for these guys. These are our guys, but this generation, and they're all friends, I believe, of like Scott Frank, Tony Gilroy, who we'll talk about in a second, Steve Zalian, who came up as the preeminent screenwriters of their day.

• 1:00:46Chris Ryan?

  Under William Goldman, yeah.

• 1:00:47Andy Greenwald?

  And then, yes, and the direct line and then have started directing. And of all of them, I mean, I think you can make the case that Scott, Scott has become one of the better directors as well.

• 1:00:56Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:00:56Andy Greenwald?

  And seeing him take a turn on something that is established and being like, I love this, I'm not gonna mess it up. I'm gonna do my version of it is thrilling. I think the case against Department Q, which makes it fun to talk about is What we were just saying a moment ago about let things be the right size, let them be what they, the best version of themselves in this bifurcated, stratified, challenging, streaming economy. Department Q should be already, we should already have a trailer for season two.

• 1:01:25Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:01:25Andy Greenwald?

  The best version of Department Q is a detective series version of The Pit that's on Netflix and Netflix is grinding them and we're thrilled because there's tons of books. But it is also an auteurish type show from the last 10 years.

• 1:01:39Chris Ryan?

  He's selling old stories.

• 1:01:40Andy Greenwald?

  And it takes time for him to get it right and he figures it out on set as he told us in interviews on the pod, he likes to figure it out in the edit. It's not wired that way. So I totally get it if there are people who are like, that didn't click for me because reasons, because it was too heady, it was too cerebral, it went too far into, literally into the chamber of secrets, if you will.

• 1:01:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:00Andy Greenwald?

  Or because I want more of it. But like, it's a really interesting case study in what TV was for the last 10 years and what it might be again. And ultimately, it's successful because of Matthew Goode's performance and Kelly McDonald's performance and especially shout out Alexei Manvalov, who plays Akram, who's one of the, if we were doing like a new character draft, he would be in the running for the top spot.

• 1:02:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, absolutely. Let's go up to our number nine, The Studio. So this is our second Seth Rogen shout out. He has got a case to be, for being one of the most important producers of television of this decade, I think.

• 1:02:35Andy Greenwald?

  You're still caping up for Preacher.

• 1:02:37Chris Ryan?

  But you know, Between the Boys and the several Apple shows that he's made, but man, The Studio winds up being a fantasy and a cringe comedy and a seat of your pants drama. And, and I think, you know, there are different fans of different parts of this show, but as the series went on and we got into the last four episodes, I think it really kind of, I personally really loved the pilot and the second episode, but I don't know if that would have been sustainable if the Matt character who Seth Rogen plays was just constantly on the verge of absolutely like destroying.

• 1:03:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Chris Ryan?

  You know, his production and you know, you can make the argument that he was still like that. But I thought is that kind of opened the aperture, spent more time with the ensemble. Some very obviously delightful cameos and just an amazing snapshot of this city and this industry. Even if it was satirized and even if it was like, well, we're going to turn this up to 11. Shout out to Rob Reiner and Spinal Tap to kind of, to kind of make the joke work a little bit better. So what do you want to say about this?

• 1:03:47Andy Greenwald?

  I love the show for all the reasons you said, for its criticism, but melancholic love of an industry that is in transition for the deep rolodex of celebrities willing to have fun with themselves and and play amplified versions of themselves like Zoe Kravitz or Dave Franco or Bryan Cranston. Second, number two in the new character draft, Matt Bellany playing Matt Bellany. This show is on my list no matter what because of just the sheer joy of its creation. From the fact that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg created it with a bunch of people, all of whom got created by credit, all of whom shared in the success of the show at the Emmys in a really lovely way. But also the fact that aesthetically, they directed every episode, they just went for it.

• 1:04:31Andy Greenwald?

  They wanted to make a noir, they wanted to make an entire episode that was a oner. The score, the style, the pleated pants, like the editing by Eric Kisek. It was a joyful act of creation that translated to the audience.

• 1:04:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, our number eight is The Eat or Not.

• 1:04:49Andy Greenwald?

  Hell yeah, dog.

• 1:04:51Chris Ryan?

  You cook on this one. This is Bruno Stagnaro's adaptation of the acclaimed Argentinian graphic novel.

• 1:04:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, look, sometimes things just fall from the sky and sometimes it's poison snow that wipes out most of the globe. Other times it is a six-episode adaptation of a beloved Argentine graphic novel that you and I had absolutely no fucking prior knowledge of. And the show was just sick. It was, it hit at the right time for us when there was like a little bit of a soft period in the schedule. And it just was incredibly compelling, incredibly entertaining, very, very surprising. I would say the weakest moment of an incredibly strong first season was the moment that it tipped the most into like sci-fi genre and had to like put alien bugs on screen.

• 1:05:34Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so that was like sort of more midway through the season, not the end of the season?

• 1:05:38Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, no. By the end, I was like, this show just knows what it is and it has such an incredible performance, starring performance by Ricardo Doreen.

• 1:05:46Andy Greenwald?

  We love shit like this. We love to be surprised. We love to be entertained and we love when Planet Earth reflects something back to us and be like, we have our own stories here. And Netflix, again, to its credit, was like, we will empower Argentine filmmakers and actors to tell this story.

• 1:06:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:03Andy Greenwald?

  Great show.

• 1:06:04Chris Ryan?

  Just phenomenal.

• 1:06:05Andy Greenwald?

  And second season coming.

• 1:06:05Chris Ryan?

  And felt so lived in. And it's, you know, one of the great things about the last 10 years of television for me and just over the course of doing this podcast, the emergence of international TV and our accessibility to it is it's cheap travel. You know, it is basically...

• 1:06:23Andy Greenwald?

  That we can go to places.

• 1:06:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I've never been to Buenos Aires, but I have a tremendous amount of fascination.

• 1:06:28Andy Greenwald?

  Bring an umbrella and a gas mask.

• 1:06:29Chris Ryan?

  Well, I have a tremendous amount of fascination for the culture there, especially because of my interest in football. And like, I think just getting those first opening episodes and especially that first episode of The Night of the Blackout and those guys sitting around playing cards and the stores and the bicycles and just the way the city is sort of laid out, you really just do get a sense of place in this show that is unrivaled in a lot of ways. And what you, and you never would have gotten this in like the early 2000s, you know, like you never would have been able to see something like this. I love the Eternon.

• 1:07:01Andy Greenwald?

  And they did it at a price point, like by necessity, but it was a reminder that like, if you want to try to get Lost vibes, you don't need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars like Three Body Problem ended up doing. I mean, obviously, it's apples to oranges, but it is Netflix. And I really like when they turn up gems like this.

• 1:07:22Chris Ryan?

  Me too. Number seven is another international show.

• 1:07:27Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:29Chris Ryan?

  And I, on a personal list...

• 1:07:30Andy Greenwald?

  You gotta go.

• 1:07:31Chris Ryan?

  Might have been, might have been pretty high for me. This is Eastern Gate, which is my thriller of the year, my thriller of the year. And I...

• 1:07:37Andy Greenwald?

  HBO Max.

• 1:07:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, HBO Max's Polish spy show about a spy played by Eva, played by an actress named Lena Gora, who like, was one of my favorite performances of the year. Somewhere between...

• 1:07:53Chris Ryan?

  Um, God, I mean, like, who are the, who are her, like, I'm trying to think of like, who her, I mean, it's like, half Jason Bourne, and then half.

• 1:08:01Andy Greenwald?

  Carrie Matheson.

• 1:08:02Chris Ryan?

  Carrie Matheson. This is about a Polish spy working in the, um, the Poland, Poland's embassy in Belarus, trying to root out a mole, working in, in this embassy.

• 1:08:14Andy Greenwald?

  And set, hyper specifically, at a moment when all the chatter, and also international, um, you know, performance, basically, in the geopolitical theater, is suggesting that Russia is going to make a move on something. It's going to make a statement by reclaiming something that it feels belongs to Russia. And in the moment of the show, it could be Ukraine, or it could be a disputed portion of Poland, called the Suwakki Gap, I believe.

• 1:08:40Chris Ryan?

  Yes, Suwakki Gap. And it's an incredible solve for making a show of the moment, but not wanting headlines to eclipse the show by the time it gets out. So you basically do recent history. Um, I thought that the thing I love about this, and one of the reasons why I'm so fascinated by spies is because it's fictional spies, is because you watch people have to put on these masks. And, uh, this character literally does not like a mask, like Jim Carrey mask, but changes her eyes, changes her hair, changes the way she dresses, and changes the way she behaves and acts, depending on who she's pretending to be and who she's with, whether it's her lover, whether she's working in the embassy pretending to be a consulate, whether she's pretending to be somebody's consort, whether she's hanging

• 1:09:25Chris Ryan?

  out with her sister. She's a completely different person. Munir Gour gives an astonishing performance. I thought this was the most gripping, tense piece of TV I saw this year in some ways, and has a phenomenal, uh, conclusion. I don't know if they're gonna do another season of this. I think they are. But Eastern Gate was awesome.

• 1:09:45Andy Greenwald?

  We love spies, always. It's one of our favorite genres of storytelling. Um, and we continue to reference Lacare all the time in the classic kind of Cold War spycraft, or shows that are like, ah, in this fallen world, post Lacare Cold War spycraft, of which Lacare wrote quite brilliantly. Eastern Gate, coupled with an author you put me on to, Oliver Harris, who's written three absolutely, eye-meltingly good contemporary spy books.

• 1:10:12Chris Ryan?

  Did you read the third one yet?

• 1:10:12Andy Greenwald?

  I'm halfway through it.

• 1:10:13Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:10:14Andy Greenwald?

  Point towards what this genre can be in the world we have now. It is so contemporary and so bracing and exciting and horrifying in a way that, you know, to be our age and fall in love with like the spy who came in from the cold is a little bit of, it's a period. I mean, it's literally a period piece, but also one's emotions are measured by the fact that it is of a different world.

• 1:10:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:40Andy Greenwald?

  Eastern Gate, and I don't need to pair them, but I do want to shout out those books again. A Shadow Intelligence is the first of those.

• 1:10:47Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:10:48Andy Greenwald?

  And No Gatekeeping, you put me on to those. I think Zach, our buddy Zach Baron, read them first.

• 1:10:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Zach gets the credit.

• 1:10:52Andy Greenwald?

  Ascension, the second one, is mind blowing. Like, these are not bloodless espionage entertainments. They are terrifying, but incredibly entertaining as well.

• 1:11:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes. We'll have a lot of book recommendations for folks in our mailbag at the end of the year. For number six, I have the lowdown.

• 1:11:10Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:11:10Chris Ryan?

  I think you had the lowdown a little bit higher.

• 1:11:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but I'll allow it.

• 1:11:13Chris Ryan?

  But we can debate it a little bit as we go further. This is Sterling Hargis' Love Letter to Tulsa and Robert Altman's adaptation of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye. And it's a shaggy mystery that kind of feels like it's like written left-handed by a right-hander. You know what I mean? Like, it has like a kind of looseness and curiosity that shows don't often have. And it's about vaping and coffee shops and Junior Kimbrough records.

• 1:11:47Andy Greenwald?

  And being a girl dad.

• 1:11:48Chris Ryan?

  And used bookstores and being a girl dad and femme fatales and, you know, it is.

• 1:11:53Andy Greenwald?

  And ultimately, what we owe each other.

• 1:11:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:57Andy Greenwald?

  And what we've inherited and what we need to reject.

• 1:12:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:01Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it is. Look, all capital letters, this is extremely our shit. I feel really lucky that we got this season. I think you and I were both, because of the age that we are in the world that we live in, we were like, "Dianu a little bit, like, I can't believe he got to make this." I feel pretty confident that there's gonna be more, which is really exciting.

• 1:12:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's really cool.

• 1:12:20Andy Greenwald?

  It's, it's a-

• 1:12:22Chris Ryan?

  Unless Ethan Hawke gets elected president, because the run he's on right now-

• 1:12:25Andy Greenwald?

  Did you listen to him on Fresh Air?

• 1:12:27Chris Ryan?

  Did you listen to him-

• 1:12:28Andy Greenwald?

  I was like, he's got my vote.

• 1:12:29Chris Ryan?

  Did you see him on Rogan?

• 1:12:30Andy Greenwald?

  No, he went on Rogan?

• 1:12:31Chris Ryan?

  He had Rogan kinda like, eating out of the palm of his hand.

• 1:12:34Andy Greenwald?

  Wow.

• 1:12:35Chris Ryan?

  It was pretty amazing.

• 1:12:36Andy Greenwald?

  In terms of Spotify podcasts, he did us first.

• 1:12:37Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:12:38Andy Greenwald?

  So that's good to know.

• 1:12:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:40Andy Greenwald?

  For my next renegotiate. But, um, this show is a celebration of filmmaking in the classic sense of Sterling being a great, not just a great writer and great director, but being a great reader and a great watcher and a great fan of, you know, Jim Thompson books and, as you said, Altman movies and, you know, shaggy dog stuff from the 70s, like, like the great Gene Hackman film Night Moves, but also of actors.

• 1:13:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:11Andy Greenwald?

  Um, one of the all-time great casts and just giving these beautiful opportunities, not just to Ethan Hawke, but to Keith David and Kyle McLaughlin and our buddy Tracy Letts, Killer Mike, Josh Fadham, like, these people who are his friends in real life who show up and populate this world, Amacon Blair, who's phenomenal in these small little moments of the show. Um, I don't wanna overstate it because it's, you know, it's, I think it's correctly ranked in terms of our big-picture top 10, but this is why we get up in the morning.

• 1:13:41Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:13:42Andy Greenwald?

  Is to have stuff like this.

• 1:13:43Chris Ryan?

  Extraordinary stuff.

• 1:13:44Andy Greenwald?

  FX, good job.

• 1:13:45Chris Ryan?

  Um, okay, so you would've had the lowdown a little higher, I think, in your personal preference. Would you agree, so that was six, do you have Task at five?

• 1:13:53Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, in my personal preference, uh, yes, but I had, I had something that you have higher or lower.

• 1:13:59Chris Ryan?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:14:00Andy Greenwald?

  Doesn't really matter.

• 1:14:01Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:14:02Andy Greenwald?

  We love all these shows.

• 1:14:03Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I have Task at five, we have Task at five. Um, we talked extensively about Task this year. I think this was probably the show that hit me the hardest this year, when I think about it. Um, on a personal level, but that, I completely- I'm candid, I'm upfront about the fact that it, that, that has a lot to do with geography.

• 1:14:20Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 1:14:20Chris Ryan?

  Uh, but it also was the most sincere and vulnerable show that I think got made in America this year.

• 1:14:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 1:14:27Chris Ryan?

  Um, in some ways, and I say that specifically because I think there, there are international shows that might, uh, pop up later, but this is Brad Engelsby's follow-up to Mayor of Easttown, starring Tom Palfrey and Mark Ruffalo, and an incredible ensemble, uh, working around them, um, made in and around Philadelphia and, and Delaware County, about essentially like a Heat-style cop versus robber on a collision course, but then it kind of becomes about a lot of other things, um, about forgiveness and about God and about fatherhood again. And, uh, just an incredibly deep and meaningful show to me.

• 1:15:05Andy Greenwald?

  I think that there's an argument to be made that this is the best show of the year. I think if we're at the point of our list where, on a, catch us on a certain day, or a couple of Yinglings deep.

• 1:15:13Chris Ryan?

  Or cap, catch us after a certain episode.

• 1:15:15Andy Greenwald?

  Or catch us after a 31-nothing overdue get-right game against the Raiders. Like, we might, we might swing this higher.

• 1:15:24Andy Greenwald?

  This is the most Philly show, and Brad Engelsby is the most Philly creator, not because of his deep knowledge of the Blue Route and, you know, all the roads around Brumall, but because of the way the show effortlessly communicates the lingua franca of where we're from. Not in terms of accents, and the performances of the accents, Amelia Jones especially, unfucking real, but this very, I think, regionally unique mix of just heart-on-your-sleeve emotion, deep, deep bruising.

• 1:15:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:56Andy Greenwald?

  Culturally, economically, um, socially, uh, psychologically, um, and then just a savage wit. Like, the show is really funny, and it doesn't work if it's not funny, just like it doesn't work if it's not pulling your heartstrings, and the performances in it are god-tier. And I'm, I'm excited and curious where it's gonna go as an ongoing series.

• 1:16:16Chris Ryan?

  For sure. Um, at number four.

• 1:16:20Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm, for, yeah, for you. No, go on.

• 1:16:22Chris Ryan?

  I have Pluribus.

• 1:16:23Andy Greenwald?

  See, I had Pluribus like at seven.

• 1:16:25Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:16:25Andy Greenwald?

  On my list.

• 1:16:26Chris Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 1:16:26Andy Greenwald?

  But I support you in your journey here.

• 1:16:29Chris Ryan?

  Well, okay, so you had, well, we can talk about it once we get done.

• 1:16:32Andy Greenwald?

  I had Task Lowdown and Families Like Ours higher on my personal list, but I do not. We are the collective here.

• 1:16:38Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:16:39Andy Greenwald?

  We are all Zosha and we agree with this.

• 1:16:42Chris Ryan?

  Um, I have noted with interest that there seems to be a more vocal contingent of Pluribus deniers.

• 1:16:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I've noticed that too.

• 1:16:50Chris Ryan?

  I think that there is an interesting-

• 1:16:52Andy Greenwald?

  And frankly, they're starting to get to me. Their campaign.

• 1:16:54Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's an interesting conversation to be had about pacing and tempo in television shows and whether or not, you know, what entertainment looks like to any given person. And I think that there is, I, I kind of fully support people being like on board by this because I don't think that there's any sort of uh, privilege to like, just because we have microphones, we don't know more about TV than anybody else. If you don't like the show, you don't like the show. I think it is a miracle. I think that what it's doing in terms of asking a pretty addled society that uh, probably watches a lot of TV with their phones in their hands

• 1:17:32Chris Ryan?

  or doing other things to watch someone do very simple things in a very complicated environment is one of the best tests I've had to take in a long time.

• 1:17:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:46Chris Ryan?

  And I have fully come under its spell. Uh, you know, I, I was watching um, the most recent episode and thinking to myself, how much actual, how many pages was this?

• 1:17:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:00Chris Ryan?

  Cause you could write the script to an episode of Pluribus in probably 30 pages, but the episodes themselves are 55 minutes or something like that. So how does it, I hope we get to talk to Vince again about how that translates from the page to the visual execution and the performances.

• 1:18:16Andy Greenwald?

  And you can only do that in an operation that has been so successful for so long, an operation that is seamless in terms of like the writer's room and the realities of production, whether they're in the Canary Islands where they filmed some of it, or they're in their beloved Albuquerque. Like, you can't start a show and pitch it and sell it and get into production and say, yeah, I know this is a pretty terse script, but don't worry. I'm going to deliver on a very gripping 55 minutes of television. You can't do it.

• 1:18:42Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:18:42Andy Greenwald?

  Only they can do it.

• 1:18:43Chris Ryan?

  And it's kind of the reverse of another show that I think both of us were very affectionate about called like Paradise.

• 1:18:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:48Chris Ryan?

  Where Paradise is um-

• 1:18:51Chris Ryan?

  Also about a, uh, an, uh, an apocalyptic level event that happens, or a, a kind of world-changing event that happens. And what Paradise chooses to do is burn a season of story in every episode, you know, and it, and it's like going seven seconds or less the entire time. I don't think Pluribus is slow to watch, but I think it's taking its time getting where it's going, and it's very intuitive. And I think what it likes is revealing layers of this chara- character Carol, and, and now I think this character, Minusos, over the course of this season about how they are feeling and thinking about what's going on through what they are doing about it.

• 1:19:33Andy Greenwald?

  I find it incredibly pleasurable to watch. Um, and if there have been moments that have dragged, or have been slow, or I've doubted, like, I'm not doubting this creative team.

• 1:19:44Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:19:44Andy Greenwald?

  There were seasons of Better Call Saul where I was like, "Yeah, I don't know."

• 1:19:47Chris Ryan?

  Me too.

• 1:19:48Andy Greenwald?

  And I was wrong.

• 1:19:49Chris Ryan?

  Me too.

• 1:19:49Andy Greenwald?

  Because cumulatively, what, when you look back at what, what has been built and what you are, the edifice that you're standing on, and what you're on the precipice of, is masterful. And I love that experience, and I love the performances. I do think that it might be worth noting that I think some of the resistance to the show is the discomforting experience of watching something that exists separate and apart from the economy that we are all living in. And I don't mean like that somehow this production for Apple TV is like anti-capitalist, that is not what I mean. I just mean that yesterday I went down to, um, scenic downtown Los Angeles, a great place to hang out, great families.

• 1:20:26Chris Ryan?

  I was there too.

• 1:20:27Andy Greenwald?

  And you were at a hockey match.

• 1:20:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:29Andy Greenwald?

  I was just on the streets.

• 1:20:30Chris Ryan?

  Screw you.

• 1:20:30Andy Greenwald?

  I was on the streets spending nineteen dollars for a coffee. And there was like a, uh, like a pop-up bazaar of like shops and, and, and people with like vintage racks and stuff. And at the end of it, there was a store that was just like the apotheosis of everything. It was a storefront with beautiful blonde wood. Inside of it was a vintage red BMW convertible taking up eighty percent of the store. And then there was a rack with five sweatshirts.

• 1:20:56Chris Ryan?

  BMW sweatshirts, or?

• 1:20:58Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 1:20:58Chris Ryan?

  Shorzy sweatshirts?

• 1:20:59Andy Greenwald?

  Nope. And I was like, oh, this is the store where people who have rich dads work.

• 1:21:04Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:21:04Andy Greenwald?

  But beyond that, I was like, I don't even know how to engage with the storefront because I don't know what they're doing.

• 1:21:09Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:21:10Andy Greenwald?

  They are not bound to the exigencies of like making a living or communicating a product or making rent. Like it's beyond that.

• 1:21:18Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:21:18Andy Greenwald?

  And thus I am confused and a little bit resentful by it. I don't feel that way about Pluribus because it's a beautiful show, but I do think that it's very challenging to rank Pluribus with other television shows that have come out of a more traditional

• 1:21:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but

• 1:21:33Andy Greenwald?

  2020s development process.

• 1:21:34Chris Ryan?

  I do.

• 1:21:34Andy Greenwald?

  And creative process because Vince Gilligan makes TV shows in a completely unique way that seems like a beautifully successful, kind, humming machine.

• 1:21:44Chris Ryan?

  But you can't knock it for that.

• 1:21:46Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not knocking it. I was suggesting that there may be some resistance to it because you're watching it and you're like, well, how are they getting away with this?

• 1:21:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, I think that the guy on Twitter with an anime avatar who's like, this shit is boring is probably not knocking it because of like the seamless development process and blank check he got.

• 1:22:03Andy Greenwald?

  Well, let's ask him because I think that he'll be very vocal in my mentions.

• 1:22:07Chris Ryan?

  Guys got him covered outside. Um, number three, I Have the Pit as our number three show.

• 1:22:14Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:22:15Chris Ryan?

  You agree with that?

• 1:22:15Andy Greenwald?

  I do.

• 1:22:16Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Uh, Old School Pleasures, New School Package.

• 1:22:19Andy Greenwald?

  Nice.

• 1:22:20Chris Ryan?

  And a show that is using the hook of a medical procedure and the tension of real time. And also, uh, packing in two seasons worth of disasters and crises into one day of these peoples, these characters, these medical professionals, their lives and makes it into an extraordinary portrait of an industry under immense pressure in a post-COVID nation. Central performance by Noah Wiley is phenomenal, but obviously an incredible ensemble and also one of the great pleasures of TV is getting attached to a half a dozen characters and a half a dozen actors that you had no familiarity with before.

• 1:23:03Chris Ryan?

  And it, you know, it does everything that, uh, that other show did, the other John Wells Hospital show did. While also just feeling very

• 1:23:13Andy Greenwald?

  For legal reasons, you're not going to name it.

• 1:23:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah, I just, I just think.

• 1:23:19Chris Ryan?

  And the fact that it's three weeks away from coming out again is goes to your to your point about like, we gotta get back on the tracks here.

• 1:23:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it's important. I mean, it is an important show for its content, for the way that it's delivering the content, for what it's doing, for jobs in Los Angeles, for the industry, for reminding viewers what television can and should be. I just think at this moment, we we are lucky with like an abundance of riches of like reasons to tune into television. We can be we can be challenged, we can be provoked, we can be just kind of zero out with something. But really, one of the greatest things TV has ever been able to provide is is love.

• 1:24:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:01Andy Greenwald?

  To love people, to root for people, to feel connected to human struggle in ways that are shut up, pleuribus, like communal.

• 1:24:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:10Andy Greenwald?

  And uplifting and joining and like gluing us together. And man, the pit just understands that in its bones. It was so it's so great to have a show like this.

• 1:24:21Chris Ryan?

  I still want the pit PM shift, the night shift.

• 1:24:24Andy Greenwald?

  The night shift of the pit?

• 1:24:25Chris Ryan?

  The Hattie C. Pit.

• 1:24:27Andy Greenwald?

  After pit, pit PM?

• 1:24:29Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I it look, it seems like it gets pretty weird at that hospital, no matter what time of day it is.

• 1:24:33Andy Greenwald?

  Fair.

• 1:24:35Chris Ryan?

  Number two, we arrived at this juncture, and I think that there is actually like an interesting disagreement. So, you know, we've talked about both of these shows so much.

• 1:24:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:44Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk about them together.

• 1:24:46Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:24:47Chris Ryan?

  I have my personal preference is number two is Adolescence, number one is Andor.

• 1:24:52Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:24:53Chris Ryan?

  I think you have the reverse.

• 1:24:54Andy Greenwald?

  I do have the reverse, but only in the spirit of, I don't know, maybe I'm putting too much nobility into like the structure of these lists. For me, Andor season two is essentially flawless.

• 1:25:07Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:25:08Andy Greenwald?

  And one of the more incredible accomplishments in entertainment of our time. I think one of the reasons why it is so outstanding and feels so accomplished and feels so monumental and significant is because of it because of the nature of it as a two season statement, proof of what what we can do with this medium. If we rewire our brains and we're not trying to just put Star Wars on TV.

• 1:25:35Chris Ryan?

  Not just trying to put a BMW in a storefront.

• 1:25:37Andy Greenwald?

  Not trying to put a BMW in a storefront, but like, what can we do that's different? What can we and how can we accomplish it? And

• 1:25:46Andy Greenwald?

  Adolescence is, I mean, look, it's 1 and 1A regardless.

• 1:25:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:50Andy Greenwald?

  For me, adolescence is a singular statement of such incredible technical achievement, but also such emotionally, emotional devastation and power. Because this one season is what we're getting and because it stands alone, to me, that went, that's the number one, because that is the most definitive statement of incredibly talented people, you know, on both sides of the camera coming together to say, look what's possible.

• 1:26:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:21Andy Greenwald?

  Look what's possible in a absolutely painfully relevant, only right now type of way.

• 1:26:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's also, um, it's challenging in the most, it's challenging in a way that I love, you know, it challenges you to have empathy for the villain of the show. And it has, it challenges you to have empathy and love for the man who raised that villain. And it has, you know, you cannot watch Owen Cooper and not be like, I don't want this to be true. You know, and you, you watch Erin Doherty act with him and you're like, I want her to fix him, you know, I want her to let him out of jail, I want her to see that he's okay. And I remember, I have recall for adolescence in a way that I don't usually for TV shows. Like, I have a little bit of a like, on to the next one, and then if you're like, what

• 1:27:15Chris Ryan?

  happened in the third episode of White Lotus this year? I'd be like, no, no idea.

• 1:27:18Andy Greenwald?

  You're the Bill Belichick of binge.

• 1:27:20Chris Ryan?

  This is like where it gets like, when you like throw a random game of LeBron and he's like, oh yeah, of course, we were down 88, 94, and there was a timeout, and then we ran horns and I got fouled, and then we went on a 16-0 run. Like, I kind of feel that way about adolescence, it's like seared in my memory. And that has to stand for something, uh, for me and/or.

• 1:27:40Chris Ryan?

  Is a little bit of a recency pick because I rewatched the second half of the season pretty casually and I was like, there's nothing better than this.

• 1:27:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think that's probably true.

• 1:27:48Chris Ryan?

  And I don't know what to say beyond that. I was rewatching things like, um, Luthen and Lani on the bench, or Krennic and Partigaz's last interaction, or Krennic and Dedra.

• 1:28:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:01Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, or when Cassian first appears in the second season and he's like, taking, he's gonna take the shuttle from the Imperial base and he's like, yeah, he's like, you're coming home to yourself. We talked to Tony a couple of times for this. Uh, that was definitely a very rewarding and enlightening experience, but look, like, this allows me to be in touch with my six-year-old self and also my guy I went to college once self. And that's really like a pretty special combination of things.

• 1:28:35Andy Greenwald?

  I don't, it's not even an argument. It's like, if you take the third episode of Adolescence and you take, um, Welcome to the Rebellion, um, you know, late in the season of Andor, and you think about Genevieve O'Reilly's performance, and you think about Stellan Skarsgård's performance, and, um, we are lucky to have these two hours, and we are lucky that both of them are engaging with our most creative selves, whether it's, you know, the, the way that that Adolescence episode is shot, um, or the fact that Andor is, you know, in the Galactic Senate in a moment that, like, the real dorks, and I say that with love and with looking in a mirror, like, that's a moment that people have probably thought about or understood.

• 1:29:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:17Andy Greenwald?

  It must have happened. And if you've watched the cartoons, it does happen in a different way, or you catch the, the flip side of it as they're escaping. Um, but both of them are also deeply political and deeply moving to have experienced this year. Um, when you can hit that sweet spot of entertainment, relevance, and emotion, you are playing in rarefied air. And- At this point of the list, like, I like all of these shows.

• 1:29:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:42Andy Greenwald?

  It's not a, it's not an argument I want to make.

• 1:29:44Chris Ryan?

  I think that one, two is in a really interesting argument. I think it's interesting that you probably had Lowdown higher and Pluribus lower.

• 1:29:50Andy Greenwald?

  But again, at that point, it's just a question of like head versus heart.

• 1:29:53Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:29:54Andy Greenwald?

  And also, I'm ranking Pluribus where it is. I have not finished the season.

• 1:30:00Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 1:30:00Andy Greenwald?

  So, which will finish this year, so it's relevant. It could move around a little bit.

• 1:30:05Chris Ryan?

  Wait, do you see who Carol's lawyer is?

• 1:30:08Andy Greenwald?

  Is it Leia? Who's actually Leia?

• 1:30:12Chris Ryan?

  I'll recap here what we had. So for the Watch's Top 10 of the Year, Andor, number one, Adolescence, number two, The Pit, number three, Pluribus, number four, but not for both of us.

• 1:30:23Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not gonna yuck your yum here.

• 1:30:26Chris Ryan?

  Task, number five, Lowdown, number six, Eastern Gate, number seven, The Eternaut, number eight, The Studio, number nine, Department Q, number 10.

• 1:30:36Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:30:36Chris Ryan?

  Andy, what were your five honorable mentions?

• 1:30:38Andy Greenwald?

  One through five, Families Like Ours on Netflix, Chair Company on HBO, White Lotus on HBO, Platonic on Apple, English Teacher on FX.

• 1:30:45Chris Ryan?

  I had Shorzy, number one. It's on Hulu. Death by Lightning, number two, on Netflix. Blue Lights, which is on BritBox, number three. Slow Horses on Apple TV, number four. And The Beast in Me, which is on Netflix, is number five. Kaya, are there any shows that we didn't talk about that you would like to just say a shout out to?

• 1:31:04Speaker 04

  I've been really enjoying I Love L.A.

• 1:31:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:07Speaker 04

  I think it's really fun. And in the slew of TV shows that came out this year about people in their early to mid twenties, I think that one is the best. And I loved The Pit.

• 1:31:19Chris Ryan?

  There you go. I love L.A. and The Pit. You can't pin her down.

• 1:31:24Andy Greenwald?

  You can't pin her down. I was gonna say, like, will, Kaya, will you hang with the cast of The Pit at the Golden Globes?

• 1:31:29Speaker 04

  I really hope so.

• 1:31:30Andy Greenwald?

  I think just you and Dr. Robbie.

• 1:31:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:32Speaker 04

  I love you, Noah Wiley.

• 1:31:35Chris Ryan?

  Let's end on that. I love you, Noah Wiley. I love you, Andy Greenwald. Thank you so much for doing the pod with me for another year. We have a couple more episodes in 25, Pluribus finale, et cetera. Thank you to Kaya and Kaya and John. We will be back on Thursday.

• 1:31:56Speaker 00

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