Marvel’s Box Office Woes, ‘Alien: Earth’ Preview, and ‘Families Like Ours’

Chris and Andy talk about the poor performance of ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ at the box office and Marvel’s continued box office woes (4:20). Then they preview ‘Alien: Earth’ and talk about where the show fits into the larger ‘Alien’ franchise (21:08) before discussing the Danish Netflix show ‘Families Like Ours’ (32:28). 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

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• 1:00Speaker 01

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• 1:44Speaker 02

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

• 1:49Chris 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, but in the studio, he's got that Dogma 95 in him. It's Andy Greenwald.

• 2:05Andy Greenwald?

  That was good. How long have you been sitting on that one?

• 2:08Chris Ryan?

  Like 32 hours, which is about how long I've been watching Tommy Winterberg's Families Like Ours on Netflix, which is the show we'll be discussing in the second half of this episode. Greenwald, you look like you just got back from Maui or MoMA. I can't tell. Great shirt.

• 2:24Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you.

• 2:25Chris Ryan?

  I'm still in Philly. You're in LA. But what's going on with you, brother?

• 2:28Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think, you know... First of all, I want to be very mindful here because I do feel like when we're remote from each other, I have a tendency to bring up things that might not be general audience interest at the start of the show, like movies I saw nine months ago.

• 2:41Chris Ryan?

  You don't have a lot of respect for the ad.

• 2:42Andy Greenwald?

  I do. I want to. I really want to. I want to bring people in, not kick them out. But I think it's worth noting that one of the advantages, there are no other advantages, but the only advantage of you being remote is that I feel more comfortable wearing shorts in the studio because we're not doing that weird side thing, you know?

• 3:01Chris Ryan?

  Oh, sure. So you're Jeffrey Toobinigum right now?

• 3:04Andy Greenwald?

  I'm 100% Toobinigum right now, but the downside is it's a little chilly in here.

• 3:08Chris Ryan?

  Oh, well, I'm sorry that you're uncomfortable.

• 3:12Andy Greenwald?

  I'm otherwise great.

• 3:12Chris Ryan?

  People can write us. Yeah, people can write us at [email protected]. They can watch us on Spotify at the Watch feed, or they can watch us on YouTube on the Ringer TV channel, and they can hit us up on Instagram and follow along with the journey, thewatchpod underscore.

• 3:28Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think we have a serialized storyline on this podcast? Do you think that we do?

• 3:32Chris Ryan?

  When I get back to LA, I think we should start some Barstool behind the scenes drama.

• 3:38Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, great.

• 3:39Chris Ryan?

  You know, like, maybe I get angry when you wear shorts or whatever. We should get a little bit of meta, meta textual, like, you know, parasocial narrative going to the pod. Andy, I wanted to talk to you about this show, Families Like Ours. I also had a couple of news and notes things, but they're more philosophical. Anything you want to share from your weekend, your weekend of culture, your weekend of content enjoying?

• 4:03Andy Greenwald?

  I just want to give you a heads up. I don't know how.

• 4:05Chris Ryan?

  Because I know this is your opportunity to be like, I checked out the Steven Soderbergh film, The Informed.

• 4:10Andy Greenwald?

  No, I was just telling Kaya about how much I'm enjoying a Robert Stone novel from 1985, so maybe we should lead with that. No, I just thought it was worth noting for the people who are paying attention for the long game here. Kaya and I are here, but also my older daughter's here in the studio, probably horrified that I'm saying this, but she's returned from the East Coast, really fired up about Summer I Turned Pretty. So if you need a co-host.

• 4:34Chris Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 4:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, very, very serious.

• 4:37Chris Ryan?

  Can we just ask right now, is she Team Conrad or Team Jer? Good. Okay.

• 4:41Andy Greenwald?

  No, no.

• 4:42Chris Ryan?

  Just checking.

• 4:43Andy Greenwald?

  Because of you, I already said this, because of your yeoman-like service last week, I knew that that was the cool way to be, although I've now been informed that being anything other than Team Conrad is actually unforgivable.

• 4:56Chris Ryan?

  Yes, yeah, I've yet to meet a Team Jer.

• 4:59Andy Greenwald?

  Are there any Team? Kai, do you watch the show?

• 5:01Speaker 05

  So I actually just started it this weekend.

• 5:03Andy Greenwald?

  Kai, really?

• 5:03Speaker 05

  After the CR recommend. And yeah, Team Conrad, of course.

• 5:08Andy Greenwald?

  Like, but like, is there any plausible? For the record, she's not going to go.

• 5:13Chris Ryan?

  I think people think that Conrad is toxic and is like ultimately like emotionally unavailable to the girl and that Jer is like a golden retriever. It's just like, yeah, like we can just hang out and I'll be a lifeguard for her.

• 5:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but then didn't he like golden retrieve some other ladies when they were not on a break?

• 5:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and he's actually bisexual.

• 5:31Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, that's fun for him.

• 5:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:33Andy Greenwald?

  So, yeah, again, she's, I've already offered, she's not going to come on mic, but she did just send me a Conrad gif. Like live, so I'm getting some very.

• 5:42Chris Ryan?

  My wife did too.

• 5:42Andy Greenwald?

  Very tween appropriate feedback. Okay, so.

• 5:45Chris Ryan?

  Andy.

• 5:46Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe, maybe next summer I'll turn pretty, we don't know. But everyone else is watching it except for me.

• 5:52Chris Ryan?

  I am like basically like, um, what's it called when you don't pay your taxes?

• 5:57Andy Greenwald?

  In trouble?

• 5:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:59Andy Greenwald?

  Sorry, what?

• 6:00Chris Ryan?

  I'm behind on, on like the current, current, current cinema. So I feel bad. I haven't seen Fantastic Four, but I wanted to lead with a broader question for you today. I don't know if you noticed that Fantastic Four continues to not perform at the box office the way I think that they were hoping. And it has these precipitous drops every weekend. And the town, the big picture, people have been talking, you read felony, you read just the trades in general. And there's a general sentiment that perhaps for now, in this pre Avengers doomsday world, that some of the Marvel stuff, or really the Marvel stuff now is a first weekend heavy for the fans, for the completists, for the people who are still dialed.

• 6:44Chris Ryan?

  And that the general casual monocultural audience is drifting away from this. To the point where at least now this reliable 800 to a billion dollar each movie box office return they used to get has now started to go closer and closer to more routinely 500 and in some cases less than that. You know, these movies still cost what they cost to make the special effects, the cast, like having holds on people's contracts and stuff. So I kind of wanted to ask whether or not you have clocked this and whether you think this is a. A phase or a paradigm shift, and then I have a follow-up question for you.

• 7:22Andy Greenwald?

  I have been noting this, and I'm also wrestling with my own response to it because there is the just unkillable Marvel fanboy in me that is like, I feel actively disappointed that the Walt Disney Company isn't getting more return on its investment in the Fantastic Four, which is not generally how my brain works, particularly in this economy. I'm slightly disheartened only because I thought Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four were good. Like, and I thought they were enjoyable, and I felt like, particularly with Fantastic Four, because it was built to be a relatively easy onboarding experience and removed from the larger weight of the last 10-plus years of content that I thought it would be. I

• 8:05Andy Greenwald?

  really did believe that it would do better because of that. That said, it's just unquestionably true that there is fatigue, and culturally, I don't think that's a bad thing. We're not quite sure what's there to take its place, although it might be weapons, which I'm kind of really do want to see, even though I'm not sure if I'm up to it. And the other thing, though, is that it might just be a sign that it is a star-driven or, you know, genre now.

• 8:36Chris Ryan?

  That's interesting. Yeah, right.

• 8:37Andy Greenwald?

  In the sense that, like, Marvel can't just put its logo on things because either because people are just fatigued, because these things do run in cycles culturally, or I think there is probably a little bit of weight to the argument that they devalued the brand through the TV stuff and through the years of mediocre wilderness-chasing Eternals-type releases.

• 8:59Chris Ryan?

  Hey, look, Big Dog, you could have put Reed Richards in WandaVision. Like, hey, I'm just saying.

• 9:05Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think you had?

• 9:06Chris Ryan?

  I give these things away for free. I thought he was the doctor waiting down the street. He never came.

• 9:14Andy Greenwald?

  Wasn't it Randall Park, though? Like, that's who it was?

• 9:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it was just like another cop or something like that. The larger question I had is, I, obviously, if they're shooting Doomsday now,

• 9:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 9:26Chris Ryan?

  and they've got X-Men in the, in the,

• 9:29Andy Greenwald?

  In the building?

• 9:30Chris Ryan?

  Pipeline.

• 9:30Andy Greenwald?

  You're talking about it like backup defensive backs?

• 9:33Chris Ryan?

  Well, it kinda is. You know what I mean? It kinda is like the guy coming back from PED suspension, you know? It's, it's like, we're, we're, they still have some bullets to fire here. I do think for one, this is now kinda three strikes and you're out for Fantastic Four. Like, this might be something that comic book fans love, and that they get a lot of enjoyment out of either the Jetsons-y qualities of it, or the more radical interpretations of the characters by like the Hickmans and stuff. But it may not translate as something that like, Joe movie fan is gonna go see when he's like, I kinda wanna see Iron Man fly through buildings and stuff. Or, we may have just, like you said, the TV stuff, everything might have just sapped

• 10:16Chris Ryan?

  the general audience's ability to follow everything. And we're at a different point now, so I do, I do have some questions about that.

• 10:24Andy Greenwald?

  I think there's two, I think there's one point to be made, though, also, and, and, and correct me if I'm, if I'm missing something here, but I think that historically, superhero, like, general interest perception is still, it is a star-driven genre in the sense that you can translate the, the angst and gravitas and motivation of a Batman, of a Superman, of a Spider-Man, of a Thor even, which people didn't think was possible in Iron Man or Wolverine. But when you tell people, "This is a team you should care about", that's harder. That's a harder sell.

• 10:58Chris Ryan?

  That works for Guardians, though.

• 10:59Andy Greenwald?

  Guardians really was the outlier. You're right. That's the main outlier. Cause a lot of these, if you look at what stumbled, you know, the Avengers initiative worked because we entered, we met the individual members first, and they could carry a movie, and then bringing them together was, well, look at how great these distinct tastes work when they're all in the same dish. That might be a harder, harder sell. But you're, but Guardians is the perfect example, and I think that Guardians, in many ways, Was the the boost in confidence or ego that allowed them to do a lot of what they did.

• 11:30Chris Ryan?

  It was like, we can do anything. If we can make this and Ant-Man work, then like,

• 11:34Andy Greenwald?

  A billion percent, yes.

• 11:35Chris Ryan?

  Right. I was kind of thinking about some of the best movie going experiences that I've had this year. And two of them are Sinners and F1 on big screens, IMAX screens. F1, probably the coolest experience I've had in a theater this year. I mean, I wouldn't, I there's a lot of movies I would put above it cinematically, or at least storytelling wise, but in terms of like, a immersive experience in a movie theater and that feeling where it's like, oh yeah, director built certain cameras, like new cameras to shoot this. And this is a feeling that I have never had before that like I am traveling at 170 miles per hour

• 12:18Chris Ryan?

  or something like that. I don't feel that, you know, you've never seen that before.

• 12:22Andy Greenwald?

  You haven't been getting out on the Jersey Turnpike much?

• 12:25Chris Ryan?

  You know what? It's funny you should say that. I have a couple of observations about Philadelphia. Driving, I'm driving a little bit more in the city and the, there's one and a half lanes worth of space, but we're going to make it into two lanes is like an amazing thing to experience on Walnut Street.

• 12:42Chris Ryan?

  I kind of was thinking about, you know, how long Marvel has had Cineplex's, the big screens and a headlock? And how little they're really delivering on that real estate compared to what I've seen this year in other projects? Even something like 28 years later that's shot on iPhones, you know, where you kind of have that like, I'm so glad I saw that on a big screen. You saw Fantastic Four. Did you feel like it brought the spectacle?

• 13:07Andy Greenwald?

  Um, I think it's a really good point. I think that Marvel has not been able to capitalize on what really does seem like a shift in terms of what people look for in the cinematic experience. A, there are directors again who are themselves stars and draws, right? And it seems like Zach Craig is one of these people now, but you know, but Nolan, and there's a certain expectation for if you're

• 13:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Coogler.

• 13:31Andy Greenwald?

  But if you're, yeah, Coogler, like, and if you're going to

• 13:33Chris Ryan?

  Or Kozinski, honestly, yeah.

• 13:35Andy Greenwald?

  And if you're going to use The screen, use all of it and use it in ways that are visceral, not necessarily transporting. Because once you can transport, you know, anyone, anywhere with the, with the, the volume or just with, you know, 18 of the best CG houses working feverishly around the clock in ununionized fashion, like, where's the magic? So I will say in its defense that I thought that Fantastic Four did have a different color palette and a different kind of relationship to space than the last six years of CG slop of like, you know, Michael Douglas and Paul Rudd being like, now it's purple and now it's green. It was not that. So, but maybe that is too low of a bar, honestly. Like, I, I thought that there were moments in it that were thoughtful.

• 14:20Andy Greenwald?

  I thought Matt Shakman is very smart about making his images be in conversation with other images we've seen, in the sense that like with WandaVision, he's like, he was playing both with style, but also genre. Um, and his, you know, his, I'm not the guy to have this conversation, but like his lens work was shifting appropriately. I thought that with Fantastic Four, there's a scene at the end with Galactus that was done to scale in a way that was very satisfying. Like, you take the space god and you put him in Manhattan and it feels exhilarating.

• 14:53Chris Ryan?

  The space god takes Manhattan.

• 14:55Andy Greenwald?

  Which is, which is different than the film Manhattan, if I remember correctly. He, slightly different. Although it is about pursuing someone young, so maybe there are some overlaps. But anyway, but like Galactus like walking through the buildings, like, it, it wasn't... Do you know what I mean? Like a lot of these, do you want to sit with us for a second? You good?

• 15:19Chris Ryan?

  That's good. I needed a laugh. I'm also going to hell for laughing at that joke, but I needed a laugh.

• 15:26Andy Greenwald?

  I mean...

• 15:29Andy Greenwald?

  This, the, I think the lesson learned, and this is a very specific example for that movie, which I know you haven't seen, but like, I think that-

• 15:37Chris Ryan?

  I've seen Manhattan, actually.

• 15:38Andy Greenwald?

  Did you feel the same way about it? That, um, you think it's aged well? Um, that, uh, uh, the first generation of these Marvel movies, I think with the size and spectacle, were trying to make us feel something like, oh, a country could be lifted into the sky and dropped. But the takeaway from this and the other 10 years of like, and now General Zod will destroy another version of Metropolis, is that we don't have any emotional connection to this landscape and it's all phony. Um, so the reaction at the end of Fantastic Four that I had wasn't like, this is meant to be scary. It was like, oh, cool. This is kind of sick.

• 16:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:12Andy Greenwald?

  And that, that felt good and different. That was a very long and almost defensive answer, uh, when the real answer to your very smart question is no, they have no answer for that. Because institutionally, they do not empower the creatives to have unique aesthetic visions. Um, there have been a few aberrations, you know, and we, and we've talked about them. And to the degree that it's a different style, Fantastic Four is one, but it is not, these are not set to compete with those. And it does feel like maybe we are in a new era of adult youthful entertainment.

• 16:44Chris Ryan?

  They can hear Jim Gunn's footsteps, man. And also, I'll, I'll just note with interest that Weapons, obviously huge opening weekend. I can't wait to see it. I just didn't get a chance to do it this weekend, but obviously Craigor has kind of vaulted into that. Jordan Poole, Kugler, maybe not Villain of Nolan's Own, and maybe not even those previous two filmmakers, but is now like a person that I think the next film, when they say from the director of Barbarian and, and Weapons, people are like, I don't give a shit, I'm going. Like, whatever this could be about paint drying and I'm going.

• 17:17Andy Greenwald?

  Well, apparently it's gonna be about Resident Evil, but yes.

• 17:19Chris Ryan?

  Well, so, yes, he's got a Resident Evil, uh, film coming. He's written a sci-fi movie that he wants to make after that, but he was passionately talking about a DC movie that he had written before Barbarian, that's essentially, sounds like Small Time Crooks in Gotham, um, adjacent to-

• 17:40Chris Ryan?

  Joker and Harley. And I just noted with interest that if you're an up and coming filmmaker or an established filmmaker, that that's where your brain went is to DC. He didn't say like, oh, I have a really cool idea for how to bring cable, you know, into like the character cable into back into the MCU, or I had an MCU idea that I want to talk to Feige about. And I do wonder whether or not there's been so much creative, to pick a poor use of the word, bloodshed with directors going to Marvel and coming out and being like, that was not pleasant. And, and now like, people are like, I'll go work for James Gunn if that's what I want to do.

• 18:25Andy Greenwald?

  I think that, well, I think two things. I think James Gunn is uniquely good at this, about being both an artist and the public facing mouthpiece of a company. And he publicly seems to say all the right things. And, you know, again, anecdotally, I've never met him, but he does seem to engender goodwill and good relationships with people. That matters. This might be a shoot the messenger type of thing, but I did note with interest that this guy, Bo De Mayo, or De Mayo, who was the-

• 18:54Chris Ryan?

  Did the X-Men 97 impersonate-

• 18:55Andy Greenwald?

  And then he was let go from Marvel for reasons that I are a little bit unclear, whether there was inappropriate workplace behavior or just something else. So I can't vouch for him or anything, but, or the veracity of his comments, because clearly he has some bitterness, but he had a long thing about why, I'll just read this quote, "To those asking why I'm not so hard on Superman, the answer is I've never worked with Gunn or DC. Like Matt Shakman and the writers of Fantastic Four, I've sat in the, quote, 'creative meetings' at Marvel Studios. They're horrible. You basically sit in a room with Kevin Feige and Lou, Lou Desposito and try to pitch your movie while also realizing Kevin just wants you to dictate his rushed thoughts." He basically says, "Don't pitch, you're told not to pitch ideas from the comics because Lou isn't, quote, 'a big comic guy,' and it'll turn him off."

• 19:40Andy Greenwald?

  So that's like me in this podcast. You sit and talk about craft and story and characters, only to have Kevin and Lou say, "Yeah, well, all we need to do is make sure it's fun." This is maybe the pull quote. Marvel is a slaughterhouse factory where you watch fresh meat get spoiled as it slowly makes its way through the assembly gears of mediocre thinking and this weird hatred for its own product. Okay, that's a little harsh.

• 20:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, even subtracting 75% for sour grapes, there's something worth noting there. And now Lou D'Esposito may be like, here are like my 1,000 favorite comic book runs and like I have cells from comic books blown up as my wallpaper. Like, I don't know, but I do think that we have reached this interesting point where it's been since that Chloe Zhao, Nia de Costa era of like, we've brought in another interesting filmmaker and now it is more like, who's gonna, who's gonna kind of like make the donuts? And not in like a, Jake Schreier did a really good job with Thunderbolts, like Matt Shakman apparently did a good job.

• 20:46Andy Greenwald?

  And Schreier's doing X-Men, which is interesting.

• 20:48Chris Ryan?

  Schreier's doing X-Men, but I thought it was interesting that they were like, we're getting young X-Men.

• 20:52Andy Greenwald?

  I think, and to your point about how like there's some sour grapes here, I think, because DeMeo goes on to say, talking about basically defending his now apparently abandoned draft for the Mahershala Ali Blade. This is a quote, "One of my drafts opened with Deacon Frost tricking some British explorers to trek up to Mount Wondagore where he does blood magic to reveal the vampire spell used by Varney and his followers during the days of Cull." So, my point is, maybe let's just make it fun also has its day in court. Maybe the better example would be, especially considering the podcast network we're on, might be like late period Belichick, right? Like, process can go stale, just because you have won multiple box office championships.

• 21:36Andy Greenwald?

  And that might be just undeniable here, that trying to squeeze all of, not just the different generation of filmmakers and creatives, but the product and whatever cultural vibes exist now that are different than 2015 or 2010, which I think are legitimately different through the same mechanism with the same set of eyes, that simply might not work anymore. Now, do I think it will work for Doomsday? And I think the answer is yes, because, you know, a week or two ago, we were joking about Rebecca Romaine.

• 22:11Andy Greenwald?

  Saying like,

• 22:13Chris Ryan?

  She doesn't know if she has to go back because they haven't finished.

• 22:15Andy Greenwald?

  Right. I think, you know, one of the reasons they haven't finished the script is because they were waiting to see how Fantastic Four was received. And there are a couple buttons left to push, like that's the sweaty button pushing meme. And one of the buttons says Deadpool, right? And one of the buttons says Chris Evans as Captain America, like they can.

• 22:32Chris Ryan?

  Right, Hugh Jackman.

• 22:33Andy Greenwald?

  They can do this.

• 22:34Chris Ryan?

  Or is he already announced or is that?

• 22:36Andy Greenwald?

  I think there are a lot of things that are assumed. And I also think that there's just, there's stuff they can throw at this that actually will still hit. But it is probably long-term diminishing returns if you're still spamming the same aging star buttons.

• 22:52Chris Ryan?

  So I had another question about another franchise, a flip side. Now, we're not going to get too into Alien Earth, which premieres tomorrow night. We're recording this on Monday, that premieres Tuesday night with the first two hour-long episodes, or about an hour-long episodes. This is from Noah Hawley. It's his interpretation, his take on the continuing kind of expansion of the Alien universe, which really got picked up in earnest again by Ridley Scott a few years ago, about 10 years ago with Prometheus and Covenant. And then since then, we've had Romulus. You know, you have people who have their preferences in terms of whether it's Alien or Aliens, or maybe they really love like some of the prequels. I actually am quite fond of Prometheus and Covenant.

• 23:37Chris Ryan?

  But I was checking out the Noah Hawley Show, which we won't get too into a critical discussion of, or even a spoilery discussion, because I want people to go in as open-minded as possible. But I realized, you know, I've talked about this before on, when I've talked about Alien with Sean on Big Pick. Like, this is my favorite franchise, I think, in terms of a franchise where it's like, I have really like, pretty much found stuff to love, if not like a lot, about each one of these films. Even Resurrection. And it's weirdly.

• 24:11Chris Ryan?

  The world I'm most curious about, and I think one of the reasons why is because there's a lot of negative space to fill in with your imagination, or you have to go really deep into Alienpedia research to find it, because it doesn't often rise up to the mainstream main texts. You know, there may be a Wayland-Yutani corporate timeline, but its references are really limited to whatever the POV character you're watching, whether it's Ripley, whether it's whoever. So Noah Hawley, who I think has obviously proven that he can take previously existing characters or worlds like X-Men, or Joel

• 24:52Chris Ryan?

  and Ethan Coens' Fargo, and then give it his own spin and use it as a lens through which to view the past or the present. I was very excited and curious about this. And then when I realized, watching these two episodes, which I think have a lot to recommend about them, and I will continue to watch, and this is in no way like an indictment of it, I realized I am a fucking nerd about Alien more than I thought I was, and I'm actually a pretty annoying person, because little things I was getting comic book store guy about. Like, I was like, well, I don't know, I don't think they would listen to Nina Simone in this, you know, like in 2142, or whatever year it is. And there are little

• 25:36Chris Ryan?

  bits that he has taken liberties with, whether it's canonically adjusting it, or suggesting different kinds of, you know, historical moments that are on the Alien timeline, or just tonally. Like, he has very specific, very deliberate pace to his stuff, that I was like, I realized that it wasn't just my visceral reaction, it was like, the nerd in me that was reacting. You haven't seen these episodes yet, you're gonna check them out, we'll talk about them on Thursday. I wanted to know if there's a franchise that you are protective of.

• 26:08Andy Greenwald?

  It's a great question. I do just want to address the bulk of your statement.

• 26:13Chris Ryan?

  You want to interrogate my personal feelings?

• 26:14Andy Greenwald?

  No, I think you're doing very well. I'm here to affirm you.

• 26:19Chris Ryan?

  No, I mean, just in terms of like, as a man in midlife, who's like, that's not how chestbursters walk, you know?

• 26:29Andy Greenwald?

  Look, I, you're talking to a man who a moment ago was, was clowning someone for talking about Mount Wondagore, and I'm like, actually, it's a pretty tall mountain. So I think there's probably is some dark magic up there. So.

• 26:43Chris Ryan?

  Top five Marvel mountains.

• 26:46Andy Greenwald?

  We're good. Well, this is a safe space. I think this is going to make for an interesting conversation about the show to a degree that I didn't realize because cards on the table. I think, I have seen more Alien movies than I even realized. Like, I've seen of the seven or eight, right, franchise, I've seen probably five of them. Some of them multiple times or part, you know, like that Aliens, Alien Three, what's the fourth one?

• 27:14Chris Ryan?

  Resurrection.

• 27:15Andy Greenwald?

  Those, those are on TV a lot. Like, I've seen those a bunch. I saw Prometheus famously or infamously in the front row of the Cinerama Dome with you and.

• 27:23Chris Ryan?

  With blood type Jim.

• 27:24Andy Greenwald?

  With you and fantasy in 2012. Still one of the more haunting experiences of my life. But that said, I have no allegiance to any kind of larger canonical truth. And so I think, I think we'll be a good pair to discuss that for that reason. I was thinking about your question before we, we started recording.

• 27:46Chris Ryan?

  It doesn't have to be a franchise either. It could just be like a property or a story that you're like, I don't really like, I don't play loosey goosey with this.

• 27:53Andy Greenwald?

  I think that my household, including my daughter who's here today, will have a similar attitude about Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey in terms of just getting the mythology right. So that'll be fun.

• 28:07Chris Ryan?

  What about Jon Bernthal's kind of street level way, way with the dialogue?

• 28:13Andy Greenwald?

  I'm rewatchable as hell. I want Jon Bernthal in everything throughout history, so I'm okay with that. No, I, I, I do think though, the Alien thing is interesting because it's, is it the last, and I know why it was, you know, for a while it was a crown jewel, it was very protective. I mean, there was something kind of amazing about the way the franchise was, you know, gently handed to a new generation's auteur for those first four movies. That, you know, that was also sort of the, like the Mission Impossible idea at the beginning too, that was very nice. And.

• 28:47Andy Greenwald?

  In this world of like just absolutely origin story, just, you know, ravaged like, like there, there is no more, there is no more coal in Northern Pennsylvania because there was once a reference to who made the Predator or whatever. Like the fact that there's this less, that there, there, there has been relatively, the Weyland-Yutani and all that has been relatively underexplored is kind of remarkable.

• 29:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think I thought, and, and Noah certainly digs in. Um, and I, I almost think that where, say Tony Gilroy with Andor had Knights Templar behind him being like, this is the way, like you cannot stray from this path. You can do anything you want within this, but this has to happen in this year. The Force is this thing, et cetera, you know, et cetera. So the Force gets mentioned in Andor, but there are no lightsaber battles. There is no, you know, like there is, there is a kind of, um, resistance to indulging in some of the stuff that obviously the Mandalorian and a lot of the Filoni stuff has gotten

• 29:51Chris Ryan?

  into. Um, I don't think there is a, uh, Library of Congress for Alien necessarily. And I think Noah, Holly kind of, I wouldn't say exploits it, but I think he's like, this is my take on it. And one of the cool things is for his, you know, Alien movies can take on different genres like war or haunted house or slasher. They should also be able to take on different points of view in terms of what's interesting about this. And ultimately, I kind of like agree with his idea where there's been six, seven movies where yes, some philosophical ideas obviously are a play and Prometheus is like one of my favorite sort of 21st century

• 30:32Chris Ryan?

  genre movies, honestly. But these movies are like people getting chased by a thing that will kill them. Noah's show is about identity, what it means to be a human being, what, what is memory if you can write it, you know, like all these, these very heady sci-fi ideas. So I'm, I'm curious to see where he takes it.

• 30:55Andy Greenwald?

  It's interesting because it's almost like he is himself kind of. It's not, it's not a relic, but his ability to do this and that being recognized as a, as a skill and an asset has fallen so far out of favor in the last 10 plus years since he did Fargo. Like, you know, he did, and I was lucky enough to work on a season of Legion, which the whole selling point, I remember Laura Donner coming into the room, being so excited that it had nothing to do with James Marsden as Cyclops or any of the movies, you know, that was the whole selling point. And then briefly, he was doing that when Fox still had the rights to the Marvel character, I mean, before the merger, he was doing that with Doom. He was writing a Doom thing that was just its own world. And so this is another, and maybe the last

• 31:38Andy Greenwald?

  example of that being a plus of FX, you know, flexing its aesthetic muscles and saying, we want to do a Noah version of this as opposed to, I mean, there, there would have been a long line out the door for the bake off of, let's just do the movie franchise on TV. Now, I'm saying all this having not seen the show, and if we don't like the show, that's a different argument, but in terms of what their priorities were for it. So to answer your question, I mean, my number one gut answer is probably predictable, but also not something that's liable to come up, which is Twin Peaks. Like, like, I, like, don't, don't come at me conflating Bob, the evil spirit with Judy, the evil spirit. Like, let's understand who works for who in the hierarchy of darkness, you know, coming out

• 32:21Andy Greenwald?

  of the Black Lodge. I'm pretty in the weeds with that stuff, but I also don't think anybody is either trying to or checking for like a reboot.

• 32:32Chris Ryan?

  You're really gonna regret saying that. First of all, what if they ask you? And second of all, what if it's like Jeremy Sonya, we're like, oh shit, but what if it's good, you know, like?

• 32:43Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, so you're talking about a franchise of which that I, that I feel weirdly tiki tack particular about accuracies other than Harry Potter?

• 32:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:53Andy Greenwald?

  I think, honestly, it's, it's, these are, these are, these have been active conversations. I think X-Men would be one.

• 33:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Yes.

• 33:01Andy Greenwald?

  Because I think over 60 years, that franchise has been so many different types of things and so many different stories have been folded into it. Like, within the same universe, there's a very, you know, poignant and super emo struggle about identity. And then there's also, there's also whole storylines where they just play softball at the mansion. Like, these are all different iterations of these characters. And so I think that I'm not one of the people who's just like, where's, where's the new casting of Wolverine? What are we doing with this? Because of all the things that they have to get right to please people, but also be true to it. In a weird way, this is the biggest test of what I think

• 33:41Andy Greenwald?

  Kevin Feige's mutant power has been, which is I can both reduce and boil down the logline of a character into a easily translatable, you know, I use the word already, to a logline. I can take 60 years of history and make it a logline.

• 33:58Chris Ryan?

  I can package it.

• 33:58Andy Greenwald?

  And I can translate it to the casual. This would be his toughest test to do it with X-Men.

• 34:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:05Chris Ryan?

  All right. Why don't we take a break and we'll come back and we're gonna do, we're gonna talk about families like ours.

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• 36:07Chris Ryan?

  Okay, man, so I'm very excited to talk to you about this show. This has been a little bit of a, um, we're, we're a little behind the times, I suppose, on some of these series, but we've had a really nice run on this pod. I don't know if our numbers will reflect it of really enjoying some international television over the last couple of weeks. We talked about the Eternaut for a couple of episodes a few weeks ago. We spoke about Eastern Gate, uh, last week, which is a Polish spy thriller that you can find on HBO Max and Rules. Uh, and hopefully we'll come back to that once we, uh, once, once we finish. And now we just wanted to highlight a show that came out in Europe, I think, last year, but it was just released on Netflix in June.

• 36:49Chris Ryan?

  And it's from Thomas Winterberg, who is one of the founders of the, the Danish filmmaking movement, Dogma 95. I, there are other pronunciations of that, um, but I'm not going to do it. It's like dogum and yeah, so I'm just gonna roll with Dogma 95.

• 37:05Andy Greenwald?

  Is it related to Dogman? My younger daughter likes that quite a bit.

• 37:09Chris Ryan?

  No, uh, and, uh, Winterberg, for people who don't know, is a celebrated filmmaker. He's done, most recently, he put out the film, um, Another Round, uh, with Mads Mikkelsen, which I believe he got nominated for an Oscar for directing, uh, for that one, and other films like The Hunt, The Celebration. He's also, and this comes into play with Families Like Ours, uh, did do a film called All About Love, which I've never seen, but is with Joaquin Phoenix and Claire Danes, uh, in the earlier 2000s. That deals with a very plausible environmental disaster collapse in society and its impact on, um, on the interpersonal relationships of a few characters.

• 37:52Chris Ryan?

  So Families Like Ours is a seven-episode Netflix series. Uh, Winterberg directed all of it, I believe, wrote all of it as well. And it's essentially about an extended family in Denmark who find out at the series, as the series begins, that the country is going to be evacuated because of wide-ranging flooding happening across Europe, essentially across the Netherlands has already been closed down and evacuated, and Denmark is next because it's low-lying and that the floods are coming. And, you know, when I heard about the show, I was very interested. When I saw a couple of quotes from Winterberg about the show, I was, you know, I thought it was going to

• 38:35Chris Ryan?

  be basically a keeping that disaster and keeping that situation almost at arm's distance, at arm's length. And I have to say that I'm so impressed by the fact that he has come up with this cast of this ensemble and this cast of like six to eight to 10 characters. And this is all they talk about, is the fact that we have to move out of Denmark. What are we going to do? And everything about it is like, our relationship shot through all the practicalities that go into what would happen if you had to leave where you were from, where you would go, how much money you would need, how the government would be a play a role in your evacuation, how people are feeling about losing their national identity and their heritage and their homes and the economics of everything with the

• 39:20Chris Ryan?

  real estate market. And it is so finely detailed. I almost was thrown for a loop by how intimately Winterberg gets into this stuff. So Andy, I'm so excited to talk about this with you because it's one of the coolest shows I've seen this year.

• 39:33Andy Greenwald?

  I think our listeners are excited that there is a second show in as many episodes that immediately talks about the Svalki Gap. Did you notice that like the third line of the show is about the Polish corridor and evacuating through it?

• 39:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:50Andy Greenwald?

  So, look, when we love something, we're like a dog with it, but we just get our teeth dug into it. And, you know, I'm so excited about this show for a number of reasons. The number one reason would be it's fantastic. It is beautifully directed, wonderfully acted, really engrossing and thematically and emotionally rich, which is the sweet spot for me for any hour-long TV show. The other reason, and we can talk about this in tandem with the actual specifics of it, or we could talk about it, sort of carve it out separately, is that This is, I found this so thrilling as a way forward for what has been a very, very stagnant

• 40:32Andy Greenwald?

  American drama moment for the serialized drama. This is the first horror slash dystopian, high-concept show that I can remember seeing in a long time that is terrifying because it is so relatable and plausible and in some ways maybe even inevitable. There are no zombies. There are no sci-fi elements here. There are no high-concept CGI dam-breaking moments. There's just this incredibly disturbing and artful lingering of the camera on water and how water is everywhere in Denmark and how water is inevitable and how it's coming

• 41:16Andy Greenwald?

  and it's part of the beautiful, truly beautiful landscapes of intermedia films in the opening moments of the series.

• 41:21Chris Ryan?

  But he opens the series at the end of a school term where it's sunny and it's Copenhagen in late spring, early summer.

• 41:29Andy Greenwald?

  And he doesn't ignore the fact that life absurdly goes on. So there are moments of happiness or joy or new romance or, you know, new beginnings. And I think that one of the things that people who watch the show that will resonate even before you get into the climate terror that's baked into the heart of it is a very familiar post-COVID, ongoing, end-of-the-post-war democratic order feeling of like, "Oh, God, we're living through the worst moments." Like, you don't want to be alive for the interesting times and yet here we are and what do we do about it? Like, it's just you don't really have a choice in that. And that feeling of inevitability is amazing.

• 42:12Andy Greenwald?

  But the bigger thing is that, like, just I do want to get your thoughts on that. Clearly, to break through these days, you do need some sort of high-concept hook for a lot of our storytelling. And this has an incredibly high, almost impossible-to-fathomly, that's not the word, concept. Like, almost imperceptibly high concept. But it is also an emotional family drama. And I think it marries the two wonderfully in a way that both is exciting for the show and just made me kind of inspired for other types of storytelling we might see going forward.

• 42:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, most of what the drama is on screen is, it will feel, scope-wise, no different than,

• 42:58Chris Ryan?

  I mean, honestly, take any, any family drama that you watch, where it's largely confined to people's houses or workplaces. The conversations are pretty quotidian because they're about, like, oh, have you talked to your ex recently? Did you text this person back? This person owes me money, but I don't want to ask them for it. And then there's a large chunk of the story is about a first love. It's about, the main character largely is this, this girl, this girl Laura, who's played by Amarillis August, who does a great job as, like, the centerpiece and the sort of heartbeat and the person who's connecting a lot of these characters. But you've essentially got, like, Laura and her father,

• 43:42Chris Ryan?

  her father's new-ish wife and their new child. Then you've got Laura's mother, who has had some emotional problems over the years, who is kind of trying to figure out whether or not she's going to be able to join Laura's father and his family in Paris, or whether she will be basically dropped down to the Bucharest tier of people who need state-sponsored evacuation.

• 44:07Andy Greenwald?

  Let's talk specifically about it before we even get into the family stuff. Because, so, one of the things that's so brilliant about the show is that, is it likely that a country will proactively end itself to get in front of what are going to be terrifying and draconian changes? I mean, compared to even what we have now in terms of, like, immigration?

• 44:29Chris Ryan?

  Well, if there is going to be one, it's going to be a skeleton country.

• 44:31Andy Greenwald?

  That's my point. What's so brilliant about it being Denmark is that, and it's, and it's on-screen, right? Everything you see in the opening moments, even the, the shots inside the Staatsminister office, which I remember that word from Borgen, right? Is like, There's some really nice chairs in there. Like, the gym at the Random Public High School is pretty nice. Like, everything looks very beautiful and considered and sun-dappled. And there's like, you know, rustic bread on the tables. And it's a healthy place. And the healthy decision that the country makes is to say, "Okay, stay calm, everyone, but we are going to evacuate all of you forever in these six groups." It doesn't go that-

• 45:15Chris Ryan?

  And the first group is people who can pay their own way.

• 45:17Andy Greenwald?

  And it doesn't go that smoothly, but the fact, I just, the decision to do it in a Nordic country makes it sting even a little bit more, right? Because these are the people, supposedly, they're doing the right thing.

• 45:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, this is what it looks like when it goes well.

• 45:30Andy Greenwald?

  That's it. That's perfectly said.

• 45:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:32Andy Greenwald?

  And so it really digs into the fact that like, even, you know, morally upright people will tell the people they love, or won't tell the people they hate if they have advance warning. They will think about themselves first and become selfish. Or maybe they won't, you know, but either way, everything is so interconnected in a globalized economy. And everything is so online and, you know, hidden behind passwords and apps. And your bank card isn't really a ticket to getting your- Like, the way that the show just calmly, rationally, nordically pulls at that string in a way that is deeply disturbing. And my brain is so not wired for this kind of thoughtfulness at the moment

• 46:15Andy Greenwald?

  that I definitely found myself more anxious than even the show probably wants me to be. Where I'm like, it's not just that this is the slow spiral of an entire civilization. It's that, oh, someone's gonna T-bone this car that they're in. Like, I have that heightened anxiety of American storytelling. Where I'm like, but then also, there's gonna be a sniper. Thus far, in two episodes, there isn't. It's a much more slow and thoughtful horror.

• 46:43Chris Ryan?

  No, but I feel like you can feel the dread because, you know, when you're talking about like, how there's no zombies in this. And when you watch like, a dystopian, like, A Last of Us, or Walking Dead, not to lump them all together, because I love those shows, or like, love zombie storytelling. Generally speaking, there will be this kind of like, how the tribe of humans who rose after this mirrors-

• 47:08Chris Ryan?

  Human society now, you know, and the enemy within, how we are our own worst, the villain is us, et cetera. And the thing that's brilliant about this show is the cause and effect plotting that you can feel unfolding before the characters realize it. So there are characters in the beginning, in the first episode, who are ahead of it. They get basically inside information about what's coming. And they sell all their properties. They had some commercial properties, they had some inherited properties, and they basically, at a cut rate, get out of the real estate market and have transported euros, I think,

• 47:53Chris Ryan?

  from Switzerland back to Denmark and are sitting on like a fortune, essentially, and are the only people who seem to have been ahead of the curve. I know that is going to come up again. And you watch them in their brief moment of like, aren't we the smartest two fucking guys in the world, you know? And that kind of like anxiety, there's so many examples of this in the show. You're like, oh dude, like you can't have all your money tied up in your house. Like, that's such a real thing. And now this guy is broke, or whatever. And all that stuff, exactly what you said, like this idea that I go and give, give somebody a piece of plastic and they give me goods for it is, what happens when you start taking that stuff away?

• 48:35Andy Greenwald?

  And what happens when you're left with the frayed bonds that we are able to either ignore because of social convention, or because of status, or because of, you can, you can use money to put the problems away? There's an interesting character introduced, I think more prominently in the second episode, but it's played by David Danchik, who's an actor we've seen in-

• 48:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he was in-

• 48:57Andy Greenwald?

  Tinker Tailor, he was in-

• 48:58Chris Ryan?

  The second Top of the Lake.

• 49:00Andy Greenwald?

  He's a very familiar face, if you watch stuff not filmed here. And he, he plays one of the, the characters you're speaking about, the, the guys who are, the married men who are clever, brother, right? And he's pitched as villain, in a way, because he's an asshole and he behaves terribly, but his-

• 49:23Andy Greenwald?

  Emotion is somewhat justified, right?

• 49:28Chris Ryan?

  Well, he's, he's not that much different than the guys who have kind of cashed out of the market. They've just done it in this gentlemanly, wise way. You know, like what they've done is morally as dubious as what the David Denchek, the Peter character does, but it's like percept, the perception of it in society would be different because these guys are such shy, retiring, lovely men who just happened to have made, like gotten out of the market at the last possible second.

• 49:59Andy Greenwald?

  I also really like the, um, it could have gone, in watching it, there were just so many moments where I was like, in a weird way, this is a repeatable format, the way The Office was, like, let's make an American version of this, like, what will climate crisis do to this country, in that country? There are reasons why this is particularly, uh, good to be said at here, not just because of the Nordic element that we talked about, um, but in the same way we were talking about Eastern Gate, like, I think it's both fascinating and rich from a story perspective, but also from a global audience perspective, to see countries that are not the, the big whales, that are not like, able to just like, well, let's all just put all the people in the middle, like.

• 50:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, send them to Paris.

• 50:41Andy Greenwald?

  That's not possible. I think that's really interesting, but I also think that just aesthetically, it is so un-American in wonderful ways. Like, I, for people who, I don't know what the amount of our listenership who's like, oh, Winterberg, sounds interesting, but I'm not a real dogma guy, like, this is not, there's a couple of like dream sequences, but other than that, this is.

• 51:01Chris Ryan?

  There, I mean.

• 51:02Andy Greenwald?

  This is, this is a very human level, emotional.

• 51:06Chris Ryan?

  It reminds me a lot of Another Round. I mean, it's got a very loving eye for, uh, Denmark, for Copenhagen, but it also has a very honest eye about the failings of the people.

• 51:19Andy Greenwald?

  And think how, and the society. Think how badly this could have gone, like, the idea of like, a 18-year-old's flowering and first love being like the, the, the.

• 51:29Chris Ryan?

  Against the backdrop of an apocalypse.

• 51:32Andy Greenwald?

  It, it could just go so wildly wrong, and it's very tasteful, and it's very compelling, and.

• 51:37Chris Ryan?

  Did Carl on Walking Dead ever get a girlfriend?

• 51:40Andy Greenwald?

  I'm, inevitably, I'm sure, I know he lost an eye, so he must have gotten something back, right? Um, I mean, is that Hammurabi's Code? Am I getting?

• 51:47Chris Ryan?

  Chicks dig eye patches?

• 51:48Andy Greenwald?

  Am I getting that wrong? I think that's probably true.

• 51:52Andy Greenwald?

  No, but like, but it, but it understands like the youthful story in its own right. It's very sweet and it's at its ground level of that, but it also understands something that, you know, I think was the experience, like I was saying before of anyone who was parenting through COVID of like, it's just kind of their life. So they have to be optimistic and hopeful because that's what else do people do? And we all have that fiction, you know, to a degree during these moments and it's what keeps the species alive. So I kind of, I really responded to and appreciated that. And then also just big picture, this is, I think there was a moment early in the year when we were like, this year hasn't really had as many bangers as last year, or it hasn't been as strong of a TV year. I think low

• 52:35Andy Greenwald?

  key turning high key, it is becoming the opposite. I think, remember I have a tween here, so my use of the popular slang term low key did get a look. Um, I didn't call anyone zesty yet, though. Anyway, um, I think that the, I think that the, I think it's been a really strong year, but particularly in terms of what's exciting for me is dramas that aren't afraid of being about something other than a satisfying adaptation of another thing, or filling a particular hole or a bucket. Like, so this is a year, I think I would slot families like ours on the list with, with Andor, with Adolescents. Um, and

• 53:17Andy Greenwald?

  also in the pit of being like, we are one thing, but we are not afraid of also being alive to the world and the world that we're actually living in.

• 53:26Chris Ryan?

  And I think that, uh, all of those shows do a good job of not holding your hand.

• 53:33Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 53:34Chris Ryan?

  And I think that that is something that makes it sometimes difficult for me to watch some American drama, you know, like, not all. Um, if Gilded Age is considered a drama, I guess it would be, I mean, it's not comedy. Like Gilded Age is, is also like an incredibly dense, incredibly fast moving, you know, sometimes you realize it like, like somewhat low stakes and then it becomes the highest of high stakes. But, um, there are a lot of shows where I think that they're a little bit, um, either they're, they're only about the mythology and the fabric of the story that they're telling. So maybe those are something like, uh,

• 54:14Chris Ryan?

  Those are maybe more like comic adaptations, I think, probably are superhero adaptations. That's not necessarily drama, but something like Morning Show would be a good example of like, there's like a very explicit, uh, leading you to the conclusion that you should be led to going on. And, you know, even if the stories are quote unquote ripped from the headlines, they're not applied to like normal people. They're applied to like fabulously rich television anchors. And this is kind of nice to watch real people deal with real things, even if there are some very extreme things.

• 54:44Andy Greenwald?

  One of the biggest problems of grown up art in the last 10 plus years, 20 years, it's not just that like the best and I saw the best and brightest minds of our generation pitching Jim Gunn at DC. It's not, it's not that so much as like with everything in the country, it were so stratified that like literature and even TV and film kind of disappeared up its own ass in terms of like, everything is about how certain people feel about the idea of thinking about things. As opposed to, you know, what 25 years ago, we had The Wire, right? Uh, and there's different ways of expressing that and engaging with the world. But one of the things that is so exciting and, and, you know, thinking about things and thinking about how we feel things is how we get masterpieces like The Leftovers.

• 55:27Andy Greenwald?

  So I'm not trying to paint or too big of a brush here. But when I was reading over the weekend that the producers of The Pit for season two were like, absolutely, we're going to be talking about this big, beautiful bill and what it's going to do to healthcare in this country. Like that's what this show is a vehicle to do in addition to talking about Dr. Robbie's emotional state and whatever. Like that, that's exciting to me. We, we were, we were joking or laughing a little bit about when Tony Gilroy came on the show and was like, you know, I, I, I've been reading about the meeting in which they decided to do the final solution for years. And now I've finally found the correct Disney funded Star Wars show to explore it. Um, that's awesome. Like I, I, I like a world that isn't.

• 56:08Andy Greenwald?

  Where the art isn't didactic or heavy handed, but also isn't running from, from stuff. Like adolescence being such an exciting example of them being like, we want to do something aesthetically challenging and, and, and really push ourselves in the intellectual filmic space. But also, what is this going to be about? And how are we going to use these skills? I don't know. I'm also someone who just over the weekend was remembering that Mike Mills made that movie Come On, Come On a few years ago. Which is just like, hey, Mike Mills, what do you want to do? I'm sorry to pick on him, but he was like, I want to make a movie where the national makes the songs and Joaquin Phoenix is a radio journalist interviewing children, but his kid comes along and we'll shoot it in black and white. I'm like, I, I think, I think we're done with twee twiddling like that for a while. You know what I mean?

• 56:52Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 56:53Andy Greenwald?

  Sorry. I like NPR.

• 56:54Chris Ryan?

  Weird drive by him.

• 56:55Andy Greenwald?

  Mike Mills seems like a great guy. Beginners, great film. But I was just thinking about this movie existing and I'm like, we are, we are a little bit past the time for that now. You know what I mean? Like, let's talk about the rising sea levels.

• 57:06Chris Ryan?

  The last thing I have to say is that from what little we've seen of one of the main characters, Jacob, he's this architect who's got the new wife and he's Laura's father. And the first few episodes are largely built around him unloading this house that he's got uh, in Copenhagen so that they can get out of there and go to Paris and all of his money is, is tied up in this house. I gotta say, if I had to hug a house like that, I might, I might, I might just like take my chances with the waters, you know?

• 57:36Andy Greenwald?

  That's the thing because like, it's multi-level, right? So like you lose the basement.

• 57:40Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 57:41Andy Greenwald?

  You know, you, you, you put a boat tie on the balcony. And then you work with it. It's beautiful. I do think that's Holger, that's, that's, that's Uncle Holger's plan. Right? Like he's like, I'm sticking it out. And it is it. It's a pretty big country. I understand that it's all pretty flat, but like.

• 57:59Chris Ryan?

  Just get a catamaran, you know?

• 58:00Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think at any point in the season, there'll be a cutaway to our friend of the pod, Rene Redzepi and like just the kind of like the, you know, the, the new Nordic cuisine guys and how they're feeling about this? Like, are they going to rebrand as like a floating restaurant?

• 58:17Andy Greenwald?

  Or do you think that in the timeline of the show, when he comes to LA next year, he just stays?

• 58:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it'll be while he's on the coast. They waited for him to get to LA before they were evacuating Denmark.

• 58:28Andy Greenwald?

  Not to put too much on you, but like, did this show give you any feelings about your decision making vis a vis being a renter or about like, you know, where you have your money? Like, do you feel prepared for this eventuality? Did this make you feel any type of way?

• 58:45Chris Ryan?

  Yes. But more about like, money, is it real? You know, like, it's just like, the idea that these people can't get their money out of the banks and like, the bank is just like, has a bureaucratic wall that comes down and is like, well, you just, we aren't allowed to give out that much cash anymore or whatever. And I think, I mean, I think there's a lot of things in this, even the transactional nature of how these family members now are also in business together.

• 59:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 59:14Chris Ryan?

  And who owes what, you know, to who? Whether it's money, favors, okay, like, we're gonna bring the ex-wife to France with us, whatever it is. I don't want to say too much because I want people to be able to enjoy it like on a first blush, but we'll talk about it again, maybe next week or something. On Thursday, we'll talk about Alien Earth.

• 59:35Chris Ryan?

  You know, and if you have an abundance of time, we can drive Eastern Gate. But I think Alien Earth will take up a lot of our conversation on Thursday.

• 59:40Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think people now, when they, if they happen to see you like in Silver Lake, but you're pulling two like, a waste suitcases behind you at all times, should they assume that it's just full of euros?

• 59:51Chris Ryan?

  Like, is this? Kroner. I'm zagging.

• 59:53Andy Greenwald?

  Are you zagging? Are you buying the dip?

• 59:56Chris Ryan?

  No. No, I...

• 59:58Andy Greenwald?

  Not to make too big a...

• 1:00:00Chris Ryan?

  What about you? Do you, I mean, do you feel like you're prepared for this?

• 1:00:03Andy Greenwald?

  No, I mean, I live kind of on a hill, so I feel like I have a little more time.

• 1:00:08Chris Ryan?

  I'm not talking about water. I just mean in general, like...

• 1:00:10Andy Greenwald?

  No, I, again, we're not gonna spoil the show, but Jacob's new wife has a very memorable reaction when he leans over during like, quiet, looking at the iPad time before bed.

• 1:00:24Chris Ryan?

  He's like, by the way, we're broke.

• 1:00:25Andy Greenwald?

  No, he's like, we're broke and we have to close the country. She has a very, what I would call honest reaction to it, that I think is kind of how I, my mind and body would respond. That said, and we can explore this when we revisit the show, because I really hope, and this is a classic me saying this in the 57th minute, that like, I hope people actually do watch the show. But I would love to do cutaways to many other shows in the reality of the show, like the industry, guys, like the trading floor, watching these events.

• 1:00:58Chris Ryan?

  Rishi kind of shorting the Kroger.

• 1:01:00Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly. Like, I think that would be incredibly rich content.

• 1:01:02Chris Ryan?

  That would be good. All right, man. Great seeing you again. Thank you to Kaya. Thank you to John. Thank you to Andy's daughter. We will leave you there. We'll be back on Thursday to talk about the first two episodes of Alien Earth. Hope everybody has a great week.

• 1:01:16Andy Greenwald?

  Have a great week, Braninski. It's gonna be a good one.

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