The 'Last of Us’ Season 2 Finale and ‘Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning’

Chris and Andy talk about the ‘Last of Us’ Season 2 finale, why adapting the show from the video game caused more limitations and issues in this season than in the first one (08:24), and what’s on deck for Season 3 of the show. Then they talk about ‘Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning,’ the maybe-final installment of the ‘Mission: Impossible’ franchise, and why the stunning action set pieces could not make up for the incomprehensible plotlines (45:44). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Production and Editing: Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 1:02Speaker 02

  I need sports staff to clear the room. Stand up and walk now.

• 1:08Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the Ringer dot com. And joining me in the studio, if he chooses to accept it, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 1:21Andy Greenwald?

  You know, my path to this latest new studio was not unlike Ethan Hunt's path.

• 1:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28Andy Greenwald?

  To the, I believe it was called a pavlova? Or is that a dessert?

• 1:31Chris Ryan?

  Uh, it had a Russian name. I was, I was wondering the same thing. I feel like I didn't stick around to see if they noted it in the credits of who played the pavlova.

• 1:39Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, they only said it 41 times. You didn't catch it?

• 1:42Chris Ryan?

  As Andy is alluding to, we are going to talk about Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning today. We're also going to talk about the season finale of Last of Us, which aired on Sunday night. It's Tuesday. We took Memorial Day off.

• 1:52Andy Greenwald?

  For the troops.

• 1:53Chris Ryan?

  Two relaxed guys. Uh, and what are we going to tell people? Oh, I have a few housekeeping things.

• 1:59Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 2:00Chris Ryan?

  You can follow us on Instagram at the Watch Pod underscore. You can email us at thewatch at spotify.com. You can watch us on Ringer dash TV. That's the channel on YouTube or on Spotify where you're hopefully listening to us. I think that's it.

• 2:12Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, I have a couple of questions.

• 2:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:14Andy Greenwald?

  One, do you think, how do you react at restaurants when the tables go like this? Like, do you think you do you have one of those?

• 2:20Chris Ryan?

  I say, hey, I'm sorry to be a pain in the ass, but can you put a matchbook under there?

• 2:23Andy Greenwald?

  Do you say that?

• 2:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:24Andy Greenwald?

  That's good.

• 2:25Chris Ryan?

  And I offered to do it myself. And then I lift the table up to show everyone my core strength.

• 2:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 2:31Chris Ryan?

  And then I drop it.

• 2:32Andy Greenwald?

  You're a hero. Okay, that's good.

• 2:34Chris Ryan?

  Um, chaining day for a bunch of youngsters across the pond. How about that?

• 2:39Andy Greenwald?

  It's exciting.

• 2:40Chris Ryan?

  Not only for Liverpool FC, but for-

• 2:42Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, congratulations to you.

• 2:43Chris Ryan?

  Dominic Arabella and Alistair Stoute. How about that?

• 2:46Andy Greenwald?

  Well, you made it sound like they're siblings.

• 2:50Andy Greenwald?

  Which would be a wild-

• 2:51Chris Ryan?

  That would be funny.

• 2:54Andy Greenwald?

  I think-

• 2:54Chris Ryan?

  That would get pretty provocative.

• 2:55Andy Greenwald?

  So what you're alluding to is the casting of the golden trio in the HBO series Harry Potter.

• 3:02Chris Ryan?

  No, Harry Potter, yeah.

• 3:03Andy Greenwald?

  The golden trio in Task was cast quite a long time ago. That is, I believe, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Pelfrey, and Martha Plimpton.

• 3:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:11Andy Greenwald?

  That is your golden trio.

• 3:13Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 3:13Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, because-

• 3:15Chris Ryan?

  My young wizards.

• 3:16Andy Greenwald?

  I work on this show. I can't really say much, so I think that what would be fun-

• 3:21Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 3:22Andy Greenwald?

  Is to ask you about this.

• 3:23Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 3:23Andy Greenwald?

  You've been waiting a long time-

• 3:25Chris Ryan?

  Months.

• 3:26Andy Greenwald?

  For these kids to be, uh, announced and unveiled.

• 3:28Chris Ryan?

  I have many, many, many bets in FanDuel about who it would be. Yeah. None of them came through.

• 3:34Andy Greenwald?

  You didn't take, I thought the money line saying that at least one of the kids would be named Arabella would have, that felt like a safe hit.

• 3:40Chris Ryan?

  That was like picking the Pacers at the beginning of the playoffs. Yeah.

• 3:43Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, like, like the real Quants knew?

• 3:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:46Andy Greenwald?

  I got it.

• 3:47Chris Ryan?

  They were the hottest team in the second half. You didn't know. Check the net rating, baby.

• 3:51Andy Greenwald?

  I know they won the inaugural NBA Cup.

• 3:54Chris Ryan?

  Uh, they did.

• 3:56Andy Greenwald?

  No, the Lakers won.

• 3:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:58Andy Greenwald?

  But they made it to the finals.

• 3:58Chris Ryan?

  Lakers won and the Bucks won the second one. Yeah.

• 4:00Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 4:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:01Andy Greenwald?

  So that's how much I know. Uh, I am thrilled about this. Um-

• 4:05Chris Ryan?

  I like how we put this at the top as if we're constantly addressing Harry Potter news.

• 4:09Andy Greenwald?

  This was the big news of the day, and it's exciting.

• 4:11Chris Ryan?

  It is.

• 4:12Andy Greenwald?

  Kaya, do you want to weigh in on this as, um, someone who may have had an opinion about the first trio?

• 4:16Speaker 05

  I'll say something, though, that's very revealing about myself right now.

• 4:20Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 4:20Speaker 05

  When I, oh, God, uh, when I was young, probably a preteen, I had a poster of Daniel Radcliffe.

• 4:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 4:28Speaker 05

  From the magazine Tiger Beat hung up in my bedroom. So, yeah. Original Harry Potter cast, very important to me. Um, good luck to these small children.

• 4:39Chris Ryan?

  These, these new Harry Potter casts are incredibly important to you.

• 4:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 4:42Chris Ryan?

  I have yet to find a Harry Potter cast important to me, but.

• 4:45Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's gonna be this one. I think you're gonna like this.

• 4:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I, I mean.

• 4:48Andy Greenwald?

  I, I also will say, again, I'm not beating around the bush. I'm not, I can't say anything other than the fact that like, I can attest that this was a exhaustive and exhausting it sometimes to people.

• 4:57Chris Ryan?

  It would be funny if it was just like these, just the first people we saw.

• 5:01Chris Ryan?

  Who had 10 years of a veil.

• 5:03Andy Greenwald?

  Rest of, rest of the season off. Um, yeah, I was not, I was not a part of the, I was obviously not a part of these discussions. I was just there. When I was there, sometimes I would see some tapes and, you know, we could share our opinions, but I feel like they worked really hard at this and, uh, really smart people and I'm excited about these kids. I'm, I, I can't wait to hear how they are with, uh, a lot of dialogue.

• 5:25Chris Ryan?

  You packed it in there?

• 5:26Andy Greenwald?

  Specifically around mid-season, but, you know, no, no reason. No, I think it's gonna be great. I'm really excited.

• 5:30Chris Ryan?

  I don't think there's any other, like, new stuff that I wanted to hit, you know, uh.

• 5:33Andy Greenwald?

  Any holiday weekend stuff?

• 5:35Chris Ryan?

  No, I mean, like, you know, just personal observations.

• 5:37Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, that's all I want to do on this podcast, but.

• 5:40Chris Ryan?

  Uh, you know, I watched a bunch of horror movies and.

• 5:44Andy Greenwald?

  Is that a Memorial Day tradition or were you just like?

• 5:46Chris Ryan?

  No, but I feel like every three or four months or so, my wife and I try to like just survey the landscape of terror and, uh, get caught up. And you could do a lot of work, uh, on the algorithms, you know, like you can just start typing in scenarios and it'll be like, what about this Swedish movie from 2024?

• 6:04Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I thought you were at the point where it's like the new Gemini makes the movie for you.

• 6:07Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that would be, that's, that's probably coming.

• 6:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 6:10Chris Ryan?

  I mean, it's here. I just haven't engaged with that. Uh, I don't believe in AI as a, as a villain in Mission Impossible movies.

• 6:17Andy Greenwald?

  That's honestly best case scenario. Do you, um, speaking of algo, so when you type for your horror movies and you get, and, and by the way, feel free to shout out any hits that you discovered over this weekend.

• 6:27Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I mean, I've watched a Swedish film called Feed that I thought was quite good about social media influencers being attacked by a, a lake being, uh, in Sweden.

• 6:35Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, that sounds like something I dreamed up.

• 6:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:37Andy Greenwald?

  That sounds amazing. I would watch that. That's not horror.

• 6:40Chris Ryan?

  It's pretty scary. Yeah.

• 6:42Andy Greenwald?

  For the, I mean, for the influencers?

• 6:44Chris Ryan?

  For the influencers, yeah.

• 6:45Andy Greenwald?

  That's fine with me.

• 6:46Chris Ryan?

  Not for the people who run the eco-friendly glamping site that they're staying at. They're, they're, they're actually terrorizing them. Spoiler.

• 6:53Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, again, this feels like morally pretty good to me. I'm okay with it.

• 6:57Chris Ryan?

  I think you would have some interesting experiences if you went into horror films looking for morality.

• 7:02Andy Greenwald?

  If I just brought...

• 7:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm like, this sexually active girl must die, obviously.

• 7:09Andy Greenwald?

  Wait, isn't that accurate? I feel like...

• 7:11Chris Ryan?

  That's what happens in horror movies.

• 7:12Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 7:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but you, you're like, every, you know.

• 7:15Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I think people should let their freak flags fly.

• 7:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:18Andy Greenwald?

  Isn't that what Midsommar is about? People just having fun?

• 7:20Chris Ryan?

  Uh, to some extent, yeah. You haven't seen that.

• 7:23Andy Greenwald?

  No, I just watched the first five minutes. Everybody seemed like they're having a good...

• 7:26Chris Ryan?

  No, I didn't.

• 7:28Andy Greenwald?

  What if I watched the first 10 minutes of horror movies? Would I generally?

• 7:31Chris Ryan?

  Generally, you would be like, these are comedies, except for Midsommar, which you're like, I'm gonna go, uh, for a long walk off a short cliff.

• 7:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 7:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:39Andy Greenwald?

  Is that a spoiler?

• 7:40Chris Ryan?

  No. Wait, actually, it is.

• 7:42Andy Greenwald?

  Even I know that. I read the Wikipedia page, dog.

• 7:45Chris Ryan?

  It is.

• 7:46Andy Greenwald?

  So, at last, we are gonna be talking about the entity soon, so it is slightly relevant to our show. When you spend a weekend Googling, like, Swedish influencer horror...

• 7:56Chris Ryan?

  That's not what I Google. I Google, uh, horror movies set in the woods, horror movies set at camping sites.

• 8:02Andy Greenwald?

  Much better.

• 8:03Chris Ryan?

  Um, 80s vibed horror movies, 90s vibe horror movies, those kinds of things.

• 8:07Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, then, within 12 hours, when you fire up Instagram and you go to, like, the suggested for you, is it all horror?

• 8:14Chris Ryan?

  No, all of my Instagram is how to fix my slice and kettlebell workouts.

• 8:19Andy Greenwald?

  It's amazing.

• 8:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, really, and Liverpool parade celebrations.

• 8:22Andy Greenwald?

  I really thought I had fixed mine, because mine has, is now just, uh, chefs cooking pasta.

• 8:30Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 8:32Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know how I got there, but it's very pleasant.

• 8:34Chris Ryan?

  Gosh, how did you get there?

• 8:35Andy Greenwald?

  Well, no, no, because...

• 8:35Chris Ryan?

  It's so weird.

• 8:36Andy Greenwald?

  No, because usually, it's like chefs, chefs cooking pasta, and then children, adult children of emotionally stunted adults. I'm like, why'd that get there? Click, click, click, click.

• 8:47Andy Greenwald?

  But... Then I realized there's, there's actually a door behind the door. Because this morning, when I looked at it, there was a suggestion of Eagles free agent targets for next offseason in Italian.

• 9:01Chris Ryan?

  Really?

• 9:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. It has micro-targeted me.

• 9:04Chris Ryan?

  Maybe you should become, like, you should buy one of those houses that the Italian government is selling for a dollar.

• 9:10Andy Greenwald?

  Go on.

• 9:11Chris Ryan?

  And become like the preeminent Italian Eagles podcaster.

• 9:16Andy Greenwald?

  In, but I would have to speak Italian.

• 9:17Chris Ryan?

  And you'd have to have wifi, which I doubt that those places have. They're selling them for a dollar.

• 9:22Andy Greenwald?

  But I do like the number. I do like the number you're giving me.

• 9:26Chris Ryan?

  Let's get into Last of Us, because obviously, it's a season that I know you've found a lot of challenges with. I think that's, that's a polite way of putting it.

• 9:34Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 9:35Chris Ryan?

  I think that this is an interesting conversation to have about this finale and this season, knowing what little we know, or what, actually, a pretty significant amount we know about the third season, which will come at some date during the Ossoff administration. But like.

• 9:50Andy Greenwald?

  I do think that both of us know more than we had thought we would know. Because in, am I right in saying this? Like, after watching the finale, I was like, excuse me, I'm sorry, what?

• 10:00Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 10:00Andy Greenwald?

  And then I learned, and we will spoil of this, obviously, this episode, but also, if you would like to, if you, if you're listening to this because you are a, we're not going to spoil the next season, but we did learn.

• 10:12Chris Ryan?

  If you're just like, I am pure.

• 10:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 10:13Chris Ryan?

  I just want to watch an episode of television and then never think about it, except listen to a podcast about it. Don't, like, I'm not going to spoil anything that happens in the game after what we've seen.

• 10:24Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 10:25Chris Ryan?

  But there are things that Craig Mason has talked about, and that Neil Druckman has talked about, about how they're going to do season three.

• 10:30Andy Greenwald?

  See, I don't even know that. What, I think what we will be saying, at least, is just that this is, this is a similar shocking cut to the video game, from what I understand.

• 10:40Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 10:40Andy Greenwald?

  So we will talk about that.

• 10:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:42Andy Greenwald?

  But, go on.

• 10:43Chris Ryan?

  I wanted to come at this more as like a writing project.

• 10:46Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 10:46Chris Ryan?

  And discuss it with your background, working in rooms, working on shows.

• 10:51Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 10:51Chris Ryan?

  Structuring things. This adaptation of The Last of Us video game, I think, posed certain challenges. It also posed certain advantages. I mean, there's like a obvious, there are set pieces, there are tasks, there are actions that I think are inherently cinematic. But maybe not necessarily inherently dramatic. That I think that get translated from the game into the screen. But what we got from the second season was obviously the shocking moment earlier in the season of Joel's death. And then more or less a travelogue and then adventure story and survival story with Dina and Ellie.

• 11:29Chris Ryan?

  With interspersed with little snippets and short stories almost about the Washington liberation front, the Sarah fights, whatever was going on in Seattle. And whatever was going on with Abby's crew after they left Jackson or the area around Jackson. And basically, the season culminates with Ellie finally finding some of Abby's crew. Trying to find where Abby is. And when she gets back to the movie theater, Abby has jumped her group of Jesse.

• 12:09Andy Greenwald?

  Tommy at that point.

• 12:10Chris Ryan?

  And Dina. And she shoots Jesse, she beats up Tommy, she has a gun on Ellie. Ellie is like, don't hurt them, you're, I'm the one you want. And Abby says like, I let you live and you wasted it or whatever. And gunshot, cut to black. The stinger to some extent, or the, the end of the episode is Abby waking up. It's confusing for the viewer on first pass. She's in, I think the Seahawks stadium.

• 12:41Andy Greenwald?

  Essentially.

• 12:42Chris Ryan?

  And walks out, is told she needs to go to a meeting with Isaac, walks out, surveys a bustling kind of military camp that's happening inside of the Seahawks stadium. And it says Seattle day one. So what that means, and I think for some people who kind of were just kind of like, oh yeah, whatever.

• 13:02Andy Greenwald?

  Tracking the days.

• 13:03Chris Ryan?

  Tracking the days, like I hadn't even been thinking about that throughout the season. Is that now we are going back three days. And it's Abby's POV, or will likely be Abby's POV of the same time period.

• 13:17Andy Greenwald?

  That Ellie and Dina were in.

• 13:19Chris Ryan?

  That will be what the next season is about. So let me ask you this. First of all, I guess let's broadly talk about, did you like this episode? What did you think of the end of the season?

• 13:27Andy Greenwald?

  I was really surprised, and not in a positive way, about this episode, and in fact, about the season. I think it is hard to think of a precedent of a show that had, within the scope of one season, a masterpiece and charitably, six disappointments.

• 13:48Chris Ryan?

  I was trying to think of, I never really thought, like, I never thought about Paradise in those terms, but it did have an episode that was so far and away better than the rest.

• 13:56Andy Greenwald?

  That's the thing. I mean, it is like, uh, it was like the baseball guys had like the, the, how many true outcomes were there?

• 14:01Chris Ryan?

  Three, yeah.

• 14:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, this is, this is like the Kyle Schwaber of seasons, although I like Kyle Schwaber more than I liked The Last of Us. It was basically a leadoff homerun and then a lot of, lot of zeros. Um, I, I was really blown away by that. And the other thing that I think of is pretty unique, and I'm wrestling with it. And like, I'm trying, I want to be fair-minded about it because I'm wrestling with how unfamiliar it is. And unfamiliarity at this stage of wherever we are in the prestige television evolution or de-evolution, novelty is worth noting and not necessarily worth throwing away. But what I continue to be struck by, and I would imagine fans of the game are not, because this is their, mirrors their experience, was that a show that felt open and expansive and full of possibility,

• 14:45Andy Greenwald?

  for those of us who didn't understand what it was, the first season contains not just a potential cure that could save the world in the form of Ellie, but also an open road travelogue of a game. They're traveling across the country with a destination that has giant repercussions, but week to week, the scenarios could change. It's very odd to see a show in its second season contract as much as this show did. Not budgetarily, certainly, but in terms of the scope of its story. From a story about potentially saving the world to a story about the particularly misguided revenge narrative of this flawed character. It collapsed in on itself. And the structural foundation of the show at that point becomes, not just Bella Ramsey's performance, which we can discuss,

• 15:30Andy Greenwald?

  but the way that Craig Mason and Neil Druckmann have written this character this season. And... In the politest terms possible, I don't think the structural integrity held.

• 15:40Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and so I really want to talk about the structural integrity and I really want to talk about the choices that they made as TV writers.

• 15:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 15:48Chris Ryan?

  That I think that they had to make.

• 15:52Chris Ryan?

  And I really am trying to personally like, uh, get away from being like, what they should have done is this.

• 15:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I have no idea what they should have done.

• 16:00Chris Ryan?

  But I think the alternative, I think I want to posit some alternatives and I want to ask you whether or not, um, not necessarily HBO, like would Casey have said yes to this? But, uh, whether or not you think this would have worked? So.

• 16:13Chris Ryan?

  This plan's been more or less stated, um, that they're gonna do the, essentially the events of the second season, or at least some of them, uh, the third season will depict from Abby's POV, right? Now, throughout this season, we know, we find out who Abby is and why she's mad early on. That is a change from the game, apparently.

• 16:35Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 16:36Chris Ryan?

  We see Abby kill Joel, then she vanishes for the rest of the season. But, we do get a little bit of stuff with, uh, Isaac, the Jeffrey Wright character, Han Rahan, some of the other, uh, WLF people, uh, were introduced to in various little snippets, various little stories. We see them largely through the eyes of Ellie, but we do get alternative POV stuff. Like, we do get stories being told on the margins about this whole situation.

• 17:05Chris Ryan?

  If you're gonna make the choice that we're gonna get to the end of one road, do a U-turn, and do the same road with a different driver, with Abby.

• 17:16Chris Ryan?

  Is there an argument to be made that they should have gone full on, everything we see is from Ellie's POV? It may be disorienting.

• 17:24Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 17:25Chris Ryan?

  Why are there people executing a child in the city?

• 17:28Andy Greenwald?

  I see what you mean.

• 17:29Chris Ryan?

  What are these paintings up about, you feel her love? Like, who, we can't figure this out? Um, what's Abby do? Is Abby here? Is she not here? What's, why, why do we see explosions and fighting happening? That every piece of information that we get as viewers are the, is the information that Ellie is ascertaining.

• 17:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 17:46Chris Ryan?

  As she's going through this. You could have maybe done exposition dumps like Tommy and Jesse show up and they're like, here's everything we've learned. And you could find it like, a little bit out. And then at the end of the season, essentially, you turn back and we've had the explosion on the island and we've had all this stuff. She sees Jeffrey Wright at the boats, but that's the first time she's seen Jeffrey Wright. So you get all the way to the end of that. And then in three, it's everything told from the WLF Seraphite perspective.

• 18:15Andy Greenwald?

  So you leave the season with a lot of really juicy question marks.

• 18:18Chris Ryan?

  Well, I don't know, though, if you would have had basically people being like, what the fuck is going on?

• 18:23Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's a risky run.

• 18:24Chris Ryan?

  Because Ellie and Dina are essentially having a season-long conversation about love and forgiveness and vengeance and what are we doing out here? And now that you're pregnant, like, how has this changed? And all this stuff. And are you selfish or are you for a community? And these relatively like philosophical ideas. But it's not exactly the most dynamic story because they're essentially like going on a trip.

• 18:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 18:49Chris Ryan?

  And then I don't know if there's actually enough action or meat on the bone there if you don't include the Seraphites getting jumped and all this other stuff.

• 19:00Andy Greenwald?

  So I think you're asking a very, I think it's a crucial question to ask. And I think we should preface this by saying, I have no doubt that Craig Mason and all the professional writers involved in this show spent quite a bit of time having this debate. And this is where they netted out.

• 19:14Chris Ryan?

  It's a useful conversation.

• 19:14Andy Greenwald?

  I do too. So our version of it condensed for this podcast has to start with one giant practical response, which is if you make this entire season one half of a story explicitly and getting everyone kind of, you know, a little bit, a little bit confused, but maybe intrigued, you cannot have two years pass before you answer those questions.

• 19:36Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 19:37Andy Greenwald?

  And the practical nature of the show in 2025 is that that's how long it's going to take.

• 19:41Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 19:41Andy Greenwald?

  So I think that immediately took it off the board and I don't begrudge them for that. I think that's being relatively respectful of the audience. I think you could also make the case that the

• 19:52Andy Greenwald?

  The ballast of, well, here's Jeffrey Wright's thing. What's his story? That's interesting. He's scary. Does provide potentially some story balancing so that Dina and Ellie can have the emotional conversations that I think drew Craig Mason to the idea of this project to begin with. It's the reason why we still talk about episode three of season one. Like, if that's what you can do within this construct, then he's going to be hunting opportunities to do that. Whether he succeeded this season or not, that's not even what we're debating at this moment. The larger point, though, that I am struggling with in terms of the way this season was structured is that, from what I understand, and I'm sure there are people who understand much better than I do, and I'm trying to be considerate when I talk about it, is that

• 20:35Andy Greenwald?

  the novelty and power of the video game doesn't necessarily come from the enhanced gameplay or the righteous kills of zombies or whatever. It's the way that it was constructed to test empathy. That it would put you literally in the shoes and in the trigger finger of someone. And the way the video games take over our psyche is like, well, that's me. That's my avatar. I'm a hero.

• 20:59Chris Ryan?

  You're asked to kill the most beloved character on the show or on the game.

• 21:04Andy Greenwald?

  Or you're like, how could that monster do that? And then you flip it, and then you play as the monster, and you begin to understand that, like Grover in the famous children's book, there is a monster at the end of the book.

• 21:14Chris Ryan?

  That's also Rust in True Detective said that.

• 21:17Andy Greenwald?

  He did say that. He did say that. So Big Bird and Russ Cole, similar in a lot of ways. They're both blondes. So that idea of a video game that is actually a stealth lesson on empathy and the narrative fallibility of heroes, like, that's really, I do think that's interesting for the narrative, and that's compelling. Unfortunately, I don't know if that is a one-to-one translation to TV. The thing about TV that, among many things, but one of the reasons why I find TV so essentially interesting and compelling creatively and as a fan, is that it is an empathy box. Because of the intimacy we have with TV, and we're sitting on our couch, and we're watching people, just show us something, and we're feeling something for it.

• 21:58Andy Greenwald?

  And I think that the fact that the show was so, at least through the second season, so devoted to being like the aha. Failed the show. I think it honored, from what I understand, some aspects of the game, but it failed the show in its opportunity to be so much bigger and broader than that.

• 22:17Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:19Andy Greenwald?

  Because of, because we ended up here, it kind of feels stuck in neutral as a tweener, right? It's not an epic story about saving humanity, or about even saving a person. It just ended up being kind of like about the very particular psychologies of these limited characters on a very misguided revenge mission. The Jesse, Jesse character being maybe the best example for what I'm trying to articulate, because, again, this is some expert, not even, I don't even want to say expert, I want to say veteran TV writing, or screenwriting. Like Craig Mazin knows how to, maybe also because he has movie experience, this is something we were saying Tony Gilroy is so

• 23:00Andy Greenwald?

  good at, introducing characters with efficiency. If you think about how much screen time young Menzino has on this season, it's relatively limited. He has to go away, he has to make an impression, vanish, and then come back.

• 23:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:13Andy Greenwald?

  So that his meaningless death has meaning. I don't know if it did, because, because they constructed the season this way, and a lot of the real estate the way that they did, he spent this entire episode being the most elaborate McBane situation of any non-cartoon character in history.

• 23:31Chris Ryan?

  Being like, "Now I have to stay alive for my child," yeah.

• 23:33Andy Greenwald?

  My notes. Jesse keeps saying he's not dying out here. Keep saying it, bro. When characters give thoughtful, show-elevating speeches about the best two weeks of their lives, it's a wrap.

• 23:48Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway, I-

• 23:48Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that was when the art girl came, right?

• 23:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Look, who among us hasn't been dazzled by a teenage art girl? Like, that, really, that's talking about shared origin stories. But anyway, do you get what I'm trying to articulate here?

• 24:02Chris Ryan?

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 24:02Andy Greenwald?

  And I think that that-

• 24:05Andy Greenwald?

  That was kind of a bummer.

• 24:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:08Andy Greenwald?

  That it seemed to get so that the structural narrowing of the show from season one to season two also came with it came a narrowing of focus to honoring this particular conceit of the game, which I do not feel is as novel in television as it is in the video game.

• 24:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you know, I it's funny you bring up Tony Gilroy. I don't want to get into the habit of comparing everything to Andor. So I'll compare it to Andor and I'll also talk about Game of Thrones, because that was another show that I thought about a lot while I was watching this last episode. With Andor, I read an interview with Tony, I think it was with Hollywood Reporter, but I can't remember. He's done a bunch of press for the end of Andor and for the F Y C. season. And he was talking a little bit about the exhausting work that went into writing. It was just like writing, writing, writing, rewriting, all day writing, fixing things, solving things. How many steps is it from this place to this

• 25:10Chris Ryan?

  place? Not necessarily to show it, but in his mind, there is an internal show clock of how Cassian gets from one room to another, or from one place to a ship, or whatever it is. And that's usually subconscious for the audience, because it makes sense, or it feels right.

• 25:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, that's right.

• 25:30Chris Ryan?

  But for the writer, it is your primary concern.

• 25:33Andy Greenwald?

  Knowing what you can take for granted and what you have to over explain is the toughest balance.

• 25:37Chris Ryan?

  I felt a sneaky incursion of video game logic when questions of time or or movement came up in this episode specifically.

• 25:51Andy Greenwald?

  Like, how did people get from here to there?

• 25:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I'm not sitting here with a map of Seattle. And I will say that the the reason why I think I'm a lot higher on this show than you are, although share a lot of the same concerns, is that I find the sheer landscape of the show to be breathtaking. And the scale of the show, the imagination of all these little pockets of the country or big cities in the country, how they've been affected. How they've been divided up, what emerges out of this apocalypse? Like, I think it's fascinating. The rendition, the rendering of Seattle alone is like, as this nature is healing, but also all this other stuff, like the stadium, all that stuff. I was like, this is so cool. I would fucking, of course they would build it in the stadium because there's so many entrances and ramps and all this other stuff. Like, I love that stuff.

• 26:37Chris Ryan?

  But then there are moments where I'm like, how did Dina get from the water back to the movie theater?

• 26:42Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 26:42Chris Ryan?

  You know what I mean? Like, or not, how did Ellie get from the, from the, from the lake back to, or the ocean back to the movie theater? Or why is everything happening? Like, why do, why does Jesse keep arriving one second after Ellie to save her, but also to witness something dark?

• 26:58Andy Greenwald?

  And also to have a fight, in the same fight.

• 27:00Chris Ryan?

  That feels

• 27:03Chris Ryan?

  like a little bit of a Band-Aid, and it feels a little bit like when you're playing a video game, and I haven't really played video games like this since really Red Dead movies, games, but like, in, in honest, honestly, like Max Payne, like a long time ago. But there is a degree to which you accomplish a mission.

• 27:20Andy Greenwald?

  And then you talk about it.

• 27:21Chris Ryan?

  Sucked into like whatever the next level is.

• 27:24Andy Greenwald?

  Well, also you reach the point and then there's a cut scene where characters say the information that needs to be communicated, and then you go back into the action.

• 27:29Chris Ryan?

  Right, or, but usually when you go back into the action.

• 27:31Andy Greenwald?

  It's somewhere else.

• 27:32Chris Ryan?

  It's somewhere else.

• 27:32Andy Greenwald?

  It's, I totally, totally agree with you, and I think that, um,

• 27:38Andy Greenwald?

  gosh, well, location stuff was particularly, uh, let me just, the, the one bone I'd pick with you about finding things fascinating is that what I find frustrating about the show is that no matter where they go, what's fascinating is, oh, Nick Offerman was there in the apocalypse, Melanie Linsky is there in the apocalypse. Like, we're, we're making interesting choices within a framework that honestly feels punishingly familiar. That everywhere is just DMZ, we're, we're the real monsters. That like, of all the things.

• 28:04Chris Ryan?

  Wasn't really like that.

• 28:05Andy Greenwald?

  No, but it's, but it's either us against them, or us against us. And there's really not a lot of wiggle room between that. Now, I'm not saying that like, I, I understand.

• 28:15Chris Ryan?

  Saw like City had a thriving medical community.

• 28:18Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 28:20Andy Greenwald?

  Right. It's just like Harvard used to have a thriving medical school. It's like, we used to, we used to build things. The, the fact that like, yeah, the fact that, that it's just still kind of the crushing same like, guess what? We're at, we actually suck.

• 28:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:36Andy Greenwald?

  Like, I, I find that particularly at this moment, pretty boring. But I, I also understand that maybe like a Joel and Ellie detour where they find like some hippie freegans doing alright, might not really fit into the narrative of the show, or certainly to the, to the game. The location stuff really, really bumped me in this episode when Ellie took a boat detour to a B-plot location just to see something for it to, like, that, that was pretty egregious. So, just to recap, she is going to the island.

• 29:08Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 29:08Andy Greenwald?

  Right? To find, I think, she thinks that's where Abby may be.

• 29:13Chris Ryan?

  Seems like she's out at the Cortez Bank because she gets hit by a rogue wave.

• 29:17Andy Greenwald?

  On her speedboat.

• 29:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:18Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, and by the way, just, kudos to everyone involved for making this episode as dark as humanly possible. I hate that.

• 29:23Chris Ryan?

  Can I, can I ask you a quick digression? How does she know how to use a boat?

• 29:28Andy Greenwald?

  She knows A-ha songs. I mean, I feel like she knows a lot of old stuff.

• 29:31Chris Ryan?

  When did she in her life?

• 29:33Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know.

• 29:33Chris Ryan?

  Like, is there a lot of river boating in, uh, Jackson?

• 29:36Andy Greenwald?

  Well, do you feel like, I don't know how to sail, but like, I feel like I could point a boat towards an island.

• 29:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but that would make no difference. If you can't sail, you can steer all you want, but you have to catch the wind.

• 29:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but this isn't a sailboat.

• 29:49Chris Ryan?

  I know, but like, I was even just like, I would.

• 29:52Andy Greenwald?

  Catch the wind. Young, young Patrick O'Brien over here.

• 29:56Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I was just, it was just funny because I was like, when did she get boating lessons? Yeah, I know. You can probably just start the engine and go like, err.

• 30:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and I think, and then when a wave comes, you might be like, what do I do? And she did not know what to do.

• 30:11Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 30:11Andy Greenwald?

  Um, but, so she goes to the island. She's immediately kidnapped by Seraphites, who string her up, bring out the sickle, have the creepy child say, "Time to disembowel her." And then at that moment, the Isaac-led, we don't know, wolf pack launch happens, attack. And they're like, "Never mind," and then she goes back.

• 30:29Chris Ryan?

  Yes, they're like, "Leave her."

• 30:32Andy Greenwald?

  Now. Will that create a other side of the story moment that might be memorable in the upcoming season, two to three years from now?

• 30:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:42Andy Greenwald?

  But it felt very bizarre and digressive and frankly, video gamey of like, our character, our POV character needs to see this now.

• 30:50Chris Ryan?

  So that was actually my Game of Thrones example. One of the things that Game of Thrones, I think possibly on a, by even adjusted different budget, especially in the early seasons, well, actually, I don't know, I think Game of Thrones is always very expensive, but one of the things it did really well was character introductions.

• 31:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 31:14Chris Ryan?

  And storyline introductions.

• 31:15Andy Greenwald?

  It did.

• 31:16Chris Ryan?

  And there were several times at the end, especially at the end of seasons, like when, when Khaleesi shows up at Qarth, is that the, the, what?

• 31:29Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just like, you, it's very bold. You close your computer and you're name dropping.

• 31:33Chris Ryan?

  No, I don't have it written down. I just was like, is that the place where it's like the house of black and white where, what's the one where she like goes into like basically all the puzzles and stuff?

• 31:42Andy Greenwald?

  Do we have, can we do live calls on this show? Can we call Mallory? I know what you mean. I am not even going to pretend to remember the name of the location.

• 31:50Chris Ryan?

  There's a lot of like, we have come upon this place and it's so foreign, it's foreign to us and it's foreign to the viewers.

• 31:55Andy Greenwald?

  It's exciting, yeah.

• 31:55Chris Ryan?

  And it's exciting and then maybe next season.

• 31:57Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 31:57Chris Ryan?

  It becomes the setting of half the season. I think if we had never seen the Sarah fights, except for Ellie seeing that kid get killed and then she's cast away on this island.

• 32:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 32:12Chris Ryan?

  And, and she's seen like those people disembowel people and now she's like, if it's only ever from Ellie's POV, that moment hits much harder. No matter how silly it is that they leave her because an explosion goes off, you know?

• 32:26Andy Greenwald?

  I completely agree with you. It is disorienting and horrifying, but it, it, it half weighed it.

• 32:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:31Andy Greenwald?

  And I think that, look fundamentally, I don't find either half of the Seattle story particularly compelling. It doesn't mean that there isn't more nuance to be discovered or that. That the clash of civilizations between the wolves and the seraphites is actually quite meaningful or insightful or interesting or compelling or dramatic. It's that what we've been given of it with Jeffrey Wright, you know, giving a monologue about Nancy Meyers pans and then torturing people.

• 33:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:01Andy Greenwald?

  And then Deena and Ellie talking about being in love like I didn't find either side compelling and we're only there because Ellie has made a decision to do something quite foolish. And look, I'm not like you go back to Greek tragedy and like everyone's always making foolish decisions.

• 33:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:22Andy Greenwald?

  That's what people do.

• 33:23Chris Ryan?

  That's your mom.

• 33:24Andy Greenwald?

  To be entertaining the whole time, bro.

• 33:28Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not, I'm not trying to tear that idea down. I'm just like, it goes back to this idea that all of this is Ellie's doing.

• 33:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:38Andy Greenwald?

  And so for Ellie to keep stepping on moral rakes for five straight episodes where everyone's just like, you might be wrong about this. And she's like, fuck being wrong about this. I'm gonna shoot a pregnant lady now. Like, that's crazy. She's deeply, deeply unsympathetic as a character. And now that is not an actor thing.

• 33:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:57Andy Greenwald?

  That is a writing thing.

• 33:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:59Andy Greenwald?

  She's honestly aggravating with her decision making throughout that back half of the season and roping everyone into her revenge quest is a tough, tough beat. And then to circle the drain of it with having Jesse show up and him saying, you know, I'm doing what's best for the community, but everything you do, you do for you. And then the, the firecracker of her response being fuck the community, which was, by the way, my attitude towards the Park Slope co-op. So I am not, I'm not immune to that thinking.

• 34:31Chris Ryan?

  That's Nithia's slogan.

• 34:33Andy Greenwald?

  No, it's her opponent's slogan.

• 34:37Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not getting in trouble with silver like moms.

• 34:39Chris Ryan?

  With Big Nick?

• 34:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, come on.

• 34:43Andy Greenwald?

  That's pretty limiting. And so I feel like we're both sort of circling a larger thing, which is so much about the show is well done. And we're not, you know, I don't have a lot of issues with its casting, or some of its thoughtfulness, or some of the stuff on the margins, or certainly the scale of the production, or the cinematography. But so many of the crucial decision makings are a little bit off. And my main takeaway from this episode was that it was like, I couldn't tell if it's a bag fumble or a heat check for our guy Craig Mason.

• 35:15Chris Ryan?

  Well, I wish it had been more of a heat check. I wish that-

• 35:18Andy Greenwald?

  Like they'd gone further-

• 35:19Chris Ryan?

  I wish it had been almost like, half of this season is gonna feel completely foreign and weird.

• 35:24Andy Greenwald?

  So we're, right, and we have, exactly, we have the wind in our-

• 35:27Chris Ryan?

  And Diva is gonna come in, in the second episode and fucking upend this entire show, and you're just gonna be like, where is she? Who is she? What is going on? And I don't know, I don't know about the video game, or whatever. I'm somewhat indifferent to the reveal of Abby's motivation happening earlier. You know, I think that in the game, you're like, what is going on? Like, why is this the case? Why did this happen?

• 35:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, I think-

• 35:54Chris Ryan?

  I don't, I don't know, but-

• 35:55Andy Greenwald?

  No, but I would imagine it is not sitting right with some people, because that also undercuts-

• 36:01Chris Ryan?

  With video game fans, are you sure?

• 36:02Andy Greenwald?

  No, they're usually pretty-

• 36:03Chris Ryan?

  I think I would have heard.

• 36:04Andy Greenwald?

  Pretty chill.

• 36:06Andy Greenwald?

  I think that- So if Ellie goes on this journey with the love of her life and her horse Shimmer-

• 36:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:14Andy Greenwald?

  Who I had been thinking about, thank you, Jesse. Thinking that a roving band of sadistic lunatics hunted down my dad, and now I'm gonna get them back.

• 36:28Andy Greenwald?

  I almost get her, then she's, then it comes across as like youthful idealism, and how revenge is essentially a very immature idea.

• 36:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:37Andy Greenwald?

  What the show has done is said, no, she knows. And, you know, and then leading into this episode, she not only knows what Joel did for her, she knows what Joel did, what that meant for Abby, because she hears about, and she then tells Dina, like, she shot her dad in the head, which is like,

• 36:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:54Andy Greenwald?

  You didn't need to say all that. Um, we get it. We get that he's done.

• 36:58Chris Ryan?

  You didn't need to say all that.

• 37:00Andy Greenwald?

  Show some respect for medical professionalism. Um, it just, it undermines her further.

• 37:06Chris Ryan?

  He had an accident. Yeah.

• 37:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 37:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:11Chris Ryan?

  Fell into a bullet.

• 37:13Andy Greenwald?

  That's what you said in your Max Payne days? Sorry, sorry.

• 37:18Chris Ryan?

  Remember the Max Payne board where you had to find the baby sound?

• 37:21Andy Greenwald?

  In the dark.

• 37:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:22Andy Greenwald?

  That was real dividing line between us.

• 37:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:25Andy Greenwald?

  I think that was when I tapped out on the game.

• 37:27Chris Ryan?

  Cigarette number six?

• 37:28Andy Greenwald?

  You were like, yeah, go to bed. Dad's got this.

• 37:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:33Andy Greenwald?

  That was wild. It was just a baby crying in the dark.

• 37:36Chris Ryan?

  And you were a vigilante cop looking for the child.

• 37:40Andy Greenwald?

  And I didn't even have an excuse. I didn't have kids yet.

• 37:42Chris Ryan?

  Uh, there's been a, ever since I did the Star Wars, oh, go ahead.

• 37:44Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, I'm good.

• 37:45Chris Ryan?

  Ever since I did the Star Wars rewatchables and obviously End of Andor's, spending a lot of time reading about Star Wars, I've come across the burgeoning or bustling online community of fan edits. Um, obviously, the famous one is Topher Grace recutting the prequels into one movie.

• 38:03Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:05Chris Ryan?

  It's essentially people who have the software and equipment to.

• 38:08Andy Greenwald?

  And the time.

• 38:09Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and who has the time? So many fan edits, who has the time? But there's some really interesting ones out there, like, for instance, I saw one advertised, uh, that is a Acolyte, the Acolyte series, like, rendered as, like, Kill Bill.

• 38:24Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 38:24Chris Ryan?

  Um, and I saw one that is, like, adding kind of Andor's music to Rogue One.

• 38:31Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 38:32Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and chopping up Rogue One a little bit that way. When season three is out, someone could do what we're talking about.

• 38:41Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 38:41Chris Ryan?

  Which is the fan edit, and maybe even chronological fan edit, where the sixth episode, that's the Joel episode, no, the fifth episode is the Joel. Ellie kind of explanation episode, right?

• 38:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 38:53Chris Ryan?

  And you could basically put that in the beginning. So there's an extra Joel in the beginning of the season.

• 38:58Andy Greenwald?

  Extra Joel.

• 38:59Chris Ryan?

  And then you have all this Jackson stuff, end of Joel. And then Seattle, but only from Ellie's experience. And then season three could start with Isaac changing from Fedra to WLF.

• 39:14Andy Greenwald?

  Well, you've got your work cut out for you, but I.

• 39:16Chris Ryan?

  I needed a project this summer because God knows I'm not finishing Anna Karenina.

• 39:20Andy Greenwald?

  Don't sell yourself short. I.

• 39:23Chris Ryan?

  This dude, I just read like eight pages of a guy doing his checking account.

• 39:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. And then there's a lot of wheat.

• 39:30Chris Ryan?

  I got through the wheat. I got off Levin's farm.

• 39:32Andy Greenwald?

  I'm surprised you. That wheat keeps growing. There's a whole other season. Sorry for the spoiler.

• 39:39Andy Greenwald?

  I just.

• 39:40Chris Ryan?

  This dude is just like, I'm wet from the meadow. So I stand in the meadow and the meadow is wet. And I'm like, God damn it.

• 39:46Andy Greenwald?

  It seems like you're doing the work.

• 39:48Chris Ryan?

  I'm fucking on page 300 something, but like, yeah, I mean, I have to finish. But that feeling of being in the middle of an endless book that you are not like dying to read every day. And be like, I really want to read.

• 40:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, but this is what I have to do.

• 40:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:04Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I've had that feeling. Yeah. I, so I want to check in with you about this because I don't want to go on one of my classic morality diatribes.

• 40:13Chris Ryan?

  Your signature.

• 40:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, everybody.

• 40:15Chris Ryan?

  This is bad for us. Yeah.

• 40:17Andy Greenwald?

  But I think this show might be bad for us. No, but genuinely, I wanted to try to have a fair minded conversation about this because the show begins with, you know, an unanesthetized Dina having a crossbow, crossbolt. No, crossbow bolt. Thank you.

• 40:35Chris Ryan?

  They just pushed it through.

• 40:36Andy Greenwald?

  Pushed through her leg.

• 40:37Chris Ryan?

  It's got to do that.

• 40:38Andy Greenwald?

  It also features a woman bleeding out from a gunshot wound to the neck, screaming at her.

• 40:48Chris Ryan?

  Asking for a C-section.

• 40:49Andy Greenwald?

  Murderer to take a Bowie knife and cut a baby out of her. Um.

• 40:55Andy Greenwald?

  It's not a question of me saying like, oh, that's too extreme, or it's unearned, or anything like that. It's just, it's so, it starts to feel so dark for darkness's sake. And I think I'm struggling with the show conceptually. I'm sorry to wade back into these waters, but I do feel some of the same criticisms bubbling up that I had for Severance in the sense that it is essentially about itself. It is going down these dark corridors, these cul-de-sacs, in order to justify its own characters' particular specifics and using extreme storytelling methods, or very specific storytelling methods,

• 41:40Andy Greenwald?

  without, to my mind, having very much to say about the larger world. Now, I know this is-

• 41:45Chris Ryan?

  I think it's a huge difference from the first season. I mean, I think your antennas are up for the right reasons. I think maybe you're having, personally, I think you're overreacting to the show's kind of standing in the world.

• 41:58Andy Greenwald?

  I'm overreacting to it because I'm living in the world, and then it's like Sunday night, and I'm like, oh, let's fire up the number one show in America. And I'm like, this is dark, and it's mean, and I don't like it. That's me. So I'm glad we had a larger conversation, more objective conversation about the structure of the show.

• 42:14Chris Ryan?

  For sure.

• 42:14Andy Greenwald?

  But I am curious about if any of this resonates for you, just because it just feels so, I think you were about to say it, like, there were larger themes about humanity, or love, or parenthood, or just exploration.

• 42:26Chris Ryan?

  Every time you turned on the show last season, I think you were like, what are we gonna get? Like, this is so cool. Like, the interstitials of the talk show, and the doctor who's like, bombed the city. There was a lot of movement from Boston all the way across to Jackson, and obviously Salt Lake City. I thought that it basically took franchise, genre storytelling, or huge IP storytelling, and kinda did like, a book of short stories about how people grappled with this enormous change in the world. And obviously, coming out of COVID, there was some overtones with that, and there was also just like,

• 43:08Chris Ryan?

  I think some really thoughtful, interesting decisions that were made. And then this became a little bit more of a like, but there's a lot of story I have to tell from this video game, and- You know, we don't, there is no Abby in the first season, just like there is no Ja, not Joffrey. The sadistic one who castrates Alfie Allen in Game of Thrones.

• 43:33Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 43:34Chris Ryan?

  That guy, remember him?

• 43:35Andy Greenwald?

  Uh huh.

• 43:36Chris Ryan?

  You do remember him.

• 43:37Andy Greenwald?

  Theon Greyjoy gets got.

• 43:39Chris Ryan?

  Gets got.

• 43:40Andy Greenwald?

  By, and gets called Reek.

• 43:42Chris Ryan?

  Reek, yeah. That whole, but like, that's not.

• 43:44Andy Greenwald?

  Reek's Theon.

• 43:44Chris Ryan?

  I'm not like, sitting around in the first season.

• 43:46Andy Greenwald?

  Oh my god, it's the tip of my tongue. I can picture the kid. I can picture the cut. It's a great scene.

• 43:52Chris Ryan?

  Anyway, my point is, is that like, it's not like I'm unfamiliar with the idea of something being introduced in a new season that's like, okay, now the show's about Abby. You know, and about Abby and Ellie's vengeance trade off.

• 44:03Andy Greenwald?

  Ramsey Snow, Ramsey Bolton.

• 44:05Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 44:05Andy Greenwald?

  Right, go on.

• 44:06Chris Ryan?

  It's been a minute, you know?

• 44:08Andy Greenwald?

  So I read it from five years ago. Are we sure Theon is castrated or just flayed?

• 44:14Andy Greenwald?

  Mallory, do we still have her on the line? Go on. I agree with you, and I think it's a good observation. I would take it a step further, and I think that, and remember, for people listening, like, we are approaching this, we did not play the games, and so we are just taking it as it comes. So some of this reaction might just be, oh, okay, we didn't know, we certainly didn't have the map, the way some people did, and maybe they calibrated their expectations accordingly. But I think one of the key differences that I can ascertain between this and something like Game of Thrones, is that Game of Thrones is a series of books that expanded and expanded and expanded. And they had a lot of source material to play with, and a lot of interstitial kind of ellipses scenes to fill out, should they so choose.

• 44:53Andy Greenwald?

  And in fact, it's still ongoing and expanding because George R.R. Martin may never even finish his own version of the story. What I have gleaned, sorry, flayed, no, castrated about this project particularly, is that the first game is kind of, you know, a contained story about a road trip, about with two people whose relationship changes fundamentally, and the main character, in that case is Joel, makes a morally indefensible decision that is also profoundly empathetic and human. And that's the story. The game was a. Huge success. So they went back and what Neil Druckman and his crew at Naughty Dog decided to do was like, okay, well, what can we do for our second go at this? And we're going to try

• 45:37Andy Greenwald?

  something different in terms of challenging people's expectations of fallibility and morality and who we are when we play and what it means. And that's potentially in itself a contained thing. It is not one, two, three, four, five. It is one, and then kind of another one.

• 45:51Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:52Andy Greenwald?

  And that might speak to why these two seasons feel jarring to the TV fan. It also may have presented kind of like a poison pill ticking bomb for people expecting the next great HBO show that would just continue to expand and build in the way we're used to them doing. It's more of a project than.

• 46:09Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 46:10Andy Greenwald?

  Which is less gratifying to me in terms of what I want to engage with, separate and apart from whether crossbow bolts get pushed through legs.

• 46:17Chris Ryan?

  We can end the conversation on a positive note, which is just that Dever is enough for me to.

• 46:23Andy Greenwald?

  I know.

• 46:23Chris Ryan?

  Still have season tickets for, for the next one.

• 46:25Andy Greenwald?

  It is wild how the tenor of the show and my, honestly, my attention and my, and my diligence to like, just I'm locked in when she shows up. She's an incredible actor.

• 46:38Chris Ryan?

  There we go.

• 46:39Andy Greenwald?

  It, it is really, it's really.

• 46:41Chris Ryan?

  Dever fever remains high.

• 46:43Andy Greenwald?

  It, it's raging, this fever.

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• 48:43Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk about Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning. A quagmire of another sort. This one's for franchise filmmaking. As we end our run theoretically with Ethan Hunt, with Tom Cruise's character that has been with us since the late 90s.

• 49:00Andy Greenwald?

  96.

• 49:01Chris Ryan?

  Mission Impossible, Brian De Palma film. And I mention the history of the character because I found myself, especially during that truly endless first 90 minutes of this film.

• 49:14Andy Greenwald?

  Just incomprehensibly.

• 49:16Chris Ryan?

  I did, I did not like this movie. And I really, it makes me sad to say that because through Fallout, it's among my favorite franchises. I even had time for some of the more belittled entries, like, although I think if you ask anybody, depending on what age they are, they have different rankings and stuff like that. Two is usually at the bottom. I would put Final Reckoning possibly even below two, but second to bottom, maybe. I don't know.

• 49:41Andy Greenwald?

  I would have, I would really be curious to hear people's arguments why this isn't the worst movie in this franchise that I love.

• 49:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And I thought a lot about.

• 49:51Chris Ryan?

  Look, everything's allowed to evolve and stories changing. People get older and you need to tell a story that's appropriate to the person's age. But I thought a lot about where the origins of this franchise were, both in relatively compact espionage tales, but also a operative in over his head, in too deep. The world is upside down. He can't trust anyone. Masks, illusion, all this stuff that's kind of hallmarks of the early films. They try to personalize the character more in Three, which I thought is one of my low-key favorites of the franchise, is the J.J. Abrams one.

• 50:32Andy Greenwald?

  Weren't you glad they finally gave some definition to the rabbit's foot in this movie, though?

• 50:36Chris Ryan?

  The anti-God dog.

• 50:37Andy Greenwald?

  It was all, it was the anti-God the whole time.

• 50:41Andy Greenwald?

  In the library.

• 50:43Chris Ryan?

  But as they were kind of literally canonizing Ethan for most of this film.

• 50:49Andy Greenwald?

  Get ready.

• 50:50Chris Ryan?

  And talking about what he's meant to the world and all the people that he has saved. And as the film, and this is obviously spoilers for Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning, so wait till you see it if you don't know this. But the film ending with Tom Cruise in Trafalgar Square being the only man we can trust with the power of God in his hands, with the recently-developed special hard drive, one of Luther's last inventions, along with the algorithm that killed the entity.

• 51:21Andy Greenwald?

  That trapped it.

• 51:22Chris Ryan?

  Trapped it. And Tom Cruise has the Grail, he has the Ark, he has the briefcase from Pulp Fiction in his hands. It's glowing and only he can hold it, you know? And I have to say, I really love Tom Cruise.

• 51:38Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 51:38Chris Ryan?

  Spent a lot of time thinking about Tom Cruise over the last couple of weeks because of the Tom Cruise draft and we're always doing Tom Cruise movies on Rewatchables. And he's made some of my favorite movies, straight up. But I am starting to kind of get a little tired of the deification of Tom Cruise as, whatever his public persona is and his private life is, like, we don't have to discuss that specific thing on this podcast. But I think it's now fully infected his on-screen stuff to the point where I'm...

• 52:08Chris Ryan?

  Kind of losing interest a little bit in that aspect of him. And this idea of movie Jesus who will save us both through films, but also by getting us all to work together and all this stuff. I think there are noble ideas within what he's trying to say, but I think that it's starting to get pretty dull dramatically to have eight people standing around being like, this is the fucking greatest guy I've ever met. And he's gonna fucking figure it out, even if it makes no dramatic or logical sense. And we've, we've got it. And yes, when he's dancing in a submerged submarine, or when he is jumping from biplane to biplane, it sings, it elevates.

• 52:53Chris Ryan?

  It's some of the coolest shit you'll see on screen this year. But man, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how this is how this whole franchise ended.

• 53:02Andy Greenwald?

  There's an incredible double feature waiting to be screened someday. The Passion of the Christ and Final Record in terms of just like over the top.

• 53:10Chris Ryan?

  I didn't know that that was what we were doing.

• 53:11Andy Greenwald?

  Proselytizing. And I would leave it to people who are more expert in the field than I am to point out if this movie is or isn't particularly Scientology-coded, because it is Christianity-coded in like, an outrageous way.

• 53:25Chris Ryan?

  It's a guy wearing a Saint Christopher medal fighting the angel Gabriel.

• 53:29Andy Greenwald?

  Walking around with a cross key that can, that alone can open up the gates of heaven, basically. Fighting the anti-god.

• 53:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:39Andy Greenwald?

  It, I, I think that what you said, the thing that the place to start is, I can't believe this is where we ended up. It is so wildly removed from everything that was appealing about this franchise. And I love this franchise. Just a few weeks ago, I was saying that we should do a re-watch. We should talk about them, just because they, the thought of seeing another one of these movies, and it being the last one, made me a little nostalgic. And you made the right point, that things evolve and age over time, although not Tom Cruise's hairline. The one thing, respect, honestly.

• 54:12Andy Greenwald?

  I'm sure that, well, I haven't listened yet, but I would imagine that Sean and Amanda on The Big Picture have said some version of this and probably could say it more articulately than I can, but there's a remarkable sub-story of American movies to be told through this franchise, or even just American summer movies, action movies. Because the franchise started as, you know, well, Tom Cruise isn't going to do a TV adaptation, is he? Don't worry, it's going to be fun and classy and Brian fucking De Palma's going to direct it. And then because Tom Cruise was, you know, trying to, was elevated and still angling for Oscars in the offseason, it was going to be a director's showcase. Yeah. Right? And John Woo had a crack at it. And then J.J. Abrams tried to reinvent it. And then he pulled Brad Bird off of the animating table to try his version of it.

• 54:57Andy Greenwald?

  And then Macquarie comes in. And then Macquarie did for the last four. But broadly, the reason why, and we were on this podcast two years ago, I really like Dead Reckoning, Part One, there'll never be a Part Two. Maybe they'll fix that title like they fixed Thunderbolts. Fan edit. Yeah, it's Toher Grace Busy. And probably we were praising Fallout before it in some iteration of this podcast, you know, at some point, saying that these movies felt like, maybe they were no longer like the grown-up franchise, but they essentially were because they did not come with the serialized narrative fanboy baggage of the MCU.

• 55:38Andy Greenwald?

  That you could go see a Mission Impossible movie cold and be like, yeah, I get it. And I also don't care. Like, let's just be noisy, let's be balletic, let's have fun, let's be kinetic, and we get it. He's running, he's driving, he's flying, he's swimming. There's the Syndicate, there's the this, there's the that. Who cares? None of this needs to matter. Sure. Until it does. That by the end of it, that it seems like the brief that Christopher Macquarie either got from TC, or he felt for himself, or just reading The Room or The Culture, everything has to be a serialized overstory. Everything has to connect and matter. And so there have been moments in these last two movies that I thought were, you know, quite charming, when there was some connective tissue that

• 56:21Andy Greenwald?

  We never ever would have considered or thought about before that some, you know, bringing back, what's his name, Henry Cherney as Kidridge. Sure. And his amazing voice and bringing him back into the last movie. Okay, I appreciate that. And sometimes when it works and it's clever, it works. So I really liked Rolf Saxton's return as Rumlo. A character. Donlow, yeah. Donlow, sorry. Rumlo is Captain America. I'm still in the MCU. That's Frank Druolo's part. I, I thought that was sweet and they kind of found something like he is a lovely performer. Yeah. And the wife, that was really fun and that was sweet. But one of the most turgid scenes in the history of American cinema

• 57:01Andy Greenwald?

  has to be the, the penal helicopter ride in which Tom Cruise explains to Shea Wiggum that his name isn't really his name. He changed his name because he's John Voight's son from the first movie. Yeah. And they should greet each other as brothers.

• 57:16Andy Greenwald?

  Who cares? And similarly, we can get back into like the specifics of the movie. The first, I know you said 90 minutes because they were all pretty bad, but the first 20 to 30 minutes of this movie are batshit insane. They are so, so crazy. It begins with, you know, a voiceover about God versus the anti-God and the entity. And then there's a series of quick cut scenes that mean absolutely nothing. And part of me was like, is McQuarrie a genius? Because he has embraced the TikTok aesthetic of filmmaking where everything is fast cuts. And the entire movie feels like the voiceover British people do when they're showing us the best roast chicken in London on Instagram. But like, I went to a store where they sell amazing curry sauce, chips, top notch, chicken, fresh off the bone.

• 58:01Andy Greenwald?

  And like they record each line individually and then, and then stitch them on top of each other. Chicken again. So you never, so they don't breathe between the lines. Cause I guess that's what the algorithm prefers. It's certainly how it serves it to me. Or like when I overhear my daughter watching like a YouTuber who's like 13 years old and her whole things are like, escape rooms with my dad. And it's all like 45 seconds and we burn the house down. Tune in, click to like, subscribe. I was like, maybe he's tapped into some energy that I want to resist. And then there's the scene with Angela Bassett and all the fun homies. And I'm like, oh, oh, no, no. This was the first scene of the movie. But then they just kept fucking filming. And then they were like, well, we have to make Hayley Atwell his beloved love interest. So we have to have her be at risk. And then we have to, we have to, and we have to, and we have to.

• 58:44Andy Greenwald?

  They're building and we're Jenga towering a story that doesn't make any fucking sense.

• 58:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:48Andy Greenwald?

  And there's no fun and there's no novelty.

• 58:50Chris Ryan?

  Dissimilar from what we talked about with Last of Us. How long it took from between one and two and however long it's going to take until three. I think that the delay, I mean, Amanda talked about this on Big Picture. I think she saw it more acutely than I did, but this was supposed to be one movie, right? Like, or then it was a two part movie.

• 59:08Andy Greenwald?

  With the Reckonings?

• 59:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, or like, I think it was supposed to be, I think Dead Reckoning was supposed to be a movie. And I think the entity was supposed to be a one movie.

• 59:16Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 59:17Chris Ryan?

  Villain, no?

• 59:18Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, this was, when they announced the deal for this movie, movies, it was Christopher, Christopher McQuarrie has been hired to write and film back to back two more Mission Impossible movies. And it was announced as Dead Reckoning, part one and part two.

• 59:31Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 59:32Andy Greenwald?

  And I think that, you know, and there's a lot of fascinating and also depraved stories about like during COVID and during the strikes where like just how much money it costs to keep this thing afloat and how they basically just changed their mind and shot a whole other movie and they just kept finding it as they were going.

• 59:46Chris Ryan?

  Well, they, yeah.

• 59:47Andy Greenwald?

  And, and I also think you can't see this movie without thinking about how Dead Reckoning part one, which I really enjoyed and I think is perfectly good. And in a franchise where perfectly good gets you pretty far, underperformed massively and scared the shit out of everyone. It came out in Barbenheimer summer and it had the lowest opening of any of these movies. And they were pot committed to the tune of, apparently this movie cost three to 400 million dollars to make to do another one. At that point, I, my guess is someone decided that the way to maybe salvage it would be to steer into the final. This is it. This is, we're Top Gun mavericking it. We are, you know, we are saying goodbye to something. And so we have to freight everything with pathos that frankly, it hasn't earned because

• 1:00:31Andy Greenwald?

  there hasn't been one moment in the last 30 years where I'm like, what do you think Ethan and Luther and Benji talk about in their off hours?

• 1:00:37Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:00:37Andy Greenwald?

  These people are psychopaths. That line where they look at each other and they're all like, one, two, three, foosball.

• 1:00:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:43Andy Greenwald?

  Like, oh, did you run a humanity filter? On your ChatGPT final draft software like, nobody gives a shit. And, and you know, then so instead it's the escalation where he's like, a pretty good secret agent. And now he's the Christ. Or Luther is a fun hacker. And now he invents a handheld Faraday cage that glows in the dark.

• 1:01:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:04Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:01:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I, I think I detected a lot of, um, cast changes this time around too. I think obviously Haley Atwell coming in and essentially replacing Rebecca Ferguson as like a light antagonist in the first reckoning. And now the like, love interest, decompression chamber.

• 1:01:25Andy Greenwald?

  And I want to be clear, there will be no Haley Atwell slander on this podcast.

• 1:01:29Chris Ryan?

  Slandering her.

• 1:01:29Andy Greenwald?

  I just love Haley.

• 1:01:31Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Viness Kirby was in this franchise, not then stepped away. Um, I feel like Ving Rhames's character is essentially replaced by William Donlow. In this movie, in the sense that William Donlow has a technological or mechanical explanation for every single thing that's happening in the film. Once he shows up.

• 1:01:52Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 1:01:53Chris Ryan?

  Um, even though he's been living in Antarctica for 30 years, one would assume so. But he is like, oh yeah, this is how we.

• 1:01:59Andy Greenwald?

  Diffuse a nuclear bomb.

• 1:02:00Chris Ryan?

  Exactly.

• 1:02:01Andy Greenwald?

  Lot of, lot of casual nukes.

• 1:02:03Chris Ryan?

  They're just flying, they just got them all over the place.

• 1:02:06Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, you're, you're just carrying them everywhere.

• 1:02:08Chris Ryan?

  I think you did touch on something, uh, about the way they write these movies. You know, there is, I am, I'm a huge Macquarie fan, so let me just say that upfront. And I think that Macquarie and Cruz have definitely unlocked something and are building a mythology that maybe I don't necessarily subscribe to, but I get. Uh, about him, you know, and they've even been working on that since the Reacher movies, which have like, um, and you know, Macquarie did the, uh, first Reacher movie, Ed Zwick did the second one, but even that first Reacher film was like, I know that this character is supposed to be six and a half feet tall, but like, fuck, like I have the mythos to, to play this guy. And there's a real, um, hard seventies thriller vibe to that first Reacher movie.

• 1:02:52Chris Ryan?

  Even when it doesn't work, you can kind of see what they're going for. But I know with interest that like, you know, Robert Town and David Kep and Steve Zalian wrote the first one. Um, and that they were.

• 1:03:04Andy Greenwald?

  Crazy.

• 1:03:05Chris Ryan?

  Crazy movies, but felt more finely crafted and characters, uh, betrayed one another. And had, there was some opposition to it. And there was a moment. In this film, I think it's when they're decompressing from his submarine voyage and then swimming up to the top of the Bering Sea.

• 1:03:24Andy Greenwald?

  And dying.

• 1:03:24Chris Ryan?

  And dying, and she brings him back. So that's the first time that happens, although, you know, he's almost died in several of these films at this point. And she says, Ethan, I was thinking, you know, what if we should try to control the entity? Because like, the alternative is really bad, like, if we turn the entity off.

• 1:03:42Andy Greenwald?

  Right. By the way, I hope, I was hoping that they would turn the internet off at the end of this movie.

• 1:03:47Chris Ryan?

  Well, but my whole thing is, I thought Grace was gonna break with Ethan there.

• 1:03:54Andy Greenwald?

  And steal it.

• 1:03:54Chris Ryan?

  There, or it's something, that there would be some kind of, like, dramatic tension instead of five people who are like, I mean, I just unconditionally trust this guy to save the world every single time, no matter the odds and no matter the logic of the plan. And I think that this movie was missing that. And I think Esai Morales is a good actor who was kind of forced to constantly be acting 90 feet away from everybody and is like, I must away, and like, runs away.

• 1:04:21Andy Greenwald?

  And he is a 1940's radio serial villain.

• 1:04:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and like, so I think that the entity is obviously not able to physically manifest itself.

• 1:04:28Andy Greenwald?

  It's a weird choice to have a villain that...

• 1:04:29Chris Ryan?

  And Esai Morales is like, it's kind of, but he's also the fallen angel and has now been disavowed by the entity, so he's kind of just like, I will control the entity. I think that there was an oppositional force missing in this film.

• 1:04:43Andy Greenwald?

  There's no villain.

• 1:04:43Chris Ryan?

  In the same sense that there is like, the nation, there is no designated nation-state to the opposing air force or navy in Top Gun Maverick. It's him versus some kind of idea.

• 1:04:55Andy Greenwald?

  Who's trying, who doesn't believe in him.

• 1:04:56Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:04:57Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, and that is just the personal hero mythos that you're pointing out that he is just completely bought into. Everyone is eventually shamed into realizing they were wrong, and that the only logical choice is to trust this lunatic.

• 1:05:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but in Top Gun Maverick, even as crazy as that movie is, it's grounded by, like, Ham, you know, and Ham being like, I guess I gotta put you in that plane.

• 1:05:15Andy Greenwald?

  Top Gun Maverick is expertly crafted nonsense. I love that movie. I think it's a huge success. I think the other thing about that movie is that it allowed, I mean, ultimately... It danced a very, very fine tango with Cruise's ego. He was still the hero of the movie. He got the girl, he flew the mission. He was the only one who could do the impossible things. But it was generous enough to suggest that there was a modicum of torch passing. That there was a second generation, that there were worthwhile people behind him who could fill his shoes. Now, there was already the botched power handoff in the Mission Impossible series with Jeremy Renner. And once that was settled, it really wasn't about an impossible mission force anymore.

• 1:05:58Andy Greenwald?

  It's about Tom Cruise's unique bond with his lifelong friends who stand around and tap into keyboards while he martyrs himself again and again for the cause. That changes the trajectory of the franchise, but it kind of reached its nadir in this episode, where no one does anything. I mean, she learns how to, I guess she learns how to run a dog sled. But who is the villain? It's a nonexistent computer program that's

• 1:06:22Chris Ryan?

  It's the entities hold over nation states and their paranoia and like who's gonna nuke who first? And the fail-safe kind of borderline Doctor Strangelove stuff happening in the war room with Angela Bassett.

• 1:06:36Andy Greenwald?

  Is Kittredge the bad guy? Is he a bad guy? What are his motivations?

• 1:06:39Chris Ryan?

  I don't really even know, like, he deviates. And obviously, I don't know whether his absence is excused by Angela Bassett. But he seems to be like, I have my own program.

• 1:06:49Andy Greenwald?

  She's not running the tightest ship.

• 1:06:50Chris Ryan?

  Um, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the ensemble around Ethan, but I wanted to especially highlight Tramell Tillman.

• 1:06:57Andy Greenwald?

  Holy shit.

• 1:06:58Chris Ryan?

  Who, you know, we like on Severance, even though we have various feelings about the show itself. He's obviously quite good on that show and is extraordinary as a submarine captain in this. This is just basically, I think Macquarie and Cruise just fucking love Hunt for October because they do, Jack Ryan is dropped into the ocean, picked up by a submarine, is being chased by another submarine and needs to do a mission. And then like, they basically do the, like, the whole thing. And Tramell Tillman playing Scott Glenn in Hunt for October. Let's find a regular October with Jemel Tillman, like, let's go.

• 1:07:35Andy Greenwald?

  He's so good in it. He's also having fun in a way that I think

• 1:07:40Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:07:40Andy Greenwald?

  these movies need.

• 1:07:41Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:07:41Andy Greenwald?

  He, he understands both the, the intensity of the scenario, but also the campiness of it in a way that is really, really welcome. He also, I believe, is the clubhouse leader in perfecting the style of acting that is the company style.

• 1:07:56Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:07:56Andy Greenwald?

  Right? There's, if you see a Kabuki show, like, you're gonna, it's not the same acting you're gonna see at a Juilliard Review. And the acting style of this film, I, I believe is just called like, um, Dead Eyes Exposition monologues. And so every character at a certain point in the film says, "You listen here, mister. If you want me off of this podcast, there's only one way, and you're gonna have to reach into my warm chest cavity and remove my still beating heart with your ginger haired hands."

• 1:08:23Chris Ryan?

  Have you, have you done the remove the still beating, didn't we do a Mogwah joke last week?

• 1:08:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I just still love it. And I know that's your preferred method of dispatching your enemies.

• 1:08:32Andy Greenwald?

  But, but like, they do that and they never move their eyes. And Jemel Tillman being like, "Captain of the watch, I hope you're standing right behind me. I'll address you as if you are." He kills it.

• 1:08:44Chris Ryan?

  He's great.

• 1:08:44Andy Greenwald?

  Some of the other people being like, "This suit's gonna pump your body full of so many gases, only three of them will kill you. What do you think about that sailor boy?" Like,

• 1:08:53Chris Ryan?

  And how about I attack you in a knife while you're in your underwear?

• 1:08:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, there are other things that are just like, you remember the famous, like, Van Halen's rider? When they, for concerts, it's just like, no brown M and M's or whatever, like, do you think on some level, it's, it's true to say that during the pre-production, the long pre-production of a movie like this, McQuarrie gets a, I wanna say fax from Tom Cruise that says like, "In this film, I must have an extended fight sequence in my underwear."

• 1:09:21Chris Ryan?

  I think they write the movie around the action sequence. I think they're pretty clear about that.

• 1:09:24Andy Greenwald?

  Specific things that he wants to do or show that he can do or be seen as doing. Despite the fact that he's a 62-year-old man.

• 1:09:34Chris Ryan?

  There's a couple of moments there where I was just like, it, it, for the first time, I was like, it kinda is showing.

• 1:09:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:09:41Chris Ryan?

  And, and I don't think he's He doesn't seem super comfortable with long stretches of dialogue anymore.

• 1:09:48Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 1:09:49Chris Ryan?

  Those scenes are very fast. He seems like he's got a couple of moves in him, you know, still and, and is, I'm not talking about him physically. I'm talking about him communicating emotionally. And so I am very, very interested to see. It was interesting to me that this film comes out. It does basically what the Mission Impossible films do, although I think that the word of mouth is not going to be particularly high on this one.

• 1:10:11Andy Greenwald?

  Although it did make more money than the last one. It seems to be doing well.

• 1:10:13Chris Ryan?

  Yes, but I would imagine there's going to be a little bit of a drop off with this. And then, you know, a lot has been said about Tom Cruise going back into like the mainstream world of working with lots of different filmmakers and like he's doing an Inari To movie and maybe he's gonna do.

• 1:10:28Andy Greenwald?

  Which is now a comedy, apparently.

• 1:10:29Chris Ryan?

  But McCary went on Josh Horowitz's pod and was like, we're working on Top Gun three, Days of Thunder two and the Les Grossman movie. And I was like, oh, okay. So we're, we're maybe talking about how it would be cool to go and work with.

• 1:10:45Andy Greenwald?

  He did one.

• 1:10:46Chris Ryan?

  The PTAs of the world.

• 1:10:47Andy Greenwald?

  He did do one. I think he still wants to win an Oscar, but I, I, I think, um, I mean, let's be real. Tom Cruise is significantly older in this movie than John Voight was in the first one.

• 1:10:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:59Andy Greenwald?

  And John Voight played the elderly father figure.

• 1:11:04Andy Greenwald?

  There were moments in this movie, I agree with you, where he looks older than he does in other moments in the movie, which also suggests quite a long span of production.

• 1:11:15Andy Greenwald?

  There are scenes, like I'll say, like the scene when he shows up with Angela Bassett in that room full of like all the best dudes, like,

• 1:11:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:21Andy Greenwald?

  like Briar Patch's, uh, uh, Charlie P. and, um,

• 1:11:24Chris Ryan?

  Offerman.

• 1:11:25Andy Greenwald?

  Offerman and, and my,

• 1:11:26Chris Ryan?

  My tier.

• 1:11:27Andy Greenwald?

  My professor McGonagall.

• 1:11:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:30Andy Greenwald?

  It's,

• 1:11:31Chris Ryan?

  All, all comes back to you.

• 1:11:32Andy Greenwald?

  It's all about me. He looks great. And like the, it has a little pep in it step, the movie, and I feel like that was the start of something. Is it a whole McElany or McAlany?

• 1:11:42Chris Ryan?

  I don't know, honestly.

• 1:11:43Andy Greenwald?

  Loved seeing him.

• 1:11:44Chris Ryan?

  I love him, yeah.

• 1:11:45Andy Greenwald?

  Like, like, just a lot of, you know, not campy, but actors are willing to-

• 1:11:49Chris Ryan?

  I think McCallany.

• 1:11:50Andy Greenwald?

  But a lot of actors willing to put on the extra mustard for scenes like this was really fun. And I felt like made a lot of sense for this movie. Action sequences, as advertised, I thought the, the sub stuff was intense and engaging.

• 1:12:04Chris Ryan?

  Intense and engaging.

• 1:12:05Andy Greenwald?

  How would you do, that, that's the quote. Sometimes they, we get emails being like, can we use this thing you said about Gavin Newsom's podcast?

• 1:12:11Chris Ryan?

  Lightly amusing, yeah.

• 1:12:13Andy Greenwald?

  It was fine.

• 1:12:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:15Andy Greenwald?

  How would you do in a torpedo tube, do you think? You're, you're a swim, you were a lifeguard.

• 1:12:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but I don't really love, uh, tons of, like, pressure coming down on my body or being cold. So, I don't think very well. And, you know, I would probably sooner try to start that sub back up than I would-

• 1:12:34Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 1:12:34Chris Ryan?

  But I guess it had been imploded by the Russians, so-

• 1:12:36Andy Greenwald?

  No, but it didn't seem like it had, because he also brought, he brought like the most amazing charger. Like, that you can just bring miles under the surface and then plug into a wet- Powerboard and just like-

• 1:12:47Chris Ryan?

  A great USB drive.

• 1:12:48Andy Greenwald?

  Submarine turn-on.

• 1:12:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:50Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think, is Tim Cook holding out on us? Can you get that?

• 1:12:54Chris Ryan?

  Um, any other final thoughts? Final reckonings?

• 1:12:59Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, no, it, it, it, it, it was a disappointing end.

• 1:13:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:05Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like, I, I, I had a lot of momentum to do a podcast about this movie, and it was just kind of a, kind of a bummer. But I, I appreciate your point. I feel like I'd like to at some point with whatever movie he does next. The McQuary thing in him as a filmmaker and as a writer is interesting to me. Like, every time there's a moment of wit or humanity that pops out, it's real. Like, the end of Gabriel on the plane-

• 1:13:27Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:13:27Andy Greenwald?

  Is a great moment. And it's a thought, it's funny and it's surprising. And his instincts of, I, I just also find, and if you've listened to him on podcasts, as you have and I have, and I like to do, he does seem like the filmmaker, or a filmmaker of the moment, because he does approach things, it appears, from a problem-solving point of view. You know, and I think that a lot of movies, particularly series-ending movies, have started, again, with good faith and good intentions, from a problem-solving point of view. That's absolutely the, like, the Rise of Skywalker thing. Now, that movie is an atrocity compared to this movie, but I'm just saying, like- It's a different bar to judge on. Like, did they address everything they had to address? You know, connect everything, dot every i, cross every t, and like, get out of there?

• 1:14:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Is that a great place to begin? Art? No.

• 1:14:17Chris Ryan?

  Maybe not.

• 1:14:18Andy Greenwald?

  No. And like, it's a long, long movie to spend with this kind of level of anti-God.

• 1:14:23Chris Ryan?

  We'll be back on Thursday. We'll be talking about Adults, the new series on FX.

• 1:14:28Andy Greenwald?

  It premieres tomorrow?

• 1:14:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think so. And we're talking a little bit, maybe from some friends and neighbors, as the finale is airing, and some other stuff that comes up.

• 1:14:35Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I watched that was really good? It's the Pee-wee Herman documentary.

• 1:14:38Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:14:38Andy Greenwald?

  On HBO.

• 1:14:40Chris Ryan?

  You never really did it for me.

• 1:14:41Andy Greenwald?

  Really? Well, I think you'd like the documentary. I think it's pretty interesting.

• 1:14:44Chris Ryan?

  I'm not gonna watch a three-and-a-half-hour movie about a guy who never really did it for me. I gotta be honest.

• 1:14:49Andy Greenwald?

  Why don't you Google "guys who never did it for me," Sweden, campground, and see what you come up with?

• 1:14:57Chris Ryan?

  It was great podding with you. I'll talk to you on Thursday.

• 1:14:58Andy Greenwald?

  Fine.

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