‘Alien: Earth’ Episodes 1 and 2 and the ‘Task’ Trailer

Chris and Andy talk about the news that the ‘Jason Bourne’ and ‘Treadstone’ IP will be heading back to Universal and speculate on where the studio might take the franchise (11:36). Then they talk about the trailer for the Mark Ruffalo show ‘Task’ that was released this week (20:52), before breaking down the first two episodes of ‘Alien: Earth’ and Noah Hawley’s vision for this world (27:23). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Producer: 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

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

• 0:25Speaker 01

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• 0:37Speaker 02

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

• 0:57Speaker 01

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

• 1:24Speaker 02

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

• 1:30Speaker 03

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• 1:37Speaker 03

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• 2:17Speaker 03

  a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tremfya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more, or visit tremfyaradio.com.

• 2:30Speaker 04

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

• 2:36Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com. And joining me on the other line from the studio, the only lost boy he acknowledges is Mr. Cheeks, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 2:51Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, you dropped a gem.

• 2:53Chris Ryan?

  Do you think over at Paramount, they ever called George Cheeks Mr. Cheeks?

• 2:58Andy Greenwald?

  What's beautiful is-

• 3:00Chris Ryan?

  George Cheeks isn't, you know, one of the 19 people who's in charge of television-

• 3:02Andy Greenwald?

  You and I, you and I talk pretty much uninterrupted throughout the day, and yet that is a thought that I have also had and never expressed. And you, like the boy genius-

• 3:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, the boy cavalier.

• 3:17Andy Greenwald?

  From Alien Earth, reached into my mind and extracted it. This is a beautiful thing. We are the future.

• 3:23Chris Ryan?

  We really are. Greenwald, great to see you. It's Thursday. We're going to talk about Alien Earth, the first two episodes. We're going to talk a little bit about the possible revival of, oh my god, it's Jason Bourne. We're going to talk a little bit about the new task trailer. And we'll just, we'll just get into it. TheWatch at Spotify.com to email us. Hit us up if you've got any Alien Earth cues or observations. You can follow us on Instagram, TheWatchPod underscore. You can watch us on YouTube, The Ringer-TV channel, and listen to us and watch us on Spotify. Please, hello and thank you. I'm still in Philly. Septicuts imminent, this red series with the Phillies going poorly. I would describe the weather as pregnant with rain.

• 4:08Chris Ryan?

  This is the first time in my life, at least, it's been a long time since it gets, I've been in a place where it gets hotter after it rains.

• 4:15Andy Greenwald?

  Oh yeah, sure. Right.

• 4:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but that's really, those are the extent of my observations, other than that five-star Mr. Cheeks joke I made.

• 4:22Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I don't want to let that lie, although maybe that's like the watch premium, because I wonder how many people listening actually care the way we do about 90s, obscure 90s hip-hop groups and the current leadership structure of Paramount Skydance.

• 4:40Chris Ryan?

  There's gotta be five of us.

• 4:41Andy Greenwald?

  There's gotta be five of us somewhere. And I don't want to blow this.

• 4:44Chris Ryan?

  One day I'm gonna get that tap on the shoulder from Bill and be like, you guys had a good run, but no.

• 4:49Andy Greenwald?

  I don't want to blow up the sky, but I met a very kind guy who approached me the other day and he was like, very nice about the podcast and he said he was a huge fan and he was like, I can't, sometimes I can't believe that there are two other guys exactly my age from the East Coast who likes all the same things. And I'm like, brother, I can't believe that. That is the single most plausible thing about this podcast, that there is a nation of 48-year-old men who used to subscribe to magazines. Know what I mean?

• 5:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:21Andy Greenwald?

  That doesn't blow my mind. It's that anyone else listens that surprises me. Speaking of pivoting to the youth vote, before we get into Alien Earth,

• 5:30Andy Greenwald?

  I wondered if you had any thoughts on, A, Taylor Swift entering the podcast space and B, our odds for being her second podcast. Now, I'm not asking for me, I'm asking for the two junior members of my household, who's, this is very sweet, somehow have taken this turn of events to mean it's in play now.

• 5:53Chris Ryan?

  What's in play? Oh, that she could be on our show?

• 5:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 5:56Chris Ryan?

  This is like when my wife thought, uh, Baby Yoda might go on Bill's show. And she was like, you have to tell me, the only time I would ever demand to come to the office is if Baby Yoda was on Bill's pod. And I was like, that can't happen. That is a mostly CGI fictional creature. And she refused to accept it. And then she said she would settle for Shalhane.

• 6:23Andy Greenwald?

  Baby Yoda doesn't-

• 6:24Chris Ryan?

  And now at this point, I think probably Chris Briny, but you know, like-

• 6:27Andy Greenwald?

  But wait, this is an incredible digression because this was before Podcast bravely pivoted to video. And Baby Yoda, you know, we all love the kid, but he's not the most loquacious cat.

• 6:40Chris Ryan?

  Well, I have to admit, the, the, the 2024 turn Baby Yoda made towards the manosphere, and all the podcast appearances he made, you know, discussing his, how, how upset he was about, you know, masking and everything, that was surprising.

• 6:56Andy Greenwald?

  It's true. Um, Baby Yoda, though, I do think in hindsight was justified in calling Order 66 a genocide. I, I, I thought that was brave at the time and it's really stood up.

• 7:08Chris Ryan?

  Does anybody listening to this thing-

• 7:09Andy Greenwald?

  Listen, the, but, but it's funny, like Phoebe, my younger daughter the other day said, um, we were, I was driving her to camp and absolutely seriously, she said, if Taylor does go on your podcast, I can miss school that day, right? And I was like, yes. And then I-

• 7:27Chris Ryan?

  If Taylor goes on your podcast, she can leave school. She can drop out.

• 7:31Andy Greenwald?

  Forever.

• 7:31Chris Ryan?

  We've made it.

• 7:32Andy Greenwald?

  I could pay for private tutoring at that point, I imagine, just from the, the click throughs, but, uh, but yeah, I, I, I had to pull over and patiently explain to her that if she did come on, uh, a podcast on the Ringer Network, it would probably be good hang because, because it's host-

• 7:47Chris Ryan?

  I think you're absolutely right.

• 7:48Andy Greenwald?

  It's host made the THR list.

• 7:49Chris Ryan?

  Either way, Kaia wins.

• 7:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 7:51Chris Ryan?

  Either way.

• 7:52Andy Greenwald?

  How does it feel to once again be the bridesmaid to Hollywood Reporter's most powerful people in podcasting list? Yeah, for the record, I declined my spot this year.

• 8:01Chris Ryan?

  I don't, I don't do it for the recognition.

• 8:03Andy Greenwald?

  I, I did it because I thought Theo Von deserved it more. I was like, I'm good.

• 8:08Chris Ryan?

  Um, it's funny, you should ask about Taylor, who I was not planning on discussing with you because obviously that's being covered ad nauseam elsewhere.

• 8:16Andy Greenwald?

  It's good in the headline of this podcast. Kai is already brightening.

• 8:20Chris Ryan?

  Weird moment where, uh, you know, my brain is pretty mushy right now and, and obviously here doing family stuff is, it's, it's a complicated situation, but I do find myself having moments of pure clarity on, uh, on pop culture, like where like I won't think about anything. And then all of a sudden like a signal hits the antenna and I'm like, I got it. So I thought before she made the announcement that if this is essentially going to be like a Max Martin record that she recorded in Sweden during her tour, uh, take a, take a day off, seriously. I thought that the orange color scheme that she was presenting suggested it was giving

• 9:01Chris Ryan?

  Tennessee volunteers and Texas Longhorns. And I was like, it's college football season. Taylor's coming back for Big 12 SEC country. Like it's going to be a country music record. Yeah. I was like, and I'm a fucking I am boy cavalier. Like I, I can see it all coming together.

• 9:19Andy Greenwald?

  You cracked the code.

• 9:21Chris Ryan?

  And instead it's like a Shellback record.

• 9:23Andy Greenwald?

  It's a hundred, not just a Shellback record.

• 9:25Chris Ryan?

  It's like a thousand percent wrong, but it's a good, it was a good idea.

• 9:28Andy Greenwald?

  You've never been.

• 9:29Chris Ryan?

  And I was like, I can totally see it. She's going to play ESPN college football, like opening weekend. She's going to launch it off the back of NIL, you know, it's going to happen. And I was wrong.

• 9:40Andy Greenwald?

  She's going to do what with Lee Corso? Like I, first of all, congratulations. You have never been more wrong. That is so wrong. It's beautiful and I love it. The fact that, that she was like, not only am I not taking any time off, I have worked with my true soulmate, Shellback, on a complete thought of an album with, Kai, can you weigh in on this as our youth correspondent? I am, it's not, it's not professionally, it's personally, I have to be personally on board with this. Like I, I cannot.

• 10:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:11Andy Greenwald?

  I can't even do side eye anymore about any of this. I do feel like the one place I know my children will never hear me is the podcast I do professionally. So I can say

• 10:21Chris Ryan?

  Unless Taylor Swift's on it.

• 10:22Andy Greenwald?

  That I think that this is the tackiest album cover I've ever seen. Kaya, give me your read on this.

• 10:28Chris Ryan?

  But she has always dressed like a figure skater. I don't know why this is not like a big deviation.

• 10:34Speaker 07

  I think.

• 10:35Chris Ryan?

  I like some Taylor Swift music.

• 10:36Speaker 07

  I think the alternate, some of the alternate covers are better. I like the one of her climbing over the theater seats. Um, I think that one should have been the main album cover.

• 10:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:45Speaker 07

  But I'm also, I'm actively frightened for my life right now that I'm even slightly criticizing her.

• 10:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I.

• 10:52Chris Ryan?

  Nobody's listening.

• 10:53Andy Greenwald?

  Nobody's listening.

• 10:54Chris Ryan?

  After Andy's Manhattan joke last week.

• 10:56Andy Greenwald?

  Which, which Kaya.

• 10:58Chris Ryan?

  We're barely being monetized.

• 10:59Andy Greenwald?

  Kaya platformed that joke, for what it's worth.

• 11:03Speaker 07

  Yeah. Well, what do you think is going to be the breakout of this episode?

• 11:07Chris Ryan?

  Exactly.

• 11:07Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I guess, stay tuned. It's gonna get spicy. Any other?

• 11:11Chris Ryan?

  You, you alluded to this. You wanted to know, did I have any updates from TSITP Island? I do. Uh, incredibly, uh, trying and tedious episode that then ended with like erotic fireworks unlike anything we've seen since, uh, eight and a half weeks. This, uh, dude cuts himself on his surfboard fin.

• 11:31Andy Greenwald?

  Stop you for a second.

• 11:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:33Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's nine and a half weeks and I think you have conflated it with the classic Italian film Eight and a Half.

• 11:39Chris Ryan?

  I told you I'm in a tough spot right now, man.

• 11:41Andy Greenwald?

  The rewatchables for eight and a half weeks would break Sean and Bill because they would each have a dog in that fight, I feel like.

• 11:50Chris Ryan?

  I should tell you, it should be Sean thinks we're doing eight and a half.

• 11:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 11:53Chris Ryan?

  And Bill thinks we're doing nine and a half weeks. And then when Bill says nine and a half weeks, Sean just thinks it's one of Bill's like, I forgot what word it is things.

• 12:01Andy Greenwald?

  A hundred percent.

• 12:02Chris Ryan?

  And then we, we never just, we never figure it out.

• 12:04Andy Greenwald?

  And when Sean, and when Bill starts talking about like, is this Ice Cube's apex mountain? Sean just has to just sweat through it and be like, uh huh.

• 12:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:14Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, please go on.

• 12:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but we had a very, very, very erotic wound dressing scene in Summer I Turned Pretty this week. Uh, my guy Conrad cuts his thigh. Uh, deep wound. Um, honestly, he should have gone to the urgent care and belly dresses it and they nearly kissed.

• 12:31Andy Greenwald?

  He a doctor? Or not yet.

• 12:33Chris Ryan?

  He is a clinician and a fired one.

• 12:36Andy Greenwald?

  Spoiler, I heard he becomes a doctor.

• 12:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think so, probably.

• 12:41Andy Greenwald?

  My relationship with the show is largely uninteresting to anyone, but it is as much in my life now as TS12 is. I convinced my older daughter to go for a like a long restorative walk with me the other day if in exchange for the physical labor of walking with her father, she could just quote, "tell you about the show." So I do feel relatively caught up, but it is interesting. I keep trying to, and I realize that he's kind of a dog or whatever, but like, I kind of want her to zag and be like, "Team Jerry."

• 13:13Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 13:13Andy Greenwald?

  But when I say that to people.

• 13:14Chris Ryan?

  And it's not Jerry, it's Jer.

• 13:16Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, when everyone, all right, okay, I'm okay with that level of ignorance. Whenever I suggest this to youth adults, they look at me like I have just appointed myself to the Kennedy Center, you know what I mean? Like I have.

• 13:32Chris Ryan?

  No, it's like being like, I really hope that the Chiefs claw back the Super Bowl this year. It's like the worst opinion you could have.

• 13:39Andy Greenwald?

  But I want some countercultural instinct to exist, but it doesn't exist. Like, is it punk?

• 13:46Chris Ryan?

  The counterculture instinct would be Belly chooses herself.

• 13:50Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, oh, like Ari and Thank You Next, the song I have to listen to every day. Not for my own well-being, but that's a big, that's a big car song these days.

• 14:01Chris Ryan?

  AG, want to go through a couple of headlines?

• 14:03Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, sure, yeah.

• 14:07Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I'd like to get your thoughts on Universal, NBC Universal securing, but in a sense, resecuring the rights to the Jason Bourne slash Treadstone fictional universe from the Ludlum Estate. Obviously, a couple of years ago, we had the show Treadstone. I feel like you weren't, maybe that was during Briar Patch?

• 14:30Andy Greenwald?

  It was, it was a fellow USA show at the time, so.

• 14:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, fellow USA show.

• 14:35Andy Greenwald?

  So I was muzzled.

• 14:38Chris Ryan?

  Or I can't even remember the chronology, but I think prior to that was Paul Greengrass's, at that point, final Jason Bourne film where Matt Damon reprised the Jason Bourne character as like a bare-knuckle boxer in Eastern Europe somewhere.

• 14:50Andy Greenwald?

  And for what it's worth, I feel about that movie the same way I feel about Paddington 3. It just didn't exist.

• 14:55Chris Ryan?

  It just didn't happen. If you listen to this podcast and or know anything about the lore that goes into this podcast, you know that the opening music features Ed Norton's voice from The Bourne Legacy. So that's a film that Andy and I adore, but has been largely like kind of, in terms of the canon of the show or the canon of the films, ignored.

• 15:18Chris Ryan?

  Basically, like, this is, NBC Universal obviously felt like this was too valuable of a property to let go or to see go into Paramount, Netflix, whoever's hands. What do you think happens next with this franchise?

• 15:31Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I, you know, I think that the article says that that two very, very intriguing names are involved, in addition to Matt Damon. So by the way, for the timeline, you're right, like, the movie that didn't happen, Jason Bourne, was 2016. Treadstone, the show that essentially didn't happen in terms of its cultural footprint, was one season in 2019, and it's been quiet since then, except when people fire up this podcast.

• 15:58Andy Greenwald?

  The news in the, in the Deadline story was that Edward Berger, who is an incredibly talented director, who most recently made Conclave and was in the mix for the Bond, the next Bond film.

• 16:10Chris Ryan?

  And he has this Colin Farrell movie coming out in the fall about a gambler who goes to ground in Macau.

• 16:15Andy Greenwald?

  I'm sorry, I just got like full body shivers. Like, did you, that was more profound to me from my brain.

• 16:21Chris Ryan?

  I just can't remember what it's called, but that's, that's the movie, yeah.

• 16:24Andy Greenwald?

  Is it called Paging Mr. Cheeks? Because I feel like, once again, this is the podcast we record for ourselves, and then later we'll do one on Alien Earth. Edward Berger directing, Matt Damon potentially returning, and friend of the pod, Joe Barton, who made Giri Haji and Black Dove's dog, writing the script.

• 16:46Andy Greenwald?

  This is a pretty close to a dream team, in my opinion, for bringing this franchise back onto its feet. I find it very exciting. I also think the other piece of thing worth commenting, the way you framed it, is like, Universal felt it was really important to require this. Yeah, I mean, the other news this week was David Ellison takes over Paramount, and the first words out of his mouth are Top Gun 3. You know what I mean?

• 17:12Chris Ryan?

  Well, the first words out of his mouth were UFC.

• 17:14Andy Greenwald?

  That's true. That's true. Those were letters, but I take your point.

• 17:19Chris Ryan?

  You know what I mean. Yeah, the first words were Ultimate Fighting Championship.

• 17:22Andy Greenwald?

  Like, you need to run a studio these days, you need to have major, major IP planks to back up whatever plan you have for the long term. And so, it doesn't surprise me that Universal is like, this is too valuable, or potentially too valuable, to give up on.

• 17:41Chris Ryan?

  One of the things I wanted to ask you about was, you know, kind of going off of what we were discussing with Fantastic Four and Marvel earlier in the week. Let's just say, for the sake of conversation, you're in charge, you're the creative director of Bourne Industries.

• 17:57Andy Greenwald?

  That's exciting.

• 17:58Chris Ryan?

  Do you continue to push in a post-Bourne world? Maybe make one more Bourne film? Old Man Bourne finds out that they're doing it to another generation and stops it or something? You know, some kind of like, other new capstone that then sets up future franchises? Although I would say Hollywood has not been very successful at letting go of, like, when you have Pete Mitchell back, or you have these characters back, they don't often turn over the franchise as smoothly as they're imagined to. Ethan Hunt. Creed is an example of that working rather well, although much, I bet, to Sly Stallone's chagrin.

• 18:38Chris Ryan?

  But would you say, okay, like, we're starting with Jason Bourne as canon, and pushing forward into a 21st, 2020s Bourne world? Or do you tear it down to the studs and remake From Bourne Identity on updating Nokia Wave for the smartphone AI world?

• 18:59Andy Greenwald?

  It's such a good question, and one that people have probably already been wrestling with.

• 19:05Andy Greenwald?

  It almost presupposes, like, I don't think in this day and age, the template for the Legacy sequel demands the inclusion of the Legacy. And I don't mean the Bourne Legacy, because I think I would be pretty hyped for that. I just don't think there's a version of this that they are interested in without Matt Damon in some form. Now, the question is, does it become like Top Gun Maverick, where he's just like, "Okay, kids, let me show you how to do this."

• 19:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, where it's Matt Damon is alone, often off the grid, and then he finds out that Austin Butler has been brought into like a new Treadstone, and he's gonna go free this kid.

• 19:41Andy Greenwald?

  Or the reverse, or you do the Blade Runner sequel, where Austin Butler goes through his own experience.

• 19:46Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, and then finds Matt Damon in a cabin somewhere.

• 19:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, to do his scenes. Now, I will say that, you know, judging by the social media pics of post-Odysseus, pre-carbohydrate Matt Damon, this is absolutely the moment that they need to film this, because he looks incredible. And he probably could do the Pete Mitchell version of this sequel now. I don't know. I mean, I guess I'm of two minds about it. I do love, obviously, this world, and the world that our hero and sort of pal Tony Gilroy is really responsible for crafting, for making a mythology that worked across the movies, that, from what I understand, is fairly different

• 20:33Andy Greenwald?

  from the Robert Ludlum books that it was based on. That said, the Universal took a swing at making a show about the mythology, and it did not connect with people. This is a franchise that is, other than the movie that shall not be named, pretty unimpeachable in its cinematic run. Like, those are all excellent movies that work as movies, not just as carrier pigeons for the seeds of the coolness of the original idea. So, making another one is a little bit more, to me, I guess, like making another Bond than it is like making a Star Wars movie, only this time it's about the Knights of the Old Republic.

• 21:13Chris Ryan?

  You and I are nerds for all the Treadstone, what is it, Blackbriar? Like, all the, like, the medical engineering that goes pharmacological.

• 21:24Andy Greenwald?

  I took to Advil yesterday and I was like, sorry kids, grabbing some Kems. Like, I'm still that guy.

• 21:29Chris Ryan?

  I'm viraling off. But those things are largely MacGuffins in those movies. You know, like, for the casual viewer, I think they're like, yeah, there's all this, like, stuff in the background, but what I care about is Jason Bourne beating up a guy with a rolled up magazine. So I wonder whether or not you can really foreground the mythology and the sort of subterranean information about these worlds. Treadstone, I think, was somewhat of an effort to do that, but Bourne Legacy certainly was, where you're finding out there's all these different tiers and levels and subdivisions of government agencies that don't even know about each other and all this stuff, like the Edward Norton part. I personally think the most likely scenario is Universal following

• 22:12Chris Ryan?

  what they did with Jurassic World Rebirth, which is essentially new stars, updated setting in time, but all the narrative bones are the ones that you've, they're the fossils that we've picked over already.

• 22:24Andy Greenwald?

  That's who you prefer.

• 22:25Chris Ryan?

  So it's like, I think, no, I just think that's the most likely. I think if I had a preference, Tony Gilroy would do Andor Set in this World, you know?

• 22:31Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, there you go. Yeah, I think that's right.

• 22:33Chris Ryan?

  I mean, if I had a preference, it would be a three-season, like, end of the deep state elegy that Tony Gilroy wrote.

• 22:43Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know what you're huffing over there, but you actually are touching the third rail right now. All of these ideas are bangers. To your point, I agree with you. I think that if and when the movie continues, I mean, it basically says as much in the story that, like, they are, they want Matt Damon involved. So whatever script Joe Barton is working on, whatever that script eventually ends up being, whether he stays with it or other people end up touching it, the goal is Damon. And I'm okay with that.

• 23:22Chris Ryan?

  Only other news I had that I wanted to hit with you is this task trailer. Now, I had a funny reaction when I saw that this went live. Because I am so in on task that I almost feel like a trailer can only take me out.

• 23:39Andy Greenwald?

  You were like that with 28 years later.

• 23:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I was just like, this teaser is impeccable. It's perfect. I am seeing this the first night, if not before. You've got my money. You don't need to show me anything else. I don't need to find out like somebody didn't get the accent right. Like, let's just go. The curiosity that I had that killed the cat here and that made me watch the trailer is I was curious what music they would choose. Because how do you top Patience by Guns N' Roses as a trailer needle drop? And I was like, I don't know. You know, I mean, like, times are tight at Warner Brothers. I know the box office has been pretty liquid, but you don't want to, you know, you don't want to blow everybody's 401k matching on some song for the second task trailer. But I'll give it a shot.

• 24:27Chris Ryan?

  And what did Cut the Check Casey Boys do?

• 24:31Chris Ryan?

  He paid for Wish You Were Here.

• 24:36Chris Ryan?

  What are you doing? This is amazing.

• 24:38Andy Greenwald?

  Look, sometimes old Hollywood rears its head, right? And the Rainmakers can still make it happen.

• 24:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. You gotta buy a horse named Cartoon every once in a while, you know? Just be like this beautiful animal.

• 24:52Andy Greenwald?

  So, the show is coming out September 7th. We have been all in since Mary V. Stone was on the air and before this was announced. So this is obviously a safe space. I would say that the thing that I learned between the teaser trailer a couple of months ago and this full Pink Floyd-y two-minute trailer is that I don't think it's going to be a laugh riot.

• 25:21Chris Ryan?

  No. A lot of True Detective season one vibes.

• 25:23Andy Greenwald?

  A lot of wounded men wounding others and a lot of pain.

• 25:32Andy Greenwald?

  When it's done as artfully as Mayor of Easttown was, I'm all in with these actors. I mean, we, every time we talk about it, we are.

• 25:41Chris Ryan?

  I don't remember Mayor of Easttown being advertised as a laugh right.

• 25:45Andy Greenwald?

  This is what I was gonna say.

• 25:46Chris Ryan?

  And it had humor.

• 25:47Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly. What was, what elevated that show for me, uh, well, there are many reasons why we thought it was so excellent. But I think one of them was for all of the, this, this city is a doomed sinkhole of fentanyl and familial trauma. There was, there were also all those scenes of Kate Winslet and, um,

• 26:10Chris Ryan?

  Gen Smart.

• 26:11Andy Greenwald?

  Gen Smart, like tossing frozen peas to each other and, and rocking rolling rocks, you know?

• 26:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:17Andy Greenwald?

  So that's, I, I would very much imagine this is, this is, this is on track. Um.

• 26:24Chris Ryan?

  First scene, just Tom Pelfrey calling into IP to talk about Tanner McKee.

• 26:29Andy Greenwald?

  He was, he, okay. Let, I mean, we are gonna have so much fun this September. I don't wanna step on it, but I.

• 26:35Chris Ryan?

  I fucking hope they made Pelfrey do that because he's a big Giants fan.

• 26:38Andy Greenwald?

  I, I, is he really?

• 26:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:40Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, good. We can talk about Saquon then. Um.

• 26:44Andy Greenwald?

  His sports profile is fascinating to me. He is definitely, definitely, definitely pro Tanner McKee, if you know what I mean.

• 26:53Andy Greenwald?

  He has some real concerns about the outside cornerback position this year, but feels.

• 26:59Chris Ryan?

  Not, not Cooper.

• 27:00Andy Greenwald?

  No, feels pretty solid about the exciting mics in the middle of the field. Um, that's the vibe I get. I just wanna, this again, this will come up a lot this fall when we talk about the show, but for people who are like, at least deep Delco aware the way we are, um, it does seem that Mark Ruffalo, the star of the show, the heroic figure in the, the two-hander that is Task, seems to have, and I respect this, chosen a path of, I'm just a working guy. Voice, which for the record, in my opinion, is much, much better than being like, I'm a working guy from a city. And then you kind of sound like you're from Boston or New Jersey because you're not doing the specificities of this accent.

• 27:41Andy Greenwald?

  It does seem like Tom Pelfrey is ready to do this voice from Monday to Sunday, if you know what I mean.

• 27:49Chris Ryan?

  From the roof to the water?

• 27:50Andy Greenwald?

  From the reader to the tutor, as our southern friends, not southern Philly friends would say. How do you feel about the accent disparity? Because look, we're from there and we don't eat water rice.

• 28:03Chris Ryan?

  I honestly didn't even notice. I was just like, sitting with how good of a song Wish You Were Here is.

• 28:07Andy Greenwald?

  Did you, did you even have your eyes open? Did you loop with the blast shield down for this trailer? Because you just want to trust your feelings about it?

• 28:15Chris Ryan?

  I closed my eyes and all I saw was Taylor Swift's making a college football album.

• 28:19Andy Greenwald?

  I closed my eyes. We're psyched. I'm psyched for that. That looks fantastic.

• 28:24Chris Ryan?

  Speaking, I mentioned True Detective. I do want to mention to you that my current True Detective season five is trying to figure out what's going on between Lana Del Rey and Ethel Cain.

• 28:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I didn't know you had dogs in this fight, but you do.

• 28:39Chris Ryan?

  I got, I got some, I got a couple of Ethel Cain stocks in my, my portfolio. And I, I've been known to enjoy the, the tunnel under Ocean Boulevard. Is that, that's the one, is that right? That's a banger.

• 28:52Andy Greenwald?

  Did, did you, because when, you know, like I said at the beginning, we, we are fairly open books with each other. I did not know, the Shaq, Shaq meme. I did not know this was part of your game. Ethel Cain, when you,

• 29:08Chris Ryan?

  It's been a long summer.

• 29:09Andy Greenwald?

  When you added Ethel Cain to your portfolio, was it like, did your taste management advisor suggest it? Or did you seek it out?

• 29:18Chris Ryan?

  I sought it out and then I got more interested when Cara Monica and Joe had, had her on PopCast Deluxe. I was like, oh, that's right.

• 29:27Andy Greenwald?

  As someone who also kind of did performative trolling on the internet 10 years ago, like, did you feel a kinship?

• 29:35Chris Ryan?

  I'm staying out of that one.

• 29:36Andy Greenwald?

  Fair. That's why, that's, you're not as brave on podcasts as Baby Yoda is, I guess.

• 29:43Chris Ryan?

  Nope.

• 29:45Andy Greenwald?

  Fair.

• 29:45Chris Ryan?

  When, when Baby Yoda went on Flagrant, I learned, I learned my lesson. All right, let's take a quick break. We'll get into Alien.

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• 32:05Chris Ryan?

  All right, bud. Alien Earth, one of my most anticipated series of the year is finally here on FX. The first two episodes dropped Tuesday night, both written by Noah Hawley, the first episode directed by Noah Hawley, the second by Dana Gonzalez. It is a riff on the alien universe in a very distinctive, specific way from Hawley's POV, in so much as like, you can feel a lot of the ideas that he is interested in right now, being grafted onto this futuristic sci-fi world. It draws from the Ridley Scott films, and

• 32:45Chris Ryan?

  James Cameron films, like, it draws things from Alien, Aliens. I think that earlier in the week, I may have mentioned that some stuff in the show was annoying me because I felt like it broke with alien tradition. I actually re-watched Prometheus and Covenant this week.

• 33:02Andy Greenwald?

  Whoa.

• 33:03Chris Ryan?

  And I'm happy to report that I was kind of wrong, that both Prometheus and Covenant feel, feature plenty of nostalgic slash contemporary pop culture references, whether it's people singing John Denver, or Crosby, Stills & Nash, or Michael Fassbender's Walter character, David character, watching Lawrence of Arabia at the beginning of Prometheus. So, dinging any Alien Earth references to pop culture may be off, but I do think the preponderance of it in this series is definitely something to watch, and it might, it might turn various viewers off in different ways. I'm, I would say, very impressed, but still not totally

• 33:47Chris Ryan?

  like, I feel like I'm not totally in this show. Where are you with this after two episodes? And we're gonna be spoiling up through two episodes.

• 33:54Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, so, I have, I do have a lot of questions for you as the senior communications advisor for Waylon Duttani.

• 34:01Chris Ryan?

  I, I kind of put that out there, like, this is my shit, and then you will never feel dumber than if you go onto the LV246 Reddit page and just like, oh, I obviously haven't thought About this stuff very.

• 34:15Andy Greenwald?

  And some have.

• 34:16Chris Ryan?

  But I do love these films a lot. So that is where my protective nature is.

• 34:20Andy Greenwald?

  And I, as I said on the last podcast, like, I have a more robust familiarity with the franchise than I even realized that I did just from seeing a bunch of these movies a bunch of times when they were on cable, whatever. But I do not, but my, but my understanding of, of the, the larger canonical benchmarks is paper thin. So I do have some questions for you about that. I think that my first takeaway from these first two episodes is I kind of want to just note and to some degree applaud how Noah has managed to be kind of the last auteur standing

• 35:01Andy Greenwald?

  in our contemporary television marketplace, who is able to, which is another way, a more polite way of saying he's funded, to pursue his particular aesthetic hobby horses at such a high level within the bounds of what gets made these days, which is often pre-existing IP, right? Or what he did with Fargo and what he's doing with this. He's playing in pre-existing sandboxes.

• 35:29Chris Ryan?

  And Legion to some extent.

• 35:30Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly. He, he, he's, he, he goes in, but he, he does his thing regardless of whose sandbox he's, he's playing in. And one of the things that I think shouldn't be glossed over as we talk about the show, and there are things about the show through two episodes, but particularly about the pilot, that I loved, unambiguously loved.

• 35:52Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's worth noting, and not necessarily in a pejorative way, that there were also things about the show in the pilot that I viscerally disliked. And viscerally is a good word when talking about this franchise or the way this show unfolds. We are so smoothed out these days with the stuff that gets to us, that makes it through the development process on television, that having visceral reactions in either direction is pretty novel and

• 36:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:20Andy Greenwald?

  worthwhile. Like, I, I, I noted with some excitement how much I didn't like some of the choices because they were just unambiguously choices.

• 36:34Andy Greenwald?

  So we could get more specific, like?

• 36:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Broadly speaking, the the series is about, it starts, it's like a sprawling story about an Earth and a galaxy for the most part, but a world conquered by a few remaining corporations, including Weyland-Yutani, which is a very famous moniker in Alien history and is the owner of the ship that you you find that goes out in the first film and then the second film. And then Prodigy is the other company and Prodigy is a company run by like a puckish boy genius named Boy Cavalier. And the first episode documents the mission and crash of a Weyland-Yutani ship called the Magino.

• 37:21Chris Ryan?

  And they are carrying xenomorph samples essentially back from a mission where they were sent out to go and and get these get these aliens and bring them back to Earth for study and and God knows what. This somewhat goes against what I feel like you go into Alien and when, you know, earlier in the Alien sort of canon, you're under the assumption that this is a science vessel that has strayed or has been brought to this planet where all these alien eggs are and that it wasn't. I think I think it's safe to assume that the corporate overlords are happy to have

• 38:01Chris Ryan?

  this like bioengineering miracle rather than a bunch of minerals that these people have brought up from a planet. But that being said, a lot of this stuff is in the background or maybe in between the lines of like who's sending people where, et cetera. This is a much more explicit, like, these people were sent before the before the events of Alien are sent out into space to get these things and bring them back with them. They do bring them back. The aliens do break containment. The Magino crashes in what is basically Bangkok, Nusayam, which is a city owned by Prodigy. So you have a Weyland-Yutani ship crash landing into a city owned by another corporation.

• 38:46Chris Ryan?

  And in that city, we have essentially like a Extended quasi-family where you've got a kid named Marcy who becomes a young woman named Wendy by becoming the first person to have her consciousness transported or put into a synthetic being. So it's essentially the mind of a young girl in the body of a young woman. And her brother, who is still a human being, is a kid named Hermit, a young man named Hermit, played by Alex Lothar, who people may remember from Andor, who is a medic with a corporate security team, corporate search and rescue team that works for Prodigy.

• 39:27Chris Ryan?

  There's this crash. Hermit is dispatched to the crash site. It's an incredible set piece of design, like a wonder of design that they put a ship inside of a skyscraper, which is like basically offices and condos. And then they have to go in and save remaining, you know, crew members from the ship, people who have been hurt by the crash, and also on a kind of sub-level, get these samples back. There's a lot going on there. There is repeated explicit references to Peter Pan. Marcy's new body and new character is

• 40:08Chris Ryan?

  named Wendy. Boy Cavalier reads from Peter Pan. The other synthetic, or sorry, rather, hybrids who are basically human consciousness put into a synthetic person are known as the Lost Boys. They all have character names drawn from Peter Pan. And there's also lots of repeated references to Pinocchio, to the animated film Ice Age, which I did not know I was gonna need to know about going into Alien Earth. So you've got a lot of like pop culture references. The character Hermit is obsessed with baseball and is named after Joe DiMaggio. Reggie Jackson comes up in this show already. And that's kind of what

• 40:48Chris Ryan?

  I meant about Noah Hawley's obsessions coming in through the back door and animating the characters in an alien story.

• 40:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. And I think that, you know, there's something, again, there's something kind of commendable. We talk often about how it feels almost necessary these days to Trojan Horse bigger ideas, personal interests into the types of stuff that's just gonna get through, basically.

• 41:17Andy Greenwald?

  And he's certainly done that here. I think through two episodes, one of my major takeaways, though, is that the world and the franchise stuff is, to me, much more compelling than the stuff that is more explicitly Noah-coded. What I mean by that is- Which is like, what is a human being? Well, also just the little children with adult bodies. Um, I find to be a struggle, at least through one or two episodes. Um, it, it feels like, like it is a conceptually interesting idea. I'm not shitting on that. Yeah. But so, but so was when Van Leeuwen made Kraft mac and cheese ice cream. You know what I mean? Like, wow, that's interesting.

• 42:02Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, I don't like it, but I'm glad you did it. Um, I found the alien stuff, again, not as a superfan, so we'll get into some of these specifics, to be pretty compelling. Like, I really liked the opening stuff on the Magino. I really like that somehow he found, uh, in Babu Sisay, uh- Dude, so good. Yafet Kodo Jr. Um, it's, he's awesome. As a cyborg. And he is, uh, just such an awesome presence on screen and a fascinating character to be along, alongside from the beginning.

• 42:40Andy Greenwald?

  I thought that the, the notion of the corporate takeover of the planet and then the solar system is prescient and also fascinating. Um, I like Samuel Blenkin, who plays Boy Cavalier. He's a actor, British actor, who got his start or got noticed in, um, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on stage. He is, has a, he's a really interesting manic energy that I really like. And the set piece that you're talking about is astonishing. Like, the, the scale of a massive spaceship crashing into a densely populated urban area. And again, kudos to, to Noah and FX and the entire production department for not only making the show look like it costs tons of money, for taking advantage of the things that made it cost slightly less money,

• 43:24Andy Greenwald?

  like shooting it in Thailand and being like, no, this is where we're shooting and we're gonna show you things that you don't usually see in these shows. I loved the scale and the spectacle of that and it got me, it got me pretty hyped in watching the show. Yeah.

• 43:38Andy Greenwald?

  Then there were the other things that are what you get when you hire Noah to do a show like this. There is the very dreamlike, quick cut, flashback, flash forward visual style that is at times both kind of frantic and then also times a little too frantic and other times too dreamy. And I noticed that most when the xenomorph is stalking people in a dark hallway. And I'm like, oh, the action piece of this is not translating for me. The part that you're more stereotypically, not stereotypically, that you're more comfortable assuming as part of the Alien franchise, that kind of took me out. And then the like, the kind of thinky, what am I? What are these breasts on my body scenes that are like?

• 44:21Chris Ryan?

  That's the clip, Kaya.

• 44:26Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, who among us haven't asked these questions? You know, as our bodies grow and change. But that stuff is what animates him. I've worked with him. I know this and I respect it. But it was, as a viewer, it was a bit of a collision. It was two tastes that I don't know if they taste great together.

• 44:48Chris Ryan?

  The first half hour of the show, or the first 20 minutes or so, is incredible. It's basically the beginning of Alien itself. So it's an homage to it. I will say this for the choices visually that Holly makes and Dana Gonzalez follows up on in the second episode.

• 45:02Andy Greenwald?

  And for the record, Dana is Noah's longtime director of photography and cinematographer who began directing on previous Noah series and is the DP when Noah is directing and is also clearly stepping in as a director as well.

• 45:16Chris Ryan?

  It's an incredibly difficult bar to hit to follow Ridley Scott, James Cameron, David Fincher, and even Fede Alvarez. And, you know, like, to reach that height of visual exactitude.

• 45:33Andy Greenwald?

  By the way, the Junet Erasure will not stand.

• 45:35Chris Ryan?

  Sorry, I like Resurrection.

• 45:36Andy Greenwald?

  I do too.

• 45:39Chris Ryan?

  I will give Noah Hawley a ton of credit for thinking of a new way of imagining this world, because you could probably get pretty far into this show and just do Ridley Scott karaoke. And the fact that I've seen people compare it to sort of like, these sort of Lynchian kind of, like, dreamlike shots with dissolves and superimposing images, and there is like an idea being worked on here, and I think he is looking for a different way to visually express himself in a cinematic world that has been trod by some of the greatest people, the greatest artisans to ever get behind a camera and call action.

• 46:23Chris Ryan?

  So I think it's really cool. I find myself butting up against what happens when, for instance, Wendy and Slightly, who are two, I gotta get it all straight, there's Synthetics, which is, we'll get to Timothy Olyphant in a sec, but that is like, a fully synthetic person, or fully synthetic robot. There are Cyborgs, which is what Moro is, which is a person who has been changed, or

• 46:52Andy Greenwald?

  Modified.

• 46:53Chris Ryan?

  Modified by robotics. And then there's a hybrid, which is a synthetic with human consciousness transported into it, or put into it. When Wendy, who is a hybrid, is talking to other hybrids, it's just not my tempo, but that's like, like exactly what you're saying. It's like, there's just a little bit too much, like, I'm scared. No, you're not. We don't get scared. Like, it's like, alright, man, like, that's, that's just me, though, that's just my, my palette. And I think that you're right. Like, there are so, so much TV where you're just like, this is just boring. This isn't boring, it's just not always what I want out of.

• 47:37Andy Greenwald?

  There's such an element of...

• 47:40Andy Greenwald?

  Like, college acting class exercises to that. But like, like, become an animal. And they're like, ooh, I'm a snake. You know, there's a lot of like, what is this? It's a monster. And it's like, it is 100% a choice. And the actors go for it. And we haven't said her name yet. Sydney Chandler plays Wendy. This is the daughter of Kyle Chandler. And she, she got the memo. She read the brief. She is executing a childlike wonder.

• 48:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, she's like, what if Amelie was also, you know,

• 48:11Andy Greenwald?

  A killer?

• 48:11Chris Ryan?

  The world's strongest man. Yeah.

• 48:14Andy Greenwald?

  I find it to be a little bit discordant because the show wants you to be scared and also wants you to be curious and also wants you to be embracing, I think to some degree, the heightened, almost expected silliness of it. And there are moments of when the whimsy meets the gore that take me out. Like, but, but, but again, this, sometimes shows take a minute to sort of settle in and they require more of their audience as well. And so I kind of don't want to get too far down a path of distaste. Because like, there's a part of my brain that there's the moment in the second episode when the, when the search and rescue knock on the door of an apartment building

• 48:59Andy Greenwald?

  and it's basically Dangerous Liaison's cosplay going on.

• 49:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that's sick.

• 49:03Andy Greenwald?

  And that-

• 49:05Chris Ryan?

  Did you like that scene?

• 49:05Andy Greenwald?

  Well, that's the thing. I'm like, I want this in my that. Like, I want that sort of visually surprising, just hardcore choice. That was no note. That was what he wanted to do there.

• 49:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he was like, what would happen if this happened?

• 49:22Andy Greenwald?

  That-

• 49:23Chris Ryan?

  And we were living in like, the JG Ballard condominium.

• 49:26Andy Greenwald?

  That said-

• 49:27Chris Ryan?

  Where people are just getting fucking bacchanal.

• 49:29Andy Greenwald?

  That said, it also kind of bumped me the way it bumped me when Noah plays the Joe Hermit's dad in flashbacks. You know, it's like, I, the hand of the author is never very, is always present. I feel like in the show, in a way that is earned. But also is sometimes a little bit, like, a little bit bumpy for me. I, there are other smaller choices, like, like Alex Lothar, who you mentioned. Truly a unique and exciting British actor.

• 50:06Andy Greenwald?

  Doing an American accent, being super into baseball. It's like, it's the thing, and then there's the other thing.

• 50:11Chris Ryan?

  Even though it is, and he's into a 1950s. He's named after a 1950s baseball player, even though this show is set in 2120. So even if he was into Shohei Ohtani, it would still be weird. You know, like, much less Joe DiMaggio. But maybe there will be some explanation of like, how pop cultural artifacts are disseminated.

• 50:33Andy Greenwald?

  I think there's also an argument to be made that this whole project may have needed a Coco Chanel pass. Of like, let's take off one thing before we go out into the world. You know, but I also wonder, and then, and then I do want to steer into some of the alien specific questions that I have for you. But like, I do wonder to what degree this project is, like all projects really, a result of compromise. And where the compromise is and how the compromise will play out over time. Because for example, I think that it is ultimately good for the medium and creative and creativity. That Noah's like, here's what interests me.

• 51:13Andy Greenwald?

  And I will put on the xenomorph suit in order to explore what interests me, or otherwise I'm not interested. I think that is a, that's, that's just top to, top to bottom, good. Good job, John Lengraff and FX for empowering it. Fantastic. There's also the feeling, at least in the opening of the pilot, that the trade off for Wendy's, you know, body dysmorphia Wonderland was, you better fucking show me a xenomorph from the first four minutes.

• 51:40Chris Ryan?

  There's a lot of xenomorphs. There's way more, I was like, I wonder if we'll get an alien in the first season of this show.

• 51:45Andy Greenwald?

  And I feel like the trade off was, you have to do that, you know?

• 51:49Chris Ryan?

  Or maybe it's like a chess move by him where he's like, actually, I'm gonna take, I'm gonna take the tension out of this.

• 51:56Andy Greenwald?

  More like.

• 51:56Chris Ryan?

  And do a lot of.

• 51:57Andy Greenwald?

  More like a chess move. Get it? Cause, cause that's what they, you know?

• 52:02Chris Ryan?

  What Alien questions do you have? So the big thing that I wanted to just mention is, is the relationship between this show and Prometheus and Covenant. Because Prometheus and Covenant were part of a planned, at least trilogy that Ridley Scott wanted to do that led up to Alien. So it would have covered this territory and has a lot of very religious-coded stuff in it about Peter Weyland, played by Guy Pearce in Prometheus, and then in a long title sequence in Covenant, and his quest for eternal life and mortality. And that's what drives him and animates him and sends him across the galaxy, looking for,

• 52:44Chris Ryan?

  basically, like, the engineers, the signal from, from the heavens or from the stars about how to live forever. And I am curious to see whether or not he winds up reckoning with that at all. I think he has said that he is not acknowledging Prometheus, and that obviously comes to some extent with Ridley Scott's blessing, because he's an executive producer on this show. But to the extent that I follow along and look at Alien canon stuff, this is a pretty rebellious piece of work, I think.

• 53:16Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, well, I want to talk to you about the canon. So, as you said, the franchise cornerstone, at least, or not cornerstone, Alien, right? That there is a, we're in, we're in the future.

• 53:29Chris Ryan?

  Which takes place two years after this, this show.

• 53:31Andy Greenwald?

  And in that, and in, and in the pre-existing canon established by that movie, there is a crew, they discover something, previously, at least as far as the universe of the movie is concerned, unknown, and certainly unknown to them, and it wrecks ship.

• 53:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:45Andy Greenwald?

  This show suggests that the Weyland-Yutani and other people on Earth knew about the xenomorph aliens, and that, in fact, they had been on Earth. And I think the solve for the, the, the canon stuff is that this ship crash-lands in a controlled...

• 54:09Andy Greenwald?

  City that is

• 54:11Chris Ryan?

  For a company that will never be mentioned

• 54:12Andy Greenwald?

  That is cut off. So basically

• 54:14Chris Ryan?

  Installations.

• 54:14Andy Greenwald?

  This city is the, what is it, Nostromo? In the first movie, in the sense that it is a closed circuit that is now, that then you can explain why no one else has ever heard of this or expected this or seen this. Potentially, right? Like that, that is the, the framing of it.

• 54:31Chris Ryan?

  I think there is a throwaway line from Boy Cavalier where he's like, make sure none of this gets out for now. Like, obviously, we'll, we'll probably grapple with that more as that goes on. But yes, in this show, the thing that will not be discovered by humans until two years later, but was discovered by humans, I don't know, like 40, 50 years prior in the canon, in Prometheus and coming in, is now in Bangkok.

• 54:57Andy Greenwald?

  Right. And then the idea, oh, right. So the, the basic idea of the, this century's alien content is that it's a big universe out there and humans and xenomorphs have been dancing for a long time. And it makes sense that some people on a ship, not only makes sense that they might not know about it, maybe they were expressly not told about it or else they wouldn't have signed up.

• 55:18Chris Ryan?

  They didn't get to that episode of Ken Burns's Aliens, you know?

• 55:23Andy Greenwald?

  The Letters Home? Can you imagine?

• 55:26Chris Ryan?

  A Shokin farewell?

• 55:29Chris Ryan?

  Is that what it's called? A Shokin?

• 55:31Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. The

• 55:34Andy Greenwald?

  What did, do you think Shelby Foote would be like romantic about the early days of the xenomorphs? You know what I mean? Like, there was a way of xenomorph society before the great conflict between the companies?

• 55:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And now today they would be like, we gotta put those xenomorph statues back up.

• 55:51Andy Greenwald?

  This is exactly what I'm, see, I put it down and you pick it up, even from across the country.

• 55:57Chris Ryan?

  That's real history, man.

• 55:58Andy Greenwald?

  This is what I'm saying. Like, well, yeah, like the

• 56:02Chris Ryan?

  The deacon alien belongs outside of this military academy.

• 56:06Andy Greenwald?

  We can't, we can't erase our history, our proud, proud history. Um, okay, so I, okay, I'm on, I'm on board with that. I get that. Um, I do have some questions about the Prodigy City search and rescue teams mandate. Because I, in my experience, limited, I've, I've lived a very fortunate life, but I under, like, usually, search and rescue.

• 56:31Andy Greenwald?

  They kind of privileged the rescue, not the let's walk in to the massive spaceship crawling with hideous aliens and just kind of like poke around in there for a while. They seemed very committed to doing that. But then again, maybe that is less an error on the part of their mandate and more that they work for a trillionaire who is more interested in the contents of the ship.

• 56:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And in the second episode, there's a scene where um, Hermit tries to get out of his contract.

• 56:58Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 56:58Chris Ryan?

  With the Prodigy Corporation, which echoes a scene that's in Romulus, uh, where there's a lot of like going up to a faceless kind of bureaucrat.

• 57:08Andy Greenwald?

  I like that.

• 57:08Chris Ryan?

  And trying to like get out of this indentured servitude to a corporation. It happens on a planet called Jackson Star in Romulus, but it's, it's like a good idea to be like, you, you basically can never get out from under this corporation and you have to sort of do what you're told.

• 57:23Andy Greenwald?

  I like that a lot. I also like the kind of, um, I forget, there is actually a term for this that I don't have, but it's, it's, it's a similar aesthetic to Star Wars, where it's the future, but it's old at the same time.

• 57:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:33Andy Greenwald?

  The retrofuturism or whatever it is. I like that. I also feel like Joe's contract gets, that he, he's forced to keep his contract. His request to retire or go to medical school is denied because Wendy can touch screens.

• 57:47Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 57:47Andy Greenwald?

  And change code, which was a little bit hard to track, but, but I'm, I'm on board now. Um, okay. Another question is, how many of the aliens, uh, shout out Big Jim Cameron, in these two episodes are canonically accurate or familiar? Because I know that there are, uh, face huggers and then there's the xenomorphs.

• 58:12Chris Ryan?

  And there's like the trilobite. There's some new ones here. The eyeball is new.

• 58:15Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 58:16Chris Ryan?

  Um, there's some really like, uh, phantasmagor- magoric, uh, stuff in this show. And then I, I have to admit, I'm pretty impressed with the gallery of nightmares that they've cooked up for this. Uh, I would have to probably crush some more tape to tell you whether or not, you know, that guy jumping out of the wall has been, I find that they are, they are doing all sorts of different stuff in this series.

• 58:40Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 58:40Chris Ryan?

  Like they're, they're grabbing, they're pushing, they're doing different things. And, um, you know, but as far as like, uh, flora and fauna, to borrow a phrase used by Kersh, who's the synthetic play by.

• 58:55Andy Greenwald?

  Oliphant.

• 58:56Chris Ryan?

  By Oliphant, who I want to talk about last.

• 59:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, like, there's a bunch of different ones, but they're all, they're obviously constantly going through this process of metamorphosis.

• 59:07Andy Greenwald?

  So, behind, sort of running low-key underneath the surface of the A story of the show and of the world building, right, is Moro's tete-a-tete tango with the xenomorph. That, right from jump, suggests that he has a set of orders from Mother, which is either-

• 59:29Chris Ryan?

  He's mission-oriented, yeah. He's got a, he's got a mission from Waylon Yutani to keep these samples-

• 59:35Andy Greenwald?

  No matter what.

• 59:35Chris Ryan?

  To get them back-

• 59:36Andy Greenwald?

  Including sacrifice anyone else on the ship, and get the ship-

• 59:40Chris Ryan?

  And anybody from Prodigy who's trying to help, or anything like that.

• 59:42Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. Talk to me about the xenomorph's motivation, because I got, the energy I got from him, or her, I don't know, in these two episodes, is a little, uh, early Silicon Valley, move fast and break things. Do you know what I mean?

• 59:59Chris Ryan?

  No, see, I, I think that it's just easy to think about them as pure predator. Now, there's a lot of debate in the community, online, about whether or not the engineers from Prometheus created the xenomorphs, and I, I think that, for the most part, people have landed at, the xenomorphs are pre, even pre-engineer, that they're like, natural life from deep in space that have been basically like, planet-hopping through the centuries and eons, and that the engineers messed with their DNA a bit, but I, you know, there is some debate about what Prometheus suggests versus what then interviews after Prometheus

• 1:00:41Chris Ryan?

  and Covenant suggest, but for the most part, like, I was always a big engineer guy, I always thought that whole thing was super fascinating in Prometheus-

• 1:00:48Andy Greenwald?

  And for people who don't remember, the engineers are like the race of Jokic-looking dudes who stand over water-

• 1:00:54Chris Ryan?

  And they are the, it was initially in Alien, they come across this-

• 1:00:57Andy Greenwald?

  Oh yeah, the tablet.

• 1:00:58Chris Ryan?

  Like, basically sarcophagus of an, of an engineer, and for decades, that had gone basically unexplained, and then Ridley Scott essentially made a, two-thirds of a trilogy based on that stuff, which is fucking sick that he did that. And Lindelof wrote, obviously, did write on Prometheus.

• 1:01:14Andy Greenwald?

  So, okay, so, but, so what do you think, as a- Xenomorph scholar, even.

• 1:01:21Chris Ryan?

  I think I'm a xenomorph. I'm a fan.

• 1:01:24Andy Greenwald?

  You're a fan first.

• 1:01:25Chris Ryan?

  But I can't say that I have a degree in advanced.

• 1:01:29Andy Greenwald?

  You like what you've seen from them. You'd like to see more.

• 1:01:33Andy Greenwald?

  What?

• 1:01:34Chris Ryan?

  What do they want? What do we all want, man? We want affordable housing. We want to feel like our kids are gonna grow up in a better world than we do.

• 1:01:41Andy Greenwald?

  And because we're not gonna get any of that, we're mad. And we're gonna eat soldiers' faces. Is that where you're going with this?

• 1:01:49Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:01:49Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think xenomorph, welcome to the resistance.

• 1:01:53Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 1:01:53Andy Greenwald?

  I love it. But like, is the implication at the end of the second episode that this might be a mama bear and that these are the eggs?

• 1:02:06Andy Greenwald?

  And that's maybe why it's so mad and ripping people's faces off?

• 1:02:10Chris Ryan?

  No, it's just, it's always mad. The xenomorphs are never like in a state of repose. Like, the egg is just to get you to look over into them and then, and jump into your.

• 1:02:20Andy Greenwald?

  Xenomorph would do numbers as a podcaster, is what you're saying.

• 1:02:23Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 1:02:25Andy Greenwald?

  Like, you were telling me the rundown of Michael Rapaport's podcast today. Like, do you think the xenomorph would have a similar? Like?

• 1:02:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, his rundown was, uh, um, prepping for a colonoscopy, weapons, my fantasy football draft strategy, and why Zoran is a moron.

• 1:02:45Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like the xenomorph could.

• 1:02:46Chris Ryan?

  That's literally Zoran.

• 1:02:48Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like the xenomorph would be a guest for any and all of those segments. I love it. Okay, the one of the challenges then, all right, so going forward.

• 1:02:56Chris Ryan?

  Do you actually find it at all challenging to understand the dramatic motivation for the aliens?

• 1:03:01Andy Greenwald?

  I don't, honestly. But, no, no, no, but I was curious, and I was actually, I was gonna speak to that, that just like.

• 1:03:09Chris Ryan?

  I'll say this, in all of the films, there's very little evidence that they can be contained, you know? Much like, much like Jalen Carter coming up the middle. Like, we haven't met the guy who can block him, you know? And I don't know when they're gonna get the message that these things can't be like put in a cage, that they can't be studied, they can't be, you can't get like. The extract to put into like your new vitamin supplements out of its blood like nothing is going to work. They should be nuked from orbit.

• 1:03:39Andy Greenwald?

  But the challenge is, um, in a movie, you know, you can suspend disbelief and one or two people could potentially survive a close quarters encounter with one of these things and then you move, you move on. The show runs right at that problem by introducing five people whose selling point is we're invulnerable. Isn't that

• 1:04:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I don't get scared of this.

• 1:04:02Andy Greenwald?

  Isn't that cool?

• 1:04:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:03Andy Greenwald?

  But then also has someone who's extremely vulnerable. Um, again, the casting of Alex Lothar is interesting because he traditionally plays kind of sickly consumptive types in Ian Forster adaptations and he's much more of a man of action in this. And at the end of the second episode, the xenomorph's like, the xenomorph does the thing where he picks him out of the lineup and is like, I want to dance with you. And I feel like

• 1:04:31Chris Ryan?

  It's like Ray Lewis.

• 1:04:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, 100%. And it's like, fool me once.

• 1:04:35Chris Ryan?

  I see you 16.

• 1:04:36Andy Greenwald?

  I thought that the, the, the construction of the, uh, you know, the, the, the, the fall of the French monarchy party was really well done because in the moment Morrow comes in, gets the jump on the xenomorph, stuns it, bags it, and then also stuns Joe. I'm like, okay, well, Joe's now avoided the instantaneous death that every other human has come up against twice. And at the end of the second episode, presumably he's done it a third time. That is going to be interesting. That's an interesting challenge to sustain over a season.

• 1:05:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that's, that's, you know, long-term plot armor like that is tough to, to be

• 1:05:12Andy Greenwald?

  But, but I, I am, and I, I want to give credit where it's due here. That like, I think both of us came into this thinking that the way you do Alien on television is you slow it the fuck down. And you Build the anticipation for the xenomorph going absolute ape shit for later. And to their credit, this show does not do that.

• 1:05:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and there's a version of this show that's like Margin Call, but for Waylon Utani, and it's all about like these guys in the conference room.

• 1:05:38Andy Greenwald?

  Don't tempt me with a good time.

• 1:05:39Chris Ryan?

  But it's all these people in conference rooms and in meetings being like, is it moral for us to go follow this beacon in outer space, you know, etc. And instead, he's come up with a very visceral, very action heavy world for it to take place in. Before we go, I think we should mention.

• 1:05:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I wanted to ask you your thoughts.

• 1:05:56Chris Ryan?

  Just, he's crushing it in this. It's been a minute. I, I love him, but I felt like he, in City Primeval and to some extent in Stick, uh, he was doing all the fun. You know what I mean? He was basically doing either like a variation on his persona from late night shows or from Justified. And, uh, you know, I enjoyed him very much in Havoc, the, the Tom Hardy movie from earlier this year. But this is like, he's, he's doing something here. You know, he is like, I'm David Bowie, but I'm also like a sassy robot. And it's just, it's great. He's doing a great job. He's, he in some ways is like, for me, the emotional heart of the show.

• 1:06:38Andy Greenwald?

  He is a little bit like, um, what if, what if Baby Billy minus $2 million in an eight ball of cocaine? That's the aesthetic. Um, and we'll see how long we sit with that. I also really like, um, what's her name? Essie Davis, I think her name is, who's an Australian actress.

• 1:06:56Chris Ryan?

  Oh, she plays Dame.

• 1:06:57Andy Greenwald?

  Dame Sylvia. Again, like, it's just, there's, there are these little pro moves that I really do respect, which is, you know, they filmed on location in Thailand. They filmed mostly with Equity actors, um, which helped them film through some of the actress strike. And so both because of location and because of the commitment, they were forced to hire a lot of people that might not be household names. Like with Tony and, and/or like, that's actually a huge strength. You have a deep bench of Australian, British, and maybe even Thai actors we haven't seen yet, like, who are more than capable of dazzling us with their performances, but more importantly, like, have the element of surprise. People we maybe have seen fleetingly or haven't really focused on,

• 1:07:40Andy Greenwald?

  and they have great faces, Samuel Blaken, Essie Davis, but also like Jonathan Ajai, like, people who I'm checking for now, who I wasn't. That is something that is essentially TV in a way that we've, we've kind of gotten away from. And your boy, your guy David Rizdal, from the last season of Fargo.

• 1:07:58Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:59Andy Greenwald?

  Tapping on keys, keyboard keys. All right, so where are you as we're, we?

• 1:08:05Chris Ryan?

  I anxiously awaits episode three. Eight-episode run, so it's not gonna feel too fatty. And I think the first episode was, I preferred it to the second episode, but the second episode had some cool stuff in it. And I think in three, maybe we get to see a little bit more about, okay, what's this really about, you know? And if we're, if we're still doing slow dissolves to, sometimes I cut my own hair, then maybe I'll, I'll be bored. But I, I think right now, I'm, I've, I, I just, I think it's, it's good to talk out some of our issues with it, and it's interesting as like franchise storytelling, but I still am broadly pro.

• 1:08:42Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think it is worth noting and considering as we watch going forward, that, you know, when we did that, we did a podcast a few weeks or months ago, Time is a False Construct, about the second acts of prominent showrunners from this era of television. It was, we framed it around Jesse Armstrong from Succession into Mountain Head. And I, I think we touched on Noah, but I do think it's worth noting that a lot of the people that we talked about, or ones we didn't talk about, because they haven't made something in a while, have kind of left the stage. And whether that's because this type of stuff they do doesn't get greenlit as easily anymore, and thus...

• 1:09:17Chris Ryan?

  They've just aged out, yeah.

• 1:09:18Andy Greenwald?

  But that's also why, you know, maybe Matthew Weiner doesn't have a new show, or David Simon doesn't have a new show. I mean, they're always working, but what are they bringing to market, so to speak? Or people like our old friend Sam Esmael, who, you know, kind of has bailed on TV.

• 1:09:33Chris Ryan?

  He's a director now.

• 1:09:34Andy Greenwald?

  Noah's still working within these frameworks, and I think it's very, it's gonna be very interesting to see how the show is received.

• 1:09:41Andy Greenwald?

  And

• 1:09:41Chris Ryan?

  It's being received generally quite well.

• 1:09:43Andy Greenwald?

  It it's past the first hurdle, right? But I'd be very curious because it is a huge investment financially and and a huge investment in terms of IP capital. Just bringing the conversation full circle. Universal is very excited to have Bourne back, but they have to spend it wisely.

• 1:10:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Fox Disney is excited that Romulus is did really well. I mean, they're going to make another movie like that.

• 1:10:06Andy Greenwald?

  So can they can they pursue the two track strategy? Chris? The only way to know is

• 1:10:10Chris Ryan?

  To the future, light years. Greenwald, great to see you today. Thank you to Kaya. Thank you to John. We'll be back next Tuesday.

• 1:10:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, no show Monday.

• 1:10:18Chris Ryan?

  Maybe we will release after Alien Earth, episode three comes out.

• 1:10:24Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 1:10:24Chris Ryan?

  Because we were not going to be here on Monday, but

• 1:10:26Andy Greenwald?

  One fun thing about that is watching us make schedule decisions in real time and seeing Kaya react to it. I don't think she was against it, but it was news to her.

• 1:10:35Speaker 07

  That actually works better for my schedule next week, so thank you both.

• 1:10:38Andy Greenwald?

  That's because Taylor's coming on Good Hang, right?

• 1:10:41Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 1:10:41Speaker 07

  Let's put it out there. You never know.

• 1:10:43Andy Greenwald?

  Let's just speak it into existence.

• 1:10:44Speaker 07

  Maybe she has Alien Earth thoughts, though, that she needs to get off her chest.

• 1:10:47Andy Greenwald?

  Low key, I think Taylor would be more likely to go on a podcast to express her strong opinions about something unrelated to her career or her knowledge of the intricacies of the cover zero defense. I do think that I do think she would do that with us. Absolutely not, but generally, yes. On that note. Godspeed. It's tough out there in space.

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• 1:11:47Speaker 12

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