‘The Gentlemen’ Season 2 Premiere and ‘Lanterns’ Episode 3. Plus, ‘East of Eden’ Trailer.

Chris and Andy talk about Tom Hardy’s return to ‘MobLand’ (and rap) (2:55), a Dungeons & Dragons live-action TV series from John August and Alfonso Cuarón in development at Netflix (11:19), and the ‘East of Eden’ trailer (19:47). Then, they discuss ‘The Gentlemen’ Season 2 (26:20) and ‘Lanterns’ Episode 3 (44:28). Later, they share a few more things they’re watching, reading, and listening to (01:02:26). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Follow us on IG and TikTok! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Studio Production: Sarah Reddy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:52Speaker 01

  I need support staff to clear the room.

• 0:55Chris Ryan?

  Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. And joining me in the studio, he doesn't need a protege, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 1:09Andy Greenwald?

  I'm sorry, I'm just not myself. I just, Maria Bartiromo is out at Fox News?

• 1:13Chris Ryan?

  She's gonna be the press secretary.

• 1:16Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, okay, that, well, that works.

• 1:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17Andy Greenwald?

  I'm thrilled for her.

• 1:18Chris Ryan?

  The money, honey?

• 1:20Andy Greenwald?

  That's what she used to be called in CNBC.

• 1:22Chris Ryan?

  And I did not approve of that nickname.

• 1:23Andy Greenwald?

  No, at the time, you were quite strident that that was demeaning to both honeys and money.

• 1:29Chris Ryan?

  Uh, she used to have a fastball, man, Maria.

• 1:32Andy Greenwald?

  You don't think she has it now? She's gonna need it.

• 1:34Chris Ryan?

  She probably does. Greenwald, great to see you Thursday. Here we are.

• 1:38Andy Greenwald?

  Don't you like the way we're responsive to the news? People like that.

• 1:40Chris Ryan?

  We had a pre-recorded episode that went up on Monday or Sunday evening, as it were, where we talked about the Furious finale and then Andy interviewed Liz Meriwether and Emmy Rossum. Congratulations on all your work.

• 1:51Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you. Do you want to talk about why you absented yourself? Is it?

• 1:54Chris Ryan?

  I was participating in the Ringer Fantasy League Draft at a different part of Los Angeles.

• 2:00Andy Greenwald?

  So there are two genders, as we're saying.

• 2:02Chris Ryan?

  I had the first pick. Did I tell you that? You knew that. Did you watch the entire two and a half hour video?

• 2:07Andy Greenwald?

  I started halfway through because I'm only interested in the later rounds.

• 2:10Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 2:11Andy Greenwald?

  Who did you pick first?

• 2:12Chris Ryan?

  Jameer Gibbs.

• 2:13Andy Greenwald?

  I think that was a good choice.

• 2:14Chris Ryan?

  But it was funny because like I didn't really study that much and I know like a fair amount about the Eagles, although weirdly not as much as you anymore. And I would draft guys.

• 2:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 2:24Chris Ryan?

  And like then immediately turn to people who knew about football and see like if I could read their face as they're like.

• 2:29Andy Greenwald?

  Does anyone have a tell?

• 2:31Chris Ryan?

  And somebody would be like, oh, and I'd be like, is that because he has tendonitis or pending felony charges?

• 2:38Andy Greenwald?

  Does your team have a name? Do you name your teams?

• 2:40Chris Ryan?

  I haven't yet. I named my fantasy Premier League team, though.

• 2:44Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 2:44Chris Ryan?

  No jacket required for Jeremy Jacquet, the.

• 2:48Andy Greenwald?

  That's very good.

• 2:48Chris Ryan?

  The French center back that Liverpool has.

• 2:51Andy Greenwald?

  I know that he's the French center back that Liverpool has. I'm very invested in the Premier League. My team, I believe, has yet to win.

• 2:57Chris Ryan?

  So today on the show, we're going to talk about Lanterns, which we were remiss in. We didn't get to discuss it on Monday because we had this pre-recorded episode. We're going to talk a little bit about the second season of The Gentleman and maybe the larger project of, of mining IP for, for, for television, which is something of an old sawhorse for us.

• 3:14Andy Greenwald?

  I thought you meant the larger project of Guy Ritchie single-handedly returning posh hierarchy to his native lands.

• 3:21Chris Ryan?

  It's an odd show.

• 3:22Andy Greenwald?

  It's a weird show.

• 3:24Chris Ryan?

  And I have some news and notes and some trailers at the top for you. Some pretty important stuff at the top. And you can email us at the watch at spotify.com and you can follow us on Instagram at the watch pod underscore and you can watch us on YouTube at ringer-tv where we're hanging out with the prestige TV on that channel. And many, many, many, many, many men have emailed us asking to discuss Tom Hardy's triumphant return to Mobland.

• 3:50Andy Greenwald?

  I was one of the people that messaged you about this.

• 3:52Chris Ryan?

  This is a show that I watched, I think, you know, Kai and I were trying to talk about this. I, I think, well, we were trying in the sense that.

• 3:59Andy Greenwald?

  Was Kai like, no, man, I gotta go.

• 4:01Chris Ryan?

  Kai was like, this is inappropriate. Don't talk to me about Mobland. Tom Hardy is a very important figure for me. You know, Venom, in a lot of ways, taught me it was okay to be weird. And I'm just so happy to see him and, and Jez Butterworth work out their differences. There's, there was all these rumors that Tom Hardy had basically behaved himself off the show.

• 4:24Andy Greenwald?

  The, the story, I don't, I, the sourcing was murky, but that was that he was let go.

• 4:30Chris Ryan?

  I think we need to get it together as a society.

• 4:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 4:33Chris Ryan?

  Like, we did like a full two weeks, like, how dare Indy Navarrete turn down Michael Mann? You know, like.

• 4:40Andy Greenwald?

  We did.

• 4:41Chris Ryan?

  How dare Tony Ridley Scott say this about Paul Meskell after the fact?

• 4:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 4:45Chris Ryan?

  You know, like, and I don't think these people are actually saying those things.

• 4:49Andy Greenwald?

  I'm gonna, it's just us, right? We're turned off the cameras for a second? I think that the newsrooms have been gutted a little bit. I'm sorry to tell you, this is not Ben Bradley's Washington Post.

• 5:01Chris Ryan?

  I love dining out on possibly true information.

• 5:03Andy Greenwald?

  Who among us?

• 5:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, sure. This seems to be pretty, pretty certified, though, that Tom Hardy, who was seemingly on his way out of Mobland, and that may or may not have spelled the end for this.

• 5:13Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 5:13Chris Ryan?

  This series that I watched some of and enjoyed, but was a kind of consistent phenomenon that I think lots of people experience, where they like something, but they may not like it 10 hours worth, you know?

• 5:25Andy Greenwald?

  And talk me through this, though. This was a few months ago, we were talking about this while they were, I guess, in post on season two.

• 5:30Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 5:31Andy Greenwald?

  Season two is now a few weeks away.

• 5:32Chris Ryan?

  Very soon.

• 5:33Andy Greenwald?

  Imminent.

• 5:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:34Andy Greenwald?

  And it was renewed for season three.

• 5:37Chris Ryan?

  And in the spirit of Andy starts Euphoria in season three, I may just jump back in on Mobland. I bet I can piece it together.

• 5:42Andy Greenwald?

  In the spirit of one-upsmanship, I won't watch it until season three.

• 5:47Chris Ryan?

  But that's not the only Tom Hardy news I have for you this week.

• 5:49Andy Greenwald?

  I hope it's, okay, good, I know about this.

• 5:51Chris Ryan?

  So Tom Hardy also.

• 5:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 5:54Chris Ryan?

  Was revealed, although not fully revealed, as you'll understand in a second, to be a part of a contemporary rap super.

• 6:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 6:04Chris Ryan?

  Called Zarface.

• 6:05Andy Greenwald?

  You thought you were gonna put this over on me. I know about this.

• 6:07Chris Ryan?

  Zarface. I, I, and, and you know who's in the group?

• 6:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 6:10Chris Ryan?

  Seven L and Esoteric to backpack legends from our, our youth. Inspector Deck.

• 6:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 6:17Chris Ryan?

  From Wu-Tang Clan, the single, and then I believe that Tom Hardy's rap name is Frankie Pulitzer. Is that right?

• 6:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think it's Pulitzer. I'm sorry to be that guy.

• 6:28Chris Ryan?

  Is it?

• 6:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it's a Pulitzer Prize, not a Pulitzer Prize.

• 6:32Chris Ryan?

  And, you know, I was listening to this record. I got, I got a couple of messages about this record and I was checking it out. And I got to a track about like midway through the album called Dr. Yorgo in the Land of Acid 7.0. I was like, this shit knocks. This is really good. And then I got to the last 20 seconds of the song.

• 6:53Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 6:54Chris Ryan?

  Sarah, would you please play it for us?

• 6:55Speaker 04

  The thing I like a lot about this is that it harkens back to like, basically one of my favorite times in hip hop and in pop music that I've experienced as I've been alive, which was like, like the real height of the mixtapes era.

• 7:06Chris Ryan?

  What the fuck, Ben?

• 7:08Andy Greenwald?

  What?

• 7:08Chris Ryan?

  Did they sample me on this record?

• 7:11Andy Greenwald?

  What the fuck? Can we play it again? Will listeners hear this?

• 7:17Chris Ryan?

  I want to say this to you.

• 7:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 7:20Chris Ryan?

  To Tom Hardy.

• 7:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 7:21Chris Ryan?

  To Inspector Deck and Seven L and Esoteric and God.

• 7:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 7:25Chris Ryan?

  And the American people.

• 7:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 7:28Chris Ryan?

  You can have it.

• 7:30Andy Greenwald?

  Full consent.

• 7:31Chris Ryan?

  Full fucking, there is no safe word. There is no safe word, brother.

• 7:38Andy Greenwald?

  You are not going to be treating this the way ASCAP is treating Stella Lefty Records. You're not looking for the forensic evidence here.

• 7:45Chris Ryan?

  This is like, seriously, among the coolest things that's ever happened.

• 7:49Andy Greenwald?

  Can I hear it again?

• 7:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, please.

• 7:51Andy Greenwald?

  Our listeners, we don't have anything else to talk about today, right?

• 7:54Chris Ryan?

  Well, first of all, I think we are fully within our rights to play this on our podcast if that's my voice, which it pretty much is.

• 8:00Andy Greenwald?

  Wouldn't it be incredible if Inspector Deck called you and was just like, I need points on that now? You may be ready to.

• 8:06Chris Ryan?

  Seven L and Esoteric wanted to jump in on the watch.

• 8:09Andy Greenwald?

  You may want to give up the bag easily, but we are, we do not.

• 8:11Chris Ryan?

  I hope that this ends with Zarface and Frankie Pulitzer in our studio.

• 8:16Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, I've got a couple of questions. Let's hear it again and then I've got a couple of questions.

• 8:19Speaker 04

  The thing I like a lot about this is that it harkens back to like, basically one of my favorite times in hip hop and in pop music that I've experienced as I've been alive, which was like, like the real height of the mixtapes era.

• 8:31Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, couple of things. So they pitched you down a little bit?

• 8:33Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 8:34Andy Greenwald?

  Or did you not have that?

• 8:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I, and I fully know that if however hip hop production works, like maybe all these dudes were standing around being like, ah, yeah, pitch it down a little bit, or they could be like, find that nerd talking about mixtapes and put it at the end.

• 8:47Andy Greenwald?

  When did you say that? I feel like it was on this podcast.

• 8:49Chris Ryan?

  I think so. And I think, I mean, we must have been talking about Pusha Kendrick Drake, maybe. It sounds like we would have been referring to.

• 8:59Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 9:00Chris Ryan?

  This is like, maybe, maybe the, like, the, the clips mixtapes from the aughts or G-Unit, or I don't even know.

• 9:06Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, so let's talk through this. I appreciate that you gave the roster of creatives involved here. Who is the CR head among them? And then let, or let's, let's rank the probabilities.

• 9:15Chris Ryan?

  I mean, my desired probabilities are the likely probabilities. I'm sure.

• 9:20Andy Greenwald?

  Let your, let your heart sing. We all know it's like the engineer named Brett.

• 9:24Chris Ryan?

  I think, I think we all know that Inspector Deck, when he heard us discussing Top of the Lake was like, I found my people.

• 9:30Andy Greenwald?

  And then he thought we gave season two short shrift. And he was just like, I'm out. I mean, this is an incredible, how are you, how do you feel?

• 9:37Chris Ryan?

  Honored.

• 9:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 9:38Chris Ryan?

  Deep honor. Yeah. Like, you remember when Obama surprised Biden by giving him the Congressional Medal of Freedom or whatever?

• 9:44Andy Greenwald?

  One of the great days of my life.

• 9:46Chris Ryan?

  That's how this feels.

• 9:47Andy Greenwald?

  That like you.

• 9:48Chris Ryan?

  I'm just hanging out, listening to a rap record, and then it's just like, my voice pops up.

• 9:52Andy Greenwald?

  It's just like Barack came up behind you with a medal. And you're, oh, okay. All right. It is incredible because it is a perfect Venn diagram of who, who you would want to see you.

• 10:02Chris Ryan?

  Also, I like that beat.

• 10:04Andy Greenwald?

  It's a good beat.

• 10:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:05Andy Greenwald?

  I thought, honestly, okay, let me talk you through my process. When Sarah played it, I thought you were playing it because it was gonna be like, do you see the sample is of the eighties twee pop legends Field Mice?

• 10:16Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. That would have been weird to put in the A block.

• 10:18Andy Greenwald?

  But I was like, that is weird, but maybe it's a really slow day. You just wanted me to like, I'm proud of you. I'm honored.

• 10:26Chris Ryan?

  Do you understand how close this brings me to Tom Hardy? We're essentially homies now. We're essentially like, I'm surprised, like, I'm gonna go to London, we're gonna hang out, me and Tom Hardy. I'm, I'm, they, they say like, project out into the world what you want. It's the secret. Like, visualize it. I visualize me and Frankie Pulitz are just rolling around in a Benz, you know?

• 10:45Andy Greenwald?

  Sure. Do you think?

• 10:48Chris Ryan?

  Roadman style.

• 10:50Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think with a blood bag in the back?

• 10:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:53Andy Greenwald?

  As a rapper, is Tom Hardy better than Shaleme, who collaborated with SD Kid recently?

• 11:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think so. I think he's probably also been like honing his craft for a long time. And he wears a mask in this, like, doom style, like, yeah.

• 11:10Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, really? Tom Hardy wears a mask? Just to get into this, I mean, what a wild thing you've just thrown down on the table.

• 11:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:17Andy Greenwald?

  I'm thrilled for you. This is a wonderful moment.

• 11:20Chris Ryan?

  I wonder what the Greenwald sample would have been.

• 11:22Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I, I didn't want to bring it up, but you know, I was sampled on the new DJ Sabrina, the Teenage DJ record.

• 11:27Chris Ryan?

  Talking about Effengers? You did tell me this.

• 11:30Andy Greenwald?

  I was, and I didn't, you know.

• 11:31Chris Ryan?

  Didn't we talk about it on the pod?

• 11:33Andy Greenwald?

  No, I'm, I'm more modest about these things.

• 11:35Chris Ryan?

  That's what everybody says.

• 11:37Andy Greenwald?

  Sarah, do you have that sample queued up?

• 11:42Chris Ryan?

  Anyway, Mobland, season three, and season two. I am seated. I'll be watching that.

• 11:47Andy Greenwald?

  This is incredible too, because I do think the Paramount publicity team is just getting blindsided by this, but now they are like, holy shit, now we know how to get him on board.

• 11:56Chris Ryan?

  He's a captive audience. Uh, one other piece of news from this week that I thought you would get a real kick out of.

• 12:00Andy Greenwald?

  I may have a recoil reaction in about 20 minutes too.

• 12:03Chris Ryan?

  That's fine. We can always circle back to it. I don't even know how good this pod's gonna be. These are some headlines and some, some, uh, words that I read on deadline.com today. And I needed to get your immediate reaction.

• 12:12Andy Greenwald?

  I've been driving around. I've been seeing the headlines.

• 12:14Chris Ryan?

  Headline.

• 12:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 12:15Chris Ryan?

  Dungeons and Dragons live action series Ravenloft in the works at Netflix from John August and Alfonso Cuarón.

• 12:29Andy Greenwald?

  Do you remember?

• 12:30Chris Ryan?

  Do you think it's weirder that I'm on Zarface or that Alfonso Cuarón is fucking making a touch?

• 12:37Andy Greenwald?

  Can I tell you how this makes me feel? No, no, I don't mean this glibly. But you know the scene in the opening moments of the new season of Lioness? When Martin Donovan looks at the New York Times and the cover says, end of democracy? That's kind of how I feel with that headline.

• 12:54Chris Ryan?

  I'm zagging.

• 12:55Andy Greenwald?

  You're into it?

• 12:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. This is cool.

• 13:00Chris Ryan?

  Let me tell you about this.

• 13:01Andy Greenwald?

  You're gonna be in such a good mood today?

• 13:02Chris Ryan?

  I'm gonna tell you about this. Deadline, uh, this is a quote from Deadline, described as a prestige fantasy series.

• 13:07Andy Greenwald?

  Obviously.

• 13:07Chris Ryan?

  Where adventure collides with Gothic horror and tragic romance. Ravenloft and its domains of dread tackle adventure through character-driven.

• 13:17Andy Greenwald?

  You're all lost in the sauce now.

• 13:19Chris Ryan?

  Wait, I'm trying to understand these words. Where they tackle adventure through character-driven stories of dark magic and supernatural intrigue.

• 13:24Andy Greenwald?

  Read the next sentence. I dare you.

• 13:26Chris Ryan?

  At its heart, the series follows the making of the vampire Dark Lord Strad Van Zarovich, whose story of power, love, obsession, and undead transformation charts his origins from tragic anti-hero to one of D and D's most notorious villains.

• 13:41Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, a couple of things.

• 13:42Chris Ryan?

  Origin story of Stod the Vampire by Cuarón?

• 13:46Andy Greenwald?

  Fuck off. Respectfully. Couple of things here. Dark Lord Strad Von Zarovich is Kenneth Branagh's role in Tenet, I believe.

• 13:55Chris Ryan?

  No, that was Andre Sator.

• 13:57Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, well, I picked the wrong.

• 14:00Chris Ryan?

  You have to get up a little fucking earlier in the morning.

• 14:02Andy Greenwald?

  Frankie Pulitz are over here.

• 14:04Chris Ryan?

  Fastball past me.

• 14:08Andy Greenwald?

  The whole point of Dungeons and Dragons is that it does not have iconic villains. You are the characters.

• 14:13Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 14:14Andy Greenwald?

  Right?

• 14:14Chris Ryan?

  And that's what I bet Drew, one of our most accomplished filmmakers, who is now in year six of a prestige TV experiment, between this and, what was that one? Disclosure? Was that called?

• 14:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 14:27Chris Ryan?

  The, the show, The K. Blige Show?

• 14:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I watched all of it. Yeah.

• 14:32Chris Ryan?

  That he's making, you know, he's returning to Netflix for the first time since Roma. And I'll, I'll just add some more context to this. This is a new project with new auspices that is not related to the forgotten realms.

• 14:43Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, thank God.

• 14:44Chris Ryan?

  A live action series taking place in the titular D and D setting that Netflix put into development in early 2025, with Drew Cravelo writing and Sean Levy executive producing. That D and D adaptation is no longer in development at the streamer. Deadline has learned. So this is the Netflix D and D show.

• 15:02Andy Greenwald?

  It's a relief.

• 15:02Chris Ryan?

  Going for John August, an incredibly well-regarded screenwriter and very good podcaster.

• 15:07Andy Greenwald?

  I love, the bigger zag that you're doing, that I'm noticing is you're like, clearly, it is the appeal of open world storytelling that has drawn Alfonso Cuarón to this project, as opposed to the appeal of open world money, which is.

• 15:23Chris Ryan?

  I think that.

• 15:24Andy Greenwald?

  Which is also fine.

• 15:25Chris Ryan?

  This could be though, like, if I told you that the director of Roma was making a Gothic vampire story, what would you say?

• 15:33Andy Greenwald?

  So this is the, yeah, this is the, the deeper thing, which is that if this is the Trojan mechanism with which one can.

• 15:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:40Andy Greenwald?

  Although I learned recently, the Trojan horse, not what we thought. Not just an easy metaphor. You know what I mean? Had some consequences.

• 15:46Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 15:47Andy Greenwald?

  Especially for Elliot Page and everyone inside the walls.

• 15:52Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 15:54Chris Ryan?

  That's your take, okay?

• 15:55Andy Greenwald?

  I mean.

• 15:56Chris Ryan?

  I'm throwing a lot at you this morning.

• 15:58Andy Greenwald?

  This is, this is the world, this is the world we live in. You know, where was, what's your D and D history?

• 16:05Chris Ryan?

  I don't know that I,

• 16:10Chris Ryan?

  I never played, but I also don't feel like I was ever asked. You know, like, I think I've played D and D-esque games, but I have never played D and D, like, classic.

• 16:21Andy Greenwald?

  Like proper 20-sided die.

• 16:22Chris Ryan?

  Nobody was ever like, do you want to play D and D?

• 16:25Andy Greenwald?

  Because?

• 16:26Chris Ryan?

  Because they were like, you're so good at sports.

• 16:27Andy Greenwald?

  That's the thing. You were like, oh god, you were like, looking at your travel baseball schedule in the hallways.

• 16:32Chris Ryan?

  They're like, just, man, all you do is hit line drives.

• 16:36Andy Greenwald?

  Just ropes, frozen ropes all day.

• 16:39Chris Ryan?

  Do you know, like, when I was in, uh, I think I was pretty young. I think I was like 12.

• 16:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 16:44Chris Ryan?

  But, you know, we were, um, we have like our league, city league, you know what I mean? We, we basically have our fair amount of league that we played on different teams on. Then there was a fair amount All-Stars team that traveled the city to play different teams. And then within that citywide league, one year I made All-Star.

• 17:01Andy Greenwald?

  Good for you.

• 17:02Chris Ryan?

  And like my coach or my assistant coach was the assistant coach of the All-Star team. And I was like, doing something and I could hear them talking about like what the lineup should be. My assistant coach goes, my guy can hit cleanup, he hits line drives. And I was like, fuck, this is as good as I've ever felt.

• 17:19Andy Greenwald?

  That's the coolest thing I've ever heard.

• 17:21Chris Ryan?

  I got sampled on a Zarface record.

• 17:24Andy Greenwald?

  You've lived a pretty decent life, I gotta say.

• 17:26Chris Ryan?

  Two things that were cool happened, yeah. And it wasn't CR month.

• 17:29Andy Greenwald?

  Two things that have never happened to me and never will, I promise you that. I have, I have a follow up about D and D, but I did want to ask, like, one thing that I've observed through contemporary parenthood, and you've, you've observed it too, just by living here.

• 17:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:42Andy Greenwald?

  Is that like, the expectations of parents in travel sports is like way, way different than what I imagined it being or observed it being. Do you think that if young CR was young now, would you have done travel baseball with what it requires? And like

• 17:58Chris Ryan?

  Like traveling all over the Southland.

• 17:59Andy Greenwald?

  Wake up calls and like the, like the complete devotion.

• 18:02Chris Ryan?

  I did that for swimming for a while.

• 18:03Andy Greenwald?

  Did you?

• 18:04Chris Ryan?

  You know, there was some like, wake up at four and drive to Northern New Jersey for a meet kind of things.

• 18:10Chris Ryan?

  But I, you know, I mean, like in some ways, my diminutive height was like a blessing because it was like, this is probably not going to happen, you know?

• 18:17Andy Greenwald?

  But what, yeah, but what's his name? What's the, what's the, what's the little spark plug guy who's on the Astros?

• 18:22Chris Ryan?

  Altuve?

• 18:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 18:23Chris Ryan?

  But he's a cheater, right?

• 18:25Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, well, nobody's perfect. I just meant that like, he's carved out a pretty good career for himself.

• 18:29Chris Ryan?

  He's pretty good, yeah. I mean, there's examples of like incredible athletes overcoming maybe a height.

• 18:34Andy Greenwald?

  Willie Lampkin on the Eagles, for example.

• 18:36Chris Ryan?

  How tall is he, 5'7"?

• 18:38Andy Greenwald?

  Well, they say he's 5'11", but they talk about him like he's an Oompa Loompa.

• 18:41Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 18:42Andy Greenwald?

  So I, I think the truth lies somewhere in between. Okay, my, my D and D thing was.

• 18:46Chris Ryan?

  In Philly, it was just like, go to Fish Down and then go to like Abington. It wasn't like that hard.

• 18:51Andy Greenwald?

  For my school, like the cross-country meets at Gerard College was like the most exotic thing you could ever possibly do. First of all, it was called college. And then there were the other reasons, but you know, basically just run around.

• 19:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:02Andy Greenwald?

  Pretty easy. No, no one was like, my guy can, my guy can run forth. He runs like, they're like, he's on the team too. What I guess I should say, when I say like, it's all, you know, you generate your own characters. I never successfully like, I don't, maybe it's successful or unsuccessful. Like I never played a lot of campaigns, you know? I didn't, didn't have, didn't roll deep enough to do that. But maybe this is even nerdier, but I did read a lot of Dragonlance novels.

• 19:29Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 19:29Andy Greenwald?

  And you never went that far deep.

• 19:31Chris Ryan?

  I don't know what that is.

• 19:32Andy Greenwald?

  So the thing that they're saying, like Forgotten Realms or, or whatever this one is, Raven Loft, like within the world of D and D, which is notoriously open, they would have like world sets, you know, where like

• 19:44Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 19:44Andy Greenwald?

  In this world, there's this magic, these sorts of things, these are the stakes. And then often they would do like, they would, they would sort of flood the zone with like novels set in the world to draw people in. And then maybe there were cartoons for the more popular ones. And, and I think real heads know that those Dragonlance trilogies rip.

• 20:01Chris Ryan?

  I wonder if Taylor Sheridan's ever considered getting into like a dice rolling RPG like this.

• 20:06Andy Greenwald?

  Just in case he's run out of people to give wedgies to?

• 20:08Chris Ryan?

  No, just like, not for Dungeons and Dragons, but like you could be in the world of lioness, you know?

• 20:13Andy Greenwald?

  Stop giving this away for free. That is such a mu, that is a money minting exercise.

• 20:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. You're a Ukrainian drone operator with a crippling like.

• 20:24Andy Greenwald?

  Roll, roll to see how many women are in the bathtub with you. 20 sided die.

• 20:30Chris Ryan?

  Well, that could get really awkward pretty fast.

• 20:32Andy Greenwald?

  Depends how big the bathtub is.

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• 22:35Chris Ryan?

  Another thing I wanted to mention was that there was, and this is also kind of in Netflix news. Interesting to see a couple of trickles of information about like Netflix projects that like cross our interest level, you know, like Dungeons and Dragons being one of them. East of Eden got its full trailer, there'd been a teaser.

• 22:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 22:53Chris Ryan?

  This is Zoe Kazan's adaptation of John Steinbeck's celebrated American literary masterpiece, which I read. I think two years ago, I think Kaya's reading it now.

• 23:02Andy Greenwald?

  Did you?

• 23:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, it's been a hot book.

• 23:05Andy Greenwald?

  90, I think that was a 94 for me.

• 23:07Chris Ryan?

  Nice one.

• 23:08Andy Greenwald?

  You know?

• 23:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Did you feel like you really got the biblical allegories in that?

• 23:11Andy Greenwald?

  I just threw on Beck's Mellow Gold or whatever. Tucked myself up in my Urban Outfitters plaid.

• 23:17Chris Ryan?

  Can you read and listen to music at the same time?

• 23:19Andy Greenwald?

  Not with lyrics, no.

• 23:21Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 23:22Andy Greenwald?

  Instrumental.

• 23:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, me too.

• 23:23Andy Greenwald?

  Nice. We're just a couple of cool guys in their 40s.

• 23:26Chris Ryan?

  Guys, no fucking problems going on upstairs.

• 23:30Chris Ryan?

  Zoe Kazan's grandfather, Eli Kazan, was the director of, I believe, 1951 adaptation.

• 23:36Andy Greenwald?

  With James Dean.

• 23:37Chris Ryan?

  James Dean and, or Rock Hudson. This is seven episodes on Netflix, dropping 10/1. The cast is Florence Pugh as Kathy, uh, who is certainly not the main character of the novel.

• 23:47Andy Greenwald?

  You're right, that's the thing.

• 23:48Chris Ryan?

  Uh, but is the main character of this trailer.

• 23:50Andy Greenwald?

  And seemingly the series.

• 23:51Chris Ryan?

  And seemingly the series. We can get to it in a second. Christopher Abbott and Mike Faced as Adam and Charles Trask. Joseph Zada and Joe Anders, who is a Winslet son.

• 24:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 24:01Chris Ryan?

  As Callanairn Trask.

• 24:03Andy Greenwald?

  He was just in Cape Fear.

• 24:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and Callanairn Trask, I would say to make up a large portion of the novel, right?

• 24:10Andy Greenwald?

  Almost a biblical portion, if you will.

• 24:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And then

• 24:13Andy Greenwald?

  C and A, the sons.

• 24:14Chris Ryan?

  This also stars Martha Plimpton, Karen Hines, Hunley and

• 24:18Andy Greenwald?

  Say it.

• 24:20Andy Greenwald?

  Say the name.

• 24:20Chris Ryan?

  Like, I, I haven't seen any of his stuff. Tracy Letts, is that, is it with the two Ts, does it, is it pronounced differently?

• 24:27Andy Greenwald?

  Tracy is the, it's an actor.

• 24:29Chris Ryan?

  Yes, yeah.

• 24:30Andy Greenwald?

  He seems like, seems like a promising upstart.

• 24:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:33Andy Greenwald?

  I look forward to seeing his work.

• 24:34Chris Ryan?

  I, I have high hopes for him. Uh, he's in this and I thought this looked very good.

• 24:41Andy Greenwald?

  Beautiful.

• 24:42Chris Ryan?

  And certain shots reminded me of my beloved Joe Wright adaptation of Anna Karenina.

• 24:49Andy Greenwald?

  Do you love that adaptation?

• 24:50Chris Ryan?

  I think it's just very brave. You know, I think it's a really cool Tom Stoppard script.

• 24:55Andy Greenwald?

  The

• 24:56Chris Ryan?

  And I think like the staging of it.

• 24:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 24:58Chris Ryan?

  Is really cool.

• 24:59Andy Greenwald?

  The Joe Wright.

• 25:01Chris Ryan?

  And I, and I, I also will admit, if I tell stories about my, my line drives when I was 12.

• 25:07Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 25:08Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I have to balance it out karmically by saying, I did not finish Anna Karenina. I quit midway through.

• 25:14Andy Greenwald?

  My daughter just read it.

• 25:16Chris Ryan?

  Come on.

• 25:16Andy Greenwald?

  She did.

• 25:17Chris Ryan?

  The like real one?

• 25:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, the real one.

• 25:19Chris Ryan?

  Not the like abridged, like she put her face.

• 25:21Andy Greenwald?

  Graphic novel version? Anna K? Yeah, she read the book.

• 25:26Chris Ryan?

  How's that happen? Is that kind of like how a kid can learn French really young, but like adults find it harder?

• 25:31Andy Greenwald?

  And she doesn't have Instagram reels.

• 25:33Chris Ryan?

  I don't have Instagram, it's not like that. It's not like that.

• 25:35Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just saying, she doesn't have the distractions.

• 25:38Chris Ryan?

  She watched like 19 seasons of Outer Banks in a day.

• 25:40Andy Greenwald?

  The brain, the brain at that age, I was going to say, she, but she hasn't watched the movie, the movie, but the Joe Wright.

• 25:47Chris Ryan?

  She just read Anna Karenina. She was like, this, all this wheat chucking is cool. Like, I'm down with this.

• 25:52Andy Greenwald?

  I, I made that joke early because I read it 25 years ago and that's the only joke I remember to make.

• 25:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:59Andy Greenwald?

  Guy Levin loves farming, huh? She's like, dad, that's hilarious. Then I'm like, page 200, I'm like, Levin's still farming?

• 26:07Andy Greenwald?

  What's up with all this wheat? Am I right?

• 26:09Chris Ryan?

  Man, I feel completely emasculated, knowing that your daughter was able to do something that my brain couldn't. I know that I could have done it. I could have done it. But this is the problem is you have so much choice in this world and you're like, what if I just wrote another book about a guy who finds a bag of cocaine?

• 26:26Andy Greenwald?

  She was, she was reading that when I was reading Jordan Harper's violent masterpiece.

• 26:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:31Andy Greenwald?

  And I was like, what's going on? And she's like, well, Levin's threshing. And I was like, nice. She's like, what's going on in your book? I'm like, a man named the, what? And it's like, the night thresher is doing to the young women of Los Angeles, what, you know, what Levin does to his stocks. And she was like, why do you read that? And I was like, that's right. What's the cover of the Snoop Dogg record? You know, why must I be like that? That's, then I tried to tell her about that. And then she was like, go to bed, grandpa. I just was trying to say that Joe Wright directed her favorite film, Pride and Prejudice, good 2005.

• 27:04Chris Ryan?

  Yes, I liked Joe Wright.

• 27:05Andy Greenwald?

  He's a talented guy. He does the agency. Come on, look at us.

• 27:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:08Andy Greenwald?

  Can I, can I do one East of Eden thing, just to circle back to it?

• 27:11Chris Ryan?

  Please.

• 27:11Andy Greenwald?

  I think it looks great. I cannot wait to see this. And, and the note is still the note we had before, which is how interesting it seems to be reframed to make Florence Pugh the main character. But there was, but the world we live in now, and the way trailers are cut, there was a part of me when I was watching it that was just like, Black Widow, Professor X, in a story brought to you by the dangerous mind behind Grapes of Wrath.

• 27:33Chris Ryan?

  Enzo Ferrari.

• 27:36Andy Greenwald?

  It's, you could watch, the trailer communicates what a trailer should, which is some sort of sweeping emotion. But I don't know sincerely, and I don't know if this matters, if the Joe Popcorn casual fan who didn't read the book 30 years ago, or three months ago, I don't know if they're gonna walk away being like, I see what that's about.

• 27:55Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 27:55Andy Greenwald?

  Does that matter? I don't know.

• 27:57Chris Ryan?

  Well, I am just looking forward to this because I am not very precious about adaptations. Specifically, like, I mean, I guess I would be if, like, you know, the Coen brothers had made No Country for Old Men into like, a rip roaring comedy. But like, for the most part, I think when you make an adaptation, you should have the freedom to investigate.

• 28:16Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's exciting.

• 28:17Chris Ryan?

  Different kinds of perspectives and you should, you should feel free to screw with it a little bit. And based on this trailer, it looks like Zoe Kazan's way in on this is to interrogate a very complicated figure in Kathy. And I look forward very much for Florence Pugh to play this.

• 28:33Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's great. I genuinely, like, it's a conversation about any adaptation of a beloved or highly respected book. It's like, where do you set the floor and where do you set the ceiling? Because if you get something that looks beautiful, and you invest a lot into production design, and you have good actors, and you have a book that is prestigious for a purpose, it's going to be a B minus.

• 28:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:54Andy Greenwald?

  Like, the floor is going to be high. But honestly, why do it? Why spend all of your time doing it if you were just trying to reflect the light of the book? If you, if you have the opportunity, you should try to do something with it. Use it to tell a different story. And it seems like she did here.

• 29:08Chris Ryan?

  And since we're on the topic of Netflix, do you want to talk about The Gentleman first? And then we'll do Lantern second?

• 29:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, alright.

• 29:14Chris Ryan?

  This is a show, when it premiered two years ago, it's Guy Ritchie reimagining his, his feature with Matthew McConaughey, with this one, the show version stars Theo James as a off-brand British royal, like, what?

• 29:30Andy Greenwald?

  He's a duke.

• 29:31Chris Ryan?

  A duke.

• 29:31Andy Greenwald?

  But he previously was a army captain, peacekeeping officer.

• 29:35Chris Ryan?

  Right. I remember those flashbacks. And then.

• 29:37Andy Greenwald?

  Not flashback, that's how it starts, remember? And then he gets helicoptered out of doing good to go do bad.

• 29:43Chris Ryan?

  And Caius Golario plays the, the heir to a criminal empire in England. Her father is played by Ray Winstone. It's like, a really good, really entertaining, perhaps overlong, crime show with a lot of humor.

• 30:01Andy Greenwald?

  And a lot of great performances by some of the all-stars.

• 30:03Chris Ryan?

  Daniel Langs is in this as a coked out, rich guy. And it's, he's incredible in it.

• 30:09Andy Greenwald?

  He plays Theo James' older brother. And people who'd watched The Gentleman were then happy to see him in Night of the Seven Kingdoms.

• 30:16Chris Ryan?

  Pretty much playing the same character.

• 30:17Andy Greenwald?

  But, please let him play this character.

• 30:20Chris Ryan?

  Lionel Baratheon, and his character in The Gentleman is very similar.

• 30:23Andy Greenwald?

  I'd like to see him play this character in more shows. It would lighten the mood.

• 30:26Chris Ryan?

  Let's start with an admission. I am a connoisseur of late period Guy Ritchie. It's one of the stranger careers that I think of any filmmaker from my, like, essentially my generation, you know? Obviously, he started out his career making these incredibly stylish, incredibly hip, extensions of rural Britannia, like Brit pop culture with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Then became something of like, a steady Hollywood hand, where he's making Sherlock Holmes movies, Aladdin.

• 31:00Andy Greenwald?

  Aladdin live action.

• 31:02Chris Ryan?

  And has now turned himself into a multifaceted corporation.

• 31:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 31:08Chris Ryan?

  Where he.

• 31:09Andy Greenwald?

  Describe the brand.

• 31:10Chris Ryan?

  It's essentially a lifestyle brand.

• 31:11Andy Greenwald?

  It is.

• 31:12Chris Ryan?

  That is a mixture of high and low, like, high-end, British.

• 31:17Andy Greenwald?

  Traditionalist, kind of posh.

• 31:19Chris Ryan?

  And like Burberry, hunting pheasants.

• 31:23Andy Greenwald?

  He has a great.

• 31:23Chris Ryan?

  And hunting peasants, maybe. I don't know.

• 31:26Andy Greenwald?

  Pheasants and peasants. The guns go off either way.

• 31:28Chris Ryan?

  Whichever one comes out of the marshes.

• 31:30Andy Greenwald?

  Great pub in Fitzrovia, Laura the Land.

• 31:32Chris Ryan?

  Yes. And I believe has like, a whiskey line and a cigar line and all this stuff. And while this is happening, makes one to two genre crime movies a year, including Some Good, like Wrath of Man from a bunch of years ago during COVID, which he apparently directed from a van looking at an iPad because of, because of COVID.

• 31:57Andy Greenwald?

  Because he was busy.

• 31:59Chris Ryan?

  There's just like, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of really weird John Frankenheimer-y movies.

• 32:05Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 32:05Chris Ryan?

  That don't really typically get made anymore. And many of them are not very successful, yet he continues to get tons of work. The Gentleman is this sort of, not only an extension of his movie, but I would say is a platform for his interests in the world.

• 32:22Andy Greenwald?

  Which is very Sheridan-esque, I think.

• 32:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And also, but like, for instance, like, is not dissimilar from what Koppelmann and Levine did with Billions after a while, where they would be like, this is a band that we like. This is a, you know, this subplot about a racehorse lets us get into like gambling on horses or whatever. And I just always like, kind of admire when a creator is like, I have an idea for a show, but really what I want to do is have a bucket that I put all the things I'm interested in.

• 32:48Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 32:48Chris Ryan?

  In that bucket.

• 32:49Andy Greenwald?

  You could also just have a podcast.

• 32:50Chris Ryan?

  Sure. Yeah. But then you wouldn't get to hang out, out on the British countryside, you know, with Rolls Royces.

• 32:56Andy Greenwald?

  You screwed up.

• 32:58Chris Ryan?

  So the second season arrives, and I have a couple of things to say about like, the execution of it. But I'll just say, I found it like, plenty entertaining. The first episode is like, weirdly an hour and five minutes long.

• 33:11Andy Greenwald?

  So long.

• 33:12Chris Ryan?

  And then I started watching the second episode and I was like, oh, I see. This is how they're gonna do it. John Carlos Pizzito, who was in the first season for a while, is a rival to, who wants to buy Theo James's.

• 33:26Chris Ryan?

  His house. Reappears, and there's some discussion about orbs and scepters. Anyway, I just wanted to see what you, where your head was at with this, because I have something I want to discuss specifically about Ritchie's writing style and the Netflix house style. But please let me know how you're feeling about it.

• 33:42Andy Greenwald?

  The show seemed to be, to my mind, it seemed slightly different from season one to season two. The things I liked about season one remain. I like how it's, it's the, like, you know, when it says like, mature audiences, violence, whatever. I think it should also just say cheekiness.

• 34:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:02Andy Greenwald?

  Or cheek.

• 34:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:02Andy Greenwald?

  Because nothing is really that serious. And I kind of, that helps with some of the extremity of it for me, that everyone is having a good time playing a larger-than-life version of someone in a larger-than-life circumstance, set quite beautifully in larger-than-life surroundings. And some of the little, like, little filigrees in the, in the filmmaking were fun, too, in the sense that like, when a character is talking about money, or talking about a plan, or is introduced, that information is written on the screen. So it just has its own kind of house style that I appreciate. And when you have good-looking cast and good costumes, it's like, it's a good time.

• 34:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:42Andy Greenwald?

  I thought the second season began with a director who clearly just wanted to spread out on his lawn for a while. Like, this felt more like Guy Ritchie wanting to kind of make a movie with these people. And it really, really hangs out. And, and with a, a little bit more.

• 35:02Andy Greenwald?

  I don't want to say self seriousness, but like, there's a lot more, there's just a lot more for a show that was already pretty jam packed.

• 35:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:11Andy Greenwald?

  So I didn't love it as much, but that said, like, there are worse ways to spend your time. There are delightful new additions, like Hugh Bonneville, who has just entered a really fun.

• 35:22Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 35:23Andy Greenwald?

  Post Downton era of his career.

• 35:25Chris Ryan?

  Blaming shit words on prestige TV buzz shows.

• 35:28Andy Greenwald?

  Truly, like from the agency to this, he's just like, you could tell that he's relaxing and he can just be an actor again in a really fun way.

• 35:37Andy Greenwald?

  And, yeah, I mean, I, my favorite thing about it is Vinnie Jones, who is, you know, reliable, Richie, tough guy.

• 35:48Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and plays basically like the butler or the like, not the butler, but like the sort of.

• 35:53Andy Greenwald?

  He's a gameskeeper who has some secrets and it sort of becomes the consigliere and like, it is, it's, it's one of those performances that, you know, Tarantino would do this, where he'd like take someone who is known for being limited and gives them a chance to show a little bit of wit, a little bit of soul, a little bit of personality. Whether it was like Lawrence Tierney in Reservoir Dogs, or, I mean, they're more, Robert Forster being another big example of it. So his kind of just sly presence and charisma is, does a lot of the load lifting for me, even though Freddie Fox doesn't seem to be in the season so far.

• 36:26Chris Ryan?

  I can see why people want to be on the show.

• 36:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 36:29Chris Ryan?

  You get to say really, really, really rich dialogue while wearing outrageously nice clothes in really nice locations.

• 36:36Andy Greenwald?

  Beautiful.

• 36:36Chris Ryan?

  I don't know if they shot in Lake Como, but it sure looks like it.

• 36:39Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, the, the thing about the episode is that you're like, oh, this is going to be a pheasant, a bird hunt episode, which is a fun thing to do, like industry does it. Downton Abbey certainly did it. And then you realize that there's still 37 minutes left and there's then going to be a Botticelli art auction and a motorcycle chase. And then a lot of Lake Como stuff.

• 36:57Chris Ryan?

  Yep, and a tiger.

• 36:59Andy Greenwald?

  And a tiger.

• 37:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:00Andy Greenwald?

  And as someone who put a tiger on TV once before, welcome, brother.

• 37:03Chris Ryan?

  Well, that looked incredibly digitized.

• 37:05Andy Greenwald?

  I used a real tiger.

• 37:07Chris Ryan?

  I know, I know.

• 37:09Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you.

• 37:10Chris Ryan?

  Well, I was just thinking about like.

• 37:11Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you.

• 37:12Chris Ryan?

  Would you now, if you were making Briar Patch in 2026, would you digitize your animals like Ridley Scott?

• 37:18Andy Greenwald?

  I would do everything else like Ridley Scott, but not that.

• 37:20Chris Ryan?

  You would shoot with 10 cameras and make four movies while you were supposed to be making the other.

• 37:25Andy Greenwald?

  It would help, it would help.

• 37:27Chris Ryan?

  In the second episode, you know, there's this sort of fun opening with Giancarlo Esposito and Theo James talking about the Magna Carta. And I think.

• 37:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 37:39Chris Ryan?

  A plan to make Theo James king, which is funny, but then, basically like Theo James does the Ozark thing, where somebody goes somewhere extraordinarily far away.

• 37:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 37:52Chris Ryan?

  To have a two minute conversation that they could have had on text message.

• 37:55Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 37:55Chris Ryan?

  So he goes back to Italy, goes back to the mob boss and is like, here's what we're going to do. We're going to kill the bill that's going through parliament to legalize marijuana. Or no, we're going to make sure the bill goes through.

• 38:06Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 38:07Chris Ryan?

  But we're going to jump on the legal marijuana trade before everybody else. And the mob boss is like, sounds good. I need you to kill a Japanese guy back in London. And I was like, oh, so now we're just going to basically kind of do mission of the week, while also adding on a half an episode of the larger weed empire story. And Ray Winstone apparently shooting all of his scenes from a steam bath.

• 38:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that was one of his requests. Ever since Sexy Beast, he's like, I just like to be hot and wet at all times.

• 38:37Chris Ryan?

  Topless.

• 38:37Andy Greenwald?

  Topless. By the way, we're also glossing over one thing, which is that like, when you have people who just call their own shots, like a Taylor Sheridan or a Guy Ritchie, they are immune from larger TV trends, like this season does begin with an extreme image of something happening and then does the three weeks earlier, which I think generally has been outlawed for, for writers and directors who make less than $5 million a year. So, and he makes quite a bit more than that, I would imagine, or at least lives the way that way. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a, it's a fine and fun hang. I, I wish that it was wittier, because the visuals are quite witty.

• 39:16Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 39:16Andy Greenwald?

  And I believe there was one line here where Eddie, the Duke, Theo James, is talking to a lovely Italian countess who's visiting him for the weekend. And they're talking about her boyfriend, who's a kind of a dummy. And she says, he bought me a striped lion for my birthday. And he says, you mean a tiger? And she says, whatever. But it's shot like that's a joke?

• 39:40Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 39:41Andy Greenwald?

  And I was waiting for like the next bit of banter and I rewound it. So I was like, I bet she said something real clever. No, she's just letting us know what was going to happen later.

• 39:49Chris Ryan?

  So since 2019, when he did The Gentleman, then COVID happens and he comes out of COVID and Guy Ritchie does Wrath of Man, which I like, is a heist thriller with Jason Statham. Operation Fortune Rude Guerre, which Rude Guerre, which is actually not bad. It's like a, a big spy action movie.

• 40:07Andy Greenwald?

  God, he's made so many movies.

• 40:08Chris Ryan?

  He made The Covenant, or Guy Ritchie's The Covenant with Jake Gyllenhaal. Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Then last year he made Fountain of Youth, which was widely panned, but was supposed to be kind of like a national treasure Raiders of the Lost Ark.

• 40:20Andy Greenwald?

  Straight to Apple, I believe.

• 40:21Chris Ryan?

  Straight to Apple, In the Gray, which isn't as bad as people say it is, but is not very good. Uh, and then next year he has Wife and Dog and Viva la Madness. And also is making multiple seasons of, uh, multiple seasons of, of The Gentleman. And was he involved with Mobland? No, he wasn't. He was originally involved when it was going to be like a Ray Donovan spinoff with Ron Bennett.

• 40:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 40:44Chris Ryan?

  Anyway, the point is, is that in his writing of those movies, and he writes a lot of his own stuff, Matthew Reed also is a co, co-creative conspirator on this show. He has a very flat affect. His actors are like obviously instructed to have a relatively flat affect while they deliver really dense information and fact-packed dialogue.

• 41:06Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 41:07Chris Ryan?

  This suits the Netflix, the supposed Netflix house style of like, we have to remind people what they're seeing.

• 41:13Andy Greenwald?

  Every few minutes.

• 41:15Chris Ryan?

  Kind of well, because on one hand, you can look at your phone while this is on.

• 41:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 41:21Chris Ryan?

  Cause you can hear them being like, and you said that you were going to do this, but first we have to take a plane over there to do that. I, we better ask my father if that's okay. Your father is currently serving three to five years for a stint in jail.

• 41:32Andy Greenwald?

  In a sauna.

• 41:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And it's like, no one would actually speak like that, but they kind of do in Guy Ritchie stuff.

• 41:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 41:38Chris Ryan?

  And I don't know whether it's like a chicken and egg of like, Guy Ritchie realized like, this is where things were going and he needed to have characters talk like that. Or this is where we've just sort of arrived.

• 41:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I don't mean to belittle it. I think in the same way that Taylor Sheridan became, uh, the furnace of Paramount. But you know, now he's left, but Guy Ritchie could be that for Netflix, or at least for Netflix UK. It's just well, they're well suited to each other.

• 42:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:01Andy Greenwald?

  Like, I don't think he's the kind of filmmaker who you have to say, hey, could you re-explain the plot here? Or could you make it propulsive? Or could you end in a place where people want to keep clicking? I mean, that is what he does naturally. And I, I'm not proud to say this, but you're exactly, you're absolutely right that in season one and season two, this is a show that one's attention could wander.

• 42:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:21Andy Greenwald?

  And still be okay with it.

• 42:22Chris Ryan?

  Yes. And when Daniel Langs is on screen, I'm like, I'm seated.

• 42:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 42:25Chris Ryan?

  When other things are happening, I'm kind of like, I'm sure we're going to recap this at some point.

• 42:30Andy Greenwald?

  But there's also the same, the kind of thing that I think is an executive wet dream of every frame, there's a lot to look at or not look at. There, you could be watching it as a real estate person. You could be watching it for the wardrobe. You could be watching and trying to shop that look. You could be watching because you like that actor or that person, or there's a beautiful woman. There's always something to kind of tickle somebody's fancy in every frame and that's fine. I mean, there are so many shows that are not entertaining, so I give this one a gentleman's whatever.

• 42:59Chris Ryan?

  Last thing I'll say about this is, is the runtimes are relatively extensive.

• 43:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 43:04Chris Ryan?

  Especially that first episode. And I really would love to address this with someone who, somewhere who makes these decisions as to whether or not this is Statler and Waldorf yelling from the balcony like, they used to make 42 minute episode, 42 minute long episodes and they were great. Versus like this extra 25 minutes that gets tacked on to, say, an episode of Fallout or Gentleman or whatever it is. And I just don't find it fun.

• 43:30Andy Greenwald?

  I, I, I'll tell you from inside the matrix, there is an absolute mandate coming down from executives, from streamers, from networks, to bring down runtimes.

• 43:42Chris Ryan?

  Cause I always imagined that the idea here is that if you have a plus 25 minute runtime for eight episodes of a season, that will net out to three more hours of watch time at the end of a season.

• 43:56Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 43:56Chris Ryan?

  For people. And if they're like, hey, they're going to watch it anyway, like we might as well rack up the stats here.

• 44:01Andy Greenwald?

  If, if you think about it that way, in terms of minutes watched, that, that does make sense. But, but the other thing about it is, this goes back to a conversation we've been having for years, but I think we specifically touched on it recently, which is, choose the right number of episodes or budget for the right number of episodes. And when you get far down the road and you realize you have too much story for the eight episodes and things start to bulge. And particularly when you have these projects that at a certain point reach their own kind of velocity. Where like you've committed this much money and you've held the actors and you have the stages built and you have the VFX houses reserved. And it's people and Fallout, wow, it was a hit. So we have to make season two. It's very hard to pull back at that point. I mean, I'm sure that the, I'm sure the Nolan, Jonah Nolan and Lisa Joy, like, I'm sure

• 44:45Andy Greenwald?

  they would argue my point that they've never been asked to pull back. I'm sure it's always a push and pull.

• 44:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:50Andy Greenwald?

  But I just feel like those types of shows that become their own inevitability, those are the ones that tend to swell the most. And the other times these things swell is when it's Guy Ritchie with Final Cut, or Guy Ritchie running the entire means of production, or Taylor Sheridan, where it's just like, you want to go tell him? Like, that doesn't really happen. But I have seen firsthand, like, really, really attempted to have teeth, the mandate, that like, no, no, we're going to start this early. The scripts have to be shorter.

• 45:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, they have to be like 47 pages.

• 45:22Andy Greenwald?

  The scripts have to be, the number four has to be in the, on the script for us to want to do it. But then things happen and then things get moved around, or, you know, set pieces take longer.

• 45:33Chris Ryan?

  Or maybe you get a big actor who's like, I want to X amount more scenes. You know what I mean? Like, it could be any number of things. Or maybe another actor is like, I can't, I actually am not here this much this season. You're gonna have to fill out, like, the parts that I can't do.

• 45:45Andy Greenwald?

  Which is like, which is why Daniel Ling's maybe is not in the season premiere, which is a bummer. I guess the reason I'm harping on it is because I want to make the distinction that for a time, with the rise of streaming, it was definitely like when the CD came out. And suddenly, records didn't, albums didn't have to be, you know, 60 minutes spread across two sides, or whatever the specific limitations were on LPs. And that's when, actually, the real bump was when it went to like the double album and stuff. But like, with CDs, you could just keep cramming tracks on there. And people thought that was an invitation, if the space is there, might as well use it, which is how we ended up with that era where, like, Tina Fey and Robert Carlock went from a difficult but super tight 21 minutes of 30 Rock to Kimmy Schmidt, episodes going

• 46:30Andy Greenwald?

  24, 26, 28, 31.

• 46:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:33Andy Greenwald?

  And I'm not going to complain about more Fey and Carlock, but comedy hits different.

• 46:37Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 46:37Andy Greenwald?

  When it's longer.

• 46:39Chris Ryan?

  Absolutely. Yeah. Guy Ritchie did direct two episodes of Mobland, so, busy guy.

• 46:44Andy Greenwald?

  And I don't think he did.

• 46:45Chris Ryan?

  He did.

• 46:46Andy Greenwald?

  I know, but what if?

• 46:47Chris Ryan?

  We just kept this going.

• 46:49Andy Greenwald?

  We started.

• 46:50Chris Ryan?

  Like, we stopped doing the watch.

• 46:52Andy Greenwald?

  No, but you were like, you started by saying, you're okay with the aggregation of false facts, so what if we just drop one in here?

• 46:59Chris Ryan?

  Sometimes it serves, the first part of this pod is to just sort of riff off of, like, bullshit.

• 47:04Andy Greenwald?

  And then the new SD Kid record drops, and just my voice saying, no, he didn't. And the track's called Guy Ritchie?

• 47:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Please, please give me that.

• 47:16Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk about Lanterns. So, obviously, this, to the extent that there is a breakout show right now, I think it's Lanterns, to the extent that there is an episode that it felt like everybody was talking about, it was definitely episode three, Outcast, written by Vanessa Baden Kelly. It reminded me of like the way Lost used to do things, where they would take a character and really dig into their background, but also through doing that, illuminate the behavior of other characters on the show.

• 47:48Chris Ryan?

  First of all, I thought this was an, obviously, excellent episode of television, gripping. I think this stuff that I bumped against had more to do with the visual kind of language of the show, or the, like, maybe the appearance of the show, where there is a kind of genericness to maybe, like, Jon, you know, Jon Stewart's childhood home, or, you know, like, the Outback Steakhouse they go to. Like, it doesn't have maybe the really weathered, lived-in feeling that some of my favorite TV shows have. That being said, this is an exceptional, exceptional episode of television.

• 48:33Chris Ryan?

  That was just like, I'm not even being like, I'm not even trying to give it to merits. I think it was almost that, when something is this good, I almost notice, like, that that's just a house in Pasadena, you know what I mean?

• 48:46Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I'm curious about that. I mean, you could point to a couple of things. You could speculate about budgetary reasons with a VFX-heavy show, or at least a show that inevitably will get more VFX-heavy. You could, you could point out that James Hawes directed the pilot and the second episode in a block, and Stephen Williams, who is an accomplished and excellent TV director, came on. And sometimes visual continuity can get disrupted from that.

• 49:08Chris Ryan?

  I thought it looked fairly similar, yeah.

• 49:10Andy Greenwald?

  I think the other thing that I'd be curious about is, one of the things that was cool, I think, about the production for the show, they did get, like, a California tax credit, which is very hard to get these days. And so, where's the town that they keep going to?

• 49:25Chris Ryan?

  Nebraska, Rushville.

• 49:27Andy Greenwald?

  They shot the show in Peru, which is like in Ventura County. And so, they were trying to double.

• 49:33Chris Ryan?

  Nebraska.

• 49:33Andy Greenwald?

  Nebraska, but also wherever Jon Stewart's family is, and also wherever he was, and also, you know what I mean? So they were trying to, anyway, I do think.

• 49:40Chris Ryan?

  It's also a comic book adaptation. It doesn't need to be like a one-to-one, like, sort of relationship.

• 49:45Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's an interesting question. I also think it's worth noting that in the same way that Burn Notice on USA was a show about sunglasses, Lanterns has really, really revealed itself to be a show about jackets.

• 49:56Chris Ryan?

  Yes. I mean, in a long line of HBO shows that have been about jackets, yes.

• 50:00Andy Greenwald?

  It's just remarkable.

• 50:01Chris Ryan?

  First that we had Last of Us, and now we have Kyle Chandler's sort of cinched.

• 50:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but every week, Jon Stewart has a sick new fit that must be moisture-wicking, because that dude does not shower a lot and runs more.

• 50:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:14Andy Greenwald?

  So, yeah, here, can I, a little behind the curtain here? I've been, you know, like, I've been having, I've been quite busy, and like, my sleep's been a little touch and go recently.

• 50:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:27Andy Greenwald?

  But I woke up thinking about this episode, I think, yesterday.

• 50:30Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 50:31Andy Greenwald?

  And I wrote a note about, like, I was like, oh, I think I cracked it. You ever have one of those, or like, I really have a take?

• 50:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:36Andy Greenwald?

  And I wrote down, and I was like, at least I got that done today, before I went on to do all the other stuff I had to do. And earlier this morning, I looked at what I'd written, and I wrote, "TV in translation? Question mark."

• 50:48Chris Ryan?

  Do you know what that means?

• 50:49Andy Greenwald?

  I don't fully, but I'm gonna try.

• 50:51Chris Ryan?

  This is good.

• 50:52Andy Greenwald?

  I think what I meant was that there is something that, like, if you read literature in translation, and you can love a book, and you can love an author, right?

• 51:03Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so like, you're reading?

• 51:04Andy Greenwald?

  Savage Detectives.

• 51:05Chris Ryan?

  Perez, yeah, okay.

• 51:06Andy Greenwald?

  Natasha Wimmer is like, celebrate, I did not mean to go down this tangent, but maybe I did, is celebrated for her understanding of Bolaño's intent and context and everything in Spanish, but really.

• 51:17Chris Ryan?

  Can't wait to hear this get sampled.

• 51:20Andy Greenwald?

  On a Putumayo collection, somewhere they sell it. But the point is, or like, you know, if you love Haruki Murakami, which I do, like, people often say, you don't actually, you've never actually read him.

• 51:29Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 51:30Andy Greenwald?

  You are reading Jay Rubin or Natasha Wimmer, you're reading the translator. I think what I meant when I, and I didn't mean it pejoratively, but watching this episode, there are things in this episode that are so keenly, to me, comic book stories. Like, the way that the show, in a period of, literally, almost panels, like, one, you could call them scenes, moments, but in a comic book, it would be a series of panels, tells a very, very, very dense backstory with some degree of almost theatricality. Like, the moments between Jon and his mother throughout time, you know, I mean, this is all, all TV and movies do this because of compression, but like, the scenes where they

• 52:12Andy Greenwald?

  talk to each other are so weighty, and it's almost as if no time passed, but like, only four things have ever happened to these people, and all of them are about whether she can communicate with blue space gods or not. You know what I mean? Like, the turn of that episode from his father being.

• 52:29Chris Ryan?

  The domineering.

• 52:30Andy Greenwald?

  Not just afraid, well, the perception of the father, but also the arc of the father and the arc of the mother, and what we knew before. I mean, the efficiency of it is remarkable. But it also sometimes felt stilted to me, like, expositional, because it felt like I was reading a cool comic book and not necessarily watching a TV show, because it had to get to this, get this work done. So you think about that, and I don't want to ascribe motive, I think all these people work together, but again, I look at the credits, and I'm like, this is what Tom King does. There were just moments in this episode where it looked like, to me, like, Tom King is one of the creators, like, Human Target Comics, where the artist is Greg Smallwood, and like, the way that he captures framed images that almost look like they're stills of photographs,

• 53:14Andy Greenwald?

  it's like, that's what it felt like, that type of storytelling. But it wasn't. It's a TV show. Similarly, there were things that I think were so elegantly translated for the medium, whereas if it was a comic book, when The Guardian comes to apologize, in a comic book, that would happen in a fucking upside-down pocket dimension, and a blue god would be there the whole time, because that's why you write comic books. Because there's no budget, there's no makeup, you know, you just can draw whatever you want, and you can make it surreal. This is where the TV stuff comes in, and I, I'm sure Tom King agreed with it, but you think about Monday, or you think about Damon, and you're like, well, we don't, not only, we could, we could go ask Casey, like, head in hands, like, can we have enough money to make a blue space god in this episode? Or you could be like, what's more interesting than that? And it's Laura Linney.

• 53:59Andy Greenwald?

  And that is such a hugely successful decision, that makes the episode feel completely different, and it's quirky, and it's surprising, and it's awesome. And that works for TV. So I guess what I'm trying to say was, I was like, I was feeling the pulse of some original, of a different language in this episode. And sometimes it worked for me, all the Laura Linney scenes. Sometimes it didn't, when it's like, again, a few, a few frames of Jon Stewart being on a stakeout for nine months in the bushes, like, that's wild, that tells me something about a comic book character, but it's so outrageous that this boy is just a vessel to become what he becomes, that I lose some of the humanity in it.

• 54:40Chris Ryan?

  Well, let me ask you another, it's a kind of a nuts and bolts question, though, when it comes to writing. I think I would describe this to Damon, but just because of my experience with his work in the past, a deeply.

• 54:56Chris Ryan?

  Deeply empathic, humane writer. But also a bit of a trickster. And a little bit like of a magician when it comes to, you're watching something, you think you know what you're watching, and then it turns out you have to reconsider everything you've watched, because in fact, this person was always this.

• 55:13Andy Greenwald?

  You've been watching something else.

• 55:14Chris Ryan?

  John Locke, John Locke was in a wheelchair. You know what I mean? Like, now think about that when you're watching everything else.

• 55:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 55:20Chris Ryan?

  And, you know, after three episodes, this episode makes you look at Hal's antagonism towards John differently.

• 55:31Andy Greenwald?

  Junior.

• 55:31Chris Ryan?

  It makes you look at John's relationship to his family differently. It makes you look specifically at his relationship to his mother and his father differently. It makes you ask questions about his relationship to his brothers.

• 55:43Chris Ryan?

  It makes you ask questions about the certainty of who is doing the front office work for the Lanterns? Because there's been a lot of speculation, like, is, you know, was that Laura Linney character a Guardian?

• 56:01Andy Greenwald?

  Well, people are speculating that she wasn't.

• 56:03Chris Ryan?

  That she was a Manhunter.

• 56:05Andy Greenwald?

  What? Who speculated that?

• 56:06Chris Ryan?

  There was just speculation online about that, yeah.

• 56:08Andy Greenwald?

  What? Show me the websites.

• 56:12Chris Ryan?

  Happily.

• 56:13Andy Greenwald?

  Iraqgoals.net.

• 56:16Chris Ryan?

  My point is, is that how sustainable is that? For a storytelling mechanism where you're like, we're constantly going to be wrong footing, or asking you to go back 15 minutes to, to now think about this differently?

• 56:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 56:29Chris Ryan?

  Because I think it's an excellent way to apply Damon's like genius to a story that I think we're probably like, we know superheroes, man, we got it. We like, we've done this a couple of times. And like, he did it so well in Watchmen, he does it so well in so many different

• 56:47Chris Ryan?

  spaces. But I was, I was wondering if we're like at episode five, and it's like, actually, it's not that. Now, of course, all, all mystery shows are essentially like giving you red herrings until you finally zero in on the real person. It's probably one of the reasons why Furious was so refreshing.

• 57:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 57:05Chris Ryan?

  Is that there is no mystery to Furious, really. It's just how deep does the rabbit hole go? Do you see what I'm asking?

• 57:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I, I think in this case, I mean, broadly speaking, I think that Damon, who is, you know, is our friend and who we, but who we admired first, and who we, we have criticized openly as well, on print and in print and on this podcast. I mean, I think that he hears the music of weekly television in a way that almost no one ever has. And in the same way that people who are just like piano prodigy, prodigies can almost like hold space in their mind, not just for the note they're playing, but for all of the different chords, and then eventually like an entire orchestra, the parts. That seems to be, and I've worked with him, I've seen it happen, like, he, he, he like conducts an orchestra, basically,

• 57:56Andy Greenwald?

  of, and I know he's just gone from piano to conducting, but bear with me, I haven't seen Tar in a while. Everyone in the room is offering ideas, and what's incredible about what he does is he, he seems to process them like little different melodic moments. And he takes them, and he keeps taking and taking, and then he's sort of story weaving in real time and fitting them together. And so that's an incredible thing to see, and I do feel like you can see that happening. And I don't say that to diminish the contributions of all the other writers, including Vanessa Baden Kelly, who wrote the episode. The other reason why I think that's a brilliant skillset is because the episode, and the weekly episode drop of a series has been so devalued with the binge model, which we've talked about, maybe we're retreating from slightly.

• 58:38Andy Greenwald?

  But one of the great joys of the model is this idea of every moment, like The Wire, like every piece matters. Every moment matters. There isn't a wasted scene, because the scenes exist not just as a propulsive mechanism to go forward, but as a moment that will tie back to the past, that will connect forward to the future. And then when you have a show with a trickstery timeline set up, that, that goes double.

• 58:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:00Andy Greenwald?

  So, but I also hear you in the sense that like,

• 59:02Chris Ryan?

  I, no, I, that wasn't like a critique. It was, it was a, basically a concern troll about the sustainability of like, Lost was able to sustain that for a long time.

• 59:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 59:12Chris Ryan?

  Where you thought you knew the island, there was another part of it. You thought you knew what time you were in, there was another era. You thought you knew what Said or Locke or Jack's story was, you find out something else about it. It's baked into what you would expect every time you started a new episode. We very well may get a Laura Linney episode, or, you know, something that's a little bit more Hal Jordan centric, but I was,

• 59:35Andy Greenwald?

  It feels comic booky to me in the best way, in the sense that there's, everything has a secret identity, that there's a second layer to everything. And it's, instead of showing us something and then filling us in on lore only, it's filling us in on emotional connection and on actual like lived, their fictional characters. But like, the data dump of the show, whether it's hidden in, you know, beautiful artifice or not, isn't really that much about what the Green Lantern Corps do in outer sectors of the Sagittarius quadrant or whatever. It's about what John has done, or what John and Hal have done.

• 1:00:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:13Andy Greenwald?

  And I think that makes it more present and more interesting, but it is a comic book style of, of storytelling. The other thing that I think is very on brand for Damon, whether it was in the room, and whether he was the only one pushing it or not, is that I really like his tendency always in writing, never to, never to write around a problem. And not even a problem, write around a,

• 1:00:33Chris Ryan?

  Obstacle?

• 1:00:34Andy Greenwald?

  Not even, I don't want to use a negative word, it's like, write around something that you've, that you've been given. And so, in this case specifically, what I mean is, this show was conceived as a two-hander between two Green Lanterns, or one ascending and, and one descending. And intentionally, canonically, Hal Jordan is a white guy and Jon Stewart is a black guy. And they ran right at that

• 1:00:56Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:00:56Andy Greenwald?

  in this episode, in ways that at times felt almost didactic compared to some of the storytelling in other scenes. But at other times felt really exciting.

• 1:01:04Chris Ryan?

  Very much so, yeah.

• 1:01:05Andy Greenwald?

  You know, in, in terms of like, the, the whole thing about even in space, we aren't seen. And sometimes you have to raise your own hand. And adding context to this character that it's almost like having seen Rebel Ridge, I'm like, Aaron Pierre just basically plays a sledgehammer. And anything he does, and he's awesome at it.

• 1:01:22Chris Ryan?

  But this is, it builds that character. This episode builds that character. It's like, here's like this kid who's been basically conditioned since he was a baby.

• 1:01:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:30Chris Ryan?

  To not feel a huge swath of human emotion or to suppress it. And so what does that do to you? How do you then relate to other people, you know? And what happens when you have this other great passion of yours in art and in drawing? And that winds up being the actual thing that sort of is your entree into this, this whole other life?

• 1:01:50Andy Greenwald?

  And like, you know, the show is doing so many things. We talked about that a lot in the pilot. But one of the things that it's doing, whether, I don't think this was like their, their, their guiding light, but by running right at ideas of America, of particularly of race, of,

• 1:02:09Chris Ryan?

  Of culture, yeah.

• 1:02:10Andy Greenwald?

  Of culture, of politics.

• 1:02:11Chris Ryan?

  The whole wrapping in the backseat of the car thing.

• 1:02:13Andy Greenwald?

  But even of humor, like being silly and like undercutting things, like every frame, every, every decision is like a broadside against the idea that comic book storytelling can't do any of that.

• 1:02:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:24Andy Greenwald?

  It's like, it's, it's a, it's quite a burden for one show to, to bear. I don't think that's what they were trying to do necessarily. And sometimes I think they overdo it. Like, I do think, I'm no prude, but they curse a lot. Like, they don't need to curse that much. Like, if you ran a mic on us, like, on the way back from a Sixers game, maybe, maybe it'll be different this year.

• 1:02:43Chris Ryan?

  I think it would be different for me, yeah.

• 1:02:44Andy Greenwald?

  But, uh,

• 1:02:45Chris Ryan?

  Can you fucking believe LeBron James did that?

• 1:02:48Andy Greenwald?

  That's been you all summer.

• 1:02:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:49Andy Greenwald?

  But it's a really exciting show. And like, just those little surprises that like, it's a job, it felt very Leftovers to me, the entire mall interview with Laura Linney.

• 1:03:00Chris Ryan?

  Funnily enough, I thought that reminded me of The Prisoner. The show that we talked about a couple of weeks ago, the 60s show that's on Criterion Channel now. I thought that was reminiscent of this reality of it, was very reminiscent of that.

• 1:03:11Andy Greenwald?

  It reminded me of International Assassin, the Leftovers episode.

• 1:03:14Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:03:16Andy Greenwald?

  I guess we, I guess we aren't the same after all.

• 1:03:17Chris Ryan?

  We can both be right, yeah. What else do you want to talk to me about? Can you, can you tell me

• 1:03:22Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 1:03:23Chris Ryan?

  whether or not

• 1:03:26Chris Ryan?

  I am supposed to be as a casual, like, what do I need to know about like the Guardians stuff? Like, is, or is that just like gonna be?

• 1:03:36Andy Greenwald?

  Dude, I don't know.

• 1:03:36Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:03:37Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, generally, because I'm not, I, I know, I know I can dig deep when we're talking Marvel, but I don't really know the story of this. I, I'm actually really appreciating the kind of Cliff's Notes version of it, that like, because there's, continuity is so messy, and James Gunn's whole thing has always been the more modern version of it, the Grant Morrison version of it, which is, all that crazy shit happened. So like when Grant Morrison wrote Batman, it was like grim and gritty Batman, but also Batmite. Like, it's kind of the spider ham of the Batman universe was also real, and the Adam West vibes were also real. And you had to reconcile all that. So even in this Green Lan, and even in Lanterns, like, this is a world where there's this whole iconography that there's one, but we already have seen Superman, and we know that Nathan Fillion is also one.

• 1:04:20Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:04:21Andy Greenwald?

  And he's showing up in the show. So, all that to say, I appreciate that they're like, yeah, I heard that there's 12 of you and you're born, you know, we've now learned you you are born and die alone, and you are the guiding, I mean, I wrote down the line, we are the guiding whatever of law and order in the universe, and one of you died. And it's like, okay.

• 1:04:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:41Andy Greenwald?

  Or when his mom's like, prove it to me that you're blue.

• 1:04:44Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:04:46Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like diamond was, that's, that's challenging. You know, I learned from the agency season two that moving diamonds.

• 1:04:52Chris Ryan?

  It is, although I assume, I think the inference is that they eventually do move it, thus funding their lives of training him.

• 1:04:59Andy Greenwald?

  Of getting a satellite and yeah.

• 1:05:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:01Andy Greenwald?

  Who would you rather have shoot an apple off your head, mom or dad?

• 1:05:04Chris Ryan?

  Neither.

• 1:05:05Andy Greenwald?

  I'm with you on that, brother.

• 1:05:06Chris Ryan?

  You know what I mean? For different reasons. We're not Bill telling it over there. I hit line drives. We're not, we're not messing around. Before we get out of here, let's do a couple of recommendations.

• 1:05:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:16Chris Ryan?

  I want to keep doing these on Thursdays especially. Andy has a book rec and then I have a book and a record.

• 1:05:21Andy Greenwald?

  There's a book that came out two weeks ago called Days of Miracle and Wonder by Ashley Khan. It's Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland, an album that just celebrated its 40th anniversary. And I'm not a big music bio guy, nor am I necessarily a big nonfiction guy. But maybe the timing was right because I just crushed it over the weekend when I was doing some traveling. And it's just a really wonderful, easy, in the best possible way, read. It has incredible anecdotes about the 1980s, about music, about the, about Paul Simon's experience making Graceland, traveling to South Africa, working with these beautiful musicians. And then also the, the pushback and the uproar about, about cultural bands.

• 1:06:06Andy Greenwald?

  And, and that part in particular felt very relevant only because like one remembers that there's been liberal purity tests at every point in history. We don't need the internet just to amplify it. But more importantly, like what I found really moving about it was it's, because it's very contained. It's not like in 1962, when Paul and Artie first started.

• 1:06:26Chris Ryan?

  It's like starts with him.

• 1:06:27Andy Greenwald?

  It starts with him getting the tape that, you know, famously in the, he, he got a tape of, I think it was eventually realized it was the group called the Boyoyo Boys. But he was just walking around or he was driving to Montauk where he was building a house for his then wife, Carrie Fisher, which is just like strap me in.

• 1:06:45Andy Greenwald?

  But it, so it stays, it stays very, very focused. But what, what's incredible to read about it, and I'm sure there are many talented musicians and songwriters who still do this. But the way that he built this album is felt very, very, very grandiose in the best way and artistic and bespoke. And like, he was like, I'm going to go to South Africa where the music is, and we're going to book some studios. And these people I've never met before are going to come in and we're going to see what we come up with.

• 1:07:10Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:07:10Andy Greenwald?

  And I know that like one of the major differences between then and now, and he was, there's a lot of this in there as well. Like he paid, you know, triple rate for all the musicians and he gave credit and people got royalties and he brought them on tour. And the musicians largely felt very well taken care of and their contributions were appreciated and blah, blah, blah. But you do realize that one of the main differences between analog and digital era is that, I'm sure you've heard this as well, that like when contemporary artists have collaboration sessions or jam sessions, the tape runs from morning till night.

• 1:07:41Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:07:42Andy Greenwald?

  So that at any point, if things get legal, you know, like, like if Frankie Pulitzer was like, I think Chris said that.

• 1:07:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:50Andy Greenwald?

  They would go to the tape and that wasn't the case in the eighties. And I think there was some grumbling, I mean, famously more than grumbling from Los Lobos.

• 1:07:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think the grumble was quite, quite articulate.

• 1:08:01Andy Greenwald?

  But interestingly, like this book reveal, like talks about, it was a tough studio day because Los Lobos didn't really understand. And they were kind of insulted that they weren't brought in to do what they do. They were brought in to just kind of jam.

• 1:08:14Chris Ryan?

  Play, yeah.

• 1:08:14Andy Greenwald?

  And come up with something.

• 1:08:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:16Andy Greenwald?

  And despite how the tension of that day, the members came back multiple times to do overdubs and like were part of the process. But then later felt sort of ill-used by it.

• 1:08:25Chris Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:08:26Andy Greenwald?

  I know you had a Los Lobos question. I could see it.

• 1:08:28Chris Ryan?

  Well.

• 1:08:28Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway, it's just, it was just, it's, it's a very important album to me and probably a bunch of other people who are our age.

• 1:08:32Chris Ryan?

  I listen, funnily enough, like Graceland has been like, like one of the most played albums in my life.

• 1:08:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:40Chris Ryan?

  But not by me, but like various people in my lives are like, we're going to listen to Graceland on this road trip. Or we're going to listen to Graceland while we make Thanksgiving dinner or whatever it is. All the, like for years and years and years.

• 1:08:52Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like.

• 1:08:53Chris Ryan?

  But I love the record.

• 1:08:54Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like the most like Proustian, like Citizen Kane, like, oh my God, like sound of my life is the horns on Graceland and the horns on Billy Joel's An Innocent Man. Like instantly, it's between the years of 1983 and 1986. And I'm like, whoa.

• 1:09:11Chris Ryan?

  Mom.

• 1:09:13Andy Greenwald?

  Can I have mac and cheese tonight?

• 1:09:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I'll throw out a book rec really quick. I was reading this book, Life During War Time by Lucy Shepherd. I'm really enjoying it. It's like a kind of psychedelic sci-fi novel set in a imaginary conflict in Guatemala.

• 1:09:29Andy Greenwald?

  Did you mention this?

• 1:09:30Chris Ryan?

  I did.

• 1:09:31Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:31Chris Ryan?

  And I left it on a plane.

• 1:09:32Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 1:09:33Chris Ryan?

  So I am, while I wait for my replacement copy to arrive.

• 1:09:37Andy Greenwald?

  From Spirit Airlines? Are they sending it back to you?

• 1:09:39Chris Ryan?

  It wasn't Spirit. Okay.

• 1:09:40Andy Greenwald?

  I just figured, let's give them a little shine.

• 1:09:42Chris Ryan?

  I'm getting Frankie Pulitzer money now. We're on Alaska, brother.

• 1:09:48Chris Ryan?

  I, I'm reading this amazing novel by a writer named Rudolf Wurlitzer. He's the screenwriter who wrote Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Tulane Blacktop. It's sort of an acclaimed novelist as well. This came out like 2011. I think Drag City, the, the music label put out.

• 1:10:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:07Chris Ryan?

  The, the novel and it's.

• 1:10:09Andy Greenwald?

  Whoa, that's cool.

• 1:10:09Chris Ryan?

  It's called Slow Fade.

• 1:10:12Chris Ryan?

  And it is essentially a book about a Sam Peckinpah-esque director making a Western. His failed son, who has returned from a long trip to Asia, where he was there with his wife, but also was looking for his disappeared, disappeared sister. And it also is about a, um, basically like a rock and roll road dog who like road manages bands, who has lost an eye and is now living with the son, writing a screenplay.

• 1:10:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:47Chris Ryan?

  And it kind of feels like a little bit of that vibe where you're like, is this like, this is kind of like a Steely Dan album, like as a novel? And it's awesome.

• 1:10:57Andy Greenwald?

  That's incredible.

• 1:10:57Chris Ryan?

  I love it. So Slow Fade by Rudolf Wurlitzer is my book recommendation. And then my music recommendation I was just going to make really quickly was, um, You Say I Romanticize, the new album by Sweeping Promises. Fucking incredible.

• 1:11:10Andy Greenwald?

  So.

• 1:11:10Chris Ryan?

  It is so good. Just came out on Sub Pop a couple of weeks ago. And, um, I, I liked this band. I liked this band.

• 1:11:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:18Chris Ryan?

  Before, but this record is amazing.

• 1:11:20Andy Greenwald?

  Their first record is Hunger for a Way Out.

• 1:11:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:23Andy Greenwald?

  I loved, and then I kind of went away from them.

• 1:11:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And this is like the, it's a duo and this one, Lyra Mandal sings and plays bass. And they're like a full band on the record or, and everything, but like it is like in that sort of heritage of Wire, Stereolab, Electrolane, Elastica, Breeders, like it has like post punk.

• 1:11:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:48Chris Ryan?

  But then there are like flourishes that remind me of like Blondie or even some of like the vocal stuff they do is like, I don't know if I would say it's like Queen, but it is like incredibly gorgeous melodies layered on top of each other that are just coming from Mandal's voice. So highly recommend this record.

• 1:12:07Andy Greenwald?

  Look at this, you're bringing me.

• 1:12:08Chris Ryan?

  Driving. It is like.

• 1:12:09Andy Greenwald?

  Bringing me back.

• 1:12:10Chris Ryan?

  A great running record, a great working out record, a great driving around record.

• 1:12:14Andy Greenwald?

  That Hunger for a Way Out, there's a song, Cross Me Out on there. That's like X-ray specs meets Blondie. And that, that was one of like, if I had my goat, we should do this actually, like what was the go-bag that got you through COVID? Culturally sourdough bread-wise?

• 1:12:30Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:12:30Andy Greenwald?

  Because there are things, you know.

• 1:12:32Chris Ryan?

  DJ battles, modern family reruns.

• 1:12:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. That, that was, that was summer 2020 for me.

• 1:12:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:40Andy Greenwald?

  No, but Lonesome Dove was in there for us and reading all those books. But like, one thing as we get older, as people who are obsessed with culture and books and music and things, I find is that the, like the resonance of the things you love becomes more diffuse, meaning like, I was just saying about like the horns on Graceland. I am in another body, in another life.

• 1:12:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:59Andy Greenwald?

  In my own, but like all the cultural touchstones and the smells. And I remember things about like my grandparents' house instantly. Things from 2014, I'm like, was this 2017? Like I love things, but I, you lose.

• 1:13:11Chris Ryan?

  I think I, we're, we're conversant about a lot more things, but we're not as.

• 1:13:15Andy Greenwald?

  But they're not.

• 1:13:16Chris Ryan?

  Deeply knowledgeable and like connected to them.

• 1:13:17Andy Greenwald?

  And they're not as married to.

• 1:13:19Chris Ryan?

  So like a record that I love, I will love for four days and then never listen to again.

• 1:13:23Andy Greenwald?

  Because it's also not wedded to any particularly intense emotional period because it's just like.

• 1:13:28Chris Ryan?

  Yourself, man.

• 1:13:29Andy Greenwald?

  Well, no, but I mean, I get, as my kids pointed out this morning, I can get pretty heated going to Trader Joe's. But other than that, you know, it's not like it was some great swing in your life.

• 1:13:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:37Andy Greenwald?

  And COVID was that for everyone. So I do think that there are aspects of that in the same, I mean, on the same token, by the same token, I also don't remember anything about three years there.

• 1:13:47Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:13:47Andy Greenwald?

  And it was either 10 minutes ago or 10 years ago. But let, I, that's a project for us. That would be fun.

• 1:13:53Chris Ryan?

  The COVID diaries.

• 1:13:55Andy Greenwald?

  No. Just like remembering some things that mattered.

• 1:13:59Chris Ryan?

  For sure. Isn't that what this pod really is? Remembering things that matter.

• 1:14:02Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think we should tie more of our content to national tragedies? Like what would you like to do for the 25th anniversary of 9/11?

• 1:14:09Chris Ryan?

  Just do a full listening session for Jay-Z's Blueprint.

• 1:14:11Andy Greenwald?

  Do you know, people love it whenever, whenever the subject of 9/11 comes up and I say, you know, the weather was, it was a clear blue day.

• 1:14:18Chris Ryan?

  That's how the, the report opens.

• 1:14:20Andy Greenwald?

  That's a what?

• 1:14:21Chris Ryan?

  The 9/11 report.

• 1:14:22Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I was in, they asked me.

• 1:14:24Chris Ryan?

  It was, it's very well written.

• 1:14:25Andy Greenwald?

  The 9/11 report?

• 1:14:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:27Andy Greenwald?

  People don't talk about, did the report contain all the people playing Frisbee in Central Park?

• 1:14:30Chris Ryan?

  It doesn't. Was that what you were doing?

• 1:14:32Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, I was invited.

• 1:14:36Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:14:36Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, but like when we walked up, did the long walk up Manhattan from the spin offices, like up across Central Park, like, you know, hundreds, thousands of people were like pilgrimaging just away. There were a not insignificant number of people, just like.

• 1:14:52Chris Ryan?

  Tossing a.

• 1:14:53Andy Greenwald?

  Tossing the disc around.

• 1:14:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:54Andy Greenwald?

  Like it's a nice, is a nice Tuesday. That's the real story. You only get that here and on Frankie Pulitzer mixtapes.

• 1:15:00Chris Ryan?

  We will be back on Monday or Tuesday, yet to be decided yet, because it is Labor Day. But we will be back on Monday or Tuesday and we'll have a two episodes next week for you. Thanks to Kai and Sarah for producing today and we'll be back Monday. Everybody have a great weekend.

• 1:15:17Andy Greenwald?

  Jon Stewart would do Monday. He believes in the mission.

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