Remembering David Lynch, ‘Severance’ Season 2 Anticipation, ‘The Pitt,’ and ‘American Primeval’

Chris and Andy talk about whether or not ‘Severance’ season two is poised to be the next big water cooler show (1:00) and take a moment to remember the director David Lynch, who passed away this week, and his profound impact on tv and film (16:21). Then they talk about the trailer for ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ (24:33), the first two episodes of ‘The Pitt’ (32:10) and the first episode of ‘American Primeval’ (56:54). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 2:16Chris Ryan?

  Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com. And joining me in the studio, much like Joel Embiid, he is day to day. It's Andy Greenwald.

• 2:33Andy Greenwald?

  Does it feel better to own your pain like that? You know, because that, I flinched when you said that a little bit.

• 2:40Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:40Andy Greenwald?

  This Sixers season, I can't.

• 2:42Chris Ryan?

  You're, you are checked out.

• 2:44Andy Greenwald?

  I am beyond that.

• 2:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you don't even know that, like, our prince Tyrese Maxey is having like a real, like, come down season.

• 2:52Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I'm aware.

• 2:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's like me on a Sunday in 2007.

• 2:56Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 2:57Chris Ryan?

  You know what I mean?

• 2:57Andy Greenwald?

  That low.

• 2:59Chris Ryan?

  Greenwald, I wanted to start with an apology.

• 3:01Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, okay. I had one for you, too. This is good.

• 3:03Chris Ryan?

  On Monday, uh, we were at sea. You know, we were, we were coming to people and we were a little bit, a little bit off our game.

• 3:10Andy Greenwald?

  It was a rough week.

• 3:11Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, I made a mistake that I've been carrying with me all week. And I said that in Nicholas Wending Refin's Seminole.

• 3:21Andy Greenwald?

  You go on. I can't let you do this, but go on.

• 3:22Chris Ryan?

  Thriller Drive, one of my favorite films, uh, that Ryan Gosling sported a dragon jacket, a satin dragon jacket.

• 3:31Andy Greenwald?

  I appreciate how much you want to be the sin eater here, but I came in here with an apology coming over the top.

• 3:36Chris Ryan?

  Are you apologizing for my apology?

• 3:39Andy Greenwald?

  I set you up. I steered you wrong. I went back to the clip.

• 3:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:44Andy Greenwald?

  Which has been posted on social media. So, thanks, thanks, guys in the booth. For that one. My other favorite thing about the clip that went social, that they put on social, it's not just that I'm like, "He wears a dragon jacket." And you're like, "Yeah." So that was my fault.

• 3:57Chris Ryan?

  Well-

• 3:58Andy Greenwald?

  But two, at the end of that clip-

• 3:59Chris Ryan?

  I think what the point is, is that I should know better.

• 4:01Andy Greenwald?

  Chris, I interviewed the costume designer who found the jacket. It was one of my first pieces for Grantland. It's all about a scorpion jacket. That's in my CV. I carry this burden, not you. You carry so much water here. This podcast is one set of footprints in the sand. Okay? So I just, you can't-

• 4:23Chris Ryan?

  I feel like I should have done better. And I feel like I'm slipping a little bit and I want to make a promise to our audience and I want to make a promise to you that it won't happen again.

• 4:31Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think that that's good to have standards.

• 4:34Chris Ryan?

  It's a culture of accountability.

• 4:36Andy Greenwald?

  But I'm really the one that steered you wrong. I also do wonder, do you think that now, because as people have heard, we are on video and on YouTube and stuff, and some of these clips are being serviced, pushed to socials? Do you think that we need to, let me rephrase. Do you think that I need to keep it a little more buttoned up? Because in that clip where you're like, "I love the city of Los Angeles because I fell in love with the film Drive and listening to the chromatics," and at the end of it, we, I immediately grabbed the wheel with my gosling leather gloves and bring it back to seeing Paul Simon at Art's Deli in 1986.

• 5:08Chris Ryan?

  Well, you think that you're just kind of maybe-

• 5:10Andy Greenwald?

  There's a version of this where people are like-

• 5:12Chris Ryan?

  You're exploring the studio space too much.

• 5:14Andy Greenwald?

  There's a version of this where people watch that clip and they're like, "Anything can happen."

• 5:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. That's incredible. It's like free jazz. But in my life experience, some people don't like free jazz. Some.

• 5:26Chris Ryan?

  I've been getting into it and I've long, long subscribed to your brand of jazz. Green, while today, we're going to talk a little bit about, so Severance comes out tomorrow night. We're recording this on Thursday. So Severance comes out tomorrow night, season two, and I want to talk to you a little bit about broadly the show, but also the rollout for it, because I have some thoughts on that.

• 5:46Andy Greenwald?

  And we've watched some of the new season. We won't, but we will not spoil it for people who have not been able to.

• 5:51Chris Ryan?

  We hit this Daredevil trailer that's setting the internet on fire.

• 5:54Andy Greenwald?

  You are ready for that one.

• 5:55Chris Ryan?

  And then we're going to talk about the first two episodes of The Pit and the first couple of episodes of American Primeval, the number one show on Netflix.

• 6:00Andy Greenwald?

  I just want to say- I put in the work.

• 6:03Chris Ryan?

  You did.

• 6:04Andy Greenwald?

  This week, and I felt seen by you.

• 6:05Chris Ryan?

  You crammed, but you did put in the work.

• 6:07Andy Greenwald?

  I was meant to be in London, England this week due to catastrophic events in California. I did not travel. And speaking about exploring the space, I was exploring American television.

• 6:19Chris Ryan?

  You also wanted to see if Coach Prime got the Cowboys job too. Like, I need to stay domestic for that.

• 6:24Andy Greenwald?

  After listening to Sal talk about what would happen to his fandom if that happened, now I really need to know.

• 6:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:30Andy Greenwald?

  I'm riveted. Yeah.

• 6:31Chris Ryan?

  Um, yes, you were supposed to be in England, but you're here.

• 6:34Andy Greenwald?

  I'm here, and I watch a lot of TV, and I can't wait to talk about it. TV, pretty good.

• 6:37Chris Ryan?

  Uh, let me ask you this. And obviously, like, it's a very odd week for us because it's not the usual kind of like, uh, boots-on-the-ground, shoe-leather reporting that we're known for on this podcast. But anecdotally, just based on like my timeline and also just generally people who are like talking to me about television still.

• 6:59Andy Greenwald?

  Those are the people at Sweetgreen?

• 7:00Chris Ryan?

  And not AQI.

• 7:02Andy Greenwald?

  Right, there aren't that many of them left.

• 7:04Chris Ryan?

  It just seems like this Severance moment is a thing. It seems like it's the first time, I almost want to say since the last season of Succession, maybe, where I can feel a lot of people like hotly anticipating a show like at this temperature. And I think that this kind of culminated with this performance art piece slash pop-up that, uh, Apple and Severance did at Grand Central Station this week. Where the cast of Severance, or at least Britt Lauer, uh, and Adam Scott and Zach Cherry.

• 7:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 7:39Chris Ryan?

  Basically performed as their characters in a glass-encased replica of their office from Lumen. And I just wanted to kind of get a temperature check from you of like where you're at with this coming and whether or not this is like, this feels like significant from Apple and significant for TV.

• 7:59Andy Greenwald?

  I want to start there. I'll start with a slightly more cynical or industry-based take, and then we could talk about like the significance of people's affection for the show and how it might translate into a cultural moment. I think this might be the first time that Apple has flexed its incomparable muscles in a TV marketing push. I don't, and we've, we've spent some time talking about like, how do people know what's out there? Is Apple really trying? Like, you know, I, I heard yesterday anecdotally that, that Dick Wolf and his son have a half hour cop show on Amazon Prime with Eric LaSalle. It's pretty good. And I was like, I, I had never heard, and I feel like it is kind of our job to know about some of these things. And so again and again, we, we, these large companies, it's not even they're fumbling the bag, they just have a lot of bags.

• 8:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:43Andy Greenwald?

  If Apple wants to push something to the forefront of our consciousness, whether it's a U2 album, or it's a Severance season launch, they can do it to a degree that almost no other company can. So it is fascinating to see them put all of their weight behind this.

• 8:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:59Andy Greenwald?

  And frankly, like, it's, it's necessary in this case, both because it's been a three year absence and because this isn't, it's not a challenging watch Severance, but as people who tune in tomorrow night, Friday night, to watch season two, or the first episode of season two, if you indulge in the three minute recap, it is like getting hit in the head, non, it is just relentless how much plot and stuff was happening in the show. So it is a smart play to put it in front of everybody to this degree. But I think the question you're asking, that I, I guess I haven't fully thought out yet in, in answer to it, is are we just missing ongoing television shows on a prestige level? Are we missing the conversation? Are we missing the obsession?

• 9:43Andy Greenwald?

  Are we missing the redditing? And this is, this is coming in actually at the right time to scratch an itch.

• 9:49Chris Ryan?

  I think it's the latter, because my, uh, my broad review of the first few episodes that I got a chance to watch without saying anything about anything that happens is that this is an expert mystery box show. Like, and the, and the characters within the show perform that mystery box.

• 10:06Chris Ryan?

  Theater.

• 10:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 10:07Chris Ryan?

  At an incredibly high level and maybe with one that we haven't seen since Lost, you know? There are shows that become mystery boxes almost unintentionally, like I don't think Nick Pizzolato wrote the first season of True Detective, thinking he would send me in the spiral that he did about Carcosa.

• 10:24Andy Greenwald?

  Spiral, you mean like the symbol? I see what you did there.

• 10:27Chris Ryan?

  So, uh, there are shows that can unintentionally find wide up there. I think White Lotus is another example of that, where it's a show that sure there was gonna be some whodunit elements, but having people do frame by frame analysis or, you know, deep readings of, of, of dialogue to try and find clues as to who's dead and who did what. I don't necessarily think was Mike White's intention when he started the show, although it certainly helped with its, with its popularity.

• 10:54Chris Ryan?

  Severance, for whatever its creative evolution has been, and it's been a complicated and long one, um, both to get to the screen in the first place and to get to the screen for the second season, seems to understand fully what people are coming to it for. And so much of the dialogue in the first couple of episodes is, what the fuck is happening? What's going on?

• 11:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 11:16Chris Ryan?

  Who is that? What did you mean by that? What did they mean by that? And it's like this very kind of like, it's almost like 24, but just your brain.

• 11:25Andy Greenwald?

  So, so much of the first episode is someone running blindly through a labyrinth.

• 11:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and the first few minutes of the second season, I believe, were aired already and you can watch them on Apple TV already. Um, yeah, so I think it's just like, it's a, it's a fascinating, you know, we've, we've, we've unpacked these kinds of shows before in detail or we've mocked them, like you and I got lost deep in the sauce with Dark.

• 11:48Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah, that was fun.

• 11:49Chris Ryan?

  You know, I mean, we, we, we are susceptible to this stuff, but I think that they have captured, they know exactly what the show is, and now they are really playing to it. And I do have another point I'd like to make, which is.

• 12:02Chris Ryan?

  I think that the three-year layoff.

• 12:04Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, boy.

• 12:05Chris Ryan?

  They're playing it well.

• 12:06Andy Greenwald?

  OK, I thought you were gonna zag and say more shows should have three-year layoffs.

• 12:09Chris Ryan?

  No, I mean, I think it's a disaster for television, frankly, but

• 12:16Chris Ryan?

  for some reason with this series, I have been compelled to read multiple multi-thousand-word explainers about what happened last season, where we're at. I mean, some people have just rewatched the whole first season in the lead-up. This is like the dream, is to create this kind of like secondary activity off of the screen and interest in your show. And I guess it's really, it feels like it's really working for this specific title.

• 12:45Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's, I think you're probably right, and I think that's a very interesting read on it. Because my concern, I did go back and try to remember some of this going into the second season, and my ongoing concern, having watched some of the second season, is, well, one step back. The show was and is absolutely stunning. It is visually just incredible. The performances are phenomenal, almost entirely across the board. And like the real, the rawness of the emotion that Adam Scott brings to it, that John Turturro brings to it, make the show for me and give me something to latch on to. All of that said, I continue to have a sort of deep feeling that in terms of the mystery box,

• 13:30Andy Greenwald?

  Severance just continues to write very expensive, Apple-issued checks that it probably can't cash on a story level.

• 13:36Chris Ryan?

  That will be the question.

• 13:38Andy Greenwald?

  The, so it's interesting, so when I watched the show, and again, we're not spoiling season two, because this was throughout the first season, there definitely was a fork in the road, where there were people, and I don't blame them, like you said, I've been this person when it came to Lost or Dark or a few other titles, who are watching it precisely for the question of what are they doing on those computers? For what are the baby goats for? What is the, what is the real mythology of Keir and the Lumen Dynasty?

• 14:08Chris Ryan?

  Are the bills good in this reality?

• 14:10Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly, exactly. I

• 14:14Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not interested in any of that. And succession, geez, Severance has never made me interested in that. So I'd be interested as the season goes on and we get feedback and we talk to other people about it. Are there, are we, is there just a fundamental severed divide here between people who are iny on the mystery and people who are outy on it like me? Or is it a problem? Is it a fault line in the show that it ultimately won't be able to solve? Because they are all, all the way in. I mean, this is an incredibly expensive proposition. Clearly, Apple has given a carp launch to Ben Stiller.

• 14:49Chris Ryan?

  Season three is already in the works.

• 14:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, they're, they're doing it. And, and even like the New York Times interview with Ben Stiller. It's like, he knows how it ends. Like, they've had conversations about what is going on. They're likely, they may have been making it up as they went along, like coming off of Dan Erickson's pilot, but they've made some decisions since then. But anyway, all this is to say, I, I'm curious. You might be right that they are marketing it correctly by building the momentum for the show around the part of the show that I personally don't connect to.

• 15:15Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 15:16Andy Greenwald?

  But I'm curious about how that will pay out.

• 15:18Chris Ryan?

  I think I was cynical or I was skeptical like you were. Until I watched it again. I did, you know, I found that the first season for me was more laborious. It was just the, the episodes felt slower and longer. And I think it took me a long time to, I think the initial concept of the show, I was very into this idea of compartmentalization, this larger metaphor.

• 15:43Andy Greenwald?

  I wonder why.

• 15:44Chris Ryan?

  And as the season went on, I think I got a little bit like, kind of where you were in terms of like, this is a little bit of a chore. I don't really know if they know where this is going, what, like, et cetera. These first few episodes that I've watched of the second season, I would say that I'm a much more pro, somewhat because of the things that you mentioned, which is just the absolutely stellar level of everything that they're doing in terms of cinematography, in terms of staging and, and production design. And kind of like, they know after seven or eight minutes, someone needs to discover something. And it's, it's kind of like, you get your little dopamine hit every couple scenes in the show now.

• 16:25Andy Greenwald?

  I would say the other thing that the show has going for it, that I do not want to understate, is that Severance has wit and Severance has style. And those are two things that are often lacking in television these days. Like, What I, my takeaway from the, the season premiere was that it was super funny.

• 16:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 16:46Andy Greenwald?

  And I love that.

• 16:47Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 16:47Andy Greenwald?

  And I, and I think that, and, and style which goes beyond design. Do you know what I mean? Like the, like the stylized nature of the rooms within rooms, the staging of the scenes when people are placed in these white spaces and in these hallways with these color patterns and color stories. And we'll save most of it for Monday, but like, you know, I noted with interest that Stiller's regular cinematographer, Jessica Leegonye is a producer, maybe even executive producer on the show. Now you don't see that that often.

• 17:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:13Andy Greenwald?

  And it's deserving because she's incredible. So, yeah, I, I feel like, I, I guess for the purposes of what we're talking about today, ahead of people, most people engaging with the show itself. I'm curious about what hole it fills for them.

• 17:28Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:29Andy Greenwald?

  Because you are right, like we have spent the last year being like, there's just nothing is coming back anymore. There, we don't have these ongoing relationships. And while this is a, this is a very stylized and slightly chilly show, these are people that have been with us now for a number of years, whether actually on our screens.

• 17:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 17:45Andy Greenwald?

  Or at least just sort of haunting our subconscious. So there is something to be said for that.

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• 20:08Chris Ryan?

  All right, some really sad news happened while we were just recording the first part of this episode, which is that we found out that David Lynch passed away, one of the greatest American filmmakers of our lifetimes. A person who had enormous influence on television. Andy and I were just talking about severance. There is no severance without Twin Peaks. Andy, this is somebody I know met especially like had a huge outsized impact on your life. I know it's really raw.

• 20:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 20:36Chris Ryan?

  And I just thought maybe we could talk about him a little bit.

• 20:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I'm devastated. I'm so sad. We were, you know, we talked about him the other day.

• 20:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:44Andy Greenwald?

  We were talking about LA movies. I've been talking about him a lot recently just because, you know, he's 78 years old, was housebound with emphysema the last few years. So I don't think it's a surprise that he's no longer with us, but it's a shock.

• 20:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:59Andy Greenwald?

  Because this is the person who, you know, in many ways like taught me to like art because Twin Peaks was the most significant. Cultural event of my young life.

• 21:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:11Andy Greenwald?

  I've talked about this on other podcasts, talked about it on the Stick the Landing that I did with Joanna. But like, the opening moments of Twin Peaks, which I tuned into just because as an absolute media sauzled dork, you know, it was like on the cover of TV Guide. I hadn't seen any David Lynch movies or anything, or maybe, no, you know, I'd probably seen Dune on cable and been like, what the fuck is this?

• 21:33Andy Greenwald?

  But it was supposed to be like interesting or smart and I watched it and I think a lot about how the, the opening scene at the Great Northern has these visitors from Europe and it's dopey and Ben Horn is trying to entertain them and it's funny and it's discordant and it's weird. And then Leland Palmer gets the call that his daughter has been murdered and you hear his wife wailing.

• 21:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:54Andy Greenwald?

  And there's this collision of existential anguish and grief and surreal goofiness. And I didn't know you could mix those flavors together, you know, and I became obsessed with that show and obsessed with his movies and obsessed with him as a person because I don't know how many in this like fractured social media moment, how many like absolute to their bones artists we have.

• 22:18Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 22:19Andy Greenwald?

  Who create an aesthetic with their lives, not just their work, but their lives, their personalities, who they are, who they mean, what they mean to people. And it's probably worth saying, whenever you talk about David Lynch, like what he means to his creative community, how much they love him.

• 22:32Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:34Andy Greenwald?

  Always working with the same people and, you know, I talked about this.

• 22:37Chris Ryan?

  You listen to the actors who have worked with him, talk about him, you know, like Naomi Watson, Laura Dern and Kyle McLaughlin.

• 22:42Andy Greenwald?

  I think I've talked about this on the podcast, but I had, I mean, I did have a funny opportunity where we were both parents at the same school to chat with him a little bit, which was incredible. But then I did the, um, the F Y C event for Twin Peaks The Return. It was with him and it was Laura Dern and with Kyle McLaughlin. And I had met Kyle before, been on the podcast, he's just a lovely, lovely guy. And Laura was incredibly kind, but what was unbelievable about it was that they were both at once starstruck by someone they've known for 30 years when David showed up. And this was on the Paramount lot and he was allowed to smoke. They just put an ashtray in front of him and they also had two bottles of red wine there for him. And they were starstruck by him, but it was also like their father was there.

• 23:25Andy Greenwald?

  They were overjoyed and they were so, um, they just couldn't not be near him.

• 23:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:31Andy Greenwald?

  How much he meant to them. And they were joking about like when they were making Blue Velvet, when Laura and Kyle were a couple and they stayed in this motel and they were having all these wonderful memories. And then when we all went on stage and David did the thing that he always did, which is just didn't talk about stuff. He just would not give it. Like, imagine anyone being like that now, being like the art speaks for itself. They were carrying him in a way. They filled in the gaps and they were delighted by him and charmed by him. And the only time that he really spoke, despite me peppering him with many questions about like the fundamental artistic text of my life. The only time he really spoke was when I asked about how, in a very, very moving way, Twin Peaks: The Return was like an epitaph for so many of his friends and collaborators.

• 24:16Andy Greenwald?

  Because so many of them appeared in it, like Catherine Coulson who played the log lady, like Miguel Ferrer, Warren Frost. It was their last screen appearance.

• 24:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:25Andy Greenwald?

  And there is an elegiac nature to this. And I'm sitting here processing the fact that like, that's the last artistic statement.

• 24:32Chris Ryan?

  What a towering achievement, like last achievement.

• 24:35Andy Greenwald?

  It is a final statement. I mean, in the sense that you never call your shot, you can't always predict it. But it is a beautiful achievement because it's a family affair in a very meaningful way, both for the fans and for the artists and for the crew. But also, like with everything he did, it's fucking confounding and it's weird and it's funny and it does not give you any closure, you know? So I, I think a lot of people who knew him more than I did or who have loved his work for longer will be mourning today. But it is, it's an irreplaceable loss. There aren't that many people in our life making vital art who have become adjectives.

• 25:13Chris Ryan?

  No, Linchian, right.

• 25:15Andy Greenwald?

  It, it's just, he is one of one. And if you try to imitate him, you will fail.

• 25:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I hope people imitate his spirit though. One of the things I always loved about him, just off the top of the head, was his ability to assemble.

• 25:29Chris Ryan?

  Cinematic universe made up of like his interests and made up of his obsessions. And I mean that both in terms of his fascination with both the darkest pits of human depravity and the most square, corny, like-

• 25:45Andy Greenwald?

  Loved America.

• 25:46Chris Ryan?

  Gee, golly, gosh, you know, black cup of coffee and a diner breakfast kind of stuff. And you can also see it in the objects that he pushes to the foreground of his work, whether it's the kind of 50s cool noir or, you know, the idea of dreams being as real as reality. And yeah, what an amazing, what an amazing contribution to American popular culture and what an amazing capstone to a career that Return was.

• 26:18Andy Greenwald?

  The most universal thing, I think, among anyone listening or anybody alive is like, you have a crazy dream, because we all have them, but not necessarily scary, just you have a dream that has shaken you and you wake up and you turn to someone and you try to tell it to them and you sound insane. You cannot communicate the dream to someone else, both, you know, the logic of it or the illogic of it, or the emotions it stirred up in you. And if you want to think about what a pure artist is, it's someone who can tell you their dreams and make you feel their dreams. And that's what Lynch did. I would say five of the most upsetting, horrifying, nightmarish things I've ever seen or felt came from his movies, whether it's the guy who dies of fright in Mulholland

• 27:01Andy Greenwald?

  Drive, or Bob crawling over the back of the couch in the original Twin Peaks series. But also, as you said, he was capable of showing you beauty and quiet and peace in ways that you can't even imagine. I think about another great artist who was his close friend and fellow, along with you, lover of cigarette smoking, like Harry Dean Stanton is in Twin Peaks: The Return.

• 27:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:26Andy Greenwald?

  And there's a moment in that series that juxtaposes the death of a child with Harry Dean Stanton's soulful eyes and cigarette smoking. And I'm like, it's just, how can you have all of it? The only thing we could ever say against David Lynch was that he hated Philadelphia, which he did. I'm not just making that up. Like, he credits a lot of the darkness in his movies-

• 27:44Chris Ryan?

  He gets a pass for that.

• 27:45Andy Greenwald?

  From the time he lived in Philadelphia in the 70s. He says, that's what inspired Eraserhead. So I don't know, we're gonna keep processing this, but good God, have a black cup of coffee, a piece of pie, and watch Blue Velvet. This weekend.

• 27:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:59Andy Greenwald?

  It's just that the city is less with his absence. It's awful.

• 28:02Chris Ryan?

  So you want to get into talking about these shows?

• 28:07Andy Greenwald?

  The Daredevil trailer?

• 28:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, just like.

• 28:12Andy Greenwald?

  I think we can. I mean, we're.

• 28:13Chris Ryan?

  Speaking of iconoclasts.

• 28:16Andy Greenwald?

  We gotta keep moving. We gotta keep it moving. I don't mind. This, this, we have a rundown for our show.

• 28:21Chris Ryan?

  Okay, I guess we could talk a little bit about this, uh, this Daredevil trailer.

• 28:26Andy Greenwald?

  I can't wait to see you do this. Go on.

• 28:28Chris Ryan?

  Uh, yeah. I, uh, I think that this is an interesting gambit because, uh, they are bringing the Netflix Marvel Street. What was it called when it was on Netflix? The Marvel shows?

• 28:43Andy Greenwald?

  What was the, like the street level characters?

• 28:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, street level characters.

• 28:47Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it was Marvel Television, which was different than the MCU.

• 28:50Chris Ryan?

  So this is the first time on Disney Plus through the Feige machine that like we'll see Daredevil on screen, correct?

• 28:56Andy Greenwald?

  Well, he, I mean, he's, he's, he's been back. I mean, like, cause Kingpin was in Echo and Charlie Cox was in, I believe, the last Spider-Man movie as Daredevil.

• 29:06Chris Ryan?

  Oh, he's like his lawyer, right?

• 29:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. So they have been, the fact that, that he's accepting that into the canon is not a surprise.

• 29:13Chris Ryan?

  But it looks like it's just as violent and growling as usual, as ever.

• 29:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I guess the, the takeaway for me from this is, this is, this, like many things these days, has had a tortured path back to the small screen.

• 29:26Chris Ryan?

  It's, that's, that's generally like with the strikes and COVID, it's like.

• 29:29Andy Greenwald?

  But pre-strike, the way this was positioned when this was announced was that it was going to be longer than any TV show they'd done before. It was going to be close to 20, 15, 20 episodes, I believe, and that it was going to be more of a procedural because Matt Murdock is a lawyer. So it was going to be a courtroom show that also had super heroics in it. And it seemed to suggest that they were going to be doing a different spin on the character, which canonically, that's what happens. Like some people come on and they do a run and it's the incredibly dark, tortured Catholicism of the Frank Miller era. And then some people come back and, and then it switches and then Mark Wade is writing him as more like pop art.

• 30:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:06Andy Greenwald?

  West Side.

• 30:07Chris Ryan?

  Cool lawyer guy.

• 30:08Andy Greenwald?

  Cool lawyer guy. And I gotta say, I probably said it on this podcast. I was like, smart.

• 30:13Chris Ryan?

  What's your preference of like the sort of depictions of Daredevil? Like, do you have a preference?

• 30:18Andy Greenwald?

  No, one of the reasons why a lot of great comic writers and artists like to play with Daredevil is because he is kind of malleable. You can, there are archetypal images from that character and from the many people who've made their bones on him. But everybody can try a different spin. So like the, um, Mark Wade, I think it was Marco Martin was the artist, like so beautiful. But also the Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Malley version was also haunting and gorgeous and dark and heavy. So I, I kind of liked the idea that it seemed like Feige was like, yeah, we're just gonna put a different writer artist on this. And it doesn't mean he can't be gritty again in the future. And then anyway, it shut down because of the strikes. And then also maybe for some budget stuff and some creative stuff.

• 31:01Andy Greenwald?

  And then now that it's back, it seems, it's interesting. It now seems like the first post-Echo show in the MCU. Because this just seems like the Netflix version again.

• 31:11Chris Ryan?

  It seems like the post-Echo era we're living in.

• 31:13Andy Greenwald?

  I had no idea. It's the echo of the echo verse. It's bone crunching.

• 31:17Chris Ryan?

  Trump will be our first president elected in the post, post-Echo era.

• 31:20Andy Greenwald?

  Well, Daredevil's only good when Trump's in office, I guess. That's, that's the real zag, okay? Yeah. Do you like that?

• 31:30Chris Ryan?

  We needed Trump to save Daredevil.

• 31:31Andy Greenwald?

  We needed him. Yeah, to restore him.

• 31:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:35Andy Greenwald?

  My takeaway from this trailer was.

• 31:36Chris Ryan?

  Daredevil as AG would have been great.

• 31:38Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, my God. Yeah. Justice is blind and so am I.

• 31:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:42Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think he recognizes that? Oh, that would be amazing. If they were like asking him confirmation hearings, like, do you think Joe Biden won the election? He's like, I'm literally blind. I don't know. Show me the evidence. I can't see it.

• 31:54Chris Ryan?

  But you can't. Yeah.

• 31:56Andy Greenwald?

  That, that's great. That's get him, that gets him right out of trouble. Um, no, I mean, I, I watched this trailer. I'm like, oh, they, they've committed. They've committed to Elaine and it will probably, this trailer will probably be very well received because people like the Netflix show. And it may in fact be successful because of it. But sorry, like I was interested in them doing something different with it, but here you go. People, people seem to like this, biblical battle between a small blind man and the thing that Vincent D'Onofrio does.

• 32:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I would say that I'm running on empty with the D'Onofrio kingpin thing. To the extent that I have engaged with this content over the years. Uh, you a Punisher guy?

• 32:34Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, no.

• 32:36Chris Ryan?

  Like.

• 32:36Andy Greenwald?

  You, listen, I'm gonna put myself out, like.

• 32:40Chris Ryan?

  Like even as a kid, you weren't like, this is cool.

• 32:43Andy Greenwald?

  You're giving me the chance to retcon my own history?

• 32:46Chris Ryan?

  I am.

• 32:48Andy Greenwald?

  But just take a moment.

• 32:49Chris Ryan?

  Put the dragon jacket on.

• 32:50Andy Greenwald?

  Imagine me, imagine me in 1991, when the other chaps at Fat Jack's Comic Crypt were like, this new issue of Punisher War Journal is incredible because he murders the serpent society. What, do you want to guess what I said?

• 33:06Andy Greenwald?

  That level of violence is abhorrent. Like, I was always me. Of course I hated it.

• 33:13Chris Ryan?

  All right, are you gonna give Burnthall his dap here, though?

• 33:16Andy Greenwald?

  How do you feel about this Burnthall move? Because, I mean, the fans are happy. I'm sure it's a successful, recognizable thing for him.

• 33:23Chris Ryan?

  I'm sure that he's happy to be bringing this character back, and this character certainly has a lot of on-screen potential that I don't think has been properly tapped. Although, you know, like, given the source material, I think vigilante justice sort of goes in and out of fashion in American culture.

• 33:41Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think it's coming back?

• 33:41Chris Ryan?

  I can't tell.

• 33:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 33:44Chris Ryan?

  I personally have a broader wish list for Burnthall going forward. Do you know what I mean? Like, I think.

• 33:52Andy Greenwald?

  You'd like to see him paint with other colors in his paintbox?

• 33:55Chris Ryan?

  Well, you know what it is? Is, I was thinking about this with Ham, you know?

• 33:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 33:59Chris Ryan?

  Ham, after Draper, and I don't know what you would call Burnthall's Draper, I suppose Wayne Jenkins, but it was obviously a much smaller cultural impact than Mad Men. But let's just say that's his, like, takeout, this dude carried this whole show, give him all the awards even though you didn't, performance. And then since then, has been America's greatest guest. Awesome podcast.

• 34:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 34:26Chris Ryan?

  Incredible on the bear.

• 34:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 34:27Chris Ryan?

  You know, popping up in places. And he did American Gigolo, which kinda came and went. And now he's back as the Punisher, and I know he's in The Accountant 2. I'm just like, I want, like.

• 34:40Chris Ryan?

  The Bernthal thing. I want the showcase.

• 34:43Andy Greenwald?

  We're going to, this is going to come up a little bit. I don't know if you realize this because I, we didn't prep this part. But when we talk about the pit momentarily.

• 34:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:50Andy Greenwald?

  I do have some thoughts about returning to iconic roles.

• 34:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:53Andy Greenwald?

  Or staying in a lane. I think the issue you're pointing out, which is really interesting, is that Bernthal is one of our greatest actors and still, still, after a couple, you know, many years of, of being the next, next thing, one of our most exciting actors. When he shows up, it's like, I think even, even normals are like, oh, this is exciting. But what's his definitive iconic role? It might be the one that you have continued to publicize across many of the Ringer properties and podcasts. But that was, you know, violently under seen.

• 35:27Chris Ryan?

  I suppose so.

• 35:28Andy Greenwald?

  He hasn't had that role yet.

• 35:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, but you could only, I, I choose to live in a world where it's like, I don't care if a lot of people saw it. If it was really good, I, you know, so in any case.

• 35:39Andy Greenwald?

  Of course.

• 35:39Chris Ryan?

  I just mentioned that because Ham, he did his run on Landman. He's been on Morning Show. He's kind of been around. And now he's going into his first, like, leading man. I'm carrying this series.

• 35:50Andy Greenwald?

  Your Friends and Neighbors.

• 35:51Chris Ryan?

  With Your Friends and Neighbors, which has already been renewed for a second season by Apple before the first season is airing. So we'll keep an eye on Daredevil. Let's get into the pit.

• 35:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 35:58Chris Ryan?

  Okay. So this is a show that we have been talking about a lot as, uh, conceptually and what it means for the direction of prestige slash streaming TV. Because this is a Max show that has, was, was hot off the press. Like, it was like, as soon as the idea was starting to be kicked around and soon as it was being mentioned, it was like, not only is this exciting because it's Noah Wiley returning to a medical procedural, but it brings in John Wells, uh, who obviously had a huge hand in ER, went on to work on Shameless, kind of came in at the ninth inning on, on West Wing.

• 36:36Andy Greenwald?

  And extended it into extras.

• 36:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And one of the great, you know, TV executive producer writers.

• 36:42Andy Greenwald?

  And like the, uh, shaman of showrunners.

• 36:45Chris Ryan?

  And the shaman of showrunners.

• 36:45Andy Greenwald?

  He does, um, courses for people who are becoming showrunners for the first time. He is just lionized and revered for that.

• 36:53Chris Ryan?

  That's amazing.

• 36:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 36:54Chris Ryan?

  So, uh, this is a HBO Max show.

• 36:58Andy Greenwald?

  Warner Brothers.

• 36:59Chris Ryan?

  A Warner Brothers production and it is set in a Pittsburgh emergency room and the structure is a hook because the structure is it's 15 episodes, 15 hours, one shift in one day of an ER in Pittsburgh.

• 37:13Andy Greenwald?

  And we should say again, although we've said it and we've talked about it before, that this show is the subject of ongoing litigation.

• 37:19Chris Ryan?

  Yes, because the estate of Michael Crichton believes that this is essentially, or was going to be, essentially, it sounds like there was an ER sequel that had been in development.

• 37:30Andy Greenwald?

  There was talk of rebooting ER, for sure.

• 37:31Chris Ryan?

  And then this show kind of takes place, it's not connected to ER at all, uh, through character or story.

• 37:38Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 37:39Chris Ryan?

  Vibe wise, I would say it's very much of the, of ER.

• 37:42Andy Greenwald?

  And John Wells directed it. It was created and run by R. Scott Gemmell, who worked on ER.

• 37:48Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:49Andy Greenwald?

  The-

• 37:50Chris Ryan?

  I think Wells just, uh, wrote the first episode. I don't think he directed it, did he?

• 37:53Andy Greenwald?

  He directed it.

• 37:54Chris Ryan?

  Oh, wow.

• 37:55Andy Greenwald?

  He did not write it.

• 37:56Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 37:57Andy Greenwald?

  R. Scott Gemmell wrote the first two episodes. Wells didn't write on it. He just directed the pilot.

• 37:59Chris Ryan?

  Okay. Well, in any case-

• 38:00Andy Greenwald?

  By the way, Noah Wiley wrote two episodes himself.

• 38:02Chris Ryan?

  Oh, wow.

• 38:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 38:04Chris Ryan?

  How about that?

• 38:05Andy Greenwald?

  A multi hyphenate. Anyway.

• 38:06Chris Ryan?

  So, yeah, the first two episodes are up. The third one will be going up probably by the time you hear this podcast.

• 38:11Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:12Chris Ryan?

  Uh, like I said, it starts at 7 a.m. Every, every episode is named after the hour it takes place in. And, uh, I gotta say-

• 38:20Andy Greenwald?

  Do it. You're, this is a safe space.

• 38:24Chris Ryan?

  Just push the epi, dude. I, I was pretty into this.

• 38:26Andy Greenwald?

  Hook it, hook it into my veins.

• 38:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:29Andy Greenwald?

  You know what? Open an airway and just intubate me with this show.

• 38:33Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so let me ask you this off rip, because the criticism that you would have of this, or that one could have of this, um, aside from the fact that it's largely humorless, is-

• 38:42Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know, there's the guy with the dog collar, but go on.

• 38:44Chris Ryan?

  Sure. Oh, yeah, it's pretty funny. Uh, is that it is so far absent of the will they or won't they ship Olympics that took place in the-

• 38:54Andy Greenwald?

  There's a little s- flavoring of it, a little sprinkle.

• 38:57Chris Ryan?

  It is, uh- It is very, very piously realistic, where it's just like, there is not time for,

• 39:06Andy Greenwald?

  No, not a ton.

• 39:07Chris Ryan?

  Shooting baskets in the backyard and like, you know.

• 39:10Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, like, yeah, like Doug and Mark waiting for the L.

• 39:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, like, it's, it is about this job and not about the home life of the people who do the job, at least as of now.

• 39:19Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 39:20Chris Ryan?

  After two, two hours of their day shift. So that would be the thing I think you could say against it is, there's not enough, like, personality and life to these characters. They're all just doing their job. But that being said, it's so immersive and so fascinating, and also brings back that incredible feeling that ER had, where you were, almost felt like you were watching this actually take place, because it would go from one bed and then

• 39:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 39:48Chris Ryan?

  to track you out into another part of the hospital, of the emergency room.

• 39:53Andy Greenwald?

  It's a visual language that was so groundbreaking 30 years ago, that Quentin Tarantino, who is the most groundbreaking cinematic director of that time, not only was obsessed with the show, asked to direct an episode.

• 40:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:05Andy Greenwald?

  And I think he asked to direct an episode, not necessarily because he wanted to bring his trademark verve to it, but because he wanted to see how they fucking did that shit.

• 40:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:14Andy Greenwald?

  To have that language back in my life is a blessing.

• 40:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:18Andy Greenwald?

  This show is a instantaneous reminder to me that TV is so hard, but it's not always complicated. This is like, an incredible cover version of a song that I'll never stop loving. Instantly drawn in. And not just drawn in because of the rhythms, which, because of thanks to John Wells and the, and the, and the DNA, without even wading into the litigation.

• 40:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:43Andy Greenwald?

  Is deeply, deeply familiar, in a way that made me very happy, and absolutely makes all the executives who have been trying to make it 1997 again through science or magic happy. But, there is a, there's a simplicity to watching a show that is about heroism. You know, I, sue me, but like, there is something that emotionally, morally, intellectually, feels really good about watching. Certainly flawed people.

• 41:14Andy Greenwald?

  Absolutely in the shit, doing their best. And it is why the medical show is one of the two most enduring styles of show, right? Because it's just, it's, everything is life or death. The stakes are always the highest possible. And the good guys are pretty clear.

• 41:30Andy Greenwald?

  I, I, you told, you were like, you might not be able to handle it. Because there are some children in peril and there's-

• 41:36Chris Ryan?

  There's children in peril, there's also like some, some thoracic procedures.

• 41:39Andy Greenwald?

  There's more gore. I will say for those of us, those of you watching this podcast on YouTube, that there were moments in the first two episodes where my viewing experience was this.

• 41:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I did that once or twice too.

• 41:49Andy Greenwald?

  This?

• 41:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:50Andy Greenwald?

  And that's beautiful. That was my second screen, was my, the palm of my hand in front of me.

• 41:55Chris Ryan?

  The dude who got electrocuted in the second episode where they have to like basically open up his arm.

• 41:59Andy Greenwald?

  Debrade the-

• 42:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I was like-

• 42:02Andy Greenwald?

  I was okay-

• 42:03Chris Ryan?

  I put my head up on the-

• 42:04Andy Greenwald?

  I was okay with that. That reminded me a little bit of like dragon scale shit. Like I was, okay, I could kind of see what they did there. I feel like the woman's leg that had just been undone.

• 42:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, they did the CGI budget on that.

• 42:15Andy Greenwald?

  Just undressed?

• 42:17Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 42:17Andy Greenwald?

  Let's say, um, like, like, like the, like the skeleton, half the skeleton we used to have in our, um, science classrooms.

• 42:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that was the Joe Theismann.

• 42:24Andy Greenwald?

  That was a little, put some respect on that man's leg.

• 42:29Andy Greenwald?

  That was a little much for me. But it, it isn't really, it's kind of a fascinating show because there are elements of it that are obviously contemporary. The trauma of COVID lingers over the main characters a lot and the, the medical profession. There's, you know, there, within the first two hours, there's, there's fentanyl, there's pot gummies falling out of the wrong hands. There are things that do feel like they probably are coming up in emergency rooms a lot.

• 42:54Chris Ryan?

  Or watching the Sixers, yeah.

• 42:55Andy Greenwald?

  Oh geez.

• 42:58Andy Greenwald?

  I like that you're turning it into positivity.

• 43:02Chris Ryan?

  I don't know why you're doing this.

• 43:04Andy Greenwald?

  The, you know why? Hurt people hurt people and this is what Bill does to you.

• 43:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:08Andy Greenwald?

  And you're pushing it down on me and that's okay, I see you. I'll give you a big hug when this is over. But then there are things about the show that make me think that Scott Gemmell wrote this- The day ER ended and just waited for the gum you like to come back into fashion. Shout out David Lynch, because there's like a scene when they're having a moment of silence for someone who's died and a doctor's resident ringtone interrupts it.

• 43:29Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 43:30Andy Greenwald?

  When's the last time you heard a ringtone? Someone with like a stained song.

• 43:33Chris Ryan?

  A funky like, yeah.

• 43:34Andy Greenwald?

  That's, what? You know, or, or, or just like the conversations that Dr. Robbie has with the administrator, who like every few minutes, just she comes out and she's like, "You have to do better." And, and he's just like, rolls up his sleeves and uncorks a jeremiad against the healthcare industry in this country. I'm like, yeah, this is timeless. This is timeless.

• 43:54Chris Ryan?

  I wouldn't necessarily describe it as like supremely artful dialogue in the first two episodes. Like it's a lot of like, ugh, just another day in paradise, you know, like, uh, like it, it speaks somewhat in.

• 44:08Andy Greenwald?

  Your voice American?

• 44:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, or just, that's two for two this week.

• 44:12Andy Greenwald?

  I just wanted to bring it back.

• 44:13Chris Ryan?

  Delilah underworld, John drops.

• 44:15Andy Greenwald?

  I loved it.

• 44:15Chris Ryan?

  Uh, it's a little rote, I guess.

• 44:20Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, it is. Uh, very by the numbers, I would say.

• 44:23Chris Ryan?

  And I thought that the second episode like had liftoff where the first episode kind of, you know, it was just like insisting on telling us like of, it was like, this is post-COVID, this guy's dealing with trauma from a mentor that he lost during COVID. There are all these new interns in the ER that day. We have to meet all of them. They all have their own story. They all have their own quirks.

• 44:45Andy Greenwald?

  We have to, we have to introduce all of it.

• 44:47Chris Ryan?

  I'm Santos and I'm sassy, you know? I'm Melissa.

• 44:50Andy Greenwald?

  And I'm gonna, and I'm gonna give you nicknames and we all have one secret that's a little bit of a twist on what we expected. Like the, the one who seems overwhelmed is the daughter of the, of the dominant surgeon in the upstairs hospital. Or the Fiona Dorff's doctor who seems, you know, incredibly kind, is wearing an ankle monitor and we don't understand why that is, but like. Look, we all understand the recipe and it's just being executed at such a high level. It's incredibly entertaining. Before we get into the most important part of the conversation, which I think is Noah Wiley in the lead. I do feel like, and I know that every time, right before we sit down and like they're checking mics and stuff. And Kaia comes in and is like, are you guys going to be woke today? And like, you know, trying to like read the room and, and we appreciate that.

• 45:36Chris Ryan?

  Kaia throws a bunch of snowflakes at us.

• 45:40Andy Greenwald?

  I, I.

• 45:42Chris Ryan?

  Poor Kaia.

• 45:42Andy Greenwald?

  I, I did.

• 45:43Chris Ryan?

  Not here to defend herself.

• 45:44Andy Greenwald?

  I did want to say, I don't, I do not intentionally not making, I don't mean to make it political, but I do think broadly speaking, we can agree that there is a segment of the society that we live in that maybe had disappeared up its own ass over the last few years. Culturally, creatively, potentially politically. I'm only zagging in the sense of television and what I mean is this.

• 46:06Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 46:08Andy Greenwald?

  Where were these shows during the last 20 years? And I mean, these shows, I don't mean like, oh, CBS never stopped making medical procedurals. I know that this is better than that and it's not better than that because of the, the gore budget or because they can swear a couple of times. It's better in the same way that the things that we used to love within the mass culture were better. Like ER, like homicide, life on the street. Like, I do think there was a weird inversion of our expectations over the last few years where suddenly we thought things that were intellectual or elevated needed to be.

• 46:44Chris Ryan?

  Or slow.

• 46:45Andy Greenwald?

  Or at the forefront of cultural conversation. When growing up, you know, we liked records that didn't sound like everyone else's records and that was cool for us. That was fine, but also when like Bush released Swallowed, we were like, that rips. Or like Spice Girls, like that's a catchy song. That's fine. All I'm saying here is.

• 47:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:04Andy Greenwald?

  There's nothing wrong.

• 47:07Andy Greenwald?

  With something that isn't veering too far to the, I want to say left? Or I, I, I'm joking about making it political. What I mean is, this is mass market entertainment done at a very high level. And I really enjoyed that. And I also still enjoyed Irma Vep on HBO, which is going to be the show I keep referencing.

• 47:27Chris Ryan?

  I would also say that the pit is pretty naked in its assessment of the current state of American healthcare.

• 47:33Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 47:33Chris Ryan?

  And it's a widely diverse cast, all being like, we're fucked.

• 47:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I, I, I only, I, I joked at the start, but I did mean to like pollute my observation with that. Because what I do mean.

• 47:44Chris Ryan?

  No, I know.

• 47:45Andy Greenwald?

  It doesn't.

• 47:46Chris Ryan?

  I don't think they'll know.

• 47:47Andy Greenwald?

  But they're. Who's, who's?

• 47:51Chris Ryan?

  You know, people listen to this, right?

• 47:53Andy Greenwald?

  Everyone who listens to this, who's going to be confused, is busy in DC this week. It's fine. No, no, no. Genuinely and sincerely, I really like, and in a weird way, this, this is, this applies to American Primeval 2, a show that has nothing else in common with this, other than it's, you know, lyrical depictions of blunt trauma.

• 48:14Andy Greenwald?

  I like shows that are very comfortable being what they are and not trying to be more than that, or not trying to cover too much ground, or disappear up their own ass. And like, I, I, even within my, whatever my limited perspective is in the industry over the last two years, as there has been this larger turn towards, let's make, let's make it 1997 again.

• 48:35Chris Ryan?

  Get back to our widgets.

• 48:36Andy Greenwald?

  Some of the pitches that I've seen, or outlines I've seen, or pilots that I've read,

• 48:42Andy Greenwald?

  are always, they're all still trying to just put a little extra mustard on it. They're all like, yes, it's ER, but it's also Rashomon. Or it's ER, but it's also, do you know what I mean? And this is, yes, it's ER, but it's also, don't tell Michael Crichton's estate. That's the end of the sentence. It's just ER. And that's fine, man. That's great.

• 49:04Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so the thing that ER did, aside from give the audience like almost a new visual language to watch TV with, and learn, and what, and then.

• 49:14Andy Greenwald?

  Did you know about intubation before this? I, ER, I didn't.

• 49:17Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. I mean, I'm sure they intubated some dudes on St. Elsewhere, right?

• 49:22Andy Greenwald?

  I, I don't know, they were just, they were just razzin' on St. Elsewhere. They were just.

• 49:25Chris Ryan?

  It also introduced a half a dozen really durable.

• 49:31Chris Ryan?

  TV and movie stars. So between Clooney, who is obviously still headlining films and a major figure in Hollywood today. Anthony Edwards was already in Top Gun, so it's not like Anthony Edwards, you know, was was out of nowhere. But Juliana Margulies, Eric LaSalle, Laura Innes, our beloved Sherry Stringfield.

• 49:53Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, my God. Monuments should be raised.

• 49:56Chris Ryan?

  And, you know, many others.

• 49:58Andy Greenwald?

  And then later, just Maureen Tierney, Linda Cardellini.

• 50:00Chris Ryan?

  Like, high Pfeiffer. I mean, Linda Cardellini, yeah. Like, the people who are just came to to join the cast. And off, I wonder whether after two episodes of ER, did people know, did people know, like, this group of people are gonna be, yeah?

• 50:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, it was incredible watching TV and being the dork that read TV Guide in like in 94.

• 50:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:23Andy Greenwald?

  Because it

• 50:24Chris Ryan?

  I was reading The Punisher, but that's cool.

• 50:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but you were reading it like on the bus for travel baseball.

• 50:31Andy Greenwald?

  It, you were living a very, very full life. I was not. But, um, yeah, I mean, 94 introduced the cast of Friends and the cast of ER. And we were like, yep, that's us set for a generation of people to care about.

• 50:43Chris Ryan?

  This is stuff that people are still watching today.

• 50:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. And, I mean, what it was like to be the same dork that I keep saying that I was, was like, I knew George Clooney from The Facts of Life. Like, this dude had been on all of the TV shows.

• 50:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:59Andy Greenwald?

  And then America was like, ah, this, you know, there were all these articles being like, you know, this nephew of Rosemary Clooney is kicked around for years and he's finally found it. I was like, oh, the guy from Coming to America has finally got a second act.

• 51:14Chris Ryan?

  Wasn't he a maintenance man on Golden Girls, too?

• 51:17Andy Greenwald?

  Clooney?

• 51:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. No.

• 51:19Andy Greenwald?

  He was the maintenance guy in Facts of Life.

• 51:20Chris Ryan?

  Facts of Life, okay.

• 51:21Andy Greenwald?

  But he was Booker on Roseanne.

• 51:23Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 51:23Andy Greenwald?

  The first two seasons. He was on just endless sitcoms. Um, but, but yeah, your point, but like Juliana Margulies, it's the, we always talk about the, you know, the wonderful fluidity of the TV creative process because Aaron Paul was meant to die in the pilot of Breaking Bad. And then they were like, nope. Uh, Juliana Margulies died in the pilot of ER. And they were like, we think this this last has something.

• 51:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:45Andy Greenwald?

  It's Carol and Doug's story. Still, you teared up a little bit when I said that.

• 51:49Chris Ryan?

  Just thinking about it.

• 51:49Andy Greenwald?

  It's great stuff. So

• 51:51Chris Ryan?

  Remember Doug when the road was flooding?

• 51:53Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, my God, what a hero he was. Remember how Doug was great with kids?

• 51:56Chris Ryan?

  I say that. Because I don't think The Pit is trying to launch a generation of stars.

• 52:01Andy Greenwald?

  I do not either, although it may stumble into some. I mean, if it is successful. But I also think that the ecosystem has changed so much.

• 52:10Andy Greenwald?

  There's a... Well, you know what? Let me slightly zag on that, only to say, the pilot for ER, written by the very litigious Michael Crichton.

• 52:22Chris Ryan?

  The late Michael.

• 52:23Andy Greenwald?

  The late Michael Crichton, was incredibly, not vanilla, but like, he had written it in the 70s, I believe, and had been passed over and kicked around. And it took years for them to bring it to the screen. And then also for the creative people involved in it to be like, "Let's push things forward visually and do it a different way." One of the things that I always thought was funny about ER, even in the 90s, was that the names of the characters were the most basic-ass names. You know, it was Mark Green, Doug Ross, shout out to my elementary school science teacher Doug Ross. Carol, like it was all Susan, right? It was all very kind of square-ish. And then all the people who got involved in the show later, and I think Spielberg was a producer, right? So Amblin was involved in pushing it.

• 53:07Andy Greenwald?

  So whatever, but like it became, it was both a question of casting, and then the visual language, and then the new creative team exploded the possibilities of it, beyond maybe what that pilot was. So I'm willing to say that like, if The Pit has even a quarter of the success of ER did, that there could be a chance for growth for these characters too. But your first point might be right, which is if we're not showing them shooting hoops in between ambulance dumps, then we might not have the chance.

• 53:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, a little bit of that, but let's talk a little bit about Noah Wiley, who is carrying this show and all of the trauma of the last eight years of American life in his bones as Dr. Robbie. He is the person overseeing the ER.

• 53:50Andy Greenwald?

  Senior attending.

• 53:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, senior attending, and he's on this 15-hour shift. When he arrives, he is relieving a guy named Dr. Jack Abbott, played by Sean Hatosi. Familiar face for people.

• 54:02Andy Greenwald?

  For sure.

• 54:03Chris Ryan?

  Shout out to the faculty. But that doctor seems to be like at the very edge of his...

• 54:12Chris Ryan?

  End of his rope.

• 54:12Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I've seen you after three podcasts.

• 54:14Chris Ryan?

  And he's like, looking over the railing on the roof and, and they're, they're, they're obviously in a pretty dark place. And that darkness continues in throughout the day. What did you think of Wiley, uh, in this new way of looking at him, I think? Because usually he has been presented as this kind of effervescent.

• 54:34Andy Greenwald?

  He, he was the.

• 54:35Chris Ryan?

  Went behind the years kid.

• 54:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, he was the POV character. He was the youngest. He was the sweetest walking in and having shit kicked out of him. Um, the show doesn't work without him. I think he's absolutely incredible. He, as you said, he carries everything that isn't on the page in his performance. And there's almost no, you can't budget for financially or in terms of like potential success in, in this industry for what he brings to this. Instantly you understand who he's been and who he is to everyone. Instantly you understand why he is able to be everywhere all at once and what it's costing him. Of course, he's the one who's going to be delivering devastating news after devastating news to people.

• 55:21Andy Greenwald?

  Um, it honestly, it made me think that we shouldn't, that we should allow more actors to just typecast themselves forever, not just Tim Oliphant as a US Marshal. That like, maybe instead of just rebooting shows like Kelsey Grammer wants to play Frasier again. So we have Frasier again. What we need to do instead is make a show.

• 55:47Chris Ryan?

  Where you play the type of guy that you've played before.

• 55:49Andy Greenwald?

  But the, but the.

• 55:50Chris Ryan?

  Older version.

• 55:51Andy Greenwald?

  Right. So Woody Harrelson as a bartender in, I want to say New Hampshire.

• 55:55Chris Ryan?

  Sold.

• 55:55Andy Greenwald?

  Or whatever. And so you avoid the lawsuits, but, or like what if, or you get Michael B. Jordan, um, back on the streets of Baltimore in a different role.

• 56:05Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 56:06Andy Greenwald?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 56:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:07Andy Greenwald?

  And, and frankly, to your other point. Jon Hamm should just play a salesman again. Jon Hamm should just chill out, come back from the dead on Landman, sorry spoiler, and get a little gray in his hair and just be an ad guy again in a different deck. I don't care, but like, let's all be honest here because what Wiley is doing is exceptional and it's exceptional because of the shared history with him. I mean, like, shouldn't George, like, I understand why creative people want creative challenges all the time, you know? It's why I'm letting you know this is my last podcast with you. It's time to stretch my wings. Sorry you had to find out this way. However.

• 56:50Chris Ryan?

  Well, now that the bit ended, what?

• 56:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, now that it's in, I can finally be unmuzzled. Clooney should just be Michael Clayton forever and you could call the movie Clay Michaels. I don't care, but just like, I don't see the downside here. It's give the people what they want.

• 57:07Chris Ryan?

  I'll shout out Wiley's ability that is obviously learned over the course of countless seasons on ER. Did he go end to end with ER or did he leave earlier?

• 57:16Andy Greenwald?

  I believe he was there the whole time. I mean, I believe he was the Meredith Grey.

• 57:22Chris Ryan?

  John Carter lives, right? Yes.

• 57:25Andy Greenwald?

  John Carter from Mars? Or John Carter that he played? By the way, his character was John Carter, like, Crichton? All respect to the deceased Mike Crichton, but like, spend five more minutes on the names.

• 57:37Chris Ryan?

  He is able to convey human feeling and emotion while also saying, you know,

• 57:45Andy Greenwald?

  He left after the 11th season.

• 57:46Chris Ryan?

  10 cc's of this.

• 57:47Andy Greenwald?

  For what it's worth.

• 57:48Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 57:50Andy Greenwald?

  But he came back at the end.

• 57:50Chris Ryan?

  There's a moment in the second episode, I hope people have watched it by now, but this is a spoiler for the second episode, I guess. A teenager has been brought in unresponsive. They kind of have a little bit of a house M D thing going where they can't figure out what's wrong with him.

• 58:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 58:07Chris Ryan?

  There is this incredible sequence of events that I hope I am getting right, if I remember correctly, where basically. They look at his pupils right before Robbie is about to talk to the guy, the kid's parents, and the pupils are blown, which suggests brainstem activity is stopped. And then, as he is talking to the parents, a nurse shows him a urine drug test that is tested positive for fentanyl. And so, he has to tell these parents, live in this conversation, that the kid overdosed on fentanyl. And they're just like, "No, you didn't." Because there's, how would he have had that? And he has to explain, like, it can be found in Ativan, it can be found in all this stuff.

• 58:46Andy Greenwald?

  Well, if you buy illegal pills, label or something, it could be.

• 58:50Chris Ryan?

  Right. And then, a few moments later, he essentially is like, gotta go tell these parents this real reality. Because at first, what he says is, "We're gonna run some more tests," and blah, blah, blah, and like, gives them like, a glimmer of hope.

• 59:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, talk, talk to him, you never know.

• 59:05Chris Ryan?

  And then, he's gotta go tell the parents, like, "This is it." You know, like, I, this kid is essentially brain-dead. And it's the first moment where all the other patients and doctors on the floor here, like, are aware of something else happening, essentially. Because the woman, the mother, starts crying so much. And so, I just thought, like, that sequence, I was like, this is kind of, we're hitting ER heights here.

• 59:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. And the cross-cutting, and-

• 59:34Chris Ryan?

  And he's incredible in that.

• 59:35Andy Greenwald?

  He's incredible in that, he's completely alive. This is a different type of acting, you know, that he knows how to do, and other people had to learn. The interconnectedness is outstanding in that. Like, the mother's scream goes through everyone, and we each have a sense of place, and a sense of where everyone is in their own journey. I also feel like there's just some small things that pop right away, like, Tracey Affichor is a British actress as Dr. Collins. There's some sort of history between her and Dr. Robbie. I just immediately liked her, and I wanted to see her on screen. Like, that's the kind of thing that you need when you're casting. You need these people to pop in the small doses that you get of them. And the younger residents as well, I think, are well-cast. I didn't, I don't think I'd ever seen any of them before, other than Isa Briones, who

• 1:00:20Andy Greenwald?

  was on Picard, which-

• 1:00:21Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:00:22Andy Greenwald?

  -one of the many shows that I said I would stick with, after we talked about once. And sorry, but glad to see she's found something new to do.

• 1:00:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. I don't have anything other, any other fancy grand cultural statements to make other than the fact that I loved it and I would have watched four more

• 1:00:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:39Andy Greenwald?

  had they been available to me.

• 1:00:41Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk a little bit about Primeval before we get out of here.

• 1:00:43Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 1:00:43Chris Ryan?

  American Primeval is the, I believe, as a recording, the number one show on Netflix. It's from Peterberg and Mark L. Smith, Peterberg, obviously, an acclaimed director and TV showrunner. He helped create Friday Night Lights with Jason Cadence, came up with the sort of visual language for that, directed Lone Survivor, directed, gosh, what's like another Deepwater Horizon?

• 1:01:07Andy Greenwald?

  Battleship.

• 1:01:07Chris Ryan?

  Battleship and Mark L. Smith wrote The Revenant. And this is a Western set in 1850s during the Utah War, which is a war I was not super up on, to be honest.

• 1:01:20Andy Greenwald?

  Were you not?

• 1:01:20Chris Ryan?

  1850 is a little bit of a blank spot for your boy.

• 1:01:23Andy Greenwald?

  Huh.

• 1:01:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I get going in the 1860s.

• 1:01:26Andy Greenwald?

  Are you saving that for retirement? Like just have a big old book about that decade that you can sort of scare the neighborhood kids off with?

• 1:01:32Chris Ryan?

  I was thinking about getting into like, maybe I could, I could fire up like an audiobook about the 1850s. You know, because I've got, I got my fingers, I got my hands full with a lot of, a lot of novels right now. But I had a really negative audiobook experience recently. I was trying to be really efficient, so I was reading Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner.

• 1:01:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, we talked about it.

• 1:01:53Chris Ryan?

  And I was like, you know what? This isn't going fast enough because I want to get to these next books. So what I'm going to do is read and then go to the audiobook

• 1:02:02Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 1:02:02Chris Ryan?

  to like, keep, keep the going all over.

• 1:02:06Andy Greenwald?

  Did you really?

• 1:02:07Chris Ryan?

  With no disrespect intended, because I thought it was quite a good book and Rachel Kushner is one of my favorite novelists. I don't know who read the audiobook, but it sounded like an AI version of Emma Stone.

• 1:02:17Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, my God. Yeah, wait, I have something to say about this. Go on.

• 1:02:20Chris Ryan?

  And I pulled up somewhere to get, where was I going? That someone, I think I was getting my oil changed and I rolled up with my windows down.

• 1:02:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:33Chris Ryan?

  And there was a detailed description of a blowjob happening.

• 1:02:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:36Chris Ryan?

  From like an AI woman.

• 1:02:38Andy Greenwald?

  A BJ on Alvarado?

• 1:02:41Chris Ryan?

  In Creation Lake, it's the only thing like that that happened in the book. And I happened to be pulling into like a Jiffy Lube.

• 1:02:49Chris Ryan?

  So that's just-

• 1:02:50Andy Greenwald?

  Did everyone-

• 1:02:51Chris Ryan?

  Audio book corner.

• 1:02:52Andy Greenwald?

  Did everyone gather around until the scene was finished? Just like all the mechanics put down their tools and just quietly gathered?

• 1:02:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, anyway, where was I? Can I just jump in? Were we talking about, oh, so I maybe-

• 1:03:04Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not an audiobook guy, um, but recently when I was driving with my daughters, they wanted to listen to one of my older daughter was like, let's listen to-

• 1:03:11Chris Ryan?

  Creation Lake.

• 1:03:12Andy Greenwald?

  Let's listen to, let's jump to page 391 of Creation Lake. Uncle Chris was raving about it.

• 1:03:20Andy Greenwald?

  No, my older daughter wanted to listen to Little Women to convince her sister that it's really good because she's read it and seen the movie. So I gave her my phone and she like found it on Spotify and it was horrifying, like within two pages because it was exactly this. It was like Alexa, she's like, "Christmas won't be Christmas without presents, Grumble Joe, bring on the rug." And we made it about half a page.

• 1:03:46Chris Ryan?

  There's some really good audiobooks, I'm sure.

• 1:03:47Andy Greenwald?

  And then I was so impressed. This is a whole new world that only you and my daughter can navigate because she took the phone back and within 45 seconds Christina Ricci narrating Little Women. Total game changer.

• 1:03:59Chris Ryan?

  Was it like a different file or a different version of it?

• 1:04:01Andy Greenwald?

  A lot of options on, in Daniel X's playground.

• 1:04:03Chris Ryan?

  Well, maybe I had the wrong Creation Lake.

• 1:04:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, the Christina Ricci version.

• 1:04:07Chris Ryan?

  The Juliette Lewis version.

• 1:04:08Andy Greenwald?

  The Juliette Lewis version.

• 1:04:09Chris Ryan?

  Only Yellowjackets. Andy, god damn it.

• 1:04:13Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:04:13Chris Ryan?

  American Pride People is set in 1850s Utah.

• 1:04:16Andy Greenwald?

  Sure, it is.

• 1:04:16Chris Ryan?

  Uh, where Mormons were beefing with-

• 1:04:20Andy Greenwald?

  It's just one way of putting it, yeah.

• 1:04:22Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Native Americans and the US Army. And while all this beef is happening, settlers, pioneers, whatever, are trying to make their way west. One of those, uh, pioneer are, uh, played by Betty Gilpin, plays a character named Sarah who's trying to get from the East Coast to her husband who's somewhere in Utah.

• 1:04:41Andy Greenwald?

  A lot of, uh, once again, some Philadelphia slander in the opening minutes of this show and I stuck with it.

• 1:04:46Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and I'll tell you something, so Gilpin needs a hand. She gets out to Fort Bridger, uh, in Utah and Shay Wiggum.

• 1:04:53Andy Greenwald?

  Wyoming, I think.

• 1:04:53Chris Ryan?

  Wyoming.

• 1:04:54Andy Greenwald?

  Trying to cross into Utah.

• 1:04:55Chris Ryan?

  And Shay, Shay Wiggum in an incredible turn plays-

• 1:04:58Andy Greenwald?

  So good.

• 1:04:58Chris Ryan?

  Jim Bridger.

• 1:04:59Andy Greenwald?

  A real, a real person.

• 1:05:00Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm. And he eventually, she hooks up with, uh, Taylor Kitsch's Isaac character who is a mountain man of some repute. And his job basically that he takes out of the kindness of his heart after much arm twisting is to get her to her husband. And I'll tell you something, man. This chick gets him in a lot of pickles.

• 1:05:20Andy Greenwald?

  This is your take. This is your take. Go for it.

• 1:05:25Chris Ryan?

  It's, I'm not.

• 1:05:26Andy Greenwald?

  New year, new administration.

• 1:05:28Chris Ryan?

  I just think that she, she really, really gets him into some, some jams in this one.

• 1:05:33Andy Greenwald?

  So, so to be clear, when we meet Isaac, he's just, he's just skinning some stuff and showing his own skin.

• 1:05:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:41Andy Greenwald?

  He's just living off the grid.

• 1:05:43Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:05:43Andy Greenwald?

  Right? And then this mouthy broad shows up with a kid in a crutch and she's like, bake me to my husband.

• 1:05:51Chris Ryan?

  And that kid has a leg brace, but can pick up bales of hay.

• 1:05:54Andy Greenwald?

  Well, you don't pick them up with your legs.

• 1:05:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but I'm just saying like, I, I don't.

• 1:05:58Andy Greenwald?

  Do more Pilates. You got a strong core.

• 1:06:00Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:06:01Andy Greenwald?

  Um, and I mean, I guess there's a couple of things here because there's also another, obviously there are, um, many plots on top of each other. There's also, uh, one of our favorites, Dale DeHaan playing a.

• 1:06:12Chris Ryan?

  Dane.

• 1:06:13Andy Greenwald?

  I'm sorry, Dane DeHaan playing a young Mormon.

• 1:06:15Chris Ryan?

  Dale DeHaan was the guy who invented the dragon jacket.

• 1:06:19Andy Greenwald?

  It sounds like a Giambi situation to me. You know what I mean? There is another DeHaan. Yeah, there's another DeHaan brother. And like a, a less, like a, like a, an IFC show or an AMC show would hire him. Like trying to moneyball a prestige drama because they can't afford Dane.

• 1:06:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Dane DeHaan's in it.

• 1:06:38Andy Greenwald?

  So you get Dale.

• 1:06:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Joe Tippett, our boy from, uh, Mayor of Easttown, plays an evil son of a bitch.

• 1:06:43Andy Greenwald?

  And Sarah Lightfoot Leon, who we love on the agency, is here again, kind of having a moment. It's a great cast and there are, I mean, there's like, one of the takeaways is, you know, I don't, no disrespect. Like there haven't been that many times in my life when I wanted to go to Utah ever.

• 1:07:02Chris Ryan?

  I've been.

• 1:07:02Andy Greenwald?

  I've been, I've had a really nice time there. I have no, I actually have. It's very beautiful, um, Salt Lake City, nice town. But I've never been like, I gotta get there to the degree that these people feel it. And I think the conditions.

• 1:07:14Chris Ryan?

  The spirit is compelling.

• 1:07:16Andy Greenwald?

  The conditions in which I went were easier.

• 1:07:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:18Andy Greenwald?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 1:07:19Chris Ryan?

  Um, this show's pretty awesome, but it is the feel bad hit of the summer. It is.

• 1:07:26Andy Greenwald?

  It is so gnarly.

• 1:07:27Chris Ryan?

  It is so gnarly. The first episode culminates with a truly impressive staging of a fake news native raid on a wagon train.

• 1:07:39Andy Greenwald?

  In that.

• 1:07:40Chris Ryan?

  Mormon dudes are pretending to be a tribe, like, who are there. And it's vivid. I mean, like, you get to the end of these episodes and you know, like, there's like, sometimes there's cliffhangers where you're like, I wonder what happens next. And sometimes it's like, that was so good. I can't wait to watch another one. And these are like, truly, we must have hit bottom. I need to see these guys have like, a good day. The visual palette is so muddy. It kind of is like the Netflix version of McCabe and Mrs. Miller vibes, where it's just so brown and gross. It makes this act look as probably violent and reprehensible as possible.

• 1:08:24Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think that Sarah and Isaac, would you be happier if, like, midway through their trek across the Wasatch Mountains, they found like, a nice Airbnb?

• 1:08:32Chris Ryan?

  Well.

• 1:08:33Andy Greenwald?

  They could glamp a little bit? Would you prefer that?

• 1:08:37Chris Ryan?

  She seems to have a lot of cash.

• 1:08:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and it's weird. She's just like, I have a lot of money. And other people, in my limited viewing of the show, which is basically two episodes of the five or six, I believe. So far, when anyone says they have cash, they die violently, very, very soon after.

• 1:08:54Chris Ryan?

  Even if they're like, I have a piece of paper that suggests where cash might be.

• 1:08:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:58Chris Ryan?

  They get killed.

• 1:08:58Andy Greenwald?

  That's a wrap. That's, that's why I go paperless.

• 1:09:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:01Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:09:02Chris Ryan?

  My guy Jai Courtney is in this, as a real piece of shit, named Cutter.

• 1:09:06Andy Greenwald?

  Did I? Should we, do you think we should?

• 1:09:08Chris Ryan?

  It's not Jai?

• 1:09:09Andy Greenwald?

  Well, spelled the way, but I think it's pronounced J. But I know this, because, do you think, let's poll our listeners. They could put this up on Facebook or whatever. Like, do you think people are interested in quotidian interactions with random semi-celebrities that we have, or not?

• 1:09:23Chris Ryan?

  Uh.

• 1:09:24Andy Greenwald?

  Because one time, speaking of Pilates, I was going in and Jai Courtney was coming out.

• 1:09:28Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I saw Jai Courtney in a hotel lobby just a couple of weeks ago.

• 1:09:30Andy Greenwald?

  Seems like a nice guy, but he was huge. And we were ostensibly going into the same.

• 1:09:35Chris Ryan?

  You think he was huge?

• 1:09:36Andy Greenwald?

  He was, had just been working out.

• 1:09:38Chris Ryan?

  Oh, but I was surprised, because he was, he was kind of closer to my height.

• 1:09:40Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, not tall. He was just kind of jacked, because he was going to do an action movie or whatever. And, and, oh, he was coming in after me. And I couldn't help myself. And I was like, warmed it up for you.

• 1:09:50Chris Ryan?

  Did you say that?

• 1:09:51Andy Greenwald?

  I did.

• 1:09:51Chris Ryan?

  Did you really?

• 1:09:52Andy Greenwald?

  I did.

• 1:09:52Chris Ryan?

  And what did he say?

• 1:09:54Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, mate. He's Australian.

• 1:09:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:09:57Andy Greenwald?

  It wasn't my best. It didn't feel great. But I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, maybe we're all just, we're all just, you know, kooky astronauts on Spaceship Earth.

• 1:10:06Chris Ryan?

  I, I, I recommend this show with the typical, like, it's pretty grisly caveat.

• 1:10:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:15Andy Greenwald?

  I want to say.

• 1:10:16Chris Ryan?

  Are you gonna, you're gonna keep going with this?

• 1:10:17Andy Greenwald?

  I want to keep going with this for a number of reasons. One of which is surprising myself I'm enjoying it. And also shout out to the explosions in the sky for a very cool score.

• 1:10:26Chris Ryan?

  And Gilton's incredible. Kitch is, Kitch is my guy. I love him.

• 1:10:29Andy Greenwald?

  I like things that are expensive in the right way and done well. Like, it looks stunning. Peter Berg is a great visual director and is doing something. I mean, you mentioned McCabe and Mrs. Miller, but like, I'm interested.

• 1:10:42Chris Ryan?

  That's probably sacrilegious. It just is like a very gritty, yeah.

• 1:10:45Andy Greenwald?

  But it's, it's Pete Berg directing a Western.

• 1:10:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:49Andy Greenwald?

  Which is, that's interesting. He's, he's, his camera's moving in ways that it hasn't before. I didn't know arrows were like that.

• 1:10:55Chris Ryan?

  They, yeah.

• 1:10:56Andy Greenwald?

  You know?

• 1:10:56Chris Ryan?

  They have some velocity.

• 1:10:57Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think both of us thought that maybe like in an arrow fight, we had a little bit of a chance.

• 1:11:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, just keep zagging.

• 1:11:03Andy Greenwald?

  Just keep moving.

• 1:11:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:04Andy Greenwald?

  That does not seem to be the case.

• 1:11:06Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:11:07Andy Greenwald?

  You know, it, it reminds me of, you remember the Game of Thrones moment? When the guy was just like, he could have survived if he had just not run a go ball straight route?

• 1:11:16Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:11:16Andy Greenwald?

  If he had just done like a cross pattern, he would have survived.

• 1:11:19Chris Ryan?

  If you run Spider 3, why banana?

• 1:11:21Andy Greenwald?

  That's what I'm saying. Like, Sean Sayed has some, some, some notes he'd like to give. I'm saying like, that was my understanding of arrows. But anyway, all this is to say, it is, I feel that it is surprising for my personal brand, especially as articulated on this podcast, that I'm kind of into this show, but I like history. I like Westerns. I like Americana. I really like this cast.

• 1:11:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:41Andy Greenwald?

  Love audiobooks.

• 1:11:42Chris Ryan?

  The Punisher.

• 1:11:43Andy Greenwald?

  And into the promise of massive physical violence, week to week. I, I can't believe any of it. It's super gnarly. It's not for everyone, but I am weirdly enjoying it.

• 1:11:52Chris Ryan?

  What a great moment for television. We'll be back on Monday to talk a little bit about Severance's first episode. Thanks for everybody for listening, for watching us on the Ringer YouTube, on the Ringer TV YouTube channel.

• 1:12:03Andy Greenwald?

  Well, Kaia, Kaia, will you be joining us next week or will you be in DC? I'll see where I'm needed most.

• 1:12:11Chris Ryan?

  Have a great weekend, guys.

• 1:12:11Andy Greenwald?

  I miss Kaia being in the room with us. We gotta get her involved.

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