‘Alien: Earth’ Episode 4, ‘Star Wars: Starfighter’ Casting News, and ‘The Eastern Gate’ Finale

Chris and Andy talk about some recent industry headlines, including the rumored casting of Nicolas Cage in ‘True Detective’ Season 5, Matthew McConaughey reuniting with Nic Pizzolatto (3:19), and ‘Star Wars: Starfighter’ adding Amy Adams and Aaron Pierre (13:09). Then, they react to the first trailer for the upcoming FX show from Sterlin Harjo, ‘The Lowdown’ starring Ethan Hawke (19:01), before discussing the fourth episode of ‘Alien: Earth’ (20:58). Later, they break down the final two episodes of ‘The Eastern Gate’ and why they enjoyed it so much (39:16). 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.

• 0:02Speaker 00

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• 0:27Andy Greenwald?

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• 1:00Andy Greenwald?

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• 2:03Andy Greenwald?

  Stand up and walk now.

• 2:06Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. And joining me in the studio, thank God he speaks fluent xenomorph, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 2:22Andy Greenwald?

  It's a beautiful thing to have you back.

• 2:23Chris Ryan?

  I am back in Los Angeles. What is going on?

• 2:27Andy Greenwald?

  Did you like the way I laid out all those orange traffic cones for you on the way into the studio?

• 2:30Chris Ryan?

  That was cool. That was cool. Uh, Greenwald, it's great to see you, man. Uh, great to be back in the studio. Just want to say thank you to everybody who reached out on various platforms to offer their condolences to me. That was really, really cool. Um, I'm gonna try and get back to everybody, but very, very, very sweet of people to reach out through our email address, which is the watch at spotify.com and on Instagram and various other ways.

• 2:53Andy Greenwald?

  People love you. It was beautiful.

• 2:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it was really cool. Honestly, very moving stuff.

• 2:57Andy Greenwald?

  Can you handle it or can you not handle it?

• 2:59Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I have to put up a wall of irony, you know, to deal with any real human emotions, but thankfully, uh, I've got you.

• 3:06Andy Greenwald?

  I am literally that for you. I will cover you in an emotion fight.

• 3:11Chris Ryan?

  Uh, today on The Watch, we're doing a little bit of news. We had some True Detecting going on, uh, that we want to talk about.

• 3:18Andy Greenwald?

  Weirdly, this news happened when you were absent and it didn't really like-

• 3:22Chris Ryan?

  Somehow the Andy version of The Watch didn't do that.

• 3:24Andy Greenwald?

  Didn't ping our little like radars.

• 3:26Chris Ryan?

  Um, I also want to talk a little bit about the Taylor Sheridan universe, which is connected to True Detective now in a funny way. And we want to talk a little bit about the Lowdown, which is the new Ethan Hawke series from Sterling Harjo that's coming on FX next month. We will be breaking down the fourth episode of Alien.

• 3:43Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 3:43Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and-

• 3:44Andy Greenwald?

  We could do the fourth.

• 3:45Chris Ryan?

  And we're also going to talk about the last few episodes of Eastern Gate.

• 3:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 3:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:49Andy Greenwald?

  Save ourselves. A treat for us.

• 3:51Chris Ryan?

  Andy's got a hard out at 11:30, but I need 10 solid minutes to talk about Eva's various looks in the final two episodes.

• 3:58Andy Greenwald?

  You're gonna need 10 years to unpack what this did to you.

• 4:01Chris Ryan?

  Um-

• 4:01Andy Greenwald?

  Also, I want to star fight a little bit.

• 4:03Chris Ryan?

  Did you want to do any TSITP? Are you guys still behind at the house?

• 4:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, still behind. Still behind.

• 4:08Chris Ryan?

  Incredible shot play called by, uh, by Conrad.

• 4:11Andy Greenwald?

  You think?

• 4:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he went deep. Yeah.

• 4:14Andy Greenwald?

  Did it work out for him?

• 4:15Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I mean, I think ultimately it will, but uh, he fucked up that wedding. He, he ruined it.

• 4:22Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, he did?

• 4:23Chris Ryan?

  And it didn't happen.

• 4:24Andy Greenwald?

  Wow.

• 4:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:25Andy Greenwald?

  Spoiler at the top. Do you, I'm realizing now that when I tell you things like, my daughter is behind, but it quote, doesn't matter because she's read the book, that you must be like, oh my God, they've invented cloning.

• 4:37Chris Ryan?

  Well.

• 4:38Andy Greenwald?

  He's recreated himself in aggregate.

• 4:40Chris Ryan?

  That's right. Um, they're at the edge of Canada now. This is now, we're going to be, we're going to be in like a uncharted territory, I think.

• 4:47Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 4:48Chris Ryan?

  Well, we'll see. I think that there's some parts of the book that don't address this. This is all coming from, you know, sources that I have, not, not from my own experience.

• 4:56Andy Greenwald?

  I really think that in year 13, 14 of the podcast, we should just go completely into Miss Info. Like we cover things we don't watch.

• 5:04Chris Ryan?

  Minya or Miss Info like?

• 5:05Andy Greenwald?

  We should, we should become Mr.'s.

• 5:07Chris Ryan?

  Mr.'s Info, yeah.

• 5:09Andy Greenwald?

  We should only cover things we don't watch or hear about, or have a vibe about.

• 5:13Chris Ryan?

  Yes. I've, I watch the show every week. This has now become.

• 5:17Andy Greenwald?

  Well, you're like talking about what's in the book. You don't know.

• 5:19Chris Ryan?

  Oh yeah, it's true. Um, good. Well, let's start with, uh, the True Detective news that came out while I was away.

• 5:24Andy Greenwald?

  Just again, I'm looking at the camera. Chris is back and we love him. And because he's back, we are going to cover three week old True Detective rumored casting over the roll camera on the new Star Wars.

• 5:37Chris Ryan?

  Come on, we're old hands at this. When it gets this far down that we're talking about who he would be playing and where it would be set, it's fucking happening, right?

• 5:46Andy Greenwald?

  Sure. No, I'm not saying it's not happening.

• 5:49Chris Ryan?

  The news is that Nicolas Cage is going to star in True Detective season five from Issa Lopez.

• 5:53Andy Greenwald?

  Is he playing both roles?

• 5:55Chris Ryan?

  Is there, what?

• 5:56Andy Greenwald?

  Well, isn't traditionally True Detective, remember the fan casting was always this person and this person? It was like two great tastes that go great together.

• 6:01Chris Ryan?

  They didn't really do that with the Jodie Foster season though, did they?

• 6:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it was her and, and. And what's her name? Sorry.

• 6:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:07Andy Greenwald?

  No disrespect.

• 6:07Chris Ryan?

  Uh, they, but they like, it wasn't like, I think you're, you're on to something. I don't know who the, who the second.

• 6:13Andy Greenwald?

  I think they're doing it like adaptation.

• 6:17Andy Greenwald?

  Are you in?

• 6:17Chris Ryan?

  Are you in? That's the question. Uh, it would be set in New York City in Queens and, and Cage would play a New York City police detective, I think. Uh, based on what I've read. Um, this is great casting. I just want to say even better location. Bring it home and do not shoot this in Toronto. Do not shoot this in, in Charlotte and pretend like you're in Queens. Please.

• 6:38Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 6:38Chris Ryan?

  Go get the handhelds. Go out to the food stalls. Queens.

• 6:43Andy Greenwald?

  Vote for Zorron.

• 6:44Chris Ryan?

  It's like, be in the streets when you do this. And I think it would be awesome. Uh, Cage. This feels like a real like, welcome back. If he does this, best actor Emmy, like nailed on.

• 6:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Uh, do you though, I'm going to be, I mean, I'm not going to take it easy on you because it's your first day back.

• 7:02Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 7:03Andy Greenwald?

  Like, is your enthusiasm for this? Because in some part of your muscle memory, you are like Nicolas Cage, Pizzolato, let's go. Like, does the franchise still carry that weight for you? Or did anything about what Issa Lopez did with the franchise, the direction she pivoted it into? What we were left with, with season four, is that?

• 7:24Chris Ryan?

  The franchise is, is just really, fun is a weird word to use when describing True Detective.

• 7:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 7:29Chris Ryan?

  The first season of True Detective is among the greatest seasons of television ever made. I still stand by that.

• 7:34Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 7:34Chris Ryan?

  The subsequent seasons are just highly entertaining to me for either the ridiculousness of two. Uh, I think the depth and, and beauty of three.

• 7:44Andy Greenwald?

  There was a richness to three that I appreciated.

• 7:46Chris Ryan?

  Each one of those seasons, including Night Country, when Issa took over, Issa Lopez took over, is still got the like, ooh, like, is that a clue? Is this a thing? Is this like?

• 7:55Andy Greenwald?

  And fundamentally, we want people to be investing in like, okay, we're doing big names, big locations, mystery show.

• 8:01Chris Ryan?

  I can't do this with every show. Like, I can't do it with like Severance and this.

• 8:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, we're getting older.

• 8:06Chris Ryan?

  This is the show that I'm like, I would like to screenshot, like that bulletin board behind her and see what she's got up on there. And I, I did, I went, I went off the deep end with three. I had some real theories about that. I don't know where you were for that.

• 8:18Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, you don't think I was here?

• 8:19Chris Ryan?

  I think me and Concepcion did that.

• 8:21Andy Greenwald?

  You did a secret, separate.

• 8:22Chris Ryan?

  Well, it wasn't secret. It was published.

• 8:24Andy Greenwald?

  I wasn't aware of it. I didn't, I didn't, I was kind of in a media blackout.

• 8:29Chris Ryan?

  We're here for that?

• 8:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 8:32Chris Ryan?

  Speaking of Nick Pizzolato, he is apparently reuniting with Matthew McConaughey.

• 8:35Andy Greenwald?

  So is this hashtag your true detective? You know what I mean? Like, do you feel like this is a line in the sand?

• 8:41Chris Ryan?

  But there's some, some interesting wrinkles. First of all, it's Nick Pizzolato reuniting with McConaughey for Netflix after a, at least reported bidding war between Amazon, Apple and, and, you know, the big guns. And the show is going to co-star Cole Hauser. Put a pin on that because I have more to tell you about that. And it's, I think it's like Untitled or Nick Pizzolato Brothers Show. So I assume McConaughey and Hauser will play brothers. And it is produced by or being brought to market by Skydance Sports, which is leading people to think this is probably a sports show of some kind.

• 9:17Andy Greenwald?

  Weird.

• 9:18Chris Ryan?

  Which would be interesting because just, I just don't laugh a lot when I watch Nick Pizzolato shows. I mean, there are funny parts of True Detective, season one. There are funny parts of the Magnificent Seven, you know, script that he at least took a pass at or wrote. But, you know, if, I think when you think sports, you think sports comedy.

• 9:39Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 9:40Chris Ryan?

  And so it would be interesting to see Nick Pizzolato try his hand at Slap Shot, you know, or, or, or whatever.

• 9:45Andy Greenwald?

  Blades of Glory.

• 9:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:49Andy Greenwald?

  Interesting to note, McConaughey just finished shooting. I think they did get back together and finish the show.

• 9:55Chris Ryan?

  The Apple show.

• 9:55Andy Greenwald?

  An Apple show with Woody Harrelson called, I believe, Brothers.

• 9:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. No, is that, was that what it is?

• 10:00Andy Greenwald?

  They play brothers.

• 10:00Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so then this isn't that. I must have gotten my, my wires crossed.

• 10:04Andy Greenwald?

  Potentially they are playing brothers again in this.

• 10:06Chris Ryan?

  I mean, his characters are allowed to have brothers in every show.

• 10:08Andy Greenwald?

  Just because we don't, doesn't mean others can't.

• 10:14Andy Greenwald?

  Can you update me though? Because you're a little bit more of a textologist than I am, but like, I kind of thought McConaughey was not acting so much anymore because he was legitimately going to. Run for governor of Texas.

• 10:25Chris Ryan?

  I mean, do they have elections in Texas?

• 10:29Andy Greenwald?

  Currently, currently, oh, you're right. He's playing a long game, which is to say.

• 10:35Chris Ryan?

  Oops. Should I be king of Texas? No, I think I'd heard the same thing, which was that he has political ambitions and that maybe he was going to dial it back. But he's got, you know, the Apple show, he's got the Paul Greengrass movie about.

• 10:48Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:48Chris Ryan?

  Forest fires and then he's, he was rumored to be joining the Yellowstone spinoff show.

• 10:55Andy Greenwald?

  That's been rumored for a while.

• 10:56Chris Ryan?

  But then what happened was that seemed to go away. He's now doing this Pizzalotto show. Taylor Sheridan is starting a show called The Dutton Ranch, which picks up with Kelly Riley and Cole Hauser's characters, Rip and Beth.

• 11:12Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, Cole Hauser's doing double duty.

• 11:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And guess who's doing that show?

• 11:17Andy Greenwald?

  Tell me.

• 11:17Chris Ryan?

  Annette Bening.

• 11:19Andy Greenwald?

  This is incredible.

• 11:20Chris Ryan?

  Do you think weirdly, though, there is another show called The Madison. Why am I yelling?

• 11:25Andy Greenwald?

  Because you really care about this. It's good to feel again, isn't it?

• 11:30Andy Greenwald?

  Listen, passion comes out in different ways.

• 11:32Chris Ryan?

  Which is Michelle Pfeiffer and Patrick J. Adams, and they play like New Yorkers who have to move to Montana and become ranchers, I think.

• 11:39Andy Greenwald?

  But is that Sheridan?

• 11:40Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. I mean, there's Montana.

• 11:42Andy Greenwald?

  Wait, is that show a Sheridan show?

• 11:43Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 11:44Andy Greenwald?

  Is Patrick J. Adams the suit who likes us?

• 11:47Chris Ryan?

  He's a man. He's an actor and he's a father. Yeah.

• 11:50Andy Greenwald?

  So you think all actors who are men and fathers like our show?

• 11:52Chris Ryan?

  No, I'm saying like I'm giving him more humanity than just a suit.

• 11:56Andy Greenwald?

  No, on the show suits.

• 11:57Chris Ryan?

  I know, I know.

• 11:57Andy Greenwald?

  But isn't he the guy on the show suits?

• 11:59Chris Ryan?

  I believe so.

• 12:00Andy Greenwald?

  Who once did a thing with us on Instagram.

• 12:01Chris Ryan?

  Well, I think what happened was is that you said something kind of snide about suits and he filmed himself being like, oh, man.

• 12:10Andy Greenwald?

  I'm glad I brought it up again.

• 12:11Chris Ryan?

  Or maybe I said something snide. I like suits, so it's not, it's not a big deal.

• 12:14Andy Greenwald?

  Look at, look at you covering the bases. So Pat Adams, look at this, Pat Adams just. God, I'm sure he's a great guy.

• 12:21Chris Ryan?

  Not sure if Dutton Ranch. I don't know if Dutton Ranch and the Madison take place in like the same timeline or area. You know, obviously, Taylor Sheridan moves around with the decades of the Duttons a lot, but.

• 12:33Andy Greenwald?

  Would you like me, as someone who's been in Montana recently, to weigh in on these shows?

• 12:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, is there enough Montana for both of them?

• 12:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, it's very big.

• 12:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:40Andy Greenwald?

  That's my take.

• 12:41Chris Ryan?

  Do you think?

• 12:41Andy Greenwald?

  It's a beautiful state.

• 12:42Chris Ryan?

  Michelle Pfeiffer's character leaving New York, first day in Montana, Dave Sushi?

• 12:48Andy Greenwald?

  You said it, not me. I do.

• 12:49Chris Ryan?

  Uh.

• 12:50Andy Greenwald?

  I do. It's a nice, like, port of call. And boy, do our listeners know a lot about Dave Sushi in Montana. It is remarkable. I appreciate their thoroughness on that topic.

• 12:59Chris Ryan?

  Sheridan also has Landman, season two.

• 13:01Andy Greenwald?

  Can I make a comment about this?

• 13:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:03Andy Greenwald?

  Um, you know, you and I are, you know, quote unquote, in the industry. We, we make our bones here and sometimes we look in the trades for material to talk about on our podcast. And so I am struck every time that I go to The Hollywood Reporter that on the, if I ever make it to the bottom of the page, it's like top stories. The number one story on The Hollywood Reporter for the last six to eight weeks has been Landman, season two premiere date announced. That is the number one story in Hollywood.

• 13:32Chris Ryan?

  I pour myself a giant bowl of Weenies. I have a cup of black coffee and I hit refresh on that story 3,000 times.

• 13:41Andy Greenwald?

  Just tears.

• 13:43Chris Ryan?

  Tears of oil coming out of my eyes.

• 13:45Andy Greenwald?

  Coarsing down your face.

• 13:45Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Sam Elliott's on it this year, season.

• 13:49Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, what's he gonna do? Let me guess, we know what he's gonna do. That's cool.

• 13:53Chris Ryan?

  What if Sam Elliott was like a pencil pusher from Backy's?

• 13:56Andy Greenwald?

  What if he's some wind power cuck?

• 14:00Andy Greenwald?

  Who, who Billy Bob Thornton dresses down for his commitment to alternative energy?

• 14:04Chris Ryan?

  He's like a dude from Vermont.

• 14:05Andy Greenwald?

  You think the sun is free?

• 14:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:08Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, no, that was Sam Elliott being on the good guy's side.

• 14:10Chris Ryan?

  And presumably Andy Garcia will be in it more this season. He shows up at the end of the first season.

• 14:15Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's gonna be, I really hope, you know how when, um, when doing their for your consideration stuff, the, the, the team behind the pit is just like, rest assured that we will be covering the effects of the big, beautiful bill on healthcare.

• 14:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:30Andy Greenwald?

  I hope that season two of Landman really embraces the fact that the. EPA is now trying to find a way to put more forever chemicals into things.

• 14:36Chris Ryan?

  That Tommy is in charge of the EPA.

• 14:38Andy Greenwald?

  Well, what if the whole season is just happiness? What if like all the problems are gone because they won?

• 14:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:45Andy Greenwald?

  And it was just an incredible victory.

• 14:46Chris Ryan?

  Well, no, because he needs the, he needs oil to be at a very steady price. Cause remember the speech he gives the lawyer about like oil needs to be at seventy-eight dollars a barrel.

• 14:56Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 14:57Chris Ryan?

  Because that's like, otherwise people go too crazy. But if it gets too low, it's a bust and everybody has to sell their trucks. Sorry about that. Getting used to my surroundings.

• 15:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Well, I can't wait for him to have some more speeches this season.

• 15:09Chris Ryan?

  Good.

• 15:09Andy Greenwald?

  Can, can we talk about the Starfighter stuff?

• 15:13Chris Ryan?

  Sure. Yeah. Deal this out to me. Come on.

• 15:15Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. Well, I just like, production has begun.

• 15:18Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 15:18Andy Greenwald?

  I know you were excited about this.

• 15:19Chris Ryan?

  On Sean Levy's Star Wars colon Starfighter.

• 15:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. It has, uh, the cast has expanded with, um, your number one, Amy Adams joining the cast. Aaron Pierre, who is just tech avail, despite apparently being the future face of the DC Universe. Cause he's in Morning Show, he's in this now.

• 15:37Andy Greenwald?

  Previously announced Gosling as the star, Mia Goth, Matt Smith as the villain.

• 15:41Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 15:42Andy Greenwald?

  Great. Um, here's the thing that I wanted to just.

• 15:45Chris Ryan?

  Who wrote this?

• 15:46Andy Greenwald?

  Jonathan Tropper.

• 15:47Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 15:48Andy Greenwald?

  Your friends and neighbors, Banshee, um, et cetera. Here's what we know about the movie. These scripts penned by Tropper and which is, I'm just reading now from the place you go to for Landman News, Hollywood Reporter. Uh, is of course being kept under wraps, is said to see Gosling's character, who I can only assume is the titular Starfighter. Protecting a young charge from evildoers in a galaxy spanning adventure. And they were thrilled to announce that they cast a kid named Flynn Gray, a young Irish lad as said, charge.

• 16:23Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 16:24Andy Greenwald?

  So once again, it's Mando time. Once again, one of these movies is about.

• 16:30Chris Ryan?

  And Obi-Wan time. This is the same plot as Obi-Wan, right?

• 16:33Andy Greenwald?

  It's the same plot of all of these stories of we, even to a degree Logan did this of like, we must protect the youth. And that is my job.

• 16:42Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 16:42Andy Greenwald?

  It is a lone wolf and cub one more time.

• 16:47Andy Greenwald?

  I think we have to stop this. Now, I wanna, I wanna like, admit my complicity. I'm a part of the parenting industrial complex.

• 16:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's your fault.

• 16:54Andy Greenwald?

  And it is fair, hold, okay. Okay, okay.

• 16:58Chris Ryan?

  Everybody being like, this is the most profound experience is to take care of a child. That's why we get, to get this, to get here in Star Wars.

• 17:05Andy Greenwald?

  Let me just say, that this is the first podcast in a few, that not only you're here, but that my children aren't there making goofy ass faces at me. And let me say, nothing would get me to the multiplexes faster than a story about Ryan Gosling being cool as fuck with a blaster, driving around space in his space plane.

• 17:26Chris Ryan?

  Literally, just make space drive. Like, have this dude be a fucking Jedi getaway driver. Have Cliff Martinez do the score.

• 17:35Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, god.

• 17:36Chris Ryan?

  Have all the spaceship lights be fucking neon. Have Carey Mulligan stare at him one more time for us, stare at him. And then that's your best Star Wars movie made other than, and/or an Empire Strikes Back.

• 17:49Andy Greenwald?

  And Albert Brooks is a hut. But, how do you have access to these fucking good ideas still?

• 17:55Chris Ryan?

  Because I know what I like, I know what I like.

• 17:57Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, it's so pure, it's so pure. The point, the thing is that people don't understand, it's weird because there is an intense nostalgia of our generation, that we argue about and get annoyed about all the time, where it's not enough to have loved Amblin movies and Star Wars movies when we were kids, because they were all about adventure. Like, the world is bigger than what we think it might be, and maybe we'll get to go there someday. And then all of these movies, these, our generation got the, got the keys, and they were like, "Let's just make them again, let's just do Super 8." It's that, the flip side of that is when now they are making Star Wars movies, they're making Star Wars movies about validating their own choices not to be space adventurers.

• 18:35Chris Ryan?

  But what I don't understand is like... Even the first Star Wars movie, not, not the prequels, but like when you fall in love with a new hope.

• 18:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 18:44Chris Ryan?

  And you're a kid and you're watching that, you're like, I want to be a teenager or a young man going out into the world and doing this. I don't want to be like taken care of.

• 18:52Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 18:53Chris Ryan?

  Indefinitely by a space knight.

• 18:55Andy Greenwald?

  You also don't want to be Luke. You're like, one day I could be Han.

• 18:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:59Andy Greenwald?

  I don't think anybody watched that movie and was like, I could be Luke. We were all embarrassed by our Luke-ness. And then we were like, this is crazy.

• 19:05Chris Ryan?

  One day I could be the dude running the pleasure barge, you know?

• 19:08Andy Greenwald?

  There you go. There you go. That's the spirit, young man. Dream bigger. Like, what about a hero who's child free by choice?

• 19:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:18Andy Greenwald?

  And cool with it? Why is that hard to do? Give us something to aspire to.

• 19:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:25Andy Greenwald?

  Can you tell my kids aren't in school yet? This is so crazy to me that they are doing that thing again, which has, I don't think that's what people are checking for. I don't understand the four quadrant algorithmic information they have that suggests that we need a movie that we should bring children to because children want to see children on screen. I don't think that's true either.

• 19:47Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. I don't know. I honestly don't know how to answer it. Like, I don't know what it is, what information they get where they're like, this is just the only viable story we can tell.

• 19:56Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think there's a deeper and.

• 19:58Chris Ryan?

  It just strikes me as being, it's, it's fear. You know what I mean? It's fear to.

• 20:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 20:04Chris Ryan?

  This is the safest way for them to go out there. Sean Levy is a very reliable director. Ryan Gosling is a reliable movie star. By the time this comes out, Project Hail Mary will have come out. I'm sure that will be fairly successful. It just seems like kind of like a layup to do all this and it's going to be like winky and like nice and sweet. And it'll, it'll just be a saccharine Star Wars movie, I bet.

• 20:25Andy Greenwald?

  It's just the difference, I mean, one of the most profound differences between the entertainment that we were raised on and the entertainment that my kids or even younger kids now are raised on is that our, we saw stuff that was about adults. And we were like, okay, we'll find our way into that or it's something to look forward to. And everything now is for kids or to keep people feeling like kids or to have you looking backwards instead of forwards.

• 20:49Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 20:50Andy Greenwald?

  That's what they've done to us.

• 20:52Chris Ryan?

  Landman's nod.

• 20:54Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think Landman is aspirational adulthood for adults?

• 20:58Chris Ryan?

  It's about...

• 20:59Andy Greenwald?

  Kinda is.

• 21:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Are you excited about the lowdown coming next month on FX?

• 21:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I really am.

• 21:05Chris Ryan?

  We'll be talking about this show ad nauseam, but it dropped its first trailer.

• 21:10Chris Ryan?

  If you had to describe the vibe, this is basically Ethan Hawke's character is based on, I think, a real Oklahoma kind of character who is a journalist, conspiracy theorist, like, kind of...

• 21:22Andy Greenwald?

  A truth-storian.

• 21:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and Ethan Hawke, it looks a lot like The Long Goodbye. It looks a lot like, you know, Big Lebowski. It looks a little bit like, you know, it has kind of a, what if there was a really cool private detective mystery, but we set it in Tulsa and surrounded it with this incredible gallery of characters. It's Hawke, Tim Blake Nelson, Keith David,

• 21:46Chris Ryan?

  I think Ryan Kira Armstrong, who's gonna be the new Buffy the Vampire Slayer is in it.

• 21:50Andy Greenwald?

  Gene Triplehorn back?

• 21:51Chris Ryan?

  Gene Triplehorn, yeah.

• 21:53Andy Greenwald?

  Tracy Letts.

• 21:54Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, Tracy Letts is in this.

• 21:55Andy Greenwald?

  You ever heard of him? Killer Mike?

• 21:56Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 21:57Andy Greenwald?

  Macon Blair, like, this is, Dinklage shows up, like, this is a pretty sick cast. I can't be impartial about this because we, I, we love Sterling, we love Reservation Dogs, big Hawke guys here, but I also have to say, like, the way you are passionate about the overall Sheridan project of promoting big oil in the guise of entertaining television shows, I am completely invested in the idea that a funny, smart filmmaker could be like, "I like Altman, and I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna bring you a vibe that has historically not always worked in the streaming era, and I'm just gonna go all in."

• 22:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:34Andy Greenwald?

  And everything about this trailer is designed for me to be excited about it, from Kyle McLaughlin being in it to just the entire, just the tenor of it, and the idea that he had enough juice within FX to be like, "I'm gonna cast the most interesting people and have the most possible fun with it." I think the trailer looks so sick, I'm very excited about the show. But I also want shows like this.

• 22:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

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• 24:32Chris Ryan?

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• 25:17Chris Ryan?

  Viori clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. Well, let's talk about what FX has on the air right now, which is Alien Earth.

• 25:25Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 25:25Chris Ryan?

  Observation, co-written by Noah Hawley with Bobak Esfarghani, and it was directed by Uglah Hawksdottor, who I think gets another credit later in the series. Yeah, the sixth episode.

• 25:38Andy Greenwald?

  That's such a cool, that name, I believe, means "daughter of the hawk."

• 25:41Chris Ryan?

  I did an awesome job on this, I thought. I thought this synthesized the dreamy, fading in and out, like dissolving visual style that they've adopted to distance themselves from the Scott Cameron Fincher style that we reassociate with Alien. And yet, I felt like this was the most TV of all the episodes that they've done so far. Where like-

• 26:08Andy Greenwald?

  It definitely was.

• 26:08Chris Ryan?

  Everybody kind of gets a five to seven minute scene, kind of get an update on where everybody's head is at. There's some alarming business going on all across the board. And the moments and beats, especially between a couple of the characters, I actually felt, even if they were synthetic or hybrids or cyborgs talking, kind of like started to click a little bit more for me here. I still have reservations about some of this stuff. What did you think of this episode?

• 26:36Andy Greenwald?

  I want to pick up on what you're saying, because there's no question this is the most quote-unquote "TV" episode thus far. It is also the tax you pay on the ticket for, you know, an adventure action movie being brought to the small screen. The first three episodes were smartly an Alien movie with this Lost Boys synthetic hybrid plot glommed onto it. And inevitably, this was going to be a step back in terms of pacing and tone. I can look at this, again, from a design perspective and be like, "That is very smartly done. This is the appropriate place for this. If we are going to be spending time with these characters over the course of a season and potentially multiple seasons, we need to get to know them better when they are not being menaced by facehuggers or etc."

• 27:20Andy Greenwald?

  The issue I had with the episode was that I don't particularly like spending time with any of these people, now that we are spending time with them. And that's a TV problem, you know, in the sense that instead of, I can appreciate what's being shown to me on the whiteboard-

• 27:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, of course.

• 27:38Andy Greenwald?

  -of ideas and, but that little, the secret sauce that we were talking about with something, you know, obviously more intentionally throwback like The Pit is missing. I'm not saying they should be the same show. I don't want to be misconstrued here. But when the, are they both named Sylvia, the two doctors who are married?

• 27:57Chris Ryan?

  Uh, they're the, yeah, it's Dame and Arthur Sylvia's.

• 28:00Andy Greenwald?

  So when they had their, you know, other than a brief moment in the pilot, I think this was kind of their first them talking without anyone else-

• 28:06Chris Ryan?

  Their hard launch, yeah.

• 28:07Andy Greenwald?

  Hard launch as a couple.

• 28:08Chris Ryan?

  Your science teacher and your psychologist are getting married.

• 28:11Andy Greenwald?

  That's very sweet. Or they already are married.

• 28:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:14Andy Greenwald?

  But it did feel, I understood again in the whiteboard placement of it, why they had their, are we really sure we should be ethically doing what we're doing here moment? But it did feel a little rote to me because I don't have a deep sense of their personalities. I don't feel particularly invested in them yet as people. There's time to do it. I'm not off the fence, but I felt the grinding gears of that conversation more than I was able to relax into the cascading waterfalls of narrative story.

• 28:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Uh, if this show was led by and featured in almost every scene, either Timothy Oliphant or Bobby C. Say, what would you be saying about it?

• 28:53Andy Greenwald?

  Top 10 of the year.

• 28:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:55Andy Greenwald?

  This, this is such a great way to frame it. There are still these things that I'm-

• 28:59Chris Ryan?

  Every time Oliphant's on screen, I'm like this, this, he's, he's so good as this character. You know, that like bitchy, icy, but still like, I mean, it's capturing some of the charms of like Ian Holm or Lance Henriksen and like that kind of like, you're a human, but there's something missing. And the hair that, you know, like everything, every choice that he has made and is making. Now, sometimes you're like, that was a little bit Rayland Givens or that seemed a little bit like sassy for a robot, but- I am finding like his curiosity, his like watching of people to be as effective as anything he's saying. And then Sisay, who's playing Moro, the one who's essentially

• 29:39Chris Ryan?

  been trapped talking to Slightly for two episodes now, is still like the most compelling thing on the screen.

• 29:46Andy Greenwald?

  Let's just take a moment to praise him as an actor because he is just doing one-sided monologues in various settings. And I find him so magnetic.

• 29:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:57Andy Greenwald?

  And I find him so charismatic and compelling. And he's able to do a very difficult acting trick, I think, where it's not just that he's selling us on the essentially the monologues he's giving us. But I feel myself being psychologically manipulated by the character in that we are all slightly when he's talking. And I'm like, well, he makes some pretty good points about who owns what.

• 30:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:17Andy Greenwald?

  You know, I think he's so fantastic. And in a, it's hard not to, you can, you can accept an ensemble show, and we can, you know, accept where it's going. But, or that there's room for people to pop out or whatever. But there's something that I do feel is missing where I kind of wish it was ultimately, I can't believe I'm saying this, the cyborg versus the synthetic versus the hybrid. Maybe that's where we're going.

• 30:45Chris Ryan?

  I think.

• 30:45Andy Greenwald?

  But those three characters have the most, what's the word I'm not allowed to say? Riz?

• 30:53Chris Ryan?

  I think that, that's a really good point because you don't actually see the three of them, or even very many combos of two. Like, it's been a minute, I think, even since Kersh and Wendy have interacted that much. And that is essentially the triangle that I'm most interested in as well.

• 31:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 31:12Chris Ryan?

  The sort of, the three different kinds of these next step of evolution. I forgive me for not remembering the name of the character, but the bald guy who follows Boy Cavalier around and says, are you sure you should be doing that, sir? What did you think of the philosophical conversation that he had with Hermit, the Alex Lothar character, where it's like,

• 31:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 31:34Chris Ryan?

  Is that my sister? And he's like, well, that's what we want to keep you around for, is to figure that out. I think.

• 31:44Chris Ryan?

  Broadly, like whatever they've done with Wendy is pretty remarkable, but they seem to have like, I don't know whether that was like a lie that he was telling hermit, or that if it is actually is important to them that humans need to not be able to distinguish whether or not this, the hybrid is or isn't their relative friend, whoever.

• 32:03Andy Greenwald?

  Let me turn this back to a question for you.

• 32:04Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 32:04Andy Greenwald?

  How do you feel generally about a show that is at its core, and I respect it, about these terrifying aliens eating people's, ripping them to pieces and coming out of their bodies, that is kind of, at least through four episodes, lightly flirting with bigger thematic questions? For example, are corporations people?

• 32:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:25Andy Greenwald?

  Do governments work?

• 32:26Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 32:26Andy Greenwald?

  What makes a human, human?

• 32:30Andy Greenwald?

  All of these things are present in the text.

• 32:32Chris Ryan?

  If we could just talk to aliens, would we be like, what's up? What's on your mind? Yeah.

• 32:36Andy Greenwald?

  We do subway takes with them.

• 32:39Chris Ryan?

  What's your take?

• 32:42Chris Ryan?

  Swing choppers coming.

• 32:43Andy Greenwald?

  100% disagree. 100% disagree.

• 32:50Andy Greenwald?

  I currently am still getting my arms around, because Noah's a smart guy and he wants to play with these things and he's pushing them in the middle of the table. And I think it's again, in the spirit of Trojan Horse Prestige TV, this is a very smart way to do it. Because at the end of, at the end of every episode, there is a xenomorph, basically. But how do you feel about these questions kind of being sprinkled in? Like, do you feel compelled by the question of, is this your sister? I do not yet feel necessarily compelled by the thematic stuff that's going on.

• 33:17Chris Ryan?

  I guess I don't necessarily, but

• 33:23Chris Ryan?

  I do find it interesting that like all of the, even of our, a lot of our contemporary tech bros are interested in transhumanism. And like, what is the next step of evolution? And much as I'm like, we have plenty to solve right here in this moment, clearly that's where they are, what they're interested in is the future. And so it's interesting to watch Holly negotiate some of the moral and philosophical and ethical and also just like,

• 33:54Chris Ryan?

  Uh visceral emotional reactions because you have to imagine certain things like that. And you have to imagine what would happen if the memories of somebody and their personality traits at a fixed age were downloaded into someone who would at once physically never get older, but I guess what we're seeing with Nibs and everybody's sort of like pubescent, you know, different like sort of like what happens with, you know, if you have somebody like Nibs who has PTSD and is going through, I guess, a mental health crisis, even though she's a robot.

• 34:27Andy Greenwald?

  Or she's been implanted with an eyeball monster.

• 34:29Chris Ryan?

  Or she's been implanted with an eyeball monster. What happened on that tower and in those fights that those synthetics had, hybrids had with the aliens that we're not seeing and we don't know yet?

• 34:40Andy Greenwald?

  I, I do, I'm finding the, for budgetary reasons, for tribute to the original franchise reasons, the show, for such a big show, it does have a quite a narrow focus.

• 34:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:53Andy Greenwald?

  There really are eight people locked in this building together, which seems to be, you know, again, a nod to the franchise's origins, something's gonna get loose within this building now and you know.

• 35:02Chris Ryan?

  Well, they've got a baked in excuse. It's like, nobody can get out because we can't have anyone knowing about this, although a spaceship did crash into a skyscraper, so.

• 35:12Andy Greenwald?

  Fake news.

• 35:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:13Andy Greenwald?

  Fake news, buddy, come on. They, all of that, all of that is, I get it, and I think it's a smart fix, again, for the canonical timeline problems that this would create by saying, this is all one story, but no one ever knew about this event. But I think within the, the people, the participants of the show in the tower, I guess what I'm looking for also is a little bit more of a variety of perspective. The boy cavalier character has felt pretty frustratingly stunted through four episodes because he's just annoyed that he's smarter than everyone.

• 35:46Chris Ryan?

  I am Peter Pan.

• 35:47Andy Greenwald?

  And he's like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do these things that are very, very, very Noah Hawley script things because that's what I'm doing. I'm gonna read you Peter Pan book, I'm gonna walk around barefoot, I'm gonna see an eyeball monster take, take the, take Ryan Gosling drive a sheep.

• 36:03Andy Greenwald?

  And be like, this is fascinating. And I'm like, what science do you do?

• 36:07Chris Ryan?

  The only reason I like that scene was that he was getting annoyed that the sheep seemed to be looking at Kersh instead of him.

• 36:13Andy Greenwald?

  I like that.

• 36:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, like, I like that he gets jealous of the, you know, of Kersh and the concept of anyone being smarter than him.

• 36:20Andy Greenwald?

  Also, I'm not gonna shit on how cool that scene was. Like, that was really, really creepy.

• 36:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:25Andy Greenwald?

  It was very disturbing. It was cool and made cooler by the idea that we are POV of the eyeball alien. And that it is, what does Kersh say? Highly intelligent.

• 36:35Chris Ryan?

  Yes. It was tracking them. It was watching them. Yeah.

• 36:39Andy Greenwald?

  But there's just, what do you think? Cause you, you've been more patient with the show. You like the franchise more. You watched that previous episode more than one time. Do you think, as a longtime viewer of television and critic of me, what you, what do you think I'm slightly bumping on? And what is your solve for it?

• 36:59Andy Greenwald?

  It's not, it's cause I'm not disliking it. I haven't given my heart to it yet.

• 37:01Chris Ryan?

  If I, I mean, if I may, I think you often, and I do as well, have issues where the POV character, we either lack one or the POV character is marginalized so that we don't really get to live experientially or like vicariously through, like Hermit should be the star of the show, like in a different version of this show. Hermit should be like, what is going on here? Why is my sister like this? I'm trapped here now. Like, he should be the person who's kind of leading this investigation. I think when we go and flip between what's Kersh doing, what's Moro doing, what's Boy Cavalier doing? What are the Sylvia's doing? It kind of messes with the idea of like, who knows what? And it messes with like, what is important about the show and what is the show trying to say?

• 37:44Chris Ryan?

  I think it's throwing a lot of ideas at the wall, but right now I think, well, I wonder whether or not if this was, this guy has been marooned in this strange new world and is learning about it every episode. Not in a mystery way, but just in a way of.

• 38:00Chris Ryan?

  I think I find myself getting distracted by things like, did Moro go to India to find uh, Slightly's family?

• 38:07Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 38:08Chris Ryan?

  Is Moro in a Thai or Siam cafe?

• 38:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 38:13Chris Ryan?

  And outside and does anybody know that that a spaceship crashed into the earth? That would be pretty big news.

• 38:20Andy Greenwald?

  Side note, I love the, I love the exterior location.

• 38:22Chris Ryan?

  I mean, they're so, it's so good.

• 38:24Andy Greenwald?

  Did you like, do you like when the Silvias were at the Lotus?

• 38:26Chris Ryan?

  I'm just vibing out. I think I'm just vibing out with this and I did not expect to because they're in the first two, I was like, this is not my alien. This is not how it works. And I don't really find it like mind blowing to watch uh, Wendy sing to an alien and pet it like a cat, but I hadn't seen that before, really.

• 38:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 38:45Chris Ryan?

  You know, I mean, I guess there's a little bit of that in Resurrection, but it's really interesting, like even the idea of like, well, of course these things have to communicate somehow, right? Like.

• 38:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 38:54Chris Ryan?

  Um.

• 38:55Andy Greenwald?

  I think you're right about the point of view, perspective characters. I think that when you build out a world like this, that is.

• 39:03Chris Ryan?

  Like Ripley's such a great POV character. Like she is like, I am capable, but what the fuck is going on?

• 39:08Andy Greenwald?

  And you get her humanity and it's a shorthand and you're off to the races and you don't have to think about it anymore.

• 39:13Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 39:13Andy Greenwald?

  To his credit, I think Noah, Noah's solve for that is um, Hermit and Wendy's childhood bond and love of Ice Age or whatever. That's not clicking for me.

• 39:24Chris Ryan?

  Me too.

• 39:25Andy Greenwald?

  So because of that, I feel a little bit at sea where I am entertained. I'm intrigued. There are moments when I'm like, this is really working, but I, I'm still looking over my shoulder a little bit.

• 39:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:36Andy Greenwald?

  About where, to, to make all of this, to even be fainting in the direction of all of this, these headier concepts. I mean, I don't think it's unintentional that there was a lot of talk about transitioning and you were this and now you are this and how do we know where the line is? Like, to his credit, as an artist, he's running towards some pretty big concepts.

• 39:55Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 39:56Andy Greenwald?

  But in those moments, I do find myself super normcore, basic criticism. I'm like, okay, just ground me in what humanity isn't this time and in this world.

• 40:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's interesting that we're getting annoyed about like wider world building. Where I, I think the wider world building he's doing is like production design, but not like, oh yeah, like there, the kids talk about the five corporations that took over the world. Or the four or whatever.

• 40:22Andy Greenwald?

  Five.

• 40:24Chris Ryan?

  I mean, maybe it's just, we're just like old men who want to hear a little bit more about that. I don't know.

• 40:29Andy Greenwald?

  It's partly that, but I do think it, and this will be interesting to watch as well, is that like, like Noah's very earned and deserved success in TV has come from dropping Mike Big Statement seasons. He hasn't had to do since his, I mean Legion did three seasons, but, but like not since The Unusuals with Jeremy Renner on ABC, has he had to build a show that potentially could go multiple years with people that you become more and more invested in. And I, I wonder if what I'm either looking for or picking up on, like Wendy's hearing, is the potential friction between I'm going to drop the mic with my statement about this world

• 41:09Andy Greenwald?

  versus corporate factors and amortizing investments requiring this to continue to evolve beyond this.

• 41:16Chris Ryan?

  I haven't watched ahead, but the next episode is called In Space No One Ellipsis, and it's written and directed by Noah Hawley. So I'm very curious to see what that one serves up.

• 41:28Andy Greenwald?

  Can I ask you one thing? Is it a me problem or is it slightly intentional that the end of this episode, where the baby xenomorph jumps out of hermit's lung? Not really strong security glass, I would say, in that lung chamber.

• 41:45Chris Ryan?

  This is a big thing that I have, I have about, but I want to know why. Obviously Kersh knows what's going on with Slightly.

• 41:54Andy Greenwald?

  He knows that, and he, and he's watching this happen, so he was curious.

• 41:56Chris Ryan?

  And he watched this happen, and what is the experiment that we're doing here?

• 42:00Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly.

• 42:01Chris Ryan?

  But then when it gets into like, Nib's doing that to Dame Sylvia? When she like leaps across and like grabs her, I'm like, is there an off switch here? Like, what, like, what is like, for the, for the, like theoretically, I would imagine there would be more like controls over that, but maybe that is also part of the experiment? Like these, like what triggers them? What?

• 42:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, the layers of glass between the aliens and the people and the hybrids and the larger world and larger city is an interesting framing. Because it's, some of it is intentionally porous, because exactly, where's the experiment? Who's standing outside of it? The question I wanted to ask you about my own damaged brain was, did the end, when it jumps out, immediately make you think of the scene in Spaceballs? That was my reference, like there was an element of it when it came out and it's on the table, and it was looking at her and she was looking at it, that I really thought I was going to start going, hello, my baby. And I would have respected the hell out of it. Also, do you know that I was this week years old when I realized that that was John Hurt again? Because I saw Spaceballs in the theater with no knowledge of the Alien film and didn't remember or know.

• 43:07Chris Ryan?

  Oh my god, is he in Spaceballs? I haven't seen Spaceballs in forever.

• 43:10Andy Greenwald?

  That's the thing. I hadn't really seen it since in the theater thirty, almost forty years ago, forty years ago. And that was my introduction to a movie about aliens jumping out of people's chests. But in the movie, there, in Spaceballs, they're at a diner.

• 43:25Chris Ryan?

  Oh, and John Hurt, yeah, okay.

• 43:26Andy Greenwald?

  It's John Hurt, and he goes, "Not again." Shout out John Hurt.

• 43:31Chris Ryan?

  That's good.

• 43:31Andy Greenwald?

  Incredible.

• 43:34Chris Ryan?

  All right, well, we continue to watch intently, and we'll talk about it next week.

• 43:41Chris Ryan?

  Let's chat a little bit about the last couple of episodes of Eastern Gate. Now, this is probably, like, we brought this show up a couple of weeks ago. We were like, this show is insane. It's so good. I think when we first spoke about it, this is a Polish spy drama on HBO Max. It's six episodes. If you haven't watched it, stop listening to us and watch it. It's sick.

• 44:02Andy Greenwald?

  Stop listening to us. Go to your HBO Max controls. Change the language to original Polish. Put the, close captions on, enjoy it. And then, when you fire up And Just Like That later, and Carrie speaking in Polish, it makes more sense.

• 44:19Chris Ryan?

  So, when we first talked about this show, I think that I threw out a couple of comparisons, like twenty-four.

• 44:27Andy Greenwald?

  You did. You were on that.

• 44:28Chris Ryan?

  And you were like, "Oh, okay, that's what you think this is like?" And, you know, maybe you were thinking, "This is more Lacaree. This is more, you know, kind of like the dense, the lies we tell each other kind of personality espionage, like individual espionage." And I was like, "No, I feel like this, like, she's beating people's asses every twenty minutes." Like, I feel like this is an action show, and I think that we were both right.

• 44:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 44:54Chris Ryan?

  But the final two episodes, which are awesome and so stylish and so cool.

• 45:02Chris Ryan?

  And very, very, very, so everything in these three countries is happening in the same two-block radius involving all of the characters from the show.

• 45:10Andy Greenwald?

  It's amazing.

• 45:11Chris Ryan?

  It's very 24, but it's like 24 if Alan Pakula directed it.

• 45:15Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, I definitely was a little suspicious of your comparison until I realized what you're saying, that it is a hero's journey show, that like the fact that everything is falling on Eva's shoulders and all of the determinants of peace in our time are also connected to her personal relationships or personal failings.

• 45:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:39Andy Greenwald?

  I don't think I appreciated that in the first few episodes to the degree that that is what the show is setting out to do, but I also, that made me, when I finished the season, I was so, so, so impressed by the artistry involved to make it feel so earned, right, that she is the avatar for all of this cross-border suffering.

• 46:00Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 46:00Andy Greenwald?

  And that the show absolutely works as both. It is a kick-ass, star-driven, and this is a star performance by Lena Gora, but that it is incredibly dense. We're gonna get to that. Just hold your horses. Drink some, drink some water.

• 46:16Chris Ryan?

  Come out.

• 46:18Andy Greenwald?

  That it is, that it is also an incredibly rich and rewarding and complex spy story.

• 46:24Chris Ryan?

  And also is like a perfect one-and-done season, but they set up for multiple seasons.

• 46:29Andy Greenwald?

  And it's renewed.

• 46:30Chris Ryan?

  And it is renewed.

• 46:30Andy Greenwald?

  It's coming back.

• 46:32Chris Ryan?

  All right, so this will further conversation about Easternia will spoil the rest of the...

• 46:36Andy Greenwald?

  Before we spoil it?

• 46:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:37Andy Greenwald?

  If you're still listening, this show's making our top fucking 10s. This show rules.

• 46:42Chris Ryan?

  It's knocking on top 5 for me.

• 46:44Andy Greenwald?

  I, this show is so good. This went from when we brought it up being like, well, here go, here go your fun uncles again, talking about a Polish spy show, to being like, you guys should watch this show if you're interested in good television and also the type of television that should be a benchmark for what gets made in many countries.

• 47:00Chris Ryan?

  Spoilers going forward for the first season.

• 47:02Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 47:03Chris Ryan?

  She shot her man in the head, dude. She is just like, she is really, really, really him.

• 47:14Andy Greenwald?

  Do you remember, um, uh, like, it was like pre YouTube, but like the, the rumored footage of like Stephon Marbury playing basketball at Coney Island.

• 47:24Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 47:24Andy Greenwald?

  And everyone was like, "The game will change." That is you crushing tape on Eva.

• 47:31Chris Ryan?

  Uh, there's a scene in the final episode, I believe. Um, it's like early in the episode where she is, uh, interrogating.

• 47:40Andy Greenwald?

  This is so key. You're like, "I don't know, maybe it's the final episode. I don't have it open on my desktop right now."

• 47:44Chris Ryan?

  I have taken 30 screenshots of her torturing a Russian nuclear scientist. No, she's just like, uh, standing around in this interrogate, well, she's actually beating the shit out of this woman, but it's her and...

• 47:58Andy Greenwald?

  She's not beating the shit out of her. It's not that shit.

• 47:59Chris Ryan?

  She throws her on the ground and puts a gun to her head.

• 48:01Andy Greenwald?

  She comes at her.

• 48:01Chris Ryan?

  And says, "Do you want me to kill you like I killed your son?"

• 48:04Andy Greenwald?

  Look, fog of war. Things get said.

• 48:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:07Andy Greenwald?

  It's the same as in a podcast.

• 48:08Chris Ryan?

  It's just trash talk.

• 48:08Andy Greenwald?

  She un... That's exactly right.

• 48:10Chris Ryan?

  It's just banter.

• 48:11Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, Kevin Garnett was mic'd up.

• 48:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:14Andy Greenwald?

  How would we feel about him? Probably the same. No, she's like, "I will take off your handcuffs if you behave." And she's like, "Take them off." And then she comes at her and she's like, "I had to teach you something."

• 48:23Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 48:23Andy Greenwald?

  "I had to teach you a lesson."

• 48:24Chris Ryan?

  And then that, that woman, Tamara, who's the dirty bomb scientist, she's like, "Well, you got me. So here's, here's all the information."

• 48:30Andy Greenwald?

  Here's everything.

• 48:31Chris Ryan?

  Um, this is a very complicated, uh, plot of Belarusian, Russian, Poland, NATO, the East, the West, if, internessen fights between various intelligence services within countries and outside of countries, but essentially boils down to a long hatched and planned plot between two brothers who grew up in an orphanage and are trying to essentially exact revenge against the West.

• 49:01Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:02Chris Ryan?

  Um, and it turns out one of the brothers is Skinner, who is Eva's partner in the Polish intelligence service, but also her lover. Um, and that is a tough beat for a variety of people, including Eva and her nephew, Kai.

• 49:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it's bad for him.

• 49:20Chris Ryan?

  Who's now an orphan.

• 49:21Andy Greenwald?

  And...

• 49:22Chris Ryan?

  And...

• 49:23Andy Greenwald?

  Kind of Russian right now.

• 49:24Chris Ryan?

  And now indoctrinated to be... Hey, you know what, man? You're kind of Russian right now.

• 49:31Andy Greenwald?

  No offense.

• 49:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, no offense.

• 49:34Andy Greenwald?

  What do you, I'm just picturing like Side Talk in Collingrad. Just like super pro Russian dudes.

• 49:40Chris Ryan?

  Ayo.

• 49:41Andy Greenwald?

  Just screaming. Waving flags.

• 49:44Chris Ryan?

  Oh my god.

• 49:46Andy Greenwald?

  Among, because here's the thing about the show.

• 49:48Chris Ryan?

  Pushkin's birthday.

• 49:49Andy Greenwald?

  I'm saying, we all know it by heart.

• 49:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:52Andy Greenwald?

  Here's the thing about the show that is so compelling and why we like it because Jan Motyczynski, who directed it, I guess show ran it. It's in the blood. You know what I'm saying?

• 50:01Chris Ryan?

  She's just got to kill boss out for that one.

• 50:03Andy Greenwald?

  There's just a little, you know, little, you could take the boy out of Eastern Europe.

• 50:08Chris Ryan?

  Take him off the steps, but.

• 50:09Andy Greenwald?

  The boy's family could be expelled from Eastern Europe, whatever. But you carry a little bit of it with you.

• 50:15Andy Greenwald?

  He wrote and directed like a masterclass in how to do espionage on television from a character forward.

• 50:22Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 50:23Andy Greenwald?

  Way and, and we are going to talk about that and we love that. But I also find this show to be just incredibly fascinating, illuminating and deeply disturbing treatise on how war works in a post-truth, false flag universe.

• 50:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:40Andy Greenwald?

  That what we are seeing, and we talked about this when we first mentioned the show, that like immediately the show is compelling because it is a show set on the edge.

• 50:49Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 50:50Andy Greenwald?

  Of whatever east-west conflict we are headed towards.

• 50:52Chris Ryan?

  It's almost a period piece for the current era that we're in.

• 50:54Andy Greenwald?

  That's right.

• 50:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:55Andy Greenwald?

  But that everything.

• 50:56Chris Ryan?

  Set in 2021, right?

• 50:57Andy Greenwald?

  The ways that it is, it's set in the, and we talked about this before, but it's set at a moment when it was clear Russia was going to do something to advance its agenda or to expand its footprint. And in one universe, ours, it's Ukraine, in this universe, it is potentially more aggressively going to be Poland. And both can be true, which is a fun thing to think about.

• 51:17Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 51:18Andy Greenwald?

  But, um, but the idea that the aggression and the threat of Russia is both. Deeply baked into a history that we are just, you know, bopping around with our labubus, completely ignorant about for the most part, but that also the danger comes from the filthiness of the fight, that all of the energy that Russia is using in this fictionalized story to take over parts of Poland, to rattle and potentially break NATO, none of it involves people in Russian uniforms actively causing aggression. It involves tricking Polish officials to be in the wrong place when cell phones are out.

• 51:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:58Andy Greenwald?

  When they flooded the zone intentionally with migrants to inflame tensions and then have Russians dressed as Polish. Like, it's very complicated.

• 52:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:07Andy Greenwald?

  And it's very terrifying because what are you supposed to do? Once in the series, the minister is like, "Gotcha. You aren't playing fair. We see who's there." And the guy's like, "Okay, well, you got me." And then they do a bigger version of it.

• 52:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:19Andy Greenwald?

  And it works. Because how often, and I wish there was some analogy to contemporary political parties that I could pull from, but how effective is it to be like, "Well, that's just a distraction."

• 52:29Chris Ryan?

  Right. And then within the world of espionage, there's like London rules and Moscow rules.

• 52:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 52:33Chris Ryan?

  And there's various, like, there's understandings that you do do this and you don't do that. And-

• 52:38Andy Greenwald?

  The tidiness of the Lacare Cold War.

• 52:39Chris Ryan?

  I think that there, what Eastern Gate is trying to wrap its arms around is like a world in which, like, it doesn't really matter what happens, it matters what people believe happened.

• 52:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. That's where we're at.

• 52:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:52Andy Greenwald?

  The, it's fun to think about-

• 52:55Chris Ryan?

  And it doesn't even matter. I'm reading this book called Shadow Intelligence, which is this Oliver Harris, not like spy novel that's set, well, right now it's largely set in Kazakhstan, and the point I am in the book. But it's about a lot of the same stuff. And even in this novel, there's like discussion of like, with this kind of information warfare, even when people don't think what they're reading is true or seeing is true, the sentiment or the kernel of truth of it still activates something in terms of like how they feel about an issue. So even if you're watching something or reading something and you're like, "Well, I kind of know this is bullshit, but also it confirms something that I think."

• 53:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. Well, that's the story of the 2024 election about the economy, right? Like, "Oh, all the baseline indicators of the stock market is roaring back, but people are like, 'This shit's too expensive.'"

• 53:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:42Andy Greenwald?

  That's actually true. And now we all have to live in the fallout from it. I also just want to point out that like- I do think it's an impressive trick of well-made art that there's a way to look at the show and be like, so just one guy is a master swordsman and like has manipulated all of Polish intelligence by sleeping with women?

• 54:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 54:04Andy Greenwald?

  And filming it, and then here we are with dirty bombs, but...

• 54:07Chris Ryan?

  But he in fact was like also a blackmailed...

• 54:09Andy Greenwald?

  He was a victim of it.

• 54:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:11Andy Greenwald?

  But even, I just, I tip my cap to shows that effectively hide the ball. Like, yes, this is a soap opera, but it's a soap opera between seven people. Like we were saying in the beginning, is a good thing. You can look at it and be like, that's implausible, but it's done so well. And we are so, maybe this hearkens back to the alien conversation, we are in the hearts and minds of those seven people to a degree that they serve as an effective proxy for the larger conflict.

• 54:39Chris Ryan?

  Also, if you have high style, you can get away with a lot of convenient stuff. So it seems like basically everything from a refugee camp to a, where they're preparing the dirty bomb, to also where Russian and Polish forces are going to have a shootout, and also a orphanage that used to house the two brothers at the center of this vast conspiracy, is at the same building.

• 55:07Andy Greenwald?

  Well, for what it's worth, I did Google driving directions from Warsaw to Minsk, and it is a trim six hours.

• 55:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there's a lot of like, we need you back in Warsaw right now. And I'm like, okay, like, let me get a...

• 55:21Andy Greenwald?

  It reminds me of when we would...

• 55:22Chris Ryan?

  Get my stuff.

• 55:23Andy Greenwald?

  When you and I would drive 95 from Providence to Philadelphia, and you'd be like, seems like clear sailing.

• 55:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:29Andy Greenwald?

  Let me just grab some Cinnabon.

• 55:30Chris Ryan?

  Just shoot the Solalki Gap, we'll be there in no time.

• 55:33Andy Greenwald?

  The Kosciusko Bridge, the Solalki Gap, it's all one thing. I have to ask you this. I know you're just returned to LA, and you're happily reunited with your wife and, you know, back in the bosom of your friends and family.

• 55:45Chris Ryan?

  My rock, yeah.

• 55:48Andy Greenwald?

  Speaking of rocks, I just want you to talk about a text you sent to me last night where you said that you were, quote, "at dinner explaining Eva to my wife."

• 55:57Chris Ryan?

  And I actually brought it up really randomly in a very strange way.

• 56:00Andy Greenwald?

  This is, talk about risk it all.

• 56:03Chris Ryan?

  I just was like...

• 56:04Andy Greenwald?

  How did you talk your way through this and how did it go?

• 56:06Chris Ryan?

  We were like ordering starters, and I was like, by the way.

• 56:11Andy Greenwald?

  I have found my soulmates.

• 56:13Chris Ryan?

  I'm pretty into this Polish woman.

• 56:16Andy Greenwald?

  Did she spit out the bread?

• 56:17Chris Ryan?

  No, I think she was like taken aback and then I my point was more that like maybe when you see her, you'll get it, you know, but her.

• 56:28Andy Greenwald?

  Did you like, babe, babe, look, look what she's doing here. Look how she's holding the knife.

• 56:32Chris Ryan?

  I was at Houston's last night.

• 56:34Andy Greenwald?

  Great restaurant.

• 56:35Chris Ryan?

  And I needed it, you know, at the table sort of adjacent to us was a woman and a man. The man was wearing a Philadelphia Eagles golf shirt.

• 56:48Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, combining a lot of your interests.

• 56:50Chris Ryan?

  Were on their phones with their headphones in, looking at, she was looking at TikTok. I bet he was looking at like all 22 tape, given like the way what he was wearing. And they were seamlessly watching their phones and listening to their shit and sharing a meal. And I was like, there's a kind of beauty here. There's a kind of, there's something, there's something special going on between these two.

• 57:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, the middle part of Wally. Like, Jesus Christ, that sucks. Also, an artful way to change the subject from introducing your second wife, future wife, to your current wife.

• 57:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I just had to, I wanted to be honest.

• 57:29Andy Greenwald?

  Was she bemused?

• 57:30Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 57:31Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 57:31Chris Ryan?

  Someone like, like, explain it to me. And I was like, well, there's parts where like she like puts a bag on a, on a Russian woman's head.

• 57:41Chris Ryan?

  And kicks her, you know?

• 57:43Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it is an incredible Venn diagram of like your, your passion projects, that it is essentially Lady Edith from Downton Abbey, but who can do Kramagah.

• 57:52Chris Ryan?

  And smokes.

• 57:52Andy Greenwald?

  And smokes. There it is. Bing, bing, bing. There she is. She, she is a great, a great TV heroine. I'm very glad the show is coming back.

• 58:01Chris Ryan?

  I can't wait to see season two.

• 58:03Andy Greenwald?

  Also, dude, six episodes. Just way to do it.

• 58:06Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 58:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yon. It is compact. It is awesome.

• 58:08Chris Ryan?

  We are going to be off on Monday because of Labor Day.

• 58:11Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:11Chris Ryan?

  Um, and then we'll be back next Thursday to talk about Alien and the paper, I believe.

• 58:16Andy Greenwald?

  And then we'll be then three days away from the task premiere. Do you have a countdown clock running?

• 58:22Chris Ryan?

  I mean, September 7th, it goes Eagles, Cowboys, then Ruffalo.

• 58:26Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, we'll be recording the morning of Eagles, Cowboys.

• 58:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:30Andy Greenwald?

  How are we gonna, how are we gonna be?

• 58:31Chris Ryan?

  Should we have Sheil on?

• 58:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, yes, to just do the show that we want to do? This one's for us, guys.

• 58:37Chris Ryan?

  Thanks to Kai, thanks to John, uh, thanks again to everybody who's written to say, uh, to send their condolences. It really, really means a lot. And we will be back next week.

• 58:47Andy Greenwald?

  Have a great long weekend, Brian and Skies.

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