Pod Insights The Watch ‘Andor’ Season 2, Episodes 4-6 and the Many Faces of Cassian. Plus, ‘Everybody’s Live.’ About this episode Chris and Andy talk about an interview HBO head Casey Bloys gave on the Town podcast and what it revealed about the streamer's strategy in 2025 (6:55). Then they talk about the latest episode of ‘Everybody’s Live’ and how the show has started to improve after leaning into more traditional late-night practices (21:32), before they break down Episodes 4-6 of ‘Andor’ Season 2, which has leaned fully into the spy genre (27:34).
Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald
Producer: Kaya McMullen
Video Production and Editing: Jon Jones
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Transcript 17,285 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:58 Speaker 02 I need sports staff to clear the room. Stand up and walk now.
1:04 Chris 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 with his sister Rhinodium, it's Andy Greenwald.
1:18 Andy Greenwald? You watch Andor like a chemist.
1:19 Chris Ryan? I watch Andor like a cat. You can't get nothing by me.
1:22 Andy Greenwald? It's amazing.
1:23 Chris Ryan? Whiskers are twinkling. Uh, Greenwald, great to see you. It's Thursday. We are going to be talking about episodes four through six of Andor's season two today. Quick housekeeping, I've been remiss in mentioning that you can email us at [email protected] . Please, you know, ask us questions about Andor, ask us questions about TV shows.
1:41 Andy Greenwald? I feel like that email address was pretty much exclusively used by medical professionals to share their own experiences watching The Pit.
1:48 Chris Ryan? Yes.
1:48 Andy Greenwald? And I think it's time to open it up.
1:50 Chris Ryan? Any Rebels out there currently engaged in revolution?
1:54 Andy Greenwald? What about fashion designers?
1:55 Chris Ryan? Exactly. Um, you can do that. You can watch us on the Ringer-TV YouTube channel, you can watch us on Spotify where you listen to us, and you can follow us on Instagram, thewatchpod underscore.
2:07 Andy Greenwald? Kai has been cutting up some fire clips.
2:09 Chris Ryan? She has a no- For viral moments, I'll give her that. We're here to talk about Andor, but you wanted to do a couple of things at the top. You know, I was gonna make a joke to you.
2:18 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, yeah.
2:18 Chris Ryan? This is good. This, I want to put the most important headline.
2:21 Andy Greenwald? I want you to be happy.
2:21 Chris Ryan? I was, I, I was operating all week that it was Rydronium that Saw, Guerrero and Woolman are sniffing at the end of episode six of, of Andor, or episode five of Andor.
2:33 Andy Greenwald? Huffing, I think is the term.
2:34 Chris Ryan? Yeah, sniff, huff.
2:36 Andy Greenwald? Well, which one gets you there faster?
2:39 Chris Ryan? Alaska, Irvine, Welsh. And I thought it was Rydronium.
2:43 Andy Greenwald? Hmm.
2:43 Chris Ryan? And I spent a solid five minutes today trying to come up with the right Young Dro.
2:49 Andy Greenwald? Hmm, thank you for that.
2:50 Chris Ryan? Joke for Rydronium, and then I found out it was Rydronium. I had added an R, but it did lead me to reading about a bunch of Young Dro mixtapes.
2:58 Andy Greenwald? Fantastic.
2:59 Chris Ryan? That I kind of forgot.
3:00 Andy Greenwald? Should we name our favorites?
3:01 Chris Ryan? I don't know if anyone's ever been better in the game at naming his mixtapes.
3:04 Andy Greenwald? Okay.
3:04 Chris Ryan? So after he opens up in 06 and 08 with Day One and I Am Legend, just kind of your typical rap mixtape title.
3:11 Andy Greenwald? Mm-hmm.
3:12 Chris Ryan? 2009, R.I.P., parentheses, I killed that shit.
3:19 Chris Ryan? 2009, again, just month, a month later. Black boy swag, white boy tags. That was when he was dressing all in pull. This is a great Atlanta rapper that Andy and I really enjoyed.
3:29 Andy Greenwald? But, okay, I just, I appreciate you explaining the-
3:32 Chris Ryan? Did Young Dro ever get canceled?
3:34 Andy Greenwald? This is a bit late to be asking that question.
3:37 Chris Ryan? Anyway, Young Dro had really good mixtapes.
3:41 Andy Greenwald? I also think people should understand that for the last, I mean, this is always the case with you, but particular, particularly like the last two, three weeks, every waking moment, you have just been grinding tape and content. And so for you to say, I took five minutes to go down a Young Dro rabbit hole. This is a, this is a beautiful thing.
4:00 Chris Ryan? 2011's, I co-signed myself.
4:03 Andy Greenwald? These are just smart ways to live your life.
4:05 Chris Ryan? Dro Cabulary, of course, R.I.P. too. I killed that shit, the sequel. Ralph Lauren, Rifa.
4:11 Andy Greenwald? Mm-hmm.
4:12 Chris Ryan? Uh, Adderall Flow. I gotta get that one. That's 2018. I wonder if that's good. Um, I don't know why. I just need to get that off my chest.
4:19 Andy Greenwald? Sure.
4:19 Chris Ryan? I did the work.
4:20 Andy Greenwald? You did.
4:21 Chris Ryan? You did the work.
4:22 Andy Greenwald? Never let it be said that you don't do the work.
4:24 Chris Ryan? Uh, you listened to The Town this week. I listened to it as well. I listened to part one. I haven't gotten to part two yet. Matt Bellany, uh, who has an amazing podcast called The Town that he does, my, my buddy and co-worker Craig Horbeck over, uh, here at The Ringer, and it obviously gives an inside view into what's happening in the halls of power in the show business industry and the entertainment industry. Matt had Casey Boyes on for a two-part conversation. We can talk a little bit about how we felt about that.
4:50 Andy Greenwald? Thank you.
4:51 Chris Ryan? Did you feel a way?
4:53 Andy Greenwald? Um, no, I think that Casey is a busy guy and a lovely guy, and clearly he should be talking around the town. I thought it was very nice that, that Matt began his podcast by saying he knew how special this was because Casey is a watch fan.
5:06 Chris Ryan? Mm-hmm.
5:07 Andy Greenwald? And that's when Casey lost me a little bit because then he started listing the other Ringer podcasts that he enjoys, including Sports Card Nonsense, which kind of surprised me.
5:15 Chris Ryan? That was a shock. Him listening to New York, New York with John Strumsky.
5:18 Andy Greenwald? No one, no one saw that coming.
5:20 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
5:21 Andy Greenwald? Um, I thought it was a really, really good, it's a two-part.
5:24 Chris Ryan? Yes.
5:24 Andy Greenwald? Interview, and I recommend people check it out. There's a lot of stuff in there that's worth, uh, listening to if you're a fan of HBO shows or the industry in general. But I did think that Matt started in a place that helped me reframe something that I think is, that we have been talking about and talking around for a while now. Um, which is that maybe there has been a demarcation. Let's say if there was a Wikipedia page for the streaming wars, this would be the beginning of a new chapter.
5:52 Chris Ryan? Oh, okay.
5:53 Andy Greenwald? Um, we often talk about.
5:55 Chris Ryan? Spend a lot of time on Wikipedia?
5:56 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, I learned a lot of stuff on Wikipedia. I spent a lot of time on the Wikipedia page for Chris Ryan, the British war novel writer. And I still, you have like, you have a Reddit fan community that is robust, and yet I don't think you have a Wikipedia page devoted to your.
6:12 Chris Ryan? Let's not give anybody any ideas.
6:13 Andy Greenwald? I just did.
6:14 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
6:14 Andy Greenwald? I just did. I think someone should create a completely fictional Wikipedia page for you about just the legendary shit.
6:19 Chris Ryan? Okay.
6:20 Andy Greenwald? Khaki King, just like everything.
6:23 Chris Ryan? R.I.P. I killed that shit.
6:25 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
6:25 Chris Ryan? All my mixtapes from 2010.
6:27 Andy Greenwald? Bang, bang, bang, all the hits. We often talk about how it's very hard to even talk about whether things are successful or whether one service is, quote unquote, you know, beating another one or doing better because it is such, it's just like existentially different businesses that some of these companies are in.
6:49 Andy Greenwald? The move over the last few years to shift into streaming did seem like, you know, a bunch of rebels on Gorman trying to organize against the empire. What was interesting about what Casey and Matt, how Casey and Matt framed it, and this is also, I guess, backed up by a recent Wall Street Journal article, is that the major skirmishes of the David and Goliath era of streaming are over. That companies like Warner Brothers Discovery with their Mac service have pretty much admitted that their initial dream of creating a Netflix killer, or at least a Netflix competitor, is gone.
7:27 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
7:29 Andy Greenwald? That they simply cannot compete on the scale of a established global brand like Netflix. And similarly, you know, trying to keep up with the deep pockets of your Amazons and your Apples might also be impossible. The takeaway, which I thought was really fascinating, is that they are leaning on the horse that brung them there in the first place, which is quality scripted programming. And credit to our guy Casey for not gloating about that, for keeping very, you know, level headed in the company line. And basically say, because remember a few years ago, and it's only been like two and a half years since Mac's launched, two years?
8:09 Chris Ryan? That seems incredibly wild to me, but go ahead.
8:12 Andy Greenwald? But.
8:13 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I guess you're right.
8:14 Andy Greenwald? But the play was, it is the irresistible combination of new seasons of White Lotus and Last of Us, plus new seasons of Dr. Pimple Popper, that will elevate this new entity.
8:28 Chris Ryan? I think it was Zaslav's idea was that. Or the idea that was articulated by Zaslove was that everybody in your family will be using Max to find something to watch. And that there will be Food Network, NHGTV stuff.
8:40 Andy Greenwald? Magnolia.
8:40 Chris Ryan? And Magnolia, but also prestige television, but also kids programming, but also sports. And it was just gonna be a one stop shop. And in some, when you turn on the Max app, you can kind of see the outlines of that. You know, I think everybody gets different stuff programmed to them algorithmically, but you can see the, the broad strokes of that. It's just there's, as you'll, as you'll say, it's like, it's difficult to sustain that kind of scale and that kind of breadth. As Netflix, it doubles and triples your, your subscription.
9:10 Andy Greenwald? It's also just sort of, just simple, um, in a way, it's just sort of simple. You, you can't really be great at everything. You can barely be good at everything, but certain people, certain places, certain companies, certain development teams are gifted enough to be good to great at one specific thing. And it helps when that one specific thing is still not just the driver of this podcast, but largely the driver of entertainment culture at the moment, which is scripted television shows. So I thought it was really interesting that they are positioning themselves, or the market has positioned itself, positioned them for it. That they are a secondary service, right? That like, the hope is that if you, once you've paid for, uh, your Netflix, you probably have Amazon just for shipping. What else are you gonna spend money on?
9:55 Andy Greenwald? And the draw will be to watch the shows that people are still talking about.
9:58 Chris Ryan? Which in a way is like coming home to what HBO always has been, which is a prestigious, uh, extra channel.
10:05 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
10:05 Chris Ryan? For, for, for people who've already got a basic cable subscription and want to have access to, yeah, movies, but also.
10:12 Andy Greenwald? And documentaries and comedy specials.
10:14 Chris Ryan? Yeah, for the last couple of decades, for Sunday night television and for big takeout prestige TV.
10:20 Andy Greenwald? Now, the other thing that I thought he articulated really well, and I'm not just saying this because this complements our coverage here, is how crucial the success of the pit is for the gambit that they are now attempting. That it's, that, that when, it's intentionally that I think they're saying, um, scripted content of, at a high level. They're not saying, you know, Sunday night prestige. HBO shows, they're saying we can be a place where you will watch the shows you want to be talking about. And they could be high, they could be low, they could be mid, but that's the, but we are really good at this. And that's an, that's an enormously important plank in what they're going to be doing.
10:53 Chris Ryan? Absolutely. I think, you know, it's funny, I was listening to Casey and then reading the Wall Street Journal article that sort of prompted this conversation between Casey and Matt and.
11:01 Andy Greenwald? Were you happy to be getting some value from your, your subscription outside of the editorial page?
11:06 Chris Ryan? Well.
11:07 Andy Greenwald? I'm glad.
11:08 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
11:08 Andy Greenwald? That's good for you.
11:09 Chris Ryan? Um, and for as much as I was thinking about Max, I was also thinking about Netflix. And what does a company behave like once land is no longer in view? You know, once like the, the pack is, is gone behind them.
11:25 Andy Greenwald? Oh, they don't, they no longer feel the pitter patter of.
11:28 Chris Ryan? So, I mean, I think that we've tried to, I think we can have a laugh at some of the stuff that's on Netflix. And then we are also a pretty, pretty staunch defenders of like the big swings and its reach especially. And the fact that you can see something like adolescence, baby reindeer, get brought to so many eyeballs and become such a sensation. I also think they still take chances. There's tons of really interesting international programming. To say nothing of things like Ripley that they saved from like sort of network limbo and.
12:01 Andy Greenwald? Showtime limbo.
12:01 Chris Ryan? And roll, gave a, a full F Y C rollout and pushed for awards and it's just a gorgeous piece of television. But in the same way that you think about what happens if all of our, you know, information and communications are run by Apple and Google? Or everything that we watch is through this one app. You know, you wonder how, not the company behaves ethically, although I suppose you could, but what kind of decisions get made? At what point when they're like, well, we have everyone, they're a captive audience. Now, yes, you can get in and out of your Netflix, you know, subscription and you, some people still do that. I'm going to sign on for Stranger Things, watch it for a week and then cut my subscription.
12:45 Andy Greenwald? The churn, as they call it.
12:46 Chris Ryan? Yeah. And those people who do that, I think are very like.
12:51 Chris Ryan? They're very active TV watchers and they're very, you know, they're very precise about how much they're spending and they're very precise about when they're going to be watching what they're watching.
13:01 Andy Greenwald? NFL draft experts call that twitchability.
13:03 Chris Ryan? Twitchability, but I'm curious whether or not like we see in a year from now if Netflix is arriving at, I mean, where are they at 300 million subscribers was where they ended last year. To give people a comparison, Max is hoping to hit, expects to hit 150 million, so half of that in 2026. So we're talking about a 2X thing, right? You know, and if that's the case, what does Netflix look like when there's nobody to hold Netflix back? Do they continue to invest $9 billion in content per year?
13:38 Andy Greenwald? Oh.
13:39 Chris Ryan? Do they start buying sports? Do they start going after some of?
13:42 Andy Greenwald? So this is like the marathoner who's been sprinting and looks back and the field is gone.
13:47 Chris Ryan? Right, but it's more like, I'm not even saying a monopoly, but what, if Netflix creates a monopoly-like hold over the global television audience, what does global television look like?
14:00 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it's a valid question. I, it's certainly not settled because for as much as we say like, oh, they've, they've decided there'll be a second place or a third place or we're fighting over scraps, like Max is continuing to build out globally. Like that was the one, one of the many things that it was behind on. So it's launching in different countries and if you were a country where maybe you saw Game of Thrones, you watched it on Sky or through a licensing deal, Max is probably going to be the home of it going forward in your country and they expect you to sign up for it all over again. It is, it's a really good question and it makes me think also about something that came up in the, in the conversation between Matt and Casey, which was Matt's, and he said this before, insistence that he doesn't understand why Netflix doesn't diversify internally
14:45 Andy Greenwald? what it does. Basically have channels within itself because he rightfully says this, and I know this in personal experience, if you meet with people or you talk to people who work on the Netflix scripted side, they are A, justifiably proud of a lot of the work that they do and the shows that they make and Adolescence being the most recent sterling example of it. Also, do not consider themselves in a first place position because the business that they feel that they are in is still competing with the programming and developmental gold standard set by FX, set by HBO, the other programming executives that they themselves
15:30 Andy Greenwald? are competing with within their corner of the larger Netflix structure. You know, I don't feel like their attitude towards scripted is, oh, thank God, the floor is still lava because.
15:41 Chris Ryan? Right.
15:42 Andy Greenwald? Now, you could make an argument that if they did operate from that point of view, maybe we would see bolder swings.
15:48 Chris Ryan? On the scripted side?
15:49 Andy Greenwald? On the scripted side, knowing that the other 70% of the company is going to keep hitting no matter what.
15:55 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I mean, there's, there was an old idea back in the day of, you know, like, early days, like 2010s blogging, I think Gawker Media was when somebody very much popularized this was that they had somebody who was basically blogging like viral moments all day long and because of the reliable traffic that they would get from that, they would then try to pay for some of the more like specific or individualistic flights of fancy of the journalists that were working at the company, right? It was just like you, you, you make the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches so that you can experiment in the kitchen with something else or try to give somebody like a very unique experience. I don't know whether or not that works on the level of Netflix, but that's an interesting idea.
16:40 Chris Ryan? So you think almost like if they've got this baseline of Drive to Survive and Flora's Lava and all the dating shows where people are like held in a redacted site before they can meet the person that they're in love with, like.
16:54 Andy Greenwald? Rendition, the romance, the hookup show.
16:56 Chris Ryan? That they should then be making almost bigger swings on the scripted side.
16:59 Andy Greenwald? I think they could be. I mean, this is not something that I've spent a lot of time thinking about, but the. The sort of existential fear and fear of missing out and save my job, stay one foot ahead of, say, one step ahead of everyone else is prevalent in this industry. Maybe it always has been. You rarely see anyone operate from a position of confidence or strength anymore. And it is interesting to note that Netflix doesn't really either in terms of its scripted stuff. Now, you could say that's good because it keeps them young and hungry and nimble and, but there is an argument you could make that they are
17:39 Andy Greenwald? better positioned than anyone else to really be trying to shape the future of the industry and not being reactive to what's happening right now or to the past, you know, which, which is, you know, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in the conversations that I have, it is not so much at the moment, I said it enough for it to be a cliche just for podcast listeners, let alone people who are actually like going to meetings and things, the whole like, you know, let's bring back 90s procedurals, let's, the pit being the best example of that. The conversations that I'm hearing much more now are how do we bring back the early 2010s? Like, how do we bring back, and your friends and neighbors might be in attempt to sort of address that, like nostalgia for the first era of prestige
18:23 Andy Greenwald? TV, of difficult men's shows, of ongoing, you know.
18:27 Chris Ryan? So we've already gotten out of how do we get hospital shows and friends hanging out and apartment shows and now we're back to we need to get Damian Lewis versus Paul Giamatti?
18:37 Andy Greenwald? Kind of. I mean, didn't, didn't you say that you are being serviced billions on Instagram reels right now?
18:42 Chris Ryan? Yes, I am.
18:43 Andy Greenwald? Scene by scene? I mean, it's not a bad, not a bad play. Anyway, the main takeaway, though, and I think the one that we could just end this conversation on as being slightly heartening, was there is, and I feel like this also tracks with Cassian Andor's belief about revolutionary struggles. Do your best to be calm and take the long view and be patient, because the things that you're good at, you know, the things that got you this far might be able to get you out. And you get in trouble when you change. You know, when you're overly reactive to the winds of change or of the moment.
19:19 Chris Ryan? Uh, just, just as a, since we're talking about Netflix, I think it's worth, you wanted to mention Malia's most recent episode. I'll just say today is the day that Tina Fey's new show Four Seasons comes out. And I really enjoyed this show quite a bit. I see it's gotten some mixed reviews. I think it's worth it entirely for Coleman Domingo's performance. It's a great, great comic, but also dramatic performance. And it is, personally, I just found it a very enjoyable dramedy with all, with much more of an emphasis on the comedy than the drama. But it has some elements of drama. It's based on a 1970s or early 80s Alan Alda movie.
19:59 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, with Carol Burnett.
20:00 Chris Ryan? And it's just about a group of friends, some of whom are couples, taking trips together over the course of a year. Whether it's to visit kids in college.
20:09 Andy Greenwald? Everyone's couples. Everyone's couples.
20:11 Chris Ryan? Yes, it evolves over the course of the season.
20:15 Andy Greenwald? At the start, anyway.
20:15 Chris Ryan? Yeah. And, yeah, I thought it was really, really enjoyable. I know some people, I, I, I was, it was kind of cool to see Coleman Domingo get to be like a comic lead in this way, or a comic player in this way.
20:28 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, and I think it's fun also to see people like.
20:31 Chris Ryan? Have you seen the Alan Alda movie?
20:33 Andy Greenwald? No, I never saw the movie.
20:34 Chris Ryan? Okay.
20:35 Andy Greenwald? Will Forte, just, you know, getting to do what he, what he does and, and Steve Carell getting to kind of what we were saying the other week, like, walk that line between drama and comedy that he's, he excels at.
20:49 Andy Greenwald? I'm mixed feelings about it. I enjoyed watching the show a lot.
20:52 Chris Ryan? How many did you watch?
20:52 Andy Greenwald? I watched four or five, I think. Because, look, it, it's very pleasant. It's a very enjoyable, easy watch, and maybe that's all it needs to be. But it is pretty soft and gentle and like.
21:06 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I think that's okay.
21:08 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, but I think that might be okay, but it, it, it's interesting, echoing in my head is still this idea that like, what does Netflix look like when no one's chasing them anymore? And I'm like, is this what look, what it looks like when, for comedy writers, when no one's chasing them anymore?
21:20 Chris Ryan? Oh, I see.
21:21 Andy Greenwald? Like, it is, in Tina Fey's interview, she very intentionally said like. Like, I wanted to do something that was not joke, joke, better joke.
21:27 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
21:28 Andy Greenwald? Joke, joke, better joke. And no one is better at doing that than her and Robert Karlock and the associates and teams that they've created and worked with for years. So, in the sense of like wanting smart, creative people to adapt and change and try new things, I love that for it and for them. But I did find it a little squishy at times, and that maybe that was the intention. Speaking of Netflix and speaking of things that aren't squishy, and I think there's even a relevant segue here. The only reason I'm doing Mulaney Watch on the podcast, you know, is I think that in a more abstract sense, we will refer to like the development process or network notes or creative executives and things, you know.
22:13 Andy Greenwald? And we talk about, you know, from a outsider view often, the like perceived tension, maybe when you could see it in the final product. And we were talking about that with your friends and neighbors, like was this Apple's kind of high middlebrow sensibility pushing the show in a direction, maybe where it would be more interesting in the other direction? The incredible thing about watching everybody's live week to week is because it is live and because it is a limited, I think 11 week experiment, you can actually see that tension happening every Wednesday night in ways that are fascinating and ways that don't always net out the way you might be predisposed to believe. What I mean by that is like it is unquestionably becoming a more conventional late night show.
22:57 Andy Greenwald? Like, there's a, there's a Bill Belichick and his girlfriend bit.
23:01 Chris Ryan? It's like, what's in the news this week?
23:03 Andy Greenwald? Mulaney's monologue is leaning into the fact that he's one of, if not the best stand-up comedians alive. And so there's just more time spent on that. Last week, when Conan was the first guest, he was literally the first guest as opposed to one of three people, one of whom is an expert who's not good at being on television.
23:18 Chris Ryan? Isn't that what they did this week, though?
23:20 Andy Greenwald? And then, yes, and then even the most-
23:23 Chris Ryan? I was watching the Lakers, so I have- This is, this is airing at a time where I'm not like-
23:28 Andy Greenwald? No, it's fine. And it's fun also to check up, check in with it later. But I was preparing a take for a podcast that I do with you when I was watching it live last night about how, wow, they've even gone so far as to- Pre-plan a bit. Famously on late night shows, like, there would be someone on the staff who pre-interviews guests so that they're ready to say like, you know, I have a funny story about you when you were a kid, right? And then they have it all teed up and it's
23:52 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
23:52 Andy Greenwald? Last night when Ronnie Cheng, who I love and is on Daily Show-
23:55 Chris Ryan? Was Robert's neuro cool on set? Oh, it's so funny, you should ask that, yeah.
23:57 Andy Greenwald? Crazy thing to happen.
23:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
23:58 Andy Greenwald? Um, Ronnie Cheng was prepared, not only with a story about how, uh, he had a, broke his arm when he was a kid and his arm was in a cast for so long, he became ambidextrous. They like had a pad of paper for him to show. And I was like, these are the most conventional notes that they are getting, but they're not wrong. Like, this feels more welcoming. It feels like a late night show, not like a weird, a public access LA experiment, which it started as. And I was like, it's kind of interesting. Like, sometimes the conventional note shouldn't be fought. And it allows things like, he looks through his telescope and sees the members of Phish dressed as Seinfield, the cast of Seinfeld. It makes that pop more because there's a little bit more security in the rest of the show.
24:40 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
24:41 Andy Greenwald? And then, of just when I'm preparing this take, he clears the couch and Ronnie Cheng and Molly Shannon go away and John Cale and Maggie Rogers come on the couch.
24:51 Chris Ryan? Uh huh.
24:52 Andy Greenwald? They are on the show as the musical guests. I don't know who had it in their bingo card that they would be panel guests for 10 minutes talking about surgery. And it went about as well as you would think. Like, John Cale was in The Velvet Underground.
25:06 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
25:06 Andy Greenwald? That's awesome. But I don't know if, I don't know if like Ted Sarandos was like, get that 80-year-old Welshman on a couch live tonight.
25:14 Chris Ryan? I thought they were performing live, like, music.
25:16 Andy Greenwald? They were.
25:17 Chris Ryan? Did they perform together?
25:18 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
25:18 Chris Ryan? Okay.
25:19 Andy Greenwald? But 20 minutes before they performed live, they were interview couch guests for a pretty excruciating eight minutes.
25:25 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
25:26 Andy Greenwald? Um, but again, this is why I find this fascinating because it's a little bit like, okay, we'll take the note, but guess what we're gonna do next?
25:32 Chris Ryan? Right.
25:33 Andy Greenwald? And it is oppositional sometimes and it's lurching its way towards something truly amazing, I think, just in time for 10.
25:40 Chris Ryan? Do you ever wish we knew less about how stuff gets made?
25:43 Andy Greenwald? Hmm.
25:44 Chris Ryan? I was watching Thunderbolts this week. Uh, obviously it's the new Marvel movie that's coming out this weekend. And at one point in the middle of it, I was- Trying to figure out whether Sebastian Stan was wearing a wig.
25:56 Andy Greenwald? Hmm, trying to figure out, you mean like looking closely or like Googling?
25:59 Chris Ryan? Well, no, cuz it like it basically had like the the way wigs kinda look at weird at the very back bottom. Because they're they're not like, it's not hair.
26:07 Andy Greenwald? It's not real, yeah.
26:08 Chris Ryan? Uh, and I was like, oh, I wonder if this is a wig because he had to reshoot something because of Brave New World.
26:14 Andy Greenwald? Hmm.
26:14 Chris Ryan? And, you know, his, he's a congressperson in Brave New World and now, like, he's a congressman in in the Captain America movie.
26:21 Andy Greenwald? Is he?
26:21 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
26:21 Andy Greenwald? Did he primary like an established den? No.
26:25 Chris Ryan? Oh, my god. Well, anyway, I was like looking at that.
26:27 Andy Greenwald? I heard there's a Red Hulk in it.
26:28 Chris Ryan? And then I was looking at, uh, you know, there's a couple of moments during Thunderbolts where I was like, ooh, I wonder if this is a reshoot. I wonder if this was.
26:34 Andy Greenwald? Oh, I see what you mean.
26:35 Chris Ryan? And then I was like, what the fuck am I doing? Like, who cares?
26:37 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
26:38 Chris Ryan? Is the movie good? And did it work? I'd rather just save all my takes on it for when you've seen it.
26:43 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
26:44 Chris Ryan? Um, but it was, I was like, maybe I need to chill out instead of looking at Sebastian Stan's wig and wondering if it was retcon for Brave New World.
26:52 Andy Greenwald? But aren't we all kinda cooked in that way? And certainly people who listen, people who listen to our podcast, I feel like are a little bit self-selected as people who are, they wanna know the story behind the story.
27:04 Chris Ryan? That's true. That is definitely true.
27:06 Andy Greenwald? But.
27:07 Chris Ryan? Uh, but when you're watching Mulaney.
27:08 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
27:09 Chris Ryan? And you're like, ooh, I wonder if this is a reaction to a note they got from Ted Sarandos.
27:13 Andy Greenwald? But then inevitably, the other reason why I love it is then Langston Kerman will come out and in this case, he came out as a, like a celebrity moil, offering different kind of circumcision cuts. Um, and it's so funny and I can't believe what that guy in particular is doing week to week on the show. And it's just a great comedy. But, but no, I feel like, I wonder if, if, maybe one day we'll get a chance to talk to Mulaney about it. But like, I think that one of the things that, things that is appealing to him is the process and the process being exposed to some degree, like getting to workshop it, working it out in real time. I think if it was, um, you know, just in like a pre-pre made box, I don't know.
27:54 Andy Greenwald? Do you think that, do you think that the Mulaney show would have been better served if Mulaney had taken the entire writing staff on a retreat to Las Vegas where they did race car driving?
28:04 Chris Ryan? This is a hack joke.
28:05 Andy Greenwald? Hmm. Do you think that would have made it a better show?
28:07 Chris Ryan? I don't know, man.
28:09 Andy Greenwald? I'm just, Kai, do you think it would have made a better show?
28:13 Chris Ryan? I can't tell if you're nagging hacks.
28:16 Andy Greenwald? I'm just seeing if you're gonna take it. I don't know if you want to run with it or not.
28:19 Chris Ryan? I'm a little bit by it, not hacks.
28:20 Andy Greenwald? Okay.
28:22 Chris Ryan? Let's take a quick break and we'll get into Andor at four through six.
28:25 Andy Greenwald? It's an Emmy winning show. I'm not nagging.
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30:09 Chris Ryan? All right, brother. Three episodes of, honestly, for me, straight napalm. Just absolute brilliance.
30:19 Andy Greenwald? Do you feel, when you found out, when you started to realize that the, this second trilogy of the second season of Andor was like, it was a French Resistance wartime spy movie? Did you just feel like Tony had scooped out the soft matter of your brain and put it on the screen? Like, did you feel so-
30:39 Chris Ryan? I did have a very funny text message conversation with Jason Concepcion, who was reacting to something that Mansoukis and I talked about when he was on here talking about Rogue Heroes. And we were listing our favorite World War II campaigns. And Jason just texted me his. Like Concepcion was just like, blind text, these are my favorite campaigns.
30:59 Andy Greenwald? Okay, great.
31:00 Chris Ryan? And then we started talking back and forth and it turned, I was like, we both were basically doing like, French Resistance deep dives.
31:07 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
31:09 Chris Ryan? So yes, episodes four through six spoke to me on a very deep level.
31:12 Andy Greenwald? I, I feel like, and as much as I love these episodes, I feel like your experience was similar to when I turned on my television yesterday and saw that leading Apple TV's homepage was Kareem, a French historical drama about the best chef in the world who's also a spy. I was like, are you, are you kidding me right now?
31:30 Chris Ryan? Did you fire that up yet?
31:31 Andy Greenwald? I am so ready to fire it up, but I didn't wanna, we, we had, we had business today.
31:36 Chris Ryan? Yeah. Um, I wanna start here with you, because this is the second now episode we've done about specific episodes. Obviously, we had our interview with Tony for the premiere. I saw an interview that Tony gave to The Hollywood Reporter where he referred to the project of Andor as making eight movies in five years.
31:55 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, yeah.
31:55 Chris Ryan? And, um, there are two things that really jumped out at me about four through six. One, this is the second time where I have watched the episodes twice and found the second run through them deeply rewarding, where I am now picking up on maybe plotlines that feel like they're happening in some other district of the story, clearly now related. You know, like, I think it actually took me two runs through the Lonnie plot and what he's seeing in these meetings to understand-
32:27 Andy Greenwald? Mm-hmm.
32:28 Chris Ryan? The gross plot and the Bix plot and like, how everything is connected because they will, the writing staff and the creative team behind Andor, will keep it- They will keep you in the dark for as long as they possibly can. And then even after the event has happened, that seems like a domino falling from some other thing. They still don't throw a spotlight on and say, ta-da, it was Lonnie all along, you know, like.
32:54 Andy Greenwald? No.
32:54 Chris Ryan? They don't do that. You're just like, okay.
32:56 Andy Greenwald? They don't do that. I like the way you said that.
32:58 Chris Ryan? So that is, that is a marker. It's a gauntlet thrown down to the audience.
33:03 Andy Greenwald? Totally.
33:03 Chris Ryan? Where it's like, you have to watch every scene and listen to every line. Because even though there might be some toss offs and there's some ambiguity and there are these great human moments. Everything matters. Um, I think also there is just this very interesting, uh, developing experiential thing that's happening with Andor where the, the space in between the trilogies.
33:27 Andy Greenwald? Yep.
33:28 Chris Ryan? The sets of episodes are becoming increasingly important, at least in so much as they are being referenced.
33:33 Andy Greenwald? Oh, events that occur.
33:34 Chris Ryan? In the blank year.
33:36 Andy Greenwald? Or months or whatever.
33:37 Chris Ryan? Whatever it is, yeah. Um, and so there are, there have been some references to things that have happened. Specifically, I think Sinta's lost year. Um, whoever the guy is that Cassian and Bix have killed that is haunting Bix, which I don't think we have seen.
33:53 Andy Greenwald? We, maybe we did. I mean, I, I think it's worth admitting that I have no idea what that was about. I understood it emotionally and texturally.
34:00 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
34:01 Andy Greenwald? And you could tell me that that was a soldier on the farm planet from episode two or three of the season. Or you could tell me that happened.
34:09 Chris Ryan? In between. That's what I assume.
34:10 Andy Greenwald? In the blank space. And I, I think it, you could argue it both ways. You could say that's a sign of the show's triumph that it doesn't matter. Uh, or you could say, maybe it's getting a little too clever. Uh, unclear.
34:21 Chris Ryan? Yeah. I mean, it's a missing chapter of a novel and you could say, that's very interesting. Or you could say, I, I want to know everything about what led to and how they felt about this. I think it's two different ways of wanting the story. So talk to me a little bit about how you're watching.
34:32 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
34:32 Chris Ryan? This and how you're experiencing this based on this idea that even the creator of the show is like, it's eight movies in five years.
34:39 Andy Greenwald? I, we will get into, and if you're listening, we were, we are going to get really into the weeds and the specifics of these episodes. We're going to talk about, you know, a touch. Points, references, you know, I'll maybe even recommend some things for a larger syllabus of content and media that this reminded us of or clearly was influenced by. But it's impossible, I think, to talk about the show at the moment without talking about the delivery method. And I had to go back and check because, you know, when we talk about the first season, we talk about like Nantina Five, like that was an incredible.
35:10 Chris Ryan? Aldani, yeah.
35:11 Andy Greenwald? Trilogy, or the buildup towards Rick's Road at the finale, like it was cinematic and it was cumulative and it was built, you know, with with story arcs within the larger season. The season, though, was not delivered this way. And there were quote unquote standalone episodes. So I had forgotten that there were 12 episodes in the first season because as listeners now know, we have no idea how many episodes there are of anything. The reason I'd forgotten that was because I didn't remember getting four three hour movies. And the reality is, we didn't. We got three to start and then it was weekly after that. And our experience was, you know, mirrored that. Separate and apart from how challenging it can be to just devour something this dense
35:54 Andy Greenwald? in a relatively short amount of time and then podcast about it like like we're doing, I was actually starting to become very, very into the Tony method. The experience of watching the first three of season two and then rewatching large parts of it prepared me, I think, for this second trilogy in a really strong way.
36:16 Chris Ryan? Mm hmm.
36:17 Andy Greenwald? Where when I watched Ever Been to Gorman, which is episode 204, I felt very comfortable in its barrage of new circumstances, new characters, new contexts. And I was starting to feel like I got the hang of how these trilogies would go. Like many trilogies, there would be a kind of discombobulating introduction, there would be an escalation, and then there would be a zenith or crescendo of some kind. And I I'm into that. I was like, this is, I don't think we've ever gotten.
36:51 Chris Ryan? That's my kink. I like that.
36:53 Andy Greenwald? And that's my love language. I I don't think we've ever gotten a TV show like this. Not that, you know, I've made a 10 hour movie, not that every episode is just a chapter in a book, but specifically, these are for.
37:10 Andy Greenwald? Three hour movies, right?
37:12 Chris Ryan? Basically, they're they're they're like, yes, they're these these two and a half, three hour films within the context of of a larger season.
37:19 Andy Greenwald? I I am, it helped me through these episodes quite a bit.
37:25 Andy Greenwald? Up until the end of the last episode of this of this run.
37:31 Chris Ryan? Okay.
37:32 Andy Greenwald? Which I think.
37:33 Chris Ryan? Which is the Gorman front trying to steal weapons and it going wrong.
37:39 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, and and and Clay cut in her hand with a screwdriver and all that. That scene was excruciating, it was wild.
37:45 Chris Ryan? Awesome.
37:48 Andy Greenwald? This is, this may be the only small criticism I have of these episodes. Just that I found the gains, character wise, plot wise, of these three episodes to. Okay, let me say it this way, I went into it being like, let's fire up this next movie, expecting this is gonna be, once I saw The Lay of the Land, like, oh my god, this is the French Resistance film. The gains of the episode for Luthen, for Luthen and Cassian's Cassian's relationship, for Cassian and Bix's relationship, for where the rebellion is, all felt relatively subtle in the moment. These were all developments.
38:28 Chris Ryan? They're actually momentous, kind of in the larger scheme of things.
38:31 Andy Greenwald? Exactly, and at that moment, the show became a TV show again for me.
38:35 Chris Ryan? In a good way or a bad way?
38:37 Andy Greenwald? It doesn't matter, because I'm really excited to fire up the next three, and I have really, I'm not even gonna pretend a concerned troll here. It just, it was a change in my experience of watching it, because I was dialed in to have a contained arc that would be like, okay, this is now a natural stopping point, and if the show ended here, which it won't, I will feel sturdy about where I'm standing. But instead, the gains felt very incremental, and definitely a lot of cans now being kicked forward, which is what episodic TV does, but it seemed to run against the delivery strategy.
39:12 Chris Ryan? Do you think that any of that is tied to? The bad vibe, you know?
39:18 Andy Greenwald? That it ends with?
39:19 Chris Ryan? Uh, not that it ends within Rogue One, but that we're seeing the fracturing of Cassian and Luthen's relationship, not that it was ever based on mutual trust and respect in the first place. It was more of a kind of psychological warfare on Luthen's part and Cassian needing to be a part of something or go get killed by the Empire.
39:39 Andy Greenwald? It's kind of the origin story of this podcast.
39:40 Chris Ryan? That's right. Who's who?
39:44 Chris Ryan? You see Luthen losing his cool, you see Cassian feel like perhaps he's got enough going on in his personal life that he's gonna start prioritizing that as much as he's prioritizing the Rebellion. That Vell goes to this place to like lead a Rebellion à la Aldani or just to do an operation and is confronted by a bunch of well-meaning but very naive and unprepared rebels who make up this sort of, you know, everyday members of this of this resistance in the first place. And even strangely, like the signals that we're getting that there's more to this serial
40:27 Chris Ryan? double agent operation than we... I almost felt for him, you know what I mean? Like, you can't help but feel for somebody getting dunked on by their mother that much. But like, there is a part of me where I'm like, oh, this is, this is the turn where we find out why they had to make three more movies before they could finally conquer the Rebellion, you know?
40:47 Andy Greenwald? The, um...
40:48 Chris Ryan? I mean, the first, you know, four, five and six of Star Wars.
40:51 Andy Greenwald? No, it's beautifully, beautifully illustrated, this idea that when you start something, any project, let alone a Galactic Rebellion, it starts small and you can control things and you can dictate the pace of events, but in order to actually succeed, it's going to have to outpace you.
41:08 Chris Ryan? Yes.
41:09 Andy Greenwald? And you are going to have to recruit not just tactical geniuses or born spies like Cassian, but cannon fodder. Just people.
41:17 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
41:18 Andy Greenwald? Who have their own passions and you cannot control it. And at a certain point, the, the, the fire burns out of control.
41:23 Chris Ryan? I thought it was interesting that they, they mirrored each other. The Clea conversation where she's just like, you just basically have too much shit going on. Like we're, we're underwater here with the amount of ops and counter ops and secret ops you have going. Combined with Lonnie telling part of guys like, we're literally arresting too many people to even understand what the, what the pattern is here. And then even on top of that, Lonnie, like Lonnie, is Lonnie doing that because he's also trying to help the rebellion? I mean, it's just like the, the sort of, the, the little pirouettes that are going on in the plot are, are part of the joy for me.
42:01 Andy Greenwald? I agree, and there's, there's a, there's just such a, there's a profundity and it's kind of beauty in how the show illustrates. Not just like, oh, ripped from the headlines. Here's, here's a, here's how hard it is to fight fascism or the plight of a migrant worker. Just like kind of small, um, evergreen ideas that especially in modern, with the modern world and modern warfare. That absolutely horrific things can be happening, that rights could be being leached away. That like your, one's control over one's own life might be, might be diminishing, but it's happening over there. It's not happening here yet and life is still happening here. And at what point do you start to, uh, pay attention or start to feel personally affected?
42:46 Andy Greenwald? And in a, in a show set within a galaxy of planets, I find that kind of beautifully illustrated.
42:52 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
42:53 Andy Greenwald? The other thing that I, that I want to say before we get into some of the specifics is when I, when I had the, the pleasure of, of working at Lucasfilm a little bit. One of the things that was told to us, said to us, um, when, by Pablo Hidalgo, who, who's Tony mentioned just by first name.
43:10 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
43:10 Andy Greenwald? And he is kind of the-
43:11 Chris Ryan? Calls Pablo up and he's like, I need the name of a thing that happened in-
43:15 Andy Greenwald? Pablo is one of the most fascinating people in entertainment, loveliest people. And he is like the keeper of the flame, like he knows everything.
43:23 Chris Ryan? In the canon, yeah.
43:23 Andy Greenwald? But he is also not, uh, Pope Benedict, you know, just to, to, to draw from the headlines or like a character. He's, he's not a more doctrinaire character from Conclave. He is, for him, it is like a living church.
43:37 Chris Ryan? Right.
43:38 Andy Greenwald? And, and he's fascinated by the, the chances people are taking to diversify and change it.
43:42 Chris Ryan? He sounds like a librarian in the greatest sense of the word, where it's like, you have a question about- What did the Senate do about this? He's like, well, they happened.
43:49 Andy Greenwald? Or we've never actually talked about that. Anyway, one of the things that he drills into everyone who works there is that unlike some of the other major franchises, Star Wars is history. That every single thing that happened, happened at a point on a timeline that is fixed and static, and there are no multiverses, and there are no redos, and there are no retcons. These are the things that happened, and then there's a very strict order in which they happened. It's why, and it's something that Tony's adopted with like three years before Battle of Yavin, stuff like that.
44:18 Chris Ryan? That's how somehow Palpatine returns.
44:20 Andy Greenwald? Well, careful. Somehow. So, but if Star Wars is history, and it's not myth.
44:29 Andy Greenwald? The thing about Andor, the project of Andor that I find so thrilling is that it is worthy of historical, it's worthy of that idea of history.
44:42 Andy Greenwald? It's not history being written by the victors of like, there was a magic boy who turns out was the son of the evil guy, and then they use magic powers. And like, it's not binary like that. It's not, it's not good side, dark side. It's, it's not reductive. It's, feels more like living history, and it feels more like our history. And the, the thing that really drilled at home for me in these episodes was that Luthen kind of sucks.
45:04 Chris Ryan? He's definitely losing his cool.
45:05 Andy Greenwald? That he is incredibly complicated. And there's the scene when he is, when he and Cassian, when Cassian comes to the shop, and Luthen is, and they have this, this collision. I had this like, it was like a Howard Zinn zing go up my spine of like, oh my God, like we're seeing the raw text. We're not seeing like, Paul Revere just hung a lantern. It's like, what if Paul Revere was also a dickhead? Like, did some good things.
45:28 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
45:29 Andy Greenwald? Also, maybe not always good things. The, the complexity of that was actually exciting in a historical sense. Like, there's so much more here, and we're seeing the first draft of it, as opposed to the sanitized, post galactic, post ISB, whatever.
45:46 Chris Ryan? I think that the fascinating thing about what's happening with Luthen is that clearly he feels the need to motivate people by meddling with their personal lives. The idea that Cassian and Bix are stuck in this. Kind of shabby, but not altogether not home, home, you know, like in Bix is talking about how if we just get some towels and some curtains, like maybe this place will be okay.
46:10 Andy Greenwald? That said, if they want the comforts of home and some normalcy, I would recommend cooking dinner with something other than melons and hot peppers.
46:18 Chris Ryan? Yeah, that's not a protein forward meal.
46:20 Andy Greenwald? This is a downtime between missions.
46:22 Chris Ryan? Different galaxies, different cuisines, maybe even different metabolic standards. Like, I don't know what a guy.
46:28 Andy Greenwald? I thought maybe it was like an amuse-bouche or like a pass starter. You know what I mean? Like just something that would sort of get the palate going.
46:33 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
46:33 Andy Greenwald? Then what are we eating?
46:34 Chris Ryan? He seemed to be cooking it in some kind of convection oven.
46:36 Andy Greenwald? Mm hmm. Yeah.
46:37 Chris Ryan? What'd you think of that?
46:38 Andy Greenwald? I, I want more. I want, I mean.
46:40 Chris Ryan? You want more turkey or chicken?
46:42 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, or something so I don't wake up and eat chips in the middle of the night, please. Um, no, you know, detail. This is, this is my fever dream of a show. Like one of the first scenes in Ever Been to Gorman is, is, is what we're talking about. It's Bix and Cassian go to the bodega where they sell like, they have like plates.
46:59 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
46:59 Andy Greenwald? And they have towel, they're talking about plates and towels and they go to the bodega and he's like, oh, this is a pretty good.
47:04 Chris Ryan? Well, when Cassian's not around, Bix is going somewhere else to get that young dro.
47:08 Andy Greenwald? Do you want to talk about it?
47:10 Chris Ryan? So Bix has developed a little bit of a dependency on, I suppose, sleeping medication, but it also could be
47:15 Andy Greenwald? Hmm.
47:16 Chris Ryan? Some kind of psychotropic drug. It's obviously a painkiller of some kind. Whatever she's taking, I'm sure some Star Wars person is gonna be like, actually.
47:23 Andy Greenwald? Space melatonin.
47:24 Chris Ryan? Uh, it's, it's quite safe if taken in proportion.
47:27 Andy Greenwald? It's illegal in the Europe planet, but here.
47:30 Chris Ryan? Just don't fly a tie fighter after taking it.
47:34 Andy Greenwald? Uh huh.
47:34 Chris Ryan? Um, Luthen's using, and he always has, but he's specifically using the frailties of these people
47:41 Andy Greenwald? Mm hmm.
47:42 Chris Ryan? For and against his purposes, you know, and it happens with, um, Vell and, and Sinta as well, where they've been separated since Aldani, I think. Is the indication?
47:54 Andy Greenwald? That's the, that's the implication. Um.
47:56 Chris Ryan? And since it, in the end of the first three episodes, it's implied that she is gonna assassinate Tay Colma.
48:03 Andy Greenwald? Mm hmm.
48:03 Chris Ryan? Um, she talks about an accident that she had and how she needed to recover for a while.
48:08 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
48:09 Chris Ryan? Cut her hair and then wanted to do this job. And even in that episode, it's not like Vell and Sinta like fully are like great. And now we're gonna get a dog together. It's like, we're still soldiers in this thing.
48:20 Andy Greenwald? Mm hmm.
48:21 Chris Ryan? But.
48:22 Andy Greenwald? Can I just say on that scene and that relationship? That's when you really feel the benefit of having a film screenwriter at work.
48:30 Chris Ryan? Hmm.
48:31 Andy Greenwald? You know, like laying down the markers of that relationship and getting them back to a place where you would feel the loss as.
48:37 Chris Ryan? Yes.
48:37 Andy Greenwald? Intensely as we do as the audience. That takes an efficiency.
48:42 Chris Ryan? Yeah, cuz that could very easily have been a McPain conversation.
48:45 Andy Greenwald? That could have been.
48:46 Chris Ryan? You know what we should do? We should get a boat tomorrow and sail off together.
48:50 Andy Greenwald? Forever.
48:50 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
48:51 Andy Greenwald? Not just in the specifics of that conversation, but just being able to do all of that emotional storytelling labor in such a short amount of screen time. Like if we, if you went back and ran the crunch the numbers of like how many minutes that were devoted of Andor to the Val and Sinta relationship? It's 12 maybe? And, you know, Prestige TV has definitely, uh, disabused people of that skillset.
49:15 Chris Ryan? Well, you have to do different things if you're gonna be sharing the screen and sharing the storylines with so many other things and you're gonna be the F or G plot of a, of a alphabet of, of story.
49:28 Andy Greenwald? Mm hmm.
49:30 Chris Ryan? I thought Vell's speech after Sinta's death is actually so powerful because it does all of the emotional work without it feeling like you got gut punched because you were like, and these two, they were just about to go to Cabo together. Like they were just about to go open a B and B.
49:47 Andy Greenwald? What you're just pointing out is such a specific screenwriting thing, and I think it's so important. I think it's just a, it's a brilliant observation and a brilliant execution that.
49:56 Chris Ryan? It's almost tell, don't show, isn't it?
49:58 Andy Greenwald? Yes, because you don't have the space to show.
50:01 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
50:01 Andy Greenwald? So that, just that decision, it, it, it feels natural in the flow of things. But when you watch it and you try to like parse it, um. Yes, she doesn't. The, the event happens and it's shock and, and Val is in shock and there is no reaction. And then what her reaction does is backfill. Everything as well as give us almost everything we need to know about the rest of her life. Whether we see it on the remainder of the season or not.
50:28 Chris Ryan? So I basically had these episodes divided into their major kind of plot lines for the most part. And even in doing that, I was like, oh, and I forgot this and I forgot that. I wanted to start if we could, unless you wanted to go episode through episode. I find it a little bit more difficult to pinpoint things. Oh, in episode four, it's like this, but in episode, because it's really across four, five and six. You get this arc of each of these characters, right?
50:53 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, I think, I think that's fair. I, I, yeah, we, there, there are things that like.
51:00 Andy Greenwald? I find myself wishing we had more time for or thinking, you know, if only we could have devoted more to this. But you're right, it really is storyline by storyline.
51:07 Chris Ryan? So I, I wanted to talk about the many faces of Cassian. You know, because he plays a lover in this. Run of episodes, he's an agent. He's also. Clawing back some individualism. And, you know, working through his role as at one time, at one, on one hand, a spy master. Someone who's able to go assess a situation and say, nope. They're not ready and this is just going to be a disaster and we should pull out. To versus, you know, still being Luthen's protege and tool, you know, and, and Luthen sort of twerking, tweaking his like twerking, Luthen tweaking his life and putting Bix in a situation, I think.
51:50 Chris Ryan? Where they're ready to now go back and fight because they've kind of cleared the Gorst stuff from their psychological backwaters. Like I, I, there's a particular scene with Cassian that I want to talk about, but what did you think of his arc over this? These three episodes?
52:03 Andy Greenwald? I almost want to punt the conversation because I. It's fascinating how easy it is to forget who the star of the show is.
52:12 Chris Ryan? I know.
52:14 Andy Greenwald? And I don't mean that as any slight on Diego Luna's performance or the way the character is written. There's actually a beautiful consistency to it. If you think about the way that, um, uh, Aldani was the planet, right?
52:29 Chris Ryan? Aldani's where he shows up in the Scottish Highlands, kind of.
52:32 Andy Greenwald? Oh, not Aldani then. Where was he living in the beginning?
52:35 Chris Ryan? In, um. Ferrix, right?
52:37 Andy Greenwald? Ferrix, thank you. Yeah. I was noticing, this is just inevitable when you have a lot of made up words, but like Ferrix, Rix Road, Bix.
52:44 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
52:44 Andy Greenwald? Okay. Um, these episodes featuring an interesting turn for the character Willman were written by Bo Willaman, but we'll move on from that. But like, the, uh, the, the central conceit of the, the first season, right, was that Cassian was on a journey of discovery, but was constantly pulled back by familial attachments and emotional attachments and a feeling of obligation or service. And in theory, he grabbed his found family and got the hell out of there. The, the fact that that continues to pull him back and does that, is that his sort of fundamental flaw or is that his blessing?
53:24 Chris Ryan? Mm-hmm.
53:24 Andy Greenwald? Remains an open question. So I do love all that. But there are times, and I found it particularly so in these episodes, where he is not the central character in the show.
53:36 Chris Ryan? I don't even know if he's the central character in his romantic relationship right now in this point in the show. I mean, but I think that that's a testament to the, the wonder of this project, is that at any given moment, it can feel like Cyril is the star of this show. Um, and in some ways, I think that that's kind of the coolest way to watch Star Wars, is to go back and be like, is this a movie about Darth Vader? You know?
53:57 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, but also you're like, oh, is everything just the same story if you really love movies? And like, there's an element, I mean, yes, you certainly know that better than most these days. But I was thinking back to the first episode of Andor and how Cyril's story and Cassian's story were intentionally twinned from the beginning, that Cyril- Becomes interested in Andor because of the two people that he kills in the opening moments of the first episode. And that their journeys are always going to be in tandem. And that's not groundbreaking and I don't feel like, I'm not feeling smug that I noticed that. I'm just deeply appreciative of it. That that's not reinventing anything.
54:34 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I feel the same way about Luthen and Saw now, you know?
54:38 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
54:39 Chris Ryan? These different ways of, in some ways, Luthen has all these people held captive too. Just in, you know.
54:47 Andy Greenwald? He doesn't shoot them in their face.
54:48 Chris Ryan? Yeah, exactly. Um, the scene I wanted to talk about with Cassian and just in generally like singing Diego Luna's praises. Just his arrival on Gorman pretending to be this designer.
55:01 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
55:01 Chris Ryan? Kind of flirting with the bellhop a little bit.
55:03 Andy Greenwald? He was.
55:04 Chris Ryan? But also just kind of that breadcrumb trail he leaves of like, I'm, you know, it's like the joke about like going around the neighborhood on November 6th and being like, are you happy? No?
55:18 Andy Greenwald? Is that what you did?
55:19 Chris Ryan? No, I was in England.
55:20 Andy Greenwald? I know.
55:21 Chris Ryan? Everybody there was like tough shit.
55:23 Andy Greenwald? We walked the heath and we're like, we're not happy, but no one asked us.
55:26 Chris Ryan? And so that whole bellhop scene and then especially the, uh, the interaction with the head of the Gorman front's daughter. I can't remember her name off the top of my head, but that whole, what is it you think you're doing? You don't know me? Let's start over. And he's like, you know, my friend suggested that I meet your father. And she's like, well, your friend might have come himself. And he says, unless I'm the friend. Or maybe I'm a snitch and you're my payday. Maybe I'm ISB. Maybe you just put everyone you care about into a cell. I am who you want me to be, but that's just you getting lucky. Fuck yeah.
55:58 Andy Greenwald? It's so sick. It's also bears noting that like, we cannot, Chris, I'm being, we cannot take for granted what Luke Hall is doing on the show. That he has recreated Viennese Cafe Society in a space version of Kind of France. Everything in that cafe is considered.
56:19 Andy Greenwald? When I rewatched it-
56:19 Chris Ryan? It looks like the way the brasserie is described in Alan's first novels in 1938.
56:24 Andy Greenwald? That's exactly a reference I wanted to make. I was just staring at the tile on my second viewing. It's beautiful and it is, what's it for? It's for pleasure, you know? It's for detail, it's for substance and it makes a difference. And I just don't think we can ever get numb to that when we get to see it on this scale.
56:49 Andy Greenwald? That scene is a really, really fantastic encapsulation of what has always motivated Tony Gilroy as a screenwriter, which is the fluidity of power and how it shifts and how it shifts in that scene between them. And the actress whose name we don't know, playing a part that we don't remember the name of,
57:08 Andy Greenwald? does a fantastic job as she realizes she's not in control-
57:11 Chris Ryan? Yes.
57:12 Andy Greenwald? -within the scene.
57:14 Andy Greenwald? I think that I could, you know, it sounds like I'm diminishing Diego Luna, but he is playing a character who is playing a character many, many times, which is a hallmark of spy fiction and film and I love it.
57:29 Andy Greenwald? It was also just like, just pull it back, like, these were the Gorman episodes. I imagine there will be more, maybe in a different context or a different point in what seems inevitable.
57:40 Chris Ryan? We'll be getting much more into fabric production in the future episodes of Andor.
57:43 Andy Greenwald? I want more spiders.
57:44 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
57:45 Andy Greenwald? The, but just how about that, like tourist stuff?
57:49 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
57:49 Andy Greenwald? Come on, give me more of this detail. I love it.
57:54 Andy Greenwald? But that Cassian's involvement was to go there briefly. And again, this is not manipulative. This is actually just artistry that like, he arrives when Cyril leaves and they trade spots.
58:03 Chris Ryan? Yes.
58:04 Andy Greenwald? But that he arrives just to be like, nah, like that's his role in these three episodes. It's non-traditional, let's say.
58:11 Chris Ryan? And this idea that Luthen is like, if it works, great. If they all die, it's an outrage and it draws more attention to what they're doing to Gorman and it makes it- It's a wedge for the rebellion to keep chipping away.
58:26 Andy Greenwald? It's almost impossible to keep up with the layers of artifice, which is also intentional. I mean, remember in the first season, a lot of it, and this is when Saul showed up in the first season as well. There's the guy Krieg or something who's.
58:41 Chris Ryan? It's the guy who's basically gonna, he's the one they haven't told about the mission. And so he's gonna like fly in and they're gonna lose 30 guys and.
58:49 Andy Greenwald? But they're gonna lose 30 guys to protect the bigger cause.
58:51 Chris Ryan? Because if they pull Krieg out, the Empire will know somebody's snitching.
58:56 Andy Greenwald? Exactly.
58:56 Chris Ryan? Then they'll go quiet. If Krieg dies, they'll feel emboldened and they can hit them more.
59:02 Andy Greenwald? So this is also the main vein of Lakare Cold War fiction, which is, I know you know that I know that you know what I know, which is that you're faking it. And then how do you live in that world when it's just a hall of mirrors?
59:14 Chris Ryan? Yeah, there's, I mean, and for as complicated as it gets, an and or like Lakare, that you're often on page 300 and be like, I just don't know what's going on. I can't tell whether this is like a fake operation, a real operation, a real operation masquerading as a fake operation, you know?
59:30 Andy Greenwald? And so that's what we have here with the ISB intentionally feeding correct information and running its cargo. So that it is disrupted.
59:39 Chris Ryan? Yes.
59:39 Andy Greenwald? To have a rebellion to crush. Or more, and that's when the Cyril's involvement becomes a little.
59:50 Chris Ryan? A little ambiguous.
59:50 Andy Greenwald? I mean, just these small little grace notes that I enjoyed. With the passage of time and Cyril is there, it didn't last for long, but there's a moment when you're like, oh, is he good now? Not good, but is he showing some humanity?
1:00:04 Chris Ryan? I never thought he was good, but I wasn't surprised and almost heartened that it wasn't just Dedra and Cyril are running an operation against Gorman.
1:00:12 Andy Greenwald? Right.
1:00:12 Chris Ryan? You know, it's like Dedra keeps getting confronted with these other men around her being like, well, you're a glory hound or I need the glory, you know, and she's just like, she has a higher calling, you know?
1:00:25 Andy Greenwald? But that scene when they get to talk to Partagast and he's like, would it offend you if I said this is the, this is the greatest day of my life? And she goes, it's just nice to see you happy.
1:00:36 Chris Ryan? Rules.
1:00:39 Andy Greenwald? What did he gets an hour with her?
1:00:40 Chris Ryan? That's like when I got the Blu-ray of the 4K edition of Blood Simple.
1:00:45 Andy Greenwald? You were finally happy.
1:00:46 Chris Ryan? My wife was like, it's nice to see you happy.
1:00:48 Andy Greenwald? And then she's like, turn off the light.
1:00:49 Chris Ryan? Yeah. So you can watch it as the code of our intended. Yeah. Want to talk about Bix? Just because she's sort of linked Cassian throughout the series.
1:00:58 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, I think that the, for me, the Bix runner was the most challenging.
1:01:06 Chris Ryan? Look, living alone is hard.
1:01:07 Andy Greenwald? I know. Your wife's been traveling. There were some overlaps, I would say. Your love of morning television.
1:01:14 Chris Ryan? Take a couple of drops, watch them inside the NBA.
1:01:17 Andy Greenwald? Get to takeout, maybe not do the dishes till the next day.
1:01:23 Andy Greenwald? That plot line of the.
1:01:26 Chris Ryan? I love the detail of her manically cleaning the apartment for him to come home. You know, it's like, it looks really nice, even though you're clearly high out of your mind.
1:01:33 Andy Greenwald? I mean, that's the thing, like she, the, the plot line of the woman who has been traumatized, becoming, you know, potentially an albatross or having, you know, and basically being sidelined is a trope. And sometimes a challenging one to navigate. I think that this was in many ways, the best version of it because it had room for her to have agency and a fuller arc of wants and needs and relationship to Cassian, which, you know, again, it wasn't always. You can tell I was revisiting some of the first season, but like, I was just trying to track their relationship and remember that.
1:02:07 Chris Ryan? My guy, Tim.
1:02:08 Andy Greenwald? Tim, two Ms.
1:02:09 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:02:11 Andy Greenwald? So that it wasn't just, it isn't just like, you know, shipping these people who have always been meant to be together.
1:02:18 Chris Ryan? I'm not getting my hopes up.
1:02:20 Andy Greenwald? No. I really liked the Luthen scene and I liked, you know, just that, that kind of spy mastership of like.
1:02:28 Chris Ryan? When he goes and visits her at the apartment.
1:02:29 Andy Greenwald? I'm going to throw a pebble in this pond and see where the ripples go.
1:02:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:02:34 Andy Greenwald? He's, he's pretty good about finding little stash houses within the stash house.
1:02:38 Chris Ryan? He's a little permissive too. He's just like, you know what? You know, you gotta be sharp on the job, but.
1:02:45 Andy Greenwald? Oh, yeah.
1:02:46 Chris Ryan? I thought he was, I thought he was kinda like-
1:02:47 Andy Greenwald? You thought he was cool?
1:02:48 Chris Ryan? I thought he was just like, I like to party. I like to sleep, you know?
1:02:53 Andy Greenwald? He is challenging to sleep. Uh, I don't know if this is the, I mean, so you wanna go storyline by storyline?
1:02:59 Chris Ryan? Well, I just wanted to talk a little bit about- The Gorst thing, I think, is something that helped, and maybe people got this immediately and, you know, if you're watching these episodes all together, it's kind of like trying to play full-court press defense for 48 minutes. It's-
1:03:14 Andy Greenwald? Trying to keep track of everything?
1:03:15 Chris Ryan? Well, you're basically, you can't take plays off and the whole thing falls apart if you miss one thing. And I think on the first pass, I maybe was like watching some of the interactions between Lonnie and the guys who are also getting their ass handed to them in the ISB meeting and was like, okay, I can kind of like bring my brain down to 75% while these guys are like, man, it's fucking hard working for the Empire, isn't it? You know? But what happens is you, Lonnie is ingratiating himself to these guys by taking this shot, but then like giving him this, but then taking that. So that when Gorst is bringing his Fun Factory to town, to Corson, he hears about it, doesn't get deeply involved with it, and it is implied is able to tip Luthen off, I assume, right?
1:03:59 Andy Greenwald? Like, did you feel that that was rushed? That this was-
1:04:04 Chris Ryan? I thought it, it felt a little bit like we need Bix and Cassian off this planet for episode seven.
1:04:11 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, and we need to wipe some of the board clean in terms of what's motivating her, what's keeping her traumatized in that way. She needs to get her revenge moment. I will say that, like, the show is, one of the best things about it is that it is not sentimental and it creates entire worlds.
1:04:30 Chris Ryan? So you were hoping for a great note with Gorst?
1:04:32 Andy Greenwald? No, I just think that, like, the show casually-
1:04:35 Chris Ryan? What's his trauma?
1:04:38 Andy Greenwald? You asshole. The show created, like, just casually, a all-time Star Wars villain.
1:04:46 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:04:46 Andy Greenwald? And shout out Joshua James, who plays the part, who is also an all-time industry villain in his role as the HR guy on Industry.
1:04:54 Chris Ryan? It's incredible. What a two-role run.
1:04:57 Andy Greenwald? It's amazing. He's probably a lovely guy.
1:05:00 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:05:01 Andy Greenwald? But I did, this was the-
1:05:04 Chris Ryan? Or sadist.
1:05:05 Andy Greenwald? We don't know. We don't judge. It's the first time in the run of Andor where I was like, oh, maybe there was a five-season plan, or maybe there was more story to tell, and it's hard to squeeze in everything into the self-chosen vehicle of three-episode arcs. You know what I mean? Like, it just, it felt a little vestigial, it felt a little rushed, and it did the thing that I actually, that always rubs me the wrong way, which is, it's so disorienting when it happens, that I was like, is this a dream sequence? Is this Bix? Is this another one of her? I mean, she had been having-
1:05:45 Chris Ryan? Yeah, because she had been having these sleepless nights and these nightmares, and I thought for a second, when he is going into his office, where the torture device is just sort of sitting there-
1:05:53 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
1:05:54 Chris Ryan? And there's no security, even though he's this super-important guy who's gonna change interrogation for the entire Empire. Yes, I was like, how did that happen? How did they get in there? How is she hiding inside of his office? All that, but-
1:06:06 Andy Greenwald? And look, if this is the first and maybe only time that a show that actually is trying in 24 episodes to tell the story of a galactic, the birth of a galactic rebellion, if this is the first time I felt something was a little rushed or underserved, then, okay-
1:06:20 Chris Ryan? Here's my argument for it.
1:06:22 Andy Greenwald? But I did, just to your point of like, following the path that is laid for us, I was able to say, okay, there was the Lonnie scene where they talk about it. There is the moment when Bix is up and she does not seem to be having sleep terrors, and she says that the light's blinking, and so we know they have another mission. They did the work, but I still felt a little underserved to me.
1:06:42 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I guess I would be, I have seen someone need to get vengeance on their captor a lot. I've never seen-
1:06:50 Andy Greenwald? Oh, I thought you were talking about in your real life.
1:06:51 Chris Ryan? No. That's my-
1:06:53 Andy Greenwald? Kai, zoom in. I feel like we're about to get really good content.
1:06:57 Chris Ryan? No, I feel like that is- One of those things that you would watch over the course of, say, six episodes or season and be like, I'm pretty sure Bix is gonna kill this guy eventually.
1:07:08 Andy Greenwald? You're totally right.
1:07:08 Chris Ryan? And instead, we get it in like, five minutes, or whatever the cumulative scream time of him putting her in this situation, her experiencing the PTSD from it, and then Luthen making good with the two of them by giving them this target that maybe in his political or his cost effective, you know, his cost balance sheet, he might be like, maybe not yet. We would do that some other time. We would get like, the most bang for our buck. But he needs both of them operating, especially if he was a Cinto.
1:07:39 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, and I think that's exactly right. And I also think that, you know, for as overweighted as the auteur theory is, the reason why ultimately the captain of the ship matters is for just kinda tough decisions. And there are few people that I would trust more than Tony, looking at the game board of the story he wants to tell and the real estate he has, you know, making some tough decisions, killing some darlings, killing some sadistic doctors.
1:08:05 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:08:06 Andy Greenwald? Like, we have six episodes left in this whole story, and if there wasn't room for more of this, then it would, I'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt that that was the right decision.
1:08:15 Chris Ryan? Who would you like to talk about next?
1:08:18 Andy Greenwald? Well, I think, I wanna talk about just the world of Gorman, as it was created, as it's presented. I am always, always just enthralled and delighted by the attention paid to local customs, local language. There's sort of a very, very, very obviously French-influenced made-up tongue here.
1:08:39 Chris Ryan? Richard Samwell, who was in Glorious Bastards, as the Nazi that the bear Jew bats his head off, playing a French resistance leader in Andor is fantastic.
1:08:49 Andy Greenwald? Some people might know him as from The Strain as well, an FX show that appears, I think is like, totally memory-holed.
1:08:54 Chris Ryan? I think we talked about that quite a bit.
1:08:56 Andy Greenwald? We did.
1:08:57 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:08:57 Andy Greenwald? Well, we really had a lot of, what's his name, Stark, the guy who played Hemingway, our bald king. You know, character actor, Billions.
1:09:11 Andy Greenwald? Even Kaya can't get it.
1:09:13 Chris Ryan? The guy, oh, Corey Stoll?
1:09:15 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
1:09:17 Andy Greenwald? You know what's funny? You know where my brain went? I mean, my brain is barely functioning anymore, which makes it great that I do this. We just improvise a podcast twice a week. But like, there was a, right before I left New York, there was a character actor nexus in Park Slope at the corner, at the F-stop on 7th Avenue.
1:09:32 Chris Ryan? They'll blow up their spot.
1:09:33 Andy Greenwald? Right by, it's been years. Right by Smiling Pizza, where like invariably, at least once a week, I would see either Corey Stoll, or Noah Emmerich, or you'd see sometimes Seea Busemi.
1:09:47 Chris Ryan? They were probably all on their way to the billion set.
1:09:50 Andy Greenwald? Genuinely, I mean, it was, it was a good life. Anyway, yeah.
1:09:55 Andy Greenwald? Why am I talking about Corey Stoll?
1:09:56 Chris Ryan? Because Richard Samel is in The Strain.
1:09:58 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, that was cool of him, that he was in The Strain.
1:10:01 Chris Ryan? He was like the main Dracula guy, right?
1:10:03 Andy Greenwald? Do you want to clear out and talk about The Strain? Kaya's got some strain takes that are a decade old, she's ready to fire off.
1:10:10 Chris Ryan? Kaya's a great upgrader, Heim tickets.
1:10:11 Andy Greenwald? I know, I hope, I can't wait for an update. Anyway. The gestures, the sort of, the way that they speak and relate to each other, the, the little berets, I mean, it's, it's such a choice, and honestly, a not a very, I was gonna say not a very Star Wars one, but this is a franchise that began with the Imperial Forces having stormtroopers, so I would say that Star Wars was born from a place of World War II iconography, but it was a, in that sense, a nice return to it, that it was just so specifically, like with the catacombs, and I mean, this is the French Resistance.
1:10:52 Chris Ryan? Yes, absolutely, and when we talk a little bit at the end of this about some of the stuff that we're enjoying on the outsides, on the outer rim of Andor, like for the Andor syllabus, we can get into that, do you want to do Klae and Lonnie at all? Just that one scene?
1:11:07 Andy Greenwald? What a glow up for Klae and Lonnie.
1:11:08 Chris Ryan? First of all, Klae might be my low-key favorite character on this show right now.
1:11:13 Andy Greenwald? You have a type, I think this is.
1:11:14 Chris Ryan? What?
1:11:16 Andy Greenwald? Strong women. What? Do you think I was gonna say something untoward?
1:11:21 Chris Ryan? People who know a lot about art. Yeah.
1:11:23 Andy Greenwald? People.
1:11:24 Chris Ryan? And radios.
1:11:25 Andy Greenwald? People who like to touch the art, you know?
1:11:27 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:11:29 Andy Greenwald? It's Elizabeth Dulaugh is the actress.
1:11:30 Chris Ryan? Yeah, and she's pretty much right out of the Royal Academy of Drama, and this is like her first big role, I think.
1:11:36 Andy Greenwald? Wild.
1:11:38 Chris Ryan? She's a background player, not a background player, but like a supporting character in the first season and is now feels increasingly important in the second season. I just love that scene where you have two people who are the third or fourth person in a meeting.
1:11:53 Andy Greenwald? And who then have to hold.
1:11:56 Chris Ryan? Yes.
1:11:56 Andy Greenwald? Everything.
1:11:57 Chris Ryan? And I thought maybe the most significant part about that, other than her grinding her hand into shreds to get this transistor out of an ancient piece of braille, which in and of itself is a communication device, was just Krennic clocking all of these people, Mothma, Luthen.
1:12:15 Andy Greenwald? It's really good.
1:12:15 Chris Ryan? Being in the same place. What are we doing over here? So.
1:12:19 Andy Greenwald? Do you feel like the Star Wars universe should have a little bit more subtle bugging technology? Like, it did feel a little like analog.
1:12:28 Chris Ryan? The thing I always love about Star Wars is like the kind of vintage, futuristic, vintage aspects of it. So, yes, you know, maybe just start a fire in the gallery or something like.
1:12:39 Andy Greenwald? I mean, I guess this scene proved it because there was a moment where I was like, the value of placing a bugging device, and Clay had disagreed with the placing of it to begin with, but like in, Sculp- Sculpin is his name?
1:12:49 Chris Ryan? Uh, Scalden.
1:12:50 Andy Greenwald? Scalden's.
1:12:51 Chris Ryan? Sculpin is an IPA.
1:12:52 Andy Greenwald? That's an IPA from, from, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't like it.
1:12:56 Chris Ryan? I don't drink IPAs.
1:12:56 Andy Greenwald? No.
1:12:57 Chris Ryan? Nope.
1:12:57 Andy Greenwald? No, just you and your strong women sipping light lagers to see our lifestyle. Look where it's got you.
1:13:04 Chris Ryan? I would like to try and do that at LACMA, just to go up to like a really important piece of art and start, like, I just have a transistor under this.
1:13:11 Andy Greenwald? Or like the thing about Alexander Calder mobiles, you think they're hanging, but they're actually a living book language and you just sort of just really just.
1:13:20 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:13:20 Andy Greenwald? Grind your hands on it. The idea that it would be a target-rich environment in his chamber of antiquities, but clearly it's where he brings powerful people.
1:13:31 Chris Ryan? Yeah, shot stuff, yeah.
1:13:32 Andy Greenwald? So that scene was excruciating in the best way to watch.
1:13:37 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:13:38 Andy Greenwald? It also was connected in a nice way to one of my favorite runners in the episode, which was Mon Mothma as-
1:13:44 Chris Ryan? For people who- what's a runner?
1:13:46 Andy Greenwald? Oh, just something that you hit more than one time in an episode.
1:13:49 Chris Ryan? I definitely knew it. I just wanted everybody else to be able to hear it.
1:13:51 Andy Greenwald? You just- you know, so what you should have said is, "You're right. You were just testing me." The Mon Mothma is LBJ.
1:13:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:13:59 Andy Greenwald? Like, doing the Robert Caro version of this particular time in Imperial history, of her just trying to, like, buttonhole, like, all the different senators, some of whom are fantastical creatures. I do love, low-key, like, when Tony's like, "Okay, fine, I can be a walrus guy." You know what I mean? Like, it's never a main character. It's always someone who's looking at the art.
1:14:20 Chris Ryan? Senator Walrus.
1:14:21 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, and it's just- he's just like, "Whoa, Mothma." And then it's like, "Okay, now we're moving on."
1:14:25 Chris Ryan? Yeah, it had Angus King vibes, you know?
1:14:27 Andy Greenwald? Exactly. Just- he's just an independent.
1:14:29 Chris Ryan? Yeah, he's caucusing.
1:14:30 Andy Greenwald? I thought Genevieve O'Reilly is just- remains one of the absolute spines of the show.
1:14:35 Chris Ryan? She now does something that's very difficult to podcast about, but I suppose I can try and- I can just do it for the camera here, and you can describe it for podcasting, which is she has mastered the "ha, ha, ha, ha."
1:14:47 Andy Greenwald? Oh, the dead bit, yeah, yeah.
1:14:49 Chris Ryan? Like, I'm laughing at some asshole talking about something, and then as soon as he goes away, I, like, think about the rebellion.
1:14:54 Andy Greenwald? That's why the show rewards multiple viewings, and one of the things that jumped out in my second viewing of the season premiere is it's- I don't know if it's a oner in the style of The Studio, for example, but when she arrives in Coruscant and there's the whole- I mean, it's just- it's just such a flex. We're reintroduced to these characters over a dispute about parking.
1:15:15 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah.
1:15:16 Andy Greenwald? And then it follows her as she makes small talk with people and then walks-
1:15:20 Chris Ryan? Including Benjamin Bratt.
1:15:21 Andy Greenwald? And- no, no, I'm talking about- in the premiere, there's a parking thing, and then she walks in shadows and her face falls, and then someone walks by her and it comes back up again, and it's like the thing you do to entertain babies, where you put your hand in front of your face and like, "Now I'm smiling." Babies love that, by the way, just a little- I know, but next time you're in a room with a bunch of them. But in this one, yes, so there was a little bit of a recasting.
1:15:41 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:15:42 Andy Greenwald? This is Senator Bailorgana.
1:15:44 Chris Ryan? Leia's dad?
1:15:45 Andy Greenwald? Leia's dad.
1:15:45 Chris Ryan? Well, quote-unquote.
1:15:47 Andy Greenwald? You don't think you use the real paternity? You think there's something I don't know about?
1:15:52 Chris Ryan? Leia's dad? I'm just kidding.
1:15:55 Andy Greenwald? Tell me what a runner is. Leia's adopted father.
1:15:58 Chris Ryan? Yes.
1:15:59 Andy Greenwald? But, you know, you may have been a father, but you sure, you know, you weren't a dad. Like, there's different, like, people can play different roles in people's lives.
1:16:09 Chris Ryan? That's true.
1:16:11 Andy Greenwald? I don't, I don't think Anakin was doing the face thing with Leia.
1:16:14 Chris Ryan? And that's, it was usually Jimmy Smits.
1:16:15 Andy Greenwald? Usually. It was. Previously, it was Jimmy Smits. And now it's Benjamin Brad, who I thought looked great.
1:16:21 Chris Ryan? I'm thrilled, thrilled to have him.
1:16:22 Andy Greenwald? He also seemed, by the way, that was a 30-second scene.
1:16:26 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:16:26 Andy Greenwald? He ate.
1:16:27 Chris Ryan? I hope he gets more screen time going.
1:16:29 Andy Greenwald? But as my, as my now almost 12-year-old says in an alarming amount of times, he ate in that scene.
1:16:34 Chris Ryan? He ate in that scene? The last thing I really wanted to talk about was Saw: Guerrera, but if there was other stuff you wanted to, I mean, we didn't really get that deep into St. Inville's plotline, but that was pretty self-explanatory.
1:16:46 Chris Ryan? Dedra and Cyril, we kind of chatted about.
1:16:49 Andy Greenwald? Loved it. Oh, I did want a quick, it's really fun seeing them just be psyched to have Edie in the show more. And I did wonder, not to make this personal, more personal than it is, but when, like, Cyril comes back and he's playing a role, but he is also always trying to establish himself as a credible adult in the eyes of his, disapproving eyes of his mother. He then sits across from her and slurps his blue milk cereal again. And I wondered if you felt any connection to that scene as someone who, like, is, you know, a successful adult man in the world. But then when you go home again and you're like, Mom, any chicken salad in the fridge? It's like how I feel when I go home and I'm like, you know, I've, I've been traveling quite a bit lately.
1:17:34 Andy Greenwald? I've been in London and enjoying cafe culture. And then there's a bag of her sour cream and onion potato chips and like, thank you. Go away and just be filthy with it for a while. I thought that was a nice touch.
1:17:45 Chris Ryan? Um, Saw.
1:17:47 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, let's talk about Saw.
1:17:48 Chris Ryan? Couple of things here. Number one is, I guess it's time to re-watch Rogue One in earnest, which, because I think that the Saw stuff is on-ramping to that. He is also obviously supposed to be a foil to Luthen's style of rebellion. Saw is obviously much more nakedly militaristic. He is essentially Colonel Kurtz, like, my methods are unsound. And also Colonel Kilgore from Podgloves now, when it comes to speechifying.
1:18:22 Chris Ryan? I still don't know if I completely understand what Willman and the variations are.
1:18:30 Andy Greenwald? So it seems like-
1:18:31 Chris Ryan? It's a lockpick, but it's also got nuclear-
1:18:35 Andy Greenwald? It could explode.
1:18:35 Chris Ryan? Power in there, okay.
1:18:36 Andy Greenwald? I guess. Also, this is another thing that the show does. Willman has been on the show for a while.
1:18:42 Chris Ryan? Yes.
1:18:43 Andy Greenwald? This is a new look at him and a new role. I mean, he is the one, he threw the bomb.
1:18:49 Chris Ryan? Yes.
1:18:50 Andy Greenwald? So he is-
1:18:50 Chris Ryan? Tony talked about this in the Hollywood Reporter thing, where he's like, well, we had him throw the bomb, so we were like, alright, I guess he has to leave.
1:18:55 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
1:18:56 Chris Ryan? Because he threw the bomb.
1:18:56 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
1:18:57 Chris Ryan? And then like, just comes up with something for this guy to do, which is basically be going up the river with Saw or-
1:19:05 Andy Greenwald? And become a revolutionary, not just a spy, or whatever. And I think that that's another one of the things that clearly different stories and books and real-life history has influenced, Tony, this idea of like, can you be a, can you keep your hands clean in conflict? Can you be a gentleman spy? Can you continue to do as Luthen does, like, you know, have, literally have a different hair, beautiful flowing robes and love lovely things? And then also be down in the dirt.
1:19:32 Chris Ryan? Yes.
1:19:32 Andy Greenwald? And so it's just, again, it's just really, really smart story scaffolding to say, we have this character, we're not really sure what to do with him. Ah, we can implant him here and give us a, you know, ground, you know, a, put him at the-
1:19:46 Chris Ryan? POV character.
1:19:47 Andy Greenwald? At the ground floor of a different style.
1:19:50 Chris Ryan? Guerrilla warfare, rather than espionage.
1:19:52 Andy Greenwald? Also, we can give the young actor a glimpse at another style of acting, which is a force-
1:19:57 Chris Ryan? Whitaker. The force Whitaker essentially gives Willman a version of the speech that Luthen gave Lonnie in the first season. They both say the same thing, which is, I will die before I see this- Mission accomplished.
1:20:11 Andy Greenwald? Yep.
1:20:12 Chris Ryan? Or failed, you know, so.
1:20:13 Andy Greenwald? You say we'll all be dead before the Republic is back?
1:20:15 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I'll just, I'm gonna read it because it is an incredible piece of writing.
1:20:19 Andy Greenwald? Can you read it?
1:20:20 Chris Ryan? I'm not gonna do it in Forest Whitaker's voice. I just simply won't.
1:20:23 Andy Greenwald? Okay, so you do have a line?
1:20:26 Chris Ryan? Um, that itch, that burn, you feel how badly she wants to explode. He's talking about Rido, which is this napalm-y stuff inside of the thing. I, like, we can get into it. Remember this, remember this moment, this perfect night. You think I'm crazy? Yes, I am.
1:20:42 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
1:20:43 Chris Ryan? Revolution is not for the sane. Look at us. Unloved, hunted, cannon fodder, will all be dead before the Republic is back, and yet here we are. Where are you, boy? You're here. You're not with Luthen. You're here, right here, and you're ready to fight. We're the Rido, kid. We're the fuel. We're the thing that explodes when there's too much friction in the air.
1:21:04 Andy Greenwald? Would you have attempted the Forest Whitaker voice if Clay had told you to do it in a stern way?
1:21:09 Chris Ryan? I would do it if Forest Whitaker could pick a voice, because I, I do feel like
1:21:15 Chris Ryan? he brought a lot of different options to the screen.
1:21:17 Andy Greenwald? He brought, he's such a unique and incredible actor.
1:21:21 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:21:22 Andy Greenwald? There's an element when he does things like this, which is just like, what if Michael Jordan just shot left-handed for a while?
1:21:27 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:21:27 Andy Greenwald? You know, which, respect, but, uh, it's, it's wild.
1:21:31 Chris Ryan? So you're, what was, at the end, what is Willman doing? Is he unlocking something?
1:21:39 Andy Greenwald? Are they stealing the fuel?
1:21:41 Chris Ryan? I, I don't know. Maybe that is what it is, right? But like, in the beginning, with the guy who winds up being a traitor, quote unquote.
1:21:48 Andy Greenwald? Yeah. Oh, was he teaching him how to do the thing that he has?
1:21:51 Chris Ryan? Specific things, the variations that they have to do to unlock something or whatever.
1:21:57 Andy Greenwald? And they're learning all of them because he won't tell anyone what, where they're actually going.
1:22:01 Chris Ryan? And when he tells that guy, it's because that guy keeps asking.
1:22:04 Andy Greenwald? Specifically, which makes him clear that he.
1:22:06 Chris Ryan? Although it did seem like maybe that, that microphone was planted. I mean, it seemed very convenient. He's like, look.
1:22:11 Andy Greenwald? Here is the thing, and they're all like, wah!
1:22:14 Chris Ryan? Yeah. It is kind of dope to just like shoot someone and go, traitor!
1:22:18 Andy Greenwald? Well, I think you're actually on to something. I think that is part of what they're doing. Like, who decides any of this?
1:22:23 Chris Ryan? Who's doing?
1:22:24 Andy Greenwald? Great question.
1:22:25 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:22:25 Andy Greenwald? Great, great, great, great question.
1:22:28 Chris Ryan? Okay, that, that was pretty much my jam there.
1:22:34 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, the scope and scale of this continues to just kind of astound, I think. And I have no, I really, just to go back to the way the delivery system, I, the thing I enjoy most about this is that, I mean, I don't know if there was a next week on, I didn't look, so I actually have no idea.
1:22:55 Chris Ryan? Where we're going.
1:22:56 Andy Greenwald? Where we're going, when we're going. I mean, we're running out of time before Rogue One, but I think it's kind of thrilling.
1:23:02 Chris Ryan? We're BBY three?
1:23:05 Andy Greenwald? We were, yeah, but who knows where we'll be next.
1:23:08 Chris Ryan? I think it's BBY two.
1:23:09 Andy Greenwald? We can save this to the, we can save this for when we're looking back on this season. But, God, I just, there's so much in this show that I wish non, I wish people who make TV would take.
1:23:23 Chris Ryan? Well, maybe we should do a Lessons of Andor.
1:23:25 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, oh, we didn't do our syllabus.
1:23:26 Chris Ryan? I can just rattle off a couple of things. This is sort of like a living document for folks, so I know that this can be a little bit frustrating and maybe Andy and I or I can make a YouTube video where we just like list all this stuff and show different copies of it. I would start, if I may, with Jean Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows. It's a film from the late 60s that Melville made about the French Resistance and really reminds me of Andor and it's, it's how shabby and unglorious the work of the rebel is, the resistor is, and also how complicated it is in terms of internal factions and betrayals. It is an incredible film.
1:24:06 Chris Ryan? I highly recommend anybody see it, even if you haven't seen Andor, but it's because of what I asked to say about the French Resistance, but it's incredible.
1:24:13 Andy Greenwald? You know what else, this is a little bit more basic, but you know what else is just always worth revisiting? Like, I love the way that this show celebrates potentially more obscure things. Like, there are a bunch of,
1:24:27 Andy Greenwald? there's like a Robert Bresson movie called like A Man Escaped. There's a, Chabrol's Line of Demarcation, like, there's, there's a tradition of French Resistance movies that are also not fully about it.
1:24:39 Chris Ryan? It's like they're symbolically about resistance, but are, yeah.
1:24:42 Andy Greenwald? Because they couldn't also, it was happening in real time.
1:24:44 Chris Ryan? A Man Escaped is crazy.
1:24:46 Andy Greenwald? These are crazy movies. There was a movie that I was inspired to start watching. It's on Max now. It's Truffaut's The Last Metro, which is about life in wartime, and it was notable, it was made in the 80s. It was more notable because it was almost as if enough time had passed that they could really say, I mean, the movie begins with a map of France being like, here's Vichy, here's what it was like.
1:25:03 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:25:04 Andy Greenwald? But also Casablanca, like movies like Casablanca or Third Man, like movies about people trapped in circumstances where shifting allegiances and the world inside of a place no longer matches the world outside of the place. I was thinking about that with just the throwaway line about like this cafe used to be filled with a certain type of person.
1:25:22 Chris Ryan? Yeah. It's interesting you should mention the last metro and the different points in history where France has looked back on the resistance with different eyes. I'm reading a book called Fighters in the Shadows, which is, it's called A New History of the French Resistance. It's by Robert Gildia. And it's fascinating because it's about how not only the resistance worked, but also the way the resistance has been viewed in French culture over the decades.
1:25:50 Andy Greenwald? Right.
1:25:51 Chris Ryan? Because it had a much different meaning after Algeria, after some of the colonies rebelled against France's imperial colonial rule. And a lot of the people who were in the French Resistance were on the side of, you know, France's colonial exertion of their colonial power.
1:26:13 Andy Greenwald? This was in Monsieur Spade as well.
1:26:14 Chris Ryan? Yes. So there's a lot of nuance to being against one fascistic force. There's still nuance within it. I mean, and I thought so far, what I've read of Fighters in the Shadows is quite intriguing about that.
1:26:28 Andy Greenwald? And by the way, one of the great, there are many tragedies, I think, not real life tragedies, but creative tragedies in the wake of the Star Wars VII, VIII, and IX trilogy, the more recent trilogy, one of which being was somehow the Emperor has returned. Somehow the Empire, you know, the First Order, when it's just like actually what's complicated and what's rich and what's interesting and what is baked into. I mean, I've talked about this before, how like Andor feels like this incredible, it's not retconning, it's just like reputation saving and also fandom saving acknowledgement that George Lucas wasn't just pulling stuff out of his ass. Like there was, it was, yes, it was influenced by like,
1:27:10 Andy Greenwald? you know, Flash Gordon cereals, but also being a child of that era that he was a child of and global power structure and World War II and the shadow that it cast. What if the sequel trilogy had been about overreach, about we've unleashed Saw Guerreras?
1:27:25 Andy Greenwald? To pursue a single goal and then, once that goal was achieved, we couldn't control them anymore.
1:27:30 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:27:30 Andy Greenwald? And then what happened? Like, there's so much story there.
1:27:32 Chris Ryan? Right.
1:27:33 Andy Greenwald? Uh, and that's not what those movies did at all. I wanted to name, you mentioned it, so I was gonna reference it just again, like, we love and we talk about a lot, the writer Alan First.
1:27:43 Chris Ryan? Yes.
1:27:43 Andy Greenwald? Who's a great, great American spy novelist. All of his books are set within like a three-year window during World War II.
1:27:50 Chris Ryan? Mostly in France, yeah.
1:27:51 Andy Greenwald? They're so sick, all of them, the very few, some of them are connected and sometimes characters will appear, but you can just pick them up. The ones that I was specifically thinking of, some of my favorites, are a two-book series, and it's The World at Night and Red Gold. And I was thinking about it specifically because it's about a film producer, uh, who gets drawn into
1:28:08 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:28:09 Andy Greenwald? the world of the Resistance. And there's a little, little tiny echo of a fashion designer being like, what do I do now?
1:28:15 Chris Ryan? The first novel we've talked about before that I was gonna mention was Night Soldiers, just because it is a very Luthen-Cassian-esque premise of this kid who's been bullied by, uh, regional fascistic, uh, soldiers in Bulgaria, I think.
1:28:34 Andy Greenwald? There's a lot of Bulgaria in those early books.
1:28:35 Chris Ryan? In the beginning of the World War II, um, is recruited into working for the NKVD, right?
1:28:42 Andy Greenwald? That's right.
1:28:42 Chris Ryan? Um, but then winds up fighting in Spain, fighting in, you know, all over, you know, and is basically a Zelig-like figure throughout the war.
1:28:50 Andy Greenwald? For what it's worth, and we can, we could maybe one day do a podcast about this, like, like many great novelists, the first books are so dense. I mean, these weren't his first books, he wrote a bunch of other books that are all out of print, and then he suddenly found his voice in 1988 with Night Soldiers, and it's epic. And the next, and Dark Star is also epic, and they're huge books. It's almost like he had one swing, one turn at bat. And then he settled into a, a, a rhythm of basically writing another one of these every two years for a bunch of years, and the books get smaller and more focused. Night Soldiers is incredible. Um, I started with Kingdom of Shadows. You can start, you can, you could start anywhere.
1:29:26 Chris Ryan? Dark Star is like, I think, the first, first novel he wrote, maybe?
1:29:29 Andy Greenwald? No, Night Soldiers is first.
1:29:30 Chris Ryan? Oh, there's Dark Star a second.
1:29:31 Andy Greenwald? Night Soldiers, Dark Star, then Polish Officer, The World at Night, and then, and then he kept, he kept rolling. Um, but any of them you could pick up. And the other series I've mentioned before that is slightly similar is, um, David Downing's series about a spy named John Russell. Every book is named after, um... Train station, it's in Germany. Zoo Station, I think, is the first one. They're, not only are they all good, they're more than I realized when I was searching just to get the, make sure I got the order right. He wrote one last year with the same character now living in 1950's Los Angeles called Union Station.
1:30:04 Chris Ryan? Oh, I didn't know that.
1:30:04 Andy Greenwald? So, let's go. But yeah, just in the sense of like, people, and his girlfriend in the books, John Russell is a German film star, and it's a sense of someone at the heart of something whose world collapses around them. And then what do you do?
1:30:16 Chris Ryan? I have a couple of other things, but I almost feel like we should, we should keep this rolling. We should keep adding to the list, and then maybe we do a big master list when Andor's over as a video or something.
1:30:25 Andy Greenwald? That's great, and then could we pitch our alt Star Wars, episode seven, eight, and nine?
1:30:30 Chris Ryan? Sure, I'm sure Bob Iger would write a check for it. Many Maoist guerrillas are still on the run. Thanks to Kaya.
1:30:39 Andy Greenwald? Somehow, revolutionaries never stop.
1:30:42 Chris Ryan? We'll be back on Monday talking Last of Us and a couple of other things, and yeah, the Andor stuff continues throughout the season.
1:30:49 Andy Greenwald? How many Karems are you gonna crush this weekend?
1:30:51 Chris Ryan? I'll try and check it out.
1:30:52 Andy Greenwald? It's France!
1:30:53 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:30:54 Andy Greenwald? Let's go.
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Previous ‘The Last of Us’ S2E3, ‘The Studio’ Episode 6, and ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ Episode 4 Next ‘The Last of Us’ E4 and the Last of ‘The Righteous Gemstones’ Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated