‘Industry’s’ Book of Revelations. Plus, ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ E5 and a New Chapter in the Warner Bros. Bidding War.

Chris and Andy talk about Paramount’s latest takeover bid and the news that Warner Bros. Discovery may reopen acquisition talks (1:44). Then they discuss the penultimate episode of ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ S1 and its use of flashback (5:51), before walking through the many revelations from ‘Industry’ Season 4, Episode 6 (25:07). 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: Jamie Yukich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 2:36Speaker 04

  I need sports staff to clear the room.

• 2:38Andy Greenwald?

  Stand up and walk, now!

• 2:41Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. And joining me on the other line, nobody expects the FSB, it's Andy Greenwald!

• 2:54Andy Greenwald?

  My brother, are you well? You're far away from me today.

• 2:57Chris Ryan?

  I'm doing okay, man. I just didn't want to wet cough on you. I have a little bit of a cold over the weekend. My Valentine's Day just got a little wild. Me and my wife watched Eyes Wide Shut on Saturday night.

• 3:08Andy Greenwald?

  Which canonically is a Christmas movie, by the way, so...

• 3:10Chris Ryan?

  It is a Christmas movie, but it's also about marriage. You know what I mean? It's about, it's about love.

• 3:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. It's about honesty. It's about revealing ourselves. It's about masks. It's about cabals. It's very relevant.

• 3:22Chris Ryan?

  We have a great show for you tonight, today, because we had a great TV night last night. A kind of quintessential, you know, throwback HBO night of two huge episodes of a television show, Industry and Night of the Seven Kingdoms. We'll be talking about both of those shows. You can reach us at [email protected]. You can follow us on Instagram at thewatchpod underscore. You can watch us on YouTube at the Ringer dash TV, and you can watch us on Spotify, where I hope you're listening to us. Greenwald, how you doing, man? It's raining in Los Angeles. You seem grumpy.

• 3:51Andy Greenwald?

  I'm, oh, I'm not grumpy. We, we just had a fire alarm here. There's like, a lot of people. Listen, I respect it. Spotify clearly does not recognize Presidents' Day. And really, why would any of us?

• 4:03Chris Ryan?

  I mean, honestly, we were free to take today off, but I just thought you'd want to get these takes off because of the shows last night.

• 4:09Andy Greenwald?

  I found it. Well, we'll talk, we'll get into the specifics, but that was a tough, it was a tough viewing block.

• 4:14Chris Ryan?

  Interesting turn taken in Hollywood today was the announcement. It's in Bloomberg. You can read Lukas Shaw's piece about it. He obviously understands this stuff way better than you and I do. But since we are about to wade into the vigories of the financial world, we might as well start here with Paramount, Warner Brothers, and Netflix. There seems to be another chapter to this story. Netflix and Warner Brothers had agreed essentially to their deal at something like a $27 per share price. And now it seems like there are elements of the Warner Brothers board asking for negotiations to be reopened because of Paramount's improved

• 4:53Chris Ryan?

  bid. They had a $30 per share bid. And we can get into like backstopping and who wants what and why this is happening. But what's your initial reaction when you hear that news?

• 5:05Andy Greenwald?

  It's worrisome. I mean, I think that anyone who's been watching this story and who has better financial awareness than we do, probably noted with interest that Paramount doesn't really, isn't really in the business of listening to a no, that David Ellison is basically having a borderline polite tantrum about this because he thinks that it should be his. And the, ever since a few months ago, when Warner Brothers accepted the Netflix bid, he has been out there stamping his foot, writing open letters to European regulators, agitating, improving the offer, basically saying, we're offering you more money, we're offering you all cash. And I think that the pushback has been consistent from Zaslav

• 5:49Andy Greenwald?

  and Warner Brothers, saying, this is a more sensible deal for us for X, Y, and Z reasons. One of the, one of the reasons being, our businesses are more complementary to each other, that in terms of the employees of WBD, there are many of those similarly, similar employees at Paramount, because they also are a legacy studio with, you know, with a, with a footprint in Hollywood and buildings and a lot.

• 6:15Andy Greenwald?

  But you know, this is the way that business tends to work, both maybe on industry and in our actual real life industry these days is the loudest, angriest voice wins. And it's, I don't know, I mean, I'm not, I'm, I try not to be in the business of cheerleading for business. I don't know if any of this is good, but I do think that the behavior of Paramount, both prior to this deal and during this deal, does not necessarily suggest a harmonious marriage and any kind of like consistency and fidelity to what Warner Brothers has been doing right up to this point.

• 6:52Chris Ryan?

  I do wonder what my reaction to this whole situation would be if David Ellison had hired like Jon Favreau to run CBS News. Do you know what I mean? Like, I have to.

• 7:02Andy Greenwald?

  I gotta stop you. Which Jon Favreau?

• 7:04Chris Ryan?

  Not Jon Favreau, the Mandalorian Jon Favreau.

• 7:06Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 7:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, like crooked media. I mean, I wonder whether or not like there would be so much hand wringing if essentially there wasn't this kind of like Trump appeasing bent to Paramount these days.

• 7:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. I mean, I think that's, I think the conglomerate, conglomerization of media into regime friendly apparatuses is terrifying.

• 7:31Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 7:32Andy Greenwald?

  And, you know, it's not like, it's not like there are many companies that haven't bent knees or, you know, other ass, other parts of their bodies over the last three years.

• 7:43Chris Ryan?

  Budged up too, yes.

• 7:44Andy Greenwald?

  But there, there has been the sense that Netflix, you know, is, it's funny, we've talked about this, Netflix has been a villain in this town in a lot of ways over the last few years. But in terms of not being the Ellison's and not.

• 8:00Chris Ryan?

  They come out as heroes.

• 8:02Andy Greenwald?

  They come out as heroes. And additionally saying that like, you know, we value, at least lip service is being paid to, we value what the film half of Warner Brothers has done over the last year and a half. We value what Casey Poyce and his team at HBO has, has done. So, I don't know. This is all C-suite way above our heads, but it is a little concerning.

• 8:21Chris Ryan?

  Which one of our Sunday night television shows do you want to start with? Because I think we'll have like quite a bit to say about.

• 8:25Andy Greenwald?

  I think we should start with Night of the Seven Kingdoms. But I do have a lot to say about both. You're right.

• 8:31Chris Ryan?

  So this is an interesting episode, the penultimate episode of the season. You know, and a little bit off book, both in terms of the momentum that the show had been building up and also going away from, I think, literally the source material. There are suggestions within the novellas, apparently according to Alan Joe and just my discussions with them, that, you know, outline broadly and obviously spoilers going forward, honestly, for Night of the Seven Kingdoms and industry, in case we make any jokes. There are allusions in the text about Rafe, about his life in Fleabottom, where he came from, how he hooked up with Sir Arlen, et cetera.

• 9:12Chris Ryan?

  But to explicitly draw this connection between Dunk's childhood or Dunk's, you know, young years and how it shaped him and shaped maybe the way he felt about heroism, the way he felt about chivalry, the way he felt about what a knight is supposed to do. I thought, you know, was, it was okay. It was not my favorite part of the series so far. This is a show that I feel like has made very few missteps.

• 9:44Chris Ryan?

  And even within this episode, it's a testament to the kind of cooking oil this thing has that they were able to still make two thirds of an amazing episode while also having a huge flashback second act that goes back to Fleabottom and goes back to Dunk's origins. Tell me how you felt about the flashback specifically.

• 10:04Andy Greenwald?

  The most important thing for me to say first is, Chris, you can't use cooking oil. That will kill him. You have to use wine. So in terms of your metaphors as well, be very, very careful.

• 10:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you're right. My bad.

• 10:16Andy Greenwald?

  That's something all the maesters know. Although I have to say, like, just the sort of man on the street medical response did remind me of when I would be hungover in the early 2000s and you would offer some suggestions. It's just like, well, the chain mail seems to have stopped it. We'll just throw some hot wesson on it and just, you know, we'll probably be okay.

• 10:38Andy Greenwald?

  I thought this was a fascinating episode of television for what it was and for what it wasn't. Like, when the flashbacks started, I immediately started to get a feeling that it caused me to text you, which I try not to do in the middle of television shows, but I knew you'd already watched it, to ask-

• 10:51Chris Ryan?

  Do you, do you try?

• 10:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I didn't say I succeed. I just, I try. It's just like a policy. You know what I mean? A suggestion, a guideline, which was, is this invented? Because it felt, and you know, very often, one's spider sense about that sort of thing can be wrong, but it did feel so tonally different from what the show had been up to this point. And you told me that it was, which, which, which did make sense. Everything that was in the flashback was, was very, very well done and executed. You know, I have long wanted a Fleabottom that, you know, where the smell and stench of everyone leapt off the screen, and I finally got that and felt very rewarded for that, for my longtime commitment, you know, to the, to the, the working classes of King's Landing.

• 11:36Andy Greenwald?

  I thought that the storytelling made sense, the, I don't know how they found a little dunk like that. I have to say that the show made a bet on itself in the early going, that it was going to be so different from the Game of Thrones that we've come to, to know, to respect, and to occasionally be horrified by, that I was a little disappointed in the episode for backsliding into the nihilism of what has come before. It is completely in keeping with George R.R. Martin's fictional universe. It is resonant and relevant to Dunk's journey as a hero, that he would come from nothing

• 12:20Andy Greenwald?

  and have a innate sense of unfairness and, and how the world is built. I get all of that. I have nothing structurally to critique here.

• 12:28Chris Ryan?

  So is your objection to the actual story that gets told in Fleabottom, that he is with this girl, it's his first love, and she's killed in front of him, and that sets him on this path towards a kind of wandering- No. You know, like Samurai? Or is it that we get, because my, my objection was like- I just didn't think the show needed it. I think the show had done this remarkable magic trick of economy where it's going for 30 minutes an episode and I'm learning more and feeling more than I have in years watching Game of Thrones, including like the end of this mothership series and all of House of the Dragon. And my private viewing of the Naomi Watts Blood

• 13:09Chris Ryan?

  Moon episode just in my personal archives. Just kidding, nobody's seen that. And I was just, I just didn't think it needed it. I don't think that, I hate the penultimate episode flashback almost as much as I hate the flash forward in the first episode of shows.

• 13:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 13:28Chris Ryan?

  And I think that it didn't trust us to just be like, this is obviously who this guy is regardless of how he wound up here. And it's almost more magical and romantic to think about like somebody just being innately good rather than being like, I'm innately good because I saw something really bad when I was a kid.

• 13:44Andy Greenwald?

  You said-

• 13:45Chris Ryan?

  Of course he did.

• 13:46Andy Greenwald?

  You said it 100 times better than I could. My first pass was like, I was just sort of bummed that it went back into the more familiar nihilistic savagery, but I think your point is the stronger one. And I think I agree, I just, I think I was also processing that, which is, origin stories are kind of boring. Origin stories are kind of redundant. And I think that's what I meant when I said that the show had made such a good bet on itself early on. Now, if you are going to pad the material, if you want to fill out a full six episodes, this is a fine place for it. And I thought that the aesthetic choices of having him pass out and then have this flashback and then being brought back into the action was expertly done. I don't have, I didn't find fault with any of that. But

• 14:30Andy Greenwald?

  yeah, I agree with it. And then there's just kind of a, does everything in the end come to two guys clobbering each other? I mean, long-term listeners of this podcast hope so. But beyond that, it's-

• 14:43Chris Ryan?

  So you didn't actually, even the Baylor fight, you were kind of bummed out about?

• 14:47Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I want to talk about that more specifically. Cause like, okay, so like big picture for this episode, I said this to you when we were talking offline. I think that the direction on the series through five episodes is equal to or greater than any direction of a Game of Thrones series thus far. And I don't say that to like do a drive by.

• 15:05Chris Ryan?

  And I don't say that lightly because Sipochnik and all those guys and.

• 15:08Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly. Mark Mylott, Sipochnik, other people who names I don't have in front of me like have did exemplary work in the original Game of Thrones, particularly on these big showcase battles, which is a different kind of filmmaking. That said, the way Ashford feels in the opening moments of this episode, from the mud and the fog, and more specifically, the colors, the muted color schemes and the extravagant armor of like the Baratheon horns and the gold, I don't even know what they are on the dudes with the mustaches. It's really, really evocative and it's really transporting and it is fantasy in a way that I think Game of Thrones intentionally leaned away from in its early going when the whole

• 15:52Andy Greenwald?

  point was not that this is a fantasy show on HBO, that this is an HBO show in a fantasy world. I loved those details. So again, that setup made me a little disappointed that, not that Dunk wasn't the best fighter. I thought that was well done and I like the disorientation and being inside of the helmet and everything like that, but ultimately he's just, they're just pounding on people and he's just getting stuck like a shish kebab.

• 16:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's a different, it's not going to be Littlefinger or Tyrion outsmarting people or, you know, some great game of chess that they're playing. It's about might. I've been really thinking about this element of the show that I don't know this how explicit it is. I think it is relatively explicit in the text, but if you're just watching it episode to episode, it may have passed you by, which is that this is like a kind of backwater tournament. This is not, this is not the final four that they're in, like the Targaryens are kind of pressed. To be there, they're not really happy about being at Ashford. Two of the Targaryen kids have gone AWOL. You can see Maekar in the beginning of the series is just kind of like, this is bullshit.

• 16:59Chris Ryan?

  Aeryn is obviously a sadist, so he's looking for any opportunity to torture people and be a bastard, or not literally, but you know, to be just a son of a bitch. And there was something about like the mud and the muck that they were fighting in that really felt Second City or, you know, like Away Game, you know? And I really liked that. And, you know, I, they've been building up to some sort of tournament battle the entire time. So I, I don't really know what other culmination this could come to, other than like, these guys are, these guys are fighting.

• 17:35Andy Greenwald?

  I do love the fact that it's essentially like you, you, you have a few extra hours in the city and you go by the Rucker and LeBron calls out KD and they're finally going to settle it there. And cameras haven't been invented yet. One of the other things the show has done so well is punched above its weight in terms of budget and production. Like when Casey gave the most recent interview that he gave about the state of HBO to Nelly at Deadline, Casey Bloys, he, he, he always does, he consistently talks about Night of the Seven Kingdoms as a creative success for them, but I think he is motivated and has good reason to be proud of the fact that they also quote unquote, "made it at a cost",

• 18:17Andy Greenwald?

  to prove that not everything in their most valuable IP needs to cost hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Not that they cheaped out on it, but it's a different structure. The opening of the battle brought that home. I was like, this is just incredibly beautiful. I mentioned the good direction, I should have said. Owen Harris directed this episode. He directed the first two as well, and Sarah Deena Smith did the other episodes, and I thought they were exceptional.

• 18:41Chris Ryan?

  She did the no block, yeah.

• 18:42Andy Greenwald?

  No, no step off at all. She's also done the finale that's coming up this week. When we got to the battle, of course, it should be from Dunk's perspective, but did you feel cheated at all? A, that we never saw our favorite horny Baratheon do his thing? And not only that, like when they mention at the end... Yes, two people died. I swear to you, I know this is my job to do this podcast with you. I don't know who they meant. I have no idea who actually died in the battle. Maybe there's a point to that, or maybe it only matters if you are like, deep, deep book diver.

• 19:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, what is it, like Harding and Beesbury died? I think that I'm a big rule follower.

• 19:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, Harding and Beesbury died.

• 19:20Chris Ryan?

  I'm a big rule follower when it comes to POV. Like, I, this is one of the things that really drives me crazy. And I think it's just a product of having watched too much television over the last 10 years, but I start to give myself, like, different neuroses. And one of them is, if this is a show, that's a story that's largely being told from, whether it's Marty on Ozark, or whatever's, whoever's POV, there are certain things that they would be privy to, there are certain things that they would not be privy to. And one of the things that drives me crazy, especially say in mystery shows, is when for the purposes of like, um, expediency or economy, they start telling you things that characters don't, wouldn't know, you know?

• 20:02Chris Ryan?

  And I, uh, sure, would love to have seen, um, three more minutes of this fight with people saying, "It's Lionel Baratheon and his horns, and he was coming, struck me with a mace."

• 20:16Andy Greenwald?

  Wait, wait, I'm sorry, I have to stop you. You don't like breaks in POV, but in terms of like narration and fourth wall.

• 20:23Chris Ryan?

  Well, that's, that's what you're really saying, right? Is that like, I got in a 15 minute fight. It, it appears about midway through, he's like, "Oh yeah, he's really fighting Aeryn." If you re-watch it, you can hear Maekar say, "My son, my son." And that, uh, Balor and Lionel hold him back. It's at the very end, when Maekar is like, breaking free from that hold, that he hits his brother in the back of the head with a, you know, a mace or whatever. And it's tragic. It's tragic that it happened at all. I mean, like, it's tragic that it's, it's, it's also one of my favorite things I was saying to Joe and Mal about Game of Thrones, is that there are elements of it that are prophesied, that are prophesied, whether it's, you know, the, you know, the prince who was promised,

• 21:06Chris Ryan?

  and this idea that somebody is gonna come back and save everything. And then, then 95% of the show, though. Or 95% of the story is this guy had the fortune or misfortune of standing here when this happened.

• 21:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 21:18Chris Ryan?

  And and there's a lot of luck that plays into it. And I think that this story is a great combination of both, where you have fortune tellers and dreamers talking about where things are gonna go. But ultimately, this is a guy who happened to walk into a puppeting tent the wrong time and and got mad because a prince was torturing a woman.

• 21:41Andy Greenwald?

  And the entire scope of fictional history was changed by that action. It was changed by egg shaving his head and running away like like everything. It adds to the majesty and grandeur of the show that everything is a butterfly flapping its wings. And it gives something that might otherwise just be, yeah, like a fairy tale novella, that feeling of importance and stakes. And and, you know, to to the show's credit, to the universe's credit, to George R. Martin's credit, like, one of the most compelling things about the series is the way that it rejects, not just rejects the idea in most fantasy or sci fi entertainment,

• 22:25Andy Greenwald?

  that there is a prince who is promised, that there is some sort of fate controlling things, even though it may seem bleak or dire at different moments. But it does so in a way that is in tune with our own reality, you know? And I know you're gonna laugh, and I'm intentionally, I'm not intentionally bringing up my recent reading of the novel Effengers, I promise. The reason I bring it up only is because in what that book taught me about like German history that I didn't know, for example, you probably knew, you're more of a history buff than I did, than I am. But like the Kaiser's son, who was married to Victoria's daughter and was going to like liberalize Germany and give everyone rights. And then he gets cancer and gets to rule the country for 90 days.

• 23:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he gets cancer.

• 23:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it was before the FSB and tender got involved, but.

• 23:11Chris Ryan?

  Cozy bear got.

• 23:14Andy Greenwald?

  But the larger point being that history doesn't move always the way it's supposed to. And there are a lot of these what ifs. And it always does seem to be the relatively decent would be leader who gets amazed to the back of that.

• 23:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's like, it's like, we'll go back and we'll look at 50 years or something and be like, well, clearly like the trends were moving in this direction. And I'm like, yeah, but the trends were moving in that direction because somebody got in a car accident. You know, like it did, there's, there's this incredible alchemy that happens when luck and happenstance hit fate. And Martin's a master of that. I was curious whether or not when Baylor walks back into the tent and they're counting up, counting up casualties and Baylor, you know, he looks okay at the beginning. And, you know, the NFL did not have an independent neurologist on hand. Do you think we still have a Baylor if they leave the helmet on? Like, what do you think? What did you think of the medical procedures?

• 24:08Andy Greenwald?

  So do you think?

• 24:09Chris Ryan?

  Like, he could just be Baylor, the guy who has to wear a helmet all the time.

• 24:12Andy Greenwald?

  All the time. So it's kind of like Tony Stark's little core thing. Like, if you move it one degree, there's no more hand of the king.

• 24:18Chris Ryan?

  Exactly. Oh, my God, that's my favorite character in a long time, man. Baylor is incredible.

• 24:22Andy Greenwald?

  He's too good for this world. When he comes out and he's just like, you are a good man, son. Like, okay, all right. I've seen this episode of McBane.

• 24:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:31Andy Greenwald?

  I think you make a good point about the medical and support staff. There is no blue tent. There is, there isn't any Tor at all that we know of. He does instruct them to take his helmet off. And it's, it is the kind of thing that you don't.

• 24:43Chris Ryan?

  He does. Take my helmet.

• 24:45Andy Greenwald?

  You know, the NFL is, is, has a lot of issues. But, but when Brian Daboll tries to go into the blue tent to say Jackson Dard doesn't really have a concussion, there are protocols that stop him from doing that. Whereas if Brian Daboll was, for example, heir to the throne, he could probably tell the doctors to fucking put that kid back in the game immediately. So he can run him directly into the defensive line six more times. You know what I mean?

• 25:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:08Andy Greenwald?

  So it is a little bit different. It's a beautifully executed show. And it proved that it could operate in different registers with this episode. I think there's just a part of me, and maybe it's just like a stubborn part of me, but like, I kind of wish it didn't. It didn't need to. It just, I don't know if it needed to do that, but maybe.

• 25:28Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I don't know the other alternative being like a 25 minute fight. I especially if they had told it from entirely Dunk's perspective and we wouldn't have really understood who was doing what at what given moment. I mean, I understand the practical reasons for breaking away from that. That would have been.

• 25:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I agree with that.

• 25:43Chris Ryan?

  Draining, you know, and it doesn't have the same dramatic arc. It doesn't have the same kind of like, and then this is going to happen and then this is going to happen the way Hardhome does. You know, where like, when you're like, first they've gotten to this point and then the dead rise and then they chase them and then they get to the water. It's like, these guys are all standing and feel wailing on each other until people drop. So it's, it's, it's a little, it's visually less dynamic than some of the other big set pieces we've seen in Friends history.

• 26:13Andy Greenwald?

  Do you have any notes for Rafe? I feel like, I feel like she fucked around and found out, you know what I mean? Like, she keeps stealing.

• 26:23Chris Ryan?

  I thought that the most interesting thing about the Rafe and Dunk part was Dunk being like, what if there's nothing better than this? You know, like, why, why are we leaving? This is all I've ever known.

• 26:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 26:33Chris Ryan?

  And that was probably the most telling, the most interesting element of when you think about everything he has done since then, and especially the choice he makes after Arlen dies. And he's just like, I'm going to decide to become something that I wasn't. It's the first time he's done that. So I thought that was just, there's just really good writing throughout this season. I just think that the flashback did take me out of it a little bit. I think if you watch it and you, especially if you watch it in totality, if you were to say like, I'm going to put aside three, four hours and watch this entire series. I still think that that flashback would jump out as like, I, I knew everything about this guy. I knew everything I needed to know about this guy.

• 27:10Andy Greenwald?

  When you said, put it that way about, I think that's, that's a good thing to latch on to though, that, that sort of,

• 27:16Andy Greenwald?

  the risk averse nature of him up to a certain point. It did remind me of the good old days of driving a 95 with you where like every so often I might get a little like, what if we took this exit? And you'd be like, this is fine. There's a Cinnabon 65 miles from here. Let's just stay the course. You know, you want someone like that by your side. I can't wait anymore.

• 27:37Speaker 07

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• 28:06Speaker 04

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• 28:50Speaker 04

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• 29:27Speaker 08

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• 29:48Chris Ryan?

  Where I want to talk about industry. This is episode six, Dear Henry, directed by Luke Snell and written by Mickey Down and Conrad Kay. I wrote out a list of the industry's book of revelations from this, from this episode. So I thought maybe we could go through these revelations one by one as a way of talking about the episode. Did you have any throat clearing? I want to make my opening statement to the jury about this particular episode, or do you want to do it sectionally with me?

• 30:15Andy Greenwald?

  I think we can do it sectionally. I think that I would preface this because this will come out clearly when we talk about some of the specifics, that I found this to be the most challenging episode, maybe of the series. And it has, it has inspired a lot of consideration and thinking about what aspects of this episode in particular in relation to the challenges of this fourth season and then the overall successes of the series, what might be contributing to that reaction. But I, it might be better to go granularly and then go widescreen.

• 30:50Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so I'm just basically going through my, the book of revelations, my revelations while watching this episode, and also the revelations internally within the show.

• 31:00Andy Greenwald?

  Is one of the, I don't want to spoil it, is one of them that you can be homo at school? Is that a revelation? Or was that just like, you've been to England, been to England? You know what I mean?

• 31:08Chris Ryan?

  Honestly, I've read enough spy fiction to know that that is, that's a truism. Um, number one, Whitney and Ferdinand are in bed with the FSB, perhaps somewhat unwittingly on Whitney's part, though he is packing a Lithuanian passport. And as I, this did not occur to me while watching, but when he's singing Whitney Houston to Harper at one point in the episode, several people noted like, that could be where he chose the name Whitney, if he is in fact a long-term sleeper agent on the part of the FSB to infiltrate the Western financial markets and system.

• 31:48Andy Greenwald?

  Or a long-term fan of past, gone too soon R&B queens.

• 31:54Chris Ryan?

  Yes, yes. It could be that he was just happened to be singing Whitney Houston, but is really more into the health advice from stand-up comedian Whitney Cummings.

• 32:03Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, that's really-

• 32:05Chris Ryan?

  And that's what, that's where, why he chose the name. Uh, this is a huge, um, twist, revelation, um, added element. It explodes the genre of the show to introduce the idea that this is actually, um, an international criminal syndicate and international, and, and a nation state's intelligence service working behind the scenes, um, to, to do whatever they're doing, and we're going to talk a little bit more in depth about, about what Tender is up to. And the idea that essentially that they're, they're mining for data and that they're looking for opportunities to blackmail, leverage and expose, uh, client,

• 32:48Chris Ryan?

  the client base. And I thought this was, this was such a huge, huge band, gambit. It's, it's like a real, like, are you either fucking with us or you're against us right now on part of the show? Because, man, they could have just done six, seven seasons of these crazy kids doing E and making trades. Uh, and I think I'd be fine with that. But this is, this is a huge, a huge swing.

• 33:16Andy Greenwald?

  I think that as, as challenging as that particular pivot within the episode may have been granularly on a story level, I do love this show's, and by when I say the show, we're talking about Mickey and Conrad's creative and artistic willingness to engage in as big of a picture as possible. Because if the show, you know, up to this point is so deeply concerned with the essential nihilism of, which is like the fourth time I've used that word in this podcast already, but it's 2026, of late period capitalism.

• 33:52Andy Greenwald?

  Push it further.

• 33:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:54Andy Greenwald?

  Meaning it is interesting and gross when enormous profits are being made due to lack of oversight or due to an over indexing of narrative over substance or any of the other things that you could accuse Tinder of or many other companies that still exist in our real world. But the next question behind that, and it's the same sort of question that one could bring and that some people in Congress are bringing to the Epstein stuff is it's not just who profits literally in terms of money, but who is also profiting from the overall structural lack of oversight? Like who can fill that gap?

• 34:36Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 34:37Andy Greenwald?

  Who can take advantage of that? And very often, the answers are extremely bad actors. And I don't mean bad actors in the cast of industry. I mean, like, the Russian Secret Service or a cabal of sex criminals in the case of what's going on in America right now. There's someone profiting behind the people who are more likely to take the fall for profiting. And I think the expansion of the aperture in that way is, you're right, it's a bold gambit in the show, but maybe this is also where a lot of our conversation about the episode is going to fall, which is, I completely see this vision and I'm excited about the expansion of the terrain. When we start talking about how it unfolds within episode six of season four, then I had more issues with it and how it is delivered.

• 35:20Andy Greenwald?

  But I think it's an exciting place for the show to go and in many ways, not an inevitable place, but a consistent place for it to end up, considering where it started and the trajectory it's been traveling on.

• 35:33Chris Ryan?

  I thought that that scene where Ferdinand comes out to Whitney and he's having a cigarette and is talking about how easily it is to rationalize becoming part of the Russian intelligence services because it cleared the path for him to become CFO of the Austrian bank that he had been working at, that Tinder acquired.

• 35:58Chris Ryan?

  Was a wonderful, wonderful scene and it's like just explicit enough. I think that I'll hear people out if they're like, I need to know explicitly like, is Whitney a Lithuanian citizen who moved to America with these orders? Or, you know, how much of his character is fashioned out of thin air? You can get, we'll, we'll talk about the, the night out that he has with Henry and the morning after revelations for discussions that those guys have. But, you know, they ride the, the third rail of like, how much do we need to show? How much do we need to tell for people to feel and to think, you know? Like they don't often will have, they will take, here's, any other show would do these

• 36:42Chris Ryan?

  four scenes and industry does it in two.

• 36:45Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 36:45Chris Ryan?

  And those two might be scene one and scene four, and you're missing the middle. And you get to the part where it's like exciting at the beginning and terrible at the ending, but you don't understand how you got there. I get that. I get how they do it and I like it a lot, but I can understand why people might bump on it. I think the reason why I like it so much leads me to my second revelation, which is that Whitney has become my favorite character on this show.

• 37:07Speaker 07

  What a turn by you.

• 37:09Chris Ryan?

  I don't know what happened, but here's the thing, I, you know, the, the obvious hybrid of, and there's something kind of wonderful about Max Mengele playing a Tom Ripley-esque character when his father directed one of the great adaptations of, of Ripley. But I love the fact that this guy is not going full Henry Hill and staring out the windows at helicopters and that he is like, he is associated, like I don't, I don't even know what the diagnosis of it would be, but even when everybody confronts him, every time he gets quote caught, every time you think he's, there is no, his back's not to the wall because there's no wall there. He's like, I'll just turn around and be something else.

• 37:54Chris Ryan?

  I'll just turn around and be something else. He never seems stressed and there's something remarkably. Gentle and also honest about the way that Mingel was playing this guy. And I just find it absolutely fascinating, maybe not easily trackable. Maybe I couldn't draw your character's arc over the course of the series so far. But he has become, he and Harrington are the two most explosive things in the series this season.

• 38:22Andy Greenwald?

  Did you, how did you feel about the moment on the PJ when he looks at the emergency exit briefly?

• 38:27Chris Ryan?

  Loved it, loved it. But like he said, Henry, by the, the cannery is just like, I'm not interested in suicide.

• 38:34Andy Greenwald?

  He said, I don't believe in it.

• 38:36Chris Ryan?

  I don't believe in it.

• 38:36Andy Greenwald?

  And then he lies about the history of suicide in his family, just like he's lied about every aspect of his family.

• 38:41Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Right. But that's the thing is that you're, if you're just constantly fashioning an identity. You know, I think, I almost think he was looking at it as like a symbol, like he was looking at the exit door as like more symbolic than he was like, what if I open this private jet door and just fall to my death?

• 38:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. I mean, one of the things that, that helps, I think, our enjoyment of the series and particularly our discussion of the series is the, the raw fissile material that these guys are playing with is extremely potent. And the idea of fake it till you make it being a life strategy and a winning life strategy, particularly if on some metrics, you have already unshakably made it. And that's the case with like someone who's landed gentry like Henry. You know, the episode ends with the implication that Henry is now on the hook for one of, for now, two of the greatest financial catastrophes in recent British history.

• 39:39Andy Greenwald?

  But his harpsichord room is still waiting for him, you know, like they're still running tours through it if, if, if he falls from this, from this height because he's not falling that far. I think the, that, that there's opportunity though, and I think this is one of the other things that I'm bumming up against and maybe it'll be resolved in the last two episodes because some of the other storylines have been, have been, have fallen aside or been pushed out of the frame and we'll talk about those specifically, Eric, but. The twinning of Harper and Whitney as American Fabulous is interesting to me. And I think clearly interesting to the show. But like with many things that I've been interested in in this season, the real estate simply hasn't been there to pursue it.

• 40:25Andy Greenwald?

  And maybe this is all part of an endgame to bring them together because that's what, I don't mean bring them together romantically or even psycho sexually as they've already been. I just mean to bring those storylines into harmony with each other in a different way.

• 40:37Chris Ryan?

  So I'm going to move up one of my revelations. I had the next one, I was going to talk to you about Eric's blackmail. But let's, I'm going to take the last one and put it here because you just sort of mentioned something fascinating. So much like Rishi several weeks ago where we're like, I guess that's it. I guess that's it for Eric. And then Ken lung did, Ken lung did a interview with Vulture the night of, like on Sunday night. It was released fairly soon after the episode came out and was pretty explicit about the fact that he shot quite a bit of material that is not in the show. Now I cannot wait to talk to Mickey and Conrad about this. I hope that they feel comfortable talking about it because I don't know if Ken was supposed to mention this,

• 41:21Chris Ryan?

  but he definitely seemed to allude to several scenes with the escort, Dolly, with his daughter, with his ex-wife, with Harper. Perhaps an entire kind of arc for his character that was a little bit more discernible.

• 41:39Chris Ryan?

  Instead, it feels like a guy who gets taken into the, it's basically like Tommy from Goodfellas to keep the Goodfellas stuff going. And he just is walking into his party and it goes, oh no. You know, like right as he gets the recognition from his daughter, the love that he craves, the love that he wants. He looks down at his phone and what we are to presume is Whitney is blackmailing him. Not only with video of his sexual encounter with this escort, but also proof that she's 14, 15.

• 42:10Andy Greenwald?

  It's, it's dark.

• 42:12Chris Ryan?

  She was born in 2011. So depending on when this is literally set, yeah.

• 42:15Andy Greenwald?

  And this is also, speaking of, this is an even bigger McBane scene than poor, poor Baylor.

• 42:22Chris Ryan?

  This is my best, this is my best.

• 42:23Andy Greenwald?

  This is a direct quote. He's just had the quote, "One miraculous run that makes you live again. Harpoon, you just gave me my favorite ever day in finance." Well, we should, we should be clear about this. There's no part of this interview where Ken Long is like, I fucking left-

• 42:39Chris Ryan?

  I'm mad that this got cut out.

• 42:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I'm mad about what left on the cutting room floor. He's very matter of fact about how he considers, and we've talked to him, like, he is a very, very thoughtful, intellectual actor who really-

• 42:50Chris Ryan?

  Intense, got it.

• 42:51Andy Greenwald?

  -intense about his process and what he needs to get to where he needs to go. And so he's sort of helpfully explaining to the, the questioner about like, his journey within Eric this season may have been different from the audiences because a, about his process and his internal thought and decision making, but also because, you know, he's like, well, I did these different things that, that were steps A, B, C, and D to get to what you saw.

• 43:15Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 43:15Andy Greenwald?

  This is not an indictment. Every show, cut scenes whole cloth. And part of the artistry of making television and, and, and film certainly is remaking the show. I mean, they, you say you make the show three times, in the script, on stages or on set, and in the edit room. And each time you start from scratch almost and you rebuild it. That's how all great works are, are, are made. So it's not a problem that these things were cut. But it is another piece of evidence, I think, to my larger sensibility about the season, which is, it's too much story. This is a, there's nothing wrong with the story. It's an exciting story and it's an incredibly ambitious thing.

• 43:55Andy Greenwald?

  And it has felt appropriate to be watching the season of industry against the backdrop of the Olympics where they're like, well, this guy is going to spin six times. And then if he doesn't, you're not like, this guy sucks. You're like, holy shit, imagine spinning six times.

• 44:12Andy Greenwald?

  I, I, I cannot help but shake the feeling that this is a 12-episode season of television that has been reduced to eight. And I don't, I want to be clear when I say this. I don't mean that they were given 12 episodes. I mean, they were given the same eight episodes they've been given every time.

• 44:27Chris Ryan?

  No, I think if anything, I would imagine that they would laugh at the idea that they would want 12 episodes for a season. I think that, yes, they shot stuff and yes, there's a feeling like we missed something there maybe, but I don't think that it's because like they were asked to reduce the episode. Or anything like that.

• 44:43Andy Greenwald?

  And also, part of their superpower, and we've praised them for this before, is get to the good stuff. You know, don't bore us, get to the chorus, but a TV show. Like, there's power in that, and there's still, even in this old prestige medium, there's still surprise in that. When this episode begins with Harper going straight to Yasmin to say, here's what I'm doing, you're sitting on a mountain of lies. It's like, oh, you know, she could have bought her dinner first, but no, the show is going right into this. But there are other things that I think that are suffer, that have suffered this season because of the frenetic pace and the lack of real estate. For example, early in this episode, we're told that Tender has quickly become the Gen Z choice for banking.

• 45:28Andy Greenwald?

  I'm like, I thought they've only been a bank for 10 days.

• 45:32Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 45:33Andy Greenwald?

  That seems very, very abrupt.

• 45:37Chris Ryan?

  That's a good point. I hadn't thought about that.

• 45:38Andy Greenwald?

  There's other things that are, that you can see in terms of character arcs. Like, we praised, and I will continue to praise, to High Heaven, the show's, fuck it, bravery in being like, we have reached logical conclusions for Rishi and for Eric with the conclusion of season three and the wrapping up of Peer Point. But we want to work with these people more. We want our show to have them. So we will just figure it out, and we will bring them back, and we will try to be honest and be true to what happened to these characters in the past. But there wasn't enough room for it, so.

• 46:12Chris Ryan?

  I'm gonna push back a little bit on those two characters because I think that there's something really interesting about the fact that they brought back two of the most beloved people on this show beyond maybe what the actual story structure supported. And they're almost like, this is what you get. This is what you get when you want these like guys to come back because you think Eric has badass lines or you think Rishi is a legend or whatever. I'm not saying that they're critiquing the viewer or that there is some sort of like meta-conversation about like, why, you know. That often happened with Succession where it's like, just so you know, these are bad people that you're cheering for, quote unquote. I don't think that's what's happening here. But I think that this is a world and a job and a set of consequences that chews people

• 46:56Chris Ryan?

  up and spits them out fast. And when you lose a couple of miles per hour off your fastball, like Eric did, Eric is a mess this season. He's fucking empty. He's an empty husk of a guy. We find him, he's basically spending his days playing golf, he's left his family, they bring him back. He doesn't seem to have the same fire, he doesn't seem to have the same acumen. He's basically propping this fund up with his own money, but all they can do is get meetings with these like, kind of lesser known family desks of investments, you know, whatever. And then every time Eric is kind of needed or counted on, he's also in the corner looking at his phone, watching Sweet Pea's OnlyFans video, or dialing up a teenage escort, it turns out. And he is being seduced into a world that he really

• 47:41Chris Ryan?

  no longer is built for. And you can make the same argument somewhat for what happens to Rishi. And it's like, watching these guys who we kind of looked at as like, bigger than life in previous seasons, get atomized is really fascinating to me. But I don't, I do agree with you. I agree with you about like, the telling of the story, though.

• 48:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think that, I think that what you just did is incredibly compelling argument for the fate of and treatment of those characters. And it takes nothing away from, you know, Cigar Radia and Ken Lung delivering arguably two of the best performances on the show this season. I just have the feeling that there was more there. And there simply wasn't room for it. And that has continued. This throughout, like, I was trying to think about aspects of the show that have been sacrificed for the complete, you know, the grafting of an entirely new body onto an existing body of a show.

• 48:43Andy Greenwald?

  There is a version of this season that I'm sure they've discussed or explored. We can ask them about this and their reasons why they chose not to do this. But starting this season with the breakup of Jonah and Whitney and Whitney taking over and then turning it into a bank and then we are in real time as he's recruiting our characters into positions of power, all so the house of cards can fall down within an episode and a half. It's a lot of legwork as opposed to starting the show with Tender as, you know, too good to be true already. And then we join it and we suddenly have access to its inner workings. There was a choice there to start that from scratch with the season.

• 49:24Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 49:25Andy Greenwald?

  One of the things that have been, some of the things that have been sacrificed along the way in the service of this becoming a show about global finance and fraud and also international espionage and journalism is none of these characters have any home or personal life anymore. Now, you could argue that, like you did artfully, that's the point. They have sacrificed every bit of themselves to become these full-time brain warriors in this arena that, you know, normals don't understand.

• 49:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, they've recreated Pier Point inside of a hotel.

• 50:00Andy Greenwald?

  It's smaller and smaller rooms and...

• 50:03Chris Ryan?

  But it's like, there is no, there's no separation between like, I'm going home now. Harper lives in a hotel. Eric lives in a hotel. Like, these guys, like, they are just now these people who haunt these sort of in-between spaces of work and home.

• 50:17Andy Greenwald?

  There is a, it's incredibly bleak as a human being watching the show, to watch a show and I don't think the comparison to the succession argument is, you weren't making this, but I mean, the larger argument that, well, these are bad people. I don't think these are bad people. These are husks of people. They're not good or bad. They don't have, they're not full lives. They don't exist. They don't do anything. Harper doesn't live anywhere. Harper doesn't want anything other than dominance. This is also where you start to feel the lack of a Rob who was too soft for this world ultimately. He was a romantic.

• 50:58Chris Ryan?

  As was Diker.

• 50:59Andy Greenwald?

  It's where you start to feel the loss of the old Rishi voice. Remember, Rishi became a prominent character in the show because Mickey and Conrad discovered that with the ADR, they could just pump jokes into an otherwise sterile environment. We've lost that voice and we've lost those jokes. It is hollowed out in a way that is quite bleak. And I know you have another revelation, but I just was feeling it so deeply in this episode that, that pit, you know.

• 51:33Chris Ryan?

  I love that. I love that because I think it's really real. I think it's, I think that I've been searching for a foothold emotionally on this season. In the past, it's been, it's been evident. In the past, it's been Rob's attachment to Yasmin. In the past, it's been Harper's sort of paternal obsession with Jesse Bloom. Whatever it's been, like this kind of recognizable thing that you've seen in other shows and you've heard in other stories. These people all openly being like, I am a construction and the only thing that's keeping me from self-immolation is total victory or moments of euphoria or basically

• 52:15Chris Ryan?

  like women sherbert and fluorescents, as Henry puts it, you know, and living in this euphoria either of success or excess. And I think that that is an uncomfortable place to be for 60 minutes a week sometimes, but as like a, I love it as an idea.

• 52:35Andy Greenwald?

  I love it as an idea too. I'm just, I'm struggling with the week to week.

• 52:38Chris Ryan?

  You're struggling with banging up against it.

• 52:40Andy Greenwald?

  Particularly because an episode like this, which at one, on the one hand feels like. It's designed to be totemic and iconic and have these enormous mythological falls. I mean, there's a line that made me stop in my tracks because I was like, wait. And there are many lines in the show where I'm like, what? But then it, you know, then it slowly like, what is the line about? Look at yourself, you're wavering at the scale of Valhalla. Like, these are elevated, you know?

• 53:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:11Andy Greenwald?

  Elevated stakes, elevated scale. But in practice, in the naughty busyness of these 59 minutes, I was experiencing it as one scene after another of characters making speeches to each other. And, and look, we have, we have the tapes, we have the records. I am a huge fan of the way these guys write dialogue, of the way these guys construct seasons of television. I struggled with this episode and the moment that I, was the hardest for me in the midst of it, was Eric goes on CNN with Whitney. And under the harsh studio lights of what is meant to be the real world,

• 53:55Andy Greenwald?

  you know, not their shadow world that they exist in, full of, you know, hotel club sandwiches and glory holes, like actually the Klieg lights are on and they're doing the public story. They quote Sun Tzu at each other and say more, you know, Valhalla.

• 54:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:11Andy Greenwald?

  Shit. I, I was hungering for a moment of prose, I guess, to kind of like-

• 54:18Chris Ryan?

  Rather than the poetry.

• 54:19Andy Greenwald?

  To drive it down because at a certain point, these people continue to talk at each other and I want them to actually talk.

• 54:25Chris Ryan?

  Henry is off the wagon, realizing that life is not worth living if you don't have euphoria. He and Whitney go out to a nightclub, I guess, you know? A, a, a London sex club where you dance, you stick your dick in some stuff.

• 54:44Andy Greenwald?

  Did that differ from your experiences of London nightlife? Because I, I'm reading Surprise here and that's not how I remember it.

• 54:52Chris Ryan?

  Um, no, it's just, um-

• 54:55Chris Ryan?

  They did kind of no show really does nightlife like this. No show does like these people getting after it and communicates the feeling of it. And honestly, no, no show really does morning after this way. And I thought that their, their canal conversation was a highlight of this episode. But I guess, um, Henry's personal relationship to substances and his relationship to his sexual identity and his marriage and just Henry in general is a, uh, something I wanted to discuss with you.

• 55:29Andy Greenwald?

  He has plenty of middle-class friends, which I thought was nice. Um, just while it's top of mind, the show does remain elite in its confidence in just dropping references to things that prove its bona fides and confuse 96% of the listeners, like elite reference to Topjaw.

• 55:49Chris Ryan?

  I thought that was great.

• 55:50Andy Greenwald?

  At the worst possible moment, you know, there wasn't like, there wasn't even time for it.

• 55:55Chris Ryan?

  Do you think the Topjaw guys were like, they mentioned us on industry, I hear.

• 55:58Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly. Let's see the exact moment when they do. Do you think Eating with Todd is like, oof, dodged a bullet there? Like finally, um, really, really low-key reference to Chiltern burning down, thus there not being anywhere to have fun anymore? Respect that. Um, yeah, the Henry thing, I mean, Kit Harington is phenomenal in the show and it is, it is interesting to think about all of the characters and all the performances in the light of the Ken Lang interview, because one of the things that I really have admired is that there have been moments in watching this season of the show where I am personally confused as to where and when these characters are in their emotional journey with themselves and with each other. And the actors appear completely confident. Now,

• 56:42Chris Ryan?

  They seem to understand it.

• 56:43Andy Greenwald?

  They're great actors and famously, this is a very collaborative, uh, set and that Mickey and Conrad are very available to the actors, very close to the actors. So they're there to, you know, make sure they know what's going on. But clearly they, they understand where they are in the story, which is a, which is a good thing and a helpful thing as an anchor.

• 57:04Andy Greenwald?

  Do you feel, does your more liberal attitude towards the speed, the run of play here, does that apply to, just to talk about Henry, to talk about where Henry has gone in this season in a relatively short amount of time and specifically the state of his marriage? Because the whisper down the line skepticism that opened the episode was interesting, but also to me felt a little reductive, that Harper tells Yas and Yas says fuck you, then Yas tells Henry and Henry says fuck you, and then Henry goes to Whitney and he's a little-

• 57:40Chris Ryan?

  Whitney and Whitney is like, fucking A.

• 57:42Andy Greenwald?

  Well said. In terms of the Henry emotional storyline, performance, great, depth that he contains, fantastic, but in terms of where he is and what he's doing and how angry he is at Yasmin?

• 57:53Chris Ryan?

  I think he's angry because he wants to be whoever he wants to be at that given moment and he doesn't want anybody to tell him not to. And I don't think that he and Yas are capable of being some, on any given Wednesday, we can, we can go out and have a normal night. Like, they, they're either like crying, making up with each other, or fighting, but I don't think they're capable of being the couple that I want, I think Yasmin projects out across decades of, you know, wealth and power in the UK aristocracy. I think she wants that.

• 58:32Chris Ryan?

  I think she wants to project forward a, a new stability that she lost with her father. And Henry is like, I can barely keep myself alive. And if I'm not feeling, not only like the main character, but the prince who was promised, like, I literally have to be the guy who's out there saving the world with an app. Then it's not worth doing. Nothing is worth. I just don't even want to get out of bed. All I want to do is crush up pills under my combat boots and snort them off a harpsichord and die.

• 59:05Andy Greenwald?

  One of the low key brilliant things about the way the character is presented is he is always in costume. Not at his costume birthday party, which is telling, and that was his lowest moment, but he is always wearing the corporate swag. He was wearing the Lumi swag. He's wearing the tender swag. When he goes to the Rough Trade Club or whatever that ends up being, he looks like he's always been there. You know, he always, and when he gave his speech, like at the event in the previous week, he is, you know, the shirt is unbuttoned just so. And the sleeves are rolled up. He always looks the part because he himself is, you know, terrifying.

• 59:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I just think that like that scene where he's waking up, everything has sort of gone to shit because Harper's done her presentation. Yasmin has been calling him and she finally gets him and is just like, I can't believe you're doing this to me again. Tells you everything you need to know about their relationship.

• 1:00:01Andy Greenwald?

  Where are you with the Harper of it? I think that the Harper card, this has happened before in previous seasons. I think that the Harper, the centrality of Harper to this season will emerge in the last two episodes. Stern Tao is now just Stern again.

• 1:00:16Chris Ryan?

  And she has done what Eric prophesized. She has become a world killer. You know, she is able to stand up in front of people and just be like, I make it. So I've declared that this is bullshit.

• 1:00:28Andy Greenwald?

  You know, and the market's response.

• 1:00:29Chris Ryan?

  I saw some people online critiquing the fact that there was no evidence, evidence that she wasn't really presenting a lot of evidence. She was just like, it's a, you know, house of cards on top of a Ponzi scheme. And that was like enough for people to be like, oh, okay. But I don't think that that speech that she gave, I think the whole point was that she was supposed to talk about like women in finance and instead used it as a pivot to talking about like.

• 1:00:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, she said, I think that I hope you'll indulge me. Like instead of talking about whatever, I'm going to show you a woman doing her job.

• 1:01:02Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Yeah. Um, I don't really, I don't, the jury's still out on Harper. Mahal's performance, I'm not even talking about. I'm talking about the character and what she's doing this season because she is a little bit.

• 1:01:18Chris Ryan?

  I think that they have left her emotional or character journey a little bit to the side as they have focused on Henry.

• 1:01:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, there is no. I mean, it's all off screen. And look, I'm fully aware of the inconsistencies here. We started this podcast by saying, you know what? Dunk is dunk. We don't need to know his traumatic origin story. And then we get to Harper, and Harper, a character who I quoted this last week, said in the season, "My trauma was traumatic, and that's enough of that." I admire that. I think it's a strong choice, particularly the way TV has gone the last 10 or 15 years. But you also have to deal with the consequences. And if everything that is emotional happens to the character off-screen, or you shred a card and you take a phone call, that's asking a lot of the performer, and it's asking a lot of your writing to

• 1:02:07Andy Greenwald?

  have enough ballast to support her in all of the things that she does. So sometimes I just don't, I'm confounded. There's a difference between someone, a character, who surprises everyone by zagging, as Harper has done in the workplace, and then there's been moments this season where I've been actively confused. Like when Eric is delivering his speech on CNN, and it cuts to Harper, and she's like, wow. She's like, she's basically like, "Look at God." And I don't understand what he's doing. I don't understand what's notable about that. I didn't fully get the power of what he was doing and why it was landing on her. And we then ended in a place that, again, supports the nihilistic, "These are shells, who I love the analogy you used, who have lost their fastball, and this is

• 1:02:52Andy Greenwald?

  what happens to failed men," version of Eric. But it also, we have to say that this has been a four-season intensely intimate relationship that ends with a disappointment and rejection that felt, it didn't feel final. It didn't feel ultimate. It felt of a piece with ways that they have argued and fought before.

• 1:03:18Chris Ryan?

  You mean the last scene?

• 1:03:20Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not, and I want to be careful, because I'm not criticizing the choice. I don't think these characters were ever bound for a hug. You know, I don't think that that was the nature of it. And it also might not be done. You know, we said last season, "There's no way Rishi's on the show again. There might not be a way that Eric is on the show again." It is smart that they keep us guessing on that score. But I felt, I was...

• 1:03:46Andy Greenwald?

  Disappointed that I didn't feel more in that parting because I wasn't on, I wasn't confident in my read of where everyone was in that moment.

• 1:03:56Chris Ryan?

  I think that the argument that I would make in favor of how that relationship concludes, even if it's disappointing for people who are, who find Harper and Eric to be the most fascinating relationship in the show, of which I've often counted myself as one of their number, is that

• 1:04:15Chris Ryan?

  the reason Harper is good at what she does, if you accept that premise, is because she is invulnerable, because she has nothing to be vulnerable over. There is nothing about her family, there is nothing about her love life, there is nothing about her past. And yes, she, in previous seasons, she was trying to cover up her, she didn't have the degree that she said she had, or maybe she wanted to hide certain aspects of her, of her history or biography. But I don't think she's like that anymore. And I don't think she cares about anything other than winning. And she doesn't seem, we've barely seen her outside of the office. And when we have, she's with people from the office. Or doing things like having sex with Whitney in a scene that takes on a whole

• 1:04:59Chris Ryan?

  new kind of layer of symbolism from earlier in the season.

• 1:05:05Chris Ryan?

  She's only exists to do one thing. She's a shark. And Eric, for as much acumen as he may have, and for the 10 million that he threw in and for all that stuff, he's vulnerable. He is vulnerable.

• 1:05:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, they can't get her.

• 1:05:18Chris Ryan?

  And he has things to lose. And he can see, and right in front of him, like, everything he stands to lose if this tape comes out, the kid's never going to speak to him again. You know? And I think that that is how, we may want the hug, and we may want the catharsis between Eric and Harper, but it's an indication of like, one's built different.

• 1:05:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think that's, you know, the more we talk, and I appreciate your level headedness on this, I imagine that if and when I re-watch the season, I will be more enthralled by the possibilities and the expansion of the world.

• 1:05:59Chris Ryan?

  Well, you notice that everything that I'm saying, I'm like, here's this theme, or here's this idea, or here's this way, I think this may be, I don't disagree that there are clunky lines, that there are times when I'm like, this didn't quite connect or make sense. Like, it's not a flawless series or season, but I don't think that there's a show on TV that makes me think about this stuff the way industry does.

• 1:06:20Andy Greenwald?

  There's even, you know, essentially a throwaway scene where they get to also like, get a couple shots off at Trump, and there's the American guy there, and Chloe Peary delivers this withering put-down. And when you get a moment like that, I'm like, the audacity of the show to be all the things that it's been, and also in its own very specific British way, take something from The Wire, in the sense of it's all connected, and everything in this show, the phones in Pierpoint and the data lines are connected to every other building in London and in the world. And the audacity and imagination and creativity

• 1:07:01Andy Greenwald?

  to say, our show runs the length of these cables, that it is connected, this isn't just about these people, you know, trying to get ahead, or trying to get off, or whatever the first season could be reduced to, I think is commendable and exciting. And so a scene like that, which we almost, we barely have a moment to register as the, as the car zooms past it, is really fascinating. And then you dig a little bit deeper into the, like, to the metadata, and you're like, you know, the, so much of the season's ideas and themes are inspired by the real-life wirecard fraud that happened in Germany.

• 1:07:38Chris Ryan?

  The Bentab piece from New Yorker.

• 1:07:40Andy Greenwald?

  Huge piece in The New Yorker about it that I remember reading at the time, and it takes on a different relevance when you, after you've watched the show as well.

• 1:07:48Andy Greenwald?

  You know, there's, you can read that. And so much of it is about, well, Germany, like Angela Merkel walked this profoundly fraudulent, riddled with Russian intelligence company up to President Xi and was like, you should do a deal with them because they're the pride of Germany, primarily because Germany wanted to be in the fintech space.

• 1:08:11Chris Ryan?

  And they wanted to diversify.

• 1:08:12Andy Greenwald?

  And they want the narrative. So to read that article, as Mickey and Conrad did, and say, well, what does England want? And what would it be like in England? And how does it become an English story by tying in the aristocracy and, and tabloid culture and everything else that it did is remarkable and thrilling and works from a top level. So it is, in the spirit of two episodes remaining, it is, it does feel a little peevish to be like, these things aren't working for me, but the project is remarkable.

• 1:08:44Chris Ryan?

  This show can be anything it wants to be, but there are costs to that.

• 1:08:47Andy Greenwald?

  Look at you putting a button on stuff.

• 1:08:48Chris Ryan?

  Outside of my window, the Noah's Ark is about to happen. There's like flash flood.

• 1:08:55Andy Greenwald?

  We just got flash flood warnings here in the studio. That's after the fire alarm stopped going off. So if this is our-

• 1:08:59Chris Ryan?

  I'm gonna let you guys figure that out.

• 1:09:01Andy Greenwald?

  This is our last show. What a way to go.

• 1:09:03Chris Ryan?

  You know, if people have questions about industry, I'd love to hear from our listeners about how they're feeling about this season. Send us your emails, [email protected]. Thanks to Kai, thanks to Kaia. And hopefully I'm feeling better and I'll be in studio on Thursday.

• 1:09:16Andy Greenwald?

  You're amazing. Shout out Dayquil.

• 1:09:18Chris Ryan?

  That's what it was. It was Dayquil. It wasn't that, a weird hole in my bathroom that I went to go. See you later.

• 1:09:33Speaker 04

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