Summer Mailbag: The Influence of ‘Lost,’ Prestige TV Fatigue, and Reading Recommendations

Chris and Andy crack open the mailbag to answer questions like what the lasting influence of ‘Lost’ is on modern TV (16:57), whether we might be entering an age of prestige TV fatigue (33:00), and what they have been reading lately (47:55). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Producer: Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:46Speaker 00

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• 1:18Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at therigger.com and joining me in the studio, it's Andy Greenwald. Oh, more modest today. We're modest today because we have a modest little mailbag we're gonna do. We're in a little bit of like an in between time. Andy, with shows, you know, we were coming off of The Bear. We have Too Much on Netflix, which I think we'll get to at some point. We have, um, there's actually a couple of shows on Netflix that I was. You're doing the secret with that one. Okay. You're putting it into the world that we're gonna be talking about it. I'm just telling people, I'm watching developing situations across streaming networks. The Watch is still, our mission is still television. Uh, but you know, there's a couple of shows out there that I'm gonna try and get caught up on during my, my short vacation.

• 2:03Chris Ryan?

  Eastern Gate on Max comes, on HBO Max comes highly recommended. Families Like Ours, which is recommended to us through our mailbox, uh, as like a kind of Eternaut, but for Denmark. Uh, is, is interesting. It's Thomas Winterberg, another round director. Oh, hell yeah. Okay. So that's an interesting series I want to check out. But we have this moment before Alien Earth, before the paper, before a couple of other shows that I know we're looking forward to, where I thought we could do a mailbag.

• 2:33Andy Greenwald?

  I think it was a great thought, especially because, man, email is where it's at. You know, email is still...

• 2:41Chris Ryan?

  You doubted the email, but it's really good.

• 2:43Andy Greenwald?

  I, well, I didn't doubt it. I mean, as people who listen to the pod regularly know, you guys had, you guys had the no good emails filter set.

• 2:52Chris Ryan?

  It was tough. Kai and I, mistakes were made. There's, I don't know what spam filter we had on, but essentially I was like, damn, I only got like five emails. I've been doing this pod a long time. It turns out there were hundreds of emails. They were just in my spam filter.

• 3:04Andy Greenwald?

  It's, first of all, thank God you found them, because these are exceptional questions, and they're very kind and thoughtful, and I look forward to getting into them. I also am so happy we're doing it this way and not your alternative suggestion, which was just responding to Spotify comments, which, you know, I think probably would have been a spikier, spikier episode of the show.

• 3:25Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 3:26Andy Greenwald?

  But...

• 3:27Chris Ryan?

  Um, why don't we start here? Uh, this is a little bit of a backwards looking question, but I think it's a good one. It's from Alex.

• 3:34Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 3:34Chris Ryan?

  Been listening since Grantland. Thank you so much for doing that. Thank you for your service, Alex. Uh, I'm turning 40 this month and realize I've been listening to you guys talk for more than a third of my life.

• 3:44Andy Greenwald?

  Hold on, just, can we just, okay, all right, go on.

• 3:49Chris Ryan?

  What is the most memorable exchange you've had on the show, whether with a guest or with each other? Or is there a bit of wisdom that has stuck with you? For me, it's Andy's conversation with Jenny Lewis in the Voyager era. If there's any way I can still listen to this one, please share.

• 4:04Andy Greenwald?

  First of all, I would love to know what the...

• 4:06Chris Ryan?

  Is that on the Andy Greenwald Show? Podcast?

• 4:09Andy Greenwald?

  Podcast show?

• 4:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:10Andy Greenwald?

  It sure was, Chris. Not only was that from those Halcyon days back in when it was still under the, well, yeah, it was when it was still under Grantland, but that was the interview where when I sat down with Jenny, she sang my name, which we then used as part of the intro.

• 4:27Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 4:28Andy Greenwald?

  Wasn't that nice?

• 4:28Chris Ryan?

  I thought that was Church's music.

• 4:30Andy Greenwald?

  No, so there was two eras. Grantland era, Andy Greenwald podcast. Jenny singing my name was the opening of it. Then when we relaunched for the Ringer era, Church's was kind enough to compose original music.

• 4:47Chris Ryan?

  Who did the music for Stick the Lining?

• 4:49Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, my friend Giancarlo Volcano.

• 4:51Chris Ryan?

  Cool.

• 4:51Andy Greenwald?

  This is just great.

• 4:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:52Andy Greenwald?

  Why don't you just interview me for a while? Anyway.

• 4:55Chris Ryan?

  I know that you would love that.

• 4:55Andy Greenwald?

  I would love it. Ooh, I have so many takes to get off. Um, about myself. Uh, I, that was a great one. So, but, all right. Well, do you want to handle, you want to tackle?

• 5:06Chris Ryan?

  I will say that the most memorable run of guests that we had was definitely during the pandemic, when all of a sudden.

• 5:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 5:14Chris Ryan?

  All publicists were like, my client is pretty avail.

• 5:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 5:18Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and would love to chat with another human being about anything, but also this show that they have coming out.

• 5:23Andy Greenwald?

  So that was the, that was the run of months where we had like Paul Meskell, Kristen Bell, Hugh Grant, Kate Winslet twice.

• 5:30Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and, uh, Tony Dalton from a, uh, like what seemed like a jungle in his backyard.

• 5:36Andy Greenwald?

  But also from his iPhone, which he was holding like below his face.

• 5:39Chris Ryan?

  This is the other thing was that the celebs were not like, they didn't have their own podcast studios.

• 5:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 5:45Chris Ryan?

  So they would often be like, yeah, I can jump on whatever. And it was like, yes, because you're, you're doing this from FaceTime. Uh, but, well, everybody had the Zoom app, so it was working. So that was like a very funny, uh, very humanizing stretch, I thought, for, for a lot of our guests. Obviously Kate Winslet stands out. We've had a lot of people. I think honestly Sam Esmeil has been the person that I've gleaned the most wisdom from. Because I think it's interesting to have somebody whose work we obviously revere, who you've worked with in the past, who's also challenges some of our priors and some of our deeply held convictions about storytelling, et cetera.

• 6:22Andy Greenwald?

  He challenged his way off of the show.

• 6:24Chris Ryan?

  He sure did.

• 6:24Andy Greenwald?

  That's, first of all, because people do conspiracy theorize about this. That is not true. He is still welcome and he also still berates us off mic when we see him.

• 6:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:33Andy Greenwald?

  Um, I always, with a question like this, I always have to shout out the great Almost Was, which we have talked about in the past, but the fact that there was a moment in 20 16, when we were knee deep in negotiations for President Barack Obama to be on our show.

• 6:51Chris Ryan?

  I just really don't think it was that deep. I don't think we were anywhere. I think it was ankle deep.

• 6:56Andy Greenwald?

  I think it was toe deep.

• 6:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:58Andy Greenwald?

  But that was so, so funny to me. What a time, when he was just like, I'm almost done. Let's explore some alternative media.

• 7:07Chris Ryan?

  He's continued to do so.

• 7:08Andy Greenwald?

  He is. He was building the groundwork. But do you think that we would be doing the show for higher ground if we had just spoken to him once?

• 7:14Chris Ryan?

  I don't know, man. It's a good question.

• 7:15Andy Greenwald?

  Like, I went back to that email and we're just like, you know, we, we like to have a segment on the show called, Who the Fuck Was That Guy? And the president could weigh in on which member of the fucking Stark lineage he's not familiar with.

• 7:27Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's right.

• 7:27Andy Greenwald?

  Luckily, there was, there was nothing else for him to work on. I definitely, well, I, first of all, let's, let's leave for a moment, because I do want to talk about which moments you've enjoyed most with me. No, both of us together, without guests. But since the listener asked about the, the solo stuff, as far as I can tell, every single thing we did for ESPN is gone. It's a huge bummer.

• 7:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:51Andy Greenwald?

  Briefly, I could, like, some things got copied to YouTube because of fandoms.

• 7:56Chris Ryan?

  I thought that there are some Soundclouds, like, floating around and stuff like that, not to, not to draw the ire of the Disney Corporation.

• 8:02Andy Greenwald?

  No, but like, like, the, the Rami Malek interview I did back in the day is, like, very much on YouTube.

• 8:07Chris Ryan?

  You have, like, a crystal clear recall for the things that you did so well. It's amazing.

• 8:12Andy Greenwald?

  They were very meaningful. No, I did want to say that, like, like, I don't remember what was, I wonder what the advice was from the Jenny Lewis podcast, because that was the podcast where she talked about the advice that Ryan Adams gave her.

• 8:22Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 8:22Andy Greenwald?

  About how, like, get the fuck out of here and go home and write Wonderwall.

• 8:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:26Andy Greenwald?

  Which, you know, worked out for him. But there was a run when I did get to talk to, like, all of, not, not all, but like, many of my heroes, like Lindsey Buckingham and I, and Tony Bourdain. And I wish that I had that audio.

• 8:40Chris Ryan?

  You got the memories.

• 8:41Andy Greenwald?

  Or like, we had, like, the first interview I ever did for the show, when it was still, when it was us, but I did, it was George Pelikanos.

• 8:47Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:48Andy Greenwald?

  And he's been on since, but like, that was an incredible honor to be able to do that. And then the early, early... Ringer solo pods where I had like Trevor Noah for a really long, really good conversation. I love that one. And you know, you know, the other one was really good.

• 9:01Chris Ryan?

  Do you want to go solo? Is that what I'm hearing?

• 9:03Andy Greenwald?

  No, he's asking like, good interview experiences.

• 9:06Chris Ryan?

  He has like one little parenthetical at the end.

• 9:08Andy Greenwald?

  You can talk about the time that you spoke to Lewis Pullman.

• 9:12Chris Ryan?

  That's true, without you, because you didn't watch Out of Range.

• 9:14Andy Greenwald?

  No, but also, we were talking about this recently. There was the time that you did Jeremy Allen White solo. Because you were like, I checked out the screeners for that new FX show. I guess I'm going to talk to the guy from Shameless. And I was like, yeah, go for it.

• 9:28Andy Greenwald?

  I wanted you to get a little shine.

• 9:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, uh, look, certain people gravitate towards different hosts. I don't want to tell you.

• 9:36Andy Greenwald?

  I think.

• 9:37Chris Ryan?

  You have Jenny Lewis, I have Jeremy Allen White.

• 9:39Andy Greenwald?

  I think, um, let history be the judge. I think, uh, the, anytime into, because it has been on with us, is all timer. Anytime Jakey J Johnson's on with us is amazing. Uh, I do think maybe we peaked with the slap.

• 9:55Chris Ryan?

  That's a long time ago.

• 9:56Andy Greenwald?

  When we, we'd spent a long down.

• 9:58Chris Ryan?

  Glories of, of that short-lived NBC show now.

• 10:01Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it had a kind of freedom and purity that Barack Obama had when he was seeking out podcast opportunities in the last year in office. Do you know what I mean? Like, just the fact that we were completely making it up and just meeting in, we weren't even meeting in Midtown then. You were, we were doing it coast to coast, right? You were in California. Um, and there was just an absolutely absurd NBC show that we just devoted weeks to. I enjoyed that.

• 10:23Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I also always enjoyed talking to creators, showrunners, writers, like multiple times throughout the process of either a season or throughout seasons of shows. So getting to talk to Conrad K. and Mickey Down about industry, getting to talk to Jesse Armstrong about Succession, and getting to talk to Tony Gilroy about Andor, uh, has been really enlightening and also incredibly like entertaining for me. Catherine asks, hi Andy, Chris and Kaia. Love the watch and am in need of advice. Am in need of advice. I am a huge consumer of longer, quote, standalone media, movies and books, but really struggle with sticking with episodic viewing, i.e. TV shows. In the binging age, I have a lot of trouble getting myself to actually finish a season of TV,

• 11:07Chris Ryan?

  even if all the episodes are out. Weekly releases are much easier for me to consume, which is great with the movement away from binge drops with The Pit and White Lotus. I think this is because the eventification of the episode dropping makes it seem more exciting to my brain. The issue, however, arises with shows that are already out and already going. I haven't been able to get through The Bear Severance or Andor because I didn't watch them when they were airing. Now it feels like I'm too far behind to catch up and it feels overwhelming to start when I know that I have trouble sticking with shows that are already out. But I also want to watch these shows and know what the hype is about. Do you have any advice for starting and sticking with TV shows when the sheer amount of content and lack of weekly releases feels overwhelming?

• 11:53Chris Ryan?

  I think you're describing a modern condition here, Catherine. I don't think that this is something that you should be ashamed of, for one thing. You certainly don't seem to be, but I'm just saying like, there's like, if you were like an avid or aggressive media consumer, I think that where you're at is a pretty normal place to be, which is feeling overwhelmed by choice and overwhelmed by the labor of keeping up with it. But maybe not getting, I think ultimately you have to be honest with yourself. Maybe you're just not getting something out of TV that you get out of books and movies.

• 12:24Andy Greenwald?

  I would like to speak to that, but please continue.

• 12:27Chris Ryan?

  I, just to share, have found this very funny thing happening. You know, I was like, Home Alone this week, not like Kevin from Home Alone, but like-

• 12:37Andy Greenwald?

  Anyone try to break in? Any of those, any of the dogs you were complaining about last week?

• 12:41Chris Ryan?

  I had some time to myself this week and I find this new thing happening where I'll be reading a book or watching a movie or something or watching TV. And I just can't stop thinking about like, either the next thing I'm going to be doing or what I could be doing instead. And it's that kind of, I definitely like chalk that up to scrolling. I chalk that up to lists. I chalk it up to, you know, constantly being aware of all this stuff. I think there's an age thing too, where you've kind of maybe passed this point of like, oh, everything is new and amazing and a wonder. And you're now like, what vibe do I want to go for? What experience do I want to make? Do like, do I want to be watching a Western? Do I want to be watching a gangster movie? Do I want to watch like a really like trenchant Chinese drama?

• 13:26Chris Ryan?

  You know, like what is, there's so much stuff to choose from that I think- I find myself getting a little bit distracted by my own brain while watching stuff. And I think my advice to Catherine is just like of the shows you're talking about, like Severance and Andor and The Bear. Like, I think I would say that Andor probably has the most reward to risk payoff. Like, almost every episode of Andor has something really valuable to glean from it. But this may just be a situation where, like, you know, you're finding that episodic television is not the thing that you want to invest your time in. And I don't think that's a big deal.

• 14:09Chris Ryan?

  But thank you for listening to the pod and keep doing it.

• 14:12Andy Greenwald?

  And keeping up.

• 14:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:12Andy Greenwald?

  At least download every episode. Benny Jeserit voice, obligation is the joy killer. Like, nothing takes enjoyment out of any exercise than like having to do it. It's true.

• 14:26Chris Ryan?

  But for a second, I was like, who's Benny Jeserit?

• 14:28Andy Greenwald?

  I know, right? Benjamin Jeserit. He's my attorney. And I think that's a really real thing. The sense of like FOMO or needing to keep up or needing to be a part of a conversation. It's a struggle if it's your job as a podcaster. It shouldn't be a trickle down struggle for everyone else. I think the work that's good will be there for you to find it. But I also think it's really important as any kind of level of consumer of culture to remember that it's not supposed to be homework, to remember that finding pleasure in this stuff is an essential part of it. And it's not wrong to be like, this feels like I'm not in the spirit to watch American

• 15:11Andy Greenwald?

  Primeval tonight or whatever, like, just because these dummies on the podcast said it was worth it. It's okay to reconnect with something that you know you like. I mean, it's the thing, it's the example that I think we use almost too frequently. But like, every time I finish a long novel and I'm like, oh, I'm really, I really did it, that muscle's flexed. Like, I can't wait to tackle something major. My eye just turns to Elmore Leonard stuff on the shelf and be like, but I need a palate cleanser right now. I just want something that feels good. I think it also is a part of rewiring our brain. Because I think that the scrolling and stuff is just so dangerous for me, for anyone. And what it, just how it sort of aggressively rewires what we expect from things and the timeframe with which we expect from things.

• 15:55Andy Greenwald?

  And if you start thinking of your TV as the place you have to go to, oh, God, I gotta catch up, or I gotta get through two episodes of this tonight.

• 16:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you should do it for pleasure, yeah.

• 16:03Andy Greenwald?

  Forget it and watch your favorite movie again. Or, and just remember the sensation. And I feel that way for all these mediums that we engage with. Like, there's a time to strap on the content boots and be like, I'm gonna see what this does to me so I can have a conversation. But there's also times to be like, let's just go.

• 16:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I'd also say that the way we make our podcast is so that the pod is there for you when you do watch it. Now, obviously, like, we'd like you to join us every, twice a week, every week, and go along for the ride.

• 16:31Andy Greenwald?

  We certainly assume you do in terms of inside jokes.

• 16:34Chris Ryan?

  But i-if Andy and I were normal people with different jobs who made this pod, I don't think we would watch four bare episodes in a day. You know, like, that's not something that you would do if you had, like, a bunch of other stuff going on in your life.

• 16:48Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 16:49Chris Ryan?

  And, yeah, obviously, we find it challenging at times, anyway.

• 16:51Andy Greenwald?

  I also, I, I think we should remember this and we should consider how we can program towards this, but like, as dumb as we were to Miss Chernobyl when it was on, the experience of it being there for us, to be like, holy shit, this is a masterpiece, and engage with it on our own, admittedly painfully delayed timetable, was good.

• 17:10Chris Ryan?

  I think my favorite part about doing this pod, aside from getting to spend time with you, is not necessarily commenting on, like, the biggest show that's on right now or the most important show that's on right now. It's like finding other stuff. I, I think that the discovery aspect of it has been the most enjoyable thing over the last couple of years. And actually, in the inbox, you can see people being like, thanks for turning me on to Chorsey or thanks for turning me on to Eternot. It's, it's so much stuff out there that I'm happy to be a little bit of a, a kind of recon gang going out there and checking stuff out for people. And, and I think often, it's that stuff that's been overlooked or, you know, yet, yet to be discovered, that gives us the charge that we're looking for, because it's not like we're... Almost obligated to watch something because it's like a big HBO Sunday night show

• 17:55Chris Ryan?

  or something like that. So it's, it's an interesting situation we find ourselves in. Catherine, Jason says, whenever you guys do another mailbag.

• 18:03Andy Greenwald?

  It's now, Jason.

• 18:04Chris Ryan?

  Often on the show, you mentioned how basically everything that was once popular has been IP mined in the current era of TV production. I believe it. But that leads me to wonder, why has there never been any serious discussion of a lost continuation, reboot, whatever? That show was an absolute phenomenon in the not so distant past, and yet, nobody has been publicly kicking those tires, at least not to my knowledge. What gives? I would hypothesize that the series finale was so poorly received, though I think that really, it was really good and 80% of the population literally misunderstood the point, that it has soured the thought of bringing it back. But has there ever been any show that is more prime for picking and choosing which era of the original you would want to dive into for reimagining?

• 18:47Chris Ryan?

  I would pitch them doing an anthology where there are episodes arcs devoted to whatever part of the island they would want to, not filling in gaps and answering questions, but just telling cool stories in a cool setting. I think this is a very interesting question because, you know, Jason's right that we've been talking a lot about how everything is fodder for a reboot or a reimagining. But the real Hall of Fame Mount Rushmore TV shows of the golden era are kind of revered and left

• 19:18Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 19:19Chris Ryan?

  to, left to be. And I was wondering if, you know, like, a lot of the times when we bring back TV shows, there's, it's, there's an act of fan service to it. Say it's like Veronica Mars or Party Down or Scrubs, which is coming back. It's rare that a full reimagining takes place. I wonder whether some texts are too sacred, but you obviously get a situation like Better Call Saul, where I think there was a lot of skepticism about, like, you're gonna go back to Breaking Bad after you just ended it.

• 19:48Andy Greenwald?

  But not a reboot.

• 19:49Chris Ryan?

  On such a perfect note. No.

• 19:50Andy Greenwald?

  A continuation. I mean, I think that, like, AMC did a reboot of The Prisoner, you know, and, and I think it had its fans, but it didn't really connect. And I think one of the reasons for that is, is sort of at the heart of the question about Lost. Which is, Lost has been cannibalized and stripped for parts in ways that I feel like we don't even realize. Like, the last 20 years of television, if not culture, we're living in Lost's world.

• 20:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:16Andy Greenwald?

  So much so that to return to the original would feel like, almost like a skeleton. Like, so much of it has been, like, everything from things that we talk about, like, Dark doesn't exist without Lost. Severance doesn't exist without Lost. Those are just, those are just off the top of my head examples. I think the other issue with Lost specifically, and then I do want to get into the idea of like, some of these other sacred cows.

• 20:41Chris Ryan?

  I don't know if White Lotus exists without Lost, in some ways.

• 20:44Andy Greenwald?

  Well, yeah, I mean, Lost is, I think that's, I think that's smart. I think Lost is the poster child, for good reason, for our, what is now like, an almost fanatical, parasocial relationship with the television shows that we consume. The fan, the idea of fandom, I mean, that existed before. That Television Without Pity was roaring and raging years before, you know, in the years before Lost ever premiered. But the sense of a television show being a, in that case, weekly conversation slash talent show in front of a skeptical crowd, looking for things that they're looking for, and then be, almost being in conversation with each other, that was pretty unprecedented. The public face of the showrunner that Damon and Carlton had to become, put that job on the map, and made people aware of, there's

• 21:27Andy Greenwald?

  someone actually making these types of decisions, who you can engage with through various filters over time. I also think that Lost, in a way, is a cautionary tale. It's a celebration of a certain type of creativity, but a cautionary tale for an industry-driven reboot. Because, okay, so what is the origin story of Lost? It's not like there was just one simple idea that we could just do, other than the fact that the president of ABC at the time, I think it was Steve McPherson, was just like, huh, desert islands would be cool.

• 21:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:59Andy Greenwald?

  And then they had a relationship with J.J. Abrams, and they talked to him, and he was like, yeah, I'll do it. And they were like, great. Millions of dollars are available to you if you come up with a plan. He called Damon, they came up with a couple ideas, they made up characters on the fly, they made up characters in the audition rooms, when actors didn't fit the people that they thought they were reading for, but they wanted to bring in anyway. There was no plan. There were documents after the pilot was done. There were new documents when the writers changed after the second year. But it was a living, breathing thing, in the way that television is not anymore, and due to the money involved, probably can't ever be again. Said it before on the podcast, like that in the moment, creative, living and breathing, making mistakes, recalibrating, Nikki and Paolo, nope, we're going this way instead,

• 22:43Andy Greenwald?

  is as much a contributor to what made the show transcendent as to what made the show infuriating.

• 22:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:50Andy Greenwald?

  It's a, it's a, it's a flash. Like I, we just, we don't make culture that way anymore, partly because it is a big question mark on the ledger sheets of the streaming tech companies that own all this shit. It just, you can't do it. That said, I'm not against the idea of a single chestnut of an idea, like an evergreen, go back to Greek tragedy. And it's just like, oh, people go off, like the Odyssey or whatever, some simple idea saying, here are creatives we like. What does this mean to you? Go.

• 23:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. It's funny, because Lost had that bridge between the 22-episode fall to spring season of traditional television to eventized bifurcated season, shortened season.

• 23:38Andy Greenwald?

  To let us end this and tell a story.

• 23:40Chris Ryan?

  Yes. But within those first few seasons, they covered so much ground.

• 23:47Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, my God.

• 23:48Chris Ryan?

  That I don't need a, a Dharma Initiative spinoff. Or like, what if we did like a little bit of like the backstory on that? Like, I actually feel like it's a pretty complete statement. And even the end is like a complete, it's a, it's a realization of the things that they wanted to say with the show.

• 24:09Andy Greenwald?

  It's also, what was the mythology? Like, I, I, I was obsessed and I love it, but it is, there's parts of it that are baggy. Damon will say there are parts of it that are baggy. We still don't know who shot at them from the other outrigger. Like, they left a lot of stuff, they left a lot of holes. Now, mystery, I think, is what makes good art. But I think that the idea of a mystery box show, like the way that Severance is received and discussed.

• 24:34Chris Ryan?

  I don't think that, I honestly don't know if Lost would be able to survive in, in the current climate of like speculation and, and frame by frame analysis. And also, like that weird literal thing that people have now, where it's like, well, they would never do that because, you know, they were too far from drinkable water, you know?

• 24:51Andy Greenwald?

  There's people that, like, they had to come up with a reason why Hurley wasn't losing weight. Like, they, like, people were, so. The reason I, one of the reasons I keep up bringing Lost is because, in a way, and that show's not for everyone. Sorry, the reasons I keep bringing up Dark, and that show is not for everyone. But it really did seem like the Germanic response to the bagginess of a show like Lost. Every single screw was turned super tight. Every angle was 90 degrees. It ended in a way that is like, it lives up to its title. Let's put it that way. But that, to me, is the best expression of what it seems like sometimes fandom or executives want, which is everything neat and tidy, buttoned up, three seasons, we're

• 25:36Andy Greenwald?

  gonna do it, and take everything to its logical conclusion. I loved the show, but I think that the, there was a lot more, there was a lot more air in Lost.

• 25:43Chris Ryan?

  Did you do Lost's signal ending?

• 25:45Andy Greenwald?

  No, we never did.

• 25:46Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 25:47Andy Greenwald?

  We're saving it for season two, right, Kaya? Would have been super controversial.

• 25:52Andy Greenwald?

  Do you have an official opinion on this finale of Lost?

• 25:54Chris Ryan?

  It's honest, I don't think I've seen it since aired. So I don't even really remember a lot of it, other than some, the revelations that kind of come out. Dan says, "Hi, love the pod. Free your mailbag. I've been thinking about this. We often hear about shows that were ahead of their time, and couldn't find an audience, or got canceled. Homicide Life on the Street, My So-Called Life, etc. What about recent shows that arrived too late? Shows that would have popped before the streaming era fractured viewership and changed habits? Is there a 2025 show that you think would have killed it in 2010 or 2015?" Good question.

• 26:28Andy Greenwald?

  It's great. This is a great question.

• 26:29Chris Ryan?

  And this question kind of led me to a theory. Is the, I don't want to say highbrow, because it suggests it's not kind of gross, but has comedy been the thing that's suffered the most with such, with the explosion of streaming TV? Because I think comedy was something that I looked for...

• 26:51Chris Ryan?

  Programming the most. If one comedy was good on a, any night of a TV network, I would watch the next comedy because it was on the same network, or maybe it had some sort of connective tissue. Different world Cosby kind of thing, you know? We often talk about the NBC Thursday night thing, but I would go as far as to recall the Comedy Central run where it was like Broad City.

• 27:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, the Ken Alterman era at Comedy Central is outrageous. Kroll Show, Workaholics, Detroiters.

• 27:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so it's like this, basically you had this patent of quality. You would be like, I'll try anything on this thing, on this network, especially this kind of show. So when I see shows like Adults or Dave or What We Do in the Shadows, and I think that they're modestly successful in their own ways. I wonder if they would be much bigger deals if FX had like a comedy night. They honestly, for all I know, do. I just don't watch FX on cable anymore.

• 27:48Andy Greenwald?

  We usually, when we talk about the development teams being like, the elite development networks slash teams being HBO and FX. Generally what we're talking about is, you know, attention grabbing drama series.

• 28:00Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 28:01Andy Greenwald?

  But they're also the places that consistently, maybe the only places left, that consistently develop comedies of a really high order. And I think Amy Gravitt is the person at HBO and, and I think it's, as far as I know, like at FX, it's still, it's Nick Rad and Gina Baleyan and the, the team that's been there for a long time. I think those are still both really consistent deliverers of really high quality comedy.

• 28:29Andy Greenwald?

  But when we say like it would have been bigger, I mean, I think there's two different ways to look at it. There's the like NBC comedy nights on Thursdays or the ABC family comedies that just became the shows that everyone watched and talked about. And to a degree, Abbott Elementary is the best version of that that we have now. It is big. It made stars.

• 28:47Andy Greenwald?

  The other version of it is the Comedy Central version, which is lower budget, launching stars, creating brands. I think, I think FX has done really well in that lane, whereas I see HBO, like with everything since the merger, they are trending a little bit bigger. I mean, HBO just outbid other places for a in-house, admittedly Warner Brothers. But I think they were in a bidding war over it for a Bill Lawrence, Steve Carell show.

• 29:08Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 29:09Andy Greenwald?

  Right? That is coming up. But also they've got Nathan Fielder and. Other trying to, you know, attention grabbing.

• 29:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:16Andy Greenwald?

  That Larry David is doing a show with, with the Obamas, right?

• 29:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, sketch comedy show.

• 29:21Andy Greenwald?

  So they're still working, they're in a really big space. I think that, to me, the things that came to mind for this, I'm sorry, I don't want to cut you off. If you had any other comedy thoughts.

• 29:32Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 29:34Andy Greenwald?

  Sometimes the first place I went with this was AMC original programming.

• 29:40Chris Ryan?

  Like Interview with the Vampire?

• 29:42Andy Greenwald?

  Not their current programming, which I think is working for them. I think they found a niche, but again, this is a few years ago, but like Lodge 49.

• 29:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:50Andy Greenwald?

  The Lodge 49 era, um, the, what was the name of the, um,

• 29:57Andy Greenwald?

  the Bob Odenkirk campus comedy that was going to be his follow up to?

• 30:03Chris Ryan?

  Oh, right.

• 30:07Andy Greenwald?

  The sound, one of my favorite things on podcasts is the sound of everyone in the room typing to get it. We'll figure it out. I, it's, I can't remember it. Or, uh, but the point being, these were shows that in a different era would have been cast differently. Not the Odenkirk part, but like everything around them, they would have been budgeted differently. And they would have been received differently, you know? I, they both worked fine for what they were, but they were delivered into an ecosystem that had already moved past this type of shows, um, where people were like willing to give it a chance.

• 30:42Andy Greenwald?

  And I feel like there's a bunch of those, you know, that just feel increasingly like, uh, yeah, this is very high quality. This is very good intentions and creative teams behind it, but just greenlit at the wrong time.

• 30:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:57Andy Greenwald?

  You know, for.

• 30:57Chris Ryan?

  I think they also had like a very strange, like, where do I find AMC stuff?

• 31:02Andy Greenwald?

  Lucky Hank, by the way.

• 31:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. And maybe the bigger point there is that like.

• 31:08Chris Ryan?

  Is that one of the shows where you were like, you watched the first one and you were like, truly the greatest TV show of all time and then?

• 31:14Andy Greenwald?

  The opposite.

• 31:14Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 31:15Andy Greenwald?

  I, I, I found it a little genteel.

• 31:19Andy Greenwald?

  As far as campus comedies go.

• 31:21Chris Ryan?

  What's your favorite campus comedy?

• 31:22Andy Greenwald?

  What was the Amanda Peet show that she, the chair?

• 31:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:24Andy Greenwald?

  With Sandra Oh. That was a good show.

• 31:26Chris Ryan?

  That was good.

• 31:27Andy Greenwald?

  Should we just do that part of the podcast? But wait, are we getting to the, are we getting to the, the root of this question, do you think? Like, there's just.

• 31:35Chris Ryan?

  Yes, what it was, what's the root of the question?

• 31:37Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think that there are other examples of things that we have championed that would have been harder sells in any ecosystem. But I do feel like, you know, our, play the hits, you know, for us, zero, zero, the opposite of hits for us, zero, zero, zero. Or the English or like Hugo Blix mini series.

• 31:55Chris Ryan?

  Well, I was gonna say, there are shows that are international productions that I wonder whether would just be better off as Netflix shows. Because Netflix seems to have a unique ability to platform international stuff and sell it back to Western audiences or American audience specifically.

• 32:15Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 32:15Chris Ryan?

  And they're just like, yep, I'll give Squid Game a try, you know? And now, obviously, that's a very grabby, dystopian drama, but would Say Nothing have been bigger on Netflix? Would Tokyo Vice have been bigger on Netflix?

• 32:29Andy Greenwald?

  Tokyo Vice, maybe. The reason I want to come back to Lodge 49 was just, and in my mind, it was more recent. I think it's 2018, 2018, which is longer ago. It's already a different era of television. But Lodge 49 is just like, you know, it, it's title was inspired by Pinchon. It was created by a novelist named Jim Gavin. It starred Wyatt Russell, who is now going to be in Avengers Doomsday, but, you know, was an actor that we kind of liked from Linklater movies. And it felt like the kind of show that if given the right opportunity, because it was such a good hang, people would have found it.

• 33:01Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 33:01Andy Greenwald?

  And found their way to it. And that would have been doable for a network like AMC, when it was still receiving tons of carriage fees, no matter what. But also, maybe they wouldn't have produced it in the way that they did, which did feel a little bit caught in between. Because the whole point of the show was that it was like a cool beach hangout vibe, but it was so clearly shot in Georgia that that took me out a little bit. Like, or in the, in the mixed of cast of like.

• 33:28Andy Greenwald?

  I don't even know the budgetary history of it. I don't need to get into it.

• 33:31Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 33:32Andy Greenwald?

  But like, we are missing that. I'm using that as an example of the TV version of the kind of middlebrow quality movie that got eaten out of the movie business. We're not getting these kind of like, this is an ongoing series and we'll hang out with it for a while vibes anymore. If you're getting it, if Lodge 49 comes out today, like, it's not being made unless Matthew McConaughey is starring in it for Apple.

• 33:54Speaker 00

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• 35:48Chris Ryan?

  John has a question. I have a question about prestige TV fatigue. In the last year, I have gotten much more enjoyment from watching baseball, Top Chef, Bake Off, 100 Foot Wave, Taskmaster and other shows like that. And I don't necessarily-

• 36:00Andy Greenwald?

  John feels like he's enjoying life.

• 36:02Chris Ryan?

  I don't think this is necessarily indicative of a drop of quality or anything. I loved Say Nothing, for example, but I find I have less time and interest for very important TV.

• 36:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 36:11Chris Ryan?

  Are you folks experiencing a similar thing? Does this change the way you cover TV?

• 36:16Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's similar to the, this is a good follow-up because it's related to the previous question. There was a moment when like the prestige, quote unquote, important TV that we covered was Breaking Bad, which was also super entertaining and was a, by the end, it was six consecutive week lift, right? And then you, and then it was like a short sports season and then you were done with it. Sometimes now, the best shows of the year are, Say Nothing is a great example. Say Nothing was incredible work, completely underseen. I found both compelling and at times really enjoyable. But a limited historical series that could be really tough and really demanding.

• 36:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:59Andy Greenwald?

  That's different. Like it, it's like the great, there's, there's no middle class anymore. Can I just say that?

• 37:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:08Andy Greenwald?

  There's no middle class of this for, you know, the prestige stuff has trended more prestige or more limited, which requires a different kind of investment. Like the best TV shows, I feel like John would like The Pit, you know? And is The Pit-

• 37:23Andy Greenwald?

  The Wire, no, but, you know.

• 37:25Chris Ryan?

  It weirdly. Anything about this is, I mean, because, look, Top Chef episodes are like an hour and 15 minutes, right? 100 Foot Wave typically goes up to about an hour.

• 37:34Andy Greenwald?

  With commercials. Top Chef without is like, still, it's 55. It's the heavy, it's long.

• 37:37Chris Ryan?

  Don't they do 90-minute episodes?

• 37:39Andy Greenwald?

  With commercials, which, which net out to like.

• 37:41Chris Ryan?

  About an hour.

• 37:42Andy Greenwald?

  Of actual watching.

• 37:43Chris Ryan?

  Okay. But, so it doesn't seem to be, and then when you have Bake Off, that's like, at least a lot, a lot of volume of an episode. Look, I think maybe what you're looking for here is a repeatable experience.

• 37:54Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:55Chris Ryan?

  And a consistent level of quality. And even though we've been critical of Top Chef, or whatever, or even said like 100 Foot Wave, like, kind of caught in between what Garrett's doing and what the rest of the surfing committee, community is doing, like, ultimately, it sounds like what you want is, I know I'm gonna get this feeling when I tune into this. And I think that for me, if there's anything that I'm sharing with you, John, it's that there are real fluctuations of quality for a lot of shows. The best shows kind of can maintain it, but even something like The Pit had down episodes, or episodes where you were like, okay, that was, that was gross and exciting, but was 51 minutes and I'm,

• 38:39Chris Ryan?

  you know, like, I, I feel like something's coming. You're on that arc, but because we do so much, hey, you're not gonna fucking believe this episode, you have to build up to that. Whereas like for Taskmaster, or for Bake Off, you're like, cool, like, I am gonna feel the exact same way at the end of this.

• 38:54Andy Greenwald?

  But also, isn't this, I'm sorry to cut you off. You say it, the end of this as you would at the beginning.

• 38:58Chris Ryan?

  Nick, go ahead. Yes.

• 39:01Andy Greenwald?

  That was not a seamless baton pass. I apologize.

• 39:03Chris Ryan?

  Because you cut me off and now you don't remember what you were gonna say?

• 39:05Andy Greenwald?

  No, I remember. It's the TV.

• 39:06Chris Ryan?

  You just were like, Chris has been talking for 30 seconds.

• 39:09Andy Greenwald?

  You're done. Kayak, can we do something about this? We should get one of those little, like, chess clocks. No, the TV forgot how to be TV. So if you talk about Last of Us, whether you love the show or hate the show, there is no argument over the fact that the second episode was a very, very different show than the sixth episode, for example, just pulling that out of a hat. Or, you know, maybe skewed in a more positive way, that the third episode that everyone loved in the first season was different than the second episode that everyone loved in the second season. That's a wide variance of your experience of viewing the show, and also because it's so big, so prestige, such an adaptation, it doesn't really. I'm not saying this is a flaw, but it doesn't spend a lot of time being like, "Let's hang out in Jackson and meet all the characters so we know where we're gonna be." That's not the type of the show that it is.

• 39:50Andy Greenwald?

  So you're in, the investment of your time can have a very different return week to week. Whereas your example with The Pit, by, you know, minute forty-one of the pilot, I was like, "I can't wait to learn every single person in this room's name." And I know that I will. So that when there's an episode where the nurses stand in a circle like a Greek tragedy from, you know, the before, like from the actual Odyssey times, and they're like, "Truly, these are our problems today in medicine." I was like, "Okay, cool. I wonder what, you know, Dr. Langdon's doing right now." I love the experience. I also wonder if John's experiencing a little bit of the same issues that Catherine was experiencing, which is just, "It's really noisy in the swimming pool. Do I wanna jump in?"

• 40:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:32Andy Greenwald?

  Like, maybe John would enjoy The Bear because certainly the first two seasons, episode to episode, it's very engaging and the episodes aren't that long. But the pressure to have an opinion about it and to have watched all of it in order to talk to anyone can be daunting.

• 40:47Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 40:48Andy Greenwald?

  So.

• 40:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Dylan asks to Andy's, and thank you to Andy's endorsement of Bluey. I introduced it to my kids ages six and four, and it's now their favorite show. This has given me some credibility in their eyes to recommend shows. I've tried to turn them on to some of my favorite classics with mixed results. They love Errol Flynn and Danny Kaye, but hate Miyazaki. Andy's girls-

• 41:10Andy Greenwald?

  I'm sorry, we're gonna have to revisit this.

• 41:12Chris Ryan?

  Andy's girls are slightly older, and C.R.'s ward is frozen in time as an early teen. Thank you for listening. So I'd like to learn from their experience. What are your recs for films or TV shows from any era that will be enjoyable for me and for my kids?

• 41:28Andy Greenwald?

  I think the, this is a really tough one.

• 41:34Andy Greenwald?

  Muppets. Muppets are really good, generally. High quality across the board. The early movies especially, I will always watch. I love watching. The entirety of the original Muppet Show is streaming on Disney Channel and a lot of that, Disney Plus, and a lot of that is very much adult coded in ways that are really fun. So I think that is a reliable indicator of everyone being pretty happy. Beyond that, like there are certain classic era, classic era Disney movies like Mary Poppins that are just phenomenal, always. Then it gets a little trickier, like because-

• 42:15Chris Ryan?

  You heard of Mary Poppins dog?

• 42:16Andy Greenwald?

  No, but I'm like, I know, I mean, like, but I mean, in terms of things that I actually enjoy watching too.

• 42:23Andy Greenwald?

  I was able to, my, my kids got into Fantastic Mr. Fox, but will not watch Isle of Dogs. That's where they're, but then now they're old enough to start what, like, but now my older daughter likes Tenenbaum, so we're in the clear.

• 42:33Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 42:34Andy Greenwald?

  But like, because my kids liked Miyazaki, one of the reliable things to do was just like, go to, um, like the Apple movie, like the iTunes movie store and like, call up Spirited Away and scroll down to the all recommended also. And then there's other anime movies that we ended up discovering that they liked.

• 42:52Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 42:53Andy Greenwald?

  This guy, kids don't like that stuff, I'm not sure. But the algorithm has been helpful for me in those ways.

• 42:59Chris Ryan?

  Does it ever recommend like stuff that is inappropriate, like Blue-Eyed Samurai or something like that, like?

• 43:05Andy Greenwald?

  No, so far, no.

• 43:06Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 43:07Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, there, it does recommend, there, there are a lot of anime movies in which like, the spirit of a girl turns into a small fox that a boy falls in love with. And this is a lot of like, what's going on? So it does get a little questionable.

• 43:24Andy Greenwald?

  But in terms of like, family, everyone loving it.

• 43:28Chris Ryan?

  Stuff from your childhood that was like the first movies you really started to fall in love with, like Ferris Bueller or Goonies resonate with your kids?

• 43:37Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, 100% no.

• 43:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:40Andy Greenwald?

  They, but that also maybe not to, you know, gender is a spectrum, but like, my kids just are profoundly uninterested in movies about special boys, whether it's Star Wars, Back to the Future, Karate Kid, or hearing about my childhood, honestly. But they do love, um, rom-coms that are increasingly inappropriate. Like, my older daughter's 12 and her favorite movie is Clueless. Really likes, like, Room of the View. Really likes all Pride and Prejudice.

• 44:07Chris Ryan?

  Room of the View is a rom-com?

• 44:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, if you watch it the right way. Uh, Pride and Prejudice is, the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice is the most, most watched movie in the household.

• 44:15Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Steven said, here's my mailbag question.

• 44:18Andy Greenwald?

  Nothing for your word, by the way.

• 44:20Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 44:21Andy Greenwald?

  Commando.

• 44:21Chris Ryan?

  I don't have anything for them. Like, I mean, like, to me, it would just be, I think the biggest change that I feel like has happened is, um, it didn't feel like there was as much age-appropriate stuff for us when we were younger. And so the constant fight was, I want to watch the thing that's just a few years too old for me.

• 44:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, we were pitched up, which, which my younger daughter has to deal with.

• 44:43Chris Ryan?

  And I was much more like, I want to get away from the kid stuff as fast as possible. You know what I mean? Like, I was like, always like, trying to sneak around a door to see Miami Vice on TV.

• 44:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 44:53Chris Ryan?

  You know, like, that kind of thing. And now, if I had had as many options, if there was so much stuff marketed to me when I was eight, I don't know if I would have been like, oh, I want to, I want to, I want to know what's going on on Moonlighting, you know?

• 45:05Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think that there's a, that, it, it's amazing how much high-quality stuff there is for kids. I think another show that they fell in love with that your older kid might start to get into is like, uh, Owl House was a Disney show that they loved. It's really smart, but, um, it is a completely different thing to be catered to constantly versus just trying to, trying to age up.

• 45:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:26Andy Greenwald?

  To the point where you can plausibly rent Kentucky Fried Movie.

• 45:29Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Steven asks, with the rise of international television breaking into the mainstream in North America with Squid Game, Dark Money Heist, and more recently, Eat or Not, uh, when you watch foreign language television or films, do you prefer subs or dubs, subtitles or dubbed versions?

• 45:43Andy Greenwald?

  Never dubbed, dog. Subs only.

• 45:45Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I-

• 45:48Chris Ryan?

  Never dub. I tried it because I was curious with Eats or Not. For a couple of scenes and it just didn't have like any emotional like quality. I'm sure the voice actors tried their best, but like it's just kind of like reading. It's not. It's not acting. And I wonder if that will get better. I wonder if certain artificial intelligence programs might.

• 46:14Andy Greenwald?

  Do you, I mean, do you, I'm just, I know you don't have the answer to this because we didn't prepare this level of data. But like, I do wonder Netflix, like what percentage of people are doing dubs versus subs?

• 46:26Chris Ryan?

  Well, here's a, there's a big, it's whether you're second screening or not. So you cannot watch Eats or Not and also look at your phone for extended periods of time. Because yes, you can follow along visually, but you'll miss some nuance of these characters who are oftentimes like it's off screen voices and stuff like that. Like, so I think that that is, is the sort of major, major thing that why people would might choose to have dubs on.

• 46:51Andy Greenwald?

  I think also from what I've heard anecdotally culturally, people who grew up in non-English speaking countries are more used to dubs. Like a lot of the material that they saw was dubbed growing up. So that is a more nap, that it's a, it's not a barrier to entry. The flip side of that is what's interesting to me. It's not in the question and maybe we'll have other opportunities to talk about it. But everything is subtitled now and so many people watch things with subtitles intentionally. Not just like my parents putting subtitles on the wire because they literally didn't understand what any of these people were saying about any subject.

• 47:23Andy Greenwald?

  But more the fact that like everything on TikTok and even on Instagram, like our, the clips from this are subtitled.

• 47:29Chris Ryan?

  But that's also, so sometimes people just are looking at their phones without the volume on and they can just.

• 47:33Andy Greenwald?

  Right, but it's normalizing reading subtitles and normalizing using, looking at that part of the screen. And it does change, I think, people's relationship to, like when I put subtitles on things or if they just automatically come on. English speaking things, I am reading ahead and so I'm not really keyed into performance.

• 47:50Chris Ryan?

  I, the only time I've actually recently, I've tried to not do it because I do find that it's a different viewing experience. To read something even as you're trying to process a frame. I never do it with movies because I just feel like that is not the way that a film was meant to be seen.

• 48:08Andy Greenwald?

  And yet.

• 48:09Chris Ryan?

  That being said, I was just watching Tenet again.

• 48:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 48:13Chris Ryan?

  This weekend and that movie. Is not mixed well, like the dialogue is not mixed high enough to be able to even come close to understanding all the shit that they're talking about. I fucking love Tenet, but like when you turn the subs on, you're like, oh.

• 48:31Andy Greenwald?

  But also there's an element of like, like we, I think this came up when we were talking about Andor. Like there have been moments when watching episodes of Andor, especially re-watching them for the pod, where I've thrown subtitles on just to make sure I've gotten something. And I see something that I absolutely.

• 48:47Chris Ryan?

  For sure.

• 48:48Andy Greenwald?

  But it didn't matter. I understood that Partagaz was saying, like referring to some.

• 48:54Chris Ryan?

  But then he was mad. Yeah, like he's like, you gotta do this. But I didn't know that that was also the same thing that was referenced three episodes ago or something like that. Yeah. Um, Chris and Andy, in a slow TV period, I'm wondering if you have any recommendations for under the radar shows that maybe pre-exist your podcasting careers.

• 49:10Andy Greenwald?

  Whoa, boy.

• 49:11Chris Ryan?

  I feel like we've done this, this is from Nate. Uh, we've tried to be like pretty. Open about like the shows that we loved growing up, the shows that we loved when we were.

• 49:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 49:22Chris Ryan?

  First in, in New York together, like I.

• 49:25Andy Greenwald?

  And they're ones that I feel like are just now accepted parts of the canon, like Friday Night Lights.

• 49:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:30Andy Greenwald?

  Like, I think people get that that's amazing. I wish, you know, I, I did podcast a little bit about it on Sick to Landing, but like that, that only gets a secret.

• 49:38Chris Ryan?

  I came across, uh, the other day, one of my favorite things to happen on the internet is when I accidentally find myself on a Wikipedia page for a season of 24.

• 49:51Andy Greenwald?

  You were so into 24.

• 49:52Chris Ryan?

  And you're just like, the president's twin. It's like.

• 49:57Andy Greenwald?

  You were so into that.

• 49:58Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I was really into the first three seasons of 24.

• 50:01Andy Greenwald?

  And politically, you were really into Jack Bauer's methods. I remember that that was a big.

• 50:05Chris Ryan?

  More Nina's, but yeah.

• 50:06Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah. This morning at breakfast, my younger daughter asked me something that she's asked before, which was, when you were my age, what were your favorite TV shows? Which is such a strange question, going back to what you were saying, what we were saying before about like, what was available to us? Because I was like, when I was seven or eight. Everyone's favorite TV shows that year were The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Growing Pains. Like, that's what everybody watched, you know? And that, and I was like, explaining that they were, they were comedies about families. And then she stared at me for a minute and she said, are they the shows with the fake laughing? And I was like-

• 50:44Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 50:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and she goes, I hate that. What do you mean, you hate that? Why, what do you know? Then I said that, and then I stormed, make your own breakfast.

• 50:54Andy Greenwald?

  It was a great bit.

• 50:56Chris Ryan?

  I have to, so, I carved out some time towards the end of this pod because we have so many emails-

• 51:03Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 51:04Chris Ryan?

  -asking us what we're reading-

• 51:07Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:08Chris Ryan?

  -what books we would recommend, and whether we would do another Summer of Dove-type reading project, so-

• 51:14Andy Greenwald?

  I want to talk to you about this-

• 51:15Chris Ryan?

  Let's hash it out.

• 51:16Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, so, that was a very joyful time during a very dark period of American life in the pandemic. We were so fortunate, I think, to choose one of the greatest American novels, certainly of the 20th century-

• 51:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:32Andy Greenwald?

  -and a book that contains such multitudes and is such a journey. I think it's tough, although I think we should make this a conversation, to think of another book or book series that has the same kind of populist but also artistic weight.

• 51:51Andy Greenwald?

  That said, in the earliest, earliest days of Hollywood Prospectus pod, we briefly started a Tumblr for our book club, our Double Down Book Club, which still remains, I think, on the internet as the only official register of like, we like George Pelikanos and Alan First, and here are the books that we like by them.

• 52:10Andy Greenwald?

  So I don't know if it would be like a recurring, like, here is the Watch's bookshelf, and we could like physically put copies up here next to the golden bananas that are here for some reason, and have them here, and we would just do a little riff on why we like this book, and then the world it opens up. Do we do like, an Elmore Leonard episode? What, of things that we love?

• 52:28Chris Ryan?

  I think an Elmore Leonard episode would be good. I find that Elmore Leonard's pleasures are not where I would be like, let's go back to what Jack Ryan was doing in this book. You know what I mean? It's not like the mechanics of the plot, kind of.

• 52:41Andy Greenwald?

  The way this drunk ordered a scotch from the woman with the cigarette was so amazing. Yeah.

• 52:48Chris Ryan?

  I, you know, I have books that I can recommend that I've been reading this year and I'm happy to do so. But as far as like a project, you're right. There was something, there was like a little bit of kismet around Lonesome Dove. I think it was the first time we had both read it.

• 52:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 53:00Chris Ryan?

  It was a big, long novel that was supportive of multiple episodes of discussion, but also fun and

• 53:08Andy Greenwald?

  And there was an adaptation.

• 53:09Chris Ryan?

  surprising and sad. And then there was TV and we could talk to people about it.

• 53:13Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, my memory of reading the part where Redacted dies, while holding the paperback in one hand, while forgetting to flip the chicken that I was grilling in the backyard, is literally burned.

• 53:25Chris Ryan?

  Very much like Redacted.

• 53:26Andy Greenwald?

  Into my mind.

• 53:27Chris Ryan?

  You know, like, uh, okay, so what could we do? What, what, is there like a, another doorstopper novel that you have, either you've had your eye on, that's the other thing is that like, we got lucky and you and I both started reading Lonesome Dove for fun. And then we were both like, this is incredible.

• 53:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 53:47Chris Ryan?

  And then turned it into content. And it's, it's, it's hard to be like, let's read Tree of, Tree of Smoke by Dennis Johnson and make it into like,

• 53:55Andy Greenwald?

  Or, or Delillo's Underworld or whatever and have it be relevant to what we're doing. I, the other thing about it that I loved, and this, this has been a theme in this entire Mailbag Podcast, is that it was 40, it wasn't yet, but it was about to be 40 years old. There was nothing, uh, nothing urgent about covering this book. Its place in the firmament was settled and I kind of liked that, you know, that that was, made it a more pleasurable experience. It wasn't about like, why now? Why is this? So I don't know. I don't, I, I saw this mailbag question and I, I do think that there is some value in building a little shelf of like our canonical books.

• 54:37Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 54:37Andy Greenwald?

  Because there, like, there was, there was a period when you and I were both talking about fandom. It's like, we read one early George Pelikanos book and then what was so thrilling about it was not just that he was writing new books, but that there were so many. There were different

• 54:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:53Andy Greenwald?

  series to get into and, and, and we would be texting on the, back when you had to do the, hit

• 54:58Chris Ryan?

  T9?

• 54:59Andy Greenwald?

  three, four times.

• 54:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:00Andy Greenwald?

  Language would be texting about these books. James Crumley books that I still reread, but, and I think inform how we feel about things. But I don't know about a doorstopper.

• 55:12Chris Ryan?

  I mean,

• 55:13Andy Greenwald?

  Also, also, Kaya's Contemporary Corner, all with K's, I think would be

• 55:18Chris Ryan?

  That would be KKK.

• 55:20Andy Greenwald?

  I don't see, I don't have any notes. We pretty much just go off the dome here.

• 55:24Chris Ryan?

  Branding

• 55:24Andy Greenwald?

  First idea, best idea. That would, that would probably do numbers for us because Kaya reads more contemporary fiction than either of us.

• 55:32Speaker 03

  My favorites, well, I just finished the new Miranda July novel, which

• 55:37Chris Ryan?

  All fours?

• 55:38Speaker 03

  All fours, which I enjoyed a lot. I, but I have no, like, I have not engaged with Miranda July in any other format. So

• 55:46Andy Greenwald?

  Have you left your marriage yet? I feel like that's the, that's the all fours thing, right?

• 55:50Speaker 03

  It's, yeah, it's a lot of like, middle age ennui and perimenopause. Other than that

• 55:57Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know her. Is she related to Benny Jeserit?

• 56:01Speaker 03

  I think one of my favorite things I read this year was Colored, Colored Television by Danzi Senna, which was, it's basically a novel about a woman who, she's a novelist living in Los Angeles and she tries to get into the TV writing industry.

• 56:20Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 56:20Speaker 03

  And it's one of those books that kind of makes you feel almost like sick to your stomach with secondhand embarrassment, but like you can't put it down.

• 56:31Chris Ryan?

  Because of like the failures of her professional career or?

• 56:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:35Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 56:36Speaker 03

  Other than that, I-

• 56:36Chris Ryan?

  What's that one called again?

• 56:37Speaker 03

  Color Television.

• 56:38Chris Ryan?

  Color Television, okay.

• 56:41Chris Ryan?

  I'll throw a couple of titles out, just, you know, I, I think I shouted out Play World by Adam Ross earlier in the year.

• 56:47Andy Greenwald?

  I think John Mulaney shouted that out.

• 56:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I kind of think I beat him to the punch, although Anthony Jazelnik beat me to the punch. I love that novel.

• 56:55Chris Ryan?

  I want to shout out Patrick Hoffman, who we've brought up a couple of times.

• 56:58Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah, there's a new Hoffman, right?

• 56:59Chris Ryan?

  And there's a new novel called Friends Helping Friends, which is set in Colorado and is about a sort of small-time crook who gets caught between a white militia and law enforcement in a game of, of, I mean, of criminal enterprises.

• 57:17Andy Greenwald?

  How's that work out?

• 57:18Chris Ryan?

  It's, I wouldn't, wouldn't give it away. I don't want to do that.

• 57:22Chris Ryan?

  And, yeah, other than that, I've been trying to get through Anna Karenina, which has been like my big project that, I did East of Eden last year. I tried to like read at least one classic year. I've read a couple of other books in my downtime from Anna Karenina because I can't travel with it. It's too heavy. So I've read America Fantastica, which is a recent novel by Tim O'Brien, who wrote The Things They Carried, which I liked quite a bit, and A Hero of France, which is just another first banger, Alan First Banger.

• 57:51Andy Greenwald?

  That's not a new one though, right?

• 57:52Chris Ryan?

  No, it's just, it's about the French Resistance.

• 57:54Andy Greenwald?

  Should we reread all of the Alan First books? I was thinking about that recently.

• 57:57Chris Ryan?

  I mean, we could do Night Soldiers.

• 57:59Andy Greenwald?

  Goddamn, it's a good book. I, I feel unprepared for this because, uh, I, I-

• 58:04Chris Ryan?

  You always say that, like, I always ask you if you want to do book talk.

• 58:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but I wasn't ready today.

• 58:08Chris Ryan?

  I'm not ready, I'm not ready. And then you're like doing Instagrams of the Ivan Doig book.

• 58:13Andy Greenwald?

  Doiga, I believe.

• 58:15Andy Greenwald?

  Nothing? Did you, yeah, English Creek by Ivan Doiga is like the, the best book that I've read in a long time.

• 58:22Chris Ryan?

  That's a recommendation.

• 58:23Andy Greenwald?

  I loved it. It, I, it's a, it's set in 1939 in Montana and it was just like, I, I think I said this, like discovering it was like, oh, what if William Faulkner was Mark Twain? And it's so fun and exciting and the writing is so lively and great. I read, um- Kai, have you read any Miyako Kawakami? She wrote Breast and Eggs.

• 58:43Speaker 03

  I haven't, no.

• 58:44Andy Greenwald?

  I read a book by her called All the Lovers in the Night. It was kind of cool. Have you ever read any of that? You know what? I know you pretty well. And I read an old, I was reading, there's a, there's a children's book author named Russell Hoban, who wrote these books, speaking of the guy who wanted things for his kids, about a, I think a badger called Francis, and it's like bread and jam for Francis. And these are very like Yeah. popular books. I remember those. He then, and his wife, Lillian Hoban, drew the pictures. It's a great book about a mulled Christmas. I'm telling you all this because then he left his wife, moved to London, and wrote a bunch of adult novels about guys who were divorced and living in London. He wrote a book called Turtle Diary that got turned into a pretty mediocre movie in the 80s, but it's a really interesting middle-aged romance.

• 59:29Andy Greenwald?

  It's not like All Fours, but there are turtles in it. And then, do you, it's, it's true.

• 59:37Andy Greenwald?

  Here's the thing, we didn't even talk about this. This is my last one.

• 59:41Andy Greenwald?

  Recently, I was looking at old issues of Spin on Google Books, because sometimes it's fun to like, be like, not just like, what were the ads when magazines existed and had ads? But I'm always like, I wonder what Chris reviewed this month? You know, it's like Dilated People's second record or whatever. Or what, you know, like the time I went to Bam Margera's house and interviewed his parents while Ryan Dunn was drunk, passed out on the couch.

• 1:00:05Andy Greenwald?

  I was looking at The Masthead, and at the bottom of The Masthead from Spin in like the late 90s, early 2000s, is a guy named Gilbert Rogan, editorial director. Okay. Was there on The Masthead when I worked there. Never knew who it was. I was like, who was that guy? What role did he have? So then I read about this guy who was a legend in New York publishing, and was like a legend at Sports Illustrated for many, many years. And that he also, and then I guess had a relationship with Bob Miller, who bought the magazines and was just advising them even though he was retired. That was his role with Spin. He wasn't assigning you Dilated People's reviews. But it turns out, he also was once praised by John Updike as like the greatest other young novelist of his time. And he wrote like dozens of stories for The New Yorker, some of which turned into kind of like story collection novels.

• 1:00:48Andy Greenwald?

  And then he turned in, in 1974 or whatever, 78, he turned in a new short story to your guy Roger Angel at The New Yorker, who was the fiction editor then. And he said, "These seem a bit like you're milling the same terrain." And he never wrote fiction again. No shit, really? All this, his two novels were republished a bunch of years ago, like five, six years ago. And they're really fun.

• 1:01:08Chris Ryan?

  Roger rejected them, though.

• 1:01:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but these were, these were already out.

• 1:01:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Andy Greenwald?

  And there's, they were published in one volume by Verse Chorus Press. What Happens Next and Preparations for the Ascent. And they are like a missing link in that kind of like lightly comic seventies. But what do I do with my life? John Updike, Woody Allen vibes. And, um, pretty fun. There's always something more to discover.

• 1:01:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Uh, okay. So maybe we'll make the recommendation, the book recommendations and the shelf part of our.

• 1:01:35Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, but I wanted, I think we should answer this. We should figure out something, though, to the, the root of the question. Like, we should find a project.

• 1:01:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:01:42Andy Greenwald?

  Are we gonna do that?

• 1:01:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:43Andy Greenwald?

  Before or after you watch, uh, The Wind Rises by Miyazaki? Just like, I just wanna, I just wanna put it in.

• 1:01:49Chris Ryan?

  Before.

• 1:01:50Andy Greenwald?

  The iCal.

• 1:01:50Chris Ryan?

  Uh, thanks to everybody for listening. We will be back, uh, Andy probably solo on this coming Thursdays if this is going on.

• 1:01:58Andy Greenwald?

  Like hard solo.

• 1:01:59Chris Ryan?

  Hard solo. The Andy Greenwald Show returns. And then, uh, yeah, we'll be back soon.

• 1:02:04Andy Greenwald?

  I'm gonna have Jenny Lewis on and we're just gonna talk about wisdom.

• 1:02:06Chris Ryan?

  She can sing your name again.

• 1:02:07Andy Greenwald?

  Things we've learned.

• 1:02:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:09Andy Greenwald?

  It's gonna be great for me. Have a good trip.

• 1:02:10Chris Ryan?

  Thanks to Kaya, thanks to John.

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