Netflix Would Like to Remind You It's Still Prestige. Plus, ‘American Primeval’ and ‘The Pitt’ Takes the Leap.

Chris and Andy talk about Netflix’s slate of shows for 2025 that the streamer presented at a glitzy conference this week (1:00) and how Netflix would like to remind its audience that it has something for everyone—including prestige TV (16:33). Then they talk about a recent report from Parrot Analytics that claimed that ‘Severance’ has made Apple $200 million (26:20). Finally, they discuss the very dark finale of ‘American Primeval’ (35:42) and why ‘The Pitt’ has taken the leap with its fourth episode (46:56). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Senior Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Production: Jon Jones and Stefano Sanchez Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  What's up everybody, Chris Vernon here and welcome to a new season of the NBA and The Mismatch. And huge welcome as well to my new co-host, Dave Jacoby.

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:01Speaker 04

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• 1:32Andy Greenwald?

  I need sports staff to clear the room.

• 1:35Speaker 00

  Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. Joining me in the studio, already deep in his hurricane training, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 1:51Andy Greenwald?

  Look at the way you dig deep for the enthusiasm.

• 1:53Speaker 00

  I mean like drinking hurricanes constantly because you're getting ready to go to New Orleans for the Super Bowl.

• 1:59Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I just assumed you were referencing a show that you thought I'd watched.

• 2:02Speaker 00

  No.

• 2:03Andy Greenwald?

  Or that maybe like Amazon Prime had announced some sort of like University of Miami like...

• 2:11Chris Ryan?

  You know that I was nearly a Kane, right?

• 2:14Andy Greenwald?

  Let's talk about it.

• 2:15Chris Ryan?

  Uh, when I was in high school, I was not the most diligent student.

• 2:21Andy Greenwald?

  You had, you had, you had a busy, busy schedule.

• 2:23Chris Ryan?

  You were going to Brown.

• 2:25Andy Greenwald?

  Not in high school.

• 2:26Chris Ryan?

  I was trying to get into the U. We are not the same.

• 2:30Andy Greenwald?

  First of all, we are contemporaries.

• 2:32Chris Ryan?

  We literally are the same.

• 2:34Andy Greenwald?

  So, so there was a fork in the road is what you're saying, and I was.

• 2:38Chris Ryan?

  Two boys went through Quaker school. One came out and read 17th century epistolary novels.

• 2:45Andy Greenwald?

  18th century, but I'll allow it.

• 2:46Chris Ryan?

  Ivy Leagues. And the other

• 2:50Chris Ryan?

  joined Willis McGate and Clinton Portis.

• 2:54Andy Greenwald?

  To be clear, you were trying to be a D1 athlete. Uh, is that why? Was it the cult? What, what attracted you to University of Miami? Was it the football culture?

• 3:03Chris Ryan?

  I, I was under the impression that they had a good film school, which back in 1995 was more of a word of mouth kind of thing. You know, like it was, it was not like you could compare and contrast these things.

• 3:13Andy Greenwald?

  Who did you talk to? Some guy at TLA Video?

• 3:18Andy Greenwald?

  That was his coursework? Do you think you would have done well in Miami? You're a fair, fairly.

• 3:23Chris Ryan?

  The idea was like my grandmother lived in West Palm, so that like.

• 3:27Andy Greenwald?

  Basically the same thing.

• 3:28Chris Ryan?

  It was basically like if in the case of emergency, like I could drive there or she could come get me.

• 3:33Andy Greenwald?

  I had, I had lunch with, uh, someone from Miami the other day and I pulled the, yeah, I used, I like Florida. Like, where'd you spend time? I was like Palm Beach. And it was like blink, blink, blink.

• 3:43Chris Ryan?

  Because there was like Mar-a-Lago or because?

• 3:45Andy Greenwald?

  Well, first of all, yes, but I wasn't a member. I was just a guest. No, I just feel like there's Florida and then there's visiting your grandparents in Palm Beach. I feel like those are different experiences.

• 3:55Chris Ryan?

  Well, we just did before sunrise on the rewatchables. And so I've just been thinking about like, you know, those moments that change everything. And for me, it's not going to the U.

• 4:04Andy Greenwald?

  Who do you think you'd be today? If you had gone to the U.

• 4:07Chris Ryan?

  What if I was exactly the same?

• 4:09Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly the same?

• 4:10Chris Ryan?

  Do you think that's the power of my personality is it just would have?

• 4:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it would have been a different.

• 4:14Chris Ryan?

  Migrated north like a, like a, like a bird.

• 4:17Andy Greenwald?

  It's incredible. What are we going to talk about today?

• 4:18Chris Ryan?

  Uh, okay. I wanted to do a couple of things. There was a big Hollywood Reporter story about Netflix's huge summit that they had. Basically they're upfront, right?

• 4:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and we can talk about why they did it the way they did it.

• 4:28Chris Ryan?

  I kinda wanted to just kinda take a, not 10,000 foot, maybe an 8,000 foot view.

• 4:34Andy Greenwald?

  I don't do well with.

• 4:34Chris Ryan?

  Of what people are watching right now and what I'm watching, what you're watching. Cause like we're talking about, we've been talking about American Primeval and Pitt and Severance more in depth, the agency and stuff like that just passed, but. I kinda wanted to just get a sense of what's on right now. So I thought I would talk a little bit about that. I wanted to ask you a Severance question, but we don't have to get too lost in the weeds in it. And then we have, episodes four and five. So this episode is going up on Thursday at 6:00 PM Pacific, 9:00 PM Eastern. So sorry for your.

• 5:01Andy Greenwald?

  Commute?

• 5:01Chris Ryan?

  My New York, Philly, Boston, Acela heads who are hoping to listen to this a little earlier. But we wanted to talk about the fifth episode of the pit. And then also we'll talk about the end of American primeval. And the only reason I laugh is because.

• 5:14Andy Greenwald?

  It's awesome.

• 5:15Chris Ryan?

  The only thing more depressing than the front page of the newspaper is the end of American.

• 5:20Andy Greenwald?

  It's really true. Talk about reading the moment. Okay. Before we get into it, can I say, remind people, cause we said it at the end of the last pod, that we're doing a charity podcast or we're participating in our friend Mina Kimes's.

• 5:30Chris Ryan?

  Benefit pod, yeah.

• 5:31Andy Greenwald?

  Benefit podcast.

• 5:31Chris Ryan?

  Live pod.

• 5:32Andy Greenwald?

  Live pod this coming Monday.

• 5:34Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 5:34Andy Greenwald?

  Here in LA. If you're in LA, tickets are still available. Proceeds go to wildfire relief. Minapodlive.com.

• 5:42Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 5:42Andy Greenwald?

  Is the website.

• 5:43Chris Ryan?

  Come see us.

• 5:44Andy Greenwald?

  I think people should come see us.

• 5:45Chris Ryan?

  I don't, have we ever done an LA show before?

• 5:47Andy Greenwald?

  We did some Thrones shows at Largo.

• 5:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And we're, this is Mina's show. We're just.

• 5:54Andy Greenwald?

  Sometimes I felt like when you and I have had dinner, we've kind of cheated out a little bit towards the dining room to welcome people in with just some of our personal commentary. Maybe that was just me. So I feel like we've played to the room, but this would otherwise be our first, like, like real public, public show.

• 6:10Chris Ryan?

  I did a, a show last night with Yasi, Rob Harvilla and Sean Fantasy.

• 6:15Andy Greenwald?

  How'd that go? Where was it? Tell me about it.

• 6:17Chris Ryan?

  Drafted soundtracks at the lodge room for, for the 60 songs band spleen show. It was great.

• 6:21Andy Greenwald?

  Nice. What'd you end up with? What was your?

• 6:23Chris Ryan?

  I actually think.

• 6:24Andy Greenwald?

  Did you come in with an agenda?

• 6:25Chris Ryan?

  I had like a really solid collection of soundtracks, but uh, you know, that, that was, it was Yasi and Rob's night.

• 6:33Andy Greenwald?

  Who, who got Judgment Night?

• 6:35Chris Ryan?

  Nobody.

• 6:36Andy Greenwald?

  Really?

• 6:36Chris Ryan?

  Shockingly, yeah. I think we out-thought ourselves. I will say, just while we're here,

• 6:42Chris Ryan?

  is Judgment Night a little top-heavy?

• 6:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, yes. Judgment Night, for people who don't know, which is, I would imagine, 80% of our listenership, this was weirdly a huge event. There is a completely forgettable action film called Judgment Night.

• 6:56Chris Ryan?

  More of a thriller.

• 6:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I don't, you're, you're the movie guy. I don't know.

• 7:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:01Andy Greenwald?

  The hook was that for the soundtrack,

• 7:05Andy Greenwald?

  the music supervisor paired alternative rock acts of the day with hip-hop acts of the day, resulting in collaborations like Teenage Fanclub and De La Soul, I believe? Am I mixing things up? Sonic Youth?

• 7:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Teenage Fanclub and De La Soul. Fallen.

• 7:19Andy Greenwald?

  That's so good.

• 7:22Andy Greenwald?

  And I feel like for-

• 7:23Chris Ryan?

  With a Tom Petty sample.

• 7:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Free Fallen would be the sample. Yeah, I feel like for people like us, just young, aspiring, walk-on, redshirt safeties in D1 football of the 90s, this was like kind of a self-identifier. To say that you were into this record, or like liked both sides of the equation was, that was like our identity.

• 7:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:44Andy Greenwald?

  Wasn't it? And no one drafted it?

• 7:46Chris Ryan?

  Uh, nobody drafted it. Yeah, I, I think we had to do it by decades. So it was 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s.

• 7:53Andy Greenwald?

  70s soundtracks?

• 7:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, tough.

• 7:55Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, scores, I guess you end up with.

• 7:57Chris Ryan?

  No, soundtracks. It had to be soundtracks.

• 7:59Andy Greenwald?

  So what are some classic?

• 8:01Chris Ryan?

  70s soundtracks?

• 8:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 8:02Chris Ryan?

  Grease, uh, Saturday Night Fever.

• 8:04Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, so like musicals?

• 8:05Chris Ryan?

  I got Mean Streets.

• 8:07Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 8:07Chris Ryan?

  You ever seen Mean Streets?

• 8:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, yes. Took me a second.

• 8:11Chris Ryan?

  Andy, um-

• 8:12Andy Greenwald?

  There, there, I do have a secret list, we'll move on, but I did, I do have a secret list of movies that I'm afraid you're gonna ask me about, that secretly I sometimes chip away at.

• 8:20Chris Ryan?

  Oh-

• 8:21Andy Greenwald?

  Mean Streets was on that list.

• 8:21Chris Ryan?

  Like almost the un-letterboxables? Because if you put it up on Letterboxd without saying, "Oh, I've seen this before," like you'd be like,

• 8:28Andy Greenwald?

  A million percent. Last night, I had the pleasure of going to see Wild at Heart at American Cinematec.

• 8:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you've seen all the Lynches, right?

• 8:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, but I have to be honest with you. I didn't remember a single frame of this film in practice, except for, this isn't really spoiler, because it's sort of a memorable scene that's like partitioned from the rest of the movie, but the car crash with Sherilyn Fen. I remembered that like in my bones every second of it because it was so disturbing. But other than that, I kind of remembered Nicolas Cage's whole thing.

• 9:03Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:03Andy Greenwald?

  And I remembered there was, you know, it's kind of a horny movie. I remember that because I was a young, I was a young fellow. You know, in my, if you, if you put, if you sort of like track my, my development in terms of like major moments and one of them being seeing Twin Peaks Fire Walk with Me alone in a theater in Paris with my parents at the age of 15, as kind of my like, that's my University of Miami story.

• 9:30Chris Ryan?

  With subtitles, subtitles, I assume, or with in English?

• 9:33Andy Greenwald?

  French subtitles.

• 9:34Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 9:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, which I looked at, you know, because that's.

• 9:37Chris Ryan?

  Well, you were trying to brush up on your conversation in French.

• 9:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Um, anyway, all this is to say, I have maybe passed the Rubicon of me saying I've seen it may no longer have any validity for.

• 9:50Chris Ryan?

  For Fire Walk with Me?

• 9:51Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, no, just generally for movies.

• 9:53Chris Ryan?

  Oh, for a movie.

• 9:53Andy Greenwald?

  Because I have seen Wild at Heart, but until I saw it last night, again, I was like, but have I at a certain point have, in the same way, like your skin layer sloughs off after seven years, I'm like, what? I, I retained almost nothing and it was like seeing it for the first time.

• 10:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:07Andy Greenwald?

  That's, that's just a me story. You can just sort of ruminate on that.

• 10:09Chris Ryan?

  I'll think about it.

• 10:10Andy Greenwald?

  Uh huh.

• 10:10Chris Ryan?

  Should we, let's talk a little bit about, let's talk about Netflix.

• 10:14Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 10:15Chris Ryan?

  Tell me a little bit about this event that they held where, uh, the stars of, of Holly Weird came out to hold hands and say, hey, like.

• 10:26Andy Greenwald?

  It's kind of interesting.

• 10:26Chris Ryan?

  This is the biggest game in town.

• 10:27Andy Greenwald?

  This time of year traditionally was the TCAs, which is when the Television Critics Association would have kind of a. A couple of days where their members from all over the country would come and

• 10:38Chris Ryan?

  This is usually where the land graph State of the Union would happen?

• 10:41Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and the utility of this event in the older days was that, you know, newspapers A existed, B had vibrant arts coverage and paid their critics. So TV critics from all over the country would gather. And if you were from a smaller market especially, you would have access to talent executives, the industry that you might not otherwise get. And you could kind of, you know, you could sort of grab and stock up on stories for the year to come, as well as like learning about the shows that were about to premiere. It seems like it just didn't happen this year. Shifting economics and not just on the newspaper side, but also networks and streamers being like, we're pausing production on priority shows. We're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to schlep everyone to Pasadena. By the way, get a ride with me.

• 11:26Andy Greenwald?

  That's my route. I could pick up a little extra.

• 11:30Chris Ryan?

  You're like the Taylor Kitsch of taking people to Pasadena.

• 11:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but it's like AMC.

• 11:35Chris Ryan?

  Just put your little head wrap on.

• 11:36Andy Greenwald?

  They're like, we can't afford anyone else but you. You know how to survive out here? That would be all right for me. Anyway, so Netflix, as they often do, sees a little market inefficiency and just fills the void and had their own big party at their headquarters in Hollywood where they, where Belvedere announced, basically took a victory lap, had a WWE belt and announced how they are going to continue dominating in 2025. And like there's definitely news came out of this. Like the Noah Baumbach movie, this wasn't the number one news. It's called Jay Kelly. That was not announced before.

• 12:12Chris Ryan?

  Which Fantasy and I briefly thought was named Jay Feely.

• 12:16Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah. Or so, did you like it more?

• 12:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 12:22Andy Greenwald?

  Or if it was like Joe Kelly and it's about the Dodgers swing man pitcher?

• 12:26Chris Ryan?

  Isn't that the guy who's like, I'll only play for the Dodgers?

• 12:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 12:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:29Andy Greenwald?

  That's, that's not a bad, I mean.

• 12:31Chris Ryan?

  Me too.

• 12:33Andy Greenwald?

  Right? That seems cool.

• 12:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:36Andy Greenwald?

  Seems like a cool way to be. I feel like we saw him get lit up when we went to a game this year.

• 12:41Chris Ryan?

  I mean, treasure that moment. It doesn't seem like that's gonna happen to the Dodgers very much.

• 12:44Andy Greenwald?

  Ever gonna happen again. Matt Damon, Ben Affleck movie directed by Joe Carnahan.

• 12:50Chris Ryan?

  Rip.

• 12:50Andy Greenwald?

  Rips.

• 12:51Chris Ryan?

  Ripped. Ripped.

• 12:52Andy Greenwald?

  Ripped?

• 12:53Chris Ryan?

  You know what it is? Is there was a Jeff Bridges movie that was called like R I P D.

• 12:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it's based on a Dark Horse comic, I believe.

• 13:01Chris Ryan?

  But this is not that. This is not like the same IP, right? This is about the two cops.

• 13:05Andy Greenwald?

  That was pronounced R I P D.

• 13:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. We have a bunch of stories about cops ripping people off coming. Everybody needs to get ready.

• 13:11Andy Greenwald?

  Why are you acting like this is a bad thing?

• 13:13Chris Ryan?

  I'm just saying.

• 13:14Andy Greenwald?

  That was the closest you've ever been to the Tim Robinson wearing the hot dog suit? We're all trying to find the guy who did this.

• 13:20Chris Ryan?

  Are there too many bank robbery stories?

• 13:22Andy Greenwald?

  If you got on this mic.

• 13:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:23Andy Greenwald?

  And concern trolled the industry about all these Philly-based stash house projects.

• 13:29Chris Ryan?

  I would never.

• 13:30Andy Greenwald?

  Ugh, what a shame. Yeah, and like, and other things like Squid Game Season 3 is coming much sooner, I think, than people maybe anticipated considering how long it took for Season 2. It's coming out in June 27th. Just a half year. Should we note that it's not one or the other? Neither of us have continued with Squid Game Season 2?

• 13:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Do you say that because you didn't want people to be like, oh, they're not talking about Squid Game because of Andy?

• 13:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 13:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I did not watch Squid Game. You know when I got to Episode 2 and I was like, I think I'm just, I think I'm okay with this story where it's at. I maybe I'll find time to do it, but for some reason, like, a bunch of other stuff came up.

• 14:10Andy Greenwald?

  You're also okay with ambiguity.

• 14:11Chris Ryan?

  I was doing my third watch of Enora, you know, just.

• 14:14Andy Greenwald?

  Just try to lap me. You, so you, neither of us have contributed really to the 4.92 billion minutes of viewing that Squid Game 2 racked up.

• 14:22Chris Ryan?

  Of Squid Game, no.

• 14:23Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway, you can, there's a long list of projects. It's total dominance, the new Knives Out movie, et cetera. But what I thought was interesting, interesting about it was, and maybe this is just, you tell me if you feel this is the case, but that the framing of it, at least in terms of the way the industry. Papers reported it was that despite everything, despite total cultural and financial dominance, and this is on the heels of Netflix adding a number, surprising number of subscribers again.

• 14:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:50Andy Greenwald?

  Raising prices.

• 14:50Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's not that surprising because of what they did differently in the last year, which is get into the live events business essentially.

• 14:56Andy Greenwald?

  Right. So, okay, it's not surprising, but it is, you know, after a few years ago, when there was the massive.

• 15:02Chris Ryan?

  And Black Dubs. A hundred mil just straight off with Shaw.

• 15:06Andy Greenwald?

  When there was the mark, kind of market correction, when they were like, actually, we didn't add this quarter and the whole industry cratered because of it. It is now almost reliable that they are just growing and growing and growing. Anyway, I thought it was interesting that, and again, maybe it was the room specifically that she was addressing, but that Bella was like, for people who say we're not prestige, might I remind you that we are the people that brought you Beef and that we, you know, and she.

• 15:31Chris Ryan?

  And Baby Reindeer.

• 15:32Andy Greenwald?

  And Baby Reindeer. And she was like, what does it mean to be prestige TV? This is a quote, actually. The most annoying thing about this myth, besides the fact that it's not true, which technically is probably the most annoying thing about all myths. I feel like that's a little redundant.

• 15:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, right. Yeah.

• 15:44Andy Greenwald?

  Whenever I think about like, you know, Prometheus stealing fire.

• 15:48Chris Ryan?

  It's what makes me the most mad about watching Mythbusters.

• 15:50Andy Greenwald?

  It's so mad.

• 15:51Chris Ryan?

  They busted it again. I thought.

• 15:53Andy Greenwald?

  Why can't we have a show called Myth?

• 15:55Chris Ryan?

  Everything I thought I knew about why there was a pyramid on the dollar has been destroyed.

• 15:59Andy Greenwald?

  Myth celebrators would actually do numbers in this economy.

• 16:03Chris Ryan?

  You know what? Let's pitch Netflix.

• 16:05Andy Greenwald?

  Let's do it.

• 16:06Chris Ryan?

  Um, myth, maybe it's true.

• 16:09Andy Greenwald?

  That's actually called the internet.

• 16:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:11Andy Greenwald?

  Um, nobody knows what prestige TV actually is. Is it a critically acclaimed show? Does it win awards? Is it a show audiences love? Is it one that people at, at your dinner parties in New York and LA talk about? Okay, Bella, your dinner parties?

• 16:23Chris Ryan?

  Bella, come on the watch. You know what I mean? Like, we're trying to figure it out ourselves.

• 16:26Andy Greenwald?

  Bella, come out to dinner with us. We cheat towards the crowd and we give people what they want. Um, anyway, yes, she, she mentioned Baby Reindeer, The Crown, Beef and Ripley, and said there's the Death by Lightning, uh, which is the upcoming Benioff and Weiss, um, presidential assassination thriller.

• 16:41Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 16:42Andy Greenwald?

  There's a Claire Danes, Matthew Reese thriller called The Beast in Me, The De Niro Show Zero Day. Tina Fey was there to plug her upcoming Steve Carell show.

• 16:49Chris Ryan?

  Four Seasons.

• 16:50Andy Greenwald?

  Four Seasons. And then she also brought out Dan Lin, who is now head of film and. She made a point of saying one of his first acquisitions in the job was Emilio Perez, which seems to be going pretty great for them, especially on the prestige front. So I thought it was an interesting framing that even though they are unquestionably dominant in film and television, she felt the need to address the respectability issue, which I often feel that they have moved past, but I guess within the industry, maybe they haven't.

• 17:19Chris Ryan?

  Well, you know, one of her sort of first takeout quotes was the gourmet cheeseburger thing.

• 17:25Andy Greenwald?

  That went much bigger than I think she would have wanted it.

• 17:27Chris Ryan?

  And I think that, so there's probably, if you are one of the hundred and however many million people who have joined Netflix over the last nine months or whatever, and it's because you wanted to watch Mike Tyson and Jake Paul fight, or you wanted to watch Beyonce during the Texans game on Christmas.

• 17:45Andy Greenwald?

  And by the way, we're talking about Bela Bizzaria, the chief content officer.

• 17:47Chris Ryan?

  If there's like, my point is this, Netflix is now so big that there is not only like a must see TV kind of always on aspect to it. So whether it's weekly comedy specials that almost feel like you're going to a comedy club, it's the sporting events that they have, the WWE that they have, I am, it just would be shocking if they didn't continue to investigate ways to bring live events to Netflix. It seems to be a huge driver of interest and traffic and conversation.

• 18:18Andy Greenwald?

  On March 12th, everybody's live, which is the continuation of one of my favorite shows from last year, John Mulaney.

• 18:23Chris Ryan?

  It's not quite on the level of Beyonce at a Texans game, but I see what you're saying, yeah.

• 18:27Andy Greenwald?

  In this house, actually not in my house, but anyway, The Mulaney Show is premiering next month. That's a live event.

• 18:33Chris Ryan?

  You can have that experience with it. You can have the experience of watching Ripley and Baby Reindeer and Black Doves and just being like, I like my more refined television. You can just grind out true crime docs constantly, like Steven Soderbergh does, according to his media diary at the end of every year, where it's just like, you know, like the blank, blank killer, like terror on the highway.

• 18:58Andy Greenwald?

  The blank, blank killer sounds pretty cool, actually.

• 19:00Chris Ryan?

  It is everything to everyone. It is, it is literally like, we talked about this before. It is, it's, it's the Kleenex tissue thing. Netflix has kind of become television.

• 19:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and.

• 19:09Chris Ryan?

  But I think that there's probably all the people who work there, all the people who pitch there, they all want to make Mad Men. You know what I mean? Like, well, not everybody, but you know what I mean? Like, there's like that, there's still that feeling that comes along where you're like, man, we made the best thing on TV this year.

• 19:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, well, I have a two-part, I have a two-part answer to your blank blank theorem here. One is, it's just unquestionably true, anecdotally, and then just in conversations, and then in terms of just how pitches are being formulated and targeted, there is Netflix and there's everybody else. And if you create something, if you want to create something, if you want to work on something, and you want that thing to be seen, it's Netflix. Like, that is the place that you go. And that is the reality of the world going forward. And when I say the reality of the world going forward, it's obviously true because Netflix is dominant in our listeners' lives. It's probably, if we were able, if we were polling people, I would say that's, there's no question that like, close to 100% of our listeners have Netflix, and then-

• 20:05Chris Ryan?

  I don't mean to interrupt your two-part response.

• 20:07Andy Greenwald?

  Sure, we can do this a 1.5er.

• 20:09Chris Ryan?

  But I would also say, you just look at their top 10 of TV at any given time, and there are some, you mentioned this the other day, revived show. It is the iron lung of the television industry, where like, Younger is now the number four show on Netflix.

• 20:22Andy Greenwald?

  It's, it's an-

• 20:23Chris Ryan?

  And it's just because they bought the string of the-

• 20:26Andy Greenwald?

  It's an incredible opportunity to just sort of relitigate stuff, because everyone who has made a show, and again, I'm surely, I'm just talking about anyone hypothetically, feels that they did the best work that they could, and if it could have gotten an audience, maybe it would have found an audience if the, you know. And then, we're seeing, like, month after month, like, the creators of Louder Milk, you know, being like, "I really feel like we had something there." And the market seemed to say, "No, you didn't." Then it goes on Netflix, and everyone's like, "Yeah, we like it."

• 20:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:53Andy Greenwald?

  "We have some more?" But my question for you is, just in terms of, of the way Bella's speaking about Netflix and about the role it plays in everyone's life, the thing that I'm kind of interested in, and maybe I'm thinking about it because it's, it's, it's in production, it's filming around LA, is Beef.

• 21:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:08Andy Greenwald?

  Beef season two is, is a go. It's in front of the cameras now. It's Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Charles Melton, Kaylee Spahney, a number of other really talented actors. It's an, it's a, it's going, it's an anthology series, so it's a difference collision between, between characters.

• 21:23Chris Ryan?

  Carey Mulligan said it's like, totally different.

• 21:24Andy Greenwald?

  Two couples.

• 21:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:25Andy Greenwald?

  Would you talk to her?

• 21:26Chris Ryan?

  No, they, like-

• 21:27Andy Greenwald?

  Did she come to Bance Plane last night?

• 21:28Chris Ryan?

  She did a, I think she was at the, some BAFTA lunch or something, and somebody was like, "What's up with Beef season two?" And she's like, "Oh, it's, has nothing to do with season one."

• 21:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. I think, and I think that's exciting. I-

• 21:39Andy Greenwald?

  Beef is such an interesting test case for me because it was excellent. It was, I think, on both of our top 10s. It had all of the ingredients to be sticky in the way that it was on Netflix. I think that, you know, it was so visually dynamic and its storytelling was so in your face. And when you started it, it was very, very addictive in addition to being very good.

• 22:01Andy Greenwald?

  What is beef if it had been on?

• 22:04Chris Ryan?

  Peacock.

• 22:05Andy Greenwald?

  Peacock or Max? Still excellent qualitatively, like it's an excellent show. But in terms of becoming a thing, all capital letters, becoming a thing that can spawn other things. I mean, it's a chicken and egg question because I think that the things that its creators, that Sonny Lee did really well are very Netflix-y things, right? It's starry, it's addictive, it's propulsive. The episodes really like demand next, next, next. So it is built for the Netflix era, but does it become what it became? Which is legitimately a hit, a talking point, a reference, an awards favorite if it's not on Netflix? Does this question matter? Or what do you think about that show? I mean, I know we haven't watched it in a while.

• 22:48Chris Ryan?

  It's interesting you should put it that way because I wonder whether or not they're strangely more adept at making smaller things big than bigger things huge.

• 22:56Andy Greenwald?

  I love this framing. Let's go.

• 22:58Chris Ryan?

  For, like, don't you almost feel like there was a higher upside on Beef than there was Three Body Problem? Like, there was something about Three Body Problem that if it was on Apple or if it had been an HBO show, it would have been like, hey, there's a, here's a two and a half month, let's get really into this show and watch episode by episode and I can't believe, I can't wait till next week. And it's not just the binge model I'm talking about, the release schedule. It's something about. When something huge, like when the last season of Stranger Things comes out, when the new season of Squid Game came out, for me, for some reason, my perception is like,

• 23:44Chris Ryan?

  oh, now it's here. And now the whole thing is there. And now it's over.

• 23:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 23:48Chris Ryan?

  Whereas when it's Beef, or when it was the first season of Stranger Things, or when it's Baby Reindeer, or whatever, you almost feel that like, you can feel people giving things a chance. And because they're giving it a chance, it like goes up and up. And you can watch like the uptake of these shows in real time, like in conversations, or hearing people talk about it online for a movie or something like that.

• 24:11Andy Greenwald?

  This is the argument for the Bears binge drop as well.

• 24:13Chris Ryan?

  Exactly. I guess that's true. But at this point, I would almost argue like, you got the audience, now give us, do 333 or something like that. Like, I would almost want to extend the experience of the bear. So my point is more just that like,

• 24:27Chris Ryan?

  when they, when they get something huge.

• 24:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 24:30Chris Ryan?

  It's almost like, there's nowhere else to go.

• 24:33Andy Greenwald?

  This is really, I think this is very smart.

• 24:35Chris Ryan?

  But when they have something small and nobody knows who Richard Gad is, you know what I mean? And nobody knows who, who, nobody's seen Ali Wong do a part like this before. Like, it goes up in a way that's almost like you're scaling them out.

• 24:47Andy Greenwald?

  And this is how Netflix stays winning. Because, because of its ability and its leverage to take small or medium things, or old things, and make them undeniable, and make them huge, it is forcing, or it has caused, I don't know if it's forcing, its rivals, who have less money, less reach, less juice, frankly, to spend millions, if not ultimately billions of dollars, on the biggest things, so that they can in theory start closer to the top. Right? Like, what I mean by that is, maybe it's just a question of bidding, or it's priorities. But you don't see Netflix doing, trying to get Lord of the Rings. Right? You don't see Netflix trying to grab.

• 25:32Chris Ryan?

  No, they're trying to build their own.

• 25:33Andy Greenwald?

  They're trying to build their own. They don't need those things, and they aren't cost effective. Three Body Problem is probably an example of the wiring being a little bit off. And indicative of.

• 25:46Andy Greenwald?

  You know, what still to me, one of the most interesting pivots and the smartest things that they did a few years ago is when they got into the the overall business in a big way and even like within the company, there was a dedicated basically like overalls office to manage the rich overalls that they were signing people to. And the people that they targeted. Ryan Murphy. Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rhimes were the it's absolutely brilliant strategy because it's not just that those people are veterans with incredible experience and contacts who have made beloved incredibly popular shows. It's that they work in volume, that their business model mirrors Netflix. Other people to whom they've given big rich overalls, including

• 26:25Andy Greenwald?

  like Kenya Barris, who then left his overall, or even David Benioff and DB Weiss. No disrespect to any of these people on the other side of the ledger creatively, but like that's not the business they're in. The the three body problem was like huge potential IP. I mean, it's not like it's the most famous thing in the world, but it was a global best seller. And then their their scale for doing it was like, we do the biggest things. That's what we did. Yeah. And we will never see under the hood for the financials or anything for that. But I feel like that wasn't necessarily despite its bold appearance at the tail end of my top 10 last year. I don't think that was the return on investment they wanted.

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• 29:06Chris Ryan?

  You know, that brings me to my severance thing that I wanted to talk about. Okay. We kind of didn't... I either didn't notice this or didn't touch on it when we talked about severance on Monday. But last week, there was this report that came out that got pretty widely aggregated. The report was by Parrot Analytics, which does a lot of streaming number, like, analysis and tries to, like, sort of truly ascertain, like, whether or not, like, this is being watched or not. And I'd never seen this as a metric for a show, but they released a report. And I don't know anybody at Parrot, nor do I know how to understand these charts and stuff like that. Great. But that severance was a success. And according to Parrot, the series had made $200 million for Apple, largely through subscriber acquisition.

• 29:52Andy Greenwald?

  How do they get that number?

• 29:53Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. It was interesting because Severance is at least online and among, you know, anecdotally, very successful. It seems like everybody is watching it week to week. It seems like people are excited for it to drop on Fridays. Like, the machine is now fully going downhill for them.

• 30:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 30:12Chris Ryan?

  But they have not said, this is how many people watch Severance in either,

• 30:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 30:18Chris Ryan?

  like a traditional Nielsen idea, or even like billions of minutes spent watching. And I thought that this was a fascinating report to come out. And then I was curious whether or not, if you say that, okay, that's successful. First of all, I have no idea how to actually be like, did somebody in Latin America who, you know, signed up for Apple TV Plus do so because of Severance? Or keep it because of Severance?

• 30:44Andy Greenwald?

  Just thinking about this straw ombre you've just created.

• 30:46Chris Ryan?

  Well, that was apparently where a lot of their growth was.

• 30:47Andy Greenwald?

  Cool.

• 30:48Chris Ryan?

  Do you think that Apple will take any lesson from Severance? Severance's success? Like, and be like, okay, so what is it? Do we need some sort of visionary auteur attached to every mystery box sci-fi show?

• 31:02Andy Greenwald?

  No. It's a great question. I think, um, I think there's, first of all, here's my foundational premise is that Severance is a huge hit for Apple, even without our friends at Parrot Analytics. Severance is performing in a very important job for, it's not really a fledgling service, but still a service that has, you know, spent the last few years to find itself.

• 31:24Chris Ryan?

  We're rooting for you guys, though.

• 31:25Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it's certainly not, certainly not really an up and comer financially. But in the sense that how, the way House of Cards was to Netflix, the way Mad Men and Breaking Bad were for AMC, a calling card, both to the general audience, but also perhaps more importantly to quote unquote, the town, that we have something for you, that we can nurture, that we can zag, or take a chance, or invest in, and deliver something that is still high quality, whether that means production values, story, overall production. It doesn't matter. Like, but that's, having something like that is incredibly important.

• 32:05Andy Greenwald?

  And then you, you continue to like, roll back and look at the specifics of what Apple wants. Severance allows them to, I mean, it's something to put on the screens. It's something to have on the wall of MacBook Airs and iPhones when you walk into the Apple Store that looks aesthetically beautiful, like the store itself, that is, you know, that is tantalizing and full of promise. I mean, it is, it works so well for their brand and their goals as a company. And then you have the fact that we always have to talk about, which is ultimately, it doesn't matter if they're making or losing money on it.

• 32:49Andy Greenwald?

  And I don't even know how they would track that, you know? I think that they can have one Severance and they can have 16 Silos and Dark Matters. And then someone's running the numbers and it all is fine for them, I guess, on some level. And which one is actually causing subscriptions? We don't, we don't know, and I don't know if it matters. Ultimately, though, if, I mean, it's kind of the beef question. It's, it's a weird way that we have to talk about TV, or maybe we can't anymore because it's so speculative, is that everything is contextual. It's not like everything, in the old days, it'd be like, well, great, Lost ended up on ABC because ABC was coming off a down year. They fired their entertainment president and that they were taking chances on the same

• 33:34Andy Greenwald?

  scripts and pitches that the other three competitors were with the... Oh, yeah. Yeah, I thought you said I passed on it. You're down in Miami, just poring over coverage. And I don't mean the secondary coverage. They were all starting from the same starting point of what they were willing to do. If Severance was on Peacock, it's Mrs. Davis. You know, and I don't mean any disrespect to Mrs. Davis. I just mean like, that was a wild, whoa, what is this mystery box show? With an incredible lead performance from Petty Gilpin, who then went to explore Utah, and we're going to talk about that in a minute, with a bunch of other actors who were very good, but who were not John Per Turo and Christopher Walken, you know? And the episodes were not, were very well directed, but they were not...

• 34:17Andy Greenwald?

  painstakingly crafted by Ben Stiller and Jessica Lee Gagne. It's just they classed it up and that is what it is.

• 34:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:24Andy Greenwald?

  And that is part of the appeal and you can't, despite my efforts sometimes when we talk about it, you can't kind of reverse engineer and try to figure out what the spark is.

• 34:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I don't know how exactly like this, this number has arrived at. This is from the Deadline article summarizing the Parrot report, which is

• 34:41Andy Greenwald?

  Look how far we've done.

• 34:41Chris Ryan?

  According to Parrot Severance is doing well compared with Apple hits like Slow Horses in the Morning Show. The former generated 184.8 million dollars during a similar timeframe.

• 34:50Andy Greenwald?

  What's that mean?

• 34:50Chris Ryan?

  To Severance season one, while the latter made 299 million, but across a much longer period of time. From Q3 2020 to Q3 2024, Ted Lasso, which had been teasing a fourth season, generated 609.4 million dollars. I don't, is that like, I watched Ted Lasso and immediately bought an iPhone? I have no idea how that works.

• 35:10Andy Greenwald?

  Or I started, I mean, the other thing that, that is so weird.

• 35:13Chris Ryan?

  But there's like, I know that they know what we're watching, but there's never a point where we're like, hey, just so you know, I, I'm filling out a survey that says like, I'm watching Apple TV plus to watch Ted Lasso over and over again.

• 35:24Andy Greenwald?

  But also the Apple business is so, so specific. Many, many people buy new iPhones every year. Every time you get a new device, it gives you three months free of the television service. So what are they counting as viewers? What are they counting as monetizable viewers? Is it that I bought an iPhone, Ted Lasso was on, I liked it, my three months were over and I clicked continue? Because and then they're like, oh, this person was watching Severance when they click continue. So that's why, do you know what I mean?

• 35:52Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 35:52Andy Greenwald?

  It all seems a little, also Parrot Analytics doesn't have the proprietary data of Apple that matters to them.

• 35:59Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 35:59Andy Greenwald?

  So it's definitely speculative, but that said, everything you just named, those are hits.

• 36:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 36:03Andy Greenwald?

  It's just, we're not using the same definitional terms when we talk about what it means to be a hit. Look at, I mean, how do we make sense of this?

• 36:10Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. I don't know. Maybe we should just watch what we want. What I'm currently watching is, I thought we would just kind of take a, like a wider view. Severance, obviously, Prime People just ended. I'm watching Rogue Heroes.

• 36:22Andy Greenwald?

  What is that on these days?

• 36:23Chris Ryan?

  MGM Plus.

• 36:24Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, like the new Kevin Kline comedy I sent you.

• 36:26Chris Ryan?

  Which is essentially, I think you can watch. That is a cable channel, for sure.

• 36:31Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it was Epix, and now it's MGM Plus, and I believe it's, is it owned by Amazon now?

• 36:35Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's a, but you have to sign up for it on Amazon. Like, it's a, you have to add it as a channel for a fee.

• 36:42Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 36:43Chris Ryan?

  But I am enjoying the second season. They are kind of keeping my boys Connor and Jack on the separate sides of the story. So I'm not really into that.

• 36:51Andy Greenwald?

  Which one is more rogue and which one is more hero?

• 36:53Chris Ryan?

  Jack O'Connell is certainly more rogue.

• 36:54Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 36:55Chris Ryan?

  Can't trust him with a machine gun.

• 36:58Andy Greenwald?

  Really?

• 36:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:58Andy Greenwald?

  I would have trusted him.

• 37:00Chris Ryan?

  I mean, you could trust him if you're part of the Allies, I guess, you know, but...

• 37:04Andy Greenwald?

  I think I'm pretty...

• 37:06Chris Ryan?

  Pretty Allies-centric.

• 37:08Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I don't want to prejudge. I didn't live in that time, but I feel like I have a couple, um, yeah.

• 37:12Chris Ryan?

  You know, it's funny, Rogue Heroes is almost an example of like getting almost more than I could possibly ever want. Where it's like, they, they have now moved into the Italy campaign of the World War II, and they're making their way through, through Italy, and it's, it's pretty cool. And they're like fighting the mafia.

• 37:32Chris Ryan?

  This is a story I wrote in my head like in 7th grade. I don't know. And they curse a lot and they play Jack White songs.

• 37:39Andy Greenwald?

  Is TV too CR pill?

• 37:40Chris Ryan?

  It's TV too good.

• 37:42Andy Greenwald?

  Stop giving me what I want!

• 37:44Chris Ryan?

  I want to check out Paradise, the Sterling K. Brown, James Marsden show that's about a Secret Service agent who like uncovers a conspiracy in the White House. Seems timely.

• 37:52Andy Greenwald?

  This is also, this is Dan Fogelman again, right? Who did This Is Us.

• 37:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:55Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 37:56Chris Ryan?

  And then that brings us to The Pit, which is, um, what we're gonna talk about now.

• 38:01Andy Greenwald?

  Which is the thing we will talk about.

• 38:03Chris Ryan?

  Well, this is a way of doing a segue. I don't really have like a grand statement to make about the state of television. I want to watch Shorty, but it's not on in America yet. In the United States of America, it's on in North America.

• 38:13Andy Greenwald?

  Do you want to do, do you want to do The Pit now, or do you want to just like do a little funeral pyre for American Primeval?

• 38:18Chris Ryan?

  Whichever way, dealer's choice.

• 38:20Andy Greenwald?

  What do you think, what do you think's driving listens right now? I love this.

• 38:24Chris Ryan?

  Both are very popular on their services. I would imagine that many people watched American Primeval, but maybe don't listen to The Watch.

• 38:32Andy Greenwald?

  Let's, um, because of me, because of my...

• 38:36Chris Ryan?

  Because you're a little wishy-washy about who won World War II.

• 38:42Andy Greenwald?

  I just don't know which side the rogue heroes were on, really.

• 38:45Chris Ryan?

  Well, they were rogue.

• 38:45Andy Greenwald?

  They were unpredictable.

• 38:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, they fought for themselves.

• 38:48Andy Greenwald?

  I wanted, I think, can we just touch on American Primeval?

• 38:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there's not a ton to say.

• 38:52Andy Greenwald?

  People, I feel like you either-

• 38:53Chris Ryan?

  Kai is gonna put timestamps in, so people can-

• 38:55Andy Greenwald?

  You're either watching it or you're not. We're not gonna super spoil it, but also, there is no spoiler other than to say, like, that was pretty rough.

• 39:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:03Andy Greenwald?

  I wanna ask you, I worry-

• 39:05Chris Ryan?

  So this is spoilers for the end of the only season of American Primeval?

• 39:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, this has some real, like-

• 39:10Chris Ryan?

  Well, I guess there could be an American Primeval season two.

• 39:13Andy Greenwald?

  I don't see how. I think, I think once we got, once we locked down Utah, I think everything really chilled out, in terms of the American experiment. You know what I mean? We were able to get containment on the violence problem.

• 39:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 39:26Andy Greenwald?

  And then we moved on.

• 39:27Chris Ryan?

  White guys chilled out after that.

• 39:29Andy Greenwald?

  How many, I mean, it was funny, like, finishing American Primeval and watching Wild at Heart, I'm like, everyone just wants to get to California one way or another.

• 39:39Andy Greenwald?

  Like, there is one truism.

• 39:40Chris Ryan?

  What do you have to find there when you get there?

• 39:42Andy Greenwald?

  Across entertainment.

• 39:43Chris Ryan?

  Heartache, bitch.

• 39:44Andy Greenwald?

  That's fine here. I, I genuinely wanna ask you something, but I'm glad we're saving the pit, because I, I don't wanna, like, go down this, this rabbit hole too, too, too much, but like, I watched all six hours of American Primeval.

• 39:57Chris Ryan?

  I did, I just don't know you anymore, yeah.

• 39:59Andy Greenwald?

  I feel a little bit like I feel like my shower drain feels after I pour the bottle of Drano into it.

• 40:08Andy Greenwald?

  My main takeaway from watching this show is, well, I'm glad I didn't make the decision to settle Utah.

• 40:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:15Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean? Like, it was one, like, when you were thinking about-

• 40:17Chris Ryan?

  It's a real, when you watch some westerns, you're like, oh, God, can you imagine? Just the open range, a beautiful lady standing on a porch waiting for you, and you get home from lassoing cattle, and-

• 40:28Andy Greenwald?

  Go on, yeah.

• 40:29Chris Ryan?

  You know, like, there's, there's parts of McMurtry where you're like, holy shit, that would be incredible.

• 40:33Andy Greenwald?

  You're just, you're just hanging with your pals, you're drinking whiskey from a jug.

• 40:35Chris Ryan?

  Exactly. Sleeping under the stars.

• 40:37Andy Greenwald?

  What could be better?

• 40:39Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, everything in the world could be better than being in American Primeval.

• 40:44Andy Greenwald?

  That's the thing, I mean-

• 40:45Chris Ryan?

  As soon as you're like, I've avoided this murderous band of Mormons, you get attacked by a wolf.

• 40:51Andy Greenwald?

  Those wolves went full wolf. Do you know what I mean? Like, I, Two Wolves, Wolf's, that's the movie. Two Wolves.

• 40:58Chris Ryan?

  Wolves.

• 40:59Andy Greenwald?

  Let me look into the camera and say, I apologize, I was not familiar with your game. I didn't know that when the adults leave, wolves are just like, let's get them.

• 41:11Chris Ryan?

  There's kids.

• 41:12Andy Greenwald?

  You go to the left.

• 41:12Chris Ryan?

  Where do you think those children's stories come? Big Bad Wolves?

• 41:15Andy Greenwald?

  That's really a great point. So you think there's truth in every piece of American primeval?

• 41:19Chris Ryan?

  I imagine, like, we still live in a city where coyotes just straight up, like, sometimes walk down Hyperion, you know, like, so you-

• 41:26Andy Greenwald?

  Walk down Hyperion. There's like an outdoor couch at my house and the coyote just walked on it and just looked at us through the window.

• 41:34Chris Ryan?

  Oh, really?

• 41:34Andy Greenwald?

  It was like, I'm sorry, it's my couch now.

• 41:37Chris Ryan?

  So imagine that with like 99% less urban up, like, building and like you just would have a land of wolves, as Benicio told us.

• 41:46Andy Greenwald?

  I just didn't, I always thought, and maybe this is my naivete, so maybe this is something that I should thank Peter Berg for, is that I thought walls were a pretty big wolf deterrent. Now, maybe I'm three little pigs pilled.

• 41:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:59Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean?

• 42:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:01Andy Greenwald?

  And this wasn't a brick structure, but we're talking about the moment when little boy and two moons are left alone and the wolves are like, it's time. Tonight, wolves, we ride. And like four wolves do a coordinated assault

• 42:16Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 42:17Andy Greenwald?

  On precinct, what was it, 13?

• 42:19Chris Ryan?

  Salt of precinct 13, yeah.

• 42:21Andy Greenwald?

  And they really seem like they're just coming.

• 42:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:24Andy Greenwald?

  Do you know the only thing that stops wolves?

• 42:26Chris Ryan?

  A boy shooting them?

• 42:27Andy Greenwald?

  Guns.

• 42:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:28Andy Greenwald?

  That is, that's sick. Okay, but, but generally, I'm being, I'm being a little facetious here.

• 42:35Andy Greenwald?

  The thing about, and I, and I don't want to compare apples to blood oranges in the case of American primeval, but because this isn't McMurtry, it was never meant to be McMurtry, but even when McMurtry is at his most savage about the state of humanity, like in Streets of Laredo, which is the sequel to Lonesome Dove, which is much rougher.

• 42:54Chris Ryan?

  Which is like, I need to now disassemble people's misconceptions about Lonesome Dove.

• 42:59Andy Greenwald?

  I thought I was myth busting.

• 43:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:01Andy Greenwald?

  And I wasn't, I was myth making, so now I need to double down. There is still some sense of, there's a moment of beauty with the horizon or with silence that keeps you going.

• 43:12Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:13Andy Greenwald?

  This show-

• 43:14Chris Ryan?

  Totally Shane Wiggum.

• 43:14Andy Greenwald?

  Is so- So ultimately, just so relentless and grim. Shows don't need to educate, but I really was struggling with the fact that like I watched it. And other than like some historical things, like the massacre that the show is based on is a fictionalized account of an actual event.

• 43:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:32Andy Greenwald?

  Disputed and is quite controversial within Utah in terms of the Mormons' role in it, et cetera, et cetera. But like, I didn't learn anything about anyone on the show's humanity that made me interested in the reasons that they lived in hell. And everything was hell. Do you know what I mean? It was so.

• 43:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:49Andy Greenwald?

  It just spiraled. And then it was like, at the end of it, it's like, yeah, that was awful.

• 43:54Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 43:54Andy Greenwald?

  That was awful.

• 43:55Chris Ryan?

  I think that might be also why it's successful. Or why it's a success for what it is, is that it's not also trying to teach lessons about our contemporary moment or.

• 44:06Andy Greenwald?

  True.

• 44:06Chris Ryan?

  Do some sort of like deep dive history lesson about it. I mean, like you can take it at face value, or you can go do more reading about Brigham Young or whatever. And obviously, like you were alluding to, there's a lot of disputed, you know, kind of history. And actually, I don't even know how much it's up to dispute, but like, I did, I kind of just watched it as like entertainment, but like the reverse of what that word usually means.

• 44:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, that's me too.

• 44:31Chris Ryan?

  Um, and I think I was pretty prepared for it to be very dark at the end. I don't know if I was even like anywhere close to being prepared for the way that the Jacob storyline wrapped up, which is traditionally, you're just used to like seeing some character like that who's had this traumatic awful thing happen to him and then he does something redemptive.

• 44:55Andy Greenwald?

  Mm hmm.

• 44:55Chris Ryan?

  For himself and for somebody else or whatever, like in the, you know, like you wants, he got this extra bit of life to do something with it.

• 45:03Andy Greenwald?

  This is Brother Pratt you're talking about.

• 45:05Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Dane DeHaan's character.

• 45:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, this is, this is what I wanted to talk about as well.

• 45:08Chris Ryan?

  And, you know, obviously spoilers for the, we are spoiling this show, but his storyline ends with him murdering his wife.

• 45:14Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 45:15Chris Ryan?

  Unspecifi-

• 45:16Andy Greenwald?

  Who, who he has been searching for.

• 45:17Chris Ryan?

  Yes, who he's been searching for, uh, during a huge battle at the Shoshone, uh, sort of.

• 45:24Andy Greenwald?

  Essentially, it's another massacre.

• 45:26Chris Ryan?

  Village. And then killing himself after he realizes what he's done. What do you say? Like, you know what I mean? Like, I like, like, I guess, like, I was just watching that and I was like, oh, I can't get much darker than that in the world. And then they spend the next 20 minutes trying to get there.

• 45:43Andy Greenwald?

  That's kind of my point as well. It's an interesting, and again, this is a very like ivory tower kind of like conversation about it. The Dahan, like kudos to him for pouring every bit of his soul into something that was basically performance Drano, like he was just, just, just getting fucked, ravaged the entire time.

• 46:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:07Andy Greenwald?

  The thing that I've struggled with was that the characters themselves were so frustratingly static. They started in, all of them started in one place and ended essentially the same. I think that you could make the case that Betty Gilpin's character Sarah has lost some of her naivete.

• 46:26Chris Ryan?

  I suppose so.

• 46:27Andy Greenwald?

  That she has found, that she has gained a member of her family, that she has learned to love again or learned what love might mean for her. There's some development there and she plays it well. But everyone else is pretty static, so the, and I think the frustration for me is centered in the Jacob and Abish storyline where they each go, they start in a certain place and then they go on these very, very different paths potentially to find each other. And at the end, whatever they have gleaned or experienced is for nothing.

• 46:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:53Andy Greenwald?

  Like, like-

• 46:54Chris Ryan?

  Literally for nothing.

• 46:55Andy Greenwald?

  Super, super duper for nothing.

• 46:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:57Andy Greenwald?

  And so what does the audience learn from having watched them be in a cul-de-sac? And the only thing that I can get to is they learned that this was a rough and violent and awful place that did not fulfill anyone's wishes. And my frustration is ultimately like, I think I kinda, I got that.

• 47:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:16Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't. Now, that said, it is still filmed with like such bravura that the like, and it is, it has action set pieces that are phenomenal.

• 47:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:26Andy Greenwald?

  I kind, and that's why I watched it, but-

• 47:29Chris Ryan?

  And it's also, I think it's a, a, a part of the country and a period of time that we're just interested in watching lots of different depictions of.

• 47:36Andy Greenwald?

  It's kind of funny, we're like, oh, Utah.

• 47:41Andy Greenwald?

  It's kind of a contentious place. And then you Google Utah today and it's like, hmm, the cooler brand Yeti won't let the NHL team name itself the Yetis. What are they gonna do instead?

• 47:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think they've learned a new way to settle differences out there. Okay, so basically, like, the only other thing I wanted to mention was this is,

• 48:03Chris Ryan?

  what, it was just a great, really great performance from Kitch. You know, he seems to be, uh, just in reading interviews with him, like, in a real good place, like headspace wise, or at least like, he's just always like a very thoughtful interview. I read one that he did with Walter after the, this finale went up, or obviously the finale went up the day it premiere went up. But after a bit, he did an interview about, uh, playing this part. He loves taking photographs of wildlife. He goes on like, long trips with his buddies to, to shoot, like, nature and wildlife, like still photos. It's just like, seems like a cool dude, likes hockey, you know?

• 48:38Andy Greenwald?

  This is such a headline from Deadline. It reminded me of like, a hip hop album from 2005. The headline is, "I also do this. American primeval's Taylor Kitsch on developing a passion for hunting bears, wolves, and other wildlife armed with a camera." Looking deeper, I realized that "I also do this" is the name of Mike Fleming's, like, occasional look into the out extracurricular lives of actors.

• 49:04Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 49:04Andy Greenwald?

  But doesn't it sound like a Jim Jones record? Like, what's up, New York, I also do this. You know I'm right.

• 49:12Chris Ryan?

  But what do you think it's like, what's the thing he also does? What does Jim Jones also do?

• 49:16Andy Greenwald?

  Wildlife photography?

• 49:19Chris Ryan?

  Settles of Utah?

• 49:21Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, someone had to do it.

• 49:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, he, and he's, his next project is the Terminalist spinoff.

• 49:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:30Andy Greenwald?

  Which you will be watching.

• 49:31Chris Ryan?

  If they, I mean, I, is that coming before Terminalist season two? I don't know. Okay.

• 49:35Andy Greenwald?

  It is.

• 49:35Chris Ryan?

  Um, his character's cool on the first season. It's a, anyway, um, I want to talk about the pit though.

• 49:41Andy Greenwald?

  Me too.

• 49:42Chris Ryan?

  So we're gonna be talking about through episode five. Episode five goes up on the day that you'll hear this podcast. I think we can actually, you know, you should watch episode five. I hope you watch it soon. Andy and I are gonna mostly spend our time talking about four. Because he and I. Both thought it was one of the best episodes of television we've seen in a very long time. Now, that is even more of a thrill with a show like The Pit, which I feel like is going to be a cumulative experience as is a day in someone's life. And it doesn't necessarily, you know, each episode seems to end with someone going into cardiac arrest and,

• 50:24Chris Ryan?

  you know, there's a feeling like, oh, I can't wait to see next week whether they save this person or not. But this episode actually sort of culminated or wrapped up a couple of other storylines that had been starting over the first three hours of the show, first three hours of the day. And I think probably because, I wonder whether this is, I mean, I think this is definitely something that I found it difficult to watch and incredibly meaningful to watch. It's like, I'm not that far off. I am in a similar situation from some of the characters.

• 50:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 50:57Chris Ryan?

  And caring for an older parent is very difficult and it's, the thing about this show is that for, sometimes like I feel like it's very plain spoken and sometimes I feel like it's very like, you know, the jokes people make to each other are very like, kind of like,

• 51:15Chris Ryan?

  rat-a-tat, you know, like rimshot or whatever. But it is, there's something true about this show. And like the human beings that they're being depicted and I gotta say, the passing of this older parent in front of the eyes of these two siblings.

• 51:31Andy Greenwald?

  Adult siblings, yeah.

• 51:32Chris Ryan?

  Two adult siblings was like very overwhelming.

• 51:35Andy Greenwald?

  I thought it was incredible. And we will talk about other aspects of the, of the episode and of the show in general, but just for context to your point for people who are just catching up, I believe it was in the pilot, this character, this father is brought from a nursing home. And he's in distress, he's having respiratory issues and his adult children clash over whether to follow the father's DNR, do not resuscitate order. The sister seems unwilling to acknowledge the existence of the order and, you know, basically, then demands that they intubate him despite Dr. Ravi's.

• 52:11Andy Greenwald?

  Not relentless, but but very, very consistent commentary that this would be worse. This is an awful outcome. And and that is also looping into his own experience that he's being, he's been traumatized by in terms of the COVID and his mentor, who I believe it's suggested passed away in the same room ultimately. There's something that is both magical and throwback about the experience of watching this show. We have at times over the first few episodes when talking about them been like, there is, there is a relentless drumbeat of,

• 52:44Andy Greenwald?

  it's not truth, but of drama, of entertainment, of story, of life, that we were willing to forgive some of the clumsier moments of dialogue. This was a show that, you know, you know, the old, the old slogan of like, you campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose. Like, this is a prosaic show. Yeah. Which made episode four so stunning because it suddenly exploded into poetry. There is a respect for the actual existence of death in this world. Yeah. As a normal thing for people that is also, that is a normal thing for the world, but is shocking and abnormal for every emotional experience that we have with it. Yeah. And

• 53:28Andy Greenwald?

  there was a kindness and a respect for all sides of the grieving process or the, or the, or the actual reality of death that I was just really, really blown away by. And it just made me think like, most art is kind of dishonest. And I don't mean that as like a bad, I'm not, I'm not an anti-art crusader by any stretch. No, I know what you mean. But in pursuit of greater, what we hope will be greater truths or more profound entertainment or relevance, death is used in almost every television show or movie we watch as a means to an end. And the end is often growth or development or something in the characters who live. This wasn't that.

• 54:09Andy Greenwald?

  This was so simply focused on the passing of one character. And then it also just, it had this radiating effect where it allowed Wiley, who incredibly wrote this episode.

• 54:20Chris Ryan?

  He's incredible in this.

• 54:21Andy Greenwald?

  He is so incredible in this to give these, this very like, kind of fucks you up to talk about it, advice that the character says is like-

• 54:28Chris Ryan?

  The ho'ono'ono', the Hawaiian grieving ritual essentially is the idea that he gives them.

• 54:35Andy Greenwald?

  Which they're only four-

• 54:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's just basically you, you say, "I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you and I love you", to the person who's passing.

• 54:42Andy Greenwald?

  And there really isn't anything more to say beyond that.

• 54:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:45Andy Greenwald?

  And, but I'm also thinking about how the episode gave space to the actors. And I'm gonna Google while, while you're talking next, cause I should have the name of the woman in front of me, cause she was incredible, but the, the son is Mackenzie Aston-

• 55:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:01Andy Greenwald?

  Who is a part of our childhood watching TV, who's on Facts of Life. This is, these are incredible performances that they got. And you, you, when you think about like the ER method of making shows that is so, the DNA is so present here. One of the EPs who co-wrote the previous episode is Joe Sacks. And you go on his Wikipedia page and it's like, Joe Sacks is a technical advisor and TV writer who has worked on ER.

• 55:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:23Andy Greenwald?

  Like his whole shit is ER and now this.

• 55:26Chris Ryan?

  I can only imagine, no, go ahead.

• 55:28Andy Greenwald?

  No, just it's in the DNA. And what we think about when we say ER is like, it was a completely different visual storytelling language based on bang, bang, bang, bang, and like, you know, the jargon and the intubations and the excitement, and then on to the next patient.

• 55:42Andy Greenwald?

  This episode cleared the fuck out and let these grieving adults talk about what they wished was true.

• 55:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but you say cleared out and I think you're right in some respects, but what they're doing is way closer to Richard Linklater than it is ER.

• 55:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's go.

• 55:59Chris Ryan?

  Because ER would reset every Thursday and have Carol and Doug walking into a new day of work, or Mark coming in, or whatever, you know what I mean? Like it, it moved like a television show.

• 56:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 56:12Chris Ryan?

  This is about the accumulation of time spent with these people. So by the time- This older man passes away in front of his grown adult children. You have kind of been aware of them for three and a half hours of your life. Which is three and a half hours of their life on the screen. And even if you're like, I don't know what they do for a living, or if they get along, or if they're nice people, or anything. Did they watch American Primeval? Who knows? They finish it. I don't know.

• 56:44Andy Greenwald?

  I think he could probably handle it, but I don't think she watched it.

• 56:47Chris Ryan?

  I think it's the reverse.

• 56:48Andy Greenwald?

  Interesting. And by the way, let me just say Rebecca Tilney plays Helen, who's the adult daughter, and Mackenzie Austin plays Jeremy.

• 56:54Chris Ryan?

  But if this had been a one and done episode, if they had come in in the beginning of the episode and this had happened at the end, I don't know if it would have hit me as hard.

• 57:02Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's such a good observation.

• 57:03Chris Ryan?

  Watching them over the course of the first three hours of this day, essentially grapple with this decision, grapple with the reality that he is not going to... He's not, he's not coming back. We can keep him artificially alive, but you, you know, he is going to be going through organ failure. He's going to be in this real state of distress. I, I found it very overwhelming. I did want to ask you about this one thing, though. Uh, and this kind of goes into five, which we don't really need to deliberate much, but...

• 57:34Andy Greenwald?

  Wait, before you ask about five, can I just say like, I think that's incredibly...

• 57:37Chris Ryan?

  It's still four stuff.

• 57:38Andy Greenwald?

  But that's, I just think that's such a good observation that you just made about the time spent with them. And it makes me think that like, this, the 24 style, hour by hour, is an incredibly clever way to get the best of both worlds. Because what you're describing, the one and done, you show up with a case of the week, Dr. House.

• 57:56Chris Ryan?

  Case of the week, yeah.

• 57:57Andy Greenwald?

  That's the procedural method, and that's what people want back in TV, right? Like the ease of use, the familiarity.

• 58:02Chris Ryan?

  I can skip two episodes, yeah.

• 58:03Andy Greenwald?

  But what we got by making the show this way is, you know, who knows? The Spencer, adult Spencer kids, maybe their total screen time across four episodes would have been the same if it had been one episode. But it gave us just enough of the flavor of an ongoing, week to week prestige show that we felt the time spent with them.

• 58:23Chris Ryan?

  I think half the time that they were on screen was Robbie, the wily character, saying, "I'll come back and talk to you as soon as I know anything more." So that's, the, the interactions are pretty... quotidian, they're pretty like, they're pretty like procedural in their actual delivery, like there's not, the poetry doesn't come until he's talking about this ritual. There is something that is happening that, so that was a very like impactful storyline, you know, for a variety of reasons.

• 58:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I agree with that.

• 58:55Chris Ryan?

  I remember when we used to talk about Mad Men back in the Hollywood prospectus days, I think we talked about this. And it's, and you, you certainly wrote about it. Was that there needs to be basically like a German word for the feeling you have while watching Don Draper drive. Where it's like, there's something about this show and this character and the world that it's in, that every time he's like driving with Betty or Sally in the car, you're like, is he gonna drive off the road? Or is he gonna get hit by a truck?

• 59:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 59:26Chris Ryan?

  Something is gonna happen. That is definitely, we need a word for how it feels. When they, they bring a teenager into the ER and you're just like, oh my God, like what's gonna happen? What's wrong with this person?

• 59:38Andy Greenwald?

  What's gonna happen next?

• 59:39Chris Ryan?

  Please just be something normal.

• 59:42Andy Greenwald?

  So are you, was this brought on specifically by?

• 59:44Chris Ryan?

  The young Chinese teenager who comes in with her father. I was just like this, she's.

• 59:48Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, cuz you were worried it was gonna be worse.

• 59:50Chris Ryan?

  Way worse.

• 59:52Andy Greenwald?

  I think, again, there's someone in these rooms, in the writing room of this show, it's like, we joke about it. Bill always joked about like the czar of common sense. Um, we have you as the Hollywood fixer sometimes. I just would love to know from people involved in the creation of the show, who was in the room, who's the voice of like the pendulum that just has the right vibe? Cuz I don't know how they're tracking all these storylines. You know, whether they had a big pile of things they hoped to do, and then they try to like, stack them like Jenga tiles, like this will work here, this will overlap well with that. But specifically your point, which is good outcome, bad outcome, worst case, best case, middle case. And delivering those almost like a well prescribed drip of medication?

• 1:00:35Andy Greenwald?

  So that you don't always have the worst case. The other thing about four that surprised me, and I believe that, that the younger girl, that's in four, the thing you're talking about.

• 1:00:45Chris Ryan?

  A teenage, like a twelve year old girl comes in with her father. And she's experiencing discomfort. And there's a moment where they, the two doctors are about to talk about it, and I'm like, oh my God.

• 1:00:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and they're like, let's do a pelvic exam, dad, do you wanna step out? And you're like, is this going to the darkest place imaginable?

• 1:01:01Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:01:02Andy Greenwald?

  I think that there is a. Uh, so tha- that episode, that's, that's also four is the one we're talking about with the elderly father. The talking points for the pit was like, wait till you see what medicine's really like.

• 1:01:16Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:01:16Andy Greenwald?

  It's not that. It's not that.

• 1:01:18Chris Ryan?

  Although, all the doctors in our inbox.

• 1:01:21Andy Greenwald?

  No, no.

• 1:01:21Chris Ryan?

  And people working in hospitals are like, this is what it's really like.

• 1:01:24Andy Greenwald?

  I guess what I mean is, I, maybe this was just me, maybe I'm wrong, maybe, tell me if this was a misconception, but I definitely thought that there was an element of, well, we couldn't really show you, not what medicine is like, but what like wounds look like on ER, and now we can. That this would be somehow grode-er, gnarlier, more intense, and the fact that it recedes from that.

• 1:01:44Chris Ryan?

  Well, you couldn't show someone pissing all over a guy.

• 1:01:47Andy Greenwald?

  No, and you know what? I'm ready, I just hit the table so hard, just like, I'm stepping into the future.

• 1:01:53Chris Ryan?

  This is your American Pride people, brother.

• 1:01:54Andy Greenwald?

  This is the, the golden future we were promised, quite literally. No, that the show, that, that it is not leaning too heavily on any one thing to shock or to get attention, that everything isn't bad, that we are caught flat-footed often, which is great. Like, we are diagnosticians of the show, in the same way that these doctors are trying to figure out what's going on within it, and tha- for them, it, this is a absolute hell day that might also be a normal Wednesday. For us, it's thrilling to be wrong, in the ways that we are wrong, and the ways that, like, in episode five, which I think we should talk about also, in the fact, and it's just in the sense that it, it feels very old-fashioned to have a show that's given us however many

• 1:02:36Andy Greenwald?

  episodes it's given us, that's an answer I can give you, 11 in season one.

• 1:02:40Chris Ryan?

  I thought it was giving 15.

• 1:02:42Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, maybe it's 15, right? Yes, but it's giving us this many episodes, and it can make an absolute all-timer, grand slam episode, and then five was like, and that's another episode. But that's old-fashioned in a way that, like, it, I don't expect them all to be that great. They're, they're, they're playing, they're letting the game come to them.

• 1:02:59Chris Ryan?

  The abortion plotline in five is pretty gripping.

• 1:03:02Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I, plot-wise is gripping, but I just mean, but, but five also had, um...

• 1:03:07Chris Ryan?

  And Whittaker constantly getting sprayed with body fluids is a pretty good running bit.

• 1:03:11Andy Greenwald?

  But, there's also stuff that I found, there was more, there, it was a little bit back to the clumsiness again, where Dr. McKay... We were however many hours in and we know that we're gonna have to find out about her ankle monitor. And the way and the vehicle they chose to deliver that information was the woman who clearly is in some sort of distress or perhaps unhoused and she comes back and Dr. McKay is like, let me give you a monologue about my circumstance. Because you're the person who's going to be receiving it. But I don't bring that up to criticize it because what they then did was they zag again. And it's like, this is going great until.

• 1:03:47Chris Ryan?

  The younger doctor comes in and is just like, guess what, you're going to, yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:51Andy Greenwald?

  And her lesson isn't pretty much a replay of the lesson that Dr. Santos has learned three times already. Which is like, use context clues, speak this way to people to be a human being. But these are useful lessons. Like, I'm not against the clumsiness. It feels part of the show. I, I don't know if I'm articulating exactly what I want to say. Other than the fact that it feels like a kind of amazing throwback that four could just explode into absolute truth and beauty and then it could just go back to a little bit boilerplate.

• 1:04:24Chris Ryan?

  Twisty TV.

• 1:04:25Andy Greenwald?

  It's not, it's a, it's an inverse of the season model that we're used to in the prestige era. Where everything, the pilot will grab you and then basically you build and build and build and build. And then you basically bookmark episode nine and 10.

• 1:04:38Chris Ryan?

  They're still running it like a TV show and I think that that's one thing that makes me excited, but also a little bit like this feeling of dread. So the running joke through two episodes, pretty much of, or episode and some change of where this stolen ambulance is gonna wind up.

• 1:04:54Andy Greenwald?

  Is ending up, yeah.

• 1:04:54Chris Ryan?

  That then at the end of five, it ends up in a crash in their sort of zone.

• 1:05:00Andy Greenwald?

  Neck of the woods, yeah.

• 1:05:01Chris Ryan?

  Where they'll be getting whoever's been hurt by this. That makes me think that they are not wasting anything on this show, which makes me very nervous about Dr. Robbie's son going to a music festival.

• 1:05:13Andy Greenwald?

  That's not his son. That is his mentor's son.

• 1:05:15Chris Ryan?

  Mentor's son.

• 1:05:16Andy Greenwald?

  I was gonna say the music festival and the incel teen out there.

• 1:05:20Chris Ryan?

  I don't like it.

• 1:05:21Andy Greenwald?

  You don't like it? I don't like it either. Something's looming.

• 1:05:24Chris Ryan?

  But like, look, like, I, I'm just looking at the tape.

• 1:05:27Andy Greenwald?

  No, I.

• 1:05:27Chris Ryan?

  You know?

• 1:05:28Andy Greenwald?

  Let's run through a couple of other things. I want to know if you have, do you have a power ranking of supporting characters? Because one of the fun things about a show like this is that everybody gets their shots up.

• 1:05:37Chris Ryan?

  I fucking love, I love Mel.

• 1:05:39Andy Greenwald?

  You're a Mel guy. Talk about Mel.

• 1:05:41Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I like, I like them all. Like, I like Mel.

• 1:05:43Andy Greenwald?

  This is Taylor Dearden as sort of a socially awkward second year resident.

• 1:05:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And I think her, like what they're all, you know, usually what happens is like these people learn procedures, but I think that they're also learning how to be people in this show. And maybe that's the case for, for real life as well, when they're in these emergency rooms, doing these residencies. But, you know, Santos is having to learn like humility and not treating people like as cadavers essentially for her to practice on. Mel, I think, is not unlike Mohan, like learning like the problem with like becoming too close to the patients or becoming, being too sincere.

• 1:06:27Chris Ryan?

  Because the way that that daughter who's been caring for her mother plotline ends up in five. Uh, yeah, I mean, like I, I, there's not really like a lot of, I mean, my absolute favorite is, is the head nurse, Dana, right?

• 1:06:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, you're a Dana guy.

• 1:06:44Chris Ryan?

  You know, she used to be married to Dennis Hopper in real life?

• 1:06:47Andy Greenwald?

  Catherine Lanasa was married to Dennis Hopper? Wow, no, I mean, she's earned the grilled cheeses she's given away on that show. That's all I gotta say. Uh, I'm a slow mo guy. I really like, I really like Supriya Ganesh. I like her performance.

• 1:07:02Chris Ryan?

  Would you like a slow mo doctor?

• 1:07:03Andy Greenwald?

  Hell yeah.

• 1:07:04Chris Ryan?

  Oh, no.

• 1:07:04Andy Greenwald?

  You want a fast mo?

• 1:07:05Chris Ryan?

  I want Garcia, cut, baby. Let's go. Crake my, what is it, craking?

• 1:07:11Andy Greenwald?

  You, you, so you don't want to give them a little extra time to thread the needle through your neck?

• 1:07:17Chris Ryan?

  It seemed like Garcia was like, I can definitely fix him fast. Like, and they were like, no, no, no, we want to do this like elaborate.

• 1:07:24Andy Greenwald?

  It did seem a little much.

• 1:07:25Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I'm sure that there's a, you don't want to cut, you know what I mean? But.

• 1:07:28Andy Greenwald?

  And yet, in a way, it was kind of a referendum on cutting too much because the kid is just like, I got strep throat a lot. Let me tell you something, I'm sitting here as a strep throat survivor, okay? I got that shit like six times in a year. I got both tonsils and also I'm not, no, they're here.

• 1:07:44Chris Ryan?

  I got my tonsils too.

• 1:07:45Andy Greenwald?

  We got four tonsils at this table right now. And you know what I'm not doing? Bleeding out of my throat. So, sorry, Dr. Garcia.

• 1:07:53Chris Ryan?

  What does big tonsil not want you to know?

• 1:07:55Andy Greenwald?

  That's what I'm saying. What are they trying to take from us?

• 1:07:57Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's big tonsillectomy, I think. Uh, what about, so you like Mohan, you like?

• 1:08:01Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I like everyone. I, I also like the way the show gives people the chance to surprise us because, and again, I'm not, I mean, no shade here. The what, like when I watched the first two episodes, Patrick Ball is Dr. Langdon. I was like, are they trying to recreate George Clooney too hard with science or magic here? Because he's, he, he has kind of like a pretty boy, bad boy vibe. But he's very good at doing this acting performance that he's giving.

• 1:08:27Chris Ryan?

  They honestly are keeping these people so busy that it doesn't,

• 1:08:30Andy Greenwald?

  It doesn't matter.

• 1:08:30Chris Ryan?

  Like, it's not like he's gonna be like, wanna shoot hoops, you know, like?

• 1:08:33Andy Greenwald?

  Can I also say, the spirit of shooting hoops, the thing that is giving me great, great joy, you mentioned the ambulance chase plotline. If ER taught us anything, it was what intubation is. But if it taught us two things, it's that just the nursing pool has so much talent in it. And so just every episode when there's just another-

• 1:08:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, like Perla and all that, yeah.

• 1:08:55Andy Greenwald?

  I love all of them.

• 1:08:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:56Andy Greenwald?

  I love, um, you know, when Santos goes to ask advice to the guy. I don't know the guy's name.

• 1:09:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:01Andy Greenwald?

  I was like,

• 1:09:02Chris Ryan?

  And he's like, pick your battles, yeah.

• 1:09:05Andy Greenwald?

  I love all of these support staff and I love shows that give actors a chance. In the sense that like, you get cast, you're in the background a lot, you might get sprayed with stuff early,

• 1:09:15Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:15Andy Greenwald?

  but you pop, you are going to become important because every, every cast member on the show has a role to play.

• 1:09:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:21Andy Greenwald?

  I fuck, I really, this has, I did not expect to love-

• 1:09:24Chris Ryan?

  I did not expect this either. It's fucking awesome. It's a great show. People should be watching it. Thanks to you, Andy Greenwald, for your,

• 1:09:30Andy Greenwald?

  Me.

• 1:09:30Chris Ryan?

  your great service to the state of Utah. Thanks to Kaya for producing and we will be back on Monday to talk about the third episode of Severance, season two, and maybe some other stuff.

• 1:09:40Andy Greenwald?

  And, uh, meanalivepod.com. If you're in LA and you wanna donate money to a good cause and come see us.

• 1:09:44Chris Ryan?

  Maybe we'll watch an episode of Paradise and see what's going on over there.

• 1:09:46Andy Greenwald?

  Is that what you want?

• 1:09:47Chris Ryan?

  Eh, maybe.

• 1:09:48Andy Greenwald?

  Whatever you want.

• 1:09:49Chris Ryan?

  Anything I want, huh?

• 1:09:50Andy Greenwald?

  You tell me.

• 1:09:51Chris Ryan?

  I want you to watch it, Nora.

• 1:09:52Andy Greenwald?

  There's, so do I. And you know what? You know what the, although I've got a pretty busy-

• 1:09:55Chris Ryan?

  No football this weekend.

• 1:09:56Andy Greenwald?

  A pretty, pretty busy weekend with the Pro Bowl, you know? I, I got some time. I got you.

• 1:10:01Chris Ryan?

  Talk to you guys Monday.

• 1:10:14Speaker 02

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• 1:10:26Speaker 03

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• 1:10:29Speaker 04

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