Pod Insights The Watch The Top 10 TV Shows of 2024 About this episode It's the most wonderful time of the year! Chris and Andy reflect on the state of television in 2024, and how it feels like a transitional period for the industry right now between strike delays and no big tentpole shows (6:24). Then, they rank their top 10 shows of the year, including favorites like '3 Body Problem,' 'Black Doves,' 'English Teacher,' and more (34:23).
Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald
Producer: Kaya McMullen
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Transcript 22,687 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Speaker 00 Wake up, babe. Bandplain is back. That's right, your favorite extremely long music podcast has returned. And this season, we're talking grunge. As usual, there's goss, there's tea, there's an excessive amount of facts and info. And you know what? There's nine hours on a band that rhymes with schmerl schmam, plus much, much more. Listen to new episodes of Bandplain with me, Yasi Solak, every Thursday.
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1:32 Chris 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, top 10 Dead or Alive, it's Andy Greenwald. What's up, buddy?
1:42 Andy Greenwald? What's it gonna be today, dead or alive?
1:44 Chris Ryan? We'll find out. You got that frog in your throat.
1:46 Andy Greenwald? I do.
1:46 Chris Ryan? Greenwald, today, our annual top 10 TV shows of the year episode. It's always a fun one. This seat, empty, in honor of Sam Esmail, who's not here again.
1:56 Andy Greenwald? This is kind of like on Passover, we keep a chair for Elijah.
1:59 Chris Ryan? We set the table, no matter what.
2:01 Andy Greenwald? We pour a big whiskey and Coke.
2:03 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
2:04 Andy Greenwald? And leave it there, in the hopes that Sam will join us.
2:05 Chris Ryan? We did get a private podcast from Sam about his favorite television of the year. He can't make it today, obviously, but like, we've moved on from the Esmail era, I think.
2:16 Andy Greenwald? Is he, to us, what Matt Damon is to Kimmel? I mean, let's clear the, I feel like-
2:20 Chris Ryan? I think Matt Damon goes on Kimmel. So it's kind of-
2:23 Andy Greenwald? I heard Matt Damon goes on The Big Picture.
2:26 Andy Greenwald? There is no beef. Sam has declined to return to talk about his TV posts, but he'll come back for other stuff.
2:31 Chris Ryan? Um, Andy, I want to talk to you a little bit about a very special teaser trailer that dropped today before we get into the state of television and our top 10 list. And Kai McMullin is going to be joining us for our top 10 list.
2:41 Andy Greenwald? This is also very us. We're looking forward to 2025, even while we're celebrating 2024, because the great work goes on for us.
2:47 Chris Ryan? Yeah. I mean, if you feel like it's getting a little cold outside, if you feel like you got the winter blues and the holiday depresses, why not go to Thailand in February, baby? Because White Lotus is coming back and dropped a teaser trailer. It was great to see all of the actors that everybody's been fawning over the casting. Parker Posey, Walton Goggins, Carrie Coon, Leslie Bibb, Jason Isaacs, Michelle Monahan, Natasha Rothwell coming back, making this sort of connective run with the White Lotus franchise of hotels and also this TV show. But Mike White series is back. And I was just curious what you thought of the teaser trailer. Not a lot to pull, but I, you know.
3:28 Andy Greenwald? Well, a couple of things. It is very nice and actually kind of rare at this moment in television, and this will be reflected a little bit in our top 10s, to have a show that knows exactly what it is and comes back hitting its marks. Obviously not with the normal, like with a longer delay than usual, but still seems right on time and right on cue. Is this show your friend's Instagram reels, the series, where it's just like kind of beautiful people going to the places that you wish you could go to in February?
3:55 Chris Ryan? And getting killed.
3:56 Andy Greenwald? Well, just maybe there's a little bit more going on beneath the surface. We don't know about the body count. I mean, that's, that's not an unfair read, if it is, is it?
4:04 Chris Ryan? Yeah. You know, it's funny you should mention the body count because I was like, I wonder if there would be a White Lotus without a body. You know, like this is a show that obviously it's got the great, this is what happens when you got a girl and a gun, kind of pulp, starting line for its story. But then obviously each season investigates or interrogates certain themes and ideas that are in Mike, Mike White's mind at any given time. I think to your point about like knows exactly what it is, this is a White Lotus trailer.
4:33 Andy Greenwald? Oh, yeah.
4:34 Chris Ryan? I mean, there is immediately excess, sex, drugs.
4:38 Andy Greenwald? Middle aged, on we and regret.
4:40 Chris Ryan? Exactly. And apparently a body, a crime, maybe even a heist. So. We were gonna be talking about this all winter, so.
4:47 Andy Greenwald? I would say that you ask if it would be White Lotus without a gun. I think absolutely existentially, the answer is no.
4:54 Chris Ryan? White Lotus without a crime or a body, I mean, I guess.
4:56 Andy Greenwald? It wouldn't be because Mike White is many things. He's very talented. He's very prolific. Apparently, he works very quickly. He's also very smart and has been doing this for a while. And he, as much as the think piece generating media of which we are a part, I think. I think I'm sort of a trendsetter in that space.
5:16 Chris Ryan? You're kind of a think piece.
5:17 Andy Greenwald? I am a guy. I get these things off. Understands deeply that the missing link between the very well regarded first half of his career and the incredibly lauded and successful new half of his career. Is the gun, is the crime, is the body. He always wants to write kind of uncomfortable, thinky pieces about overly smart, overly rich people fucking up. But then when, whether it was Casey Bloys or whether it was the boredom of the pandemic, someone was like, put a body into it. That unlocked the next level of offense for him, right?
5:54 Chris Ryan? Somebody watched three quarters of a football game yesterday.
5:57 Andy Greenwald? Finally, the passing game opened up.
5:59 Chris Ryan? Kellen Moore finally opened up the back pages.
6:02 Andy Greenwald? So he's not gonna veer too far from that. The one thing, because again, why would we not do this? The one sort of interesting, just asking the questions that I would say here is.
6:13 Chris Ryan? This is why you're the best.
6:14 Andy Greenwald? Each edition of White Lotus has been about the uncomfortable liminal space of a resort between the place these rich people came from and the place they are quote unquote experiencing, but obviously with some sort of larger deep sea, rich diving suit on. The cultural appropriation levels of it being mystical Thailand, it's, I'm just watching.
6:36 Chris Ryan? Do you think it's different than it being mystical Hawaii or?
6:39 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
6:40 Chris Ryan? Really?
6:40 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, I do.
6:41 Chris Ryan? Okay.
6:42 Andy Greenwald? I do. And let, you know, and maybe not in terms of its like damaging effect on local reputation, culture or folklore that it would be in Italy. But yeah, like the elements of like, ooh, flames and crabs and an old man saying the nature of fate and circumstance. I mean, like, I'm just saying.
6:59 Chris Ryan? Okay.
7:00 Andy Greenwald? I'm just asking the question.
7:01 Chris Ryan? Yeah, well, I'm sure that.
7:02 Andy Greenwald? To be clear, his name is Mike White.
7:05 Andy Greenwald? So he knows, he knows.
7:07 Chris Ryan? I love that you're like getting woke at the end of December in 2024.
7:11 Andy Greenwald? I heard that's in. And my, I'm, no, actually, you know what? I'm zagging. I am zagging.
7:17 Chris Ryan? You're getting, you should get super woke.
7:20 Andy Greenwald? When White Lotus premieres, I'm just gonna put a black square on my Instagram.
7:24 Chris Ryan? Okay.
7:25 Andy Greenwald? You think that's gonna work for me?
7:26 Chris Ryan? That's when our landman rewatch pod starts.
7:29 Andy Greenwald? No, no, I'm not actually concerned trolling that.
7:31 Chris Ryan? I know you're not.
7:31 Andy Greenwald? But I, it is an interesting thing to consider in terms of the dials of what makes this show and what the special sauce is, how much these characters engage with it.
7:39 Chris Ryan? I think he'll thoughtfully interrogate the idea of rich white people going to the mystical east to find philosophical happiness.
7:46 Andy Greenwald? The show is about tourism in all senses. So absolutely, but it weighed a little heavier in this trailer.
7:52 Chris Ryan? Let's take a little tour through the year that was.
7:54 Andy Greenwald? Okay.
7:54 Chris Ryan? Tourists that we are, I wanna, you know, we usually do our top 10 and we have this state of TV conversation. And this was a year that I thought it was a little bit murky. It was a little bit harder for me to divine narratives. And I think I'll start with this. Is the state of television strong to you? Was this a good year? I think that's a good place to kick it off.
8:16 Andy Greenwald? Like, based on my own personal feelings about the shows that we watched, I am...
8:21 Chris Ryan? Yeah, tell me, talk to me as a viewer before you talk to me as a person who's like a part of the apparatus as well.
8:27 Andy Greenwald? I would say as a, well, no, I actually still have, I still have more subcategories. I would say my personal viewing experience of the year was incredibly strong. And I'm very excited to go through my top 10 list, which features 10 shows that I feel very strongly about, but I also feel like celebrate specific things that I just love about TV. They make me feel really good about the possibilities and the opportunities of the medium. That said, I, I really feel like these were also the 10 shows I watched this year. That's, that's both a joke, but kind of not. What I mean is, we did try to watch more widely. We did engage with and sample other stuff.
9:05 Chris Ryan? We gave things chances, you gave things starts. We didn't quite, you know, thread the needle on all of the stuff, but like, I think that you get, you don't undersell your, your efforts here.
9:12 Andy Greenwald? No, but I'm also saying that this year, and this might be as much about the after effects of the strike as anything else, like... Let me put it this way. You know, you know what I felt like was lacking this year? Was The Last of Us. Now, The Last of Us is a show that probably, I don't think it was in my top 10 last year. No, I know it wasn't.
9:29 Chris Ryan? I know it wasn't as well.
9:30 Andy Greenwald? I also don't have any, I'm not making any promises that it would be in my top 10 had it been out this year or next year. But my point is, it was a well-made, engaging, broad-tent, Sunday night show that I was happy to engage with. The closest that came, and maybe this is just actually a shorthand of saying HBO show, but like True Detective Night Country, which almost made my list, it did not make my list. But having that experience of watching a show that was a B, you know, or B minus or B plus, depending which episode or how you felt about the season as a whole, that shared experience of like, there's a lot out here. There's a robust middle class of television. I felt like that was lacking this year. There are exemplars of every type of show
10:12 Andy Greenwald? that are top of the class in this and maybe many other years, and we're going to get into them. But the overall health, much like the overall, overall health of our nation, feels like the middle class is lacking.
10:23 Chris Ryan? There's a couple of different ways to go here. Number one is, I think many people listening to this podcast, and definitely people who watch a lot of television, would tell you that The Last of Us of this year was The Penguin.
10:35 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
10:35 Chris Ryan? And that that was a big franchise adaptation or drawing from IP that had prestige, but also had genre thrills. It didn't work for me.
10:48 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
10:48 Chris Ryan? And it didn't work for you. And it has been one of those, really, I think actually is a great place to start because it's so exemplary of the conversations that I'm having at the end of the year. I went to a Christmas party on Saturday and I swear to God, like, every other person was like, "I loved The Penguin. I hated The Penguin. I loved The Penguin. I hated The Penguin." And it was, it was this sort of, it was in a microcosm, like,
11:15 Chris Ryan? TV, there's so much TV, there's so many different TV experiences. People are watching TV at their own pace. People are watching TV at their own volume that I don't think that there is a central conversation happening about television anymore.
11:27 Andy Greenwald? I think that's right.
11:27 Chris Ryan? You mentioned a couple of, you know, that there wasn't a Last of Us this year. We didn't talk about The Penguin. I think that there has also been an effort on the part of television to engineer a big show.
11:40 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
11:41 Chris Ryan? Rather than let a show catch on and rise up.
11:45 Andy Greenwald? Bubble up.
11:45 Chris Ryan? Okay, so in that case, you know, we always maybe over-index for HBO Sunday Night Dramas or FX shows where we're just like, this is, this is why we do what we do. And it's like 6 million people maybe watched it. And then you get, you know, a Taylor Sheridan show and 10 million people are watching it. Or you get Last of Us and 12 million people are watching it, or whatever the number really is. This year, I think that there was a bunch of, there were a bunch of shows that efforted to be prepackaged blockbuster shows that brought everyone together, whether it was Fallout, whether it was House of the Dragon, whether it was The Penguin, shows that were like, we have a lot riding on this, The Lord of the Rings TV series, a lot riding on this financially, a lot riding on this in terms of like our subscriber base and our shareholders
12:30 Chris Ryan? and adding people to the service or whatever. But for me, it's always going to be the show that kind of like builds up organically over the course of seasons that really catches my attention. And I also found that that, that effort to reverse engineer the next Game of Thrones often felt very labored for me.
12:49 Andy Greenwald? I totally agree, although I would say, just in the spirit of the Joe Popcorn man on the street, you know, people like my, my people.
12:57 Chris Ryan? That's you.
12:57 Andy Greenwald? You know, if you ever deign to come down from your ivory tower.
13:00 Chris Ryan? Defending the workers of the White Lotus.
13:02 Andy Greenwald? Against cultural appropriation, you're welcome. You said correctly that The Penguin.
13:08 Chris Ryan? They're getting outside.
13:09 Andy Greenwald? Maybe. Brought my inflatable rat through customs. It's just a floaty toy for the ocean. They have no idea what's coming. You said correctly that The Penguin didn't work for you. It didn't work for me. But The Penguin worked. You know, I think that is worth saying.
13:25 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
13:25 Andy Greenwald? Objectively, it was very well made by Lauren LaFrank, features great acting performances by Colin Farrell and Kristen Melody, and was a hit. And has, you know, has gotten a Golden Globe nomination, et cetera, et cetera. That's not nothing. It just was nothing for us. And it's left us, both as fans and viewers and as cultural commentators, in kind of a weird void where similarly, Fallout, by all metrics, worked. People loved the show. It was nominated for, it was nominated for an Emmy.
13:53 Chris Ryan? I believe so.
13:55 Andy Greenwald? And will have a very highly anticipated second season. But I don't really like that sort of thing, even though it was good. And so then there's no entry point. Now, you could make the argument that 10 years ago, a phenomenon could start and bubble up. Like, I didn't watch the first season of Mad Men live on AMC. But when people were like, hey, there's a show about people talking about their feelings in American history, you might want to get on board. I was like, OK, I think I could find my way into that, as opposed to another dystopian show about whatever, based on a video game or a movie that I didn't care that much about two years ago. So that's a very different framing of it. The second piece of that point that I think is that the attention paid by these larger services
14:37 Andy Greenwald? towards hunting big game and delivering big game. And I say this not to diminish the fact that HBO got The Penguin through, that Amazon developed Fallout, and it worked. Like, a lot of Amazon's resources are poured into, which are enormous.
14:52 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
14:52 Andy Greenwald? Are poured into Fallout, but also Rings of Power and Wheel of Time.
14:57 Chris Ryan? And The Boys.
14:58 Andy Greenwald? And, well, and I like The Boys.
14:59 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
15:00 Andy Greenwald? But Rings of Power and Wheel of Time, I'm not, I'm sorry, I'm not doing, I'm not going there. I can't, I can't do it. I started Rings of Power, it's fine. But Wheel of Time, that's just beyond me. And so there is a barrier for entry. And I'm not claiming to be the normie in this case. But I do think that, I'd like to think that a show that is about people in time and emotions potentially has more of a runway for entry than a show about hobbits and wizards. Although, pop culture of the last 20 years might beg to differ.
15:30 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I, I think maybe what I'm getting at is that the way in which TV felt like it was a little bit... About people's algorithmic curated bubbles this year.
15:41 Andy Greenwald? Yep.
15:42 Chris Ryan? And we're both very guilty of that. We spent the last couple of months essentially talking about espionage. We've definitely skewed towards a certain kind of show this year. But if you look at people's top 10, critics' top 10 lists, I think you see like this real like,
16:00 Chris Ryan? like this incredible diversity of shows from list to list in a way that's both good, but also notable that we have kind of decoupled from any kind of like
16:11 Andy Greenwald? critical.
16:12 Chris Ryan? mass critical hive mind. We have all agreed that these five things are the best this year, you know?
16:17 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
16:18 Chris Ryan? So it's, and that's fascinating, but like, not only that, I think also everybody's just reckoning with the fact that like, there are only so many hours in the day. And honestly, like, reading top 10 lists this year just really made me kind of feel inadequate. Because I didn't see the second season of Pachinko. I didn't watch my interview with the vampire. I didn't see this, I didn't complete this season of Somebody Somewhere. I didn't see My Brilliant Friend. So I feel like behind, even though I feel like I spent most days checking out some kind of TV this year.
16:51 Andy Greenwald? Especially things starting, because there still were a lot of pilots this year.
16:55 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
16:55 Andy Greenwald? Even though overall, there will be fewer shows on air this year than there were last year, which was 12% fewer than the year before.
17:00 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
17:01 Andy Greenwald? It still feels like we're racing to catch up. But it also, to a different degree, feels like we are kind of in a transitional period. Some of the shows that you just mentioned that we weren't keeping up with are ongoing. I'm sure we each have some shows on our lists that are ongoing. But in a way, the argument, not argument, the conversation we have every year when the Emmy nominations come out in the drama series. We're like, oh, this is, this is what we've fenced in. This is what we've selected. This is what we're offering as the best of this year. It's surprising. Not even before you get, one gets critical about it. Like, we don't have our bedrock shows carrying us across this era at the moment, I don't think. We have franchises. You know, there will be a Game of Thrones show on consistently for the next however many years there.
17:43 Andy Greenwald? Despite all evidence, you know, reasons in the contrary, there will be a Star Wars show going constantly. But it is, it is a different sort of time and it's a different sort of list where if we went back like. You know, six years, eight years, 10 years, I feel like, and grabbed a three-year sample
18:00 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
18:00 Andy Greenwald? of our list, there would probably be one show across all three years. And that's just not how TV is made anymore, let alone how we consume TV anymore.
18:08 Chris Ryan? I think also, I mean, it's worth noting that a couple of shows that I like very, very much, I think maybe had down seasons.
18:17 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
18:17 Chris Ryan? And, you know, you made the remark about Star Wars and Marvel and those shows like, you know, that was, I think, I think I'm having a down moment with those franchises in general. But, you know, like, it's, it's sort of an embarrassment of riches when you can have maybe not the best Slow Horses season.
18:36 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
18:37 Chris Ryan? And it's still a very good show, but it just isn't in our top 10. Now, that's a show that I think if we had been making, if Slow Horses had been on in the air in 2016 and 17, would probably just routinely have a spot on our top 10s. But because there's such a high volume of shows now, and also I think there is like a little bit of a, what's the new model, what's the new model? You know, you get a little bit used to The Bear, you get a little bit used to Slow Horses, you get a little bit used to certain things. And, and I think, you know, to break out of that sameness, The Bear tried something else.
19:09 Andy Greenwald? Yep.
19:10 Chris Ryan? You know, and it didn't quite work for a lot of people. Other shows did iterate, and I think we were quite successful in doing so. So it's really a matter of taste at a certain point.
19:19 Andy Greenwald? It reminds me a little bit about the difference, of the difference between making your top singles of the year and your top albums of the year, and you're kind of rewarding different things. When you're reviewing your singles of the year, you're like, this was a, like a absolute bubblegum blast of an emotion or an experience.
19:34 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
19:34 Andy Greenwald? That was a high, whereas an album that requires a little, it's like a distance runner, requires a little bit more constitution, a little more stamina, and a little bit more consistency over time. And I think that's a good way to consider the fact that three shows that are of the highest quality, that I look forward to all the time, and that I like a lot, and I think, and I don't want to ding for the fact that they are consistently producing bodies of work, did not make my list this year.
19:59 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
20:00 Andy Greenwald? Slow Horses, you're right, Slow Horses, The Project is a top five show on television. Slow Horses, The Experience is a top five show on television, because every fall, there's a new Slow Horses, and we're excited to talk about it. I felt, as we talked about in the time, this season was a little uneven, but maybe this is a... Maybe it's a mistake to say that because, you know, I can ding it because it's coming back.
20:23 Chris Ryan? Yeah, you also, I think, I think once a show gets established and has a certain rhythm, you can start to hear very, very minute deficiencies, like, oh, it's a little bit out of rhythm this year. It's a little bit tonally odd. We talked about this. I just thought that like there was something about the compression of the season in terms of like the time in which it did not feel like a breakneck, we must solve this in two days, which is kind of what the book is. And the show itself was sort of struggling to unite the cast a little bit. But I mean, we don't have to get off on like what was wrong with Slow Horses.
21:00 Andy Greenwald? No, but I also think it's a reflection to a degree on the changes in our attention spans.
21:06 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
21:06 Andy Greenwald? Like, mine is super cooked, you know, like I'm acting like I made an albums of the year list. Like, I was like, three songs by the same artists, news, let's move on. You know, with so much out there and so little attention, and also just life, I guess, I realized that I was prioritizing moments and experiences more than, you know, the sort of solid lunch pail work of making a good TV show year to year.
21:34 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
21:35 Andy Greenwald? Again, not just Slow Horses, The Boys, the same way. Another really good season, and it is not on my list. One of the finalists for my list ahead of it is a much more controversial show that I do not think has anything near as steady a hand on the rudder as Slow Horses or The Boys. But Three Body Problem was so exhilaratingly insane and exciting, sometimes for a minute, for a glimpse, that that high lingered longer for me.
22:03 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
22:03 Andy Greenwald? Than the solid pleasures of seeing River Cartwright wearing just like an absolutely sick fit, you know, country outfit, running through the French countryside.
22:16 Chris Ryan? How much do you think? The fact that TV watching behavior has changed a lot. Because you're alluding to this idea of like moments rather than, you know, songs maybe over the albums and moments of TV watching rather than like sustained experiences. And I feel like one of the reasons why, among the many, that I'm so excited about the Landman thing, which I know it's like a little tongue in cheek, but it's kind of not. Is like, I do get texts on Sunday of like, oh my God, have you watched Landman yet? It's one of, the Taylor Sheridan thing is-
22:53 Andy Greenwald? Do you write back, "Mom, go to bed"? How do you respond?
22:58 Chris Ryan? I write back to your kids like, "I don't think Andy would like you watching this."
23:02 Andy Greenwald? Sincerely, Uncle Chris.
23:05 Chris Ryan? There are so few moments where it feels like people are like, "It's Wednesday, it's time for this. It's Sunday, it's time for this." People are watching things in their own way. And I do notice that that makes, it makes like the passion behind TV a little bit harder to pin down or to even power, you know, like it's not like, "Hey, Enora is finally out in my town. The brutalist is finally out in my town. I can't wait for a complete unknown to come out."
23:30 Andy Greenwald? Are those are movies?
23:31 Chris Ryan? Those are movies, but like, they still have like a horizon to work towards with a Friday release. But TV is a little bit different now. Like, I mean, we've had several shows that we love this year that went into binges. We have several shows that put up three episodes to start, two episodes to start. You know, Netflix shows that were over in a weekend.
23:51 Andy Greenwald? And several shows that we adored that went off the rails, that didn't finish half as strongly as they started. But it's interesting, I feel like you're sort of sketching out a very, very, to me, very interesting and kind of profound difference between two modes of TV watching or TV experiencing. One is definitely an older mode that still exists for some and we still have a fondness for and whatever crazy moment we live in now. And I'm sure that there is a more finely attuned and articulated version of this point that's been made in the FX development offices for years now. Which is to say, like, is, do you consider TV as a gentle, empty bucket that waits for you on Sunday night? And you sit down and- You see how that bucket is patiently and reliably filled? Or is it a bucket that someone walks up behind you, swinging and hits you in the back of the head to get you to pay attention?
24:35 Chris Ryan? Right.
24:36 Andy Greenwald? And I think we have examples of both of those kinds of shows. But increasingly, for as much as I wish the kind of monocultural, let's all talk about it, Sunday night show would be back in my life. I'm looking at my list and there are a lot of bucket shots to the head here. You know, like, there's more of that.
24:53 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
24:53 Andy Greenwald? That was more noteworthy. That was more interesting. That's probably not a good thing for the sort of, you know, old de Medici bespoke Renaissance model of, you know, benevolent TV artisan cookery that I'm always trying to articulate.
25:05 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
25:06 Andy Greenwald? But, look, I didn't make the world. We're just living in it.
25:10 Chris Ryan? Any other big picture thoughts before we get into our lists?
25:13 Andy Greenwald? Not really. I would say, you know, we'll talk about this as we get into the specifics. But I think we both have a very robust showing from our friends at FX this year. I mean, I just casually joked about them a minute ago. But for as much as, well, if we put on our, like, our business reporter hats, I think that their success this year, and, you know, remember a few months ago, we were talking about them angling for the rare Emmy triple? The treble, I believe you call it, in the country that I spend most of my time in? Where they were potentially going to win the Emmy for comedy series, drama series, and limited series. I think there's, unless you're a super, super cynic, there's no way to look at that other than a, as a triumph and a referendum on
25:56 Andy Greenwald? their more old fashioned mode of developing and of trusting creators and building things from the ground up. That's a good thing, I think, for the health of the industry overall. I think HBO, you know, the, the, the other half of the who still makes TV the old way conversation had a slightly down year because, directly because of the strike. Because I think a lot of their programming was, you know, they're counting on Last of Us coming back and White Lotus coming back, and that's all delayed until 25. But the fact that they were able to make Penguin work, I think, I, I mean, I find that is to be one of the more interesting stories. Do you have any big picture thoughts, or we can save it for when we get into the top 10, about any of the other players, particularly Apple, who we talked about a lot, almost from
26:40 Andy Greenwald? a cultural and business model, and not so much about the shows? I do have one Apple show on my list, so we could save it.
26:47 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I mean, we could do that then. I did feel like Apple would win the day and lose the season. Like, it would be either a good trailer, a great announcement, a great first episode or two, and then, as the weeks wore on, almost without fail, I would feel like there was a lack of checks and balances about, like, what's the best version of this show?
27:10 Andy Greenwald? Mm-hmm.
27:11 Chris Ryan? Whether it was, we wrote a huge check and spent a ton of money on Masters of the Air, but didn't think about, like, what was the storytelling or the casting that made Band of Brothers so special, you know?
27:23 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, in a weird way, for people who are really industry junkies, like, you could probably see HBO's reticence in the product that came out, like, why they didn't greenlight.
27:33 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I think that it was an example of, I understand why they did what they did, but that, the first several episodes of that show is a show about planes. It's about planes making pretty patterns in the sky, planes doing bombing runs.
27:48 Andy Greenwald? This is why you never watched the Miyazaki movie you said you would. That is what The Wind Rises is also about.
27:53 Chris Ryan? But it should be about the guys in the planes, and they couldn't, they didn't figure out the guys in the planes until midway through the season, and then it was too late. And it's a shame, because it had a dynamite cast and a lot of really good people working on it. There are examples of historical fiction, nonfiction TV storytelling that happened this year that were very successful in that, and I think some of those shows will pop up on our list. As far as Apple's, like, other efforts, like, I just thought I had, like, a blast talking about it this year, but often felt rather weary at the end of a lot of these seasons, feeling like, oh, like, there was a really good TV season in here, and somebody just kind of, like, took it and ran in the other direction.
28:32 Andy Greenwald? I feel like I... Regrets, I do have a few. I mean, I didn't finish Bad Monkey. I really enjoyed it, what I saw, and I like, I just like the idea of it. I'm glad it seems to have found an audience, but again, it's just sort of in that nether space.
28:47 Chris Ryan? Shrinking is another one that I felt like I didn't really participate in that. A lot of people really love that show.
28:51 Andy Greenwald? Yep.
28:52 Chris Ryan? That just kind of wrapped up its second season, I believe, and it's coming back for a third one. There's, there, there is like a...
28:57 Andy Greenwald? People love Silo.
28:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah, Silo.
28:59 Andy Greenwald? Was Manhunt this year or last year?
29:00 Chris Ryan? Silo just got renewed for two more seasons.
29:02 Andy Greenwald? Good for Silo.
29:03 Chris Ryan? But I mean, but that's the thing is in some ways, like, Apple is really very stable and like, it's fostering really good practices in terms of like letting a sci-fi show tell its entire story. And letting them know that they have this much time to sort of pace it out in the way that they want to, you know? And, and I wish some of their, I mean, I guess it's like a, a pocketbook thing, but I wish some of their, you know, behaviors were applied to other streamers.
29:29 Andy Greenwald? Also, you know, maybe this is, I definitely did watch sports yesterday, but like, do you, as a fan of the medium and specific shows as well, do you prefer rooting for an underdog or an overdog? And I think one thing that Apple tends to do is start with everything. And then, over the course of a season, kind of squander some of it.
29:49 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
29:49 Andy Greenwald? Or not take full advantage of it.
29:50 Chris Ryan? Yes.
29:52 Andy Greenwald? There's a, there's a feeling that that kind of project engenders that's not a great one, where you just feel the squandered potential.
29:59 Chris Ryan? But the shows that they make are the shows I want to watch, which is what makes it a little bit more frustrating.
30:02 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, I mean, my example, and, and I-
30:04 Chris Ryan? Like with Amazon, I'm like, I don't really want to watch the Lord of the Rings thing, so I don't like-
30:07 Andy Greenwald? Exactly.
30:07 Chris Ryan? That broken up about like whether or not it's become like a huge mainstream phenomenon. With Apple shows, I'm like, I don't know, you guys got Vince Vaughn in a detective story in Florida, and somehow this isn't clicking for me, like, that's, this sucks.
30:20 Andy Greenwald? The bigger example for me, and weirdly, I may talk about this again on Thursday, when we do our best episode of the year episode, this was not the winner, so I feel like it's okay to, to spoil it, is Sugar. Like.
30:30 Chris Ryan? Yeah, it didn't win.
30:32 Andy Greenwald? It didn't win, sorry. But sincerely, the pilot was on my shortlist.
30:36 Chris Ryan? Sure.
30:37 Andy Greenwald? Because it was a beautiful show, a beautifully directed episode, a beautiful Colin Farrell. You know, I think that, respect to Oz Cobb, but like, his performance in those first few episodes of Sugar are, that's the Colin Farrell of the year I'd like to remember.
30:51 Chris Ryan? Uh huh.
30:53 Andy Greenwald? And it was so full of promise. And it did not deliver on that promise. It has somehow been renewed, but like, that is, in a way, that experience of it souring, sours my memory of how much I enjoyed the pilot. As opposed to something that, in the old school TV model, starts, you know, scrappy, starts, you can see some flaws, but there's potential and it builds and builds and builds.
31:16 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
31:16 Andy Greenwald? It's different. It's all different. It's all a little topsy turvy.
31:19 Chris Ryan? We're gonna get into our top 10 list. Kaya's gonna join us, but first, it's time for a surprise segment presented by Walmart.
31:25 Andy Greenwald? Okay, so this is a PSA for last minute shoppers. Gather round.
31:29 Chris Ryan? Yeah. We get it. During the holidays, plans change, you know? I'm going to the East Coast. Maybe I wanna come back from the East Coast before it turns 20 degrees there.
31:39 Andy Greenwald? Change those plans.
31:40 Chris Ryan? People get added to your gift list. It's really stressful.
31:43 Andy Greenwald? Are you giving presents to the people who asked you about the Penguin on Saturday?
31:47 Chris Ryan? Only the ones who said they didn't like it.
31:49 Andy Greenwald? Got it. Uh, yeah, finding the right gift, and most importantly, getting it delivered in time, it's a lot.
31:53 Chris Ryan? Yeah, so let Walmart do the work for you. With delivery through 6pm on Christmas Eve, your gifts will make it in time. Plus Walmart is the place to find the perfect gift for everyone, no matter your budget. Here is what I'm shopping for this holiday season. So Andy and I got each other presents.
32:10 Andy Greenwald? This is very exciting.
32:11 Chris Ryan? Okay, so.
32:11 Andy Greenwald? And to be, wait, before we get into it, I took this very seriously.
32:14 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I know. I took it really seriously too.
32:16 Andy Greenwald? Okay, we'll see.
32:17 Chris Ryan? Okay.
32:17 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, alright.
32:18 Chris Ryan? Andy is currently on the road a lot. He's traveling a lot. He's on a lot of flights. He's not, not at home, not in his usual routine. And maybe, people may or may not know this about you, but you care about your physical fitness. You care about your muscle tone.
32:30 Andy Greenwald? Thanks, yeah.
32:30 Chris Ryan? You care about like, aches and pains. So I got Andy a mini Theragun.
32:35 Andy Greenwald? This is the greatest present you ever could have gotten me.
32:37 Chris Ryan? To take on the road, cuz he's not going to his regular Pilates. Classes every week.
32:41 Andy Greenwald? This is a, this is legitimately a great present for me.
32:43 Chris Ryan? And also because Andy's always rolling. He's like, I'm in the car, I'm in the plane, I'm in the cab, I'm wherever I am, the tube even. I got you a backup.
32:53 Andy Greenwald? Oh, my God. You know me so well.
32:55 Chris Ryan? Power bank for your mobile phone.
32:57 Andy Greenwald? Because you know me, there's the two things that are the consistence in my travel. One, I packed the wrong shoes. The lower body's hurting a little bit. And the other one is, how can I have these 14 texts about the Eagles passing game keyed up for when you wake up? On the west coast of LA.
33:11 Chris Ryan? Power bank, baby.
33:12 Andy Greenwald? That's really kind. Okay, so I took a different approach to my gifts for you. And basically, I was thinking about, Chris, it must be hard being a legend all the time. You are an inspiration.
33:21 Chris Ryan? Yeah, thank you.
33:22 Andy Greenwald? You are, you have a cult that follows you, that worships you, that hangs on your every word. Talking about the internet CR heads, as well as some members of the Big Picture Podcast. And I was like, what can I get, Chris, that just burnishes the image? And so I went through, there are a lot of great choices on walmart.com, this is true. And I was kind of trying to put together a CR starter kit for CR. And I want you to know that they do sell some interesting books, such as Melissa Clarke cookbooks about putting all your dinner in one. I almost got you that.
33:53 Chris Ryan? One pan.
33:53 Andy Greenwald? That's a great cookbook. I almost got you a book by my, my late book agent, Jim Fitzgerald, called The Joys of Smoking Cigarettes, which is mostly out of print, but somehow still hanging on on walmart.com. But ultimately, what I decided I would do is I just wanted to bring you things that would bring you back to yourself.
34:09 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
34:09 Andy Greenwald? So one was the Criterion Collection of the Before trilogy.
34:13 Chris Ryan? That's right.
34:13 Andy Greenwald? By Richard Linklater, so that you could just spend some time remembering what it was like to feel things.
34:17 Chris Ryan? Go through life, like go through the 90s, the aughts and the current, the current moment.
34:21 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
34:21 Chris Ryan? Yeah. One of the greatest trilogies ever made and a great reason to start a physical media collection.
34:28 Andy Greenwald? Yeah. And the other one was, actually, this is not a surprise, because you actually received it at home already, before the demolishing of the Steelers yesterday.
34:38 Chris Ryan? Official Eagles jacket. It was divisive in my house.
34:42 Andy Greenwald? You look great.
34:43 Chris Ryan? Between an Eagles jacket and Richard Linklater's Before Trilogy, I feel like I'm gonna cry.
34:47 Andy Greenwald? This is just like looking, you know, people know you have a tough exterior.
34:51 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
34:52 Andy Greenwald? But this is the gooey center. This is who you are in the inside.
34:54 Chris Ryan? I'm clashing my sports logos right now. That's kind of a no-no. During the holidays, timing and thoughtfulness matter. As Andy and I have just, you know, shown each other, thoughtfulness and timing. So give the gifts that show you get them at Walmart.
35:09 Andy Greenwald? That's also the hallmarks of the Eagles passing offense.
35:10 Chris Ryan? That's right.
35:11 Andy Greenwald? Thoughtfulness and timing.
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36:11 Speaker 05 As wish lists grow, you know where to go. Head to Ulta Beauty. We have gifts they'll love from brands like Tato One and Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez. Shop beauty faves to give or keep from Shark Beauty, Sol de Janeiro, and more. Not sure what they want? You can't go wrong with Baumann, Clinique, or Redken. And don't forget to put yourself on the list. Book a salon moment or add a little more sparkle to your season. Shop holiday in-store or at Ulta.com. Ulta Beauty.
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37:43 Chris Ryan? Okay, we are back. Kaya is out here with us.
37:46 Speaker 00 Hello.
37:46 Chris Ryan? It's great to see you.
37:47 Speaker 00 We had some contract negotiations over the weekend, and here I am.
37:51 Andy Greenwald? How did it go?
37:53 Chris Ryan? That's right.
37:53 Speaker 00 Well, I'm here.
37:54 Andy Greenwald? About as well as mine.
37:55 Chris Ryan? You know, Kaya sits through every session of The Watch, more or less, over the course of a year, but it's not like she doesn't have her own takes. You know, and every once in a while, you're a great ally when it comes to Taylor Sheridan shows, and I thank you.
38:07 Speaker 00 You're welcome. That was part of my contract negotiation.
38:09 Chris Ryan? That's right.
38:10 Andy Greenwald? Is that why you brought her out here?
38:13 Speaker 00 I'm locked in for Landman S2.
38:15 Chris Ryan? That's right. But Kaya's gonna share her top 10 list along with me and Andy. These are always a little bit complicated as a dance goes because, you know, we've some people have something at six, some people have something at four. We're just gonna go through our lists. We can talk about them at different spots, but Andy, I want to start with you and ask you what your top, your number 10 is.
38:32 Andy Greenwald? And we're gonna post these, just, we're gonna post these lists afterwards somewhere, maybe perhaps on our new.
38:37 Speaker 00 Our new Instagram feed?
38:38 Chris Ryan? Yes.
38:39 Speaker 00 I don't know.
38:40 Andy Greenwald? Which is controlled by one of us.
38:41 Chris Ryan? At the watch underscore.
38:42 Speaker 00 At the watch pod underscore.
38:44 Chris Ryan? A watch pod underscore. Man, I can't, I can't get that right.
38:47 Andy Greenwald? Do you think I should put it on my stories? If, if she posts those?
38:50 Chris Ryan? Yeah, if you, if you can find the time, yeah. In between ramen shots.
38:53 Andy Greenwald? I'll see what I could do. Uh, okay, and then we want to do honorable mentions at the end?
38:57 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
38:57 Andy Greenwald? Okay. All right, so I'm gonna start us off with a bang. This was, as I said a moment ago, I feel like my top 10 list this year contains eight, nine, maybe 10 examples of the TV shows I'd like to meet in heaven. Not to say that these are my eight, nine, 10 favorite shows ever, but just that they are each in their way exemplars of something I love in this crazy business that we've devoted ourselves to. So my number 10 is a show that was rife with problems that I don't even know if I loved because sometimes I hated it, but boy, it got me going. And that is Netflix's Three Body Problem.
39:35 Chris Ryan? This is just an amazing, amazing move from you. I never would have guessed this in a million years.
39:40 Andy Greenwald? I was going through my list and I, you know, there are shows that I deeply love and that in a more nuanced conversation, perhaps, you know, not one that's being chopped up for social media consumption, I would make the patient case for What We Do in the Shadows, for Slow Horses, we were just talking about it, for The Boys, or even the problematic third season of The Bear. But none of them got me as hype and as furious as Three Body Problem did. The journey, I mean, you guys know this, you know, I drive a lot, driving children around, a lot of trips, different regions of Los Angeles.
40:17 Chris Ryan? Did most of your Netflix Three Body Problem watching?
40:20 Andy Greenwald? Have you guys ever seen the, the, the social media, like I5 commuters, the guys who just drive to Seattle every day and scream at people who are in the wrong carpool lanes? And people who are just watching old episodes of Lost.
40:32 Chris Ryan? Don't you do it! Yeah, I love those guys.
40:34 Andy Greenwald? That's kind of my, they're my spirit animals. But no, but like the most dramatic journey that I had this year wasn't on the 110 freeway. It was going from episode, um, episode five of Three Body Problem, Judgment Day, in which, in which, no, in which the sky blinks dark and the words, "You are all bugs" appear. And I was like, holy shit, the next seven years of our lives on television are going to be so sick. And then two episodes later, there's something called a wall facer where their brilliant plan to defeat the space bugs coming in four centuries is not to tell the plan out loud, which kind of reminds me of the 76ers' rebuild strategy.
41:16 Andy Greenwald? So I swear I'm not doing this for the clicks or the lols.
41:20 Chris Ryan? You know what, honestly, the cast of that show really resembles the 76ers roster too, in terms of injuries.
41:26 Andy Greenwald? Truly, truly. Like, right now Jared McCain's brain is being shot into space as a last minute effort.
41:32 Chris Ryan? Gotta make sure Tyrese Maxey does not take an abandoned cruise liner through South America.
41:36 Andy Greenwald? I'm just saying that it feels weird to be caping up for a show that probably cost, by all said and done, like a quarter of a billion dollars to make.
41:46 Speaker 00 Are they doing another season?
41:47 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah, they're wrapping up their story.
41:49 Andy Greenwald? Which is what you wanted with something that started with a 400-year lead time towards the story actually starting. It's weird to cape up for it, but there is something about the batshit "let's do this" mentality that made me kind of miss those halcyon days of like 10 years ago.
42:07 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
42:07 Andy Greenwald? When this is kind of what TV was doing. Not like, can we please appease the fans of the original Galadriel origin story? But actually, can we cut a cruise liner in half with laser thread? So it's a vibes pick.
42:22 Chris Ryan? I thought this was a really fun watch this year. And it was honestly one of those things that like, you start to wonder whether or not there's like, radio waves being sent out by Netflix with the urgency with which I would start the next episode. So there's several shows on Netflix this year that I like straight up binged in an unhealthy way, and this was one of them.
42:42 Speaker 00 This was a did not finish for me. I think I got through like-
42:45 Chris Ryan? DNF.
42:46 Speaker 00 DNF. I got through, I think like-
42:49 Andy Greenwald? DNF.
42:49 Speaker 00 An episode and a half. I have, I have a low bar for like, dream sequence, like weird sci-fi fantasy things. So I think once they like entered the first, some dream-
43:02 Chris Ryan? Virtual reality game?
43:03 Speaker 00 Yeah. Oh, right. It was when they started playing the video game. I was like, this, I don't think this is-
43:06 Andy Greenwald? That was 10 minutes into the first episode. Do you remember, do you, do you, do you guys remember the part of this episode where Liam Cunningham is sternly watching some scientists in a lab as they unfreeze a sleepy monkey?
43:18 Chris Ryan? Yes.
43:18 Andy Greenwald? A CGI monkey stumbles awake and then barfs, and Liam Cunningham goes, "That'll work." This is real. They made this. And frankly, I'm here to celebrate it.
43:29 Chris Ryan? If you DNF Three Body Problem, what is your number 10 show of the year?
43:33 Speaker 00 So my number 10 show was also a show I had mixed feelings about, but ultimately I think had more good- Them bad. And so that was hacks.
43:43 Chris Ryan? Okay.
43:43 Speaker 00 Midas season.
43:44 Chris Ryan? Old.
43:44 Speaker 00 Which I think sagged quite a bit in the middle, but then finished out really strong with the like Ava, like sniping.
43:52 Chris Ryan? Yes.
43:52 Speaker 00 Um, Jean Smart's character. And then also, I mean, I think particularly with this season, the like Paul Downs and Megan Stalter, like relationship between those two.
44:02 Chris Ryan? Oh, with the like the script they were producing. Yeah.
44:03 Speaker 00 Yeah. I think that like shined enough to like overshadow some other issues.
44:08 Chris Ryan? I liked where hacks ended.
44:09 Speaker 00 I do too.
44:10 Chris Ryan? I thought like that's, that's actually the show is like.
44:13 Speaker 00 Yeah.
44:13 Chris Ryan? How this industry probably destroys people. But you know, they're like, this is goals. Like we, I love Ava and like, I love Deb. Like it's kind of hard to balance the two. Um.
44:25 Speaker 00 Yeah. They're like, basically the middle of the season was kind of like a montage of them like getting along.
44:29 Chris Ryan? Yes.
44:30 Speaker 00 Which is like, just not quite as fun.
44:32 Chris Ryan? It's not as tense.
44:32 Speaker 00 When they are like up against each other, but I think the next season's gonna be really good. I'm looking forward to that.
44:38 Andy Greenwald? I'm glad it's on the list. I'm glad it's being said on this podcast. I think that it is a show that in, if you broke it apart into its component pieces, I don't have a single criticism about any of the pieces. I love the actors. I love the creative team behind it. I love the way it's made. I love that it continues to be made and that it is an ongoing series that pushes its story forward and remains true to itself and the sweetness of its characters. But when brought together, it kind of fell flat for me this year. And I think that you're both kind of maybe, I think, I think that, I think that's an astute way of looking at it, that maybe this was a transition season to get to the season of the show where the juice is.
45:14 Speaker 00 Yeah.
45:14 Andy Greenwald? Um, otherwise I did have, and it's interesting, like a TV creator that I admire more than just about any other from the last 15 years is an EP on the show. Mike Schur. He's not the showrunner in any way, but he, his shows do have that tendency to drift towards softness.
45:34 Speaker 00 Yeah. It gets like a little saccharine.
45:35 Andy Greenwald? Solving problems and hugging rather than finding comedy in the spikiness or the division. And it's another, like his show for Netflix, A Man on the Inside, did not make my list for that reason too, because it was, again, beautifully made, wonderful cast, sharp. But soft in a way that didn't make it feel compelling. So I'm glad we're keeping Hacks alive because I'm excited to see season four.
45:58 Chris Ryan? My number 10 is Tokyo Vice. So from on it's on Max. I talked about this show pretty extensively with Mina earlier in the season. I thought this series, it sadly came to a conclusion. It came to an end, but I thought over the course of these seasons, really told like an incredibly dense, fascinating story that was probably will go down as like the last of its kind in a lot of ways. It was probably not a very cheap show to make in terms of having this production in Japan, having all these actors.
46:30 Chris Ryan? And, you know, most of it is in Japanese, you know, there's it's basically like an international co-pro kind of show, even though it's obviously through Max. Where I don't know that like, if you can stick through it and you can stick with the mystery, I think it's just one of the most rewarding crime shows in recent memory. The central performance from Ken Watanabe is fantastic, but there are dozens of really incredible performances in this one. And I almost like sentimentally put it on my list because I know it's going to be unlikely that we see many shows like that again, because as TV networks move more towards like reliable, like kind of like, we know that this is a hit or we know the margins on this will be good.
47:11 Chris Ryan? So seeing something that's like a very expensive crime show shot out of Japan is going to be like more and more like rare, I think. Yeah, I got through, I think, a little over half of the first season this year, based off of your recommendation. I really enjoyed the first season that, and I want to finish it out. Yeah. Cause I know the second season gets a lot stronger.
47:30 Andy Greenwald? Kaia, are there any shows on your list that you watch because of my recommendation? Or should we, should we, should we just table that?
47:36 Chris Ryan? Let's keep moving.
47:37 Andy Greenwald? It's fine. It's fine.
47:39 Chris Ryan? Show Kasamatsu is probably like my, my big like watch out for this guy. As like years go on, I think he's going to be.
47:46 Andy Greenwald? Is his stock trading domestically now?
47:48 Chris Ryan? I don't know. I hope so. Greenwald, what's your number nine?
47:52 Andy Greenwald? My number nine is a show that briefly was my number one. When we came in and talked about the first episode.
47:59 Chris Ryan? Presumed Innocent?
48:00 Andy Greenwald? Which is Presumed Innocent on Apple.
48:02 Speaker 00 Wow, how far?
48:04 Chris Ryan? The fucking meme coin of shows for you, Ben.
48:06 Andy Greenwald? Definitely one of the hottest. One of the hottest takes ever debuted on this program. But no, but I do stand by the enthusiasm, if not the ultimate judgment, that this was, this was the Prince Who Was Promised in terms of the very, very best gourmet cheeseburger that one of these streaming services could come up with. I do think the first two episodes were outstanding. I thought they were brilliantly directed. I thought the buildup of the world and of a vibe and of a spirit and of capturing something that I think, I mean, certainly on the rewatchables, you guys discussed this a lot, like a very specific type of film, a 90s courtroom erotic thriller, like, let's put that on TV and let's own the type of show that we're making. And a lot of that credit probably goes to
48:50 Andy Greenwald? David E. Kelley, who knows how to make soapy television.
48:53 Speaker 00 A gourmet cheeseburger.
48:54 Andy Greenwald? He's been cooking them up in his big green egg behind his gigantic Beller mansion for decades. Ultimately, did the show kind of falter?
49:02 Speaker 00 Was it Bill Camp's head exploding?
49:05 Andy Greenwald? Or was it mine?
49:06 Chris Ryan? Spoiler.
49:09 Chris Ryan? Dream spoiler.
49:09 Andy Greenwald? I don't think I liked a supporting cast more this season, like, O.T. Fagbenly and Peter Sarsgaard and Bill Camp, just absolutely outstanding and having fun, which is something that I think a lot of these overheated, post, you know, this current era of prestige TV shows forget to do. You could call what Jake Gyllenhaal did having fun. It doesn't seem like anyone else was having fun with him on set of that show, but he definitely went for it with his full Roadhouse roid rage vibes, and it was a choice.
49:42 Chris Ryan? There's also something to be said for the show of the summer. Like, it definitely was, like...
49:47 Andy Greenwald? Is this on anyone else's list?
49:48 Chris Ryan? No.
49:48 Speaker 00 No.
49:48 Andy Greenwald? Wow. Look at me. I love this.
49:51 Chris Ryan? Forging your own past.
49:52 Speaker 00 I think it would be hard for you to go from this is my number one show of the year.
49:56 Andy Greenwald? Which I didn't say. I believe I said, this is everything TV is supposed to be.
50:01 Chris Ryan? Getting with the Gallerist plot is where I I made the decision that this would not be a top 10 show.
50:06 Speaker 00 That was like a 20 minute scene of her like in a gallery.
50:09 Chris Ryan? And he's like, and cannabis hand cream, wasn't that a part of it?
50:13 Andy Greenwald? You're rubbing it all over her hands.
50:14 Chris Ryan? But honestly, man, like the first and last episodes were like completely ripping and Sarsgaard gave one of the best performances of the year.
50:21 Andy Greenwald? It's weird, though. Again, I think this is going to be a recurring theme that there are there shows that we just really like and are glad that are in our lives? Yes. This is archetypal for the type of show that would make the TV experience better if they could figure out a way to harness this money, this talent, Apple's ambition and do this. Like, there's a lot of examples of Apple harnessing all those things and doing something else. This was a crowd pleaser and it is coming back. And although I wish it was coming back with the supporting cast in Chicago, minus this case, it's not. But what a fun time it was for us.
50:55 Speaker 00 Make TV fun again.
50:56 Chris Ryan? It's a great pick. Kai, what about you?
50:58 Speaker 00 My number nine is The Bear, which is another one where the season as a whole was, it's definitely not my favorite season of The Bear, but there's still like the ice chips episode and the napkin episodes, I think, were strong enough on their own to kind of carry the other parts. Like, I just, I really didn't love the first and last episodes. The first episode was essentially like a montage of.
51:22 Chris Ryan? See, this is the thing that's great about this season, though, is like the first episode, I would make an argument as episode of the year.
51:28 Speaker 00 Really?
51:28 Chris Ryan? Yeah, just because I think it was, it was such a brave, cool thing to do with such a valuable project. And just to be like, I need to express myself for, for Kristor to be like, I want to express myself in a different way, but you go ahead.
51:41 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, that's fair. It's like, I just, it just had no plot. Like, it had, it was just like long shots of vegetable gardens.
51:48 Chris Ryan? It was, it was a recap of his life, basically, yeah.
51:51 Speaker 00 Yeah. And like, I, yeah, I agree. I think that was like a brave and like interesting, interesting thing to do out of the gate. But, yeah, I mean, it's just kind of like, there were some episodes that weren't so strong, but I think that cast is so strong and like the like foundation that they have is so strong that even if this is like the least strong. Season of the bear, it's still like miles better than like a lot of other TV out there right now.
52:15 Andy Greenwald? You're right about that. And I think it's kind of a, it's a cheat, it's a dodge, I'll own it. I cannot consider the season of the bear an independent season.
52:24 Chris Ryan? I've basically arrived at, I agree with you here.
52:28 Andy Greenwald? The, the bear for the first two years of its existence is the best show on TV. I think it was our number one last year. It is consensus, the best show on TV in the sense that its first two seasons, like probably was in our, all of our top three. The way we've talked about it, the relationships we've made with the people on screen. The relationships we've made with people off screen, coming on the pod, like it is an incredible triumph. I could not watch this season without thinking about the fact that Chris told us on our podcast two years ago, he had three years of story. And they made four seasons. It's a lot of pressure to put on a fourth season of a show to justify the existence of the third season. But my hope is, and my trust in them is so great that I think that they will do it.
53:10 Andy Greenwald? But I, I liked your framing, Kaya, too, because I think that the, the premiere and the finale are ammunition for the haters. I'm with you, Chris, in that I loved the premiere, but any of the people who backlash hard against the season. It is.
53:25 Speaker 00 Yeah, I think the finale where it was like, they just lined up a bunch of like famous chefs.
53:31 Chris Ryan? Yes.
53:32 Andy Greenwald? Who, who also, who are friends of Chris Stor and Courtney Stor's sister, who's an executive producer on the show. That vibe informs their lives, it informs their creative process, and they brought it on set.
53:42 Speaker 00 And it's a lovely tribute to the restaurant industry and the struggles the restaurant industry, industry faces.
53:47 Andy Greenwald? But it was not a dramatic episode of television and it was not a season finale. I mean, which was a more disappointing season finale, that or House of the Dragon? For people who love both, I'm being genuine here.
53:57 Chris Ryan? That's a good question. I, you know, I felt like House of the Dragon was an episode short of a season finale.
54:03 Andy Greenwald? I mean, House of the Dragon's season ended with everyone being like, that fight we're gonna have, it's gonna be a big one. And then Matt Smith being like, but here, this tree, let's look at this a little bit longer.
54:13 Chris Ryan? Um, I will just throw out there as like a thing to watch for the fourth season is what Kaya was saying about hacks, which is the what's good for the show might not be good for fans of the show. And I think that the bear became the phenomenon. It is partially be driven by like how people feel about these characters.
54:33 Speaker 00 Yeah.
54:33 Chris Ryan? And in order for there to be maybe a dramatically satisfying conclusion of the show, I wonder whether any of those characters will disappoint the fans in some way or another.
54:42 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, I think that, um, we said this at the time, so maybe it's worth recapping or repeating now. I think, I believe that one of the central messages of the show is that Carmy's dysfunction is being furthered by the elevation of the bear into a would be Michelin.
54:59 Speaker 00 Right.
54:59 Andy Greenwald? Star fine dining restaurant. That happiness and healthiness will come from accepting the grubby sandwich shop as well as the tweezer food. And that that's where we're going to some sort of like more balanced acceptance of the duality of nature, whatever. By spreading it out, you ended up with a season that, high points aside, and I think napkins and ice chips are as good as any other episodes of television on any show or any streaming service this year. You ended up with a season that was like, this is worth it. The point of this is to try and kill yourself to make this restaurant work. I, I think it is a facile misread to say that like, that's what the script said.
55:37 Chris Ryan? Sure.
55:38 Andy Greenwald? I'm just saying that in terms of where the story left us was the suggestion that maybe this whole thing is going to be worth it.
55:45 Chris Ryan? Right.
55:45 Andy Greenwald? As opposed to showing us that it's not, having us experience that it's not in real time. Now, future generations streaming this on, on the Palouse Disney service forever will not have this debate. They will just roll right through these two seasons.
55:57 Speaker 00 Was season three basically just in service of setting up season four?
56:01 Chris Ryan? I think, I think it was in service of a couple of things. Like, I think he wanted to expand the, the cast. I think he wanted to play around with different feelings. There are some episodes of this season that are just like straight comedy. You know, and that is almost weirdly getting back to like. The early version of this show where you know Carmy's giving kids at the hot dog party for the kids in the first season. But yeah, I, I, this is my most anticipated show of 2025 because I can't wait to see how it concludes.
56:29 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
56:29 Chris Ryan? Uh, my number nine is Tell Me Lies on Hulu. This is a show that could also be called Bad Decisions and I really like this one. I, first of all, this is sentimentally like a show that I just really love watching with my wife and you know, collective group participation in watching a TV show is really kind of like elevate what you're watching. This is also something where ordinarily when I'm watching something, if I can see someone is making a horrible decision and also I know that way before they do, that's really like anxiety producing and I often like, I don't like watching someone be like, I don't have anywhere to put this bag of money, so I'll bring it with me. And it's like, oh, this is not going to work out for you, man.
57:10 Chris Ryan? There is such a mass like, like there's so many bad decisions made on any given episode of Tell Me Lies that I feel like I break through and it's like someone who's like, I don't really like pot, but if I take the biggest bong hit of all time, maybe I will bust through that high.
57:28 Andy Greenwald? That's relatable content.
57:29 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
57:29 Andy Greenwald? I tried that once.
57:30 Chris Ryan? It's like, don't take a five milligram gummy, take a 20 milligram gummy and see what happens.
57:35 Andy Greenwald? The reason you don't like it is because you don't do enough of it.
57:37 Chris Ryan? Yeah, exactly.
57:38 Andy Greenwald? That's good decision making.
57:39 Chris Ryan? This show is kind of like, uh, it's just really a bunch of people at a stand-in for Bard College, uh, screwing each other over and screwing each other.
57:48 Andy Greenwald? So is this like the Real Sex Lives of College Girls?
57:50 Chris Ryan? Kind of, yeah. Or it's Euphoria without like the, I also want to make a Hal Ashby movie while this is happening.
57:57 Andy Greenwald? And we don't take five years between seasons.
57:59 Speaker 00 It's Euphoria, but a lot less arty.
58:01 Chris Ryan? It's very, uh, well constructed in terms of it's got this sort of like flashback sequence or flash forward sequence that is now probably going to be taking over the show, I imagine if it, if and hopefully it does come back for season three, where it's several years in the future after these people have left college. And so it's kind of not unlike Lost, I think, where you're sort of trying to piece together what's going to happen in the past by what you can tell has happened in the future, but they don't tell you exactly. It's basically, you know, three guys and three girls who are constantly cheating on one another.
58:34 Andy Greenwald? I only watch Lost in the HOV lane, so.
58:38 Speaker 00 This is another one. This is another Chris recommendation. You just don't recommend shows to me. I don't know what to tell you. I got through a few episodes of the first season and I will definitely be revisiting.
58:48 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I hope so. More people should check this out. It's on Hulu. Andy, what's your number eight?
58:53 Andy Greenwald? My number eight is a show that has brought me nothing but pleasure at the end of the year and might have been higher if there was more time to reflect on it. And I wonder if it's on your list as well, but it's Black Dubs.
59:02 Chris Ryan? It's my number eight.
59:03 Andy Greenwald? Number eight? Okay. Do you, it's the same number eight. We could just do this together.
59:07 Chris Ryan? Let's do it together.
59:08 Andy Greenwald? Do you have Black Dubs on your list?
59:09 Speaker 00 I don't. I only have seen one episode.
59:11 Chris Ryan? Do you want to hold hands?
59:12 Andy Greenwald? I mean, I always wanted to know, but the studio really kind of makes it more comfortable. Wait, do you think that it would have been higher on your list had we had more time to consider it and reflect on it?
59:23 Chris Ryan? No, and I'm happy to tell you why.
59:24 Andy Greenwald? Okay.
59:25 Chris Ryan? I could have picked 12 different shows to go eight, nine, 10 here. To me, I don't feel especially strongly about what place 10, nine, and eight are in. And there's a bunch of honorable mentions that I think have like a shout to get into those slots. It's when I get to six, actually, I'll say seven is also a little bit open. It's when I get to six is I just have like, that is the tier.
59:48 Andy Greenwald? It jumps. I agree.
59:49 Chris Ryan? It jumps. And then it also jumps again at the top four. So for me, Black Dubs was the most entertained I can remember being watching television this year.
59:57 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
59:58 Chris Ryan? It is fucking ridiculous. Like the plot, like, have you finished it?
1:00:01 Andy Greenwald? I finished it.
1:00:02 Chris Ryan? Yeah. So like, the way they bring in like another heavy midway, two thirds into the series.
1:00:08 Andy Greenwald? Oh, after the end of four, yes.
1:00:09 Chris Ryan? Yeah. Is absurd, but in terms of tone and the charm of the two central performances, I was like, this is as good as TV can be to me.
1:00:19 Andy Greenwald? I'm with you in the sense of like, this is just pure joy. It made me happy to watch it. It's the only show, I think, even of the higher shows on my list, that when I did the 56 minutes, and I didn't say it like that.
1:00:30 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:00:31 Andy Greenwald? I was like, great, 56 minutes. Let's go. I think that it is so beautifully put together. I think it's incredibly well-directed. I think it's so stylistically in tune with itself, that the direction, the performances, the emotion, the high tightwire balancing act of sincerity versus bloodshed. It's just all in concert with itself. And it is anchored by one of the best performances ever by one of my favorite actors alive, Ben Whishaw. And it is-
1:00:57 Chris Ryan? Best performances ever?
1:00:58 Andy Greenwald? By him.
1:00:59 Chris Ryan? Oh, okay. I thought you meant like better than like My Left Foot. Like-
1:01:03 Andy Greenwald? Hold on. Hold on. I, Peter, best performances all time. Peter O'Toole, Lawrence of Arabia. Peter Sarsgaard, Presumed Innocent.
1:01:14 Andy Greenwald? I could make it, I could put together a little.
1:01:15 Chris Ryan? The dude whose head goes into space and three body problems.
1:01:18 Andy Greenwald? With just his head?
1:01:21 Andy Greenwald? No, one of Ben Whishaw's greatest showcases for the specific thing that he does. He's really great in this. I think the show is really sort of, I think that the, the, the, the fun tone of it gets the headlines and gets you into the top 10. But there is an earned melancholy to this show. And maybe it's also the Christmas piece of it or the, but just the way the sky looks in London in December, which I've become very well attuned to. But I'm thrilled about the show and it makes me happy. I feel like there are a lot of other things in this list that I'm excited about. But coming off of our conversation about the bear, I feel like when we were doing our top 10 list the last two years, there was that meta element of like, boy, I'm really happy this exists.
1:02:00 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:02:01 Andy Greenwald? And I'm happy there's going to be more of it. Black Dubs is renewed and I, Netflix is very, very specific in their development process. I've heard this from many people about what they hammer down on and what they let go. And it just feels like Joe Barton, who created the show, took the notes and ran with them in a happy way. And I'm psyched to give you a show that works for your aldo.
1:02:22 Chris Ryan? I was reading an interview with Keira Knightley and she talked about how when she signed on for the show, she had just read the pilot. And then when they started shooting, they only had two scripts. And that's pretty crazy when you think about like, it's a six episode show and it's, I'm sure Joe Barton had broad ideas about like where he was going with it. But there is a kind of spontaneity and liveliness to the series where three episodes in, he's like, I think I want to bring in a new villain.
1:02:49 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
1:02:50 Chris Ryan? And it kind of works for the tone of the show.
1:02:52 Andy Greenwald? Or how about some Irish hit ladies?
1:02:55 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:02:55 Andy Greenwald? That are just gonna roll.
1:02:57 Chris Ryan? And that is actually, you can tell that those actors, they were just like, you know what? These two are charming. Let's give them a bigger role, you know?
1:03:05 Andy Greenwald? I think it's a great point. It's, I think we should have Joe Barton on in the new year to talk about this. But like, maybe what you're speaking to that I'm responding to in this show is that kind of like improvisatory spirit.
1:03:17 Chris Ryan? Yes.
1:03:17 Andy Greenwald? That used to exist when you had 22 episodes and you could be like, oh, that guest star in, in episode six, that's our show, actually. Let's grab the wheel and steer towards it. That never works in the streaming era when you're shooting with big stars, with big budgets and big expectations and you want to change your mind. Or someone's demanding you change your mind.
1:03:35 Speaker 00 And you're making it all in a vacuum.
1:03:36 Andy Greenwald? We could, off the record, find out. We could, we could like, reach out to Joe Barton and he has circles under his eyes blacker than the doves in the title. You know, and he's like, "It was a nightmare and I can't believe I pulled this off." But, look, the results are the results.
1:03:48 Chris Ryan? That's number eight for me. So that's number eight for Andy's Black Doves on Netflix. Kai, what's your number eight?
1:03:53 Speaker 00 I got another Netflix. It was a good Netflix year.
1:03:56 Chris Ryan? Tighty little Netflix year, yeah. I'm pulling for those guys. I hope that they can stay afloat.
1:04:01 Speaker 00 I went with Nobody Wants This at my number eight spot. Such a just charming little show, you know? It's just like, it's just was nice to watch. I think like Adam Brody's charm could just power 1,000 ships.
1:04:15 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:04:15 Speaker 00 And, yeah, it was just a night.
1:04:18 Chris Ryan? He is the Tesla Supercharger, yeah.
1:04:20 Speaker 00 Of, yeah, of which there are many in East Side, Los Angeles.
1:04:24 Andy Greenwald? Speaking of, Kai, was there an element for you with the show similar to what we talked about? Like, when we talked about Get Millie Black, a really good HBO show that didn't make my list but was cool and I'm gonna finish. That sounded really disingenuous. I do intend to finish that show. I did genuinely like it. But there was an element of like, cultural television tourism where I'm like, "Take me to Jamaica." Was that what the East Side of LA was like for you? Like, as someone who lives under a marine layer?
1:04:49 Chris Ryan? I was wondering how you were gonna relate Get Millie Black to...
1:04:50 Andy Greenwald? Was Nobody Wants This your Get Millie Black in terms of seeing a place...
1:04:54 Speaker 00 Is that like 10 miles east of me?
1:04:56 Andy Greenwald? That's what I'm saying. A place that you never... Because, to be clear, for listeners not from LA, I travel to London five times as often as I travel to Mar Vista. Like, that is a much more convenient...
1:05:06 Speaker 00 You know, there's good ramen in Mar Vista. You should...
1:05:08 Andy Greenwald? My favorite ramen, Venice Ramen, is out there.
1:05:11 Speaker 00 But, yeah, I, I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that it felt really of a place when we talked with, or when you talked... With Adam Brody, it's like shot all on location in LA. You just don't really get that.
1:05:23 Chris Ryan? You really don't.
1:05:24 Speaker 00 Anymore. And so it felt so like, almost just like lived in. And it's like, yes, here's this little world that we're gonna like let you in on.
1:05:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:05:32 Speaker 00 And I think it's just like everybody, like Justine Loop, a friend of the pod, Tim Simons, I Jackie Tone as Esther, I think was probably one of my like favorite performances. Of the year. Kristen Bell, obviously amazing. Her and Adam Brody just had great chemistry. And so it's like, you put all of those factors together. And it's hard not to make something that's like incredibly watchable, not to mention 28 minute.
1:05:59 Andy Greenwald? Kristen Bell, currently the holder of the highest Q rating in my household.
1:06:03 Speaker 00 Oh, I bet.
1:06:04 Andy Greenwald? The girls are obsessed with the good place. And also she did Anna. So she's, you know, important in her life. And then I was like, she's also on this new show where she falls in love with a rabbi. And they're like, oh, that's culturally relevant to us.
1:06:14 Chris Ryan? Is that what your daughters?
1:06:16 Andy Greenwald? No, they were in, they were like, really? They were interested in that.
1:06:19 Chris Ryan? Okay. So my number eight, that was a great pick. My number eight was Black Doves. Andy, what's your number seven?
1:06:24 Andy Greenwald? Okay, I'm staying with Netflix. And this is, this is breaking kind of an unspoken rule here.
1:06:29 Speaker 00 Oh, I think I know it.
1:06:30 Andy Greenwald? Because generally we have only all, we sort of soft agree to do only scripted shows.
1:06:36 Chris Ryan? This is, this was annoying. Go ahead.
1:06:37 Andy Greenwald? This was annoying?
1:06:38 Chris Ryan? Yeah. So this was annoying. This was like, we, this is the Anthony Bourdain rule. Every year we would have put Bourdain on our list.
1:06:44 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
1:06:45 Chris Ryan? But we decided these were going to be scripted TV shows.
1:06:47 Andy Greenwald? Well, look, rules are made to be broken.
1:06:49 Chris Ryan? All right.
1:06:50 Andy Greenwald? Also, I didn't know.
1:06:50 Chris Ryan? Can't wait for my number one Survivor.
1:06:53 Andy Greenwald? I didn't know you had got me a mini Theragun when I decided to do this. If you'd given me the gift earlier, I would have been like, I gotta make this easier for Chris.
1:07:02 Andy Greenwald? Everybody's in LA.
1:07:03 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:07:03 Andy Greenwald? The one week live John Mulaney talk show experience.
1:07:06 Speaker 00 This was my number seven as well.
1:07:08 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
1:07:08 Chris Ryan? Gosh, never let it be said that this show exists in a bubble, you know?
1:07:11 Andy Greenwald? We win.
1:07:14 Andy Greenwald? Because of what we were, this, this is what I was thinking of when we were talking at the top of the show about just chasing moments and kind of indelible experiences and moving the medium forward. Because so much of what we see on TV is either recycled, like, let's bring the 90s back, or let's bring the blockbuster film era back, or let's just please God, bring another script or series out of Taylor Sheridan, or anything that's working. Netflix making, giving John Mulaney the keys to do a live whatever he wanted for one week with Brooklinder's amazing weird documentary-style investigations into the city, with David Letterman under a cozy blanket while Pete Davidson just cackled. Like, I laughed harder watching
1:07:57 Andy Greenwald? the show, and I was filled with a very specific and very rare kind of glee that only TV, that only live TV can do. And it was exciting.
1:08:07 Chris Ryan? I think that's really actually a great point, is to celebrate the live TV aspect of it.
1:08:11 Andy Greenwald? This is, only TV can do this. And as things have gotten less and less live, and even Saturday Night Live, like, which is having a pretty decent season that I'm experiencing entirely through day-after YouTube clips.
1:08:24 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:08:24 Andy Greenwald? Like, the experience of firing up that episode where he's, you know, where Richard Kind is shouting about something, where there's a, you know, Lucy Jones, the seismologist, is talking, where Flea is leading people on a wild goose chase. And by the way, all of these episodes stand up after the fact. But there was something about a particular moment in a particular place that the show celebrated with, with Mulaney, who is just not only at the peak of his powers, but does seem to have this wizard-like ability to see the game board of pop culture and show business and say, I would like to play here, and I would like to try everything.
1:08:58 Chris Ryan? Are they gonna do more of this?
1:08:59 Andy Greenwald? And they are doing more of it. So weirdly, this is an ongoing series.
1:09:01 Chris Ryan? In LA or anywhere else?
1:09:03 Andy Greenwald? I believe, I, I know nothing about the series, other than they are doing it as a weekly show. But again, I don't know if that's, they're gonna do 20 of them, or they're gonna start and then see.
1:09:12 Chris Ryan? Yeah, right.
1:09:13 Andy Greenwald? But in the spring, this show will be back, potentially under the same name, potentially under a different name, with a similar vibe. And I, and I love it. And it was enough for me to break the rule. Sorry. I mean, I wouldn't call it like-
1:09:25 Speaker 00 Reality TV like it had, I don't know.
1:09:27 Chris Ryan? No, I think it was.
1:09:28 Andy Greenwald? There were scripted bits.
1:09:29 Speaker 00 Yeah, there were scripted bits. There was filmed. There was filmed.
1:09:33 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:09:33 Andy Greenwald? Unlike, unlike Bourdain's found footage.
1:09:35 Chris Ryan? We'll call the parliamentarian about this.
1:09:37 Andy Greenwald? Like, like, like, like, cook here.
1:09:38 Speaker 00 I didn't know if I liked this show because it was so specifically for me. Like, John Mulaney is one of my favorite comedians. And it's full of LA specific jokes. So I'm like, do I like this because it's good or do I like this because it's like, specifically made for me, but had such a like awkward charm to it. And it was like, seems so close to going off the rails at all times.
1:10:00 Chris Ryan? That was like a huge part of it. It was just like Mulaney trying to keep the, the car on the road.
1:10:04 Speaker 00 Yeah. And it almost felt like public access TV. Like if it was not hosted by one of the most famous comedians of all times, of all time, then like, it could have just been like something people made in their garage.
1:10:17 Andy Greenwald? I think spiritually, I'm gonna pair this with Three Body Problem. In the sense of everything right now in this industry, if not this world, is contracting and reducing. And the horizons feel like they're getting smaller. And I am here for people either ballsy enough or talented enough or both, to take Netflix's money and say, we're gonna fucking try this.
1:10:41 Chris Ryan? Yeah, right.
1:10:41 Andy Greenwald? Now, one was to my mind, much more successful than the other, although both strangely are on my list. But I, I'm here for that. I'm here for people taking chances and trying something new and trying, you know, trying to move this whole thing forward, Chris.
1:10:54 Chris Ryan? I agree with you.
1:10:55 Andy Greenwald? We're not going back, as a great lady once said.
1:10:56 Speaker 00 It's funny to me that Netflix is too big, like live offerings this year, the like Mike Tyson and Jake Paul fight and this, everybody's in LA. Though I guess, I mean, I think I might be forgetting something. But one.
1:11:08 Chris Ryan? And they'll have Beyonce and a Christmas.
1:11:10 Speaker 00 Yeah. But one made me feel so pessimistic and depressed about the state.
1:11:15 Chris Ryan? Did you like sit down to watch the Mike Tyson fight?
1:11:17 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
1:11:17 Andy Greenwald? Did you really?
1:11:18 Speaker 00 Did not. That make me feel good about myself.
1:11:21 Andy Greenwald? Netflix is America. Like, you could make a case that Netflix has ruined the industry, or you can make a case that Netflix is single-handedly keeping creativity alive, um, much like America.
1:11:31 Chris Ryan? We've mentioned Netflix more times in this top 10 than I think we ever have.
1:11:34 Speaker 00 Well, Ted Sarandos is gonna be sending me a check.
1:11:37 Andy Greenwald? And there's more, there's more coming.
1:11:39 Chris Ryan? My number seven is a cheat. So you cheat, you've got Mulaney on there. I'm gonna cheat.
1:11:44 Andy Greenwald? Both sides do it.
1:11:45 Chris Ryan? And I'm gonna talk about broadening horizons, and I'm gonna give number seven to Landman and Lioness.
1:11:49 Andy Greenwald? Wow.
1:11:50 Speaker 00 They really are one of us.
1:11:52 Andy Greenwald? Could you combine them into Lion Man?
1:11:54 Chris Ryan? That would be honestly like my favorite show of all time.
1:11:57 Andy Greenwald? That's the gift I'm gonna give you.
1:11:58 Chris Ryan? I, you know, Kai and I extensively talked about the second season of Lioness a week ago.
1:12:03 Speaker 00 It did not make it onto my list.
1:12:05 Chris Ryan? It definitely like faltered when it came to plot mechanics. But in terms of thrills and in terms of, you know, action set pieces, holy shit moments. And actually, I thought fairly decent performances, you know, by especially Zoe Saldana. It still worked for me, and it was still an example of there is nothing on TV that is like that in terms of its scale and commitment to showing that kind of like military activity on TV. That may not matter to you, but if you are an action movie fan, like Lioness actually has.
1:12:40 Speaker 00 Some of the most incredible action set pieces.
1:12:42 Andy Greenwald? I really like the idea of you sitting down on your couch and being like, television? Kind of large-scale military action can you show me today?
1:12:49 Chris Ryan? Honestly, that is basically like a, like a tab on Netflix. Landman is still in mid-stride, but what a stride it is.
1:12:57 Andy Greenwald? It is.
1:12:58 Chris Ryan? What a gallop. And, uh, this is the show that I get texts about now on Sunday, like Bill being like all-time Landman tonight.
1:13:07 Chris Ryan? This show is actually.
1:13:09 Speaker 00 You say we don't have Sunday night shows, and yet.
1:13:11 Andy Greenwald? I know, it's back.
1:13:12 Chris Ryan? I think this is like Texas Slow TV. Okay. I think that this is like, we are gonna have a 21 minute dinner scene. We are gonna have Demi Moore swim laps for like five episodes of a television series.
1:13:24 Andy Greenwald? We sure are.
1:13:25 Chris Ryan? Uh, we are gonna kind of lightly imply like a, a season long plot, but really it's just like problem of the week stuff. And then you will just have like a guy randomly getting crushed by pipes. So the drama and the stakes go up this high. For some reason, I have fallen under Taylor Sheridan's spell, not politically, not in terms of like how.
1:13:47 Speaker 00 I like how every time you bring him up, you have to stay, not politically.
1:13:51 Chris Ryan? I don't even know what his politics are, honestly.
1:13:54 Andy Greenwald? No, it's pretty vague. I think he's into green energy.
1:13:56 Chris Ryan? I think he's into self reliance.
1:13:58 Andy Greenwald? Yes, sure. Where, where a humble failed actor can one day date Bella Hadid on screen.
1:14:04 Chris Ryan? There was some reason, for, for some reason though, like with Yellowstone ending last night, with Lioness ending the week before. He has written, I believe, 40 hours of television this year. Between Lioness, Yellowstone, Landman and Mayor of Kingstown season two.
1:14:19 Andy Greenwald? I mean, to be clear, there are dudes at Meru Coffee right now in Los Feliz who have also written 40 hours of TV this year. But he has produced 40 hours of TV this year.
1:14:28 Chris Ryan? I know.
1:14:29 Andy Greenwald? That is the real accomplishment.
1:14:30 Chris Ryan? Directed more episodes of television than anybody this year. Like, this is, this is the most entertaining shit I have.
1:14:36 Andy Greenwald? He had more screen time than Demi Moore had on his own show this year.
1:14:40 Chris Ryan? Respect.
1:14:40 Andy Greenwald? Right?
1:14:41 Chris Ryan? Yeah, that's the real substance.
1:14:42 Andy Greenwald? That is the real substance.
1:14:43 Chris Ryan? So Landman, Lioness, like a split decision because Landman has not finished the season. I think Landman is, is on the inside track to be one of my, like my favorite shows he's done. And I think it's like actually a comedy and actually a workplace comedy. But, uh, no, you laugh.
1:15:02 Andy Greenwald? I'm watching it.
1:15:03 Chris Ryan? But your energy levels, when we talk about it, are through the roof. You are definitely stimulated by this show.
1:15:08 Andy Greenwald? I am going to continue to watch the show. I would love to, I mean, I feel like maybe through Bill, can we get friend of the larger Ringer project, uh, John Hammond? Just be like, John, like honestly. Talk us through it.
1:15:21 Chris Ryan? I watched him on Eisen and he was just like, read the script, was just like, went down to Texas, talked to Taylor, I was in, wanted to yell at Billy Bob.
1:15:28 Andy Greenwald? Filmed for six days.
1:15:29 Chris Ryan? Got off 18 different private planes.
1:15:31 Speaker 00 Had some steak.
1:15:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah. Okay, so that's my number seven. So we're at number sixes now, right? Did you do your number seven? Yours was?
1:15:38 Speaker 00 Everybody's in LA.
1:15:39 Chris Ryan? Everybody's in LA, okay.
1:15:40 Speaker 00 So, right, Andy's number six.
1:15:41 Chris Ryan? We'll recap after we get through six here. So what's your number six?
1:15:44 Andy Greenwald? Okay, we are now in the zone of my list that you were talking about with yours in terms of the top tier where at some point, sincerely, no presumed innocent, every one of these shows spent time in consideration or resting at the number one spot.
1:15:55 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:15:56 Andy Greenwald? I feel good about how it's sorted out, but I was that high on all of these shows in different ways. My number six is Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
1:16:03 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:16:03 Andy Greenwald? On Amazon Prime Video service. Anyone else got it?
1:16:06 Chris Ryan? Nope.
1:16:07 Speaker 00 It's on my list, yeah.
1:16:07 Chris Ryan? Nice. Hi, on your list?
1:16:09 Speaker 00 Yes.
1:16:10 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:16:10 Andy Greenwald? I was so thrilled and delighted by this show. For me, the way you talk about wanting to see large-scale military action, that's how I feel about watching.
1:16:21 Speaker 00 You just want it in like an Italian ski resort.
1:16:23 Andy Greenwald? And focused on the excruciating emotional microaggressions of long-term relationships. This was the dream Trojan horse for me.
1:16:34 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:16:34 Andy Greenwald? Of, there's a big project resting in someone's IP library, very talented people, in this case Donald Glover and Francesca Sloan are given the keys, they dust it off, and then they make the, you know, rat-a-tat action comedy that their execs wanted, kinda. What they really do is drill down on just the tensions of being in a relationship.
1:16:57 Speaker 00 What they really make is like Marriage Story.
1:16:58 Andy Greenwald? Yes. Marriage Story with shootouts at ski resorts with Parker Posey and Bagni Mora carrying like high caliber weapons. Are you listening yet?
1:17:06 Chris Ryan? I loved, I loved Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
1:17:08 Andy Greenwald? I was so delighted by it. I thought it was, I also really am a fan of when talented, powerful multi-hyphenates like Donald Glover understand how to use themselves as player coaches. He was really well-used in the show. He was, it was a great charismatic performance.
1:17:24 Chris Ryan? Really was.
1:17:25 Andy Greenwald? There was no strip poker with Bella Hadid or riding horses. Sorry, no, I'm just going right at you. But the real breakout was Maya Erskine, who my new favorite memes Shaq saying, "I apologize, I was not familiar with your game."
1:17:38 Chris Ryan? That's an old meme.
1:17:39 Andy Greenwald? I know, but I've just really found it useful recently.
1:17:42 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:17:42 Andy Greenwald? That's how I felt about her. I did watch some Pen 15, but I did not know that she could deliver a performance this dramatic, this nuanced, this compelling.
1:17:49 Chris Ryan? And this, this in like stunts, action, like convincing.
1:17:52 Andy Greenwald? All of it.
1:17:52 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:17:53 Andy Greenwald? I, I, I wonder if the show would have been higher, honestly, if it aired later in the year. Time has, has faded and I haven't revisited it, but I loved it. And I know the show is coming back and Francesca Sloan has been announcing some cast additions. The kid from Enora is going to be in the new season. But there is a part of me, I understand the necessities and the economic forces of this prestige, A-list TV marketplace, but I wish they just, I wish they could have run it back. I wish Glover and Erskine were back.
1:18:20 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:18:21 Andy Greenwald? And this was a three-season project and let's go. But I'm happy we're getting more of anything and I loved it.
1:18:26 Chris Ryan? So do we know is the next season with Maya Erskine at all, or is it completely a new cast?
1:18:32 Andy Greenwald? We, we don't know anything.
1:18:33 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:18:33 Andy Greenwald? Anything is in play for them to appear again in some capacity. It's also possible, and I think this was smart of them, to, for people listening to us, talk about it who didn't watch it. You can watch the first season. It, it resolves. Yeah. It resolves with some ambiguity.
1:18:48 Chris Ryan? Some ambiguity.
1:18:48 Andy Greenwald? That's fun, I think, but you can, if the show had ended, then the show would have ended and I still would have had it at number six on my list. Yep. So there's a chance for people to return. It is, from what I understand, it's a, it's a new chapter in a world where there are John and Jane Smiths.
1:19:03 Chris Ryan? Gotcha.
1:19:04 Andy Greenwald? Paired up doing spy shit.
1:19:06 Chris Ryan? Uh, Kaya, did you want to add anything to the Mr. And Mrs. Smith?
1:19:09 Speaker 00 Not a ton. I mean, it's just like this show hit all my sweep spots. It's like great chemistry between the leads, really fun action pieces, really beautiful settings, kind of almost like a Black Mirror-esque. Like tech figure overlord that's like kind of fun and adds like another layer to it. Um, if anybody's looking for more Myerskin plus one with Jack Quaid.
1:19:34 Chris Ryan? I almost fired that up last night.
1:19:37 Speaker 00 Incredibly charming.
1:19:38 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I would say that this one really captures the tone of like effortless cool that you find in the first few oceans 11 oceans 12 movies where it's just like, oh my God, these people are beautiful. This plot is very slick, but like really what I like watching them do is get each other like everything biggles and like hang out at their.
1:19:56 Speaker 00 Go to the farmer's market. Yeah.
1:19:58 Andy Greenwald? It's something that this show shares with black doves, which is like there are, there are brilliant examples of shows that wrestle with the psychological, emotional and real world toll of hyper violence. Or they're stylized genre shows that choose what they're, how they're going to portray violence and also the real, what, what cuts deeper, whether it's bullets or a cutting, you know, sort of passive aggressive remark from your spouse and runs with it. And I think that I just want to call that out. Like it doesn't have to be one or the other, but if you choose your lane, make the show that makes aesthetic sense and then run with it and you can run far.
1:20:34 Speaker 00 I'm excited for the coming seasons because I mean, it's like that show started and was supposed to be Phoebe Waller-Britt.
1:20:39 Chris Ryan? And Donald Glover. Yeah.
1:20:40 Speaker 00 And when she exited, I think there was like some trepidation of like, is this going to still work? And so that's why I feel like I have a lot of trust in what comes for future seasons.
1:20:50 Chris Ryan? Yeah, absolutely. What's yours? So did we get to your six yet?
1:20:54 Speaker 00 No, not yet. My six is English teacher. Delightful.
1:20:58 Chris Ryan? My six is English teacher.
1:21:00 Andy Greenwald? You know what? This is going to be great because my five is English teacher.
1:21:03 Speaker 00 Let's do it.
1:21:04 Chris Ryan? All right, let's talk about an English teacher.
1:21:06 Speaker 00 Wasn't Brian Jordan Alvarez coming on this show that made me watch this finally? It was Brian Jordan Alvarez's daily dancing TikToks.
1:21:13 Andy Greenwald? Hell yeah.
1:21:14 Chris Ryan? It wasn't us talking about it that made you watch it?
1:21:17 Speaker 00 No, it wasn't. Guys making a compelling and well articulated case for this show. It was Brian Dornalvez dancing on TikTok daily.
1:21:24 Andy Greenwald? Do you know how like introducing the remix of his TikTok song Sitting, which is an absolute banger into my children car commute has done so much good for me in my life. I didn't even just thank him for that, but he is a casual genius. And those are words I would use to apply to the show as well.
1:21:44 Chris Ryan? Probably a couple of these episodes, the hardest I laughed this year.
1:21:47 Andy Greenwald? Oh, absolutely.
1:21:49 Chris Ryan? Field trip would have been up there with best episode of the year. We'll talk about that later in the week with what is, but I just, one of those things where it's like, TV can just deliver a package of like people that you just really weren't familiar with at all.
1:22:03 Speaker 00 I'm like newly obsessed with Stephanie Kane.
1:22:05 Chris Ryan? Exactly. Now I'm obsessed with these people. So it's just, yeah, I've loved this show.
1:22:10 Andy Greenwald? I would look at my list. I would look at everybody's list and like gun to my head. If you, Taylor Sheridan is holding a gun to my head and I can have one new episode.
1:22:20 Chris Ryan? Eat this upmarket beef that I make.
1:22:23 Andy Greenwald? Can drink this Michelob Ultra. It's not alcoholic. I mean, it's alcoholic.
1:22:26 Speaker 00 Do you guys know there's a Taylor Sheridan restaurant in Las Vegas?
1:22:29 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, there's a big billboard for it.
1:22:30 Chris Ryan? We got an email about that, right?
1:22:31 Speaker 00 I know. Yeah, that's.
1:22:32 Andy Greenwald? Inviting us?
1:22:33 Chris Ryan? No, it was just the guys like, I was here, check it out.
1:22:35 Andy Greenwald? Oh, that's cool. Okay, gun to my head. I could get one new episode of any of the shows we're talking about today ahead of the new season. I would choose English teacher.
1:22:43 Chris Ryan? Yeah, a Christmas special.
1:22:44 Andy Greenwald? Anything, any more content. It is so, so, so hard. I mean, we're about to talk about some shows. I know Chris and I have, actually, there's a huge degree of difficulty, I think, in a lot of the shows still remaining on the board that we're going to talk about. But we should not give short shrift to the degree of difficulty of just hard launching a completely new comedy that immediately feels like your favorite shows ever.
1:23:04 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:23:04 Andy Greenwald? Where you love everyone like you've known them your whole life, like you are excited when a new situation is introduced to the comedy. Because it's like just shooting a pinball into a course and you know what it's going to bounce off of. You can feel the rhythms and it's still capable of surprising you. The show is funny, it's sweet, it's smart, it's romantic, and it doesn't take itself seriously, but it is seriously good at what it does.
1:23:29 Chris Ryan? So that's on FX. So you can watch that on Hulu or Disney for streaming.
1:23:34 Andy Greenwald? It just made me happy.
1:23:35 Chris Ryan? So you're, that was your number five?
1:23:37 Andy Greenwald? That's my number five.
1:23:38 Chris Ryan? What's your number six?
1:23:39 Andy Greenwald? We don't need to spin the wheel. Wait, I'm at, my six is Mr. and Mrs. Smith. So I feel like we're on to Kaya's number five.
1:23:44 Speaker 00 So my six, oh yeah, okay. So I, we're on my number five.
1:23:46 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:23:46 Speaker 00 Okay. My number five was Shogun, which I think is higher on your both lists.
1:23:52 Chris Ryan? A little bit higher. We can
1:23:54 Speaker 00 We can hold that.
1:23:54 Chris Ryan? Let's hold that to talk about it when we get a little higher up. My number five is Shorzy.
1:23:59 Andy Greenwald? Wow, look at you.
1:24:00 Chris Ryan? Shorzy was, Manzukas and I talked about this earlier in the year, just an absolutely wonderful experience as it completed this third season, which is in itself, like, I think, the end of a certain version of this show. They're gonna try and, I think, I would imagine there will be another iteration of Shorzy. So Shorzy, for people who don't know, is a Canadian sitcom, workplace comedy, from Jared Kiesewetter, who did Letter Kenny. And this one is set at a semi-professional hockey team in Canada. And it's basically like older guys playing on a hockey team in rural Canada. It featured, my favorite moment of any show this year is in this third season of Shorzy. It's basically the way I would describe it is either Eastbound and Down with a Heart
1:24:43 Chris Ryan? or Coen Brothers on Ice. I don't know which one to try to go with.
1:24:47 Andy Greenwald? Strong.
1:24:48 Chris Ryan? Jared Kiesewetter's specific sense of humor, his style, the way that the actors in the show all have this very flat affect. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but once you get used to it, it is mesmerizing and becomes, as you can see online, like, you can communicate almost entirely in Shorzy sayings and Shorzy quotes. But on top of all of that and the comedic beats of it and the funny moments, this was actually a deeply affecting sports movie told across the course of three seasons. And this guy's redemption and his figuring out what sports actually means to him was honestly deeply moving. So it's a fantastic show. You can easily binge this in a weekend.
1:25:33 Chris Ryan? It's like six episodes per season. They're like 20 minutes each.
1:25:37 Andy Greenwald? I might have to pull Akaya and take a TV recommendation from you, Chris.
1:25:40 Speaker 00 What a novel idea.
1:25:41 Chris Ryan? I think it will probably be for you, if I had to guess, like, you'll either be like, "This is really funny," or you'll be like, "I can't," because the way they talk to each other.
1:25:50 Andy Greenwald? Because they're Canadian?
1:25:50 Chris Ryan? No, because it's so flat. It's almost like performance art, the way that they like, you'll be like, "Two people standing in front of each other," and be like, "Oh, hey, what you doing there? What are you doing there?" You know, like...
1:26:00 Andy Greenwald? That's Sheridan-esque, honestly, in terms of an affect.
1:26:03 Chris Ryan? Yeah, just the northern part. Yeah. Okay, so that's my number five.
1:26:06 Speaker 00 And what streaming service is that on?
1:26:07 Chris Ryan? That's on Hulu. You can get that on Hulu.
1:26:10 Andy Greenwald? We talked about English teacher, so... Number five for Kaia was?
1:26:15 Speaker 00 Shogun.
1:26:15 Andy Greenwald? Shogun. So now we're up to number four.
1:26:17 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:26:17 Speaker 00 Should we do a brief recap of our?
1:26:19 Chris Ryan? Yeah, so for my number five was Shorzy, number six was English teacher, number seven was Landman and Lioness, number eight's Black Doves, number nine is Tell Me Lies, and number 10 was Tokyo Vice.
1:26:31 Andy Greenwald? I also think you, in the middle, doing a recap backwards may have been the single most confusing way to do a recap. So I'm proud of us. People keeping it home with their bingo cards being like, I'm clear on Greenwald and Gaia, but-
1:26:45 Chris Ryan? What's Chris doing?
1:26:46 Andy Greenwald? But in what order is he doing them? Okay, so mine, counting down from 10, was Three Body Problem, Presumed Innocent, Black Doves, Everybody's in L.A., Mr. and Mrs. Smith, English Teacher.
1:26:57 Chris Ryan? Uh huh.
1:26:57 Andy Greenwald? Now we're on the precipice of four.
1:26:59 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:26:59 Speaker 00 Mine, counting down from 10, was Hacks, The Bear, Nobody Wants This, Everybody's in L.A., English Teacher, Shogun.
1:27:07 Chris Ryan? Okay, and my counting down from 10, since you guys want to be particular, Tokyo Vice, Tell Me Lies, Black Doves, Landman, Lioness, uh, English Teacher and Shorzy.
1:27:16 Andy Greenwald? Doesn't hit right for me when you go that way.
1:27:17 Chris Ryan? Yeah, you want me to go descending?
1:27:19 Andy Greenwald? I do.
1:27:19 Chris Ryan? Um, what's your number four?
1:27:21 Andy Greenwald? Okay, now we're into the biggest guns for me. Uh, number four was Say Nothing.
1:27:24 Chris Ryan? My number four was Say Nothing. Great.
1:27:25 Speaker 00 That was my number three.
1:27:26 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:27:27 Andy Greenwald? Well, we just did an entire podcast about this last week, so we don't need to get-
1:27:31 Speaker 00 I just binged, like, all of it in one weekend.
1:27:33 Andy Greenwald? Maybe we need to hear your, hear you talk about it.
1:27:35 Speaker 00 Yeah, I had to get ready.
1:27:36 Andy Greenwald? But like, Say Nothing is just a staggering, staggering achievement that, um-
1:27:41 Speaker 00 What a cool show.
1:27:41 Chris Ryan? Man, fucking rocked. I loved that show.
1:27:44 Andy Greenwald? Like, but I just, let's just take that reaction for a second. Like, this is a heavy, heavy, heavy subject matter-
1:27:51 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:27:51 Andy Greenwald? -to try to wrestle.
1:27:52 Chris Ryan? It's two shows in one. It is a thrilling coming-of-age show set against incredibly tumultuous background and a very, very serious reckoning with that coming-of-age. And that is, to do those two things in nine episodes is amazing.
1:28:08 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, and I, and I continue to think that the secret sauce in all of this is having a plan from the beginning and having confidence in executing in it. And you don't feel the wobbles in this. You don't feel any- Blinking or pressure about like, do I, am I going to get this historically right? Although they did worry about that and they did do a lot of, spend a lot of time attending to the history and, and, and making sure that it was a rigorous adaption of both reality and Patrick Radenkeef's book of the same title. But what you also feel is that the creative team, whether it's director Michael Lennox or Josh the Tumor, who was the adapter and showrunner of the show, the team at Color Force FX, is that they understood the show that they wanted to make, that they were not
1:28:49 Andy Greenwald? making a documentary to educate people who happened to have Hulu about the troubles. They wanted to make a show that moved to the beat of punk rock drums about being young and becoming obsessed with something and then the cost of it. And to do that across nine episodes was dazzling. And I, I said we weren't going to talk more about it, but I think we-
1:29:09 Chris Ryan? That was a good, that's a very good summary.
1:29:10 Andy Greenwald? It's important to talk about. This show is wild and I feel like it got dumped as a binge and it's end of the year and it might get overlooked and it-
1:29:17 Chris Ryan? So that was four, four and three for you?
1:29:19 Speaker 00 Yes.
1:29:19 Andy Greenwald? What was your weekend experience like with the show? Was it intense? It's an intense show.
1:29:23 Speaker 00 Yeah, it was a lot. It was like one of those things where I spent so much time watching it yesterday that when I went to bed last night, I just like could not get it out of my head. And it's just like incredibly like well plotted. Like I never was as, something that like bugged me with Lioness is that like a lot of times-
1:29:42 Andy Greenwald? I mean, in other ways, similar shows.
1:29:45 Speaker 00 I'm just like, where are we going? What are we doing here? Like, why are we like-
1:29:50 Chris Ryan? Iran.
1:29:51 Speaker 00 Yeah, why?
1:29:51 Chris Ryan? Gotcha.
1:29:52 Speaker 00 Right. But with Say Nothing, it's like, I felt like, yeah, there was such, just such a confidence in the-
1:29:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah. When they jump forward on Say Nothing, you're like, oh God, this is so impressive that you're doing this.
1:30:03 Andy Greenwald? Not to be glib.
1:30:05 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:30:05 Andy Greenwald? But Marion Price would be an incredible lioness.
1:30:07 Speaker 00 True.
1:30:09 Andy Greenwald? Don't you think?
1:30:09 Speaker 00 Well, maybe they would have gone-
1:30:11 Chris Ryan? I think it would have gone in a couple of different directions. So that is four, four, three. And your four was-
1:30:17 Speaker 00 My four is One Day, which was on Netflix.
1:30:19 Andy Greenwald? Talk about it.
1:30:20 Chris Ryan? God damn.
1:30:20 Andy Greenwald? It's a charming show. I checked it out. Not on your recommendation.
1:30:25 Chris Ryan? No, I, what are you talking about? Yeah.
1:30:28 Speaker 00 What a lovely, like, beautiful sentimental show, foregrounded by like two incredible, like, two people who are incredible young talent, who I think are going to have like very cool careers to watch, Leo Woodall and Mbika Maad.
1:30:43 Chris Ryan? And Leo Woodall, we would have seen last season on?
1:30:45 Speaker 00 White Lotus, yes. He was the nephew.
1:30:48 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:30:48 Speaker 00 And I think-
1:30:48 Andy Greenwald? The laddish nephew. Different, very different performance, I would say.
1:30:52 Speaker 00 And so it's an adaptation of a book, which has already been adapted into a movie. And I actually haven't seen the movie. I think it stars Anne Hathaway.
1:31:00 Chris Ryan? Yep.
1:31:01 Speaker 00 Written by David Nichols. I think he was the executive producer on this as well. And then Nicole Taylor, I think, was the main writer. And it takes place across 10 years, 10 episodes. Each episode is one day, July 10th, I think. And just like Scotland looks cool, London looks cool. It's like extremely heartfelt without ever feeling like melancholy.
1:31:25 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:31:25 Speaker 00 Minus like maybe the end is quite a tearjerker, but yeah. I just, I always have this, rom-com shows are always going to have a soft spot.
1:31:33 Andy Greenwald? And they're hard to do.
1:31:33 Speaker 00 They are.
1:31:34 Chris Ryan? I really hate to say it, but we are kind of like making a, we are really making a case for Netflix in this, in this top 10. In terms of like-
1:31:41 Andy Greenwald? I find this interesting. It's revealing.
1:31:43 Chris Ryan? Watching all of us sort of perk up when we're like, and then I watched all of it. And we're like, you know, like these different event series and then also just like series that really caught our attention.
1:31:52 Andy Greenwald? I mean, this is Netflix's strategy is to flood the zone and then to be as close to be like a B, B+. And if they're lucky, A in as many categories as possible. And it's really interesting. I mean, again, their goal is to have every user have a perfectly bespoke experience.
1:32:08 Speaker 00 Right.
1:32:09 Andy Greenwald? But they hit. And when they hit across, you know, even if they just hit five, six, seven things, look how, yeah, look how we're, look how we're responding to those five, six, seven things. And it's like all the dross fades away.
1:32:20 Speaker 00 You know what's also on Netflix? Every single season of Fear the Walking Dead.
1:32:25 Andy Greenwald? Wow, Kay.
1:32:26 Chris Ryan? That's not your number one, is it?
1:32:29 Andy Greenwald? This is a crushing listen for the team at Peacock. Who tune in every week for Kaya to be like, guys.
1:32:35 Chris Ryan? I was listening to a group chat the other day and Waz was talking about how he goes to bed every night watching Blue Bloods, that show on CBS. And there is like a kind of like, your personal championship belt, like yours is definitely Fear the Walking Dead. Mine is probably Law and Order SVU. Waz's is Blue Bloods, but the show you're like, now that everything else is over.
1:32:55 Speaker 00 Right.
1:32:55 Andy Greenwald? That's been Detroiters for me, which has been on Netflix.
1:32:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:32:59 Andy Greenwald? We're all cogs, aren't we?
1:33:01 Chris Ryan? So, say nothing, say nothing, say nothing, and one day is Kaya's four or three?
1:33:06 Speaker 00 Four.
1:33:06 Chris Ryan? Okay, so, what's your number three?
1:33:08 Andy Greenwald? Shogun.
1:33:09 Chris Ryan? My number three is Shogun. This is gonna be boring.
1:33:11 Speaker 00 That was my number five.
1:33:11 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:33:13 Andy Greenwald? A lot of time has passed since the show was on the air and I feel like that has kind of, maybe, when I was revisiting shows for this list, I thought, I was like, well, it can't have been as good as we thought it was. So the experience wasn't as fun as we remember it being and maybe some of these late breakers will jump ahead of it. And then I went back and I watched some of it and I remember that this is fucking astonishing accomplishment. Again, when we, when we, literally people like us, the three of us, engage with shows, we are watching it for our personal engagement, but I do think we are also watching it with an attempt to hold a finger in the air to see where the winds are blowing and how strong those winds are and can those winds sustain careers for another couple of years before retirement? Sorry.
1:33:52 Andy Greenwald? Shogun was so thrilling because we had talked about it for years, saying, and FX keeps throwing money at this weird old piece of IP that maybe was a smart zag when...
1:34:03 Chris Ryan? It was gonna be Ronan Bennett who wound up doing Dave the Jackal, you know, like...
1:34:07 Andy Greenwald? But just it's felt like a, like it felt like a 2017, 2018 John Landgraf head of FX zag, being like, ah, the epic mini-series has been unexplored and we're gonna bring that back. And then you suddenly you're on the cusp of it finally coming out after many years and delays and completely different creative team and at great cost. And then it's like, oh, and it's also maybe a corrective to the beloved mini-series, that it's maybe in some way reacting to that and making, you know, centering the Japanese story and it's mostly in a different language and we don't know any of these actors and is that guy doing a Tom Hardy impression and really what's even going on here? And all of that went away because it is a timeless, sweeping, melodramatic, but deeply emotional story that does what TV does best, entertain people, it took them out of their homes and it made stars.
1:34:52 Chris Ryan? You just illuminated, elucidated a way in which it's like the epic version of English teacher. You know, it's like the same kind of thing where you're bringing like all these new faces to us. I mean, obviously, Anissa Wise on Pachinko, you can see, you know, like a lot of these people in different places. But every decision that they made wound up working out. And if any of these decisions had gone wrong.
1:35:17 Andy Greenwald? Oh, my God.
1:35:18 Chris Ryan? It kind of would have been unwatchable. Do you know what I mean? Like even the decision to have Portuguese be English or to have, you know, whether we're gonna have Cosmos, the Blackthorn character be, how far can we get him from the center of the story? But still have him be a part of it. Like, there are so many different things. The execution of certain battle sequences and certain action set pieces was absolutely top notch.
1:35:43 Andy Greenwald? But as was the underplaying of certain battle sequences.
1:35:45 Chris Ryan? Yeah, of course.
1:35:46 Andy Greenwald? Which could have been in less sure hands. You could have been like, oh, that's FX budget in Vancouver for you. Instead of being like, holy shit, look at FX's budget in Vancouver. Credit to Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, husband and wife team, who shepherded this. And as they said, when they came on our podcast in April, like, had zero children when they started this show and now have two thriving children, having made the show. And it'll be an interesting test case because this is a project that has now straddled a number of different TV eras, including moving in real time from a limited event series into an ongoing series that won the Emmy for Best Drama Series. What is season two of Shogun gonna look like? They're going literally off book.
1:36:27 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:36:28 Andy Greenwald? It's exciting to think about.
1:36:30 Speaker 00 My only thing to add is, can I put a show on my list for giving me my favorite pod moment of the year? Which is Andy's Blackthorn impression?
1:36:39 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah.
1:36:40 Andy Greenwald? That was fun.
1:36:41 Chris Ryan? Yeah, you were good at that. Did you do that for Justin and Rachel when we did?
1:36:46 Andy Greenwald? I don't, no, I don't think I did it on air.
1:36:49 Chris Ryan? I think they were definitely like, we are aware of this.
1:36:50 Andy Greenwald? We got, they were very aware. We definitely get feedback. We should say of all the many ombuds people who are nice enough to respond to our feelings about shows and the podcast, the FX team is very trigger happy. They are ready to respond. But I think that one thing with the Blackthorn imitation is that, from what I understand, many people involved in the production had been honing Blackthorn imitations. So mine was just one of many.
1:37:13 Speaker 00 I mean.
1:37:13 Andy Greenwald? But thank you, Kaya. Maybe if I had recommended Three Body Problem in a Blackthorn voice, you would have stuck with it.
1:37:20 Chris Ryan? Okay, so that's your number three, Andy. That's my number three. That's your number?
1:37:26 Speaker 00 Five.
1:37:26 Chris Ryan? Five. Andy, what's your number two?
1:37:29 Andy Greenwald? My number two, I want you to talk about for us. But my number two is Ripley on Netflix. Is that your number one?
1:37:35 Chris Ryan? Yeah. Nice.
1:37:37 Andy Greenwald? Should we just wait for you? Let's wait. Let's talk about it as your number one.
1:37:40 Chris Ryan? So what's your?
1:37:41 Speaker 00 My number two was Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
1:37:43 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:37:43 Speaker 00 So.
1:37:44 Chris Ryan? All right. I think we're gonna have the same but flipped, right?
1:37:48 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, so why don't you take the lead?
1:37:49 Chris Ryan? For Ripley?
1:37:50 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
1:37:50 Chris Ryan? Okay. Ripley's my number one show of the year. I think, I was trying to think of like, new ways to talk about a series that I've talked about quite a bit, but I think if I had to boil it down to anything, it was a series that took chances. In taking a chance in casting Andrew Scott, who some people might have thought was a little too old to play Tom Ripley, the Ripley that they had in their head, shooting in black and white, Robert Elswit's extraordinary black and white photography, trapping us very closely to Ripley's sociopathic POV and kind of living in that mind state for that many episodes. Showing us a different side of Highsmith. I think if you've watched the Anthony Mahala
1:38:31 Chris Ryan? adaptation of Talented Mr. Ripley, you'd be like, oh, the lush, beautiful, romantic scenes.
1:38:38 Andy Greenwald? Jude Love playing a horn.
1:38:39 Chris Ryan? The Mediterranean and jazz clubs. And this is like, there are six people left in post-war Europe and they're all trying to destroy each other. Mike Hale from the Times described this as Antonioni or Alan Rene making White Lotus. And I thought that that was like a very well, well put way of describing the high art execution of low pulp story. This is about a con man who was trying to insinuate himself into the lives of wealthy people in Europe after World War II. And it's just a totality of vision. The way it looked, the way the performances all interlocked, Scott's performance is absolutely towering. I didn't think.
1:39:21 Chris Ryan? I didn't think that there really needed to be another version of this show, of this story.
1:39:25 Andy Greenwald? Right.
1:39:25 Chris Ryan? And now I like, I'm heartbroken at the idea that Zalian might not make more.
1:39:30 Andy Greenwald? Yep.
1:39:30 Chris Ryan? Highsmith novels. And it had a real idea about the world. I think it had a real idea about what it takes for people to climb this sort of socio-economic ladder. What that does to someone's psyche to be constantly kind of scraping and pulling and covering their own tracks. And I just thought it was a truly unique and beautiful piece of work.
1:39:51 Andy Greenwald? I think it's impossible to argue against that point. I think, I mean, it's my number two. It was a coin flip. There may never be more, a series of more beautiful images.
1:40:01 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:40:01 Andy Greenwald? On screen. Anytime in the last 15 years when anyone said into a microphone that TV is the new movies, this is the best case scenario for that. It is absolutely jaw dropping. And the fact that it left some people cold or some people checked out or.
1:40:18 Chris Ryan? It's not for everyone. I understand. Yeah.
1:40:20 Andy Greenwald? I understand that it's not for everyone, but I just think objectively, it needs to be hung in a museum.
1:40:24 Chris Ryan? Sure.
1:40:25 Andy Greenwald? Then subjectively, it fucking rules. It is both excruciating and thrilling in equal measure.
1:40:31 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:40:31 Andy Greenwald? And has shots and images and moments that I cannot stop thinking about. And I think ultimately, the reason why I didn't put it at number one was just because it was so exactingly executed. It, and precise that it felt not TV. It is the best case for this type of TV, but ultimately for what I want to celebrate on a list like this is something that is going to continue on and that is a little bit more malleable, which also means lower lows potentially. If not, sometimes the feeling of chasing a higher high. It's a super bummer that it seems unlikely that we'll get more of this, but it is a just a stunning and pretty perfect visual statement.
1:41:13 Speaker 00 I only got through like, not that I didn't want to finish it, I just only ended up getting through three episodes at the time of this recording, but the three I did watch, I absolutely loved.
1:41:23 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:41:24 Speaker 00 Andrew Scott, I think, can really just like do anything.
1:41:26 Chris Ryan? He's amazing. It was just a really like a, you should watch it alone just for him and to watch him sort of go from a guy doing forgeries in a cold water flat.
1:41:36 Speaker 00 It's like facial acting in this show is like his like, you can read like his disgust for like everyone around him and yet like needing to be like in their orbit is like kind of incredible.
1:41:46 Andy Greenwald? It's the hungriest performance I ever remember seeing. I also just want to amend what you said. You should not watch this alone. It doesn't feel good to watch the show alone, but it's an exceptional, exceptional show.
1:41:58 Chris Ryan? Greenwald, what is your?
1:42:00 Andy Greenwald? Wait, so we have, are we, have we finished?
1:42:02 Chris Ryan? That's your number two. That's not on your list. What's your number two?
1:42:05 Speaker 00 My number two was Mr. and Mrs. Smith. So we did that. My number one, I think Andy and I might be aligned.
1:42:12 Chris Ryan? And that's not my number two. It's industry, right?
1:42:13 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:42:14 Chris Ryan? It's industry. Look at us. I will say for, despite putting this as the number two show of the year, and it really is like a coin toss to me, it's the series of the decade. It's improving with every season. It's able to mix and match its main characters and supporting characters and make one the other, you know? The ability to push Yaz into a kind of protagonist role this season. Uh, take Rishi, who's essentially doing ADR bits in the first season and then give him his own episode this season. Uh, the addition of Kit Harington.
1:42:50 Speaker 00 Which almost felt like an afterthought because it's like this season was so packed and so good.
1:42:55 Chris Ryan? He's really like the star of the first half of the season and then vanishes until like the last the end of it. Yeah.
1:43:00 Andy Greenwald? But also it, it, it isn't like a let's drop a star into the middle of the show to save it.
1:43:04 Chris Ryan? No, he's like, I want to, please let me play.
1:43:06 Andy Greenwald? Please hang me in your constellation and let me do what I need to do to reflect light. It's, it's a wild, wild thing. And I, I, I feel like, but I was, I've said versions of this throughout this very long podcast, but like, if you ask me what types, what do I want to be able to experience when I have television? To watch. One of them would be like a comedy that makes me feel at home, like English teacher. One would be a really, really aesthetically driven and personally curated historical vision. And that was Say Nothing. One was a fucking epic that like takes me away that only television can do.
1:43:39 Chris Ryan? And that's Three Body Problem.
1:43:39 Andy Greenwald? And that was Three Body Problem. One was a show primarily about, yeah, and one would, and that was Shogun. And then in terms of like, give me movies the way I imagine them in my head and give me the maximum version of it. It would be Ripley. But what I truly, truly love more than anything else in this crazy fucked up medium is a show that changes, evolves, metamorphizes and gets better and better as it gets deeper and deeper. That takes us on a journey we were not expecting with people we'd never met before. And continues to push until you find new layers of soil underneath where we began this journey. And yes, like I think, I know exactly what you mean when you say industry is the show of the decade. And it's also the show of, in many ways, the show of the decade for this pod.
1:44:24 Andy Greenwald? I would twin it with The Bear in that sense, in that we, look, hearts on our sleeves. Like, we like to be taken on a journey with both characters and creators. And to, to experience something from the ground up, and that is a saying that other industry lovers weren't with us.
1:44:39 Speaker 00 Why do you guys think that people got on board with this season in particular?
1:44:44 Chris Ryan? I think it might have connected with younger people a little bit. I don't know, demographically speaking, like it, it does seem like the overall vibe of the show replaced Euphoria as much as it replaced Succession and that people really enjoyed.
1:44:59 Andy Greenwald? Or that it drew from both.
1:45:00 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:45:00 Andy Greenwald? Drove both fanbases. I, I think.
1:45:03 Chris Ryan? I also think that there's just, this is how it's supposed to work. Is that for three years, people are like, have you seen Industry? Have you seen Industry? Have you seen Industry? And finally, people are like, you know what? I caught up and I love this new season.
1:45:14 Andy Greenwald? And, you know, it's, it's an example of a creative team meeting the moment. Like, it's not just that the world cut up to Industry. The third season is exponentially better than the second season, which was exponentially better than the first season. And I loved all three seasons.
1:45:26 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:45:28 Andy Greenwald? The degree, like, there were episodes in this third season that like the, the old Passover Dayenu problem, where I'm like, that would have been enough. That whole episode was almost a season in terms of the journey that you took me on with Ken Lung's character, or the journey you took me on with Rishi, and yet then there were more episodes, or sometimes, and we talked about this at the time, there was a little bit more cocktail left in the sidecar for you to just continue enjoying.
1:45:52 Chris Ryan? Right.
1:45:52 Andy Greenwald? They, it is so hard to get anything made.
1:45:56 Speaker 00 And it never feels overstuffed, you know?
1:45:59 Andy Greenwald? It's rich.
1:46:00 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:46:00 Andy Greenwald? But it's never overstuffed, and it is so hard to get anything made in this business, and it's even harder to get anything made well, that it is inspiring and exciting to see people, in this case, Mickey and Conrad, the creators, and certainly friends of the pod, take full advantage of what's in front of them and not leave any scrap on the table, and not leave any plot thread untugged. You know, one of the things that is exciting going forward is, like, there were choices in that last episode of the third season that I was like, what the fuck? And I'm still a little bit on the fence about.
1:46:31 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:46:31 Andy Greenwald? But I love that they went there. I mean, they directed those episodes. They went high, like Brideshead Revisited, they filmed in the house where Howard's End was filmed. It took on a completely different visual and emotional language.
1:46:45 Speaker 00 It got like romantic at the end, when it's like, industry is not something you think of a show as like a romantic.
1:46:51 Chris Ryan? Deeply romantic, yeah.
1:46:52 Andy Greenwald? They could fall completely on their faces next season. I don't think they will, based on their talents and, you know, they're talking about how they want the next season to be Michael Clayton, so I feel like this podcast will remain resolutely in their corner.
1:47:04 Speaker 00 I mean, if they keep making the show specifically for you two, then...
1:47:06 Andy Greenwald? It's gonna help, no question. But like, it is kind of what you want to hear, and everyone gives it lip service, but you rarely see it in practice, which is, we're gonna leave it all out in the field.
1:47:17 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:47:18 Andy Greenwald? Every time. And I find that thrilling. And it's just crazy that of all the shows we've covered, or got excited about, or took a chance on, or we're like, the vibes are good, that this is the last show standing, and not just the last show standing on our list, but like, this is the ongoing drama series of the moment, right?
1:47:34 Chris Ryan? That's what I mean by show of the decade, you know what I mean? Like, I think that this will have a similar issue that I think The Bear is, where like, its cast is rated to go do movies and it's already happening, but I think that this series, unlike The Bear... Does not have like a central question it needs to answer.
1:47:51 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
1:47:52 Chris Ryan? It has like this like, this is Conrad K. and Mickey Down's notebook. This is what they're interested in. This is the kind of stories they want to tell. These characters right now fit that. You could, there is an industry with like different people.
1:48:06 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
1:48:07 Chris Ryan? You know what I mean? Like they have shown that they can kind of add and subtract. So I'm really fascinated to see about how long this runs and what the next season holds. We should try and get to some honorable mentions, right?
1:48:17 Andy Greenwald? Just the last thing to say, this business is so fucked up and every, every development executive is still chasing, trying to get ER again, and they're trying to get Law and Order again, and they're trying to get Game of Thrones again. But the most inspiring and exciting, and I do think eventually award winning return on investment shows are The Bear and Industry.
1:48:34 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:48:34 Andy Greenwald? And you cannot pregame those. You cannot like galaxy brain design them. You can invest in younger creators. You can give them the space to develop and the kindness and the nudging to shape something and then give them some runway to try and fail. And those are the hardest things for anyone in management to do.
1:48:54 Chris Ryan? For sure.
1:48:55 Andy Greenwald? I wish they would try more.
1:48:56 Chris Ryan? Okay, let's just do like two honorable mentions each.
1:48:59 Andy Greenwald? Okay.
1:49:01 Chris Ryan? Or a couple, just name a couple, yeah.
1:49:03 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, I feel like some of them have already been covered. The Bear obviously was an honorable mention for me. Monsieur Spade probably would have been in my top 10, but it's less, less, less clickable.
1:49:13 Chris Ryan? Uh huh.
1:49:14 Andy Greenwald? Everything that I want is Scott Frank doing a detective story with Clive Owen. I thought it fell apart kind of at the end, but I loved the attempt. I always am here for Slow Horses. I'm always here for The Boys. I'm always here for What We Do in the Shadows and would just continue my apology tour.
1:49:28 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:49:28 Andy Greenwald? For not sticking with it through thick and thin.
1:49:31 Chris Ryan? Kai, what about you?
1:49:32 Speaker 00 Want to shout out Bad Sisters, season two?
1:49:34 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:49:35 Speaker 00 Which it was set up with like, I think it faced a problem at the end of season one where it's like, what do you do when the central, central plot point we had for season one is now gone?
1:49:46 Andy Greenwald? That the sisters were bad.
1:49:47 Speaker 00 And I think they've, I think they've navigated that.
1:49:49 Chris Ryan? It turns out they are though. Yeah.
1:49:50 Speaker 00 I think they've navigated that well by bringing in Fiona Shaw. When in doubt, bring in Fiona Shaw. And I think that'll solve a lot of problems for you, but I think I'm like midway through the season, second season and still a joy to watch. And then I also wanted to shout out somebody somewhere.
1:50:05 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:50:05 Speaker 00 It's also final season.
1:50:06 Andy Greenwald? I didn't watch the final season. Would you, would you consider the agency since it's just, we're only like a couple of episodes in?
1:50:10 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I think it's like four. I really feel like that's going to be one that needs to be evaluated at the end of the season. I would add, so True Detective Night Country, you mentioned My Lady Jane on Amazon was canceled after one season, but Gemma Burgess's show was fantastic. If you haven't seen it, you should check it out. I also agree with you. Three Body Problems, Your Spade, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Bear. I guess I would throw like Masters of the Air on there as like a totality of the experience and the highs of House of the Dragon were high for me. There were, there were episodes of House of the Dragon that I thought were really great, but we covered everything pretty much. We should probably wrap it up there. It's been a long one. Kaya, thank you so much for your top 10.
1:50:47 Speaker 00 Thanks for having me, guys.
1:50:48 Andy Greenwald? Thank you for breaking your YouTube embargo. We are thrilled to see you.
1:50:51 Chris Ryan? We will be back later in the week with our episode of the year episode and we'll talk to you guys soon.
1:50:56 Andy Greenwald? Is it gonna be sugar?
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