‘Alien: Earth’ Episode 3, ‘Peacemaker’ Season 2 Premiere, and Netflix Theme Parks

Chris and Andy talk about a pair of Netflix-branded event spaces coming to Dallas and Philadelphia before addressing the decision to play ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ in theaters and what these developments suggest about the streaming titan (4:51). Then, they react to NBCUniversal’s decision to pivot ‘The Paper’ to a binge release a few weeks ahead of its Peacock premiere (15:03). Later, they break down the third episode of ‘Alien: Earth’ (20:40) and the ‘Peacemaker’ Season 2 premiere (45:13). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of ‘The Watch’ and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady 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

  For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tremfya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tremfya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tremfya, proper training is required. Tremfya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis, serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tremfya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit tremfyaradio.com.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Boar's Head. You know what I love about football season? It's the football, but also the football-watching food. And nothing hits like a Boar's Head sandwich when I'm watching a game. Really, any game day sandwich better with Boar's Head. Philly cheesesteak, layer-up buttery slider rolls with Boar's Head and London broil roast beef, American white cheese, and picante provolone. Delicious. Then add roasted onions, peppers, and Boar's Head pub-style horseradish sauce. I love horseradish. And you've got the ultimate game day cheesesteak. They've also got a whole lineup of premium meats, cheeses, hummus and dips, condiments and more to serve up on game day. Head to your local Boar's Head deli counter to shop now for game day sandwich inspiration and more. Visit boar'shead.com. Boar's Head, committed to craft since 1905.

• 1:44Speaker 02

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

• 1:50Chris 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, oh, cool, another anthropomorphized animal to care about. It's Andy Greivold.

• 2:03Andy Greenwald?

  Don't put your stuff on me. That's you.

• 2:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I know. I just get tired of these animals with personalities and these... We're going to be talking about Peacemaker today, Andy. We're going to talk a little bit about that third episode of Alien that I missed. Really quick, housekeeping, the watch at spotify.com to email us. You can watch us at the ringer-tv YouTube channel or on Spotify, where I hope you listen to us and you can follow us on Instagram at the watch pod underscore.

• 2:29Chris Ryan?

  Greenwald, just a little bit of personal housekeeping news stuff. Obviously, I wasn't on the show last week, or I wasn't able to make the Thursday show. As people probably know, I'd been going through some family stuff. My mother passed away last week. She had been battling cancer for several years. She had been in hospice here at home for the last couple of weeks, and obviously, a really difficult time for me. You know, just processing all of it, being here for it. I was really thankful that I was able to take the time away from Los Angeles to do that. And I just wanted to thank a couple of people, even though I don't think that they

• 3:11Chris Ryan?

  listen to the watch, but I just wanted to say it out loud. The hospice nurses, the home hospice nurses, specifically Tamika and Mahassan, who were very, very, very helpful at the end, and specifically, an aide named Shay, who was with my mom for the last couple of years. I just really wanted to thank them. And just on a personal note, I know this is weird, because it's, you know, it's a strange thing, maybe, to thank a bar when you're talking about your mother passing away. But, you know, as I've been here for basically a month, I have essentially made Bad Brother a home away from home for myself. And I just wanted to thank Nick, and CJ, and Jimmy, and Xander, and Christine, and everybody at Bad Brother for making sure I

• 3:56Chris Ryan?

  had somewhere to go at night, and somewhere to blow off steam, and just watch the Phillies, or whatever. Thank you to my wife and my friends for being there for me. And yeah, I'll keep my memories of her. Private, we don't need to do a eulogy, but I just wanted to say thanks to everybody who kind of sensed what was going on or knew what was going on and, and reached out. I really appreciate it. And yeah, we can get into regular podcasting. I just wanted to say it at the top.

• 4:21Andy Greenwald?

  Thanks for sharing it with everyone. I think, you know, I did the, I was happy to do the American Cinematech event last week.

• 4:28Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:29Andy Greenwald?

  In your absence, but it was wonderful to see the showing out of people seeing them clap and cheer mostly when I mentioned your name. And of course, I think they speak for me.

• 4:39Chris Ryan?

  As opposed to Ian Curtis.

• 4:41Andy Greenwald?

  I left before the movie started. It was after 10pm. But I think I speak for everyone. We say that we love you and we support you and what you did over the last few weeks and months is really special and really loving and really heroic. And

• 4:52Chris Ryan?

  Thanks, Dan.

• 4:53Andy Greenwald?

  It's something we're all gonna have to do. And hopefully, we can do with half as much grace as you did. So happy to have you back.

• 4:59Chris Ryan?

  Should we pass aggressively talk about television now?

• 5:01Andy Greenwald?

  No, I mean, I think that there's, you know, sometimes the segues make themselves. And when you have the chance to go from hospice care to peacemaker, I just feel blessed.

• 5:11Chris Ryan?

  There wasn't really that much news I was looking at, you know, believe it or not, I'm still on the boards. I'm still, I'm still trolling with the wires.

• 5:19Andy Greenwald?

  Believe it or not, you can't turn that off. Come on.

• 5:21Chris Ryan?

  I can't, I can't. I'm on, I'm on, I'm on those sites.

• 5:24Andy Greenwald?

  Also, by the way, just for full context of today's show, I can't survive without you this long. So I've now populated the studio with two children who are, who are both on screens currently.

• 5:34Chris Ryan?

  Are they yours?

• 5:36Andy Greenwald?

  Again, I don't like to, you're apparently the one who shares personal details. Now, I don't know who these people are. I can't confirm or deny it. But it is a full house today. Just so you know, that's the energy I'm bringing.

• 5:45Chris Ryan?

  I was disappointed to find out your daughter was behind on Summer I Turned Pretty because we can't talk about the beach scene.

• 5:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but she read the book, so she can.

• 5:51Chris Ryan?

  I know, but like, you know, there's, there's a, a passion and the Chris Bryony brings to his performance that you just don't, can't get it on the printed page. No disrespect to Jenny Hott.

• 6:01Andy Greenwald?

  It's fair. We missed you for many reasons on Thursday, but I definitely missed you in, when I floated my daughter's take about the show to Kaia, that she thinks that the character, and she can stare at me if I'm getting this wrong, of Conrad is a lot more nuanced and sympathetic on screen than in the book. And Kaia, who is game for anything, a great co-host, a great producer on vacation, which she deserves right now, she's watched like an episode and a half. So I think her response was, oh. I feel like you would have had more to say about that. So we can circle back.

• 6:32Chris Ryan?

  I probably would.

• 6:33Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway.

• 6:35Chris Ryan?

  Andy, there was one thing that you did want to bring up.

• 6:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I have a question for you.

• 6:39Chris Ryan?

  Which was the, and I saw this headline, but I have not really delved into it. It's the Netflix is getting into, this is as close as I think that they've like even stuck a toe in the idea of like a theme park, but it's, it's something more specific and a little bit more low, like smaller.

• 6:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, we've talked before and I'm sure you've heard this, this take expressed a lot on with Matt Bellamy in the town. But like the thing that separates Disney from Netflix still, even though Netflix is globally dominant, is live events. And that is a, you know, a dependable source of income with the cruises and the theme parks and everything for Disney and, and, and Universal to a slightly lesser degree. Netflix is trying to remedy that using their apparently unlimited budget. So we have the play Stranger Things play that just moved from London to New York. But now they are doing these things called Netflix Houses. Now, at first, when I heard this, I got excited because I thought it was House of Guinness, the upcoming Irish drama written by Stephen Knight about the founding of the, what do they call it? The black stuff.

• 7:42Chris Ryan?

  One of our favorite beverages.

• 7:43Andy Greenwald?

  It's true. It is not that. These are like event spaces that are going to have like branded content and immersive experiences and no doubt stores and things. The reason I wanted to bring it up was, I mean, first of all, the people know you. They know you love going to immersive experiences. You are first in line for Haunted Hayride every October. But the fact that the Netflix Houses for 2025 have been announced in two locations. One, Dallas and Cowboys suck, so I don't care about that location. Two, Philadelphia. Not just any part of Philadelphia. They are dropping this at the King of Prussia Mall, which is honestly iconic and.

• 8:22Chris Ryan?

  And I think that this is probably a strange way to talk about this, but I, I'll take advantage of the opportunity here is that I'm not coming back to Los Angeles. I am going to be staying here in King of Prussia where I will be the docent of the Mindhunter experiential house.

• 8:38Andy Greenwald?

  Which by the way is not sanctioned. But you will be in the parking garage on Level C outside of which one is the nicer mall?

• 8:47Chris Ryan?

  And folks are welcome to come by and take forensic photographs and dust for

• 8:51Andy Greenwald?

  Do you remember one of the best scenes in I think season two is the entire monologue delivered from the back of a car, a parked car?

• 8:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:58Andy Greenwald?

  I think that so someone can get into the car and not and know in quotes that you're in the backseat and you will just deliver a chilling, potentially psychopathic monologue to them.

• 9:08Chris Ryan?

  There are so many Easter eggs, you know, it's like I'll have a little can of tuna fish with ants crawling all over.

• 9:14Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know why they don't.

• 9:15Chris Ryan?

  Maybe a guy holding a crucifix.

• 9:17Andy Greenwald?

  Why do they not hire you? But like, so the Philadelphia house will feature, this is the small scale experience that you're going to provide. The large scale experiences are based on One Piece on Wednesday. Additionally, the Netflix house in Philadelphia includes nine holes of mini golf. Fun.

• 9:32Chris Ryan?

  For Happy Madison.

• 9:33Andy Greenwald?

  Nope.

• 9:33Chris Ryan?

  Happy Gilmore, sorry.

• 9:34Andy Greenwald?

  See again, they should hire you. No, each hole is themed to characters and shows, including Bridgerton, is it Cake, Stranger Things, Wrestling, WWE, and Squid Game.

• 9:47Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 9:49Andy Greenwald?

  And they're even bringing.

• 9:49Chris Ryan?

  But not the golf movie that's hugely popular or the reality show that they have?

• 9:53Andy Greenwald?

  No. Also, I guess nothing will be K-pop Demon Hunters, even though, and this is a small segue, they put it in theaters six weeks after it premiered on Netflix and it's the number one movie in the country, but because that's Sony, so they can't put that in their houses.

• 10:06Chris Ryan?

  Isn't that pretty wild that like Netflix hasn't even been bothering with half the stuff that they could be doing to make money and this is how much money they have and this is how much power they have in the industry and they're not even like in theaters or doing, uh, doing experiences and doing rides and stuff like that. And it, it was funny because I know that Sarandos was kind of Ted Sarandos, who runs Netflix, was a little bit skeptical about getting into live television, getting into sports, all this stuff. And then he was like, turns out I was wrong. Now, to me, that is a nice sign because I would like. Maybe someday to start watching Netflix shows like a normal person and have them be at least batched if not, you know, spread out a little bit just so that you're not waiting

• 10:50Chris Ryan?

  five years for a Stranger Things season that is over in terms of its conversation in two days. But a fully operational Death Star is pretty scary for the rest of quote unquote the town.

• 11:01Andy Greenwald?

  That's the thing. I think what is maybe the most chilling about what happened this weekend is just how shrug emoji it was. They had a movie that, you know, I've talked about on this podcast and on the Big Picture podcast. It's like, it's fantastic. It's legitimately good. It is legitimately a sensation. It's on its way to being their number one movie globally ever. And, you know, there's also a sub story, which I find fascinating, which Sony, apparently not really knowing what they had and just offloading it to Netflix when they could have had potentially, you know, a billion dollar global box office franchise.

• 11:37Chris Ryan?

  But isn't that chicken and the egg? Is it what it is without the Netflix?

• 11:39Andy Greenwald?

  That's definitely what they're saying in Culver City when the bosses of Sony are like, why did we do this? That's definitely what they're saying. And then Netflix has gotten what they needed from it. They're selling tons of merch, some of which is en route, by the way, I got the tracking updates, should tell my daughters that, en route to the house right now. And this is, this is going over better than anything I've said so far. And

• 12:02Chris Ryan?

  You're talking about the summer I turned pretty in K-pop demon owners. They're completely changing their opinion.

• 12:08Andy Greenwald?

  So pandering. It's working.

• 12:10Chris Ryan?

  Usually it's like, I love early, early go betweens albums and isn't it cool this international spy show?

• 12:16Andy Greenwald?

  You won't let me talk about the early go betweens album on this podcast. The fact that Netflix has gotten everything they needed from it, and then I guess talked into, got talked into, well, why don't you just see what would happen if you put it in theaters branded as a sing-along? And even then, they were like two days only. And I believe, again, I'm sure the big picture will cover this in more, with more detail and intelligence on the subject. But I think that there's still beef with some theater chains. So it wasn't even in all the theater chains. And it's the number one movie in the country.

• 12:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's not in AMC.

• 12:44Andy Greenwald?

  Right. And casually, it's just dominant. So that's the thing about it. It's just like they, they, I don't even think they realize. The reach of what some of their programming can and could do. And this, Pete, it is relevant in the sense that being able to own an event, especially in a hot summer weekend, very hot all over the country, very hot out here. That is what Disney has made its bones on. You know, live events and being able to just, you're welcome parents, here's something to do for two hours.

• 13:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's like, it's the whole, like, here's the lunchbox, here's the Halloween costume, here's the, here's the ride to go on. It's like that part of it that I don't feel like Netflix has really even truly touched on, you know, and like, it's interesting with Summer I Turn Pretty, just because I was gonna make this

• 13:30Chris Ryan?

  alien conversation broadly about like whether or not it is a quote, big show, you know, whether or not it's a hit. And it is met by metrics, it's certainly a very successful show.

• 13:42Chris Ryan?

  And I think it's doing what they set out to do, which is to extend the alien brand and show that there's an appetite for all sorts of different approaches to this stuff. And we're gonna get into that, but I am very struck by the fact that like, Summer I Turn Pretty, which is a weekly release as well. And is one of those Amazon shows, and I think maybe the show that I would use as a exhibit A in any court case of the power of like, Amazon and how you can shop the show within Amazon Prime and, you know, everything about it is obvious, it's based on these books. These books are being bought on Amazon, all of the clothing, all of the furniture, all of the like, music can be purchased on Amazon.

• 14:25Chris Ryan?

  So it's, it's kind of striking when you see these companies get fully up to date with like, how to do the Disney thing. They can out Disney Disney if they, if they want, at least in the digital space.

• 14:38Andy Greenwald?

  I also wonder, and then, and then I have, I actually have another thing to bring up that is more relevant to the release strategy conversation. But there is a question to be had about the internal value of franchises. Because we tend to say like, all of these companies are desperately in search of the IP that is recognizable, that they can iterate or expand upon or build out. And that's obviously still the most valuable currency in quote unquote, this town. But. I think it's clear that IP that can be put on Broadway and put in event houses and put on backpacks and lunchboxes is probably more valuable than xenomorphs. Like, just fundamentally. And so, the amount of money that-

• 15:20Chris Ryan?

  So you don't think my alien stage play has legs?

• 15:23Andy Greenwald?

  I think it has too many legs. I think that's the issue.

• 15:27Chris Ryan?

  No, that's the thing. It's about an alien with no legs. It's kinda like my left foot, but for xenomorphs.

• 15:31Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, so it's sort of highbrow.

• 15:35Andy Greenwald?

  I'm interested. Go on. I was trying to imagine a lunchbox where the lunch punches through the side of the lunchbox.

• 15:45Andy Greenwald?

  I don't-

• 15:46Chris Ryan?

  No, the lunch explodes out of your stomach after you eat it.

• 15:49Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I mean, it just depends what you serve them. Anyway, we could go, we can circle back and we talk about Alien in a moment. Two things. I did, I just wanna say, to wrap up the Netflix House thing, that I, I'm surprised there's not an I Think You Should Leave room. I just think that there's an opportunity, you know, to, to, to, to like, have a hot dog guy in the store, like crash the hot dog store, or find out who, you know, we're all trying to figure out who did this, or something where you, you pay for something with your bones, like a skeleton. I just think that there's opportunity there for, you know, maybe get, maybe they open that experience in Fishtown, right? Or they open it in like the hipper neighborhoods.

• 16:26Chris Ryan?

  I would like a DC experience where you got to see how Frank Underwood would've handled Trump 2. Like, would he, would he do, would there be any backroom dealing, or would he just be like kissing the rain and just be like, oh?

• 16:38Andy Greenwald?

  Is the Underwood Political Dynasty your DCU? Is that what you're saying here?

• 16:44Andy Greenwald?

  Like, is that what you wish? I wanted to ask you, or talk about the, the bit of news last week about The Paper, the Office spinoff. We covered the trailer. We will talk about the show when it premieres in a week or two. But there was a pretty high-profile switch in how it's going to be delivered in that I think initially they'd said first two were going to go up on Peacock and then it was going to be weekly.

• 17:07Chris Ryan?

  I think it was first four and then two a week. I can't remember.

• 17:10Andy Greenwald?

  They were going to do something more staggered.

• 17:13Chris Ryan?

  Something like a chunk and then, and then, and then it was going to be staggered. But they have announced that they're going to put the entire season up. I believe of 10 episodes, 10.

• 17:23Chris Ryan?

  And you look, there's two ways of reading this. One is this is the way people watch television. If anyone gets into this show, they'll probably be able to finish it in two nights, you know, anyway. Because that's sort of the way that people watch these easygoing comedies that are, that are kind of like nightlight comedies, not that there's not art to them, but that's over the course of the last few years, when you've got stuff like New Girl and you've got stuff like The Office and stuff like 30 Rock. And people are like, I'm on my fourth or fifth or sixth re-watch of this. It's because you like turn it on and then I would just soon do other things or kind of are using it to fall asleep or using it to kill time while you're chopping onions or doing whatever. I don't think it's like intentional watching all the time.

• 18:08Chris Ryan?

  So I get it. You put this season up and I think the hope is that the cumulative number that you get to is so encouraging that you're like, maybe we upstream this to NBC if, if Trump allows NBC to exist. Or maybe we, you know, do weeks a week next time we come around. Or maybe like if they're smart, they'll kind of get into the, oh yeah, it was better when we fired these shows out every spring and fall, you know what I mean? And maybe get this back up on the air, at least at the same time next year.

• 18:41Chris Ryan?

  But the other version of it is that there is a certain lack of confidence about the buzz around this show and that they, they want to like not wash their hands of it. I mean, you would, you'd probably know better than I would when it comes to like an internal confidence meter. I still am excited for this show.

• 18:54Andy Greenwald?

  The reason I find this interesting has nothing to do with the potential quality of the show. I'm looking forward to checking it out. Anecdotally, I've heard people enjoying it, people who maybe have, you know, not completely unbiased, but have seen early episodes or early had access to it. What I find interesting here is that there are the companies like the pure tech companies like Amazon and Netflix have their release strategies, their reasons for it, and then it's kind of they do, then they just shrug. And like, that's what we do. Now, we have seen these companies. Sorry, Ryan Johnson. Exactly. But we have seen these companies start to get a little more creative with the possibility of it when they like splitting Wednesday into two drops, for example. But broadly speaking, they're just, they just point to the data and then they're like, that's what we do and we have our reasons for it. Now, now that these, all of these

• 19:37Andy Greenwald?

  entertainment companies have streaming arms, they also have their data that are telling them certain things about how people watch the shows. I think it's not just tradition that HBO still feels that there's value for them in the weekly drop. I think that that they've gotten whatever confirmation they needed from the data from Max, HBO Max, to tell them to keep doing that. Peacock and NBC were later entrants into this and I still think it's not just romantic to be like, there's still a little bit of that 30 Rock NBC core at work there. And so I wonder if this was a more nuanced conversation and one I would love to hear. One, it isn't just, we're not liking the buzz, or we need to like duck under the first wave of criticism just to get it out there so that can maybe

• 20:17Andy Greenwald?

  spread virally. I think it, I, you know, I have like my five, I have like the five stories or anecdotes that were inscribed on a tablet that were handed to me when I started being a TV critic and I tell them too many times, I apologize. Maybe we could just like make a cheat sheet. You never know when it's somebody's first show. And if it is, I'm sorry, this is a weird one.

• 20:38Andy Greenwald?

  But that Mike Schur, creator of many great NBC comedies, Parks and Rec, Good Place, et cetera, said that he wishes you could make 10 episodes of a sitcom in a, in a vacuum, throw them away, and the first one people saw would be the 11th. I was thinking of that when this was announced. There is a version of this where they're like, we think it's better for us to communicate the way this show finds its legs in a traditional sitcom way over the course of the 10. So that if you were to watch one and then maybe make it to three and it's just not clicking yet, well. The US office didn't click in three. Parks and Rec certainly didn't click in three. There's precedent for that, even though it's a very, very different media ecosystem that these things are being released into.

• 21:20Andy Greenwald?

  So my best version of this is that there was a, I don't have any reason to think this is the case, but that there was a more nuanced contextual conversation about it.

• 21:28Chris Ryan?

  I hope so.

• 21:28Andy Greenwald?

  There was a vote of confidence in where it was going so that they can show you their work and then potentially get busy with the next 10 that could sing. I don't know. Clearly, I want this to be good.

• 21:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, me too.

• 21:40Andy Greenwald?

  But I don't have any other.

• 21:41Chris Ryan?

  They were advertising it on the Tour Championship Tournament yesterday on NBC during the golf. And so like it is getting promoted.

• 21:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 21:51Chris Ryan?

  In big places on NBC. I'm sure it'll get promoted on the first Sunday Night Football. I think it's out by then, but I'm sure it will be promoted there. It'll be interesting to watch them try to thread the needle. And I wonder whether or not in the fall, at some point, they'll put it on NBC. I mean, I think that was originally talked about as the plan, but I don't know if it's going to continue to be.

• 22:11Andy Greenwald?

  Are you going to hold out, like hold off on making an opinion until it's on NBC? Because if it's not on broadcast TV, it doesn't count for you?

• 22:17Chris Ryan?

  It doesn't really, it doesn't really exist. That's, I mean, it's stunning that I even come up with an opinion about any Netflix shows.

• 22:23Andy Greenwald?

  It's stunning.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by The Home Depot. The Home Depot has everything you need to launch your holiday season in style. Upgrade your yard with this year's hottest holiday decor, including the show-stopping towering Santa. Oh, I like that one. And his impressive reindeer, both 8.5 feet and both designed with incredible detail that stands out day or night. When you want decor that delivers impact, The Home Depot has it. Make your home Santa's favorite stop with the holiday decor you want, all waiting for you at The Home Depot. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Whether it's a pumpkin spice coffee that goes splat in your seat or a weekend tailgate that leaves your trunk full of gear and who knows what, you're going to want WeatherTech in your vehicle, whether you call it fall, autumn, or spooky season. Whether the mess is your fault, the kids, the dogs, or the weather's fault, you're

• 23:09Speaker 01

  going to want WeatherTech for American-made floor liners and a cargo liner that laugh in the face of fall weather. Visit weathertech.com today. This episode is brought to you by NOS Energy. Every ounce of dirt, sweat, and gears, every checkered flag and trophy raised, every lap, every race, every hard-fought place. They're all jammed inside every can of NOS Energy. High-performance energy for burning the midnight oil in the garage and pedal-to-the-metal human horsepower for the streets. Go ahead, crack open a can of NOS Energy and get after it.

• 23:41Speaker 05

  FanDuel is now available everywhere in the US.

• 23:49Speaker 05

  So you can get in on the sports action no matter where you are, including these places.

• 23:58Speaker 05

  Make this your most rewarding season ever with FanDuel. Age and location restrictions apply. Product availability varies by market. See FanDuel.com for eligibility. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.

• 24:10Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk a little bit about Alien, just because I didn't get to weigh in on the third episode. So this is, as a product of like what's been going on with me, I watched it, was fully prepared to talk about it, wasn't able to attend that podcast, obviously. Completely forgot what happened, re-watched it. And just because like every time, I think I sent you a bunch of texts that were just like, and then this happens and you were like, I don't think so.

• 24:36Chris Ryan?

  So I re-watched it.

• 24:37Andy Greenwald?

  With love, I said, I don't think so.

• 24:39Chris Ryan?

  I know, I know. You were, you were being, you were an Alien.

• 24:42Andy Greenwald?

  Chris, why can't you focus?

• 24:44Chris Ryan?

  No. Noah Hawley worked really hard. The least you could do is take some time out of your griefing.

• 24:53Chris Ryan?

  And zoom in here. I was just gonna say that I liked it a lot better the second time around because I think I understood what was happening. Now, granted, so knock, knock down like 15% of my brain capacity from the first time, just given circumstances, but like, I did not know, and spoilers for episode three of Alien Earth, I did not know how Moro was communicating with slightly. I did not.

• 25:21Andy Greenwald?

  The first time you watched it.

• 25:23Chris Ryan?

  The first time, I was like, does this guy, did this guy hack into a computer speaker or something like, why does, how is this even happening? I don't think I understood.

• 25:32Andy Greenwald?

  Did you Google, is there Bluetooth in future?

• 25:35Chris Ryan?

  Well, I don't think I even understood that like hermit got stabbed. I thought he just got like knocked around a little bit and I was just like, why is this dude under full, you know, they're really getting, getting the balloon inflated inside of this dude. Like what's happening?

• 25:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 25:48Chris Ryan?

  Um, so some of the set pieces and some of the details made a lot more sense to me the second time around. I will not, I cannot promise that I will watch every Alien Earth episode twice, but it did click a little bit more for me the second time around. Did you talk about this at all on Thursday?

• 26:04Andy Greenwald?

  No, we didn't. Uh, we talked about Kaya's, uh, brief onboarding to the Alien Universe. It was, uh, it's not for her. It's not for her. Um.

• 26:14Chris Ryan?

  Was this the, was this the on-ramp or did she try?

• 26:17Andy Greenwald?

  It was like an on-ramp with nothing. Like it was just kind of to nothing. It just sort of went off the side of it. It was, we talked about this once we finished recording.

• 26:25Chris Ryan?

  That's Kaya backing away from Alien.

• 26:27Andy Greenwald?

  Like, it was actually quite moving because Kaya's worked with us for quite a long time and we love having her, but I didn't realize just how, uh, how much a part of the Watch family she was until I sat with her for an hour and we did an entire podcast on shows neither of us had watched. Uh, and then she recommended a 10-year-old German film.

• 26:44Chris Ryan?

  Perhaps it's time to turn over the keys.

• 26:46Andy Greenwald?

  I was like, it's sometimes they grow up so fast, you know? Um, no, we didn't really discuss it. Uh, we didn't really discuss it at all. Um, I have a bunch of different things that I'd like to sort of get at with this episode, but I, I don't want to, I don't want to like break this, I don't want to break the conversation into too fine. I don't want the points to be too fine, but.

• 27:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Cause we're going to talk about it again, probably on Thursday.

• 27:08Andy Greenwald?

  That's true.

• 27:08Chris Ryan?

  When the fourth episode's dropped.

• 27:09Andy Greenwald?

  I think that what I find, uh, compelling and confounding about this show is that it's rare in my experience to find something that contains in every episode thus far, things that I like this much and things that I dislike this much. Maybe it's kind of repeating the take I had after the first two episodes, which was, you know, the intensity of feeling is probably a good sign.

• 27:33Chris Ryan?

  Is actually a good thing.

• 27:34Andy Greenwald?

  Um, there's definitely, this is, this was a human, human made. Um, because there are, like the, the show in which Babu Sisay as Moro is the star, is the leading character.

• 27:46Andy Greenwald?

  Is one of my favorite shows of the year. I love this actor. I love his intensity. I love his.

• 27:52Chris Ryan?

  His story is incredible. Like his like, I'm, I'm like a, a man without a country. And my country was a corporation, but now I'm like very mission oriented because like otherwise, what am I? Just a half man, half robot, you know, who can, who can't relate.

• 28:05Andy Greenwald?

  And, and who can't really even enjoy the delicious street food being cooked up around him in future Bangkok, because you know, I had to say it.

• 28:12Chris Ryan?

  I thought young Bourdain might jump out at that.

• 28:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I love, I, it, I genuinely expressed something about Game of Thrones a decade ago, about wanting to spend more time in the spice markets of Essos or whatever. Then it became a cliche, but like it does give something like I, I find it very, very compelling that they went to Thailand for, I'm sure, among other reasons, but tax reasons being chief among them. And then took full advantage of it and made Prodigy City some future version of Bangkok. And then put the actors out into the street and found ways to film at night on bridges over the river with around people, um, cooking and living and shopping and it feels alive. And that kind of life is what I think makes a show called Alien Earth earn its name.

• 28:56Andy Greenwald?

  Because the traditional alien films are just hermetically sealed, uh, haunted houses, basically, right? In space. And this is not that. And I really appreciated the way, like that whole scene when he's grabbing the phone and grabbing the food. And that was the highlight of the episode for me.

• 29:13Chris Ryan?

  I think you're absolutely right. The, the cool thing about, I mean, you, you're right about the, the haunted house is generally, even, even on, I was going to say that like Alien Three, for instance, is a prison planet, but like is, is realized as a haunted house, you know, I think that that claustrophobia and keeping people in these intense spaces is part of like what makes these movies so remarkable. Holly has to open that up because you can't sustain the tension.

• 29:42Andy Greenwald?

  That's right.

• 29:42Chris Ryan?

  Um, over the course of 10 hours, I mean, plus of, of television. And I actually find myself.

• 29:51Chris Ryan?

  I wouldn't say not bored at all, but when the alien aliens, if there's ever any combat, if there's any ever any like, oh, the alien's gonna get hermit. I'm like, well, this dude presumably has plot armor for at least a while longer. So this fight is really only there to frustrate me because I've seen so many of my homies go down.

• 30:12Andy Greenwald?

  So many, so many greats.

• 30:13Chris Ryan?

  From Tom Skerritt to Bill Paxton. I've seen them all. And it's kind of frustrating to watch an alien dilly-dally, you know, for the sake of TV, or for the sake of Alex Lothar being a regular star on this television show, when I'm like, this guy would have gotten chompers through the forehead, like, instantaneously.

• 30:35Andy Greenwald?

  I totally agree with that. And I think that it makes it a-

• 30:38Chris Ryan?

  Unless there's like a whole plan for that fam.

• 30:40Andy Greenwald?

  Well, clearly, there's something, and we should get to it. But I, but I think that this is one of those cases where the way that we, that you and I tend to talk about TV, which is a little bit, can be a little bit 10,000 foot or meta, or like, trying to think about the problems that were being solved with this, is useful, because there's no, absolutely no question that Noah and whoever else he collaborated with in the early stages of this, had to run right at this problem. That there's a, the reason the alien movies are so uniquely successful has to do with their construction and limited timeframe. And once you start giving people magical get out of fangs free cards, it feels different. So, that said, something that I admire, definitely more on a practical,

• 31:23Andy Greenwald?

  clinical, writer's room kind of perspective, is the way he designed a season to give us, potentially, we've only seen three episodes, but to give us both, meaning, we got the claustrophobic alien movie in the crashed ship inside of the tower, and we even got a epic battle with a xenomorph that proved that the hybrids can defeat them. What he then also gave us is four or five more, right? So it resets the clock. He showed us what an alien movie that we expect and what we might see going forward, and then gave us the potential to revisit it. I think that's very smart. It might be frustrating to some viewers. And similarly, the like, we went claustrophobic, and now we are back out

• 32:08Andy Greenwald?

  onto the city streets, or into the suites of these trillion dollar corporations. It's a smart aperture shift. Is it too jarring for some fans who are only there for one thing or another, or is it just, you know, par for the course when he has to establish a different storytelling rhythm and language for a franchise as it jumps from one medium to another?

• 32:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, also, just, um, we probably evaluate TV shows prematurely across the board like society does that, but also we probably do because we've got a lot of shows that we need to check out. And I think we've got years of, um, taste oriented like reflexes where we're like, I don't like that. That's not, this isn't, I don't like this. This isn't for me, or I do love this and I don't care even if it's doing it well or not.

• 32:53Andy Greenwald?

  By the way, put a pin in that. That's going to come up in Peacemaker.

• 32:57Chris Ryan?

  Well, I noticed myself being like, oh, a couple of these hybrid kids who I found deeply annoying, and that's not nice, but deeply annoying in the first two episodes.

• 33:10Andy Greenwald?

  Because they were kind of in the way of the alien movie you thought you were getting.

• 33:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And I was like, this is interesting, actually. So, uh, I think it's, is it Nibs or Curly? Who's the redhead?

• 33:19Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, Nibs.

• 33:21Chris Ryan?

  Nibs. Her, I'm in an Emily Bronte novel staring into the mirror and perhaps like there's, there's some stuff wired wrong in my head is fascinating to me now. And Curly, the one who's like, I'm actually the real Wendy because I don't get broken is cool. And like her going up to boy cavalier and saying like, I could be you. I could be a better version of you. Um, which plays into his idea of like, I need somebody to talk to who I feel like I can have a smart conversation with. Kersh and his obvious like changing. I mean, this is TV storytelling. You get incremental change over the course of hours of watching. And, uh, I appreciated that in this episode. And I think the things that

• 34:06Chris Ryan?

  annoyed me maybe in the first two, like needle drops where I was like, why is, why is this playing in the, in the future? I don't know. It's like, I actually thought the Funkadelic needle drop, like if you just put down your, your weapons, you're like, oh, it's pretty cool. Like I like this montage.

• 34:23Andy Greenwald?

  What, so do you feel, so in other words, on the second viewing, did you feel some of your preconceived expectations or frustrations secede a little bit and you were enjoying the rhythms of the show for what it was and as a TV show? Because I think it's an interesting point to make, like. This is all of the criticisms that we're having so far about the show. I mean, there's some things that are just absolutes. It's very well made. It's very well made. The production value, the cast is interesting and intriguing. If we don't really understand someone yet, they're compelling enough or eye catching enough or curious enough to keep us, keep us interested and leaning in until we reveal a little bit more.

• 35:03Andy Greenwald?

  I still found the Lost Boys conceit to be a little bit of a struggle.

• 35:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:12Andy Greenwald?

  Only because it's like the, you know, how did this flavor get in my other? Like, it just didn't, it's not tasting good together to me yet.

• 35:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and I think that you can probably go around and be like, um, nitpicky about some of the behaviors and some of the things that are happening within the, um, complex that Boy Cavalier and Prodigy has where it's like, these are, I said, probably billion dollar investments, each one of them. Like, are you guys just really letting them like hang out and do, do their own thing? Like, is there no like downtime or supervision or surveillance?

• 35:44Andy Greenwald?

  They're seeing, people are seeing everything they're seeing.

• 35:47Chris Ryan?

  I know, but then you'd know probably that this kid is talking tomorrow. You know what I mean? Or you would know that this kid seems really scared and staring into the mirror and freaking out.

• 35:57Andy Greenwald?

  It's the nature of TV to give us, you know, seven to 10 characters to care about, but it does seem a little understaffed.

• 36:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and, you know, there's a thing that's happened a couple of times on this show so far where, especially in the blast site, uh, various characters, but especially Moro, has just leapt through a hole in the wall.

• 36:15Andy Greenwald?

  Always, yeah, with the sparks, which is beautiful and calls back to the film.

• 36:18Chris Ryan?

  Great shot, and you're just like, what's there? Like, is he jumping 40 stories down? Is he jumping onto a platform that's right there? Like, it's kind of unclear. And I was like, this is a little bit of, I think that what I was thinking was like, I hope he doesn't do this more than he has to with the entire plot. Give himself a hole to jump through and be like, you guys, don't worry about what's there. I've just moved over here. And he's, I think, I think Holly's slowing it down a little bit.

• 36:44Andy Greenwald?

  Before we get into the real question of what kind of hybrids we're talking about, because is there a lot of alien? Again, are you mixing your peanut butter alien with my chocolate, uh, hybrid child robot? I'm, I want to talk to you about that. I do want to zag slightly and say that the one way in which I'm intrigued to have so much of the focus be on. Babies, children, adults, you know, children in adult bodies is the, it does give a different sort of paint job on one of the horriest cliches of horror, which is, why don't we see what this does?

• 37:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:22Andy Greenwald?

  You know, there is a

• 37:23Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 37:24Andy Greenwald?

  You, again, it's a buy-in, like

• 37:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, let's split up is, is a, is a real fun one. Yeah.

• 37:28Andy Greenwald?

  That, it's just the nature of the genre and people much smarter than us have spent, you know, very successful careers coming up with new ways to camouflage those instincts or that stupidity, frankly, and keep us interested. Having them be children and three children and a robot dissecting something that probably shouldn't be dissected, you know?

• 37:48Chris Ryan?

  Respectfully.

• 37:49Andy Greenwald?

  Respectfully. Respectfully.

• 37:53Chris Ryan?

  We gotta get the dies out of food and we gotta stop dissecting xenomorphs.

• 37:57Andy Greenwald?

  And, no, and we gotta just let, let the egg be what it's gonna be, you know what I mean? They stamp the date on it for a reason. That's, I, I, maybe I shouldn't, but I do respect, uh, uh, your big ag to kind of get that going for us. So Wendy wakes up from her, and by the way, I am sure that there is a place, clinic, maybe more than one clinic in Los Angeles that would charge us a lot of money to lie down on a glass table that glows red for a while, and it seems to have remarkable healing benefits. And I'm interested, I'm curious.

• 38:36Chris Ryan?

  I'm in the market.

• 38:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I'm just, I'm open. So she wakes up, but she seems to be now have, having some sort of, uh, siren song in her head of these creatures. Is this, I want to know, you're, as the alienologist, I'd like to know your read on this, because is this similar to

• 38:58Chris Ryan?

  Resurrection obviously gives us a

• 38:59Andy Greenwald?

  Sigourney becomes

• 39:01Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and, and has a connection to the, the species itself. I won't spoil resurrection too much, but it, there is previous in the alien universe for people or whatever becoming one with the alien in various ways. I thought, the first time I watched this, uh, episode, I did not understand really like what was happening with Wendy, was she just having like a, I'm empathic, so I can feel Or was there, and there is, you know, a missing moment of her and the alien behind this steel door that gets folded down.

• 39:38Andy Greenwald?

  Wait, we don't fully know what happened. She just.

• 39:39Chris Ryan?

  And when they open it back up, she's decapitated the alien, but herself, she is also bleeding, you know, her milky blood. So I think that it could be, there could be an alien inside of her.

• 39:53Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 39:54Chris Ryan?

  There could have just be a.

• 39:56Andy Greenwald?

  Could there?

• 39:56Chris Ryan?

  Connection somehow made, um, you know, like.

• 39:59Andy Greenwald?

  I gotta stop you. So we learned from Kersh that the eggs.

• 40:04Chris Ryan?

  I know that the aliens don't wanna, uh, and, and that would be the first time, you know, like, as far as I know, no, as far as I know, no alien has ever been, you, a hu, a synthetic has never been a host for an alien. It's always a person.

• 40:19Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 40:20Chris Ryan?

  Um, it bursts through a couple of synthetics, but not like.

• 40:24Andy Greenwald?

  But we've never, this is a whole new invention for the show, this idea of a hybrid, and we don't really know what kind of, um, what's the phrase, uh, people meat that, that he used to make them.

• 40:34Chris Ryan?

  I think a lot of the stuff below the brain is, is, uh, is pure Volkswagen, but.

• 40:38Andy Greenwald?

  It's German engineering?

• 40:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but I think that everything up top is.

• 40:43Andy Greenwald?

  They seem to get, I don't wanna make this personal, but these Lost Boys get better range than I do. I'm pretty sure that they have to plug in less often.

• 40:52Chris Ryan?

  Oh, are you complaining about your EV again?

• 40:55Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, I don't complain. I'm just saying, I, I'd like to have Boy Cavalier, give it a once over. That's all.

• 41:01Chris Ryan?

  I, uh, the other day, I watched a 25 minute YouTube video that's just Tommy from Landman explaining things to people. Had, uh, I'd forgotten, um.

• 41:11Andy Greenwald?

  You gotta come home.

• 41:12Chris Ryan?

  The, the wind farm one with the lawyer is like, wind is great. And he's just like, oh, yeah.

• 41:20Andy Greenwald?

  He's like, you stupid idiots.

• 41:22Chris Ryan?

  You stupid Northwestern alumnus.

• 41:26Andy Greenwald?

  So certainty is amazing. That said, I'm willing to say that I may have wagered on the wrong future when I went all in on electric vehicles. You know what I mean? I definitely like put my finger in the wind. Maybe this is my first problem. And I was like, I see where things are going. I'm gonna get in front of it. Not me.

• 41:42Chris Ryan?

  Um, I would like to imagine Tommy from Landman in this, in the Alien Earth world.

• 41:48Andy Greenwald?

  Explaining things to everyone. Honestly, that is, wait, this is, this, we just can't, this can't just be like a minute, you know, 41 digression. Like, I can think of five shows right now that would be improved and shortened by a Tommy from, if Tommy just came in and yelled at everyone about the way it was gonna be, show would be over.

• 42:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:09Andy Greenwald?

  This is, this is.

• 42:10Chris Ryan?

  Whenever I hear Cav and Halliburton starts a file on these guys.

• 42:13Andy Greenwald?

  This is, this is fast. Um, it's a wrap. Uh, do you have any, but do you have any, so for the, at the end, uh, our guy Hermit is, he's lungless and they've implanted something in one of his lungs and he's under and Wendy, I couldn't tell if it was, my sense is that it was meant to imply all of this was affecting her. But, but you know, was she overly empathic about her brother's plight, about the egg?

• 42:39Chris Ryan?

  No, I think she's reacting to Kersh.

• 42:41Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, she walks towards where Kersh is. So.

• 42:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:45Andy Greenwald?

  Again, this is how I've been approaching the show because of how I've been processing it. When I see, when the end of the episode is like, and now we're gonna do a ninth thing, that my, my warning signs, my warning alarm goes off as opposed to, cool, let's do more and more and more. And I, so I want to be honest about that because the fact that then this is where it's going, it's very busy. It is, there's no shortage of ideas and density. Just talking to you about it, the fact that we've only, we're only talking about three episodes is, is remarkable and it, and is in and of itself worth noting because often streaming shows are very clearly stretched. Uh, this, this seems quite packed.

• 43:24Chris Ryan?

  It seems really packed and I think what I'm, my, my big question for it is, how reliable are the characters in terms of being, when, when they're doing their expository exposition dumps or when they're talking about their intentions, like how reliable are those characters about their intentions and how, how sincere are they? I think putting Wendy in play as.

• 43:49Chris Ryan?

  An uncontrollable new force who might be a hybrid of not just human and robot, but also alien and what that would mean. And what does, what are boy Cavaliers like true desires in this whole thing? And what are Kersh's? Because I think Kersh is starting to deviate from the plan.

• 44:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 44:08Chris Ryan?

  And also, like, obviously, like, the, in the sort of lore of Alien, to the extent that Noah Hawley winds up honoring it at all, Yutani Corporation, the Wayland Yutani Corporation is very present and Prodigy is not. So

• 44:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I think that's

• 44:25Chris Ryan?

  Obviously, the introduction of the Yutani heir, who calls Moro on the phone and he's like, oh, I used to deal with, I think, her grandmother or something like that. Obviously, like, there's, there's a lot of shoes to drop in that area. And it'll be interesting to see how Hawley decides to be like, I'm showing you X yet, this amount now, this amount later. But, you know, for three episodes, you might think Kersh is like, kind of, boy Cavaliers, you know,

• 44:53Andy Greenwald?

  Iron boy.

• 44:54Chris Ryan?

  Friday. And instead, yeah, exactly.

• 44:55Andy Greenwald?

  Do you

• 44:56Chris Ryan?

  Should we get in?

• 44:57Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, go ahead. Just, you tease at the top. I don't even know if it's just something like, maybe we'll just, just a, something to think about and return to. But you sort of tease the idea of like, wondering if this was a big show or a big enough show.

• 45:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, well, I mean, I saw like, the nine million number, and I'm sure it's grown exponentially since then for the premiere.

• 45:14Andy Greenwald?

  And by that, you mean like FX, as all these places do now, released, you know, had a press release being like, premiere of X show smashes records by reaching this many people in its first seven days. It's almost par for the course to get a release like that, but they do seem bullish. And, you know, the public facing, we have no, we're not trying to create smoke here. We have no idea how they feel internally, but everything was bullish. This is going according to plan.

• 45:35Chris Ryan?

  This was a really stupid bit for me. I was just gonna be like, nobody's really talking to me about this. Like, I, like, I think we're podcasting about it. I know that Mal and Rob have been podcasting about it on House of R. But like,

• 45:49Chris Ryan?

  Tom Friedman style, like no one in a diner in America has like pulled me aside and been like, sir, sir, what do you think of Alien Earth? And I, but I don't, they aren't really do, I did hear someone talking about some writer pretty at a bar, but no one has like kind of been like, oh dude, if you, I gotta go home, aliens on tonight.

• 46:06Andy Greenwald?

  That could build, and like we've said, he is putting down a marker for potentially a much larger universe expansion and story. And I think that if it, whatever internal benchmarks FX has, if it meets them, then they are beyond thrilled because then they have an IP franchise to go with everyone else. But I, the reason why I think it's a relevant conversation is twofold. One is what I was saying moments ago, or you know, a while ago in this pod about what is the ceiling for adult centered, R rated?

• 46:36Chris Ryan?

  I can tell you exactly what the ceiling is.

• 46:38Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 46:39Chris Ryan?

  Alien versus Shogun.

• 46:40Andy Greenwald?

  Well, that's the note. That's where all this is going, and that would be so sick. That's an amazing idea. You, by the way, you're just, you're just coming back to the big leagues, but you're still throwing gas. Like there's no.

• 46:58Chris Ryan?

  These warm up games.

• 46:59Andy Greenwald?

  You haven't lost any ticks off your fastball.

• 47:03Andy Greenwald?

  But.

• 47:04Chris Ryan?

  You don't want to do Blackstone encountering an alien?

• 47:08Andy Greenwald?

  Give me a second. I, I mean, I guess that the ceiling is something like Penguin, right? Which was an incredibly successful show for HBO in ways they didn't expect and has had an even more successful afterlife as it started getting nominated and even potentially winning lots of big awards. I don't think that's necessarily what they thought it was going to be, but it was an interesting validation of the idea that we can do adult stories in these larger universes. The other piece of it, though, I think it's a relevant conversation is for as much as we have liked, loved and always respected his work, Noah hasn't had a quote unquote big show. I mean, none of his shows are Game of Thrones. I mean, what shows are, but do you know what I mean?

• 47:51Andy Greenwald?

  Like they have been big in the realm of cognoscenti like them, podcasters like them.

• 47:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:58Andy Greenwald?

  Award voters like them and actors like working with them. That's not nothing, but you know, he does seem to have taken some steps as we were describing.

• 48:07Chris Ryan?

  This is a completely different proposal because like theoretically Tim Olyphant's got to go to Thailand. For the next five years.

• 48:14Andy Greenwald?

  Although I think they talked about how they were moving production. That that was a season one thing, but.

• 48:18Chris Ryan?

  But like it's different for Fargo when it's just like, hey, man, come play.

• 48:21Andy Greenwald?

  And we've seen that.

• 48:22Chris Ryan?

  For six months and yeah.

• 48:23Andy Greenwald?

  But we've seen it already in the sense that like he put the xenomorph, full xenomorph story arc battle in three episodes. Like he is foregrounding things in a way that he didn't. And I say this as someone who was there with Legion season one, where the brief really was. It doesn't matter if Professor X is never even mentioned, right? Like this is not that. So it is definitely a play to be a little bit more mainstream, but.

• 48:42Chris Ryan?

  So this actually goes right into Peacemaker for me.

• 48:45Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 48:45Chris Ryan?

  So let me, let me just say that I would imagine.

• 48:51Chris Ryan?

  The dream for any studio right now is to be able to have. Multiple titles that are under the same property banner. So to have DC stuff or Alien stuff or whatever. And have them in conversation with each other with, with, you know, a dream possibility. You could always do, do something that collapses some timelines or brings multiple characters into it. But I distinctly feel, at least for now. Like there is no like, when's Ripley going to show up?

• 49:24Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, yeah, that's fair.

• 49:25Chris Ryan?

  In Alien, okay? Penguin's a good example of, I saw some Colin Farrell quotes where he was like, yeah, I'm reading the Batman two script soon. I don't care if I only have to do like a two days, I don't think I'm in it. And I don't care if I only have to do like two days of work. Like I just love Matt Reeves so much. But he's also saying that because like, he's got this huge show on television now where, you know, he is kind of. The, the, the main character of a series.

• 49:54Andy Greenwald?

  A show that hasn't been renewed.

• 49:55Chris Ryan?

  And, but did not need Batman.

• 49:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 49:58Chris Ryan?

  Um.

• 49:59Andy Greenwald?

  That, that's, yeah, it's a great point.

• 50:01Chris Ryan?

  So this idea now of like, we're making this stuff. Yeah, in the background, in the foreground, maybe like it's referenced in Peacemaker. They, they talk in the first episode of season two of Peacemaker. They make reference to things that happened in Superman. I would be pretty surprised if Superman shows up in Peacemaker this season. Well, so I think that's actually like what they want. It's like, it's like a superpowered version of Agent of Shield, Agents of Shield in Marvel. And where Marvel put all their marbles in, okay, people are going to watch every single one of these. Stay for the post-credit sequence and we're going to have people charting and graphing character appearances and how you have to watch all of this to know what's going to happen in the next thing. I don't think that's the model anymore.

• 50:45Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think it's a uniquely, it's a unique divergence from the model because the Kevin Feige in the background saying, trust me, all this is connected and there's a vision. In the case of the new DCU is James Gunn, who is himself the creative force, not just the architect. So it is unique in the sense that the Russo brothers didn't, didn't direct Agents of Shield. This premiere episode, I mean, Gunn was the showrunner of season one of Peacemaker, a show that we should, full disclosure, I did not engage with, I did not watch.

• 51:19Chris Ryan?

  I believe I watched the first or first two episodes of the first season.

• 51:22Andy Greenwald?

  People seem to like it.

• 51:25Andy Greenwald?

  And so in between making season one of the show and season two, Gunn was given the big job, given Superman. And given the incredible, remember the, remember the, I'm realizing the trouble of this reference already. But do you remember, what was the, what was the Bill Cosby like reading show where he had the?

• 51:46Chris Ryan?

  Really on a hot streak.

• 51:47Andy Greenwald?

  I know, but remember he had like the pen?

• 51:51Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not saying like, it was very gentle. He didn't like use the pen to like put anything in anyone's water. I'm just saying, do you remember that? What was that that I'm thinking of?

• 52:02Chris Ryan?

  I honestly don't remember, man.

• 52:03Andy Greenwald?

  You're gonna make me look this up? This was an important part of our childhood.

• 52:06Chris Ryan?

  Google Bill Cosby a couple of times. Let's see what happens.

• 52:08Andy Greenwald?

  It wasn't Picture Pages.

• 52:10Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 52:10Andy Greenwald?

  You don't remember Bill Cosby Picture Pages?

• 52:13Chris Ryan?

  I don't, I don't.

• 52:14Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think it's because Bill Cosby asked you to look at some Picture Pages? Is that why you?

• 52:22Andy Greenwald?

  You're coming down with me, okay? We'll see. Kai is not here to clip this. Anyway.

• 52:30Andy Greenwald?

  Bill Cosby. In between season one and two. No, no, I'm moving on. In between season, who's the real Peacemaker here? Between season one and season two, Gunn got the big job. And so in his ability, I was trying to use the magic marker to say he could say what is canon and what isn't. Yes, he could both.

• 52:45Chris Ryan?

  Retrofits and stuff.

• 52:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, so he's, he kept his baby as part of the universe, but then also retcon stuff so that in the previously on Peacemaker montage, there is a very significant difference where I guess season one ended with an image of Snyder's Justice League with like Aquaman in the shadows. It is now the Justice Gang from the Superman movie. And he can, your point about Superman not showing up is probably right, but Guy Gardner and Hawkgirl and his brother Sean's Maxwell Lord are in this, are in this premiere. That's not a, that's not a favor. I mean, I'm sure that the people who have showrun many Marvel shows, whether they were Marvel TV, like Shield, or part of, you know, Marvel Studios, I bet they're furious when they see

• 53:29Andy Greenwald?

  this. Like, we had a plan, but you didn't let us do it, or we didn't have access to the codes. So it is much more closely drawn. I think the, the, the, the bet that the show makes, that I am very unsure about, is, does, does someone want something this tonally different than the movie they just watched? There's room for all of it, is what he's saying. But I found it to be really, really, really challenging, because, I mean, I just found it to be like nihilistically clever, self-satisfied, glib, and violent, and like.

• 54:13Andy Greenwald?

  Kind of drap, like the banter felt really forced. And I, and the best case version of this for me, and then I'll take my answer off air, is like Superman worked so well for me because I think that the best version of James Gunn mixes the glib with the heartfelt. And Superman as a character forces him to have that counterbalance right in the middle of Guy Gardner talking about butts or whatever he likes to talk about. And I think that that, that works for me. That's a, that's a recipe that works. His side project, this is like, best case scenario, this is his Metal Machine music to me, and he gets it all out of his system and I don't have to engage with it because this side of it is not for me.

• 54:54Chris Ryan?

  I think this is a guy who loves Troma, not trauma, Troma, the old like, you know, sort of basically direct to video, like genre studio, horror and sci-fi studio. And he used to work there. And I think he loves creature features and he loves horror and body horror and all this stuff. And then he also loves talky, kind of one liner comedy. And then he has a very, very, very big heart that sometimes is, is almost like unwieldy, you know, where he will, like you said, he basically goes from crass humor to saccharine

• 55:37Chris Ryan?

  sentimentality within the same conversation between two characters. And I think what you're reacting to is the same thing I reacted to, which is within the context of Superman, he's swinging from PG to PG 13.

• 55:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 55:54Chris Ryan?

  And it's not even like, I could give a shit about the violence. Like I'll, I'll watch violence all day. I don't, that doesn't bother me. But if you're a kid or whatever, if you're watching Superman, what's like, there's some scary monsters, Lex yells, a dog gets kicked, there's some fart and poop jokes. And then there is basically like this overwhelming like sentiment within the, within the film about like idealism. It's an idealistic movie. And he, he's explicit about that in talking about Superman. Peacemaker.

• 56:29Chris Ryan?

  Is asking you to care about like a guy who's like, I'm gonna have a coke orgy and punch someone a million times in the face and shoots my shoot people in the head.

• 56:38Andy Greenwald?

  By the way, that is the Ray Velcoro spinoff that I think we all want.

• 56:43Chris Ryan?

  Peacemaker is is swinging from PG 13 to R or NC 17. And I wonder whether that swing, when it's starting more extreme and going further, rather than it's starting at Goonies and going to the harder parts of Back to the Future. You know, it's like you basically like are identifying something that I was I noticed watching this, which is that I think it actually works better when he has more restraint. Now, I, to be completely honest, like I familiarized myself with what happened at the end of season one of Peacemaker. I watched this episode of Peacemaker. I think there are parts of it that I like. There are parts of it that I immediately recognized as frustrating, like, of course,

• 57:28Chris Ryan?

  there is a quantum library where all of your loved ones live and their alternate realities and all the tongue in cheek jokes about the hair metal bands that have different names slightly and different songs slightly. And the James Gunn thing where something really, you know, soft and soft focus happens and then like an ironic needle drop kicks in and all that stuff. But I will give this whole thing some praise for this reason. I could basically agree with you. I don't think I'm as allergic to it, but I just want to say this. I fucking really admire how industrious this guy is.

• 58:03Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, I'm with you on that.

• 58:04Chris Ryan?

  And he's got a sensibility that he is able to apply to a bunch of different stuff. And I think it is cool that he has one of the biggest movies of the year in the box office still is still in theaters that he is. This is obviously one of his babies. Peacemaker is obviously something that he could have left in season one, offloaded to proteges. You know, he's got other people directing on the show, but is, I think, doing three episodes this year and he did five episodes on the first season.

• 58:30Andy Greenwald?

  And good people directing. He's got Greg Mottola, he's got Peter Sollet, like he has, again.

• 58:35Chris Ryan?

  I'm kind of like, I'm, I kind of want to see what Greg Mottola does with a block of Peacemaker episodes and.

• 58:40Andy Greenwald?

  I don't disagree.

• 58:41Chris Ryan?

  I don't really think that this is going to be an essential. I mean, I know that there are rumors about like it's important to watch Peacemaker and understand that. I don't really care. But I really admire that he's got this and now he is about to go shoot the sequel for Superman. Like this is kind of to your point. If Feige was just directing these movies.

• 59:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 59:03Chris Ryan?

  Or if he had turned everything over to Marcus and McFeely or Russo's. Like I kind of admire the sort of like mass production of this story because I think it feels more coherent when there's more of it to take in.

• 59:18Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's a great point and a fair point, and I agree with you. I think that his likability and sense of community that he clearly engenders is one of the selling points and why he maybe was the right person to get this job, the big job at Warner Brothers to be head of DC even more than his filmed output. Because this show that is his baby, that he can now protect and nurture, you know, is giving like Danielle Brooks, you know, and Steve Agee, like people that he likes, who are, you know, surprising, interesting performers, interesting work to do.

• 59:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:50Andy Greenwald?

  I did like that. I am not made of stone. I liked the dancing opening. I think that's fun. I generally like, I love the Guardians movies. I think what I bumped on a little bit was ultimately a little bit of a, a little bit of a fear that there's really nowhere for the shared superhero universes, universe stories to go other than are these meta-humans a threat backed with the multiverse is coming. We have seen those stories in countless ways. In the Marvel Universe, it's the boys. I'm curious if there's a different way to do it. And one of the reasons why I like Superman so much is that, and he owned this, and he owned it again in a very typically like everything's on Front Street, almost corny way with the

• 1:00:34Andy Greenwald?

  needle drop at the end of the movie, but making a character who was decent and good and saved squirrels despite all this nonsense was more punk rock than having the 378th scene of a woman who walks into a bar and picks a fight just so she can feel something and get beat up. Like I didn't, it was very well directed. You know, it was, it was kinetic action. He's good at what he does, but. You know, but, but maybe we're thinking about it wrong. And the other reason why he's a good king of content is because this show at its baseline is delivering certain packets of entertainment for people who reliably want to feast on them.

• 1:01:14Chris Ryan?

  We might enjoy it more or less if we were like up to date on all the operations and teams and, you know, failures of these characters. And I don't mean to make a sweeping generalization about the show, having not watched every single moment of it. But I do think we're informed enough to like, I'm, I'm talking more about the tone and I'm talking more about the project than I am about whether or not like Rick Flag Sr. Is wasting government resources, you know?

• 1:01:42Andy Greenwald?

  I think, is he senior or junior?

• 1:01:44Chris Ryan?

  He's Grillo is senior. Rick Flag Jr. Is Joel Kinnaman.

• 1:01:48Andy Greenwald?

  Was Joel Kinnaman.

• 1:01:49Chris Ryan?

  It was.

• 1:01:50Andy Greenwald?

  Shout out, respect. Can I ask you one quick question? Just, I get your take on this. Don't Google. How old is John Cena? Don't Google.

• 1:01:58Chris Ryan?

  Fifty-one.

• 1:02:00Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. John Cena, I thought so too. I would be, I was like 53, looks great. By the way, we didn't even really talk about him. He is, he's really good at doing this. He's a very reliably funny, charismatic performer. He's three weeks older than me.

• 1:02:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:18Andy Greenwald?

  Is that wrestling? Is that like, is that, do you know what I mean? Cause obviously, I'm not pretending that I am like, he is a very fit man.

• 1:02:26Chris Ryan?

  Do you look better than John Cena? Or you think you look worse than John Cena?

• 1:02:28Andy Greenwald?

  In what way? I'm just asking the question.

• 1:02:31Chris Ryan?

  Wait, what's your, I really want you to have to say this.

• 1:02:34Andy Greenwald?

  I was shocked. But maybe we look really old now and I just don't see it. I thought that he was quite a bit older.

• 1:02:40Chris Ryan?

  We definitely look old.

• 1:02:41Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Oh, I know. I've seen the tapes. The other fun thing about us is that we didn't go on YouTube for 10 years, which is just an awesome way to age gracefully in the public eye.

• 1:02:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:54Andy Greenwald?

  Just take off 10 years and then come back. So thanks, everyone for putting us on camera. I love it.

• 1:02:58Chris Ryan?

  Why don't we wrap it up there? Let me give you the listeners who are still with us a roadmap of the next couple of episodes. So Thursday, Andy and I are going to talk about Alien, episode four, Alien Earth, episode four. And I think we're going to try and finish Eastern Gate. So if that was a project that you embarked upon, we're going to talk about the end of Eastern Great Gate, season one.

• 1:03:17Andy Greenwald?

  And by the way, if you didn't, it's six episodes and they're awesome. We loved the show.

• 1:03:22Chris Ryan?

  What else do you have to do in your life? We're off Monday for Labor Day?

• 1:03:28Andy Greenwald?

  That's right.

• 1:03:29Chris Ryan?

  And we'll be back the following Thursday. And, you know, by that point, we'll be getting almost into task. We'll have the paper, obviously, Alien. But we'll probably also try to catch up with the end of Families Like Ours by before task kind of takes over half the week for us. I'm really putting a lot of eggs in the task basket, but I think you'll see why soon.

• 1:03:50Andy Greenwald?

  I'm very excited about that.

• 1:03:51Chris Ryan?

  In fact, if anybody wants to send me a task basket, I would receive it. I would take it.

• 1:03:57Andy Greenwald?

  Actually, they could send it locally as long as you're there.

• 1:04:00Chris Ryan?

  It's true. Send it to C.O., care of Pat Brother. I'll get it eventually. Greenwald, great to see you. Thank you so much for being there for me for the last few weeks. And thanks to Kai and John and everybody. Kaya on vacation for producing and for making making this thing run. And we will be back on Thursday.

• 1:04:19Andy Greenwald?

  And when we're back in studio, we're going to talk about redecorating. We need to, we need to add some flair here. So think about that on your flight home.

• 1:04:27Chris Ryan?

  So that's where the task basket comes in.

• 1:04:29Andy Greenwald?

  See? Look how good you are.

• 1:04:39Speaker 06

  My name is Taylor. The economy is crushing moms like me right now, even working full time. My paychecks went straight to childcare and all of the bills. Nutritious food is really important to me.

• 1:04:52Speaker 07

  High food costs and changes to nutrition programs constrain family budgets. Your donation helps Feeding America provide the nourishing food families need.

• 1:05:01Speaker 06

  I'm hopeful for stability.

• 1:05:03Speaker 07

  When budgets strain, your gift sustains. Give now at feedingamerica.org/communityresponse.

• 1:05:10Speaker 08

  Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger, fresh for everyone. Restrictions apply. See site or store for details.