HBO’s Wave of Renewals. Plus, ‘The Beast in Me,’ ‘The Chair Company’ E6, and ‘I Love LA’ E3.

Chris and Andy talk about the ongoing bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery and the news that Netflix’s offer would include theatrical releases (5:31), before reacting to the various renewal announcements from HBO including ‘Task’ and both ‘Game of Thrones’ spinoffs (12:23). Then they discuss the Netflix miniseries ‘The Beast in Me,’ starring Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys (30:51). Later, they check in on ‘The Chair Company’ (51:45) and ‘I Love LA’ (53:53). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Additional Video Supervision: Sarah Reddy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  When the sun goes down, the appetizers come out. Yeah, you heard that right. Late night, half-priced appetizers are here at Applebee's. Saucy, sweet and spicy boneless wings. Crispy, cheesy mozzarella sticks. Creamy spinach and artichoke dip. Your favorite apps, half-price, available every single night because why should appetizers have curfews? Tap the banner to learn more. Dining only for a limited time at participating locations. Restrictions apply. Copyright 2026 Applebee's Restaurant LLC. This episode is brought to you by NOS Energy. Every ounce of dirt, sweat and gears, every checkered flag and trophy raised, every lap, every race, every hard-fought place. They're all jammed inside every can of NOS Energy.

• 0:43Speaker 00

  High-performance energy for burning the midnight oil in the garage and pedal-to-the-metal human horsepower for the streets. Go ahead, crack open a can of NOS Energy and get after it.

• 0:54Andy Greenwald?

  I ain't sports to have to play with, right? Stand up and walk now.

• 1:00Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com. And joining me in the studio, preparing his bear hug for Warner Brothers Discovery, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 1:14Andy Greenwald?

  Have you talked to our guys, our finance guys?

• 1:16Chris Ryan?

  They're working, they're moving some things around.

• 1:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:18Chris Ryan?

  Do you ever move things around? Do you ever have to move things around?

• 1:21Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not liquid like you.

• 1:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23Andy Greenwald?

  No, I've been told that there's a thing waiting for me in some unknown point on the horizon called retirement, I guess, that might be there for me. And my assumption is, when I get there, I can maintain my lifestyle in Los Angeles for six to nine weeks.

• 1:40Chris Ryan?

  Okay. You can go to Courage Bagels twice.

• 1:42Andy Greenwald?

  And then that's it.

• 1:44Chris Ryan?

  It's Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan, the Tommy and Tim John of this patch. Today on The Watch, we're going to be talking a little bit about the Netflix series The Beast in Me. And some other stuff, I Love LA, Chair Company.

• 1:57Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 1:57Chris Ryan?

  I'll have a little bit of a note about All Her Fault.

• 2:02Andy Greenwald?

  I'd like to hear about that. I thought you were going to say, I have an interview with, and I got so excited that you were gonna...

• 2:07Chris Ryan?

  I have an interview with Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio. They're just waiting outside. They wanted, they wanted it to be a surprise.

• 2:14Andy Greenwald?

  No, I get that.

• 2:16Chris Ryan?

  Many people are asking how I feel about Christian Bale's apparent imminent casting in Heat 2.

• 2:23Chris Ryan?

  I approve.

• 2:24Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 2:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, this is good.

• 2:26Andy Greenwald?

  What, what?

• 2:27Chris Ryan?

  This is good.

• 2:27Andy Greenwald?

  What role is he playing, do you know?

• 2:28Chris Ryan?

  This is the thing. I still think that there are shoes to drop, twists to be experienced, turns to be made.

• 2:35Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 2:36Chris Ryan?

  And like how this all shakes out with who's playing what in what timeline? Whether they're gonna like-

• 2:42Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 2:42Chris Ryan?

  Is Pacino coming back and being de-aged? Who's, is Bradley Cooper in this movie? Who's playing-

• 2:47Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 2:48Chris Ryan?

  Young Wingrove in the flesh?

• 2:50Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, you've called me that on occasion.

• 2:52Chris Ryan?

  I think I have.

• 2:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 2:53Chris Ryan?

  Um, but I, I'm keeping my eye on it, obviously. A lot of things to keep our eye on today. There's a lot of news.

• 2:58Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think? Is there a chance? That Heat 2 is gonna be done like rep theater style? Where they're gonna switch parts? Like they're gonna do one version of it with everyone playing one part? And then, you know, like, like when Philip Seymour Hoffman and, um, uh, John C. Reilly did True West?

• 3:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and they would trade off parts every other day.

• 3:15Andy Greenwald?

  Which one's better as Austin? Like, are they gonna do it like that?

• 3:18Chris Ryan?

  So then, uh, like, so one night Austin Butler is chivalrous and then that other night-

• 3:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 3:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that'd be good. I'd be, I dig that.

• 3:25Andy Greenwald?

  That would be, that would be kind of like an afterlife scenario for you.

• 3:29Chris Ryan?

  Let's just get the movie made before we start-

• 3:30Andy Greenwald?

  Sure, but like every day-

• 3:32Chris Ryan?

  Wild variations on this.

• 3:33Andy Greenwald?

  It's kind of a beautiful thought that like, that's how maybe you would know after like, two weeks that you are in some sort of beautiful Lost-esque, final chapter that you just show up every night at like Vista?

• 3:44Chris Ryan?

  That would be like defending your life for me.

• 3:46Andy Greenwald?

  With your beautiful wife next to you and some popcorn, the popcorn never runs out? And there's Heat 3 and Heat 4 and Heat 5? You're like, this is so sick.

• 3:52Chris Ryan?

  Just come on, yeah.

• 3:54Andy Greenwald?

  That would be nice.

• 3:55Chris Ryan?

  Um-

• 3:55Andy Greenwald?

  It's okay to get emotional when we talk about things that matter to you.

• 3:58Chris Ryan?

  It's, I'm getting, I'm getting a little choked up.

• 4:00Andy Greenwald?

  Can we, before we get into the TV stuff?

• 4:01Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 4:03Andy Greenwald?

  Can I just address one other elephant in the room?

• 4:04Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 4:05Andy Greenwald?

  Which is our social media strategy?

• 4:07Chris Ryan?

  This is like the fourth time and fifth shows that you've done this.

• 4:09Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I'm just noticing some trends, okay? I'm just noticing some trends. Now, I am, um, what's the word? Uh, punching bag? You know, if I, if I, if I, if I go anywhere like deviate from conventional wisdom-

• 4:25Chris Ryan?

  This is very Trumpy of you, by the way.

• 4:27Andy Greenwald?

  There's, thank you. It's working. There I am on Front Street to Slings and Arrows, right? Now hypothetically, let's say my best friend and co-host sits down in front of a live camera and a live mic and says that he had played Legend of Zelda on a PC.

• 4:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:44Andy Greenwald?

  Let's just say he did that. I'm not naming names, okay? A lot of people thought he was a very bad man. You know, there are many people who weren't fans of that man. You know, um, who said that? I don't know his name.

• 4:55Chris Ryan?

  Wait, they thought Legend of Zelda link was a bad man or me?

• 4:58Andy Greenwald?

  No, I was, I was doing full Trump.

• 5:00Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 5:01Andy Greenwald?

  Talking about a murdered journalist, but perhaps maybe I'm veering too far from the agenda. Which is to say, this section was clipped. The part that was clipped was you saying you've played Legend of Zelda, you're fucking boss mode at Shinobi.

• 5:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:16Andy Greenwald?

  And when you travel the streets of Japan, whether it's Shibuya or all the way down to Okinawa, people come up and bow to you recognizing your excellence.

• 5:27Chris Ryan?

  How could I have a Shinobi?

• 5:28Andy Greenwald?

  What was clipped? And I don't know whether we're looking at Kaia or we're looking at, who's not here today to defend herself or Kai.

• 5:35Chris Ryan?

  Kaia got the social media flu. She was just like, I'm not coming in today.

• 5:38Andy Greenwald?

  So Kai just cleaned it up a little bit for you. He sane washed it. Now, what I want to know is how do I get a relationship like that with Kai? Cause I thought we were cool back from sick of the sick of the landing days and yet.

• 5:48Chris Ryan?

  I don't know what to tell you, man. I mean, uh, as far as the record goes.

• 5:52Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 5:53Chris Ryan?

  That's what I said, you know?

• 5:54Andy Greenwald?

  Wow.

• 5:55Chris Ryan?

  Um, speaking of our social media, you can follow us at Instagram at the watch pod underscore. Uh, you can email us at the watch at spotify.com. You can watch us on the ringer dash TV YouTube channel. And you can also watch us on Spotify where I hope you're listening to us, but you can also listen to us on a number of other platforms. Um, Pirate Radio in East London. Um, you know, we're part of the shipping news right now. We're part of the shipping forecasts.

• 6:20Andy Greenwald?

  That's great.

• 6:21Chris Ryan?

  Um, I have a bunch of news for you today because it's a strange day for Warner Brothers Discovery. Not only is, uh, this the deadline for the first bids for Warner Brothers Discovery from, from outside networks. So we're expecting uh, bids from Paramount. Paramount was rumored to have been involving some, some Middle Eastern sovereign wealth.

• 6:44Andy Greenwald?

  I saw that. Wow.

• 6:45Chris Ryan?

  They have since said some Gulf sovereign wealth and they have said, hey, that's actually, that's not, the reporting is off on that one. There's Paramount. I think they're gonna try and buy the whole thing, right? Then there's Comcast Universal, our boys. We're, we're big, we're big Xfinity guys.

• 7:01Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, because of Philadelphia? They're just, they're just some dreamers from Philly like us? You think, you think Brian Roberts goes by Bad Brother?

• 7:09Chris Ryan?

  Do you think Brian Roberts listens to our pod and is like, they fucking did it, these guys? I knew, I always believed in them.

• 7:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yep. I'm gonna say yes.

• 7:17Chris Ryan?

  Comcast is gonna be apparently making a bid, I would imagine, for the streaming service and the studio. I don't think about the linear, the linear assets. And then there's this Netflix offer, which is apparently incoming, which is for, I would imagine, the same, the studio and the streaming service. And today, there was some reporting that Netflix would maintain Warner Brothers theatrical presence.

• 7:38Andy Greenwald?

  That's what they told Ryan Johnson.

• 7:40Chris Ryan?

  This would be different. I don't know what, why they would do this, I guess, but I-

• 7:44Andy Greenwald?

  Is it like Amazon with MGM? Which they've also claimed they're doing the same thing.

• 7:47Chris Ryan?

  Well, they are doing that, right? They're also putting a lot of stuff on streaming. But anyway, while all this is happening, Casey Boyes made some, made some renewal announcements today.

• 7:58Andy Greenwald?

  Before we get into that, just on the previous point, I don't have any insight necessarily, but I have a podcast, so let's see where this goes. There is a, I don't know whether it's a rumor, or whether it's a prediction, or whether it's a real possibility, that some of these assets may be split, right? Do you want to talk through that? You sort of, you alluded to it.

• 8:16Chris Ryan?

  Yes, well, okay, so initially Warner Brothers had talked about how they were gonna split the company up in the first place, that there was gonna be a new co-

• 8:22Andy Greenwald?

  That was their 26 plan.

• 8:22Chris Ryan?

  Like, yeah, there was going to be, the linear networks were gonna be split off. I believe your boy Gunner was gonna be running that. And I don't know what you do with a bunch of, of linear cable networks in 2025, but I'm sure that they probably would figure something creative out with that.

• 8:40Andy Greenwald?

  Sure, I mean, I think there's, there's-

• 8:42Chris Ryan?

  That's the Discovery stuff, right? That's all their-

• 8:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and, and the, the cynical spin on that is that it, that was a perfectly legal, within the financial markets, attempt to decouple the more valuable parts of the company-

• 8:55Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 8:55Andy Greenwald?

  -from the crippling debt of the other parts of the company.

• 8:58Chris Ryan?

  And would you say arguably get out from under some of the more politically volatile things like having CNN?

• 9:07Andy Greenwald?

  I, I don't know.

• 9:08Chris Ryan?

  In terms of getting a merger to go through, or getting a sale to go through?

• 9:11Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know, because initially, the split had nothing to do with another takeover. Initially, this was a plan that-

• 9:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, make, make us more financially-

• 9:20Andy Greenwald?

  Nimble.

• 9:21Chris Ryan?

  Spruced.

• 9:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and now, and so now, ahead of that actual division happening, suddenly it's open season.

• 9:28Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 9:28Andy Greenwald?

  And it's unclear whether some of these, some of these bids are for parts or for the whole. Meaning there could be an outcome, potentially, right? Where, let's say Comcast Universal buys HBO. And Netflix ends up with the movie studio, right?

• 9:47Chris Ryan?

  I suppose, yeah.

• 9:48Andy Greenwald?

  And in that version, one of the many things that seems confusing and complicated is, and we'll get into it now when we talk about what Casey was saying in New York today. So much of HBO's agenda and schedule is defined by proprietary IP coming from Warner Brothers.

• 10:06Andy Greenwald?

  What would happen? Would future seasons of the It show be on Netflix?

• 10:12Chris Ryan?

  I hadn't thought about that. He said something about IP shows, but in a different way.

• 10:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, so today, so that we can, so we don't know what's going on with that, but bids were due. Today, Casey was speaking in New York and had a lot of news about renewals and the state of the company that he is currently employed by.

• 10:29Chris Ryan?

  I gotta say, everything about both, we talked about this when Peacock or when Universal or Comcast made their big play for Taylor Sheridan, is that today's list, like, you know, batch of announcements from Casey Boyes suggests there will be an HBO going forward.

• 10:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, well, two things. One, he has to behave that way. Because as we know, and he's talked about even on this podcast, like, his job is scheduling for 2028 and beyond. So as far as he's concerned, there's a plan in place. And he can only work with what's in front of him. I thought the most interesting thing about their current strategy, separate and apart from the, the financial shenanigans going on behind the scenes, was that point about why so much IP programming? And I thought it was a really, whether this was a market-tested answer, 50% true answer, or a genuine 100% true answer, I thought it was compelling. He said that the old version, the previous iterations of HBO could rely on a robust the post-theatrical slate, because they made deals with studios to

• 11:31Andy Greenwald?

  Debut their movies on television.

• 11:33Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 11:33Andy Greenwald?

  They had a deal with Universal for a long time and that the Saturday night new movie that they would broadcast was a big deal for their programming.

• 11:40Chris Ryan?

  They used to do that. There's actually an arc of time where you can watch their coming soon on HBO.

• 11:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and there would be movies in there.

• 11:46Chris Ryan?

  And there would be a time where it was like, here's this Batman movie or whatever. And now it's almost all original program with maybe like one or two movies. Yeah.

• 11:54Andy Greenwald?

  So I thought that was pretty interesting. And those movies were not cheap. I mean, they were not the same as like a season of House of the Dragon, but they were not cheap to have those output deals. And so he was saying that having guaranteed, having the movies coming only from Warner Brothers and then they have a deal with A24, having the IP movie, sorry, the IP series drawn from Warner Brothers helps sort of shore up their schedule in a way in terms of familiar, familiar images on their screen, being able to maximize the deals that they are now able to do. I hadn't really thought about that in terms of what was no longer available to them.

• 12:26Chris Ryan?

  The other thing that I don't even know that he mentioned is I wonder whether the cable, the streaming networks are actually, or the movie, the traditional movie networks, you know, like your Showtimes and your, and your HBOs were damaged at all by just the sheer lack of volume on movies. You know, like the

• 12:39Andy Greenwald?

  Definitely.

• 12:39Chris Ryan?

  The fact that there weren't that many programmers coming out from studios anymore, to use an old fashioned term, but you know, you're like kind of 98 minute genre movie that you, you know, would become a rewatchable 10 years later. There's, those aren't going to cable anymore because they're either made straight for streaming or there's such a wide variety of streaming networks competing for the rights for whatever movies there are out there. Or most studios have a streaming deal, with the exception of like, I guess, Sony, which usually I think had like a reliable partner. I can't remember who it is off the top of my head. In any case, uh, yeah, I think that that, that changed their business significantly. There were a lot of other announcements. The biggest one for our purposes is probably the fact that we got confirmation that task is coming back.

• 13:23Andy Greenwald?

  We, I think we, we knew this a little bit, but we didn't know it when we talked to Brad Inglesby a month ago.

• 13:30Chris Ryan?

  No, but I will note that many people saw that it said season finale, not series finale.

• 13:36Andy Greenwald?

  And that they never used the language of limited series intentionally. So this was baked in a little bit, although I'm sure if this show hadn't taken off ratings wise the way that it did, and Casey gave some data about how it's the fastest growing, blah, blah, blah, they could have been proud of one season and moved on. No question. I'd like to think, I don't, I never want to overstate our

• 13:57Andy Greenwald?

  The volume of our voices within the industry. But I do like to think that the incredibly compelling case that I made on that podcast as to why this show should never, ever be brought back was kind of in the same way that my negative criticism of the first season of The Leftovers really inspired Damon Lindelof.

• 14:14Chris Ryan?

  That's probably it.

• 14:14Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like me saying definitely not just lit a creative fire in Brad or in Casey.

• 14:20Chris Ryan?

  When you're driving around and you're in traffic, are you like, this whole town?

• 14:24Andy Greenwald?

  Got them.

• 14:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:26Andy Greenwald?

  That's me. That's me. So where are you? How are you feeling about this? So Tass coming back, Brad Inglisby writing, creating, same production team, Mark Ruffalo coming back. That's all we know.

• 14:36Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Do you think, I'm very pro this. I'm very pro the continuing adventures of Tom Brandis. I am curious whether the next iteration of this series, I assume that Inglisby has pitched some story, you know, because I don't think HBO would be like, yes, no matter what. They've turned down bigger properties, you know, they've turned down chances to revive other things.

• 15:02Andy Greenwald?

  What I imagine is it's similar to Dave Dombrowski at the winter meetings being like, there's a path to success if we re-sign Schwaber, a path to success if we re-sign Schwaber and Real Muto. And then there's just like Kyle Tucker, I guess. I don't know.

• 15:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:14Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean?

• 15:15Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 15:15Andy Greenwald?

  Caution to the wind. So I feel like that's-

• 15:16Chris Ryan?

  That's like Casey Boy's looking at like the Jon Snow show. It's like, Kyle Tucker.

• 15:20Andy Greenwald?

  Who knows? $400 million. Probably equivalent.

• 15:25Chris Ryan?

  I would hope, I guess, is the right word to say, that tonally, or at least emotionally, they mine different territory because I, I think that this happened with True Detective a little bit where the second season, which is much maligned, although I have kind of a soft spot for it.

• 15:44Andy Greenwald?

  I, I'm with you.

• 15:47Chris Ryan?

  I actually like, you know, the first three seasons of True Detective, no notes.

• 15:50Andy Greenwald?

  You like, I know. That was cute, the way you tried to pretend that-

• 15:54Chris Ryan?

  Um, part of the problem was that like you were trying to get other characters to speak in the voice of Matthew McConaughey, right? Like that, that sort of um intellectual philosophical landscape was being transported onto these other people, the Vince Vaughn character, the Taylor Kitsch character. There was some cool shit, but I'm just saying like it doesn't go one to one. And I would even be into task not having like a Heat-esque adversary for Tom. Um, and look, I also, I, I was joking about this before, but the, the mayor crossover is sitting out there.

• 16:33Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 16:34Chris Ryan?

  Um, and you know, I, I don't, I don't know anything about that. I've, people have obviously asked Brad Inglesby about that. And I think they've asked Kate Winslet about that and.

• 16:43Andy Greenwald?

  What did she say?

• 16:43Chris Ryan?

  I think she was like, I'd love to come back and play her.

• 16:45Andy Greenwald?

  She's like, I would break that news only on my favorite podcast.

• 16:48Chris Ryan?

  Good hang.

• 16:49Andy Greenwald?

  Good hang with Amy Poehler.

• 16:51Chris Ryan?

  Um, I trust them to put together an amazing cast and a cool story.

• 16:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. And I think that, I think you're right to bring up True Detective as a concern for anthology series, especially with that show. What became not just famous, but what I think the expectation that was created was, was a similar dynamic between two stars. And then there was the, there was the meme on Twitter that was really fun about, you know, any picture of two people together was True Detective, season two, or season three or whatever. This has the, the, the correct chemistry, I think, in that it is a returning show with a format that invites ensemble and different styles of storytelling.

• 17:27Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 17:27Andy Greenwald?

  It feels anthologized and that it won't necessarily be the Dark Hearts or a similar setup, but you have Ruffalo playing.

• 17:34Chris Ryan?

  Do we have any, we have the, we have no, like the Dark Hearts are like.

• 17:37Andy Greenwald?

  Dark Hearts are in disarray. You met the New York Times headline by Maggie Haberman? Dark Hearts in Disarray.

• 17:42Chris Ryan?

  The Star Wars crawl, episode two.

• 17:46Andy Greenwald?

  Somehow Perry has returned.

• 17:48Chris Ryan?

  Somehow Perry.

• 17:51Andy Greenwald?

  She's so sick.

• 17:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, the Dark Freddy's still out there. It would be cool if Inglesby cast his eye on urban Philadelphia, like the city.

• 18:03Andy Greenwald?

  I think you're missing something. I think the real red herring in season one is the little magician kid. Like, he has access to all kinds of dark magic.

• 18:12Chris Ryan?

  But the Potter crossover is right there.

• 18:14Andy Greenwald?

  As someone who's working on a show that is just rife with dark magic, it's all HBO, baby.

• 18:20Chris Ryan?

  A couple of other renewal announcements from Casey Boyce today at the HBO. Was this just like upfronts? What were they doing? I didn't even notice.

• 18:27Andy Greenwald?

  A media event, just making a media announcement.

• 18:29Chris Ryan?

  I Love L.A. and The Chair Company, two comedies.

• 18:34Chris Ryan?

  You laughed when I said that. I guess we'll get into that later.

• 18:36Andy Greenwald?

  Two 30-minute?

• 18:37Chris Ryan?

  Things. Both renewed for their second seasons. Typically, that usually happens like the day after or the day of their finales or around the finales, the renewal announcements, but he made those announcements. Night of the Seven Kingdoms is also gonna have a second season. That's

• 18:51Andy Greenwald?

  Before its first.

• 18:52Chris Ryan?

  Obviously a layup. We are getting a fourth season of House of the Dragon. Ryan Condal has said previously that the fourth season would be the last season. Casey Boyce said, "We'll talk about it." He also spoke, like you said, about that downmarket impact of fewer movies.

• 19:09Andy Greenwald?

  What about White Lotus?

• 19:11Chris Ryan?

  Is White Lotus coming back soon?

• 19:12Andy Greenwald?

  Well, no, he officially confirmed it's set in France.

• 19:16Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:17Andy Greenwald?

  That had been reported. He confirmed it.

• 19:20Chris Ryan?

  I I was, there was one other really interesting tidbit that he even caught. I thought it was interesting. They commented on the fact that they have had the meeting about Poker Face.

• 19:28Andy Greenwald?

  They've had the conversation. He said that they had the initial meeting when it was Natasha Lyonne. They took the meeting on that show and that they've chatted about it.

• 19:35Chris Ryan?

  So you're making a distinction between meeting and conversation?

• 19:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 19:38Chris Ryan?

  Well, I didn't say who he met with.

• 19:41Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, you're saying he, like a Quaker meeting, perhaps he stood up and said, "Only Peter Dinklage in the spirit of the light within us." Can take on the iconic role of Charlie Kale.

• 19:51Chris Ryan?

  There is that of Dinklage in all of us.

• 19:53Andy Greenwald?

  Beautiful. I'd like to think that's true. I think that all of this is interesting in the spirit of the way you initially framed it, which is Casey's up there acting like they're still going to be in HBO. Yes. Not only that, all of these moves really feel like a, no shade, like a very reasonable and respectable attempt to put some order around an industry and perhaps even a company that is in chaos. Like, this feels like responsible stewardship in the sense that the early renewals for the Game of Thrones shows

• 20:30Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:31Andy Greenwald?

  creates a world in which there will be a Game of Thrones show on every year for the next three years, which was the mandate that was declared way back when the aborted Naomi Watts prequel series was filmed.

• 20:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. What was that called again? Blood Moon?

• 20:46Andy Greenwald?

  No, there were a bunch of, I don't know if we ever heard the official title. I think that may have been the, like, the working draft title, but it went away.

• 20:53Chris Ryan?

  They shot it.

• 20:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, but I'm saying, but it never went to the phase of, so Night of the Seven Kingdoms coming January, and House of the Dragon coming in the summer, and then Night of the Seven Kingdoms coming back quickly in 27, which means they've clearly already well down the road of second season production, or at least pre-production, and then House of the Dragon in 28.

• 21:14Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 21:15Andy Greenwald?

  So that guarantees that kind of repetition. Similarly, like, Chair Company, which I fucking love, wildly robust numbers, which kind of surprised me because that felt much more in the like, somebody, somewhere, something for us kind of vibe.

• 21:28Chris Ryan?

  I think You Should Leave is like

• 21:29Andy Greenwald?

  Pretty popular.

• 21:30Chris Ryan?

  It's, I think for a certain cohort out there, it's like, this is like if Anchorman was on every week.

• 21:35Andy Greenwald?

  That's how I feel. I love it. So, early renewal makes sense. I love L.A. Super early renewal. But again, I think it's about building in some continuity, giving them creatively a chance to figure out what's going on, but also to just be back on the air, to give these shows a sense of cadence.

• 21:51Chris Ryan?

  I think this feels like a real return to pre-strike, almost pre-COVID behaviors.

• 21:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 21:55Chris Ryan?

  Of like, let's just like, let's, we have a roster of things, there is stability, we're building, we're building from a place of strength. Like you said, like, we have these cornerstone shows, we know what's coming.

• 22:04Andy Greenwald?

  And I think there's just like, the, that's the, the word I want to say again is cadence. Like, there should be a cadence to, doesn't have to be in the fall, new shows, but People's relationships to shows should have a slightly dependable rhythm to it. And nothing is going to be as dependable as the pit, which, you know, we're two months away from having back in our lives.

• 22:23Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 22:24Andy Greenwald?

  But.

• 22:24Chris Ryan?

  And industry.

• 22:25Andy Greenwald?

  And industry, but, but, but even industry is like a big gap between some seasons and then an opportunity to get back on the air quicker if they rush scripts and they do it. And you know what I mean? Like it's, we don't often, often have a window into, uh, how like the wink wink renewals, like get the room going.

• 22:42Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 22:43Andy Greenwald?

  Versus dead stop, let's fire up the engine again.

• 22:46Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 22:46Andy Greenwald?

  And it is nice to see, the passion in my voice comes not just from the HBO of it, but like, I am hoping that a lot of these other streamers do deeply understand the need for that and are responding accordingly with their review, internal reviews.

• 23:00Chris Ryan?

  Did he say anything about True Detective, Mom Donnie country?

• 23:04Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, oh, right. It's supposed to be there, right?

• 23:05Chris Ryan?

  It's in Queens. Yeah.

• 23:06Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, so you think that the two things leaving New York are Bill Ackman and the True Detective franchise? Like that's.

• 23:14Chris Ryan?

  He's staying, dude.

• 23:15Andy Greenwald?

  Ackman. Ackman staying?

• 23:16Chris Ryan?

  I think he was like, what, didn't those, all those guys bent the knee? Like after when like he won, they were like, I'm, I'm ready to work with you, brother.

• 23:23Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's more that, from what I understand from a distance, it seemed like Ackman, you know, his thoughts turned inward and that's when he started posting about like, gentlemen, here's how to meet a nice lady in the world.

• 23:32Chris Ryan?

  He was doing the secret.

• 23:32Andy Greenwald?

  You approach them and you say, would you let, would you permit me to meet you?

• 23:36Chris Ryan?

  Wait, it's not the secret. What was the big pick up artist thing?

• 23:39Andy Greenwald?

  The game.

• 23:39Chris Ryan?

  The game. Yeah.

• 23:40Andy Greenwald?

  I like you pretending you don't know about that. I remember you and Mystery cruising the WeHo bars.

• 23:44Chris Ryan?

  I was, I never was good at picking up girls.

• 23:49Chris Ryan?

  You know, I never had pick up lines. I never had, I never had game like that. I was just like, I'll just, I'll just be myself.

• 23:55Andy Greenwald?

  You'd just be like, would you like some of these cigarettes I'm smoking? Six at a time?

• 23:59Chris Ryan?

  Basically.

• 24:00Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I believe the game was all predicated on negging, which is not our vibe.

• 24:05Chris Ryan?

  No, no.

• 24:07Andy Greenwald?

  I mean.

• 24:07Chris Ryan?

  I'm an ally.

• 24:08Andy Greenwald?

  Certain television shows, perhaps I could turn negative on. I have no updates on the new True Detective.

• 24:12Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Um, I wanted to ask you about the state of television, right? Right at this very, very instant.

• 24:17Andy Greenwald?

  I gotta drink of my green tea.

• 24:18Chris Ryan?

  So you and I have talked about in the last couple of weeks, Death by Lightning, Down Cemetery Road, the morning show.

• 24:24Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah. We gotta talk about Down Cemetery Road.

• 24:25Chris Ryan?

  I love LA, the Chair Company, Landman, lots of different, you know, Apple, HBO, Paramount, Netflix.

• 24:34Chris Ryan?

  All of these things, kind of with the exception of, I guess, Morning Show, which has been on for the last couple of months. Apple is like really behaving more like an HBO where they they put their stuff out weekly and everything.

• 24:46Chris Ryan?

  This is a funny time where I feel like I like a lot of stuff and don't love anything. And I I a little bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount that kind of got dropped seemingly at once here. Obviously, Pluribus, we forgot to mention, but I almost put that in a category of its of its own.

• 25:04Andy Greenwald?

  Did you say Lowdown too? We were all over that.

• 25:06Chris Ryan?

  Lowdown, we know. I mean, like, yeah, I'm talking since since Lowdown, I guess, because we were doing Lowdown and a couple of other things pretty faithfully for.

• 25:15Andy Greenwald?

  Task.

• 25:15Chris Ryan?

  Task, right. But this moment of like, pretty good. And we're going to talk about the new shows that we just we just chucked out, The Beast in Me. And I'll mention all her fault, but like, I was wondering whether or not like you almost would prefer an easier separation of wheat and chaff, like when it's all like, oh, do I keep watching Death by Lightning? Do I keep watching Beast in Me? Do I keep watching?

• 25:40Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 25:41Chris Ryan?

  Like this stuff, is it easier for you to sort through it when it's like, oh, clearly, this is not for me?

• 25:45Andy Greenwald?

  Like, clearly, here's the headliner of the moment?

• 25:47Chris Ryan?

  Well, I guess that's up to us to determine what the headliner of the moment is.

• 25:52Andy Greenwald?

  I would say, without stepping on the conversation we're going to have about some of these shows, I feel, I actually feel the opposite. I actually feel good about the relative health at this snapshot of the industry in which just stay on Netflix, that at this moment, there's, um, Nobody Wants This, Death by Lightning and Beast in Me, all of which are worthwhile, all of which are interesting in ways that can surprise. And, um, some and and one of them, what we're going to talk about today, is kind of not for me.

• 26:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:26Andy Greenwald?

  But I think it's well done, and I think it has a lot of the things that I root for. And the broad is like 20,000 foot above the wood, above the the tree line. Like, this is what I want Netflix to be doing, because Netflix can. Netflix can turn, they're alchemists. They can turn a lot of things into at least ratings gold for them.

• 26:50Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 26:51Andy Greenwald?

  And there is an algorithmic formula, obviously. And so anytime anything deviates a little bit from it with some sense of Ghost in the Machine, or Style, or a piece of casting, or whatever, like, that's good, that's just, that's just good, I think, for the industry. So I don't mind it. And I've actually kind of enjoyed the rhythm of the last few weeks of being like, oh, check back in on this, or Down Cemetery Road, which I think has some evident wobbles as it's gone on.

• 27:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:20Andy Greenwald?

  But maybe the flip side of Like a Beast in Me, where I'm like, I just kind of like it, and I'm enjoying it. That's different than, there have been periods in our last few years, post-COVID, post-strike, coverage, where there have been, there's been such a disparity between the things that really, really motivated us and got us so fucking excited.

• 27:39Chris Ryan?

  I would even say that that was defined the first half of the year. Like, a lot of the shows that I think are gonna be on my top 10 were breaths of fresh air, or like, felt radical, even if they were traditional, like The Pit. You know, like, there's elements of The Pit that are as old as TV itself, and then there are things that you would never be able to do before 2025, with The Pit. Adolescence is a good example of something where it's like, that's the same streaming network that did all the shows that we're just talking about, like Death by Lightning and Beast in Me, but felt and looked and communicated something unlike anything else on television.

• 28:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 28:17Chris Ryan?

  So it's just an interesting moment where, earlier in the year, I was like, man, like, there's just like some clear-cut, drop-dead, heavyweight-championed shows.

• 28:26Andy Greenwald?

  It seemed like, at the midpoint of the year, and we didn't do a midpoint list, I was like, my top four to six is already locked.

• 28:32Chris Ryan?

  Locked. Locked. I think it still is, to me. And it's still from that period.

• 28:36Andy Greenwald?

  Is it?

• 28:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. But this is like, maybe objectively, a better television-watching, in the traditional sense of like, you could watch something any night, and you could have your stories, and you could have, like, you could check in, and maybe it's a nice respite, I guess. You know what I mean? It's two different ways of doing TV. Do you want to get into Beast in Me?

• 29:01Andy Greenwald?

  Well, what, do you want to? All Her Fault is there is there All Her Fault and Beast in Me seem to be they drop around the same time. They seem to be doing very well.

• 29:10Chris Ryan?

  Yes, All Her Fault sounds like it's a giant hit to the extent that I can understand minutes watched as a metric.

• 29:17Andy Greenwald?

  As a metric. And again, like, we can be critical on the show, but I am still very much like, rising tide lifts all boats. Like, I think it's good for distinct services to have hit shows before they all start buying each other and cannibalizing everything.

• 29:30Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 29:31Andy Greenwald?

  So it's good for Peacock. But I've not engaged with the show. Do you want to is there are there common threads? Because they seem.

• 29:39Chris Ryan?

  I would say that there is an element of it that is for both female lead crime, but I would say closer to feeling true crime-y than they feel like crime fiction.

• 29:54Andy Greenwald?

  Could they plausibly switch titles and still exist as a show? Because I do think having watched One Beast in Me, All Her Fault could be the name of it.

• 30:01Chris Ryan?

  There is an aesthetic.

• 30:02Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 30:03Chris Ryan?

  A shared aesthetic, I think. They're both about well-to-do pockets.

• 30:08Andy Greenwald?

  Say more.

• 30:09Chris Ryan?

  You know, no, I mean, and All Her Fault is a little bit more, this is based on a novel by Andrea Mera, and it's it starts Sarah Snook in her first big post succession role, and Jake Lacy's in it. Dakota Fanning is in it. Like, there's it's got a really good cast. And I think it is grabby. I would put it that way. I will not swear on a Bible that I have been attentively watching. To be honest, like, this is something my wife watched, and I've like, kind of walked in and out and checked in on it, and then watched the end of it, you know, which so.

• 30:43Andy Greenwald?

  By the way, that is also like, what parenting is between the ages of like, four and nine. You know what I mean? Like, you're not in the like,

• 30:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:51Andy Greenwald?

  Be careful of the edge of the coffee table.

• 30:53Chris Ryan?

  You're you're chainsaw man conversant.

• 30:56Chris Ryan?

  But not necessarily like.

• 30:57Andy Greenwald?

  Also, you don't need to be in the room the whole time.

• 30:59Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 31:00Andy Greenwald?

  You just need to keep an eye on it.

• 31:01Chris Ryan?

  That's how we were raised.

• 31:03Andy Greenwald?

  Be honest.

• 31:03Chris Ryan?

  Uh, yeah, I thought all her fault, like to the extent that I was studying it was, was really well done.

• 31:11Chris Ryan?

  But a little bit, uh, I don't want to say convoluted because we also just spent 40 minutes talking about Landman the other day.

• 31:19Andy Greenwald?

  Also, you have already prefaced this by saying that it did not have your full and undivided attention.

• 31:23Chris Ryan?

  Exactly. So yes, there are some connections between that and Beast to Me.

• 31:27Andy Greenwald?

  Do you, would you recommend it? Or what's the, what's the Phoebe word on it?

• 31:31Chris Ryan?

  She compulsively watched it.

• 31:33Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 31:33Chris Ryan?

  So I think she thought it was a bit silly in places, but it was like, I must get to the end. Which is really like, probably a good recommendation for a show because there are lots of series where I'm like, I, I don't care.

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• 33:33Chris Ryan?

  Beast in Me. Interesting pedigree on this one. So this has been kicking around for a little while. I believe like I saw it was like seven or eight years ago. Gabe Roder wrote like this, wrote the pilot or really like, you know, started working on this. But this is kind of now become in this iteration of whatever it was going to be. A hybrid of some people who used to work on 24 and Homeland and Howard Gordon.

• 33:59Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 34:00Chris Ryan?

  So clearly Howard Gordon had a pre-existing relationship with Claire Danes. Her seminal role as Carrie on Homeland. They bring in a star heavy, TV star heavy, like top of the line acting crew of Danes. And watch favorite Matthew Reese.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  The best.

• 34:17Chris Ryan?

  You may remember our side podcast AM to the PM about Perry Mason.

• 34:21Speaker 00

  Now it would be AM to the BM for Beast in Me, but that sounds real bad. So we're going to take that back to the lab. Bill is really good at coming up with better podcast names.

• 34:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:30Speaker 00

  So maybe I'll run it up to him.

• 34:31Chris Ryan?

  It makes it sound like it's about digestive regularity.

• 34:33Speaker 00

  100%.

• 34:33Chris Ryan?

  It's not what we're podcasting about. Matthew Reese, Brittany Snow and Natalie Morales are also in this series.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  These are TV all-stars.

• 34:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And there are some really good directors working on this. Antonio Campos, who did a couple of movies I really like, including Christine. And then did the HBO series, The Staircase. And then Lila Neubauer, Bauer, who did the Jennifer Lawrence movie a couple of years ago, Causeway. And was also directed like on Secret Lives of College Girls, but has done a ton of New York theater. So there's like a lot of talent here. It's about a New Yorker writer.

• 35:14Speaker 00

  This, I mean, pause, pause.

• 35:20Andy Greenwald?

  Did you, sorry, this is in my head. Do you, this is one of my favorite factoids that, just we're talking about Howard Gordon and Claire Danes in Homeland, and we'll get into the New Yorker writer part. I just want to leave people on a cliffhanger about that because they're probably pretty leaning in. Do you know this as this little factoid, has this come up on the podcast, that when Howard Gordon and Alex Gonzo were writing the Homeland script, they wrote their main characters with the names of the actors they wanted to cast?

• 35:46Chris Ryan?

  And did they write it as Claire?

• 35:48Andy Greenwald?

  They wrote it as Claire Matheson and Brody because they wanted Claire Danes and Adrian Brody.

• 35:55Chris Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 35:55Andy Greenwald?

  And Claire had to become Carrie because it was Claire Danes.

• 35:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. The Beast to Me is about Aggie Wiggs, who is a famous New Yorker profile writer.

• 36:05Andy Greenwald?

  Such a, the name.

• 36:07Chris Ryan?

  And memoirist.

• 36:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 36:08Chris Ryan?

  Who is living in the shadow of a personal tragedy, the death of her young son in a car accident caused, she believes, by a drunk driver.

• 36:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 36:16Chris Ryan?

  This incident ended her relationship with her wife Shelley, played by Natalie Morales, and seems to have triggered a massive case of writer's block and financial slash emotional distress for Aggie. She lives in Oyster Bay, New York, Long Island.

• 36:31Andy Greenwald?

  Seems like it.

• 36:32Chris Ryan?

  Enter Niles Jarvis.

• 36:34Andy Greenwald?

  These names, pretty good.

• 36:36Chris Ryan?

  Played by Reese.

• 36:37Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think, do you think they did the same thing where they wanted to cast Jarvis?

• 36:42Chris Ryan?

  Jarvis Cocker?

• 36:44Andy Greenwald?

  Either Jarvis Cocker or the automated AI that later becomes Vision in the Iron Man movies.

• 36:50Chris Ryan?

  They're not calling it White Vision, right?

• 36:52Andy Greenwald?

  You could call it that.

• 36:54Chris Ryan?

  But he is playing White Vision, right? Vision goes, is white now?

• 36:58Andy Greenwald?

  Listen, this is more-

• 36:59Chris Ryan?

  His outfit is white.

• 36:59Andy Greenwald?

  This is more for the Midnight Boys to talk about. If you would like to use this podcast-

• 37:03Chris Ryan?

  Or Red Scare.

• 37:03Andy Greenwald?

  As a platform to articulate your own personal white vision for how you want the superhero stories to go.

• 37:10Chris Ryan?

  Do you think, yeah, do you think the conservative podcast space will be really all in on White Vision?

• 37:15Andy Greenwald?

  A billion percent. I feel like they think it's ascendant.

• 37:19Chris Ryan?

  I saw some dude getting roasted because like, it was like some, some right wing guy who was like getting extra mad about the beginning of Ken Burns' American Revolution series.

• 37:29Andy Greenwald?

  What, how does it start?

• 37:30Chris Ryan?

  I think being like Ben Franklin was like a, or in the, in the words of, of Bob Ferguson, fucking slave owner, man.

• 37:41Chris Ryan?

  The Grand Wizard.

• 37:43Andy Greenwald?

  He says, so someone was mad that-

• 37:45Chris Ryan?

  Someone was mad at the depiction of our founding fathers.

• 37:47Andy Greenwald?

  As Christmas adventurers.

• 37:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:49Andy Greenwald?

  Look, we are, we are.

• 37:51Chris Ryan?

  It is what it is.

• 37:54Chris Ryan?

  So Niles Jarvis comes on the scene, he moves in next door to her in the Tony neighborhood of-

• 37:59Andy Greenwald?

  And Chris, he's trouble.

• 38:00Chris Ryan?

  He's trouble. He's a master of the universe, real estate magnate slash developer, who says things like Yimby socialist fucks and who has been accused of murdering his first wife. He's moved on.

• 38:12Andy Greenwald?

  Nobody's perfect.

• 38:13Chris Ryan?

  He's married to Brittany Snow now, but you know, there is a, there is an air around him that's like, this guy got away with murder, literally. Aggie going through it, trying to find something to write about. She owes her second book, she's two years late.

• 38:27Andy Greenwald?

  Say what she's writing her book about.

• 38:28Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

• 38:31Andy Greenwald?

  Their friend, unlikely friendship.

• 38:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, strange bedfellows.

• 38:34Andy Greenwald?

  So here's the thing about this show. It is pitched at a, at a degree that is perilously close to camp. The way that the characters talk to each other, the way that Niles interacts with the world, um, the fact that it is about a New York, a famous New Yorker profile writer named Aggie Wiggs.

• 38:57Chris Ryan?

  I took it to be like, she's a little bit Mary Car, a little bit Joan Didion.

• 39:01Andy Greenwald?

  Sure. There, there are, this is a pod, safe space podcast for famous New Yorker writers, or honestly, even not even that famous New Yorker writers.

• 39:09Chris Ryan?

  But it's hard to imagine like Bill Ackman being like, holy shit, is Rebecca Mead at this party, right?

• 39:14Andy Greenwald?

  See, you just pulled that and that's exactly it. So that said, there is an archness, not just in Matthew Reese's performance, because I think he's incredible in everything and is just always, always seems to just intuit the tone even before the director gets his hands on it in the edit. But these little details, like the fact that she is devoting all of her time to a niche book about the unlikely friendship between a liberal and a conservative and then Niles Jarvis is like falling asleep at the table, being like, that's boring, makes me think that there might be a kernel of, uh, necessary satire-

• 39:50Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 39:51Andy Greenwald?

  -within this construct. It's tough, like- There are so many cooks in the kitchen here, including, I think, Conan O'Brien's company is somehow a producer of this as well.

• 40:00Chris Ryan?

  Yes. He's quite busy these days.

• 40:03Andy Greenwald?

  Have you seen that If You Had Legs, I'd Kick You movie?

• 40:05Chris Ryan?

  I have not.

• 40:06Andy Greenwald?

  I'm interested.

• 40:06Chris Ryan?

  I have not.

• 40:08Andy Greenwald?

  He, so, there are just so many cooks in the kitchen, and then when you get to Netflix and you have, and they have their mandate for the type of show they want to make, and then you have Antonio Campos, who is a director with Real Style. And I was drawn in immediately from just the way the show does the title cards.

• 40:23Chris Ryan?

  The title cards are awesome, and there's a lot of voyeuristic surveillance state kind of long zooms and lingering looks. There is also a lot of what seems like Netflix House style, shallow depth of field, like, here are two people that, like, they are in perfect focus. Everything around them is basically, it looks like it could be a slate behind them. So it's like, I vibed with some of the style, I hit my head on some of it.

• 40:52Andy Greenwald?

  And then some of the content too, of like, are we hiding the ball about this guy, or are we celebrating it? This is always a tough tonal one, like, before he, as he's moving in, his wild guard dogs attack Aggie's house and menace her tiny dog. And I actually, in that moment, made a promise to myself that I almost don't want to admit here, which was, if this episode ends, as it inevitably will, with her dog, or actually her late son's dog, Steve, dead because of these big dogs, I'm out. Not because I particularly care about Steve, but I was like, but that's just been telegraphed. The show ended with a different death, so now maybe do I have to watch another one?

• 41:31Andy Greenwald?

  But I'm curious, just because, I don't know if I'm articulating it right, but like, the, the basic outlines of this show, it's just fucking Netflix catnip, like, it makes sense. And then it gets chefed up a little bit in the kitchen with a Claire Danes, with a Matthew Reese, Jonathan Banks is showing up in future episodes as Niall's dad, like, it's classed up. Is it slyly commenting on our appetite for this type of programming? Is it, does it have something new to say about it?

• 42:00Chris Ryan?

  No, I don't, I don't know.

• 42:02Andy Greenwald?

  It doesn't need to. So, one way to find out would be to continue watching it. I'm not ready to commit to that because fundamentally, I was like, I watched this and I was like, it's a little bit like a cantaloupe or something. Where I'm like, I recognize this is probably a very, very fresh example of the form, but I don't love the taste.

• 42:19Chris Ryan?

  I think you're identifying something interesting where the thing that's kept, so I watched like, most of the second episode. Uh, and there's something about tonally, Danes is doing Claire Danes. Like, there, there are no normal, there, there is no easygoing Claire Danes performance, right?

• 42:39Andy Greenwald?

  That's it. I thought she was a little bit modulated from the last time we saw her in Fleishman is in Trouble.

• 42:44Chris Ryan?

  Yes. There are different parts there, but I, I thought like, you know, there's a core intensity to Claire Danes's parts.

• 42:51Andy Greenwald?

  You know what you're getting.

• 42:51Chris Ryan?

  And usually her characters are in the throes of a great personal crisis. Uh, she is doing one thing, and Matthew Reese is doing something very different. And they're, they're not always in lockstep. And I think it is at once weird for the show. So sometimes when you're watching, you're like, what the fuck is he doing? Like, in a cool way.

• 43:15Andy Greenwald?

  Like in the lunch scene.

• 43:15Chris Ryan?

  He's hamming it up. Like, every scene is like, I am, I am like, I'm absolutely chewing it up here.

• 43:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and it's borderline, I'm like, why is she a passive participant in this?

• 43:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, like.

• 43:27Andy Greenwald?

  Why does she sit there?

• 43:28Chris Ryan?

  And he's, and, and yet, I think they are starting to scratch at the, you, you and I, we're not so different thing about like, bloodlust they talk about in the first episode and about, I think there is an implication that as a writer, there is something cold and calculating and that you would go through your own personal life. Her big memoir that she wrote was basically in a, not an assassination, but like a takedown of her father and her life with her father. It's called Sick Puppy. And the idea that you could write something and expose family secrets is like this kind of... Hey, well, I'm a killer, you know, like I'll kill my own family metaphorically.

• 44:06Chris Ryan?

  And so I think that they recognize something in each other, but there's, there's something interesting going on both because like I don't know scene to scene exactly what I'm gonna get.

• 44:16Chris Ryan?

  There's a lot of, you know, they add on a lot of, not filler, but there's like an FBI agent. You know, there's like, there's like the money troubles, the book delivery, like all this stuff.

• 44:26Andy Greenwald?

  There's a running path.

• 44:28Chris Ryan?

  This running path, are they gonna get this figured out? I don't quite understand that.

• 44:31Andy Greenwald?

  Does you think he's interested in, maybe could be convinced to try trail running?

• 44:34Chris Ryan?

  Well, I think he wants to be, have a paved jogging path for himself and for his neighbors, but she's like, what about a walk in the woods, you know? Which one do you go with?

• 44:44Andy Greenwald?

  Inside of you, there are two wolves. One likes a paved path.

• 44:48Chris Ryan?

  I gotta admit, the older I get, the more I appreciate a graded, you know, like just like flattened piece of pavement.

• 44:57Andy Greenwald?

  I'm also, sorry, I'm just really hung up on the edit. You said you checked out some of the second episode and I am picturing you. Okay, I appreciate the honesty. I thought you were walking in and out a little bit.

• 45:06Chris Ryan?

  I started, like you got to the end of one, I was like, I'm pretty compelled. And I started two and then I think I got midway through and fell asleep.

• 45:12Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just picturing you with the Dan Campbell glasses, you know, just like wandering in, like looking over the edge of them being like.

• 45:17Chris Ryan?

  No, Dan Campbell's calling the plays, brother.

• 45:20Andy Greenwald?

  I know. That's why he's got a lot in his mind. You can't just watch the second episode of some shit.

• 45:24Chris Ryan?

  The culture is failing in Detroit because Dan Campbell's too busy calling those fucking hitch patterns.

• 45:28Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think? Do you think it's falling apart?

• 45:30Chris Ryan?

  Oh, you can't do everything. Trust me, I've tried.

• 45:32Andy Greenwald?

  You truly have. I, I think you've also, you may have broken a seal here because I don't know if we've ever actually confessed to falling asleep during television shows on the podcast. If so.

• 45:44Chris Ryan?

  I watched an hour of it and then I got like a 90 minutes into it. So I, you know, yeah, I'm doing the work.

• 45:49Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I definitely, we could just like use a different filter on my face when I'm, when like I've told, I shouldn't give Kai ideas, but like. I'll put it this way, like I, as you know, like I'm currently zooming to work on England hours.

• 46:05Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 46:05Andy Greenwald?

  So my attempts to watch lots of television to catch up last night was really cooking. And then I woke up like really worried and shocked and like, you know, like almost like body horror, like where am I?

• 46:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:20Andy Greenwald?

  And on the screen was Chair Company 106 where the, his like teenage sons are demanding that he do the Pee-wee Herman dance for them at his birthday party. And I guess the punchline of the story is it was 7:16 at night, but.

• 46:34Chris Ryan?

  You gotta watch out, man. You're gonna flip your schedule, it's gonna be dark. Anyway, I am going to keep watching this. I understand if it's not for you, but this is kinda where we are. We have a bunch of shows that we've sort of like started with. I think you're maybe a little higher on Down Cemetery Road at this point than I am.

• 46:51Andy Greenwald?

  Last thing on Beast in Me, I think the other piece of it is when we're budgeting our time as, as viewers, like this is eight episodes and I watched, and tell me what you think about this, but like after watching the one, I feel like I now have enough, I have, you have, we've all watched enough TV now that like the shape of this for seven more hours feels unwieldy to me and less promising than if it was four to six.

• 47:18Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 47:19Andy Greenwald?

  Just because of the things that it's going to have to do to fill the space, to keep these characters apart, together, apart, together, et cetera.

• 47:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:26Andy Greenwald?

  When you have a two-hander like this, there's, there's certain cards you can play and we have seen, I don't wanna paint with too broad a brush, but we have seen shows like this drawn out to eight and 10 and it's challenging. Sometimes it works.

• 47:39Chris Ryan?

  You know, it goes back to our task conversation where obviously that show ended so, so successfully. Like there was just such a profound period at the end of the, of the sentence there. And. The fact that it's coming back for a second season is fantastic. And I think what it'll be is a new paragraph. But this, it's difficult when you're like, I know we're not gonna have the continuing adventures of Aggie Wiggs. Kind of like, do you know what I mean? Like, you're right. There is something about like, eight is a lot for finality.

• 48:11Andy Greenwald?

  Eight is a lot for a story that is moving only in one direction towards an end.

• 48:14Chris Ryan?

  Yes, that's a better way of putting it.

• 48:16Andy Greenwald?

  Not always. I mean, there are examples that I don't have access to at this moment because as I just said, I've been working since five. But there are examples of that. But there is also an incredible feeling that I feel like we should coin a phrase for, a term for, the feeling of watching one episode of Death by Lightning and loving it and realizing there's only three more. That was a high.

• 48:39Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 48:40Andy Greenwald?

  And we will talk about, we should circle back and talk about it. But that is a very specific thing. And by the way, just want to do a small shout out while we're talking about like, structure. I thought Catherine Van Aarondonk had a really good piece on Vulture this week on New York Magazine, saying enough already with the penultimate flashback episode. Which was really overdue, I think, but like, in the same way that we've talked about how the, starting a show with a really heightened-

• 49:05Chris Ryan?

  But you know, I mean, like, do you think people are really making like, the creative decision to do a flashback episode simply as filler?

• 49:11Andy Greenwald?

  It's not as filler. It's just that, you know, I know from being in rooms that like, it can feel, one thing that is true, I think, across all writers' rooms, no matter how much TV people in the room watch or consume, or how much they think about the industry, is that they become very insular. And you, for probably good creative reasons, think pretty much only about what's in front of you in terms of problem solving, or what's on the whiteboard, and you don't think about what, uh, what the show's gonna be released into.

• 49:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:41Andy Greenwald?

  What the ecosystem or the context will be like, or even how it might be in dialogue with other shows one day. And so I think that feeling of, we've known- What happened this whole time? And we are so excited to tell you. When would it be cool to tell you?

• 49:56Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 49:56Andy Greenwald?

  And it will be right when our hero has made it to the precipice. And then we, next episode, yoinks. Now you see how we got here from the full perspective. That's sound. That is sound, interesting storytelling logic. The problem is, these shows are all being created in relative vacuums. And it's not their fault that every other show had the same idea at the same time.

• 50:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:15Andy Greenwald?

  So actually, pieces like that, for as much as any criticism can be meaningful. Like, I think things like that do, I think things like that are noticed. So I think there should be also, let 10 think pieces on the starting a show at the most interesting moment, and then saying five months earlier, like, let's end that right now.

• 50:33Chris Ryan?

  Uh, let's kind of run through these comedies.

• 50:35Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, did you want to do Down Cemetery Road? Do you feel, I, I've not watched, I realize now, we're talking on Thursday. The fifth episode has posted, and I have not watched it yet.

• 50:44Chris Ryan?

  No, I think we can, we could actually do a little bit of a Down Cemetery Road. And I'll, I'll do my report card on the morning show finale on Monday. Yeah.

• 50:53Andy Greenwald?

  I'm ready for that.

• 50:54Chris Ryan?

  Cause we have Pluribus and Landman, but like, we can also mix it up with some of that stuff, too.

• 50:57Andy Greenwald?

  All right, fine. I like the show, though.

• 51:00Chris Ryan?

  Just make the case.

• 51:01Andy Greenwald?

  Well, no, I mean, you said we're gonna talk about it on Monday.

• 51:03Chris Ryan?

  No, but you can, you can, you can kind of talk about like how, I, I think that there has been some public kind of grousing about like the, there, that there is a falloff after episode two. Do you agree with that?

• 51:12Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think, yes. But I, I don't know if it's entirely a quality falloff. It is like a, wait, what's the show?

• 51:20Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:21Andy Greenwald?

  Because the show did such beautiful work in two episodes, creating Oxford as a living place. And these two characters in an orbit to each other, and to like Wigwam Squat, and to the university, and to the larger world of government in London. That made sense, and we were very excited about being oriented in that world. And then in episode three, suddenly, it's like a not lovers on the run conspiracy thriller about wronged, uh, military veterans taking experimental medicine to stop the streaming shakes in their bodies.

• 51:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:53Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, that's not the show I thought that it was.

• 51:56Chris Ryan?

  It reminds me a little bit of the second season of Vigil. Uh, the first season very much contained on the submarine, but the second season, kind of like skipping across, like, it's, you know. Like all this different stuff and a lot of like every time you get to the end of an episode, you're like, and now there's like a whole other plot that's been opened up.

• 52:15Andy Greenwald?

  It's it's very busy and it's very messy and.

• 52:19Chris Ryan?

  But the two leads and the.

• 52:20Andy Greenwald?

  The two leads are so good and I just so far, I don't find it cloying that the show becomes charmed by ancillary characters like in the, I think in the fourth episode of the motel, there's the, there's the, the desk clerk who is, when you meet him, you're like, oh, he's playing this way too much to be just someone passing.

• 52:44Chris Ryan?

  One scene.

• 52:44Andy Greenwald?

  And then he comes back five more scenes.

• 52:46Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 52:48Andy Greenwald?

  I appreciate that generosity of spirit.

• 52:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:51Andy Greenwald?

  The like the, the logic of like Ruth Wilson's character being like 24 hours ago, I saw a girl on a bike and now I am a single vigilante on the run, hunting for cars and guns does jibe with how I thought the world worked in my twenties.

• 53:05Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 53:06Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe that would have been a successful pickup line for you at LA bars and hotspots.

• 53:10Chris Ryan?

  I mean, sometimes I actually think this about the Mick Herron stuff, which is, you know, he's obviously the author of the Slow Horses series and he's the author of, I believe it's a series of Zoe Bohn books.

• 53:20Andy Greenwald?

  I think there's more than one.

• 53:22Chris Ryan?

  Is that they.

• 53:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, there's four.

• 53:24Chris Ryan?

  The shagginess of them as a novel does not actually translate one to one to TV. You know, and that you do get this sort of more, I mean, I think they've done a really good job of pairing Slow Horses down to its bare essentials.

• 53:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 53:39Chris Ryan?

  And keeping the things that they really want, like Jackson and Rivers' relationship or whatever. And obviously Standish is like, they, they do a really good job with the book to TV highway, but this one, I'm almost like, this feels like it would almost be a fun page turner. And I wouldn't be like, why are we, why are we on the run now? But on TV, you're almost like, I want a kind of repeatable.

• 54:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 54:01Chris Ryan?

  Experience.

• 54:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. And so I.

• 54:05Andy Greenwald?

  I guess we'll see. I mean, I'm enjoying it enough to see, but to your point, I wonder if it would have been less thrilling in two episodes, but more rewarding over four seasons, if they had just made the decision that it's Zoe and Sarah as unlikely investigators in this town.

• 54:22Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 54:22Andy Greenwald?

  And left it at that. And let the plot run through them. That's not what's happening.

• 54:28Chris Ryan?

  What's happening on the Chair Company?

• 54:30Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I feel like I gave a lot of it away to you by saying that there is a Ron's son's birthday party in which Ron is asked to do the Peewee dance and then he doesn't do it and his son is so upset by that, he binge drinks. And then as they're singing "Happy Birthday" to the cake, he vomits because of alcohol consumption and a large man picks up the cake, places it over the pile of sick and says, "Don't worry, it's covered. You don't have to look at it."

• 54:59Chris Ryan?

  One of my favorite things about you is how much you like weird, weird comedy.

• 55:03Andy Greenwald?

  I love this show so much.

• 55:07Chris Ryan?

  This is kind of how you used to talk about like Twin Peaks.

• 55:09Andy Greenwald?

  Because it is Twin Peaks.

• 55:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:10Andy Greenwald?

  Because the thing about Twin Peaks is that it's fucking hilarious and it always was. And David Lynch's stuff is all funny until suddenly he just moves the needle a little bit and it's horrifying. And there's a moment, and this show exists on the same frequency. It's just pitched a little bit different. There's a moment when Ron comes home from a long day at work. I think it's like, even he says it's like one in the morning. And he walks into the kitchen and there's a large bearded man with a bowl of popcorn standing there and he turns around and he says, "Hi, Ron." And then he's like, "Who the fuck is that?" And his wife's like, "Oh, that's our son's friend. They're working on a project in the basement." But it's in the same place as horror and everything else. And it's so mundane and crazy

• 55:55Andy Greenwald?

  and weird. And it's also this episode, Ron, in order to try to like jazz up their development, pitches Lou Diamond Phillips how not only should it have like terracotta color scheme, it should have a CBGB zawning when things were like really cool. It's so good. I'm so happy.

• 56:12Chris Ryan?

  I enjoy Lou Diamond Phillips on this.

• 56:13Andy Greenwald?

  I'm so happy it got renewed. This is a big Lou Diamond Phillips episode.

• 56:16Chris Ryan?

  Do you think that there will be another mystery next season? Or do you think they will just continue to like chase this?

• 56:21Andy Greenwald?

  Wow. I mean, I what first of all, what a great substantive question. Thank you for it. I would like to say I have no fucking idea what's gonna happen on this show. And I honestly, honestly don't care. I'm delighted by it.

• 56:34Chris Ryan?

  What do you think of where I Love L.A. is right now?

• 56:37Andy Greenwald?

  I need you to make the case for me with this because I struggled with the third episode.

• 56:42Chris Ryan?

  I uh, I find it pretty easy to watch. Like, obviously, it makes me feel incredibly old in some ways. And in some ways, sometimes I feel like even the characters on the show or the people playing the characters are maybe feel the same way.

• 56:58Andy Greenwald?

  That's right. Yeah.

• 57:00Chris Ryan?

  There is like a kind of, um,

• 57:04Chris Ryan?

  I wouldn't say there's not like flop sweat to be relevant, but there is like a kind of yearning to be like contemporary that I think TV shows have a hard time with when they are doing it knowingly. You know, like where it's like, we want to have these references hit in a way that if you've been on Instagram in the last 24 months.

• 57:22Andy Greenwald?

  Sure. Or if you've been in Echo Park in the last 24 months, you know that there's occasionally a line, although not a line that big at Canyon Coffee.

• 57:28Chris Ryan?

  Right. Um, but I am finding myself like, I think the initial criticisms that we had of it, that it was gonna be, there's like a little too much influencer mechanics drama. Yes, I am really just not that interested in that. I did find the uh, the Coke Larry stuff with Josh Hutcherson to be really, really funny. And I am enjoying his, his sort of performance. And I'm starting to, I think, get the rhythms of Rachel Sennett in this show.

• 57:56Andy Greenwald?

  No better expression of your own white vision than you being like, the hero of the show is Josh Hutcherson, the slightly older, normal guy.

• 58:06Andy Greenwald?

  Who doesn't want to get embarrassed at work for being Coke Larry? Like that is, I see the white vision.

• 58:11Chris Ryan?

  I just really liked it when she's like, I'm not on Guy Twitter. I don't know what this is.

• 58:15Andy Greenwald?

  That's fair. What the Michael Jordan meme? I don't know. This feels like concern trolling. It's unnecessary to say it, but I can't tell where the floor is on the show yet. Because it feels like it is a bunch of people making satirizing aspects of life in 2025 and/or in Los Angeles, but also satirizing themselves for satirizing it. And that is a level of busyness and meta-ness that I find hard to just sit with. And ultimately, like, I need an anchor. Like, I do, I am Josh Hutcherson. I have a nine to five job and I drive a Dodge Stratus. So the show is not for me. It's an electric Stratus, though, by the way, so you're welcome. But I-

• 59:00Chris Ryan?

  Enjoy it while you can, man.

• 59:01Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I get no benefits anymore.

• 59:02Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 59:03Andy Greenwald?

  Other than moral clarity and slight smug superiority. I do need an anchor of like, where am I oriented in terms of caring for people, caring for their journey?

• 59:14Chris Ryan?

  Why do you not need that in Chair Company?

• 59:15Andy Greenwald?

  Because I think Chair Company is profoundly funny and creative and skewed and aesthetically so specific that it is kind of art to me and it just reliably makes me laugh. It is pure comedy. And I think that if this show, if this, if this show and the spirit and this aesthetic was a six-minute funnier dies sketch or 90-minute movie satirizing influencer culture in LA, it would succeed on it, on the current terms. But as a show that is now going someplace over two seasons, um, I mean, I, I don't, it's three episodes, so there's plenty of time for it to find an anchor. I'm just curious what it is.

• 59:53Chris Ryan?

  I think it was probably the Vulture review, but I can't remember who said like, this show is more, maybe it was Alison Herman, I can't remember, but it was, it was like, think of this more like Entourage and How to Make It in America than Girls. And that was very helpful for me to kind of be like, oh, yeah.

• 1:00:06Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's helpful, but also two of those shows I bailed on and one I stuck with and I was hoping-

• 1:00:13Chris Ryan?

  You bailed on Entourage?

• 1:00:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:00:14Chris Ryan?

  Damn, dude. So you don't know what happened with E?

• 1:00:17Andy Greenwald?

  Did he make Aquaman?

• 1:00:19Chris Ryan?

  He gets fired from Aquaman, doesn't he?

• 1:00:21Andy Greenwald?

  E, well, what about Queens Boulevard?

• 1:00:23Chris Ryan?

  It's Queens Boulevard.

• 1:00:24Andy Greenwald?

  E and Sloan, I think, end up together.

• 1:00:26Chris Ryan?

  And then they want to make the Pablo Escobar movie. They do.

• 1:00:28Andy Greenwald?

  Medellin.

• 1:00:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:31Andy Greenwald?

  This would be, by the way.

• 1:00:32Chris Ryan?

  Apparently, somebody didn't quite quit Entourage.

• 1:00:34Andy Greenwald?

  This podcast would do numbers of two guys just struggling. They wear glasses now, their white vision isn't what it used to be. Like, just to remember plot points from a show that one of them claims to have not watched.

• 1:00:45Chris Ryan?

  You know what, Hal, when, if any rap song released from 1989 to 2002 comes on, I'm like, I know all the lyrics to this.

• 1:00:52Andy Greenwald?

  Everyone, yeah.

• 1:00:53Chris Ryan?

  That's how I feel about Entourage episodes.

• 1:00:54Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, word.

• 1:00:55Chris Ryan?

  I don't, I could not, if you were like, do, do like, any number of Big L songs off the top of your head, I would be like, I could not. But if I heard two beats of it, I'd be like, here's all the verses. That's how I feel about Entourage. I could not tell you a single thing off the top of my head about Entourage, except for the fact that I know every episode of Entourage by heart.

• 1:01:16Andy Greenwald?

  That's amazing.

• 1:01:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:17Andy Greenwald?

  What would the, open the computer back up. What was the, what was the Entourage era from when to when?

• 1:01:22Chris Ryan?

  96 episodes of this bad boy.

• 1:01:24Andy Greenwald?

  96 episodes, god, talk about how to make it in America.

• 1:01:28Chris Ryan?

  It ran to the glory years.

• 1:01:29Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:29Chris Ryan?

  04 to 11.

• 1:01:31Andy Greenwald?

  Those are the best years of our lives.

• 1:01:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:33Andy Greenwald?

  Wow. Those are the years where you're just standing next to women at bars, smoking cigarettes.

• 1:01:39Chris Ryan?

  Until, well, no, because Mike Bloomberg banned it.

• 1:01:43Andy Greenwald?

  The smoking?

• 1:01:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:44Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 1:01:44Chris Ryan?

  Inside.

• 1:01:45Andy Greenwald?

  So you were just sidling up to, yeah, first of all, you weren't doing this.

• 1:01:48Chris Ryan?

  I was saying, do you want to go outside and have a cigarette?

• 1:01:51Andy Greenwald?

  Like, with increasing levels of intensity and sweat.

• 1:01:55Chris Ryan?

  That's true, actually.

• 1:01:56Andy Greenwald?

  That is very true.

• 1:01:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:57Andy Greenwald?

  04 to 11, 9, 04 to 11, 90.

• 1:02:00Chris Ryan?

  Eight seasons.

• 1:02:02Andy Greenwald?

  Goddamn. I respect it.

• 1:02:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Andy Greenwald?

  You would never have thought that Doug Allen and the Brain Trust could have mined 96 episodes.

• 1:02:09Chris Ryan?

  They got eight seasons and 96 episodes of Entourage, and like, Stranger Things is like, ah. Try to get the last boulder over the mountain.

• 1:02:16Andy Greenwald?

  She's just a three-hour boulder up the hill. Uh, what are your, for I Love L.A.?

• 1:02:24Andy Greenwald?

  What are your, uh, put on the Dan Campbell glasses, except now I'm gonna switch sports.

• 1:02:28Chris Ryan?

  When he goes down.

• 1:02:29Andy Greenwald?

  No, you're at the combine.

• 1:02:30Chris Ryan?

  He's like this, like he's gonna call sheet, yeah.

• 1:02:32Andy Greenwald?

  Because he doesn't want, up here, he doesn't want them to be messed with, but he needs the, there's readers.

• 1:02:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:37Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. You're at the combine and you're watching I Love L.A. do the weird like jumps and shit. What are the traits that give you some confidence? Not that it's gonna go eight seasons, but that it is going to smooth its journey into something that is like a dependable player in this league.

• 1:02:55Chris Ryan?

  The Odessa Zion character can go in a lot of different directions.

• 1:02:59Andy Greenwald?

  And she's phenomenal.

• 1:03:00Chris Ryan?

  And she's a dynamo.

• 1:03:02Andy Greenwald?

  Force of nature.

• 1:03:03Chris Ryan?

  And I think that they could, she could be in an eight twenty-four movie.

• 1:03:08Andy Greenwald?

  The character.

• 1:03:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:09Chris Ryan?

  She could be Charlie XCX, like she can go and do a bunch of different things. And they could get into a lot of different pockets of the entertainment business. I hope actually, I understand why the influencer thing is like actually probably more authentic to these characters and probably more authentic to twenty twenty-five.

• 1:03:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:03:26Chris Ryan?

  You know, um.

• 1:03:27Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think it's hard.

• 1:03:28Chris Ryan?

  I was talking with Fantasy the other day about how, uh, you know, there's, um, you know, a lot of anxiety around the media business now and we're, nobody's sure. And I was like, you, who doesn't have that as video games?

• 1:03:40Andy Greenwald?

  True.

• 1:03:41Chris Ryan?

  And.

• 1:03:41Andy Greenwald?

  Like Shinobi?

• 1:03:42Chris Ryan?

  No, but just like in general, like video games, like we've always had this experience where like when, whenever everybody is like, god damn it, where am I gonna string two pennies together? Video games are like, how about twenty-five million dollars?

• 1:03:52Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, like how much these are making?

• 1:03:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. And I was thinking like, that probably makes sense, like influencers, when everybody's just like, is Sydney Sweeney actually a star? And it's like, these influencers are like, I make nine million dollars a year, you know?

• 1:04:04Andy Greenwald?

  I think the most, but I also think this is, and we have to cop to our.

• 1:04:07Chris Ryan?

  Doing that, but I wish they would put her in some other stuff.

• 1:04:09Andy Greenwald?

  I also feel like this is copying to our like, look, this, you guys are listening to a podcast hosted by people who should just be reading Robert Caro novels by a fire.

• 1:04:17Chris Ryan?

  So, I finished Vinland, bro.

• 1:04:19Andy Greenwald?

  I know, respect.

• 1:04:20Chris Ryan?

  You know what I did?

• 1:04:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:21Chris Ryan?

  I finished Vinland, which was like hard for me, cause, cause my brain is shredded mozzarella now. I finished it.

• 1:04:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:29Chris Ryan?

  And much like Coop in Interstellar.

• 1:04:31Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:31Chris Ryan?

  I used the fucking momentum of the black hole.

• 1:04:34Andy Greenwald?

  Swung around.

• 1:04:34Chris Ryan?

  And I immediately started an easier book and read like forty-five pages.

• 1:04:38Andy Greenwald?

  That's smart.

• 1:04:39Chris Ryan?

  Cause I was like Barry Bonds with the donut on his bat and takes it off, or juice, you know?

• 1:04:44Andy Greenwald?

  You have to inject it yourself with fucking so much testosterone. This is really

• 1:04:49Chris Ryan?

  I went to Balco, yeah.

• 1:04:50Andy Greenwald?

  This is really, I do want to finish the other point, but I want to say this is elite reading advice.

• 1:04:54Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:04:55Andy Greenwald?

  Because I did something similar where I finished a more challenging book and then I flew, by the way, I also want to address for the record, people were commenting on this, why didn't we sit together on the flight home from England?

• 1:05:05Chris Ryan?

  Different flights.

• 1:05:05Andy Greenwald?

  First of all, different flights.

• 1:05:06Chris Ryan?

  Different flights.

• 1:05:07Andy Greenwald?

  Done. Second of all, intentionally different flights because I love you and I have no, I hide nothing from you, except my airport self. I do not want to see anyone at the airport or on an airplane, ever.

• 1:05:19Chris Ryan?

  I don't want to talk for 10 hours.

• 1:05:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:22Chris Ryan?

  But I'd hang out with you.

• 1:05:23Andy Greenwald?

  Like in, like in the back of the plane?

• 1:05:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I get it. I mean, Virgin, first of all, Virgin has those like little bar areas. I'd love to just get a little chin wag with you mid-flight, talk about some of the turbulence.

• 1:05:33Andy Greenwald?

  I'll just text you from the left side of the plane. You don't want to see me in turbulence.

• 1:05:36Chris Ryan?

  What do you like?

• 1:05:37Andy Greenwald?

  What am I like?

• 1:05:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. You make it sound like you're like a cave troll. What's wrong with you?

• 1:05:40Andy Greenwald?

  Well, first of all, it's tired, like, because I take the early flight, you took a later flight, but also like, it is peak, like, hood up, what have you just handed me? This appears to be some sort of like Stouffer's pan, doesn't matter, I ate it. Like, I, I am definitely just like-

• 1:05:55Chris Ryan?

  You know what, I say this to you?

• 1:05:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:56Chris Ryan?

  And now I'm remembering that one of my flights, when I went to England a couple of years, like a year ago.

• 1:06:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:02Chris Ryan?

  I was flying back and Jesse Armstrong was sitting in front of me.

• 1:06:04Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 1:06:05Chris Ryan?

  And I think I was texting you and you're like, you should say hi, you should say what's up.

• 1:06:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:08Chris Ryan?

  Here's the difference, I was like, full, full sweatsuit, like-

• 1:06:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:06:13Chris Ryan?

  Sweatsuit to the point of like-

• 1:06:14Andy Greenwald?

  Rules don't matter.

• 1:06:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there's no part of my body that's not suited in sweat.

• 1:06:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:06:19Chris Ryan?

  And I'm watching fucking, you know, a cricket documentary and rolling around, trying to get my back feel good. Jesse Armstrong sat, sat straight up-

• 1:06:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:06:28Chris Ryan?

  And read the Financial Times for like 11 hours.

• 1:06:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, look, this is what keeps-

• 1:06:32Chris Ryan?

  And I was like, I'm a, I'm, I'm not, I'm not ready to see him, I'm not ready to have the awkward, like, hey, I don't know if you remember me, we had two podcasts together, but like-

• 1:06:41Andy Greenwald?

  I keep, no, these are not people that I personally know, but I keep flying with, like, Andrew Scott is on the flight and you just look so tussled and rumpled, I'm like, well, let's see you in 11 hours, pal. Fucking looked amazing, hugging the stewardesses afterwards, you know? I have now flown from LA to London multiple times with Theo James.

• 1:07:02Andy Greenwald?

  Let me tell you something, that guy ages like wine on flights.

• 1:07:05Chris Ryan?

  Exactly. He's probably going back in age just because of the time difference.

• 1:07:08Andy Greenwald?

  He, he looked, you're right, he looked better when we got there.

• 1:07:11Chris Ryan?

  That's why those guys do that flight.

• 1:07:14Andy Greenwald?

  He just never, never put his feet on earth, so he's actually only 29 years old. Very humbling. Last two points that we were talking about. That is elite reading advice. If you read something hard, it is like with the weights. Then you read something easy. Coming off that flight, I was like, I'd like to read a book, but also I'm completely jangled, picked up an old Don Carpenter novel.

• 1:07:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:33Andy Greenwald?

  Had one of the best reading experiences of my life.

• 1:07:35Chris Ryan?

  Which one did you do? Couple of comedians?

• 1:07:36Andy Greenwald?

  Comedians is a perfect book.

• 1:07:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, really.

• 1:07:38Andy Greenwald?

  Come on. Second, back to I Love LA for the people who are really hanging on for the last observation. I don't want to bring this part of myself to it, but I must, which is to say that it is incredibly accurate to Los Angeles and the state of the entertainment industry, that it is just like, it is like panhandling for crumbs from Tressame or fucking Balenciaga is going to email you and a message about maybe sending you a bag and then 10 seconds on TikTok have to be answered to and at Chifa where you have to order the whole menu and it's going to bankrupt you. Very accurate. I also find all of that so deeply depressing.

• 1:08:15Chris Ryan?

  Who's that accurate for?

• 1:08:16Andy Greenwald?

  Life in LA, like and the entertainment industry is down to these kind of like crumbs of influence and branding and selling out. Like that is the entertainment industry, basically.

• 1:08:24Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:08:26Andy Greenwald?

  Season three of Man on the Inside, a part, but like that is basically the entire entertainment industry, season two. That bums me out so much that I don't want to necessarily find the humanity in it.

• 1:08:38Chris Ryan?

  Ah.

• 1:08:39Andy Greenwald?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:08:40Chris Ryan?

  I see.

• 1:08:40Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know if the show wants to either. I think everybody realizes that we're just like, you know, we're just last orders, you know what I mean? But.

• 1:08:47Chris Ryan?

  Last orders at Chifa.

• 1:08:49Andy Greenwald?

  Last orders at Chifa, the rabbit is to die for.

• 1:08:52Chris Ryan?

  Do you think we did a good pod today?

• 1:08:54Andy Greenwald?

  I think there were moments when I was worried, but then, then you started talking about white visions and I was like, let's cook.

• 1:09:00Chris Ryan?

  Uh, thanks to Kai.

• 1:09:01Andy Greenwald?

  I thought it was good. I think Kai has a lot to work with and I think he's gonna slant things a little more wide.

• 1:09:05Chris Ryan?

  Kai, then...

• 1:09:06Andy Greenwald?

  I'm working the refs.

• 1:09:07Chris Ryan?

  The most excited Kai was, was when we were talking about Keylock before we started recording.

• 1:09:11Andy Greenwald?

  When you and he were talking about Keylock.

• 1:09:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I said, have you listened to Keylock? And Kai is just like, Keylock's fucking amazing.

• 1:09:17Andy Greenwald?

  I think...

• 1:09:18Chris Ryan?

  I'm coming back for rap. I feel it.

• 1:09:20Andy Greenwald?

  This is exciting.

• 1:09:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:21Andy Greenwald?

  This is a good zag for you. Which camera are you saying that into?

• 1:09:25Chris Ryan?

  You.

• 1:09:25Andy Greenwald?

  You're like, hello rap caviar playlist. Would you like to hear my white vision?

• 1:09:29Chris Ryan?

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:09:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:30Chris Ryan?

  I go, I do my own research.

• 1:09:37Chris Ryan?

  I am gonna start a rap, rap playlist called White Vision now.

• 1:09:41Andy Greenwald?

  You should.

• 1:09:42Chris Ryan?

  And I'm gonna use Betney.

• 1:09:43Andy Greenwald?

  It's just all tracks.

• 1:09:44Chris Ryan?

  Betney from Margin Call, not from Vision.

• 1:09:47Andy Greenwald?

  No, of course. And it's all tracks by that dude Russ. That's it. Great.

• 1:09:51Chris Ryan?

  Thank you for listening to The Watch. We'll be back with Pluribus, episode four, Landman, episode two.

• 1:09:56Andy Greenwald?

  The people have spoken. I have to watch it.

• 1:09:58Chris Ryan?

  Landman?

• 1:09:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:59Chris Ryan?

  You can do what you want. It's free country.

• 1:10:01Andy Greenwald?

  That's what Landman says.

• 1:10:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:02Andy Greenwald?

  And I believe it.

• 1:10:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:04Andy Greenwald?

  I'll watch it.