‘The Pitt’ Season 2, Episodes 9 and 10, Checking In on ‘Paradise’ S2, and Kate Winslet Is the Next ‘LOTR’ Lead. Plus, Wrapping Up the ‘Industry’ Mailbag.

Chris and Andy talk about Tommy Lee Jones joining the cast of ‘The Lowdown’ for Season 2 (9:39), ‘Better Call Saul’ cocreator Peter Gould’s new show with FX (11:30), and Kate Winslet as the lead of the next ‘Lord of the Rings’ film (15:04). Then they discuss ‘The Pitt’ Season 2, Episodes 9 and 10 and whether or not this season might be Dr. Robby’s last (22:54). Later, they check in on ‘Paradise’ Season 2 (49:36), before revisiting their ‘Industry’ mailbag (59:37). Drivers wanted. Learn more athttp://vw.com Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Additional Video Supervision: Sarah Reddy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm pro-football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carried sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit MDDAllies.com to watch my story.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 1:31Speaker 03

  FanDuel is now available everywhere in the U.S.

• 1:39Speaker 03

  So you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are, including these places.

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  Make this your most rewarding season ever with FanDuel. Age and location restrictions apply. Product availability varies by market. See FanDuel.com for eligibility. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.

• 2:05Speaker 04

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

• 2:11Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. And joining me in the studio, the bunker was just the beginning, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 2:25Andy Greenwald?

  I love opportunities to talk to you about prepping.

• 2:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:28Andy Greenwald?

  About End of the World.

• 2:29Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 2:30Andy Greenwald?

  How weed fare badly. Well.

• 2:34Chris Ryan?

  I'm starting to wonder.

• 2:35Andy Greenwald?

  You think?

• 2:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm starting to wonder whether or not I've I've developed too many creature comforts. If I've gotten soft in my my late 40s.

• 2:41Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think that you would make it to the bunker and then the next day you'd wake up?

• 2:44Chris Ryan?

  This is about paradise, by the way.

• 2:45Andy Greenwald?

  Well, not yet, but that you'd wake up and just through sheer force of habit, walk to Sweetgreen? And then die in nuclear winter?

• 2:53Chris Ryan?

  I'm worried about Sweetgreen. We can get to that into the Watch After Dark segment.

• 2:56Andy Greenwald?

  After Dark, let's talk about slop bowls and food and stuff.

• 2:58Chris Ryan?

  It's not, I I don't call it a slop bowl. It's kale, you know, it's not slop.

• 3:03Andy Greenwald?

  Look how upset that made you. There are very few things that can rattle you this far into your media career.

• 3:09Chris Ryan?

  I don't want everything in my life fetishized, you know, I like a salad for lunch. It is what it is.

• 3:13Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. Excuse me, should we restart?

• 3:19Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, we're at war, but I guess this is what you're upset about.

• 3:21Chris Ryan?

  Today on The Watch, a couple of news and notes from the world of Hollyweird. And we're going to talk about the last two episodes of The Pit, because we didn't get to touch on it last week.

• 3:32Andy Greenwald?

  That's right.

• 3:32Chris Ryan?

  But, you know, The Pit in general, this episode will go up, our episode of The Watch will go up after the most recent episode of The Pit airs today on Thursday. We're going to talk a little bit broadly about Paradise, season two, five episodes have aired.

• 3:47Andy Greenwald?

  It's just insane.

• 3:48Chris Ryan?

  Andy's watched three.

• 3:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 3:50Chris Ryan?

  I've watched four. The fifth one is up. Mina is already texting me about it. I'm not like trying to read into it. Mia Kimes is a big Paradise head. I think we're going to do it Monday in depth, once we get through the entirety.

• 4:05Andy Greenwald?

  But we are going to remind everyone a little bit about the show.

• 4:09Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 4:09Andy Greenwald?

  And maybe give some general feelings about why they should stick with it for season two.

• 4:13Chris Ryan?

  And then at the end of the show, a long promised industry mailbag. It's only been 10 days since industry's been off the air, but it feels like it's been longer than that for some reason.

• 4:22Chris Ryan?

  First at the top, oh, watch the watch at Spotify.com. Please email us because I love these industry emails and I love, I love feedback and sharing it with Andy selectively. And you can follow us at the Instagram, the watch pod underscore.

• 4:35Andy Greenwald?

  Everybody bubble wraps me.

• 4:37Chris Ryan?

  No, no, no, no.

• 4:38Andy Greenwald?

  It's all right.

• 4:38Chris Ryan?

  I think it's because I know it impacts you, you know, it affects you.

• 4:42Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I am, I lead with feelings.

• 4:44Chris Ryan?

  You do.

• 4:45Andy Greenwald?

  You know, I'm an empathetic colleague.

• 4:48Chris Ryan?

  That would be your downfall in the apocalypse.

• 4:50Andy Greenwald?

  Hundred percent true.

• 4:54Chris Ryan?

  And then you can watch us on YouTube, ringer dash TV is the channel. And you can watch us on Spotify where I hope you're listening to us. So.

• 5:02Andy Greenwald?

  12 days into CR month, by the way.

• 5:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but here I get to be Chris.

• 5:05Andy Greenwald?

  What's the traditional gift? Oh, wait, yeah, that's true. By the way, I've never called you that.

• 5:10Chris Ryan?

  And it's just like, I can just be myself here. If I'm in a bad mood, if I'm in a good mood, if I'm, you know.

• 5:14Andy Greenwald?

  If you just haven't had enough kale yet.

• 5:18Chris Ryan?

  It's been, it's been a really lovely month on the rewatchables, you know, just knocking out the to live and die in LA is coming on Monday.

• 5:25Andy Greenwald?

  I'm very excited.

• 5:26Chris Ryan?

  We're recording Nice Guys next week.

• 5:28Andy Greenwald?

  A great choice.

• 5:29Chris Ryan?

  LA Confidential, which hopefully you will be on.

• 5:33Andy Greenwald?

  Is it still?

• 5:34Chris Ryan?

  I just don't know the day that we're recording and I know you have a very tight schedule.

• 5:37Andy Greenwald?

  No, it's not that. You have a very, Bill has a very whimsical schedule.

• 5:42Chris Ryan?

  I think it's just like you, you can tell when we record rewatchables based on when Bill records the Bill Simmons podcast.

• 5:48Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 5:48Chris Ryan?

  So usually it's the days that he's not recording, we can record rewatchables.

• 5:52Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, I'm just, I'm just on, I'm on standby. You know what I mean?

• 5:55Chris Ryan?

  How many times have you watched LA Confidential in preparation?

• 5:58Andy Greenwald?

  Well, that's why I keep asking you how many days out we are because I want to be fresh.

• 6:01Chris Ryan?

  Well, that's one of the things with rewatchables is like you can't watch too far in advance.

• 6:05Andy Greenwald?

  I agree.

• 6:05Chris Ryan?

  You lose the, that, that je ne sais quoi.

• 6:08Andy Greenwald?

  The electricity. Also, this is, I feel like this is transgressive because I, this is my first time potentially appearing on the podcast since the embargo was lifted on talking about the movies that are going to be on the podcast.

• 6:20Chris Ryan?

  I don't know what's going on. Yeah.

• 6:21Andy Greenwald?

  It's just a brave new world.

• 6:23Chris Ryan?

  He's, he's mapping it out for people. They're, they're, they're getting, they're getting 4Ks delivered, you know?

• 6:29Andy Greenwald?

  Ahead of time.

• 6:29Chris Ryan?

  All sorts of stuff is happening out there. Um, I want to talk to you a little bit about the, the small screen.

• 6:35Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 6:36Chris Ryan?

  Because.

• 6:39Chris Ryan?

  I've been in a little bit, you know how like you see sometimes like a pitcher will go out there for any major league baseball team, the Tigers, the A's, the Phillies, you know?

• 6:48Andy Greenwald?

  You're wearing a Tigers hat today.

• 6:49Chris Ryan?

  I am wearing a Tigers hat, fuck it. You know what I mean? What's, what's gonna happen?

• 6:56Andy Greenwald?

  What else could go wrong?

• 6:57Chris Ryan?

  What else could happen? You know, it's like, it's not because I was wearing a Tigers hat that COVID happened, you know, like?

• 7:02Andy Greenwald?

  We don't know, but yeah.

• 7:04Chris Ryan?

  And sometimes you see pitcher goes out there and you're like, oh, I'm really excited to watch Cole Hamels today.

• 7:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 7:10Chris Ryan?

  And that, that's been a while since I've said those words.

• 7:15Chris Ryan?

  But throws one pitch.

• 7:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 7:18Chris Ryan?

  And he's just like, ah, ah, you know, he points at his shoulder. He's just like, oh, something's up, something went wrong. And I gotta admit, the last couple of days since Kingdom and Industry went off, I feel that way when I turn my TV on. I'm like, is there something up? I may need TV Tommy John. You know, there's something going on with like, I, I, I really enjoyed watching Paradise over the last couple of days.

• 7:44Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, good, me too.

• 7:45Chris Ryan?

  But like, I, I do feel like almost bad because sometimes it's not TV, it's you. And now it's you about TV.

• 7:53Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 7:54Chris Ryan?

  But sometimes those shows might've arrived. I've been thinking a lot about our rea-

• 7:57Andy Greenwald?

  This is very heady.

• 7:57Chris Ryan?

  No, I've been, I've been thinking about our reaction to DTF. I've been thinking about shows that I know are coming on the horizon. I think, um, finding out that Scarpetta was like DOA.

• 8:09Andy Greenwald?

  I, I, we have to cover Scarpetta. After reading a review of it in the New York Times, it makes it sound like the most unhinged shit that's ever been made.

• 8:17Chris Ryan?

  This is the, uh, Amazon adaptation of Patricia Cornwall's beloved series of mystery novels starring Nicole Kidman. But based on this review, seems like they had some different ideas in the room about how to approach this, this series.

• 8:31Andy Greenwald?

  I strongly suggest reading the review of the show, even if you're the kind of person who doesn't read reviews. I read the New York Times review by Mike Hale.

• 8:37Chris Ryan?

  I see, the paper of record.

• 8:38Andy Greenwald?

  Quite, with the gray lady.

• 8:41Andy Greenwald?

  Doing what it does best.

• 8:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:45Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I don't mean to distract you from your larger point. It's just that this show, which seems to be relatively straightforward, like a, you know?

• 8:52Chris Ryan?

  In latest press conference, Trump breaks norms.

• 8:55Andy Greenwald?

  Is that, that's the split screen?

• 8:59Andy Greenwald?

  No, um, no, there was a really interesting video essay on why cats always land on their feet yesterday. I don't know if you saw that. And also, if you scroll, this is a little media criticism. One of my favorite things about waking up bleary eyed and seeing what other wars we've gotten into is that every third image on the New York Times app is Jenny Slate teaches you about AI and hiring. Have you noticed that?

• 9:20Chris Ryan?

  Oh, because it's an ad, right?

• 9:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 9:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:22Andy Greenwald?

  Just great.

• 9:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Andy Greenwald?

  Just last call to money bar. Let's get it done. Sidebar, Scarpetta, deep pocketed studio, Amazon, relatively big property that has entrenched fan base. Seems to be straightforward. I mean, there have been a lot of successful shows, as Mike Hale points out in his review over the last few decades, about female forensic pathologists and...

• 9:43Chris Ryan?

  I love them.

• 9:44Andy Greenwald?

  And yet somehow with this one, with Nicole Kidman...

• 9:47Chris Ryan?

  The second Mrs. Ryan will probably be a female forensic pathologist.

• 9:51Andy Greenwald?

  Or Lady Edith from Downton Abbey.

• 9:53Chris Ryan?

  She was great.

• 9:54Andy Greenwald?

  It's one or the other for you.

• 9:55Chris Ryan?

  She is great. I loved her.

• 9:57Andy Greenwald?

  It's Simon Baker, Bobby Canavale, Jamie Lee Curtis, big cast, and yet they seem to have decided to make this show in two timelines?

• 10:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:04Andy Greenwald?

  With young actors playing the same other actors?

• 10:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:07Andy Greenwald?

  Why do they do that?

• 10:08Chris Ryan?

  I don't know, man. We're gonna find out.

• 10:09Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, anyway, sorry. You're thinking it's not all working for you.

• 10:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you know, it's just like, it's just like, sometimes you get out there and you're just like, God, you know, something happened to my shoulder.

• 10:18Andy Greenwald?

  Not my day.

• 10:18Chris Ryan?

  But the reason I bring this up is just to say, I think I got a little spooked by seeing others say, "I love DTF St. Louis." And I was like, is it, is there something wrong with my ear, with my eye, like?

• 10:31Andy Greenwald?

  Our buddy Jason Manzoukis sent it.

• 10:32Chris Ryan?

  I know, man. So I, it's just sometimes you get a little in your head. And in TV, in general with TV right now, I think I'm a little bit, I'm slumping a little bit.

• 10:41Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 10:41Chris Ryan?

  But...

• 10:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 10:42Chris Ryan?

  I saw this news coming, coming from deadline.com and other trades, you know, across the board.

• 10:48Andy Greenwald?

  But that's your favorite of the Penske properties?

• 10:50Chris Ryan?

  It's like, I prefer Penske as just purely as a motorsports entity.

• 10:56Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 10:56Chris Ryan?

  But when it comes to news, I go there first.

• 10:59Andy Greenwald?

  Interesting. It is, I still think we don't talk about enough the fact that

• 11:03Chris Ryan?

  That one guy.

• 11:04Andy Greenwald?

  Owns Deadline Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.

• 11:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:07Andy Greenwald?

  And we're giving David Ellison a hard time for owning two studios? Like, that's weirder.

• 11:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it is pretty weird.

• 11:12Andy Greenwald?

  Go on.

• 11:13Chris Ryan?

  And I think the guy who owns Chelsea owns like a big piece of all of it and the Golden Globes, Todd Bowley.

• 11:18Andy Greenwald?

  You want to bring in the beautiful game?

• 11:20Chris Ryan?

  What's his Clearwater capital, I think is him.

• 11:23Andy Greenwald?

  I like, last week you were talking about Redbird. Today you're talking about Clearwater?

• 11:27Chris Ryan?

  My guy Jerry.

• 11:27Andy Greenwald?

  You're seeing the bigger picture now.

• 11:29Chris Ryan?

  Jerry was fucking dueling with Matt Bellany.

• 11:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Should he come on the watch?

• 11:35Chris Ryan?

  I fucking wake up every morning dying to do stuff like this. Let's get in a fight. Some TV news that gave me a little pep in my step.

• 11:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 11:43Chris Ryan?

  Tommy Lee Jones is on the second season of The Lowdown. I'm gonna say that again.

• 11:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 11:49Chris Ryan?

  Not because I butchered it, but also because I want to hear my, make sure those words are coming out right. Tommy Lee Jones.

• 11:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 11:55Chris Ryan?

  Is on the second season of The Lowdown on FX. He's joining Betty Gilpin as another addition.

• 12:00Andy Greenwald?

  A big hire.

• 12:01Chris Ryan?

  To the cast. Tommy Lee Jones was on an HBO movie in 2011 and has otherwise not been on TV in 40 years.

• 12:09Andy Greenwald?

  Since Lonesome Dove.

• 12:10Chris Ryan?

  Yes. This is really cool.

• 12:14Andy Greenwald?

  It's really cool. I mean, it is such a, we spend a lot of time on this show, I think, not incorrectly bemoaning the current cultural moment and the state of the industry. And one of the reasons, or one of the bemoans we could have let out is the fact that Sterling Hardjo's The Lowdown, one of the best shows of last year. We have no idea how or if it connected with people.

• 12:38Chris Ryan?

  And.

• 12:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. It did get a second season because it deserves one and it's excellent. And FX has a history of supporting the filmmakers and creators that it's in business with. And showing a patience with shows and letting them grow or just be what they are for a amount of time, which is commendable. But then, it's not just that it's like we gave you a courtesy renewal. He goes out big game hunting and gets Tommy Lee Jones to be on the second season of the show. Now, having an actor like Ethan Hawke leading it probably helps.

• 13:05Chris Ryan?

  It probably helps, but I don't think Tommy Lee Jones gets out of bed just for like a good offer.

• 13:09Andy Greenwald?

  You don't think, maybe he watched the screener of Blue Moon and was like, time to get back in the saddle.

• 13:13Chris Ryan?

  No, I think he hopefully like watched The Lowdown and was like, that's a good show. I'd be on that. I can see where I fit in there.

• 13:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, right.

• 13:20Chris Ryan?

  Betty Gilpin also, just such a phenomenal performer. I'm really excited to see her on this. FX had also recently announced something that I, we did. Didn't really touch on, which was a new show from Better Call Saul creator Peter Gould.

• 13:34Andy Greenwald?

  I wanted to talk about this. Yeah. What's it called?

• 13:36Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Disinherited. And it stars Victoria Padretti, who's done some stuff in the Mike Flanagan universe. I think she was on, I want to say she was on like House of Usher, but I can't remember which one she was on. They kind of run together for me a little bit. Kiara Allen is the other star of the show. And it's about, here's the log line, "A pair of scrappy sisters thrust by an unexpected inheritance into a world of generational wealth and long buried crimes." This is noteworthy to me. A, Peter Gould, very interested to see what he does. It's his first show after Better Call Saul. And second of all, it just feels like a good TV show. Like, I don't know why, but like when I close my eyes, I'm like, dope. FX is still like chugging along on the same tracks that they've been on.

• 14:20Chris Ryan?

  I know they're with Disney now, developing stuff. And they will make a show with people that most TV viewers are not familiar with. They will, they will make stars rather than be like, oh, if only we could get Kidman to play this forensic pathologist, you know?

• 14:35Andy Greenwald?

  Speaking of forensic pathology, it's not, probably not worth getting into the weeds and trying to, you know, DNA test the origins of every project and development that gets greenlit. But often you kind of can not just read the tea leaves, but read the larger cultural waves that affected this project. That they announced, for example, FX a few months ago, we didn't even talk about it, announced a family drama starring Elizabeth Olsen. And that seems exciting. Garrett Bash, who produces a lot of their great shows with Taika, and also did Ripley is one of the producers behind it.

• 15:09Chris Ryan?

  He's a producer on Lowdown too, right?

• 15:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, he is. And, but when I read that news, because I know nothing about the project, I just read it knowing that every single network and streamer for the last 10 years has basically had a mandate to try and crack the family drama code.

• 15:26Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 15:26Andy Greenwald?

  They all want to do a Six Feet Under type thing. So this may be unique. That show that we're talking about may be, you know, a special flower that, that moves beyond that mandate. But then you come up with, with a project like this. Again, we know nothing about it. But as you said, I've never heard of either of these leads or seen them. And I think that's a good thing. All I know is Peter Gould knows how to make television and the log line sounds like an exciting area for a TV show.

• 15:49Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 15:49Andy Greenwald?

  And Chris, that's how we used to make stuff in this country. So I do feel pretty enthused about that.

• 15:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's a strange moment. I mean, I think that- Obviously, there's the pit. We're having a great time with that. And honestly, these last two weeks, I'm like, is this, this is really just the only thing I want to watch. I wish there was like 500 episodes of this already. DTF St. Louis, we talked about on Monday, and some of our mixed emotions about it. Rooster, we also discussed. Love Story, I will not watch for a variety of reasons.

• 16:23Andy Greenwald?

  Daryl Hannah being chief among them.

• 16:24Chris Ryan?

  I don't watch Ryan Murphy shows.

• 16:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, we've agreed on that. That's something that has freed up a lot of our time in the space over the years.

• 16:30Chris Ryan?

  Paradise, I'm enjoying. Vladimir, I have yet to check out on Netflix with Rachel Weisz. And Young Sherlock, we've gotten a couple of emails being like, have you guys checked this out? But I have not. That's on Amazon Prime.

• 16:42Andy Greenwald?

  That's a title. That's the other way we used to make things in this country.

• 16:45Chris Ryan?

  What if Sherlock was young?

• 16:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 16:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. So it's just, I was just wanted to work through my, my issues here. Did you have other news you wanted to talk about today?

• 16:53Andy Greenwald?

  I think you're setting up something that's worth talking about, and we will, because how things used to be familiar beats in television, playing the hits. I mean, Paradise fits right into that conversation. So we'll get to that momentarily. I have a question for you. That's the big screen, not the small screen.

• 17:08Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 17:08Andy Greenwald?

  There is a particular film. Usually, we sit here, and you, you know, I don't know, like, conversation happens, and someone makes a passing reference to Moon Knight. I'm like, actually, Marc Spector was the inherited the Egyptian spirit of Khonshu, or whatever. And then you're like, let's go.

• 17:25Chris Ryan?

  For instance.

• 17:26Andy Greenwald?

  For instance, just throwing that out there. The one area where, I mean, okay, then there are cooler areas where, where we start talking about, like, you know, alien films, and you're ready to go deep on the financials, health of Weyland-Yutani throughout the centuries.

• 17:41Chris Ryan?

  Shareholder interest, too.

• 17:42Andy Greenwald?

  But the one, I believe, IP that you know more than me about proudly is Lord of the Rings.

• 17:49Chris Ryan?

  I guess so. Yeah.

• 17:50Andy Greenwald?

  In that you've seen the movies.

• 17:51Chris Ryan?

  100 times.

• 17:52Andy Greenwald?

  They were released in the theaters, which I have not.

• 17:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:55Andy Greenwald?

  So I'm just getting word from my ivory tower that there is a new. Hobbit movie happening.

• 18:01Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 18:02Andy Greenwald?

  And Elijah Wood might be in it.

• 18:06Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 18:06Andy Greenwald?

  And Gollum is in it.

• 18:08Chris Ryan?

  Yep. Directed by Gollum.

• 18:10Andy Greenwald?

  Directed by Gollum in character as Gollum. First of all, do they need an intimacy coordinator just for him to sit in his chair? Because if there's a windy day on set.

• 18:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Do you think the PAs just bring live fish to Gollum?

• 18:26Andy Greenwald?

  We're in a staring contest. Who's gonna do the voice first? And I'm telling you, it's not gonna be me.

• 18:30Chris Ryan?

  It's not gonna be me. I don't do Gollum.

• 18:32Andy Greenwald?

  You don't do Gollum?

• 18:33Chris Ryan?

  Nah.

• 18:33Andy Greenwald?

  You thought about it. I saw you pause.

• 18:36Chris Ryan?

  I was doing Hal from 2001 yesterday.

• 18:39Andy Greenwald?

  That's good.

• 18:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:41Andy Greenwald?

  And that was your limit? What?

• 18:42Chris Ryan?

  No, I just like, I'm just, I'm in a weird spot with voices, you know? Zane Lowe's been real big on the rewatch.

• 18:48Andy Greenwald?

  Really big. I just like it. I was excited because I kind of like it when you get baited into it and you find it in the moment.

• 18:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. It's also like one of those things where like, I just can't do a New Zealand accent. Like.

• 18:58Andy Greenwald?

  That's a Peter Jackson accent.

• 19:01Chris Ryan?

  Was Zane Lowe where?

• 19:02Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, Zane Lowe.

• 19:03Chris Ryan?

  Zane Lowe is New Zealand.

• 19:04Andy Greenwald?

  I thought you were talking about Peter Jackson. I was like, no, no, Peter Jackson isn't actually Gollum. I thought you had completely blacked out.

• 19:09Chris Ryan?

  Andy Serkis is directing a film called The Hunt for Gollum.

• 19:11Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, and friend of the podcast, Kate Winslet is now starring in this. And I need you to explain this to me. First of all, why would you go look for Gollum? Who needs more Gollum? Second, where did this story come from? Since they had already turned one book into three movies 20 years ago.

• 19:28Chris Ryan?

  Gollum, this is taking place before Fellowship of the Ring, is my understanding.

• 19:32Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, so are we gonna D age Elijah?

• 19:35Chris Ryan?

  I think so.

• 19:36Andy Greenwald?

  Sick.

• 19:36Chris Ryan?

  I don't, because that guy got on a boat at the end of Return of the King and he went to the.

• 19:41Andy Greenwald?

  Spoilers.

• 19:42Chris Ryan?

  No, come on, man. You know, you know what I'm talking about. You've seen the third one, right?

• 19:45Andy Greenwald?

  What year did that movie come out?

• 19:47Chris Ryan?

  Like, oh, three, oh, four?

• 19:49Andy Greenwald?

  Well, ask me other questions about things I did or saw in 2003.

• 19:54Chris Ryan?

  You saw me at black and white.

• 19:55Andy Greenwald?

  I saw you in black and white after A Few Too Many at four in the morning.

• 20:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I, this is my understanding, is that it is taking place before Fellowship of the Ring.

• 20:06Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 20:06Chris Ryan?

  Because I don't know if you saw, this is supposed to be largely, I know that Kate Winslet is leading the cast.

• 20:12Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 20:13Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. If I had to guess, just like, put me in it like a gun to my head.

• 20:18Andy Greenwald?

  Sorry. It's, I, okay, go on. I've got some facts here.

• 20:21Chris Ryan?

  I think she's playing an elf.

• 20:24Andy Greenwald?

  So the movie is set between the Hobbit trilogy and the Lord of the Rings trilogy with Aragorn and Gandalf searching for Gollum to learn more information about the ring.

• 20:34Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 20:34Andy Greenwald?

  So it's essentially a fact finding mission, but a movie.

• 20:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:38Andy Greenwald?

  Hey, weird CGI monster. Can you tell us some facts that will be not relevant to this film, but to the next movie?

• 20:46Chris Ryan?

  Well, the thing is, is that we know that their hunt fails.

• 20:48Andy Greenwald?

  So best case scenario, it's Rogue One with elves. That's the best case scenario. Oh, my God, did you just?

• 20:58Chris Ryan?

  But the thing is, is that here's the, here's the jam.

• 21:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 21:00Chris Ryan?

  It's supposed to be largely an Aragorn movie.

• 21:03Andy Greenwald?

  All right.

• 21:03Chris Ryan?

  And Vigo won't do it. So Leo Woodall is gonna be Aragorn, apparently.

• 21:09Andy Greenwald?

  You could just be Aragorn now?

• 21:11Chris Ryan?

  I, well, that's what I don't understand is that he obviously does not really look like Aragorn. So how young are they de-aging these guys? Or how old are they gonna make Leo Woodall? And is Kate Winslet, is she just Galadriel? Or is she doing the Kate Blanchard part? I don't, I don't know.

• 21:25Andy Greenwald?

  And Ian McKellen is gonna be in it.

• 21:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. But I don't know. I bet Frodo will be like, in the background, like, like smoking a pipe. You know what I mean?

• 21:34Andy Greenwald?

  I don't think Frodo- What if this is Frodo's dirtbag era?

• 21:37Chris Ryan?

  But it's like Frodo can't be hunting for Gollum, because when they find him in the Shire, they're like, this is your job now. He's like, you gotta be fucking kidding me. I'm just a hobbit.

• 21:47Andy Greenwald?

  What if he was smoking a lot of the pipe and playing Goldeneye in 64? And just kind of like a 2003 vibe?

• 21:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, listening to Aes.

• 21:56Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just saying, that's pretty cool. Or, or what if they wiped his mind like Peter Parker at the end of the Spider-Man movie?

• 22:04Chris Ryan?

  Do you think that they're gonna try and squeeze a trilogy out of this? I mean, if it's really successful, obviously they'll, they'll get into it.

• 22:09Andy Greenwald?

  They're like, oh, we've lost the Trail of Gollum again.

• 22:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:12Andy Greenwald?

  We must keep going.

• 22:14Chris Ryan?

  And they've never, I don't really know, I, I, you know, I'm not a big Tolkien guy. I've just watched the movies. Do they ever do like what happened after they got Sauron? Did they ever do somehow Sauron is returned?

• 22:26Andy Greenwald?

  Is Sauron just an eye? What is Sauron?

• 22:29Chris Ryan?

  No, Sauron's a guy.

• 22:30Andy Greenwald?

  Does someone play him?

• 22:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, in the fucking show, in Rings of Power.

• 22:35Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah, okay, sure.

• 22:36Chris Ryan?

  He gets, he gets captured.

• 22:38Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 22:38Chris Ryan?

  But then his power grows when he's like in that tower. And he's the Eye, and he controls all.

• 22:43Andy Greenwald?

  Do you ever see the rest of him?

• 22:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you see him in like when he fought, uh, Iseldur. Uh.

• 22:51Chris Ryan?

  Don't fucking look at the camera. Don't look at the camera, Moon Knight. Don't do that. Sorry. When we come in here, we come in here to laugh. You know, we come in here-

• 23:00Andy Greenwald?

  We laugh until you start dropping Iseldur.

• 23:04Andy Greenwald?

  Iseldork.

• 23:05Chris Ryan?

  He gets his hand cut off. Remember he gets his little fingers cut off by, no, he cuts Sauron's fingers off.

• 23:11Andy Greenwald?

  Oof.

• 23:11Chris Ryan?

  With the, the blade that's broken.

• 23:13Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 23:14Chris Ryan?

  And it's Iseldur's pain, I think, and they gotta put it together.

• 23:17Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 23:18Chris Ryan?

  And he, and that's like Aragorn's uncle.

• 23:20Andy Greenwald?

  Sorry, I was at parties.

• 23:22Chris Ryan?

  Okay. You were at the fucking comic book shop. Being like, oh, new mutants. What are these guys up to?

• 23:28Andy Greenwald?

  Are they new mutants?

• 23:32Chris Ryan?

  West Coast Avengers.

• 23:33Andy Greenwald?

  I've been reading-

• 23:33Chris Ryan?

  How do they deal with the time change?

• 23:36Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it's a great question. Most of the West Coast Avengers were more of like laconic in spirit, you know? It was just like Iron Man and Wonder Man.

• 23:42Chris Ryan?

  Spiritually West Coast?

• 23:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, they're like California sober, you know what I mean?

• 23:46Chris Ryan?

  That's not true, is it?

• 23:48Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it was like-

• 23:49Chris Ryan?

  Were they based in LA, weren't they?

• 23:50Andy Greenwald?

  They were based. They were 100% based. It was like Wonder Man and Hawkeye, Tigra. You know, Iron Man hung out for a while when he was detoxing.

• 24:01Chris Ryan?

  Oh, was he always detoxing, right?

• 24:03Andy Greenwald?

  Well, detox to retox, as my guy Fallout Boy once sang. In 2003. A concert I was at.

• 24:10Chris Ryan?

  Remember, you don't remember Iseldur, but you remember fucking the Water Buffalo song that Fallout Boy did.

• 24:17Andy Greenwald?

  It seems like you remember it too.

• 24:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that's a good jam. That's a fucking anthem.

• 24:20Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe their best song.

• 24:22Chris Ryan?

  This episode is brought to you by Volkswagen. It can be hard to do your own thing when everyone else is following everyone else. But that's what some of the best films are about. An outcast striving to make their own way in the world. And this is your sign to be that outcast. From us, from VW, from the other outcasts out there, take a chance. Make the most of every day and don't be afraid to veer off course every now and then. Because if you don't do it now, then when? Learn more at VW.com.

• 24:53Andy Greenwald?

  That's the beauty of this podcast. What a journey we just went on.

• 24:56Chris Ryan?

  That was Watch After Dark. I have nothing left for it.

• 24:59Andy Greenwald?

  I got nothing left for the show.

• 25:00Chris Ryan?

  Let's do the pit.

• 25:01Andy Greenwald?

  This is what happens when Kaya steps out, by the way. Chaos.

• 25:04Chris Ryan?

  We have to get to this, because, you know, when we didn't do the pit last week because I chose to center hockey.

• 25:11Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you for taking ownership.

• 25:13Chris Ryan?

  I was like, it's okay, because I don't really feel like anything super significant happened on the pit.

• 25:19Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 25:20Chris Ryan?

  And now, if you took that episode from last week, and this episode from this week, and put it together, we need to talk about the Robbie situation, because it's screaming. It's screaming. It was a background note.

• 25:30Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 25:30Chris Ryan?

  Then they put it up in the mix, and now it's like Steve Albini's kick drums. It's like, you cannot ignore this. Did you download, did you buy from Bandcamp the Albini version of It on the Killtaker?

• 25:43Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 25:44Chris Ryan?

  Not yet?

• 25:45Andy Greenwald?

  I'm saving up.

• 25:46Chris Ryan?

  As soon as you finish. As soon as you finish the fucking, the Tolkien books you got on your.

• 25:53Andy Greenwald?

  I got the, no, I gotta finish this pitch dog for the West Coast Avengers reboot. Trying to get my guys at Marvel to really take it.

• 26:02Andy Greenwald?

  Take me seriously.

• 26:03Chris Ryan?

  Two wonderful episodes, but I think the big headline coming out of it for me has been Robbie's behavior over the last couple of episodes. So he's given up his apartment to Whittaker.

• 26:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 26:14Chris Ryan?

  In the future, but like, you know, he's like, hey, you can stay at my place while I'm on my motorcycle road trip.

• 26:18Andy Greenwald?

  Which also, by the way, has been a very overt, is an overt statement of what has been going on behind the scenes, which is that he clearly feels that Whittaker is his mini-me. And is sort of.

• 26:29Chris Ryan?

  Behind the scenes on the show, though. Not like behind the scenes like on the pit, Noah Wiley is like, this dude is him.

• 26:35Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, no, although possibly, he's quite a supportive boss, I believe. But, I mean, on the show, like, even in this week's episode with his buddy Duke.

• 26:43Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 26:43Andy Greenwald?

  He introduces Whittaker as one of our most accomplished.

• 26:46Chris Ryan?

  You're in good hands.

• 26:47Andy Greenwald?

  Emotionally.

• 26:48Chris Ryan?

  So he gives his apartment to Whittaker. If you re-watch it now, like the goodbye to Jack, when Jack's like, I'm punching out before I have to punch back in again.

• 26:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, great scene.

• 26:59Chris Ryan?

  Great scene, kinda weird, kinda, kind of like, a little bit more final than you would kind of, well, he's like, am I really not gonna see you again? It's like, it's like a strange kind of vibe to it.

• 27:11Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it also is baked into the DNA of these characters, who we first met when Robbie was kinda, sorta, talking Jack down from the roof of the hospital.

• 27:22Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 27:23Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, there is a morbid streak.

• 27:26Chris Ryan?

  They live on the edge.

• 27:27Andy Greenwald?

  In their relationship.

• 27:28Chris Ryan?

  Uh, he has shown a general, like, not my problem, energy, I think, in terms of some of the, like, in the first season.

• 27:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 27:37Chris Ryan?

  Everything that's happening in the emergency department seems to affect him almost on an emotional, like, on a foundational level, you know what I mean? Especially the interference by the executives.

• 27:48Andy Greenwald?

  And the, um, the aging, uh, the aging father.

• 27:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I, I still think he has his touch with patients, but not with patients when they happen to work for him, where this episode.

• 27:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 27:59Chris Ryan?

  Mohan has a panic attack after, you know.

• 28:02Andy Greenwald?

  Repeated calls from the parents.

• 28:04Chris Ryan?

  Calls from her, from her mother, and also.

• 28:06Andy Greenwald?

  What's the, what's the prescription for that?

• 28:09Andy Greenwald?

  Sorry, go on.

• 28:09Chris Ryan?

  And she's also, like, behind on her applying for a fellowship, and, uh, he dresses her down in a way that even, like, all the people in the, in the, in the department notice, including Dana, who's just like, what's that about?

• 28:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 28:21Chris Ryan?

  So, I just find his, I find his behavior odd. Now, I think that this is just a great development for the character.

• 28:31Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 28:32Chris Ryan?

  It's been fantastic, and fantastically rolled out, in like, in a really well-paced way. What's your read on what is happening here?

• 28:41Andy Greenwald?

  Well, there's a couple of different ways to look at it. One is to remember that within the context of the show, he might just have senioritis. This is his last day before a much deserved vacation.

• 28:54Andy Greenwald?

  And it happens to be yet another in an increasingly bleak series of days from hell. So I don't necessarily blame him for being a little bit of a short fuse about it. Particularly because, as we know, he has not necessarily a messianic complex, but he does have control issues and believes that he is keeping this thing together. And so it is threatening to his well being and sense of self that he might not be necessary. Because then what is he good for? So I so just on a surface level, you can accept that. Then you also have to understand that, I don't mean you, I mean, when watching that this is, he's the main character and star of the show and executive producer and one of the writers and an occasional director. And so despite the fact that he is quite, I believe, a democratic leader and shares

• 29:39Andy Greenwald?

  the wealth, this show is this man's story as much as it is the story of the emergency room. So it has to be pushing him in a different direction than he had been before. And it's interesting to see in the context of the first season, which set up the day being an enormous trauma trigger with all of the COVID flashbacks and his mentor and everything, that in the end, I mean, it was a challenging day and his mentor's son's girlfriend died and that was hideous and traumatic and violent and awful. His low point, if you remember, was just five minutes of collapse.

• 30:13Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 30:13Andy Greenwald?

  In one of the rooms.

• 30:14Chris Ryan?

  When Whitaker finds him.

• 30:15Andy Greenwald?

  And Whitaker finds him. And so that's an intimacy that they share, even if it's not referred to. I bring that up because I think in watching the first season, especially the first season of a show that was not guaranteed multiple seasons, the way the show now is, I thought we were heading towards a much more.

• 30:30Chris Ryan?

  Significant, like dark.

• 30:31Andy Greenwald?

  Existential crap. Not that he would die or something, but that he would be incapacitated or fail and there would have to be a reckoning.

• 30:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:38Andy Greenwald?

  That's not what happened. So it does seem like in a in a slightly different rhythmic way, we're building towards that this season. What I do not think we are building to, despite the loud revving of Chekhov's motorcycle.

• 30:54Chris Ryan?

  You're on you're on the same website I am on. Is Robbie gonna die this season?

• 30:58Andy Greenwald?

  Which camera? No. Like, I know that television and all entertainment works on, you know, suspension of disbelief. But as I just alluded to, Noah Wiley is the Ducati engine that fuels this.

• 31:15Andy Greenwald?

  Generational success that the show already is.

• 31:19Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 31:20Andy Greenwald?

  He is not leaving the show. That it doesn't work like that. So I hope that doesn't rob anyone of excitement or, or, you know, of anticipation. Could he get in an accident? Could his face?

• 31:31Chris Ryan?

  Sure. Could he have a nervous breakdown? Could he? Could he? Yes.

• 31:34Andy Greenwald?

  Could the season end with a cliffhanger of, we just got word that he crashed somewhere outside of Montreal? Sure.

• 31:41Chris Ryan?

  That would be, he would be making incredible time if he got from Pittsburgh to Montreal within the parameters of this season of television.

• 31:48Andy Greenwald?

  It's a great point.

• 31:49Chris Ryan?

  And if he did get in a crash, driving that fast, there would be no coming back.

• 31:53Andy Greenwald?

  So do you?

• 31:54Chris Ryan?

  That would be like, like, like if fucking Tron crashed. You know what I mean?

• 31:59Andy Greenwald?

  What if Duke was his late cycle pal? And it was just yet another opportunity for corporate synergy?

• 32:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:05Andy Greenwald?

  That'd be, honestly, that would be sick.

• 32:08Chris Ryan?

  Um.

• 32:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I don't, okay, fair enough. Maybe somewhere in Lackawatta County.

• 32:11Chris Ryan?

  I was talking with Joanna Robinson about this. Jo and Rob are also recapping The Pit every week on the Prestige TV podcast. And we were batting around worst case, best case, realistic case scenarios for what's happening here. And she actually, I hope she doesn't mind me saying this, was like, what if Noah Wiley wanted to take a kind of more behind the scenes role in the third season and basically like Jack is Robbie next season?

• 32:39Andy Greenwald?

  For a season?

• 32:39Chris Ryan?

  And Robbie is Jack, where he's like, at the end of the shift, I come in or whatever. It's my first day back after my accident or my own breakdown. I also think that there are threads connecting Robbie and Langdon, who before Whittaker was the prince who was promised, and Robbie's refusal to kind of give Langdon the resolution he craves with making amends. That might be like, you know, be careful what you wish for because you may be asking for the same kind of grace later. I'm just, I'm just throwing out ideas.

• 33:13Andy Greenwald?

  I would predict, here's the thing about The Pit that sometimes is dazzling, or dazzling in a way that is both exciting, entertaining, but also can be, can take your eyes away from the fundamental truth of the show, which is that so much of it is still conventional. That's a good thing in the case of The Pit. But like, this is a show that even in the midst of these like remarkable creative pirouettes, a character goes, "Do cyber attacks happen often in hospitals?" Like, it still does that. Like, it's still, that's still the show.

• 33:40Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 33:41Andy Greenwald?

  So, it's okay to sometimes do Occam's scalpel and just be like, Robbie's gonna get in a bit of a pickle before the season's over and Langdon will have to save him. Like, it could just be that.

• 33:52Chris Ryan?

  Could be.

• 33:53Andy Greenwald?

  That is one of the, the, the, the low murmurings of story throughout the season that will get some sort of payoff. I also, not to be overly cynical, but it's hard to be overly cynical in these times. This is a Warner Brothers show.

• 34:08Chris Ryan?

  In these times, like, Middle Earth, you know? And then the second age of-

• 34:12Andy Greenwald?

  The second age of-

• 34:12Chris Ryan?

  Second, second age of-

• 34:14Andy Greenwald?

  Is, I wanna say Isringhausen, what was his name?

• 34:16Chris Ryan?

  Isildur, dude.

• 34:17Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 34:17Chris Ryan?

  Whatever, man. You, you're, you're trying to shame me, you're never gonna shame me about this. I remember a character from the first fucking Hobbit movie.

• 34:24Andy Greenwald?

  That's, that's cool, man.

• 34:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:27Andy Greenwald?

  That's great. Proud of you.

• 34:32Andy Greenwald?

  It's a little, this in the slot bowl, we're getting there, we're getting towards something.

• 34:38Andy Greenwald?

  I guess what I'm trying to say is, The Pit is extremely creative and nimble and takes chances and is rewarded for those chances that it has taken in its already, you know, it feels like it's been a part of our lives for a while, but it's only been a season and a half of television. That said, it is one of the most crucial flagship shows of the Warner Brothers Discovery operation as it attempts to dry dock onto Paramount. And that is not overstatement. Like, HBO Max is debuting in the UK and Ireland, and it is debuting with season one of The Pit. Like, they held that show back so that they could premiere with it.

• 35:16Chris Ryan?

  Because when it hits- When it hits the aisles.

• 35:19Andy Greenwald?

  They're gonna freak out.

• 35:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:21Andy Greenwald?

  They're gonna be like, whoa, we should, we really do have a special relationship with this fail state. They can't even fund their hospitals.

• 35:28Chris Ryan?

  Um.

• 35:28Andy Greenwald?

  My point is, they could get away with a lot of stuff because of the goodwill they've built up, the success they've had creatively, the awards they bring in, the attention they've brought to the platform, the stabilization they've brought to the platform, the awards they have won and will continue to win. But if you walk into, not Casey's office, David Zaslove's office, which he's outfitting with new gold drapes, having, you know, done the con of the century and put people out of work and enriched himself beyond any known possible measure. Congratulations, that's the point of capitalism. And you say, no, while he's not gonna be on season three of the show, that might get him some pushback.

• 36:01Chris Ryan?

  Sure. There's some other storylines that I think are really illustrative of the really beautiful job they're doing writing this, this piece, this season. Alashimi, Alashimi, who I think has drawn some criticism for being a bit stiff as a character and perhaps.

• 36:18Andy Greenwald?

  Was I drawing the criticism across the table?

• 36:20Chris Ryan?

  And perhaps a bit on the nose with her belief system when it comes to the role of AI.

• 36:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 36:27Chris Ryan?

  Generative AI, you know, in the, not generative AI, right?

• 36:31Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, generative.

• 36:32Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I thought it was agentic. I thought it was just supposed to help you, right?

• 36:35Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 36:36Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. I can't, well.

• 36:37Andy Greenwald?

  Why don't you ask Jenny Slate?

• 36:38Chris Ryan?

  She wants AI in the, in the emergency department and she's just a little stiff, but all the other doctors seem to dig her except for Robbie. Over the last couple of weeks, it has been pointed out that she had not done many procedures or any procedures other than.

• 36:52Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 36:53Chris Ryan?

  The examination on Dana's rape victim.

• 36:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and the, and some baby stuff.

• 36:58Chris Ryan?

  Some baby stuff, but had not done, she was more like calling shots from the, from the sideline rather than getting in there the way Robbie and Abbott do.

• 37:06Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think she's Claude?

• 37:07Chris Ryan?

  Well, no, but did you watch her do the trake thing?

• 37:09Andy Greenwald?

  The slash trake?

• 37:10Chris Ryan?

  The slash trake, first of all, like, as many people have pointed out, if you go and do any reading about. What was happening when she was in Afghanistan and with Doctors Without Borders?

• 37:23Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 37:23Chris Ryan?

  She was probably working for a maternity hospital that was bombed, I believe is the story. And so obviously she's dealing with PTSD from that, but clearly might have like, you know, a shaky cutting hand based on everything that she's seen. But when she does this trake, it's like this motherfucker knows her stuff. And everybody in the room is like, I've never seen that before.

• 37:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 37:46Chris Ryan?

  Um, so that was pretty cool. And the way that they are not only developing that side of her, but even her reaction to Garcia, who uh is the sort of head surgeon.

• 37:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 37:57Chris Ryan?

  When she walks in is just like, what did you fucking use a bone saw or something? Or like whatever she said.

• 38:01Andy Greenwald?

  We talked about a few weeks ago.

• 38:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. She's just like, I just saved her life.

• 38:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. She says they'll be thrilled to clean up your mess. And she said, I think they'll be, um, maybe they'll thank us for not letting him die.

• 38:10Chris Ryan?

  Yes. And you can see as she walks out the door, her like shoulders sag a little bit. Like she's just like, it's getting to her too.

• 38:18Andy Greenwald?

  Now, she also says that she has never actually done one of these before. She had just done it like on a simulator.

• 38:23Chris Ryan?

  Maybe.

• 38:23Andy Greenwald?

  Um, oh, you think that might not be?

• 38:26Chris Ryan?

  I wonder.

• 38:27Andy Greenwald?

  She, she also, the other thing that I felt a little bit was.

• 38:32Chris Ryan?

  That seemed like battlefield surgery to me.

• 38:34Andy Greenwald?

  For sure. That felt like something that, that like the stuff that Abbott was doing in the previous season. She's also the one who despite being essentially a robot for eight episodes, pulls Robbie aside and is just like, be nicer to your staff.

• 38:47Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 38:47Andy Greenwald?

  So, so she, she has depth. She has layers.

• 38:50Chris Ryan?

  Speaking of being nice, um, there's two ways of reading what's going on with Santos right now. One is that, uh, the accumulation of stress over the course of a really tough day is forcing her to backslide maybe into poor habits about her like workplace demeanor and eye rolling and snapping at people. The other one would be the writers are just more comfortable with her being a mild antagonist. Um, and so I thought she was warmer with Whitaker. She was warmer with some of her colleagues. I think she was a little bit more vulnerable. She's still Santos. She's still just like, I want to be, you know, I want, I basically want to be the best,

• 39:33Chris Ryan?

  but like has a little bit of a brusque manner to her. Do you think this is more like they're just comfortable having that performer in this character be?

• 39:43Andy Greenwald?

  It's a good question.

• 39:44Chris Ryan?

  Oppositional or, you know?

• 39:45Andy Greenwald?

  I would say, and I should have said this at the top. I loved last week's episode. I thought this week's was one of the weakest of the season.

• 39:52Chris Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 39:53Andy Greenwald?

  And one of the reasons is it just, these are not new complaints. These are not fatal complaints. These are things that exist in the show. And when more attention is drawn to them, I remember that I have a couple of issues. And one of them is Langdon, Langdon's return, his recovery arc is very, very compelling and good drama, good character stuff. Langdon himself is also very well, we've talked about this before. Patrick Ball, I think, is a really talented actor. He is also very, very pretty and very, very lovable with his puppy dog eyes that cause, you know, incredibly intoxicated young college girls with severed tongues do moon over him.

• 40:34Chris Ryan?

  They do.

• 40:34Andy Greenwald?

  There's not a single moment in Langdon's performance, appearance where I worry that he's going to backslide into being some sort of addict. It's just not written into the character or in the performance. So the fact that everyone, not everyone, the fact that one of the most reliable drumbeats of this season is that Robbie and Santos fucking hate him and don't trust him.

• 40:55Chris Ryan?

  Well, Santos hates him for a reason, you know, because if she was wrong, that would have been the end of her career and he put her in that position.

• 41:01Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not saying it's not legitimate. I'm saying that that drumbeat is not as successful to me because Langdon is just walking around like a puppy dog, being an absolute saint to people on the spectrum and anyone else that crosses his path. Is that real, more or less realistic? I don't know. It's, but it's the way that the character is written and the way that the character is played. So the downside of that decision or the upstream, downstream effects of that decision is that Santos feels like she's backsliding, that she's just being petulant, that she's just being annoying. And I think that that's not a successful box for the actor or character to be in. The show moves so fast that all of this can be forgotten by next week.

• 41:44Chris Ryan?

  And this episode specifically does move fast because there's been a water park disaster, goddammit.

• 41:48Andy Greenwald?

  True. It also, I did want to just note that Garcia, who's making a lot of appearances this season, says to Santos that she's done talking about Langdon, and this is a quote, "If you're looking for someone to eat ramen in bed with and have sex, I'm your girl."

• 42:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:01Andy Greenwald?

  "I'm no Monty Hall, but take the deal." You know what I mean? Like, I, that is a strong, again, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not Monty, I'm not Howie Roseman.

• 42:11Chris Ryan?

  For you, if you're looking for somebody to eat just a beautiful, clean piece of fish and watch Moon Knight reruns.

• 42:19Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, read back issues. You know what I mean? You don't want, not ramen, because you don't want broth splatter.

• 42:26Chris Ryan?

  You don't want ramen hands on your sacred Moon Knight.

• 42:29Andy Greenwald?

  Now, I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump in here, sorry to be that guy, but you don't traditionally eat ramen with your hands.

• 42:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but sometimes you get a little splash, right?

• 42:36Andy Greenwald?

  Not if you do it right. Moon Knight's costume was immaculate.

• 42:39Chris Ryan?

  So is the white wizard Gandalf when he's, when he comes back.

• 42:44Andy Greenwald?

  Who do you think would win the fight?

• 42:45Chris Ryan?

  He was the gray and then he turns into the white when he gets back from the Balrock fall that he has.

• 42:49Andy Greenwald?

  Or he's just trying to like, you know, go with the political winds.

• 42:52Chris Ryan?

  Oh, right.

• 42:52Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm. White Gandalf.

• 42:57Andy Greenwald?

  No more woke Gandalf nuance.

• 42:58Chris Ryan?

  Tell me more about why you didn't like this episode.

• 43:00Andy Greenwald?

  There's a structural reason, two structural reasons and a personal reason.

• 43:05Chris Ryan?

  Tell me both.

• 43:05Andy Greenwald?

  The two structural reasons are, uh, the, the, the pit coaster of the season, this is, this is a me thing, not a-

• 43:13Chris Ryan?

  The pit water slide of the season, perhaps?

• 43:15Andy Greenwald?

  This is a me thing, not a show thing. I think we have, we were conditioned by the first season to expect calm morning and then all hell to break loose. The cyber attack happens and we're like, hell has arrived. But in fact, they are incredible, they adjust, things are stressful, but they are basically, you know, we're all getting our prescription nicotine patches and we, we get through it.

• 43:35Chris Ryan?

  Whatever, that, if I heard Dana say that correctly, that it is a 20-milligram patch, that woman should just smoke.

• 43:44Andy Greenwald?

  She does.

• 43:45Chris Ryan?

  But she should just do it in the, in the ER. Like, we should just go back to 19, I don't know when the last time you were able to smoke in a hospital was, but-

• 43:53Andy Greenwald?

  In Pittsburgh, it's surprising. So, so I think that the, the sort of up and down, like anticipation, the episode ends last week, like, there has been a catastrophe at the water park. Oh, they did a little, um, they did a little, uh, what do you call it? Shell game and tricked us. It wasn't the cyber attack, it was this that comes on the heels of it. And then, though catastrophic, it appears to be two hideous injuries and casualties, and then we're on to the next thing. So I think I was a little rhythmically out of sync with the episode.

• 44:25Andy Greenwald?

  The other thing was, I compliment the show for this, so I'm not going to be inconsistent and say that I think they wasn't worth the swing. But the way that they have found these pockets of, we're going to do a quiet moment or a quiet runner through an otherwise stressful episode, it's been incredible to watch and very successful throughout the season. I thought the attempts to make this the mom's episode.

• 44:46Chris Ryan?

  Roxy, Javadi's mom, Moihan's mom.

• 44:50Andy Greenwald?

  I thought was a little clunky.

• 44:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:53Andy Greenwald?

  And you could feel the intention in ways that didn't fully pay off.

• 44:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's weird. It's like, three makes a trend to make it.

• 45:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 45:02Chris Ryan?

  Work.

• 45:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 45:04Chris Ryan?

  If they had just done Roxy and Javadi, or that would have probably been enough because it's like Javadi is actually working with Roxy and obviously is going through an emotional reaction, kind of seeing this, but that's a good point.

• 45:15Andy Greenwald?

  So, again, there's nothing wrong with it. The show attempts to do things that lesser shows would never even attempt to do. And I admire it for it. This one didn't work for me. And the other, but the ultimate one was, you know, the, I can deal with a lot of like, I don't mind seeing the vocal cords or the debrading of finger flesh.

• 45:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:36Andy Greenwald?

  But this was hitting my particular vagus nerve center of saying goodbye to children and worrying about children.

• 45:44Chris Ryan?

  I thought you were going to talk about the leg getting cut off.

• 45:46Andy Greenwald?

  No, it's fine.

• 45:47Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 45:48Andy Greenwald?

  You got two, you know. No, like that, that.

• 45:51Chris Ryan?

  Can you imagine though, looking over and somebody's like washing your leg with saline?

• 45:54Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, of all the things you could be doing with my severed leg, that's probably top three.

• 46:00Chris Ryan?

  It's probably what Joe Theismann felt like.

• 46:02Andy Greenwald?

  God. You've crossed the line, sir.

• 46:06Chris Ryan?

  When LT hit him. You knew what I was talking about.

• 46:11Andy Greenwald?

  I remember. I didn't think it was like some random Monday night football broadcast. He's like, how'd I get in this position?

• 46:17Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 46:18Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway, that's just like, that's tough.

• 46:20Chris Ryan?

  You know that I'm not loving, the Roxy storyline is done well. This is the cancer patient mother.

• 46:27Andy Greenwald?

  The show doesn't blink, man. I appreciate that.

• 46:30Chris Ryan?

  I am a little surprised that they are, under the circumstances, they are just like, yep, you can just hang out in the ER. That generally is not my experience, but.

• 46:41Chris Ryan?

  So be it. And it's, it's very well done. It's, it's become my, my kind of like, I'm like, all right, I'm gonna like, kind of maybe look at my phone for a second and just be, but that's just because of personal stuff.

• 46:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Which, which again, I think we both admire the show for doing. Like, I think, I'll, I'll repeat myself, but like, if the pitch for the show, as we understood it was, it would be like ER, but gorier and more intense in the way that we can do with prestige TV. I think we all undersold the idea that they would also be able to do the flip side of that, which is actually consider life, death, dignity, um, and the choices that we make, you know, in those, in those moments. So I, I admire it, but it was, it's, it's a tough watch.

• 47:22Chris Ryan?

  Um, okay. Well, we can put a pin in the pit there. Was there anything else you wanted to talk about with it? Mel's deposition, I don't really have a comment on.

• 47:30Andy Greenwald?

  I did. I'm so happy we didn't see it.

• 47:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. My God, dude.

• 47:33Andy Greenwald?

  That was awesome that we didn't see it.

• 47:35Chris Ryan?

  Although that would be an interesting wrinkle for the show to be like, the pit attorneys at law.

• 47:40Andy Greenwald?

  Well, that's the spin off. They could do that, medical lawyers, but I'm glad they didn't do it this episode. Uh, what about, I'm gonna ask you this. I know industry ended 10 days ago, but Chris, is ketamine having a moment?

• 47:52Chris Ryan?

  I had no idea. It was so prevalent. I mean, obviously like you're here about it as like a therapeutic and.

• 47:57Andy Greenwald?

  And we go to Bergen all the time.

• 47:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. But you, and then as a party drug, but I did not know that they were just pumping people full of K before they amputated.

• 48:06Andy Greenwald?

  Or, or reattached.

• 48:07Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 48:08Andy Greenwald?

  You can use it both ways.

• 48:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:10Andy Greenwald?

  Get it off, get it back on.

• 48:11Chris Ryan?

  Turns out the horses were living right the whole time.

• 48:14Andy Greenwald?

  It makes me feel, okay, I have a lot of thoughts about that. It makes me feel better about the whole luck thing on HBO.

• 48:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 48:20Andy Greenwald?

  You know, because I assumed that those horses, though they, they died.

• 48:24Chris Ryan?

  They're no longer with us.

• 48:25Andy Greenwald?

  They're no longer with us, but at least they were, you know, their nervous systems were.

• 48:28Chris Ryan?

  They died going to see Fred again and Thomas Bonkold.

• 48:31Andy Greenwald?

  At least the visions of them. It does make me have questions about Shailene Woodley's favorite horse in Graceland and Paradise, who runs away during the apocalypse and runs back three years later, looking none the worse for wear.

• 48:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:42Andy Greenwald?

  It ran in search of the ketamine. Found it and just nuzzled around in it.

• 48:48Chris Ryan?

  Do you want to just jump to paradise now then?

• 48:51Andy Greenwald?

  Um, do you have any Dr. Mohan stuff?

• 48:56Chris Ryan?

  I, I'm, I worry that her mom is calling a lot so that there's probably something up with her. I don't think she's just calling to be like, I can't get the TV to not mute.

• 49:03Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think in the spirit of the show's inclusion of family members that Dr. Mohan's mother also has a UTI from having lots of sex?

• 49:11Chris Ryan?

  Jesus.

• 49:11Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think that everyone's loved ones are just out there?

• 49:15Chris Ryan?

  You're referring to Mel's sister.

• 49:16Andy Greenwald?

  Getting after it.

• 49:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:17Andy Greenwald?

  And that that's what's going to bring him into the ER?

• 49:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:19Andy Greenwald?

  Just too mu- like a hot summer weekend?

• 49:21Chris Ryan?

  She's in New Jersey. I think Mohan's mother is somewhere else. Like, her mother is like not in Pittsburgh. I don't think.

• 49:26Andy Greenwald?

  What if she rode the Robbie Express and got there really fast?

• 49:28Chris Ryan?

  Get a Tron light cycle.

• 49:30Andy Greenwald?

  Let's say you, you have, you're a social guy. You have a lot of friends.

• 49:35Chris Ryan?

  Are you not?

• 49:36Andy Greenwald?

  What, a social guy or one of your friends?

• 49:38Chris Ryan?

  A social guy. What are you talking about? Just because we disagree about the importance of Iseldur doesn't mean we're not friends.

• 49:43Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just saying that, that, the, the, the, um, Middle Earth community that you're a part of, I think, you know, lifts you up during lonely moments. You have people to talk to. You have the horse ladies of Rohan to chat with.

• 49:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I do.

• 49:55Andy Greenwald?

  You know, with all their ketamine.

• 49:58Chris Ryan?

  Can we weave this together? I think there was only one horse lady.

• 50:01Andy Greenwald?

  I thought they were a whole, see again, you would know.

• 50:04Chris Ryan?

  Miranda Otto played the horse lady of Rohan. Yeah.

• 50:08Andy Greenwald?

  That sounds like the crazy old lady with the horse. I thought that she was part of like a tribe of warrior women on horses.

• 50:13Chris Ryan?

  No, it's mostly dudes because she's all frustrated that like the women in, in Rohan are not allowed to go out and be cavalry officers.

• 50:20Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 50:20Chris Ryan?

  She's like, I'm just, I'm here to like worry about men, but I, I, I can fight. And then she fucking does.

• 50:26Andy Greenwald?

  Wow.

• 50:26Chris Ryan?

  And she kills that, um, the flapping, the, the.

• 50:30Andy Greenwald?

  Why don't you say its name, Chris?

• 50:31Chris Ryan?

  God, what is it called? Winged beast, Lord of the Rings.

• 50:35Andy Greenwald?

  It's definitely auto filled that for you.

• 50:37Chris Ryan?

  Nazgul.

• 50:39Chris Ryan?

  Fuck, I'm gonna be so embarrassed by that.

• 50:40Andy Greenwald?

  That's really embarrassing, Chris.

• 50:42Chris Ryan?

  I'm not gonna be able to show my face at the next gathering. Um, the Naz School.

• 50:46Andy Greenwald?

  So, okay.

• 50:47Chris Ryan?

  She kills Naz School.

• 50:47Andy Greenwald?

  Which, great. Kudos to her. I always, I always said that women could kill Naz Schools. Just so you know.

• 50:54Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 50:54Andy Greenwald?

  I am a hashtag ally in Middle Earth, Upper Earth, Lower Earth, whatever. People know that about me. My point is, if one of your, the people in your life was like, "Do you mind if I bring my friend to the function?" And then they show up with Duke. What is your, what are you thinking?

• 51:10Chris Ryan?

  I mean, Duke seems like a great hang.

• 51:13Andy Greenwald?

  That's my question.

• 51:14Chris Ryan?

  What would you do?

• 51:15Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I would just be, it would, it would shade my understanding of my.

• 51:19Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I wouldn't bring Duke to your kid's birthday party, but I, I would bring Duke if like, you were like, "I'm having drinks and everybody's invited."

• 51:27Andy Greenwald?

  I'm having drinks and smokes. I would invite Duke. Okay.

• 51:31Chris Ryan?

  All right.

• 51:32Andy Greenwald?

  I'm glad you don't judge Duke or Robbie for his presence in your life.

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• 53:20Chris Ryan?

  Here's what happens with modern television. You blink and five episodes are up. And that's the case with Paradise. That will be the case next week with The Madison. I believe tomorrow they're putting up or tonight they're putting up three episodes of this new Taylor Sheridan show. And then they are finishing it the next week with another three episodes. That's the Kurt Russell, Michelle Pfeiffer show.

• 53:37Andy Greenwald?

  Just put a pin in this to say, they filmed two seasons of The Madison, a year apart, two six season episodes, waited till they were in the can, and now they're releasing them in a yearly schedule. And Pluribus should have done that. That's my galaxy take.

• 53:52Chris Ryan?

  We can talk about this later. They got in Pluribus until like 27. And it doesn't sound like Vince Gilligan is like, I got Pluribus season two written.

• 53:58Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, no, I know. But I'm wondering if this, we can save this for a bigger conversation about these release dates. But like, what's the trade off and what's better?

• 54:05Chris Ryan?

  We're just so fully divorced from like, the rhythm of like, of once a week, you know, when you're not on HBO pretty much now, like, except for like, The Boys and a couple of other shows, like, weekly drops are not really a thing. I can see why they did it with Paradise.

• 54:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, Paradise dropped three and we're already two weeks past that.

• 54:22Chris Ryan?

  Yes, you've watched the first three. I've watched the first four. We're not going to spoil anything about it.

• 54:28Andy Greenwald?

  Well, not going to spoil anything major, but we, I think we are going to talk about why they dropped three, and where the show focuses, and how it has expanded the palette since season one.

• 54:37Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 54:38Andy Greenwald?

  If you don't mind.

• 54:39Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 54:39Andy Greenwald?

  The first season of the show was batshit crazy. And we liked it for that.

• 54:44Chris Ryan?

  And then it had an episode in particular that we thought was elite.

• 54:49Andy Greenwald?

  And about the end of the world.

• 54:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:53Andy Greenwald?

  And this season, I mean, I don't even know if we want to go specific, granular, or big picture, because.

• 55:00Chris Ryan?

  Picture, because I think Monday, if we talk about the first five episodes, I think that.

• 55:05Andy Greenwald?

  I want to talk about.

• 55:06Chris Ryan?

  Discussion.

• 55:07Andy Greenwald?

  I really enjoyed watching the show. And I really enjoyed how. Anachronistic and old fashioned, it felt, to watch the show. Not dissimilar from what it can feel like to watch The Pit. Not because they are similar shows in tone, or rhythm, or intention. But because a big old sloppy, we're gonna wind all these different outlandish plot threads together, and we're just gonna keep saying, yes, and, yes, and. And we're gonna do flashbacks, and we're gonna make everything emotionally convenient so that it chimes across timelines in ways that just life actually doesn't work. It reminded me of the glory days of Lost. Now, it's not Lost.

• 55:47Chris Ryan?

  It's not Lost, but I think it's very consciously drawing from Lost structurally.

• 55:52Andy Greenwald?

  And let me just, in the context of the first-

• 55:55Chris Ryan?

  Maybe not spiritually and philosophically, but I think it's drawing from like-

• 55:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 55:58Chris Ryan?

  The balance of like a present day timeline and a flashback coming together to thematically tell a story about one, you know, character every episode.

• 56:07Andy Greenwald?

  And it keeps pushing it in ways that I really admire. And the people who are making the show really know how to make TV in a style that is kind of out of fashion. First season, I don't think it's a big spoiler, but like Sterling K. Brown is a Secret Service agent in a beautiful retirement community slash Florida town, and he's protecting the president. And then over the course of the season, you find out that essentially the world has ended due to a catastrophic environmental disaster, and these are the 25,000 people who made it to a bunker created by the US government.

• 56:41Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 56:42Andy Greenwald?

  The end of the season, in addition to a lot of other insane things happening, he believes that his wife, who did not make it to the bunker with him and the kids, may still be alive out there in the-

• 56:51Chris Ryan?

  In Atlanta.

• 56:51Andy Greenwald?

  In Atlanta. And he takes off in a single-engine airplane to go find her. This season begins with Shangline Woodley as a failed resident at The Pit, I believe. There was a little overlap there.

• 57:06Chris Ryan?

  A failed medical school dropout, who was in her third year of medical school.

• 57:10Andy Greenwald?

  Who chooses to instead become a tour guide at Graceland. And due to her medical training, or just her natural loner sensibilities, survives the catastrophe with her pal, security guard, by grabbing all of the baked beans and novelty candles and hiding in the TV room at Graceland.

• 57:30Andy Greenwald?

  It's a big swing for a returning Emmy nominated show to do something where you start with a different character and only connecting the dots at the end and then only getting really to the setting of the first season in the third episode. So that's why you were saying, and I agree with you, why they dropped three, to sort of hold people's hands. But I gotta say, like, there's just something very, very entertaining about a show that privileges, almost to an unrealistic degree, privileges, character development and emotional accuracy, or at least emotional, broad emotional accuracy over realism.

• 58:06Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:07Andy Greenwald?

  Like, when I watched this first episode, and you can speak more, you know, in more detail about it if you want, but like, I watched this first episode where she survives the apocalypse for three years, basically alone, two or three years, and then armed men, you know, break down and crash into Graceland looking for something. And it turns out, not only are they all young, good-looking and kind, and love to reference pop culture, but one of them is played by the guy who played young Captain Hook in the Descendants movies.

• 58:37Chris Ryan?

  Thomas Doherty, yeah. He was in Tell Me Lies and in Gossip Girl, too.

• 58:40Andy Greenwald?

  But mostly, he was in the Descendants movies. And he's like flirty and charming, and it's like a sweet, meet-cute romance.

• 58:48Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 58:49Andy Greenwald?

  And I watched this, and I was like, you know what? This is fucking a lot better than The Last of Us. Because we have seen the version where the raiders come and sexually assault her and steal everything, and she must hunt them down in vengeance. I'm like, give me this version of the show instead.

• 59:03Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 59:03Andy Greenwald?

  Why not? Entertain me, for God's sake. Don't bum me out.

• 59:07Chris Ryan?

  I was watching that same episode and that same kind of move that they pull, which is like, we're gonna make these guys look like the Reavers are here, you know? And instead, they're just a charming bunch of guys who make references to ABC Family Fun Friday, or whatever, and...

• 59:23Andy Greenwald?

  TGIF.

• 59:24Chris Ryan?

  TGIF, sorry.

• 59:25Andy Greenwald?

  And they're going around trying to like, stop nuclear meltdowns.

• 59:28Chris Ryan?

  Friday was a big night for me. I was out, you know? I was out on the streets.

• 59:31Andy Greenwald?

  You were at the Tolkien Conventions. Cosplaying, fucking hobbits.

• 59:37Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and the question I have is whether or not the zag is because of a story a person wants to tell, or a zag is because it's like, everybody's gonna be expecting this, but we're gonna do that.

• 59:49Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 59:50Chris Ryan?

  Um, every single episode of this show, especially this season, has some like, god damn, you guys are, this is happening? You guys are doing this now? Like, there was a, there's another plan? There's a group of Lost Boys? There's, like, you're just like, it engages the part of your brain that is,

• 1:00:10Chris Ryan?

  I guess it just wipes out the boredom, because I, and I don't know whether or not I ever feel like he's trying to say something more profound about humanity, but I honestly don't give a shit, because it is, sometimes it is just TV. And I'm like, keep me entertained for 57 minutes, and the performances are good, the filmmaking is decent, like, and the storytelling is really, really compelling.

• 1:00:33Andy Greenwald?

  And it's also okay, and this also overlaps with the pit, like, it's okay to say that one of the reasons why we, as a society, as a people, often like, um, the entertainment that we like, is because it is neat, and ordered, and competent, and clicks together in ways that actual real life does not. You and I both love a, let's turn the camera on and find the spirit of the thing, like, we, you know, you were a big mumblecore guy, like, this, I, I, I am not trying to be like, anti-art here, but there's also an elegance and a craftsmanship in making an episode about Xavier, like, surviving

• 1:01:14Andy Greenwald?

  a plane crash and an encounter with the Lost Boys and popping his dislocated kneecap in without anesthesia, rhyme perfectly with his meet-cute origin story in a hospital with his missing wife.

• 1:01:26Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:01:26Andy Greenwald?

  Like, that is- Preposterous. It is hackneyed. And yet, they were like, let's steer towards this and give the best version of it. And I admire it. I look at that episode the way Nick Offerman looks at a nicely made canoe or a chair.

• 1:01:41Chris Ryan?

  Sure, me too. And like, the thing is about this show is it's not very wasteful. Like, there are a lot of shows that I think are like enamored with indulgences that they they get because of maybe their budget or whatever. This show, it's like, if if he asks for a blanket, it's because he's gonna give the woman the blanket later. You know what I mean? Everything is Chekhov's everything.

• 1:02:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:02:00Chris Ryan?

  And there's not really that many wasted lines. Like, everybody is saying the one anecdote that will then echo back at the end of the episode to be some sort of life lesson. I think it's really, it's really well done, and I'm really enjoying the season. The first three episodes go, we have this Shailene Woodley character, Annie, we get a Xavier episode in the second, and then we basically get a Sinatra episode in the third episode.

• 1:02:23Andy Greenwald?

  So. That's Julian.

• 1:02:24Chris Ryan?

  Julian Nicholson's back, took that shot to the sternum and.

• 1:02:28Andy Greenwald?

  Was it sternum? Or was it kind of like, looked like she kind of had like an improvised slash trach done to her?

• 1:02:32Chris Ryan?

  It, whatever it was, yes. And Crazy Ass Jane, the assassin, Secret Service agent, still in the mix. And I like that, like, I just love the guessing game. And I think it's just a really entertaining TV show, honestly. I don't have like a.

• 1:02:51Andy Greenwald?

  It's okay that it is not trying to educate us on the evil that we are capable of.

• 1:02:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:57Andy Greenwald?

  Or where we are as a society or anything. It's just like, it's just some preposterous Jenga tower stacking of story and plot, anchored by, like I said at the top, like some attempt to adhere to emotional honesty or compelling, relatable emotional journeys. And that's what, that's the bread and butter of TV.

• 1:03:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Andy Greenwald?

  And we get away from that.

• 1:03:20Chris Ryan?

  We've gotten away from industry.

• 1:03:22Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, gosh, we haven't even gotten to the mailbag.

• 1:03:24Chris Ryan?

  Let me just do this, because I think actually what I tried to do is grab, thank you so much for your questions, first of all. And people were sending in questions over the course of the season. We got to some of them. Some of your questions were about episode six or episode seven. These are mostly postseason questions that I grabbed. And I'll start here with.

• 1:03:41Chris Ryan?

  And I grabbed these questions with the intention of kind of like spinning the conversation forward on industry so that we're not just kind of like revisiting things that we've obviously talked about quite a bit. Scott wrote in and he said, "I'm a first time commenter and a long time listener." So anyway, at the end of season four, episode eight, right after they flashed the title card industry.

• 1:04:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 1:04:00Chris Ryan?

  There is a very quick subliminal image of a very sinister looking Whitney.

• 1:04:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 1:04:04Chris Ryan?

  It's kind of bathed in this reddish light. Did you guys catch that?

• 1:04:07Andy Greenwald?

  They did.

• 1:04:08Chris Ryan?

  Thoughts? I did catch it. I also caught Mickey Down's explanation of it in another interview, which I thought I would share. It's Whitney looking through a glory hole. We shot this entire scene.

• 1:04:18Andy Greenwald?

  Is that what you're supposed to do with glory holes?

• 1:04:19Chris Ryan?

  I didn't know that there was like, yeah.

• 1:04:22Andy Greenwald?

  Is it sightseeing?

• 1:04:25Chris Ryan?

  We haven't gotten to that part of Lord of the Rings. We shot this entire scene of him in Lithuania having escaped where he's talking to a man at the bar, the implication being, is that man a potential lover? Or is it something that's going to be a threat? And you leave him on this moment where he follows this guy into the bathroom and the guy says, "Come in here," and there's a glory hole. And we shot Whitney through it. If you were eagle-eyed, you'll see it. We used one frame of it, basically. I bring this up not only to explain to Scott what happened, I'm sure he's come across this information as well, but also that there's just like a lot of industry footage we didn't get to see.

• 1:04:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I'm glad you bring it up. I think that's something, you know, and we will get a chance, I'm sure, to talk to Mickey and Conrad again, but we were relatively limited in the time we had with them because they're busy with season five. And we didn't really get to ask that line of questioning that I think was interesting to both of us, which is, it seems like from the interviews with Ken Lung and from interviews like this, that they shot a lot of stuff that they didn't use. And I'm very curious about creatively, the thinking behind that. Do, is that just their plan? Do they like to overshoot and pare back? Were they surprised that they ended up in that pickle because of the crush of production and they just, they just ended up with more than they anticipated? What is their compass in deciding how close to the bone to cut it? Because again, in that Ken

• 1:05:43Andy Greenwald?

  Lung exit interview that he did with New York Magazine, he alludes to a lot of scenes that helped him with his understanding of the character.

• 1:05:50Chris Ryan?

  Of where Eric was.

• 1:05:50Andy Greenwald?

  And of the performance, and we got none of them. And, look, you love sculpture. Sculpture is all about taking away and finding the art within, but also that is a very tricky balance. Sometimes maybe the ellipses aren't enough. All that is to say, I did not leave that finale being like, give me more Whitney in Lithuania. But I think that the inclusion of it is intentional.

• 1:06:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:14Andy Greenwald?

  And it does create the, I think, the fair expectation that that story isn't done, which is consistent with the show.

• 1:06:21Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Jesse Bloom mentioned in one of the last episodes of this previous season, no one ever really dies in the show.

• 1:06:27Andy Greenwald?

  People come back. People show up. People haunt. And I think that's, that's exciting.

• 1:06:32Chris Ryan?

  Summit asks, here's something I was wondering about. Am I the only person who was assuming that Whitney's compromised database included footage of him and Harper, especially since they had sex at his place?

• 1:06:43Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 1:06:43Chris Ryan?

  And Mr. Narrative is everything would use this footage as another desperation plan and attempt to flip the script about Stern Tao short of tender. I have to admit,

• 1:06:53Chris Ryan?

  I was kind of surprised that this was never really explicitly referenced.

• 1:06:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:59Chris Ryan?

  Again, I mean, like, they have that obviously intimate conversation.

• 1:07:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:07:03Chris Ryan?

  Frankly, if they had had that conversation, having never met, I think it would have been just as weird.

• 1:07:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:07:09Chris Ryan?

  And interesting. Maybe the intimacy of it is, is a little bit too much, given that they had never met in person. It makes sense, knowing that they've had sex. I do think it's strange that if Whitney is powered by all this blackmail and all this power that he holds over people is footage of them having compromising experiences. And now Yasmin is moving into that world herself. I'm a little bit surprised that that was never hinted at.

• 1:07:37Andy Greenwald?

  This is a ongoing aspect of our conversation and our criticism of the show, which is, how much of this is galaxy brain? Like, we're supposed to think that? We're supposed to wonder what he has in his back pocket, the dominoes left to fall? And then the, again, and I, this is not a criticism, there are necessary building blocks of contemporary dramatic television. And one of them, especially in the early going of such a challenging blueprint for a season, is you have to get the characters in the same room. You have to get them to meet each other. My more cynical take on the first half of the season that I'm still, you know, I still stand by, was that there were a lot of chess moves that

• 1:08:19Andy Greenwald?

  were purely to ground things and to set things up, rather than to pay off emotionally. And one of them was. Harper. Honestly, she haunted the season, as we said to them in our interview, a little bit like a ghost, without consequences, really, and without a lot of stake in anything. And so crossing her with Whitney felt like an attempt to ground her, to connect them, to give it a reason, to spark the engine of the season, in a way. And also to give us some behind-the-scenes insight into Whitney's psychology and who he is before we understand the depths of his...

• 1:08:54Chris Ryan?

  Alternative lifestyles.

• 1:08:57Andy Greenwald?

  Alternative lifestyles, but also of his, potentially of his evil.

• 1:09:01Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:02Andy Greenwald?

  And then we never hear from it again. So you could argue both ways, and we'll see.

• 1:09:06Chris Ryan?

  And just so everybody knows, I'm condensing these questions for clarity and time. You know, like, some of them are much longer, and there is...

• 1:09:15Andy Greenwald?

  Much like Industry: Season 4, you're leaving a lot on the cutting room floor.

• 1:09:17Chris Ryan?

  I will say, if we have time at the end, I want to read a rather long, but quite gripping, just piece of commentary that someone sent in.

• 1:09:25Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:09:26Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Ryan writes in, "Post-finale..." Oh, sorry. Yeah. Ryan writes in, "Post-finale of Season 4, I'm doing some brainstorming on what Season 5 could be about. And I think it has to be at its core about Harper, quote-unquote, 'killing Yaz.' Harper versus Yaz is what this show has turned into, and it should end with that as its core narrative. What does, quote, 'killing' mean? Not sure, as it is, whether it's physically the end of a life, or just bring her to her knees and stop her from continuing the evolution of her becoming her father. Maybe Rob comes back to help her bring... to help bring her down. Stefanowicz is mentioned... Stefanowicz? Stefanowicz?

• 1:10:03Andy Greenwald?

  Stefanowicz.

• 1:10:04Chris Ryan?

  Stefanowicz. Stefanowicz has mentioned Silicon Valley in his and Yaz's first meeting, but unless we do a five-year jump, I think that the season would be centered around a political fight with money driving the center of the battle, obviously.

• 1:10:19Chris Ryan?

  Have you given much thought about season five? Or are you just like, these guys now are in, they've left Pier Point and they have left the workplace so they could do anything they want?

• 1:10:26Andy Greenwald?

  It's more that than the other. I think there's, there's, there's two things. One is, post finale, my admiration and respect for the season has grown. We talked about it when we were recapping the end of it. They accomplished one of the more challenging transitions that a TV show can attempt, to become something completely different. And did so with adding viewers, adding intrigue, adding layers to the story. And by the way, I've seen people completely misconstrue what we were saying. At no point were either of us saying that industry is the heir to The Wire, or on the same level as The Wire, in terms of quality or ambition.

• 1:11:05Andy Greenwald?

  What we were saying was, clearly, is, The Wire is an interesting comparison point for what their goals are in terms of building a fictional society, layer by layer. That's purely what I'm saying when I make that comparison. So, back to your question. Here's the challenge, I think, that they face going into season five. I mean, they could do anything, which is both exciting and, and a challenge. I think that what's very, very clear to me, and what I love about the show, and our journey with the show and covering the show, is that it is so clearly now, a successful vehicle for what animates and interests its creators. And there are no, there are no ceiling on that anymore, in terms of where it could go and what it could say about our absolutely cooked society.

• 1:11:50Andy Greenwald?

  I love that. What I don't know, and what I think might be very, very difficult for them to navigate, is it's rare to enter the fifth and final season, or the final season of anything, where I cannot articulate what its protagonist wants. I don't know what Harper wants. And that has been an ongoing thing. Harper has been about world eating, about domination, about crushing, about not conforming, about not breaking, about not being traumatized. Those are a lot of no, no, no's, or everything's. What is the yes? What is the thing that she wants that will bring her to a place of, either to a place of completion and success, Daniel Plainview style?

• 1:12:26Chris Ryan?

  Why does it have to be success?

• 1:12:28Andy Greenwald?

  I'm saying, it doesn't have to be. It's, it, bring her to the edge of it so we understand it, and then we can sit with ultimately, the achievement, or the lack of achievement of it. It's just, that may be-

• 1:12:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, like, what is she going for?

• 1:12:40Andy Greenwald?

  So, the fact that we don't know that, heading into the last season, is- It's just noteworthy. It doesn't mean they can't pull it off. But I think that every successful, ongoing show of this era, like even something like Mad Men, you know, which spent, honestly, I mean, it's one of the greatest shows of all time, but there were seasons that felt like circling the drain, where Don was just like, well, now he's swimming and now he's sleeping with this person. And every season, Matt Weiner would be like, I'm gonna empty the notebook. And I've always thought the show would end with him bringing his kids to Dick Whitman's house.

• 1:13:15Chris Ryan?

  And that's like in the first season?

• 1:13:17Andy Greenwald?

  No, season five or six, he brings to the house.

• 1:13:19Chris Ryan?

  Brings them to the house, yeah.

• 1:13:20Andy Greenwald?

  And so what was left in the notebook or in the mind for season seven? Unclear, but we always knew what was motivating him and where he wanted to get to. This is not Mad Men. It doesn't have to be. I think the success of this season has proven that they are rewriting the rulebook or even the playbook of what shows ought to be. But I just, I know with interest that we're heading into it without really understanding what its protagonist is going to be doing at the start of the season.

• 1:13:47Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Jessica writes, all three watching season four, the show has felt a little unmoored to me. And then it clicked that Pier Point as a workplace is no longer a physical anchor for the characters and story to keep coming back to. Seasons one through three were clearly located at Pier Point, albeit with lots of excursions. The answer for that question in season four is either not really anywhere or it involves a whole lot of plot description. This isn't necessarily a criticism because rudderless drifting is a pretty good description of where our main characters are in their lives. But I can't think of another show that has made this kind of radical shift from a workplace drama to not sure what you call this. I'd love to hear your thoughts from a TV writing story constructing perspective. I'll just say one thing I will. There just aren't that many workplaces anymore.

• 1:14:32Chris Ryan?

  Like, I know that the finance and banking world still value and are, they have a lot of office attendance and participation and a lot of the work happens in person in a physical space. But.

• 1:14:47Chris Ryan?

  One of the sort of themes of the season has been the disconnection and dislocation people are feeling, and we're going to get to an email about that in just a second. Vis a vis the internet, their digital lives, their consumption of the world happening entirely through their phones and then through their virtual selves. So it makes sense that they don't come to work hungover anymore and have to see each other from across the table. Now, we lose iconic moments from the show. Harper's You Are a World Killer, Harper and Jesse Bloom, If You Click Out on Me While You're Executing, You'll Never Hear From Me Again.

• 1:15:24Andy Greenwald?

  Rishi's Constant.

• 1:15:26Chris Ryan?

  Rishi, Buying or Selling Pounds. So I feel it, and it is probably a show that needed to be 12 or 13 episodes to properly set up the nuances of working out of Eric's hotel suite, or, you know, all the things that we kind of experience or where. I thought we had a little bit of this at Tender, and there's multiple episodes set largely at Tender, I think. But yeah, what do you make of the location stuff?

• 1:15:53Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's well, I think we articulated is right. I think that Mickey and Conrad have been celebrated for being young television creators, and I think that what they are leaning into, and I think this is a really fascinating and bold choice, is they're leaning into the young part of it. And I think the show is increasingly generationally accurate. There are no careers anymore. The idea of wanting something or steering towards something is very, very outdated. And just as they called me on my kind of conservative-leaning view or criticism of the show of trying to get, you know, trying to normalize things, look at any show that briefly felt like the voice of a generation type of show and capturing young people or a zeitgeist, and how it ended.

• 1:16:38Andy Greenwald?

  And specifically, I'm thinking about Girls, which was sort of about, you know, millennial aimlessness, and it literally ends with Hannah moving upstate and having a baby and finding happiness in motherhood. Which, for the record, I find a lot of happiness in parenthood as well. But that felt like a...

• 1:17:01Andy Greenwald?

  It is, it's like the third act in a Judd Apatow movie where it's like, we can say crazy stuff, but in the end, it's just about the nuclear family and really, you know, showing up every day and punching a clock. And that world is a fallacy, and particularly for young people. And I think that the show is very, very dialed into that and wants to make something out of that.

• 1:17:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:17:21Andy Greenwald?

  I also think that that is very challenging from a dramatic standpoint, and that is their challenge.

• 1:17:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, TV works, TV has decades of, of blueprints about like what works, what people come back to week after week.

• 1:17:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:35Chris Ryan?

  It's hard to tear those pages out.

• 1:17:37Andy Greenwald?

  Your coworkers become your family.

• 1:17:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:39Andy Greenwald?

  And whether, even if you're Seinfeld and you don't hug, you're still about these four people who love each other more than they love the crazy world that they're stuck in.

• 1:17:46Chris Ryan?

  Right. This last one is from GTH. It's more of a comment than a question.

• 1:17:50Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, great.

• 1:17:51Chris Ryan?

  Uh, good evening and thank you both, Chris and Andy, for your, for diligently covering this season of industry. It's been a hell of a ride, a lot of salacious plot details, but from one watcher to another, big ups on spreading your wings and fluttering them above the story to try and analyze it on a macro level. So, thank you, GTH. I have been trying to do the same.

• 1:18:09Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 1:18:09Chris Ryan?

  These two creators have changed this show so drastically, shifted dynamics, pruned branches, made such beautifully idiosyncratic choices on the who, what, when, and where to focus on. My question throughout watching this season was why? Opting against putting out another season of bumbling through the dead eyed fluorescents of an established financial institution must have been a huge undertaking. Moving the microscope onto new test strips, taking apart different institutions, assumptions, nations, it's so difficult, it has to be more of a challenge. It has to be more oomph than simply capitalism equals bad, right?

• 1:18:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:43Chris Ryan?

  I believe the mission statement of this season is episodes of TV peppered through Q1 of what will be, be an incredibly difficult year for our species.

• 1:18:50Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 1:18:51Chris Ryan?

  Is so much deeper than people give it credit for. A subject matter that most movies and TV shows will never touch with a 10 foot pole is capitalism plus the internet as a vector towards widespread ontological fragmentation, slow march towards dark age mentality, questions about reality, your own sense of being, whether or not. Not this is real stemming from an almost religious allegiance towards an illogical set of baselines that we have been forced to bury beneath us the moment we were born. Capitalism assumes infinite growth in a world of finite resources. How in the world can any of us expect to not go completely insane when that is where we are starting?

• 1:19:31Andy Greenwald?

  I have no notes. I agree with all of this.

• 1:19:33Chris Ryan?

  Harper in the middle of season three sits back and sighs and groans. I feel like I'm losing touch with reality. To me, this moment sticks out as much part of a pattern of the show picking at the edges of its own construction to bring attention to the flimsiness of the audience at home. The multiple allusions to the power that lies within constructed realities. Whitney and Henry's entire back half of the season. Elements like jumping through time and space picking the last season. The last scene of episode one back up after 20 minutes of episode two. Even Rishi's final moments before his ankles shatter. Having a drugged out communion with a light coming through the curtains. This image of a godly epiphany while Charlie Heaton explains the world's relationship to itself and the idea of itself.

• 1:20:15Chris Ryan?

  Multiple ghost dads, digital or supernatural, all of it, man. It just speaks to what I think are the creators' main concerns with this show. The same thing that Ari Aster had in his mind when making Eddington. The same that Radu Jude had in his mind when making Do Not Expect Much From The End Of The World. The fact that the algorithmic therapy coming to us via unfettered billionaire id just cannot coexist with the nymphian beauty of the world. Yup, these are our listeners.

• 1:20:44Andy Greenwald?

  Daniel, like just cut the feed? By the way, sincerely, Kiki and Monrad. Amen, brother. I mean, that is beautifully said and there is an element. If you felt like there is a, if you're listening and you've made it this far and you've listened to our coverage of the show all season and if you feel like there is a, any dissonance between my, I think, pretty granular criticism of aspects of the season with my larger belief and enthusiasm for the project. It's there. I mean, there's an element of what we do here where I feel like we are focusing on the aesthetic choices of the flatware in the dining hall when they are actually covering the Titanic. As it sinks and not many shows do any of that.

• 1:21:25Andy Greenwald?

  And it's a bummer that they're the ones that they may be the only ones watching on the wall. But I'm glad that someone is making a show that is diving right into it, that is not afraid of now. Uh, even as I am fucking terrified of it. So it's remarkable and the fact that they are doing a fast turnaround to bring this whole conversation somewhat in line with each other. They are, I think they posted on Instagram.

• 1:21:50Chris Ryan?

  They already did the first.

• 1:21:51Andy Greenwald?

  The first episode into the producers or into the studio or even into the network. So they are operating as close to as real time as this moment in television allows, and that's a very, very good thing.

• 1:22:02Chris Ryan?

  That's an exciting thing. Yeah. Got any watch after dark for me before we go?

• 1:22:07Andy Greenwald?

  I'm, I think I'm.

• 1:22:08Chris Ryan?

  You talked out?

• 1:22:09Andy Greenwald?

  I feel tapped out. What do you got?

• 1:22:11Chris Ryan?

  I just didn't know if you wanted to hold me accountable for my salad choices.

• 1:22:14Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, well.

• 1:22:16Chris Ryan?

  I'll say this. Sweet Greens.

• 1:22:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:19Chris Ryan?

  Having a tough quarter.

• 1:22:21Andy Greenwald?

  You're doing your best to float them.

• 1:22:24Chris Ryan?

  No, I mean. I'm trying to unwind. I've, I've, I've talked about this, I think.

• 1:22:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:30Chris Ryan?

  If you have like dependencies on very specific products. You are then enslaved to those products and to these like huge corporations.

• 1:22:38Andy Greenwald?

  How many zins are in your mouth?

• 1:22:39Chris Ryan?

  No, this is the problem is that my Nicorette is going out of style. My salad place is now putting like the bad part of kale into the kale salad. My, um. My toothpaste, they stopped making my toothpaste. I had to switch to other toothpaste. And it's just like, when that kind of stuff starts to get to you.

• 1:22:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:58Chris Ryan?

  You need to volunteer for the Boys and Girls Club. You need to go do something with your life. And so I'm not, I'm trying not to be a fucking emo guy about my salads not being as good as they used to be.

• 1:23:10Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's beautifully said. I agree with you. That's how capitalism gets all of us. I was just really struck by your resistance to the slot bowl term because I still believe, and I don't know what your order is. Maybe you've talked about it in other podcasts, but-

• 1:23:24Chris Ryan?

  The word bowl is in the order.

• 1:23:27Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, so, and I have no problem with these items for lunch. I just will say that like, I have never been more full in my life than after I order one of these things where you can add like, roasted broccoli and almonds and chicken and this, because there's this weird disconnect between the assemblage of roughage that you have and the quantity of it and how you don't feel full until you've eaten the whole thing and then you feel worse than you've ever felt in your life.

• 1:23:53Chris Ryan?

  I feel nothing when I eat these.

• 1:23:55Andy Greenwald?

  Putty.

• 1:23:56Chris Ryan?

  I feel like I topped off the tank. You know what I mean? But not a drop too much.

• 1:24:02Andy Greenwald?

  All right.

• 1:24:03Chris Ryan?

  I've been refueling and then it automatically like is just like no more.

• 1:24:07Andy Greenwald?

  Do you know what we should do? You should come over for lunch sometime.

• 1:24:09Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 1:24:10Andy Greenwald?

  I'll cook you lunch.

• 1:24:11Chris Ryan?

  I don't think you mean that.

• 1:24:12Andy Greenwald?

  Of course I mean it.

• 1:24:14Chris Ryan?

  So I just go back to your house right now. You make me lunch.

• 1:24:17Andy Greenwald?

  That sounds so nice.

• 1:24:18Chris Ryan?

  What are you gonna make?

• 1:24:20Andy Greenwald?

  What do you want?

• 1:24:21Chris Ryan?

  Well, you're not Dave Chang. What do you have in the fridge? What are you gonna make?

• 1:24:24Andy Greenwald?

  I am low on protein options right now, but I have some lovely tinned fishes I could open up for you.

• 1:24:29Chris Ryan?

  I don't want to eat that for lunch, honestly. Like, I don't want to eat tinned fish for lunch.

• 1:24:33Andy Greenwald?

  You don't have to. I'm just saying that's where we're dealing with it.

• 1:24:35Chris Ryan?

  Is that what you would make, like a toast kind of thing?

• 1:24:37Andy Greenwald?

  I could do a toast. Sometimes I make, you're gonna, you don't want to hear this. Sometimes I make like little like, brothy soup type things.

• 1:24:44Chris Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 1:24:45Andy Greenwald?

  Chickpeas or chicken and a bunch of greens, lemon juice, olive oil.

• 1:24:49Chris Ryan?

  And you just whip that up?

• 1:24:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:24:53Chris Ryan?

  This is something you do that I don't do. And what I do is-

• 1:24:56Andy Greenwald?

  Go to parties.

• 1:24:58Chris Ryan?

  No, I mean, I don't even go to parties that much anymore, but apparently, like I remember Isadora, so.

• 1:25:03Andy Greenwald?

  I think that there's, as we've talked about, there are trade-offs in both directions for child-full and child-free lives. And I have said goodbye to the part of me that remembered things about orcs.

• 1:25:20Andy Greenwald?

  In return, what did I get?

• 1:25:22Chris Ryan?

  You're not beating the allegations, dude. You fucking are such a nerd about Marvel. You know so much about comic books.

• 1:25:29Andy Greenwald?

  I know, that's why I'm...

• 1:25:30Chris Ryan?

  You can't, you can't...

• 1:25:30Andy Greenwald?

  That's why this feels so good.

• 1:25:31Chris Ryan?

  You're not Amanda. You can't be like, "Oh, I don't, I don't even do that anymore. I'm too busy with my hobbies."

• 1:25:37Andy Greenwald?

  This feels so good. Also, Amanda isn't beating the allegations because not only is she just like, "Oh, does Captain America have a sword or a shield?" She's also like, "Sentimental value did nothing for me."

• 1:25:49Andy Greenwald?

  So frankly, I don't mean to cause cross-pod beef.

• 1:25:53Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:25:53Andy Greenwald?

  And I don't know, at this point, she's a devoted listener and a good friend.

• 1:25:56Chris Ryan?

  I don't know if she does watch After Dark.

• 1:25:57Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know if she makes it 70-plus minutes in.

• 1:26:00Chris Ryan?

  Because being friends with us is like always hearing watch After Dark?

• 1:26:03Andy Greenwald?

  Kind of.

• 1:26:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:04Chris Ryan?

  Uh, thanks to Kaya, thanks to Kai, thanks to Sarah. Uh, we'll be back on Monday talking about the Oscars, and we'll go into a little bit more depth about the other two episodes of, of Paradise. We'll, we'll do, we'll do a more granular breakdown, I think.

• 1:26:19Andy Greenwald?

  All right.

• 1:26:19Chris Ryan?

  And then, uh, next Thursday, I think you can expect some Pitt. I think you can expect some Madison. We'll check that out.

• 1:26:25Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 1:26:25Chris Ryan?

  Um, maybe a special guest. We'll see.

• 1:26:28Andy Greenwald?

  You, I always get excited when you talk about what's to come, even though I have more knowledge than maybe the average listener. You really tease it well.

• 1:26:35Chris Ryan?

  Thanks to everybody for writing in, uh, about the industry. And thanks to GTH. Have a cold one.

• 1:26:41Andy Greenwald?

  Take it, take a walk, touch some grass.

• 1:26:44Chris Ryan?

  See you guys next week.

• 1:26:54Chris Ryan?

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• 1:27:24Chris Ryan?

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• 1:27:49Chris Ryan?

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