‘Euphoria’ Season 3, Episode 4 and ‘Star Wars’ Streaming Numbers. Plus, Pitching Literary Classics as TV Shows.

Chris and Andy talk about the recent ‘Star Wars’ viewership data on Disney+ and what it says about the state of that IP (7:19). Then they pitch unadapted literary classics as contemporary TV shows, inspired by the release of Netflix’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ (29:25). Later, they discuss ‘Euphoria’ Season 3, Episode 4 (45:31). Finally, they react to the 76ers’ Game 7 win over the Celtics (0:00). Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Email us! [email protected] Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Additional Video Supervision: Sarah Reddy Order and it will come. Like today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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

• 0:25Speaker 01

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

• 0:37Speaker 02

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

• 0:57Speaker 01

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

• 1:24Speaker 02

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

• 1:35Chris Ryan?

  This episode of The Watch is presented to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last-minute beach day, a spontaneous hike, or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for? That's when Prime's same-day delivery has your back, getting you exactly what you need, fast and reliably, so you can actually join the moment instead of watching from the sidelines. Same-day delivery, it's on Prime. Visit amazon.com/prime to find millions of items delivered fast, available in select areas. Terms apply.

• 2:09Speaker 04

  Stand up and walk now.

• 2:12Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the Ringer dot com. And joining me in the studio is Pinky Toe is a Metaphor. It's Andy Greenwald.

• 2:25Andy Greenwald?

  That was a good Euphoria reference.

• 2:26Chris Ryan?

  Thank you, brother. Today, we are going to talk about Euphoria, episode four. We're going to talk a little bit in a roundabout way about Netflix's Lord of the Flies.

• 2:36Andy Greenwald?

  For those not watching, you're doing the wind horse fingers.

• 2:38Chris Ryan?

  Those boys are on an island. Why is that? Oh, wait.

• 2:43Andy Greenwald?

  What are they eating?

• 2:44Chris Ryan?

  We're going to talk a little bit about Netflix's Lord of the Flies, not the actual show, but the text.

• 2:49Andy Greenwald?

  Elite.

• 2:50Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and some things around that. I had a fun little project for us to do on a on a sleepy little manic Monday. You look great.

• 2:58Andy Greenwald?

  Wow, thanks.

• 2:59Chris Ryan?

  One of my best weekends in a minute. At least one of the best Saturdays.

• 3:03Andy Greenwald?

  I want to talk to you about this. This is important. Thank you for giving me the opportunity.

• 3:08Chris Ryan?

  Every once in a while.

• 3:09Andy Greenwald?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:10Chris Ryan?

  You know what? Like, I just stretch the arm out and I can still hit 90 on the gun, you know?

• 3:14Andy Greenwald?

  Damn it, you're the best.

• 3:15Chris Ryan?

  Saturday, Adam Scott in Hocum, the movie. Pretty good.

• 3:21Andy Greenwald?

  Meaning you saw the movie. Adam Scott didn't.

• 3:24Chris Ryan?

  No, Adam Scott did not come to my house and show me Hocum and then talk to me about Severance.

• 3:28Andy Greenwald?

  Approachable guy, though. It's possible.

• 3:29Chris Ryan?

  Sure, I'm, I'm, he and I would have plenty to argue about in the R E M. Replacements wars.

• 3:34Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly.

• 3:35Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and then I went to go see, uh, some Sixers on my TV at my home.

• 3:41Andy Greenwald?

  You're phrasing all this super weird.

• 3:43Chris Ryan?

  I know. Hold on.

• 3:44Andy Greenwald?

  You sound like Steve Carell in Forty Year Old Virgin, talking about having a good time.

• 3:49Chris Ryan?

  Those bags of sand.

• 3:52Andy Greenwald?

  You, so you watched the Sixers game?

• 3:53Chris Ryan?

  I watched the Sixers beat the Celtics, uh, for the first time in a playoff series since 1982.

• 3:59Andy Greenwald?

  It was un, it was surreal?

• 4:02Chris Ryan?

  We're going to talk about, I want to get into like everything about it. And then I went and saw the band Basement play in El Sereno, uh, in basically a parking lot, and it fucking ruled, so.

• 4:12Andy Greenwald?

  Now, do you go in the pit still?

• 4:14Chris Ryan?

  No, I still, no.

• 4:16Andy Greenwald?

  Still?

• 4:17Chris Ryan?

  I can't. First of all, like, there was, it was really funny. I saw a guy, like, before him, me and my buddy Jeremy were talking to this dude, and he was just like, I got two kids and.

• 4:26Andy Greenwald?

  And they're in the pit somewhere.

• 4:27Chris Ryan?

  He was just like being a dad, you know, and like, he was a really nice guy. And like

• 4:32Andy Greenwald?

  Sounds like me.

• 4:32Chris Ryan?

  Forty minutes later.

• 4:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 4:34Chris Ryan?

  I just watched that man get his head knocked off by a guy doing a somersault off the, off the stage.

• 4:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 4:40Chris Ryan?

  And he took that L and then just started screaming the lyrics back at basement. And I was like, this guy's still got it. I have some semblance of it. You've got none of it.

• 4:49Andy Greenwald?

  Zero.

• 4:50Chris Ryan?

  Um, so that was.

• 4:51Andy Greenwald?

  Did I ever have it? A question for another pod.

• 4:53Chris Ryan?

  What's the most insane you've gone at a show?

• 4:56Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, one time Belle and Sebastian played a deep cut from Tiger Milk at Town Hall and I was seated already because we all were, but when the violins hit.

• 5:08Chris Ryan?

  Phew.

• 5:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Makes me take a deep breath, just like I did then.

• 5:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:13Andy Greenwald?

  For.

• 5:13Chris Ryan?

  Have a cup of mint tea.

• 5:15Andy Greenwald?

  No, for digestion. Yeah.

• 5:16Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 5:17Andy Greenwald?

  Sorry. I just got lost in memories.

• 5:18Chris Ryan?

  Um, so yeah, that was, that was what, what I got down with.

• 5:21Andy Greenwald?

  This is why, I mean, there are many reasons why you're undisputed, AKA the king, but like we were texting as we often do generally, but particularly during sporting events, but for such a momentous occasion, you were relatively understated and quiet during game seven. And I wasn't sure if it was nerves or if it was you were busy. And then I didn't hear from you for a minute and then I, I fired up the old Instagram machine and the stories from CR, it's always an adventure. Actually, no, it's rarely an adventure because it's almost invariably it's you being clever and charming on a podcast.

• 5:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I usually keep, keep that.

• 5:55Andy Greenwald?

  Unless.

• 5:56Chris Ryan?

  Life is for the living.

• 5:57Andy Greenwald?

  Unless you've had the second Modelo and then you'll be like, here's a song by the band Karate that I'm listening to right now. And I'll be like, he's having a good night.

• 6:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:05Andy Greenwald?

  But you posted a mosh pit in El Sereno.

• 6:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:10Andy Greenwald?

  And I was like, man, that's awesome.

• 6:12Chris Ryan?

  Um, it was a good weekend.

• 6:13Andy Greenwald?

  Did you feel good Sunday morning still?

• 6:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, brother. Yeah.

• 6:18Chris Ryan?

  I didn't even really get after it that, on Saturday night, you know, it was clean living. It was victories after victory after victory. I didn't feel the need to like cloud it all up with.

• 6:27Andy Greenwald?

  A victory is winning. I was like, is victory a new non-alcoholic beer brand that you were?

• 6:31Chris Ryan?

  There's, there's Victory L, isn't there?

• 6:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but I think that's alcoholic. I was thinking of like athletic or whatever that's going. John Mulaney's NA.

• 6:40Chris Ryan?

  What's up with that? Is there a John Mulaney cocktail, like mocktail thing?

• 6:44Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, he is, I don't know if he's co-owner, but he promotes a non-alcoholic beer brand.

• 6:49Chris Ryan?

  Good for him.

• 6:50Andy Greenwald?

  I think so.

• 6:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:51Andy Greenwald?

  I like a little wheat soda now and again, you know?

• 6:55Chris Ryan?

  I have like a weird way into this project I wanted to do. So today, here's what's on the agenda. Lord of the Flies came out weirdly today. I don't really remember many Netflix shows dropping on Mondays, but here we are. Four episodes written by Jack Thorne, who did Adolescence, so I'm very excited to check it out. Although, I would say, say, if 100% obviously would be the most excited I could possibly be to watch a show, I'd put this at about 70 just because Lord of the Flies is something I'm very familiar with. I obviously-

• 7:27Andy Greenwald?

  The early years of Granland.

• 7:30Chris Ryan?

  No, but you know, everybody, most people read Lord of the Flies at some point.

• 7:34Andy Greenwald?

  We all talk about holding the con.

• 7:35Chris Ryan?

  Between sixth and ninth grade. It's an introductory text when people are trying to teach you about characterization, foreshadowing, metaphors, allegories. And not to hang out with boys unsupervised. It got me thinking a little bit about classic literature as intellectual property, as debased as that is, and some of our bigger titles out there, both, you know, the more sensational box office smashing things like Star Wars, Happy May the 4th, and literary classics that still hold some sort of market share of imagination for people, where when they see Howard's End or this, like, they'll be like-

• 8:12Andy Greenwald?

  I'm sorry, I just leaned in, yes?

• 8:14Chris Ryan?

  I'll check it out.

• 8:15Andy Greenwald?

  The most alive I've been in weeks.

• 8:17Chris Ryan?

  Something really funny happened as we were about to start recording, as Hollywood Reporter published some numbers about Disney Plus streaming in regards to Star Wars.

• 8:28Chris Ryan?

  And I, you know, I just had this conversation with Sean. We did some Star Wars rankings. This is going to come out on the big picture today, I believe. And we had like a long conversation about the state of Star Wars, but I wanted to bounce a couple of things off of you because from this data, and you can find it in the Hollywood Reporter.

• 8:43Andy Greenwald?

  This is before we get into the classical literature.

• 8:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm going to get there in a second because I think that these things come together. I hope. There's some numbers I wanted to talk to you about with the Star Wars stuff. First of all, the number one, I guess, how would you describe the, they put out a top 10 most streamed Star Wars title as of 2025.

• 8:59Andy Greenwald?

  They is Disney.

• 9:00Chris Ryan?

  Disney, yeah. And well, Nielsen, Nielsen did. And Andor is number one.

• 9:05Andy Greenwald?

  Wow.

• 9:05Chris Ryan?

  Now that would make sense because Andor is sort of the freshest, newest thing that they put out in some ways.

• 9:12Andy Greenwald?

  And the only good thing.

• 9:14Chris Ryan?

  Sure. It's also the most critically acclaimed thing. So if people are looky-loos with Disney Plus subscriptions for their kids, they might check out Andor. You can watch Andor and not really know a lot about the sequels or the prequels or a bunch of other Star Wars stuff. You can get into it without being a Star Wars completist.

• 9:31Andy Greenwald?

  You may not know the answer to this, but do you, because I didn't see this article, like, do you think Nielsen's numbers are skewed in any way in terms of like dynamic engagement? Like, because I would, I would have thought, it wouldn't surprise me if Andor is up there just in terms of like recency and watching one probably means you're watching 16, which may add, which may be a larger engagement number than everyone who has Disney Plus watching Empire Strikes Back once, if that makes sense.

• 10:02Chris Ryan?

  I do understand what you mean, and I'm sure that there are reasons for all of this. There are a couple of interesting factoids that come out of it that Andor remains number one, even if you open it up to the first quarter of 26, which I suppose is also like maybe end of the year, Hosanna's thrown at Andor and maybe people being like, well, I guess it's finally time to check out Andor. In fact, Sean did check out the second season of Andor to like complete it and was blown away. And I would say.

• 10:30Andy Greenwald?

  Does he know that we liked it?

• 10:31Chris Ryan?

  He does. He does. Um, the other thing that was shocking about this list was how poorly, not poorly, but there are no sequels in.

• 10:43Chris Ryan?

  In like the top 10 here.

• 10:45Andy Greenwald?

  You mean 7, 8, 9, not the prequels?

• 10:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, no Force Awakens, no Last Jedi, no Rise of Skywalker. Which might have something to do with their recency, so people may feel less compelled to re-watch. We've done a couple of pods on the big picture recently about Star Wars. We did a Star Wars draft and then a Star Wars ranking. So I went back and re-watched some of the sequels and I was struck by how their very, very modern storytelling style of like constantly running into a room and trying to solve a puzzle that's not quite, yeah. Doesn't really lend itself to re-watching. It's not a-

• 11:24Andy Greenwald?

  That's a great observation.

• 11:24Chris Ryan?

  Not a lot of moments that I feel like they breathe. The Ryan Johnson movie obviously has some of that. It's a, um, it's good. I really, really like The Last Jedi. There is a large sequence in it that I find unwatchable, which is the like casino racehorse-

• 11:41Andy Greenwald?

  Bizarre.

• 11:41Chris Ryan?

  Segment, but for the most part, like, you know, those movies were enjoyable enough to watch in the theater and I don't really feel super compelled to revisit them. I think those numbers kind of, they kind of pan out that way. Like they support that idea.

• 11:58Andy Greenwald?

  Generally, if you have children in America, probably including the guy who is concussed with the hardcore show, like you have a Disney plus subscription for the child pacification purposes and/or is something that mom and dad might want to dive into as a perk-

• 12:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:15Andy Greenwald?

  If they have the service.

• 12:16Chris Ryan?

  Um, here's where I want to go with this, though. Mandalorian and Grogu is coming out at the end of this month, Starfighter next year. These are like the two major Star Wars things on the books.

• 12:27Andy Greenwald?

  You know, Kai clipped you talking about how you'll probably go see Mando and Grogu and I did look at the first comment on it within like an hour of it posting was someone wrote, "CR, please see it on opening day." And I was like, is this Josh Demero's burner? I just, it's just an incredible, and it's still, I don't know why I'm surprised, but that is a wild level of specific fandom.

• 12:48Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 12:49Andy Greenwald?

  They're like, "You person on the internet, you must support this franchise on opening day with your dollars."

• 12:56Chris Ryan?

  There's not as much volume, obviously. Like, there was a point on this podcast where I felt like we had a Star Wars new story to talk about every day.

• 13:02Andy Greenwald?

  I know, that was good for our numbers.

• 13:04Chris Ryan?

  And there was trailers to talk about, and there was new shows to talk about, and obviously, there was a little bit of, like, fatigue with that. Aside from Ahsoka, season two, I don't think I know of any TV series that they're currently working on.

• 13:16Andy Greenwald?

  No, no second season of Acolyte, no second season of Skeleton Crew.

• 13:19Chris Ryan?

  Right, Andor is complete. So, we're kind of at this weird crossroads with Star Wars, where I think they're gonna see how viable Mandalorian is, as an ongoing project, and they have finally ate the first new

• 13:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 13:32Chris Ryan?

  piece of, like, here's some new characters. Knowing Star Wars, I'm sure that there will be echoes, if not actual straight-up cameos from older characters. Here's what I want to talk to you about.

• 13:41Andy Greenwald?

  You mean in Mando, or in Starfighter?

• 13:43Chris Ryan?

  Starfighter.

• 13:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, Starfighter is, that's the hope.

• 13:46Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 13:47Andy Greenwald?

  That's the new hope.

• 13:47Chris Ryan?

  It is the new hope. How viable is this stuff at this point? Do you think?

• 13:54Chris Ryan?

  Do you think the window is at all closing on, let's revive Jedi Knight stuff, let's bring back, like, the Skywalker name, like? Or do you think that this is something that's just always gonna be, like, in the background or foreground of culture, and they're always gonna be, like, pumping something out?

• 14:14Andy Greenwald?

  I think they're in enormous trouble. And I say that as someone who's worked inside the building, I say that as someone who engages with the content still, both on the podcast and as a fan. And I say that as someone who's the parent of two kids who have zero interest in anything coming out of a galaxy far, far away, like, cannot be bothered with any of it, even, like, bespoke pieces of entertainment that might appeal to them, or that might be culturally resonant.

• 14:39Chris Ryan?

  They have some demographic numbers on Mandalorian, and they said Mandalorian, shockingly, like, the two most interested groups were people aged two to 10, or people aged, like, 55 to 70.

• 14:51Andy Greenwald?

  It's classy.

• 14:52Chris Ryan?

  It was just like, these two, like, old people who, like, used to watch Gunsmoke, and babies, like.

• 14:58Andy Greenwald?

  Is it like the beginning of international football matches, when they walk out, holding hands with the children, just like, let's all walk into the movie theater?

• 15:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:06Andy Greenwald?

  Or that's actually what? The movie's about.

• 15:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:09Andy Greenwald?

  Although we don't know how old Grogu really is.

• 15:11Chris Ryan?

  No, I guess not.

• 15:12Andy Greenwald?

  I think he's actually contemporary of us.

• 15:13Chris Ryan?

  He's in his late 40s?

• 15:15Andy Greenwald?

  I think so. Yeah. Can you tell? I mean, I think I have the same joyful attitude towards the world. It's tough for us to find a unique way to have the broader version of this conversation, which is that we, the things that we love and the things that we obsess over and the mechanisms with which we engage with them are wildly out of step from the same answers to that question for a generation.

• 15:39Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 15:39Andy Greenwald?

  20 years younger than us.

• 15:42Andy Greenwald?

  The degree to which something like One Piece, which is a manga and a Netflix show that I know nothing about and probably will never know anything about, but the degree to which that is the most popular franchise on planet Earth and dwarfs anything Star Wars related in terms of active engagement and probably merch and all that at this moment. I don't have merch because there's the theme parks and legacy people buying that stuff. But so when we talk about Star Wars becoming relevant again and we talk about it being like, oh, maybe they'll have an amazing TV show or maybe there'll be a trilogy that resonates again, it's actually already, I think, in kind of a boomer bubble of like, for whom and how big can it go?

• 16:23Andy Greenwald?

  The floor, I don't think, is that low because of the millions and tens of millions of people who will always love this stuff and give it a shot. The floor, and this is actually, I think, more of an indictment as I say it out loud, is Star Trek in that like this is a reliable franchise that you can continue to mine and there will always be a certain number of people who engage with it. Now, like, I know how dramatic and foolish that sounds because even like Mandalorian and Grogu, which is, as we discussed last week, likely not to set the global box office or the imagination of a generation on fire, is going to make half a billion dollars globally just by being Star Wars. Like, probably, maybe.

• 17:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:05Andy Greenwald?

  300 million, 400 million.

• 17:06Chris Ryan?

  Like, it's tracking at, like, well, I think the big question is, is it going to outperform Solo?

• 17:12Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know. I wonder, though, if the tight, the terror.

• 17:17Andy Greenwald?

  The white knuckle grip on the franchise that Disney has had and that the various stewards of it have had over the last 10 years may have been not fatal, but may have been ruinously damaging to the franchise because what it may have done, and I'm not saying I would have argued for this, I don't even know how one would have done this, but if they had loosened the grip a little bit, and they met with, when they say they met with everyone to make Star Wars content, they did.

• 17:40Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 17:41Andy Greenwald?

  You know, I think it's now officially reported like Vince Gilligan was in there, like all the great creators of stuff that we like went in there for meeting Fincher. All these people have had serious, more than serious conversations about it. But did they bring in the younger generation of people who didn't grow up on it and give them a pathway towards it? You know, how do you keep it fresh, keep it new and keep it feeling like something that is vital? I don't know the answer to that, and I think all these legacy franchises are starting to founder against those rocks.

• 18:08Chris Ryan?

  This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan, come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike, or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for? That's when Prime's same day delivery has your back, getting you exactly what you need, fast and reliably, so that you can actually join in on the moment instead of watching from the sidelines. Same day delivery, it's on Prime. Visit amazon.com/prime to find millions of items delivered fast, available in select areas, terms apply.

• 18:39Chris Ryan?

  The reason I'm trying to make this connection between classic literature and Star Wars is because I think Star Wars is-

• 18:45Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I see what you're doing. Sorry, it took me a second.

• 18:46Chris Ryan?

  Not quite in danger of, but it faces the possibility of becoming classic literature when it comes to being, it's gonna be kinda stuck in, behind glass in a museum soon if they don't do something drastic. And I think Andor was drastic, and Andor was a, you know, project that lasted, you know, in terms of like the actual creative act of it was like a six, six-year project or whatever, you know?

• 19:11Andy Greenwald?

  I think, I think Tony says it's almost like a decade of his mind, but I think he puts Rogue One into that.

• 19:17Chris Ryan?

  Rogue One in there.

• 19:19Chris Ryan?

  If you don't really, look, I understand why they don't because it's like the bets are too big to not pay off.

• 19:24Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 19:25Chris Ryan?

  And you can't make a losing bet that then everybody walks away from the table permanently because of, you can't, you can't have them all be so, like, I'm so disappointed with what you've done that I don't want to experience that, I'm not going to give you another chance. But the thing about Andor and the thing about The Last Jedi was that it actually tried playing with different storytelling colors and painting with those colors and, and saying like, can Star Wars make you feel this way? Can Star Wars make you think about this? Is Star Wars just the frame, but the house can be different every time? What I think they decided was, no, that we don't like that experience.

• 20:07Chris Ryan?

  We need to make a replicable, everybody comes in, we do the same thing, there's a kid, there's a, there's a master, there is, then there is like a.

• 20:16Andy Greenwald?

  Familiar story beats, you can go in and you can relax as opposed to you can go to the theater and lean in. And I, you know, I don't even remember what the NDAs were and I don't even think it's my place to say anything, but the project that I was lucky enough to work on with our friend Damon Lindelof and Justin Britt Gibson was about the act of, a radical act within the expected hierarchy of a Star Wars universe.

• 20:39Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 20:39Andy Greenwald?

  It was essentially running at the thing, both on a meta level, you could see what he was playing with, but also the characters were saying, why does it have to be this way?

• 20:48Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 20:48Andy Greenwald?

  And it was super biased, I thought, very, very, very exciting. And, you know, in the fullness of time, like, I'm, am I extremely disappointed that that didn't happen for personal, professional and fandom reasons? Hell, yes. But to the point you're saying about like being a steward of this and the risks you take, I understand, but that felt like a big moment of a decisive moment, you know?

• 21:12Chris Ryan?

  I would love to get Bob Iger's version of the Steven Soderbergh pitch for Ben Solo, which. In the vacuum of nobody from Disney really commenting on this has kind of taken shape as, what was it, who was the writer on it? Oh, it was, I think it was Jules Asner with Soderbergh and like Scott Burns? Or I can't remember.

• 21:31Andy Greenwald?

  It was one of his dudes. It was Ed Solomon or Scott Burns? It was one of them.

• 21:34Chris Ryan?

  It wasn't Ed Solomon, so it was probably Scott Burns. And, you know, this story has taken shape that Soderbergh was like, Adam Driver was in, we had a really, really good idea that was rounding into form as a script if it never actually became the first draft. And the enthusiasm of Lucasfilm, most importantly.

• 21:51Andy Greenwald?

  It says along with writer Rebecca Blunt.

• 21:53Chris Ryan?

  That's Jules Asner, I believe.

• 21:54Andy Greenwald?

  That's Jules Asner.

• 21:55Chris Ryan?

  Um, and then it got to, because Steven Soderbergh uses all these like pseudonyms for different things, I believe Rebecca Blunt is Jules Asner.

• 22:03Andy Greenwald?

  Is Emily Blunt also Jules Asner?

• 22:05Chris Ryan?

  No. And then it gets up to Iger and Iger is just like, you gotta be kidding me, like Ben Solo is dead.

• 22:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 22:12Chris Ryan?

  Uh, now I think what he really meant was there's no way I'm reopening the can of worms that was the toxic fandom that surrounded all of those characters. And after getting pilloried for bringing Palpatine back, I'm not now bringing Ben Solo back.

• 22:26Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 22:27Chris Ryan?

  Um, I, that's my argument on behalf of Bob Iger. I'm happy to appear in public as his defendant.

• 22:33Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 22:34Chris Ryan?

  As his defense attorney.

• 22:35Andy Greenwald?

  That's what we do on the show. We give voice to the voiceful. The people who have the loudest voices.

• 22:41Chris Ryan?

  We give voice to the guy who runs the Edinburgh Center. Um, but, you know, that is the, uh, that is the perfect example of what we're talking about, where like a really inventive filmmaker, a really interesting actor, a really cool idea, but would obviously be playing with like completely different tonal ideas than most Star Wars stuff right now. And they're like, yeah, we're not making that bet, dude.

• 23:09Andy Greenwald?

  One thing that we say when we talk about TV is we constantly hold up HBO and FX as being unique unicorns in terms of having an entrenched development power structure that has been working together and developing things for a long time. And one thing that is, I think, under discussed, and we talk about the last five years of Star Wars, is the tumult of who's holding, who's left. Holding the bag because this spans a time, not only of a massive industry upheaval and industry repositioning in terms of where you're pouring the content money, TV streaming, oh no, we are back to movies. But it's the Iger Chapek Iger era and the Iger era, Iger era 2.0 contained within it, one, the constant sense

• 23:49Andy Greenwald?

  that Kathy Kennedy was going to be retiring at some point and stepping down and what the succession plan within her company was. But then also Iger stepping down, who is taking over his role and what that person would feel about it. So I do think that when you're talking about such a valuable property and the amount of time it takes to develop, produce and release a film. You need five years of continuity to decide on a plan and then to be able to stick with the plan. The worst case scenario would have been projects that Iger, or God forbid, Chapek had approved or the Kathy had approved. And then the incoming leadership structure is like, actually, this, we think this is kind of whack. And then pull the plug on it. I think there was a cycle of that happening.

• 24:30Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not saying I'm more optimistic about the next five years, but theoretically there will be consistency.

• 24:37Chris Ryan?

  I just wonder whether or not, say Mandalorian and Grogu does fine, but winds up being maybe slightly better performing than Solo. Perhaps just because it doesn't have the like cynicism around an Alden Ehrenreich type figure in it and doesn't have the chaos of switching directors mid shoot. So let's say it does okay. And then next year, just off of Project Hail Mary vibes alone, Starfighter does pretty well, right?

• 25:02Andy Greenwald?

  It very well may. It may, I mean, also, let's throw this out there. What if it's good?

• 25:06Chris Ryan?

  Sure. I mean, it's entirely possible. But what I wonder is like, if you guys, if there isn't like a new story to tell on a franchise level where you're like, it's going to take multiple films to complete the arc of what we're trying to do here. And we've introduced these new characters that are going to change over the course of these movies. Like, does Star Wars essentially then become a very expensive, modern version of things like Lord of the Flies?

• 25:33Chris Ryan?

  Where everybody just broadly, even if you haven't read it, probably knows it's kids marooned on an island. It's an allegory for society. One of them is named Piggy and he has glasses, right? Like, I bet most people could probably dial that up even if they haven't, if they don't remember William Golding's novel. You know, line for line.

• 25:53Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 25:53Chris Ryan?

  What stories that we sort of hold as central, like, of course, well, this is canonical. We'll always have Star Wars.

• 26:01Andy Greenwald?

  You sound like my dad.

• 26:02Chris Ryan?

  Are gonna, in 20 years, look like East of Eden, or Ian Forster, or what have you. Do you see what I'm saying?

• 26:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think it's very possible. I think what's interesting, though, is that for the, so you suggested we do an exercise where we look at the, the, whose list is it?

• 26:18Chris Ryan?

  It's the Modern Libraries.

• 26:19Andy Greenwald?

  The MLA list of like, the 100 greatest novels, and then like, thought about ones that were ripe for adaptation. But in so doing, I was like, at no point did I look at the potential of adapting these books as an opportunity to like, recreate them in amber as they were. Like, what they are, you look at it, and it'll be fun to go into the list and think about it. And I was like, which of these is ripe for some relevance? Which of these is ripe for reimagining, or some sort of modern take on it? Because otherwise, why would you do it?

• 26:48Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 26:49Andy Greenwald?

  You know, and so, that, I mean, that's ongoing, like, there's a, there's a, it's highly controversial in my household, because the 2005 version is my daughter's favorite film. But Netflix has a Pride and Prejudice adaptation coming out next year.

• 27:02Chris Ryan?

  Jack Loudon, right?

• 27:03Andy Greenwald?

  Jack Loudon, and Emma Corrin, and Olivia Colman, and, but like, so my question is, why?

• 27:12Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 27:12Andy Greenwald?

  Not in a negative way, but show me why. I'm curious why.

• 27:15Chris Ryan?

  But when you see, especially coming out of England, the, um, the maintenance, the classics maintenance that they do over there. Where they're like, it's been 10 years, it's time for this.

• 27:27Andy Greenwald?

  Totally.

• 27:27Chris Ryan?

  Now- Funnily enough, I went through a bunch of these books in the, so this is the Modern Library's list of the top 100 novels of the 20th century. So-

• 27:37Andy Greenwald?

  And it's a pretty fairly stodgy list, I would say.

• 27:40Chris Ryan?

  Very, very much so. And so we're not in the 21st century. We're not talking about No Country For Old Men and stuff like that.

• 27:45Andy Greenwald?

  But we're also not looking at the 20th century with a particularly non Harold Bloom 21st century view. There are a couple wild cards in there.

• 27:53Chris Ryan?

  Very few.

• 27:53Andy Greenwald?

  But very few. And the sheer number of books that are about a guy finding himself in Africa was shocking. Like genuinely, like I didn't even know, I've read a bunch of these books, not even as a brag, but I didn't know even Saul Bellow was like, what if this middle-aged man found himself in darkest Africa?

• 28:12Chris Ryan?

  And they, and they treated him as a prophet.

• 28:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, like a lot of that.

• 28:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Um, but you know, I was looking at this list and we'll put the, the list itself in the show, the show notes. I can't even tell if I'm connecting the dots between the Modern Library 20th century novels and Star Wars.

• 28:27Andy Greenwald?

  I think you got big brain from this weekend and I love it.

• 28:29Chris Ryan?

  Are you, you're on this wave with me though?

• 28:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. This, this is like doing a podcast with the fourth square and the Vince McMahon meme.

• 28:36Chris Ryan?

  You know what? It'll be funny if in 20 years you and I are doing this podcast at age 68 and we're like, what are some Star Wars stories that could use a TV adaptation?

• 28:49Andy Greenwald?

  Is that how you're gonna talk?

• 28:50Chris Ryan?

  Um, yes.

• 28:51Andy Greenwald?

  Got it.

• 28:52Chris Ryan?

  Ever since a guy fell on me at a basement show at age 58. Going through this list, some of these titles are so, I don't know, memorable. They're so present in my mind, even if I haven't even read them.

• 29:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 29:07Chris Ryan?

  That I, in my, in my head, I was like, there has to have been seven or eight Lord of the Flies adaptations.

• 29:13Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 29:14Chris Ryan?

  There's four on screen.

• 29:15Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 29:16Chris Ryan?

  There's a, a 60s movie. There is a, a foreign film. There's the 1990 movie, which is sort of in my mind, the Balthazar Getty one, the, the one that I, I know of. And now there is this Jack Thorne adaptation, which by the way, is getting love, like wonderful reviews and sounds excellent. It's just also sounds like it's very dutifully like captures what's on the page.

• 29:39Andy Greenwald?

  Not to add too much to, to what may already be a creaky bit before getting into it, but I think that the more relevant comp in this is something else that I worked on, which is Harry Potter.

• 29:46Chris Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 29:46Andy Greenwald?

  Which is, people are like, why, I'll explain it to you. It's about a wizard.

• 29:51Andy Greenwald?

  You leaning in or out?

• 29:53Chris Ryan?

  I'm at, literally at 50%.

• 29:55Andy Greenwald?

  I know. What if I told you who is a special little fellow?

• 29:58Chris Ryan?

  I'm the undecided voter who's like, Janet Mills, Graham Platter.

• 30:02Andy Greenwald?

  You're the one?

• 30:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:05Andy Greenwald?

  Many people, many people, but this is not a strong man argument, are like, why? Because the movies already exist.

• 30:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:12Andy Greenwald?

  I think there are many reasons for it, and hopefully the show will speak for itself. But that is more in the line of the, there isn't going to be a lot of iterating within the world, or within the IP, or within the space, because the IP is very tightly controlled. So is it more along the lines of every 20 to 25 years, we get a new Howard's End? Or we get a new Sense and Sensibility?

• 30:34Chris Ryan?

  What if every 15 years, we get a new Hope?

• 30:37Andy Greenwald?

  It's beautifully done.

• 30:37Chris Ryan?

  No, but like-

• 30:38Andy Greenwald?

  But, but I'm saying like-

• 30:39Chris Ryan?

  Maybe if that's what you guys want, if we all just want Luke and Leia, let's just get two new cool people to play them.

• 30:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 30:45Chris Ryan?

  And, and use new, new effects that we have.

• 30:47Andy Greenwald?

  Who you got?

• 30:49Chris Ryan?

  Well, I'm not going to get into that game right now, because I spent way too much time casting Henry James novels.

• 30:53Andy Greenwald?

  Sure, alright.

• 30:54Chris Ryan?

  So Andy and I gave each other this little project to-

• 30:57Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't do a lot of casting, I did a lot of show running, but okay.

• 31:00Chris Ryan?

  I, I did, I did some casting, I, hot out of the, the door, I have, I have my cast, but then-

• 31:06Andy Greenwald?

  Hot out the door? Classic Bakers talk. Go on.

• 31:11Chris Ryan?

  I feel like I'm having a mild stroke, because I keep replacing words in cliches.

• 31:15Andy Greenwald?

  You're like, I, healthy living, brother. I'm, no, no ill effects from the hardcore show.

• 31:21Chris Ryan?

  Okay, I'll, I'll go first with an idea. So, like I said, we are taking from the Modern Library's top 100 books of the 20th century. Um, and we're thinking about what of these old titles could use a fresh coat of paint?

• 31:33Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 31:33Chris Ryan?

  My number one draft pick here is Henry James's The Ambassadors.

• 31:38Andy Greenwald?

  Look at you. By the way, this is, we are covering the new episode of Euphoria in this pod, and we are leading with Chris's imaginary adaptation of Henry James, The Ambassadors. So this SEO shit, don't put it on me anymore.

• 31:50Chris Ryan?

  Show run by a man who has never run a show.

• 31:53Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 31:54Chris Ryan?

  Named Noah Baumbach.

• 31:55Andy Greenwald?

  Wow.

• 31:56Chris Ryan?

  This is a novel about, um, a, a guy who, a widower, I believe. I can't, can't remember if he's a widower or not, Lambert. Yeah, I read it in college.

• 32:06Andy Greenwald?

  Should we step down?

• 32:07Chris Ryan?

  No, I don't want to because, uh, yeah, he's a middle aged widower. And his new fiance, who's pretty paid, is like, you gotta go to Europe and find my ne'er do well son. So Lambert, the, the sort of main character, he's in his late 50s. This ne'er do well son is in his late 20s. And he, she's like, you gotta go to Europe. This is like 1903. Find my son, bring him back. He's got to start working at the, the family factory to running the family factory or whatever. He's got to inherit his, his family kind of mantle here. So, you know, this American goes off to Europe and, and finds this, this young man. And instead of finding a ne'er do well, finds a guy who's blossoming.

• 32:49Chris Ryan?

  And then this man himself, the, the widower Lambert blossoms himself and learns a lot about himself as he discovers, you know, new things about the old world.

• 33:01Andy Greenwald?

  Is this in any way similar to when I started working at Spin in 1999? And you were still in Boston and you called me and you were like, how is it? And I'm like, it's pretty cool, man. And then you showed up and you were like, I want.

• 33:12Chris Ryan?

  Which one of us is the ne'er do well younger son in this case? So I have Noah Baumbach making a series about, about these people. And I have it set in contemporary times. Because I think there's something really interesting to be done with America's perhaps diminished role in the world.

• 33:30Andy Greenwald?

  Perhaps diminished, yeah.

• 33:32Chris Ryan?

  To talk about Americans abroad and, uh, what, what that means in, in 2020, whatever. Uh, whenever you want to set it, set it. This 58 year old man, I'm, I'm mixed on this because I, I have an easy one, which is Billy Crudup, who's done Noah Baumbach work before, has led if, or appeared in several big series before.

• 33:57Chris Ryan?

  But Billy Crudible, it's like if you're asking somebody to go from being straitlaced to free. Billy Crudible, we know he can be free. There's no surprise there. So what about?

• 34:07Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 34:08Chris Ryan?

  If Dr. Robbie's sabbatical just lasts a little longer.

• 34:11Andy Greenwald?

  See, I was wondering where the juice was coming from.

• 34:13Chris Ryan?

  Where's Noah Wiley? Like, let's get Dr. Robbie on the bike to Europe.

• 34:18Andy Greenwald?

  This is good. He would drown.

• 34:20Chris Ryan?

  And when he goes over there, he finds this young man.

• 34:25Chris Ryan?

  And the young man should be played by, by the way, his name's Chad. He should be played by Chris Bryny. From Summer I Turned Pretty. Just appeared in Hacks recently, is obviously trying to like break out of like teen dream stuff. So let's put him in a Noah Baumbach.

• 34:42Andy Greenwald?

  You had me. I'm doing the Jonas era now, because here's the thing. When you started with this, I was leaning out. No offense.

• 34:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:50Andy Greenwald?

  But I was like, trying to get in the mindset of contemporary buyer in this town. And I was not enough, you know? I can't say there's a lot of heat for the Baumbach vision right now, in terms of like well-heeled types. Well, okay, but CAA is not saying, Noah, you've been mismanaged all this time. What you need to do.

• 35:10Chris Ryan?

  Is a Henry James.

• 35:11Andy Greenwald?

  A Henry James adaptation. I think UTA could have managed that for him just fine. But when you start populating it with contemporary people that have a fanbase. Who are people who are wanting to see their next step, this is why it's gonna work.

• 35:25Chris Ryan?

  One of the joys of this cast of characters is you've got a guy in late middle age, you've got a young man entering real adulthood that's played by Chris Bryny. And then they're both equally sort of smitten with this thirty, late 30s, French woman. Madame Vianette. And in this adaptation, she's played by Lea Seydoux.

• 35:49Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, okay. And now are you taking that meeting yourself?

• 35:56Andy Greenwald?

  Leah, bienvenue.

• 35:59Andy Greenwald?

  I'd like to speak to you about some

• 36:00Chris Ryan?

  Pauline Lou Henry James.

• 36:01Andy Greenwald?

  I'd like to speak to you about some opportunities.

• 36:03Chris Ryan?

  So that's, that's my, that's my pitch.

• 36:04Andy Greenwald?

  Have you heard Basement? I believe is the way you say the band's name.

• 36:07Chris Ryan?

  That's my pitch for the Ambassadors.

• 36:09Andy Greenwald?

  That's pretty sick. How many episodes? Who, who are you trying to sell it to?

• 36:12Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I, I'd love it to be six. And I do wonder whether or not Apple TV is the only one who'd be like, hmm. Although they actually like ongoing series more than limited.

• 36:22Andy Greenwald?

  What's the second season? They find another younger ne'er do well, a little bit further east. And they go to like a lot to pop in Belarus and a lot of the shows we've been watching.

• 36:32Chris Ryan?

  That's true.

• 36:33Andy Greenwald?

  You think about that.

• 36:34Chris Ryan?

  You go, you give me one.

• 36:35Andy Greenwald?

  I don't have a ton. So if you, did you ever read the book Appointment in Samara?

• 36:39Chris Ryan?

  I have this down too.

• 36:40Andy Greenwald?

  Do you?

• 36:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but this is like.

• 36:41Andy Greenwald?

  Let's chop it up.

• 36:42Chris Ryan?

  So this is, uh, John O'Hara.

• 36:44Andy Greenwald?

  John O'Hara, 1934 novel, like the, the, I read it recently. I don't know if you read it back in the day, but like the book that people, the book that everyone thinks Fitzgerald wrote, but actually they're thinking about Fitzgerald's life. This is that book. It's about like one night in a Pennsylvania suburb, I mean, who among us, where a guy basically wildly circles the drain and drinks himself to death. It's like a social, it's a, it's a snapshot of a social class and culture and just ruinous mistake making.

• 37:14Chris Ryan?

  This is what your friends and neighbors should be.

• 37:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, this is right. This is right. And, and I think that when I, so it's in like Gibbsville, Pennsylvania, which no disrespect to our neighboring towns from where we grew up. I think what would be interesting would be to put it in a place like Beacon, New York or Maplewood, New Jersey.

• 37:32Chris Ryan?

  You can't take John O'Hara out of Pennsylvania.

• 37:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yes. First of all, I can do what I want. He's dead. Sorry.

• 37:40Andy Greenwald?

  But the reason being, the idea of this like, um, well-heeled, but entrenched demi-monde, like again, no disrespect to the great work Governor Shapiro is doing. Like, I don't know how much of that is in Pennsylvania right now, whereas I think it's interesting to explore these towns.

• 37:57Chris Ryan?

  I see what you're saying.

• 37:57Andy Greenwald?

  Of people who have left the city and are very pleased with themselves. Listen, I'm, I'm among them for like being able to now have a yard and. And like, look, we're performing America, but we're being, we're being cool and maybe polyamorous or whatever.

• 38:09Chris Ryan?

  In this house, we believe in Michael Clayton.

• 38:12Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, a million percent. You said it among those lawns.

• 38:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:17Andy Greenwald?

  And then I, but then what was interesting, you actually helped me with this one. I don't know if you had a different setup, but I was trying to think of who are our best interlocutors and examiners of long-term relationships and the cracks that can appear in things. And first I was like, is this, is this an opportunity to hire one of the savage Brits like Jesse Armstrong or something? Or like one of the last great shows about marriage was The Americans.

• 38:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Andy Greenwald?

  So I was like, would Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields come off the bench for this? But you gave me the right answer, which is Francesca Sloan off of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Because I think maybe, and I don't know how you feel about the project writ large, but I was excited about the chance to inject some youth into this fairly stodgy.

• 38:58Chris Ryan?

  Cause the, I mean, this could, this is Matthew Weiner cult coded, you know, like it is. It, it very much, I think Mad Men pulled from O'Hara.

• 39:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 39:08Chris Ryan?

  And Cheever and, and a lot of these, these sort of like poets of middle-aged alcoholism.

• 39:13Andy Greenwald?

  Malaise, yeah.

• 39:15Chris Ryan?

  That's really cool. Any ideas of like, who could play the main character?

• 39:20Andy Greenwald?

  Who's the guy from Christopher Briny? You want to cast him again? Should we put him in all of these?

• 39:25Chris Ryan?

  You know what? My next one was The Magus by John Fowles.

• 39:29Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, do it.

• 39:30Chris Ryan?

  It wouldn't be bad if he had an English accent as a grad student teaching English in Greece, who comes under the spell of an eccentric rich man and it plays a series of games with him where it makes him question reality. And there's a lot of stuff about World War II in there. I need a, I need a Lynchian showrunner. I need, not Lynchian in that he runs the show like David Lynch, but someone capable of atmosphere and dream worlds.

• 39:59Andy Greenwald?

  I have a piggyback for that. So, and I, who I think would be the right showrunners for this.

• 40:04Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 40:04Andy Greenwald?

  So I picked Day of the Locust, Nathaniel West, a book about being down and out in Los Angeles. And turns out. Turns out there's a magnet that attracts all the evil people here, as Sam Levinson put it so poetically.

• 40:16Chris Ryan?

  Wait a second, let me back up for one second. Appointment in Samara, are you updating that? Are you like, is it contemporary times?

• 40:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:21Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so for the Magus, you could get into a lot of things about how the digital world makes us not really understand what's real and what's not.

• 40:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 40:29Chris Ryan?

  For your, uh, for your Nathaniel West adaptation.

• 40:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 40:33Chris Ryan?

  Would that be current?

• 40:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think, I'm not interested in period pieces, brother. Like, I'm a buyer right now, you know what I mean? Like, I'm trying to program for 2028, 2029, assuming we still-

• 40:43Chris Ryan?

  Can I get Budapest to look like Gibbsville?

• 40:45Andy Greenwald?

  Can't, I mean, can't I afford to gas up the Quixote trucks to get them anywhere in 2029? Um, probably not. So, yeah, Hollywood, Hollywood is hard, Hollywood is difficult, Hollywood is a nightmare place, et cetera, et cetera. A tale told many times, uh, often well. But the main thing, so my first thought was like Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are kind of doing this with the studio. Um, and I'm curious if they have a desire to play with a different gear, and I kind of don't think they do, because they have been slightly, like Preacher and the Boys, other things they've produced have flirted with topicality, but they do like heads exploding. Um, the, the single most David Lynch creator working today is my guy, Tim Robinson.

• 41:28Chris Ryan?

  Wow.

• 41:28Andy Greenwald?

  I think he should leave, the chair company.

• 41:30Chris Ryan?

  You think he should do Day of the Locust?

• 41:31Andy Greenwald?

  Tim Robinson and Zach Kanan should do Day of the Locust. I think they should do the Magus. I think they should just expand their business, their footprint in this town.

• 41:38Chris Ryan?

  I had Amy Seiditz.

• 41:40Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, good.

• 41:42Chris Ryan?

  Who, obviously, uh, had a negative experience working on The Idol, where she was replaced mid-stream by Sam Levinson.

• 41:49Andy Greenwald?

  Lucky. I had a negative experience working on The Idol too.

• 41:52Chris Ryan?

  And, uh-

• 41:53Andy Greenwald?

  And I had to do the whole thing.

• 41:53Chris Ryan?

  You know, is currently on The Testaments, but hasn't, hasn't directed TV if I'm, well, she doesn't, she does lots of TV directing. I mean, she did episodes of Atlanta and stuff like that, but I would love to put her in charge of something like this. And I think that, uh, it would, the material would suit her in a lot of ways.

• 42:12Andy Greenwald?

  That's good.

• 42:12Chris Ryan?

  Um, I have one more throw at you.

• 42:15Andy Greenwald?

  Hit me.

• 42:16Chris Ryan?

  This is pretty, a pretty good layup. It's The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad.

• 42:20Andy Greenwald?

  I had that too.

• 42:21Chris Ryan?

  Uh, so this is a story about a relatively successful London businessman.

• 42:24Andy Greenwald?

  Genuinely, tell the story. This is the most, this is the most ripe for adaptation and for reinvention and for updating, I would think, of the whole list.

• 42:30Chris Ryan?

  And, um- It's about a guy who is a business owner in London who is in fact a spy on behalf of what is supposed to be Russia essentially, but it's unnamed. Yeah. And it jumps around a lot chronologically in the novel around a bombing. And you could do it now. Uh, you could do it then if you wanted to. But one of the great unrealized projects is the prospective third season of The Nick.

• 43:01Andy Greenwald?

  Well, look what you're doing here.

• 43:02Chris Ryan?

  Remember when he was like, it's just gonna be the hospital, but it's jumping ahead like 50 years. And wasn't Barry Jenkins or somebody gonna direct it?

• 43:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, the idea was that the, the, the real star of The Nick, kind of like with ER after many years, the real star of The Nick was the hospital.

• 43:17Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 43:18Andy Greenwald?

  And that while Steven Soderbergh, who directed every episode and Clive Owen, who was the star, may recede from view, someone else could pick up the mantle and tell the story of the same hospital in a different era of New York.

• 43:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:29Andy Greenwald?

  And there was, there were versions of it where, um, uh, oh my God, why am I blanking on my beloved actor's name?

• 43:36Chris Ryan?

  Andre Holland?

• 43:36Andy Greenwald?

  Andre Holland was gonna continue playing the part that he played so brilliantly. And there was talk that Barry Jenkins was gonna get involved. We were gonna jump forward 20 years.

• 43:43Chris Ryan?

  Well, I have the idea of, of reuniting Soderbergh and Clive Owen on this.

• 43:48Andy Greenwald?

  Nice.

• 43:48Chris Ryan?

  But I wonder whether or not you do, one half of it is the, you know, basically turn of the century tale, and the other is like modern times.

• 44:01Andy Greenwald?

  This is good.

• 44:02Chris Ryan?

  But it's like maybe two different directors shooting the same actors, or it's like, yeah, Soderbergh shooting both, but you're dressing, cause you know, you could shoot London, there's parts of London that do look exactly like it did in the beginning of the 20th century.

• 44:14Andy Greenwald?

  And there are at least two people in this room who'd be willing to scout it.

• 44:18Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 44:18Andy Greenwald?

  No need to name names.

• 44:19Chris Ryan?

  Honestly, there's probably five people in this room that would scout.

• 44:22Andy Greenwald?

  It's quite possible. So you get Soderbergh and Owen in the past, and you get Briny and Zach Craig or one of your other kids that you like in the, he's our age, isn't he? Like in, in the, the present day.

• 44:33Chris Ryan?

  We are not Chris Briny's age.

• 44:34Andy Greenwald?

  No, I thought, didn't Zach Craig are more of our contemporary?

• 44:37Chris Ryan?

  Yes, but still younger than us.

• 44:39Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, so is everyone, but I just mean like he's.

• 44:41Chris Ryan?

  Um, a couple of other ideas that I had, like Naked and the Dead, the Norman Mailer, Mailer World War II novel. Uh, I just, let's make World War II stuff. And equally a bummer with Appointment in Samara would be An American Tragedy, uh, the Theodore Dreiser 1925 novel. But yeah, like.

• 45:01Chris Ryan?

  It would be pretty bleak to do American tragedy. It's kind of in the name.

• 45:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. What if it was Ryan Murphy's American tragedy?

• 45:07Chris Ryan?

  Oh, my God.

• 45:08Andy Greenwald?

  Sells itself.

• 45:09Chris Ryan?

  Dude.

• 45:09Andy Greenwald?

  All right. I'm just gonna assign a few more works to showrunners where you don't even have to talk about.

• 45:12Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 45:13Andy Greenwald?

  Secret Agent I had also, I want to give it to my friend Joe Barton, Black Doves.

• 45:17Chris Ryan?

  Your personal friend?

• 45:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 45:19Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 45:20Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I'm giving it to him because he makes good television, but he's also a lovely guy. And look, Spurs are struggling this season.

• 45:25Chris Ryan?

  It's all a network.

• 45:26Andy Greenwald?

  So this is how we're, yeah, you're here pitching like more World War II content and they're like, we will not be validating your parking. Uh, I'm trying to make this stuff happen. You know what I mean? I got kids to feed.

• 45:39Andy Greenwald?

  Walker Percy's The Moviegoer.

• 45:40Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 45:40Andy Greenwald?

  Sterling Hardjo. Go take it.

• 45:43Chris Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 45:43Andy Greenwald?

  See what you want to do with it. A nice walking around ambling kind of vibe.

• 45:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:48Andy Greenwald?

  Edith Wharton's House of Mirth.

• 45:49Chris Ryan?

  They mirth it up, though, don't they?

• 45:51Andy Greenwald?

  They're constantly mirthing. However, Phoebe Waller-Bridge should be making something like that, not Tomb Raider. You know what? Bringers, what a shoot.

• 46:00Chris Ryan?

  Why can't you do both?

• 46:01Andy Greenwald?

  That's what I'm saying. You know who else could do it? Sophie, what's her name, could do it with her.

• 46:05Chris Ryan?

  Sophie Turner?

• 46:06Andy Greenwald?

  Sophie Turner could do it with her. Like, they could do both shows simultaneously.

• 46:11Chris Ryan?

  It happens all the time.

• 46:12Andy Greenwald?

  Happens all the time. Quite easy. Uh, everything's being made in London, anyway. And then finally, Saul Bellow's Adventures of Augie March. I think we just hand it to, speaking of, this is all, it's all about who you know. So I think we give that to our friend and listener Tracy Letts and the Steppenwolf players and be like, go make your Chicago show.

• 46:29Chris Ryan?

  A contemporary Augie March?

• 46:30Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 46:31Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 46:32Andy Greenwald?

  Everything contemporary. Do you understand? I do not have the budget or the discretion to greenlight something.

• 46:37Chris Ryan?

  Period cars, yeah.

• 46:38Andy Greenwald?

  Period piece. Every car in it, by the way, is gonna be one of those like Vinfast, one of those like, it's an electric car company owned by Saudi Arabia, maybe? That you see on the road now? They're sponsoring it.

• 46:48Chris Ryan?

  I can't wait till you get your BYD, your, the Chinese electric cars.

• 46:52Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:53Chris Ryan?

  Then everybody's like, when are we gonna get those? They're like $20.

• 46:56Andy Greenwald?

  Listen, I hear gas prices are problematic right now. Couldn't be me.

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• 48:43Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk about Euphoria. Kitty Likes to Dance is the episode, it's episode four of this third season. We've seen stuff online now about this not being the last season of Euphoria. I would imagine if in any shape or form this show goes on, it's not going to be with the same actors, or at least not all of them. I think this is going to be the end of, of this group of characters together. This high school class has moved on. I say that without having watched ahead. I just don't know where you would take them in their 30s or whatever.

• 49:14Chris Ryan?

  How did you feel about this midpoint episode?

• 49:16Andy Greenwald?

  I thought this was the best episode of the season. I thought it was the most engaging and I thought it was also, I feel like this is sort of my default role because again, I can't speak to the arc of the series as a whole, but this felt the most cohesive as a episode of episodic television that was attempting to move multiple balls forward at the same time.

• 49:38Chris Ryan?

  Yes, the cross cutting was noted.

• 49:39Andy Greenwald?

  The cross cutting was notable and also tonally, the stories fit better together. And there were moments like when Rue visits the Melrose Place-esque apartment building, where all the characters are now living, where I was like, oh, this is what characters do on ensemble television shows.

• 49:56Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 49:57Andy Greenwald?

  Their storylines intersect with each other.

• 49:58Chris Ryan?

  Inexplicably live together.

• 49:59Andy Greenwald?

  And they share the screen sometimes, or one person's problems, in this case is Rue's desire to find another person to sell her hard drugs, would maybe bring her in contact with characters who are in the midst of their own storylines.

• 50:12Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 50:12Andy Greenwald?

  Like Maddie photographing Cassie with a leaf blower. So I do have positive things to say about this episode. I also want to say, and I'm curious if Kai wants to weigh in on this as well. This morning, when I was driving the girls to school, I mentioned that I'd be talking about the show today. And my older daughter said, oh, I know everything that's going on on that show. And I said, really? I don't think that's a good idea. And she said, bro, this is what they say. There are so many fan edits right now.

• 50:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:48Andy Greenwald?

  And she said, and then I was like, really? You know what's going on this season? And she said, some marriages weren't meant to last.

• 50:56Chris Ryan?

  That's one way of looking at it.

• 50:57Andy Greenwald?

  Less than 12 hours after this episode ends.

• 51:02Andy Greenwald?

  She also said that he, meaning Nate.

• 51:06Andy Greenwald?

  Treated Maddie unkindly.

• 51:08Chris Ryan?

  It's true.

• 51:08Andy Greenwald?

  And I was like, you now know more about the canonical arc of this show than I do.

• 51:13Chris Ryan?

  So she's watching TikTok fan edits of Euphoria. Does it have like anything from the Silver Slipper in it? Like, are they?

• 51:20Andy Greenwald?

  Here's how I know the answer is no, because I was saying something about like-

• 51:23Chris Ryan?

  Rated PG, Euphoria fan-

• 51:26Andy Greenwald?

  No, she's like, I heard last night was about dancing. You know, people like doing it. And I was like, that's what it's about. No, I say, I was saying something about how, and I'll say it again on this podcast, how amazing Zendaya is in this show. And I was, something that I was talking about, I don't know, maybe I said something about, there's a scene where she's driving or something. She's really, she's just so alive in every moment, even when she's driving or something. And my daughter said, she shouldn't be driving, she's a drug addict. And I said, no, she's not. She is currently a DEA informant trying to snitch on two competing drug gangs who are heading for a massive violent war. And she said, oh, I didn't see any of that. So, thank you, Google's age settings, I guess.

• 52:08Chris Ryan?

  And then she also like, what's the DEA?

• 52:11Andy Greenwald?

  Great, hold on, I gotta make a quick phone call. So, so that's where we are with the culture.

• 52:16Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk about the Rue part first, because, you know, you can, you can sort of split this show into different buckets, because they aren't always coming all together, right? Like, there is like, brief moment where Cassie, Lexi, Maddie and Rue show the screen. There isn't a ton of interaction between Zendaya and the other actors like there.

• 52:38Andy Greenwald?

  It is similar to like, Industry, season four, episode two, where you might watch that episode and be like, that one guy's not talking to any other characters.

• 52:47Chris Ryan?

  Is Rue a ghost?

• 52:48Andy Greenwald?

  We won't spoil it too much, but yeah.

• 52:51Chris Ryan?

  She's just extraordinary, man. Like, I, I'm trying to think of every week coming up with a different description of her, and it's really been, I guess, at the forefront of my mind, just because she's so incredible in the drama, so she's really, I've been watching her on screen pretty much all year now. And the, the scene with the two DEA agents in the interrogation room is they kind of play her with being like, all we found was like a joint in the car, so.

• 53:17Andy Greenwald?

  So good.

• 53:18Chris Ryan?

  Her resignation, both when the dog, the drug sniffing dog starts barking, and then when they're like, you're fucking going to prison for the rest of your life unless you help us, is so-

• 53:32Chris Ryan?

  I don't know, it's just so approachable. Like she, for somebody who's so famous and so kind of larger than life, she is playing this part and it feels like someone I, I know. Like it feels like someone I see at coffee shops. It feels like somebody I've been at bars with. And it's, it's a really remarkable availability and like being, being open and being, yeah, it's vulnerable, yeah, but it's not like performatively like I, I'm dirty, you know, or anything like that. It's like really present and she does movie star shit. All, every episode she does like her fucking blood splattered face and her eyes moving

• 54:13Chris Ryan?

  from the safe to the guys holding the gun on Big Eddie. It's just like, that's why she's her.

• 54:20Andy Greenwald?

  One of the best definitions of, of good acting is being present and alive in any situation, moment to moment.

• 54:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:29Andy Greenwald?

  And it is a masterclass in screen acting. Like I, maybe she's great on stage too. I wouldn't doubt that she can do anything. But the way that she can be so outrageously, exquisitely, intricately alive every second that the camera is on her, where she's showing us something, she's showing us thought process, she's showing emotion, she's showing history that as I keep saying, I'm not privileged. I don't know her history, but I can read enough of it emotionally on her face to be engaged by it. It's astonishing and that, that scene, I mean, the first 10 minutes of the episode, absolutely writ because that's what it's about. And she elevates everything, yes, but I'm not withholding flowers because that scene, the way in the interrogation room, the way it's lit, the way it's shot, the way those

• 55:13Andy Greenwald?

  two dudes are those specific two dudes. One who is also meeting her with his presence and the other one is basically dead faced, which is a choice, you know, because there's other kinds of good screen acting. Like I was thinking about why I like Marty Supreme so much. And one of the things that Josh Safdie is so good at is non-professional actors who are not necessarily vibrant and alive and processing.

• 55:35Chris Ryan?

  No, they just look like real people.

• 55:36Andy Greenwald?

  And they behave like real people.

• 55:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:38Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, minute to minutes, you're like, I'm, I'm seeing someone. So it's like, it's like we're praising people. People who I see that they are acting, or I see that they are not acting.

• 55:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:45Andy Greenwald?

  And when you get the right recipe of those two things together, it's something else.

• 55:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that whole exchange in the interrogation room where, you know.

• 55:52Andy Greenwald?

  That was funny. It was well-written.

• 55:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, like, have you been to Mexico? Is it nice? And he's like, some parts.

• 55:56Andy Greenwald?

  Nice. Great scene.

• 55:59Chris Ryan?

  And all that stuff of like, if I've been to the moon, if you asked me if I've been to the moon, and I was like, hell, no. And they were like, I have a picture of you on the moon. It's like, no, you don't, because I've never been. And that's not how you're answering the Mexico question. I love, I love that sequence. Her, I think after she gets out of that interrogation room, one thing I noticed that Levinson does a little bit is he's starting to de-Michael Bayify Rue's POV of her own life.

• 56:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 56:26Chris Ryan?

  Because for a couple of weeks there, you know, it's basically been like hype Williams videos inside of like the, and I mean that as a giant compliment, inside of the Silver Slipper. And it's starting to get a little bit more daylight. And a little bit more overhead fluorescent lighting, and a little bit more like, this person's waking up. Not necessarily like she wasn't aware of what she was doing, but.

• 56:50Andy Greenwald?

  There's sexual violence on a CC, black and white CCTV screen.

• 56:53Chris Ryan?

  But it's the, it's the series of events that leads up to that. It's like she's, she knows that she's now got a snitch jacket. She's in this card game, and she knows Alamo is looking at her in a different kind of way. And she either has to like, pretend to be falling off the wagon, or try to obscure the fact that she's like, running a game on him. And obviously, um, obviously Bishop is starting to notice that.

• 57:17Andy Greenwald?

  Daryl Burt Gibson is phenomenal in this episode. He's been great the whole season.

• 57:20Chris Ryan?

  He's fantastic.

• 57:21Andy Greenwald?

  But his non-verbal performance in that scene and across this episode, he's building something.

• 57:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:26Andy Greenwald?

  You know, that could be, in lesser hands, could just be a cliched or recognizable architect.

• 57:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you would have, he's like, oh, I've got, I've seen this guy.

• 57:35Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:36Chris Ryan?

  Uh, like, sort of idiosyncratic hitman is somebody who's been in movies and TV shows for 30 years now, since Pulp Fiction. Um, and then you get to that CCTV footage of.

• 57:47Andy Greenwald?

  Kitty.

• 57:48Chris Ryan?

  Um, of Kitty with basically being assaulted and.

• 57:52Andy Greenwald?

  And Kitty is played by an actress who's the sister of the lead of your show, Tell Me Lies.

• 57:55Chris Ryan?

  It's not my show, but yes, I, I've watched it. It's Grace Van Patten's sister.

• 57:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 58:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:00Andy Greenwald?

  Uh. It's not your show?

• 58:02Chris Ryan?

  I like it.

• 58:02Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 58:04Chris Ryan?

  We're really saying like, it's like, I don't take possession of it. You know what I mean? It's a show for everybody.

• 58:11Andy Greenwald?

  Lea, again, I welcome, how was the flight from Paris? What is my vision?

• 58:17Chris Ryan?

  For the ambassadors?

• 58:18Andy Greenwald?

  I'd like you to watch the show of mine, Tell Me Lies.

• 58:22Chris Ryan?

  And then, yes, by the end, you know, covered in blood, sitting next to Rosalia.

• 58:27Andy Greenwald?

  As one is.

• 58:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Rosalia, like, this is a much bigger part than I thought it was gonna be. It's also like- It's fantastic, she plays magic, the girl with the neck brace.

• 58:34Andy Greenwald?

  But also, it's like, um, I don't know. I mean, again, I don't frequent many Silver Slippers, Silver's Slipper.

• 58:42Chris Ryan?

  Strip clubs, yeah.

• 58:43Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know how many Catalan exotic dancers there are in the Southland. Maybe it's a thing, maybe it's like, you know, it's like, it's like a pipeline.

• 58:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:52Andy Greenwald?

  The way like Beef taught me that you should look for the Filipino nurses. Like, maybe you should look for, you know, Spanish separatist strippers.

• 59:02Andy Greenwald?

  I am fascinated if one day the story is written about like, yeah, we got Rosalia on the show because we were filming the entire Silver Slipper sequence in seven days. Do you know what I mean? Because I don't think she was there for like a 10-month block shoot.

• 59:12Chris Ryan?

  Well, if you just do magic stuff, I wonder if it's just a couple of days. But you're right, I mean, now she's sort of getting a bigger part because she's a little bit more partnered with Rue, against all odds.

• 59:24Andy Greenwald?

  I'm also so broken brained about the show that I did start noticing things like, like, Rosalia is in a scene at the Silver Slipper when all she's required to do is have Rue walk past her on the way to the office. And I was like, well, okay, that's not a Good Wife situation.

• 59:38Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 59:38Andy Greenwald?

  She was there that day to film that one walk by and she didn't need to be.

• 59:43Chris Ryan?

  And then the episode ends, the Rue part of the episode ends with the reveal that the getaway driver, there's a robbery at the Silver Slipper. It's pretty obviously Lori's guys to viewers, but for the, for the characters, they're not so sure until they see Faye's signature.

• 1:00:01Chris Ryan?

  Very pump lift lips.

• 1:00:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:03Chris Ryan?

  You're right. This was the most TV satisfying TV episode of the season. And I thought it was the one where it was like, okay, now we're, we've left the garage and now like a story is developing.

• 1:00:17Andy Greenwald?

  I think generally, the reason why I've responded to the the Rue storyline this season isn't just because it's anchored by Zendaya's performance. It's because in those scenes, I can feel a filmmaker having fun with convention. And with for tropes and cliches.

• 1:00:36Andy Greenwald?

  In a way that feels active and engaged, like you you mentioned Tarantino and some of it can feel like Tarantino light. But when it's edited so well, like the card game was, and everyone's giving it their best. And there's these little, just there's an edge to it.

• 1:00:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but even like the the shot of her as she's sort of watching behind the glass.

• 1:00:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:56Chris Ryan?

  As Eddie starts to negotiate with the group of guys like that they're gonna have sex with.

• 1:01:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:00Chris Ryan?

  With Kitty. It's like, it's starting to look more and more dark and nefarious.

• 1:01:05Andy Greenwald?

  This is the thing I want to like, I, I think it takes me generally. I am, I'm more drawn towards things that are, you know, interior or written in a different way than things that are told predominantly through the cinematography and the camera work and the direction, for lack of a better word. And so some of the episode and some of the storylines have left me cold because the real passion is in the camera movement. And there was a lot of camera movement in this episode, and some of it was quite striking. And I appreciate the technical difficulty of that. And I also appreciate the fact that there's a filmmaker telling us what he wants to tell us emotionally on screen through what the camera is doing.

• 1:01:45Andy Greenwald?

  But then there is the Rue storyline in which not only is it giving space to have her performance to be up to elevate it, to give space to the writing, to be a little bit crackly and fun and surprising. But then, to your point, that's when the direction comes over the top is the third heat.

• 1:02:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:00Andy Greenwald?

  To also. Surprise us with how we feel about what we are seeing. It's such a smart observation about a show that I'm often too quick to discredit, that her experience of the strip club is an aesthetic choice that is now changing.

• 1:02:14Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and I think that in the hands of another filmmaker, they might just be like, we've settled on a look for the strip club.

• 1:02:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and it's cool. We've lit it this way.

• 1:02:22Chris Ryan?

  And now it's like, no, this is, this is a place they'll give you migraines. Everybody here is on ketamine. Sexual assault is pretty common. People are probably being human trafficked. Like, this is hell, you know? And this guy, Almo, is not a cool pimp reading history books. Like, he's a menacing, malevolent force. And I think we're starting to like, that stuff is all starting to merge. I actually also thought, call me crazy, that the Cassie Maddie stuff was equally compelling on like, a heist level, where they're going into an influencer's home to essentially stage a moment that's gonna break Cassie wide in the world of influencers and OnlyFans.

• 1:03:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Chris Ryan?

  And the orchestration of that, and Maddie being like, you have to like, get noticed, get into bed with him, or get him at the precipice of getting into bed, but do not fuck him.

• 1:03:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Chris Ryan?

  And the sort of like, comic sight gag of like, no do coke out of my belly button, no do coke out of my belly button, was like, pretty funny.

• 1:03:29Andy Greenwald?

  Could you imagine that same setup in The Ambassadors? If we could get there with Henry James?

• 1:03:33Chris Ryan?

  I mean, Europe, Europe is a playground, my man, you know? And that was the girl, the girl that she goes upstairs with is the girl that Maddie was originally managing in the beginning of the season. So, it's all coming together.

• 1:03:46Andy Greenwald?

  Again, that worked less for me because I am less compelled by coming in cold, Maddie and Cassie generally. And I was confused by Maddie's shifting status in that it seems like she's kind of a hanger-on who's struggling, and yet she plays this entire party like it's Stradivarius. And her presence in it is understood, is respected, she's able to maneuver people, and maybe she's a master manipulator.

• 1:04:14Chris Ryan?

  She knows everybody who she needs to know.

• 1:04:16Andy Greenwald?

  And now, that's convenient for the story, but that seemed confusing for the version of the person that had been introduced to me two weeks ago. That said,

• 1:04:24Andy Greenwald?

  Like, this sounds crazy, but like, what you just sketched out, that the way to do a heist on status and attention would revolve around-

• 1:04:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, the payoff is the notifications she gets at the end.

• 1:04:38Andy Greenwald?

  Camera phones, notifications, social media, hard drugs, Hollywood Hills parties, like, that is a war, euphoria was designed to win. Like, this is the new class battleship that we want, unblocking this particular strait. Am I losing the metaphor?

• 1:04:56Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:04:56Andy Greenwald?

  I just mean that, like, even from a distance, my perception of what the show was doing, that, separate apart from, like, the quality of it, that it was effective at, was engaging with contemporary culture-

• 1:05:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:11Andy Greenwald?

  And contemporary fame economy, or young life, like, this is, these are the ones we want on this.

• 1:05:18Chris Ryan?

  And, you know, for as much as people have questioned how he is depicting Sydney Sweeney, and to what extent she's in on the joke-

• 1:05:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:26Chris Ryan?

  Um, and what the joke is, necessarily.

• 1:05:28Andy Greenwald?

  And what is a joke?

• 1:05:29Chris Ryan?

  I thought it was pretty funny to have Sydney Sweeney show up at a party and everybody be like, she's the new, the new kid in town-

• 1:05:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:38Chris Ryan?

  At this, like, influencer party, basically, and there are, like, people eyeballing her, but she's gotta, like, do the Footloose dance to get everybody's attention-

• 1:05:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:46Chris Ryan?

  Up on stage. I like the way that they are playing with her public persona. So, I suppose the less successful elements of this episode, for me personally, were the Jules and Nate stuff. Nate, just because, I can't help but watch the show somewhat from your POV at this point, and wonder whether or not, how, if you understand, like, Nate saying at this zoning meeting-

• 1:06:10Andy Greenwald?

  You know, you know I was interested at that point.

• 1:06:13Chris Ryan?

  But, uh, if Nate not being able to build leads him back to Dark Nate, it's gonna be really funny, and it's quite an interesting commentary on the state of Los Angeles.

• 1:06:24Andy Greenwald?

  And why we can't build things anymore.

• 1:06:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, uh, but that-

• 1:06:27Andy Greenwald?

  Nimby culture.

• 1:06:27Chris Ryan?

  When he's begging the guy and saying, like, "I'm trying to be good, I'm trying to be good, trying to do a good thing," that is because he has done so many bad things.

• 1:06:35Andy Greenwald?

  So, I didn't know that, but my daughter did tell me about that this morning.

• 1:06:38Chris Ryan?

  Did she tell you any of the details of his nefarious deeds?

• 1:06:42Andy Greenwald?

  No, apparently he was a bad guy, she said, and maybe an abusive guy.

• 1:06:46Chris Ryan?

  For sure.

• 1:06:46Andy Greenwald?

  But, um, that's the extent of it.

• 1:06:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:48Andy Greenwald?

  Now- Maybe I need to have a more serious talk with her to unpack some of this, but also like so she can help me out with my coverage of the show.

• 1:06:54Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:06:56Andy Greenwald?

  But yeah, I don't. That is the storyline that is clearly the most beholden to past baggage and not just a beautiful Barbie dream house luggage set that Cassie threw from one floor of the house to the other in her grand escape.

• 1:07:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:12Andy Greenwald?

  So yeah, I agree. I continue to think that like some of the best filmmaking is in the Nate and no longer Cassie stuff, just the colors and the framing and the lighting, but I am uninterested.

• 1:07:23Chris Ryan?

  He is in a similar situation to Rue where he's being put into an impossible position. And it'll be interesting to see how he reacts. I think that Rue is starting to like, every time she looks at that safe, I'm like, she's looking at that safe.

• 1:07:42Andy Greenwald?

  She's been looking at it.

• 1:07:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And the same thing goes for Lori's basement of illegal pleasures, full of drugs and guns and money. But I feel like those two characters are being, having the most pressure put on them in a lot of ways and how they react will kind of define the rest of the season. The Jules part, I don't really know what to say because it doesn't really seem like it's in the same show as everybody else. I, I thought we were going to get a little bit more coherence out of, or cohesiveness out of like the plotlines. Once they reintroduced Jules and introduced this idea of her being a sugar baby and introduced this plastic surgeon and introduced all this stuff. And now it's like Jules is kind of hanging out at Lexi's

• 1:08:25Chris Ryan?

  workplace and putting a bunch of dicks on a George Soros painting and it's not successful.

• 1:08:31Andy Greenwald?

  That is a radical reinterpretation of Sunday in the Park with George.

• 1:08:35Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Now, they, they contrast that with Cassie at the party, right? Like, isn't that during that sequence, it's like Jules painting is Cassie.

• 1:08:46Andy Greenwald?

  Painting over it. Yeah. I mean, I, I think if you squint, there may be some loose commentary there about the old ways to become famous and the new ways to become famous.

• 1:08:56Chris Ryan?

  That's true.

• 1:08:57Andy Greenwald?

  And how hidebound the old ways are. And I do think that those scenes with the Sharon Stone scenes with the, you know, the necessary Din Tai Fung takeout containers in her office are meant to be satire.

• 1:09:07Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:09:09Andy Greenwald?

  They fall flat for me, even though I'm enjoying Sharon Stone's performance quite a bit.

• 1:09:12Chris Ryan?

  Also quite funny, I wonder how the homies at HBO felt about.

• 1:09:17Chris Ryan?

  A studio executive being like, do you know what your day of missed shooting cost?

• 1:09:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that's a little bit of like, we're all laughing here, right, guys? Right? I, but the naivete of everyone involved was discordant to me. Not just that, like, what a great opportunity to have my friend come do a painting for a television show that has eight million people watching it every week, which is like, okay, buddy. Good luck. I wish.

• 1:09:43Chris Ryan?

  What is this mayor of Kingston?

• 1:09:44Andy Greenwald?

  I know. But beyond that, then like the reaction to it and then the like, the idea that she somehow, her dreams have been crushed because this insane painting that she's hung on the set of a television show is somehow being rejected. Like, I, I don't understand this character at all, or what her point of view is or what we're doing with her.

• 1:10:04Chris Ryan?

  I couldn't tell, honestly, I think the thing that you have to ask yourself is, do you think that what Jules does to the painting is like an artistic breakthrough for her? Because it happens wordlessly in, in comparison to Cassie painting her masterpiece, you know? And so I'm wondering whether or not, like, through this rejection of her expression of sexuality, did Rue find a more abstract but more powerful way of expressing herself? Sorry, Jules, find a more abstract and powerful way of expressing herself? Or was she just like, I'm gonna ruin this painting with red paint and then walk away and we'll pick my story up next week?

• 1:10:42Andy Greenwald?

  I think what's frustrating, and I want to be careful when I say this, because I actually, big picture thought, I do not have a prescription for this show. There is not a version of season three that I'm gonna-

• 1:10:52Chris Ryan?

  The show's not sick, doesn't need one.

• 1:10:53Andy Greenwald?

  Fair enough. But I, but I'm not, I'm not sitting down here being like, ah, if only here's how you'd fix it. Like, this is such a unique convergence of events and celebrity and vibes and aesthetics and all of it, that it is, it just is what it is. So. Here we are.

• 1:11:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:08Andy Greenwald?

  Covering it every week. That said, a minor frustration of Wada Kuda is that genuinely an idea of how limiting and how unpleasant and how surprising and occasionally depraved the opportunities are for people five years out of high school.

• 1:11:26Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:27Andy Greenwald?

  In quote unquote, this town, or maybe America. Like, that's, that's a fairly fertile landscape to explore.

• 1:11:35Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:11:35Andy Greenwald?

  And again, if you squint that the former addict is now giving drugs to people and trying to go legit, but also is now completely enmeshed in an impossible, never ending drug war.

• 1:11:46Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:11:47Andy Greenwald?

  With pigs and dead birds surrounding her. But specifically that idea of people who were special in high school, one way or another, and then wanting to make it. And then what are the options of doing that? Can you marry a conservative businessman? Well, no, because everyone's leveraged and no one can do anything and everybody's in debt to somebody else. Like, can you become, can you, can you get a job in Hollywood? Well, you can unwrap someone else's dumplings to work on something that is already failing.

• 1:12:12Chris Ryan?

  Lexi pounded away on Final Draft.

• 1:12:14Andy Greenwald?

  Something's coming.

• 1:12:15Chris Ryan?

  Well.

• 1:12:16Andy Greenwald?

  XOXO.

• 1:12:16Chris Ryan?

  She, she had quite a dramatic debut last, last year, last season with her play.

• 1:12:23Andy Greenwald?

  I'll ask my daughter about it.

• 1:12:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:25Andy Greenwald?

  But, um, yeah, I mean, there's, there, and maybe this is what you find, an element of what keeps you coming back isn't just that it's not boring, but like, you see these things, these potentially amazing things just sort of tossed out and then we move in a different direction. There's a lot, there's no shortage of stuff.

• 1:12:43Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:12:43Andy Greenwald?

  And some of it is working and some of it isn't. But it was, I thought, broadly speaking, a entertaining and surprisingly cohesive episode of TV and suggests an end game of sorts that we're moving to, potentially not a series end game, but a season end game that will be compelling in a different way, in an old fashioned way, in a, oh, I'm engaged and curious what's gonna happen next.

• 1:13:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm, I think the thing I'm most fascinated by is, I mean, I remain entertained by it on episode to episode level is to what extent will the main characters influence the outcome of the other main characters? Or are they all gonna have like, personal? Epiphanies, catharsis, and points at the end of the season that don't have a ton to do.

• 1:13:23Andy Greenwald?

  What is the his- I will ask you this, like, what is the history of the show in terms of its finales? Like, have the storylines overlapped?

• 1:13:31Chris Ryan?

  Yes. I mean, they were all in high school together.

• 1:13:33Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:13:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. So that was, that was the thing, is that like now Los Angeles is their high school. So it's to what extent is Rue gonna get a drug connect through Maddie? Is, um, you know, is she gonna start selling to like the guy that Cassie was just seen with this week? I mean, like, they'll have to pull things together and to what extent does Nate put down his, uh, his shovel and his ideas of building homes for the elderly and get back involved in some dark shit?

• 1:14:01Andy Greenwald?

  It's also interesting to watch it with a old fashioned TV brain. An example of that would be when the superstar influencer asks if the Coke is, has been tested.

• 1:14:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:13Andy Greenwald?

  And she's like, no, I get it from my usual plug. It's fine. He's like, okay. And then what does Cassie say? I love Coke. She got me on that one.

• 1:14:23Andy Greenwald?

  That in a more conventional television show would be laying a trail towards fentanyl-laced cocaine entering this milieu too, and the worlds colliding.

• 1:14:34Chris Ryan?

  I think it's possible that it might. I mean, there's-

• 1:14:35Andy Greenwald?

  But it's also euphoria. That may never come up again. It's just that we're watching an influencer and that is a accurate reflection of how hard partying people on camera all the time have to treat drugs.

• 1:14:45Chris Ryan?

  I thought it was also an interesting commentary on like, you know, we've moved on from like the safe sex era and into the safe drug era.

• 1:14:52Andy Greenwald?

  We?

• 1:14:54Chris Ryan?

  America.

• 1:14:55Andy Greenwald?

  Well, again, when Lea Sadeau arrives at LAX, you're gonna have to explain all of this to her. You may feel a magnet below the city. Trust me, it's a metaphor.

• 1:15:03Chris Ryan?

  Do you wanna talk about the Sixers before we go at all?

• 1:15:05Andy Greenwald?

  You wanna swap the lights? What do you wanna say?

• 1:15:06Chris Ryan?

  Let's get a little tender here. That is a legitimately beautiful sports moment and I'm really, really, really, really happy for those guys. They don't need me to be happy for them, but I just wanna say, like, watching Joel Embiid get his entire body stretched out and just watching him and being like- Do you have to stretch, snap, and dec-ectomy surgery? Like, I don't really know what's happening here. Like, did you rip her stitches? Like, what happened? And watching him on the ground and like, everything that he's put his body through.

• 1:15:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:37Chris Ryan?

  It's just the first round. It's, but it is game seven in Boston. And it just, it meant something. That was fucking incredible.

• 1:15:45Andy Greenwald?

  I want to be careful here because I'm worried this is a little bit like when, like Pete Buttigieg goes on like Fox News and they let him cook for like 10 minutes and then the feed gets pulled. Like, how much can we talk about this series?

• 1:15:56Chris Ryan?

  We're free to. We're free to.

• 1:15:58Andy Greenwald?

  You're sure?

• 1:15:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:59Andy Greenwald?

  You've been given the green light?

• 1:16:00Chris Ryan?

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:16:01Andy Greenwald?

  And we can't just be like, mostly, my first reaction about the Sixers winning game seven over the Celtics was I felt bad for Derrick White. He didn't have the series that he wanted, you know? And so, put the camera on him, he's laughing at the bit.

• 1:16:16Chris Ryan?

  No, it's just, that was what Bill saw in game five.

• 1:16:18Andy Greenwald?

  That's right. Genuinely, I, this has been a roller coaster for me because I have not been.

• 1:16:24Chris Ryan?

  You didn't make yourself available emotionally to this.

• 1:16:27Andy Greenwald?

  No, but what was terrifying, although not probably surprising to you, was like, I felt like the crater opened inside of me as I was sitting down to watch game seven of how badly I wanted this.

• 1:16:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:40Andy Greenwald?

  And how wonderful it was to finally actually win one of these. Like, I know we've had a lot of citywide success over the last few years, but specifically this team and specifically against that team.

• 1:16:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you just need to get those guys. Like, I honestly, I obviously hope we beat the Knicks.

• 1:16:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. A lot of nice Knicks fans in my life, happy for them.

• 1:16:58Chris Ryan?

  Don't have my hopes up very high for it. I'm, anything is possible. I'm pulling for us, but like, I just, beating Boston was in and of itself, like, worth it.

• 1:17:07Andy Greenwald?

  And I also want to say, I understand how funny it is when there are people, like, their fanbases and things are like, want to put up in the rafters that they like came in second in the play-in tournament or whatever. It's like, I would legitimately hang, hang a banner. That we advanced out of the first round in a game seven, that's fine. I will always remember where we were. Can I ask you a sports thing about this game, just your general take on this? One thing after this game, which was thrilling and we won, and Tyrese Maxey was the best player on the court and that was awesome, was, as soon as it's over, this is not unique to this series, but everybody is so buddy-buddy. Like, everyone, every, immediately, Joel goes over to Jalen Brown and they have some hugs and everybody's dapping up everybody.

• 1:17:49Chris Ryan?

  Does he love that? Don't you love everybody being friends?

• 1:17:53Andy Greenwald?

  I like everybody on the same team being friends, so I can fall asleep at night.

• 1:17:57Chris Ryan?

  Typically, at the end of series, people really dab each other up.

• 1:17:59Andy Greenwald?

  I think there's a version of it that is like, respect.

• 1:18:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:02Andy Greenwald?

  But I feel like it was a little too...

• 1:18:04Chris Ryan?

  Jaden McDaniels essentially was like, every Nuggets is a marshmallow. And like, every Nugget is like, not worthy of being on the floor with me. And then at the end of this, at the end of that season, he like, Caesar, seriously hugged Jokic.

• 1:18:17Andy Greenwald?

  So it's a switch you can flip.

• 1:18:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:19Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:18:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. It's like you and me. It's all love in here.

• 1:18:22Andy Greenwald?

  And then once...

• 1:18:23Chris Ryan?

  And then we get out there, I'm like, you fucking marshmallow.

• 1:18:25Andy Greenwald?

  But I'm like, I am a marshmallow. It's true.

• 1:18:28Chris Ryan?

  Um...

• 1:18:28Andy Greenwald?

  That was cool.

• 1:18:29Chris Ryan?

  I can't believe we have to play again, uh, tonight.

• 1:18:33Andy Greenwald?

  Um, yeah, but you can't, I did Google it, you can't have a second appendectomy.

• 1:18:38Chris Ryan?

  That's good.

• 1:18:39Andy Greenwald?

  Like, what's cool about it is that like, every time someone rolls into his knee, I'm like, same fucking knee, man. That's crazy. You can't just take it off. It's not like the game of Operation where it's gone. I did double check this. You cannot regrow the appendix and it cannot burst again.

• 1:18:55Chris Ryan?

  Okay, good.

• 1:18:55Andy Greenwald?

  So that's in our favor.

• 1:18:57Chris Ryan?

  I didn't think that that was gonna happen. I, I am worried about his hip contusion and his knees and everything else. And Maxi's hand and, and the Knicks fans and all that stuff, like in the intensity of the Garden. But, eh, if we punt game one, it's okay. It's a long series.

• 1:19:12Andy Greenwald?

  It's a long series.

• 1:19:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:13Andy Greenwald?

  Anything can happen.

• 1:19:14Chris Ryan?

  All right. Thanks to Kai, Kaya, and Sarah. We will be back on Thursday to talk about Widows Bay and Top Chef and some other stuff. We'll put the Modern Library list of 100 books in the show notes.

• 1:19:26Andy Greenwald?

  Hell yeah.

• 1:19:26Chris Ryan?

  I'll send that to Kaya and...

• 1:19:28Andy Greenwald?

  This is a safe space to do those things.

• 1:19:30Chris Ryan?

  Well, I don't know if I necessarily landed the plane, but, you know, we'll see.

• 1:19:34Andy Greenwald?

  I think the Air France plane is on its way.

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• 1:20:10Speaker 04

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• 1:20:14Speaker 06

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