‘The Paper’ and More Trailers. Plus, Why You Should Be Watching ‘The Eastern Gate.’

Chris and Andy talk about the trailer for the 'Office’ spinoff ‘The Paper’ that was released today (8:48) and also the trailers for the movies ‘Ella McCay’ and ‘Jay Kelly’ (27:46). Then they talk about the news that Cindy Holland, the Netflix exec who helped launch series like ‘Orange Is the New Black,’ ‘House of Cards,’ and ‘Stranger Things,’ is coming on at Paramount as the new head of streaming (33:22). Finally, they make the pitch for why you should be watching the Polish thriller series ‘The Eastern Gate’ (46:35). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Producer: Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:00Speaker 01

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• 1:29Speaker 02

  I need sports staff to clear the room.

• 1:32Andy Greenwald?

  Stand up and walk now.

• 1:35Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. And joining me on the other line, walking into this podcast like Joanne Duran in the ninth inning, it's Andy Greenwald. I think it's Yoan. I thought I just looked up how to pronounce it and it said Johan. But that was Google. I mean, like, it might have been a bot. It might have been AI. I honestly haven't heard it. I only see these these images background in the bar in Philadelphia. I'm here for an extended period of time dealing with some family stuff, but Andy, it's great to see your face. We wanted to do a pod just to just to make sure the muscle still works.

• 2:14Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like people also probably don't have a sense of how hard we work to bring this pod to the people, just in terms of the IT support that Kaya and John are providing. I mean, the other beautiful thing about this, Chris, is that our age, it's wonderful to still be learning, you know, like I learned how to use a second screen, not in the way that I check Instagram when I have to watch shows I don't like because you tell me we have to cover them. I mean, literally like a second monitor to get this going in my kitchen today.

• 2:41Chris Ryan?

  It's big. It's it's big. You're not a huge office guy. Before we get into the stuff we're talking about today, let me do a little bit of housekeeping.

• 2:48Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 2:49Chris Ryan?

  It's the watch at spotify.com. If you want to email us, it's ringer-tv is the YouTube channel. If you want to watch us there. You can also watch us on the watch feed on Spotify, which is where I hope you're listening to us. Greenwood, we are also on Instagram at the watch pod underscore marshaled by the great Kaya McMullen, who is producing us today. It's good to see you, man.

• 3:09Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think today's a real video show for us? I feel like we didn't need to like broadcast the YouTube link.

• 3:17Chris Ryan?

  I've been a I've been on YouTube a lot in the last couple of weeks. So I've been here in Philly. Like I said, kind of have a family situation, but

• 3:26Chris Ryan?

  I have been doing a lot of compilation tapes of Tommy's lawyer from Landman.

• 3:34Chris Ryan?

  Doing different depositions.

• 3:37Chris Ryan?

  That's kind of where we're at. No, it's good to see you, man. What's going on with you? Do you want to just get into the the topics or is there any any personal grievances you want to air?

• 3:48Andy Greenwald?

  Wow. I mean, I guess you didn't take me up on my suggestion to watch K-pop Demon Hunters.

• 3:54Chris Ryan?

  I did not. I'm sorry.

• 3:56Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, that hasn't really crossed your

• 3:57Chris Ryan?

  I think I get a get out of jail free card for the next couple of weeks.

• 4:01Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, you haven't seen Fantastic Four, so I get it. I get it. You're feeling a little culturally behind.

• 4:05Chris Ryan?

  I'm gonna try and get to the movies this weekend. I want to see Weapons.

• 4:08Andy Greenwald?

  Can I? Oh, I can I be honest with you?

• 4:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:11Andy Greenwald?

  I kind of want to see Weapons, too. Do you think I can do it?

• 4:14Chris Ryan?

  I think I could probably test it for you. How about that?

• 4:18Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, I appreciate that. Like, do you think, though, that you'll err on the side of like, protecting my fragile sanity, or, because it looks good, and it looks kind of like a, like a thinking person scary film.

• 4:28Chris Ryan?

  I think it is a thinking person scary film. I think it has, uh, I really, I have, I've successfully avoided everything about it. I see little bits and pieces of people kind of saying, oh, it reminded me of this, or it reminded me of that. Sean has been an angel about not spoiling a single thing about it. I really wish I could do the big pick with him about it, but I just haven't seen, I haven't gotten a chance to see it yet. But I think I'm gonna try and carve out some time to do that in Eddington this weekend.

• 4:53Andy Greenwald?

  For the record, I don't want it to seem like you're some great cinematic villain or betrayer, because I came to the pod today wanting to brag about seeing a movie that was released in theaters, I believe, in April.

• 5:04Chris Ryan?

  Hey, we're gonna talk about a show that was released in January, so it's okay.

• 5:07Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, great. Yeah, I just wanted to let you know, Chris, that I saw Black Bag.

• 5:11Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 5:12Andy Greenwald?

  That was real sick.

• 5:13Chris Ryan?

  Yep. That's awesome, man. Soderbergh's spy film, written by David Kapp, and starring Fassbender and Cate Blanchett.

• 5:20Andy Greenwald?

  I do want to ask you, though. So, I think it's semi-relevant, because it is streaming now. So, maybe the people who didn't quite make it out to the multiplexes, uh, can dip into it. And I had two thoughts. We don't really need to get into it too deeply. It's, I think it's so good. It's such a high quality. The cast is amazing. Um, Fassbender is just doing his best, like Alec Guinness, and Kate's great, and, uh, Pierce Brosnan, what a great late-career renaissance we're having with him. Almost like I can't believe-

• 5:50Chris Ryan?

  From your beloved Mobland. That's right.

• 5:54Andy Greenwald?

  Did you, did you stick with that?

• 5:55Chris Ryan?

  I, I sort of did. I'm, I'm, I actually might finish it while I'm here. I have, I have some time on my hands, so yeah.

• 6:00Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, fair. Um, anyway, I just thought it was like, exceptional, and clever, and, and I, I thought it would be a bigger thing for people who are always clamoring for more adult fare. But the other thought I had, and I wanted to get your quick thoughts on that, is Soderbergh is so ruthlessly efficient with these expert adult entertainments, that there is a slight feeling that's a little bit zipless, right? It's like seamless. It's almost-

• 6:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:23Andy Greenwald?

  -too good and too fast. And part of me is like, is just the David Holmes score just kind of jazzing it into abstraction, you know, like, was there any there there? Or is it just a high-quality Saturday night watch?

• 6:37Chris Ryan?

  I think it's a fair-

• 6:40Chris Ryan?

  Fair thing to say that he may be a victim of his own consistency, which is a weird thing to say for somebody who tries so many different formal experiments. Earlier this year, he's already released two films this year. Presence was the other one, which was a haunted house film told from the POV of the ghost. And it's just a goat, like it's basically these roving, sometimes fisheye lens shots of this family interacting, not unbeknownst to them, there is a phantom in the house.

• 7:07Andy Greenwald?

  Are you a big ghost guy? Do you believe in ghosts?

• 7:10Chris Ryan?

  Uh, no, I don't really.

• 7:12Andy Greenwald?

  I know Bill is.

• 7:13Chris Ryan?

  Haven't had a super ton of palpable experience with them though, but I enjoy, I enjoy their work on screen, you know, like.

• 7:18Andy Greenwald?

  But that, that, the reason why this movie suddenly sounds interesting to me is.

• 7:21Chris Ryan?

  It's kind of like dinosaurs, like I'm sure they existed, but like it's more, it's.

• 7:25Andy Greenwald?

  You're sure, huh?

• 7:26Chris Ryan?

  I'm sure, yeah.

• 7:27Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 7:28Chris Ryan?

  Although I can be convinced otherwise in this economy.

• 7:31Andy Greenwald?

  There, I think there's some empowered people ready to make the strong case against them. You know, my thing about ghosts, which is why this movie seems interesting to me, is that I just feel like it would be the most boring thing in the world. Like actually watching people just sort of, you know, second screen while watching Conan O'Brien must go, I feel like that would be not a really entertaining way to spend the afterlife.

• 7:54Chris Ryan?

  But I think that.

• 7:55Andy Greenwald?

  They're not focused enough.

• 7:56Chris Ryan?

  There's a lot of emotional stuff that happens in that movie, but in Presence and in Black Bag as well, but there's a way in which Soderbergh is kind of making films now that, you're right, has a kind of like, it almost has a remove. And I don't know whether it's, I'm sure with a guy who's as thoughtful about everything that he's doing, there is a reason for, say, like, you know, the way, the way he would block a scene, the way he shoots a scene, whatever, however, whatever kind of coverage he gets out of it, but it does sometimes feel not like a copy of a copy. What's the, I think you're right. I think a little bit arid, a little bit distant, a little bit zippy and, or zipliss. And even though I love it, I do think that he's like hit that nail a couple of times.

• 8:42Andy Greenwald?

  There's a version of this movie, because the script is so good and the cast is so good. There's a version of the movie that I feel like if it was a little less bloodless, like if the person making it was passionate about, I don't know, spy craft or love as war or whatever, that it would hit different and be like a significant movie. But then again, this feels like an argument from 1989. Like, I don't know if there's a weighty, thoughtful spy craft, but also how we live our lives now film, audience anymore.

• 9:11Chris Ryan?

  I think they're all watching television and that is a good segue for what we're going to talk about later. So today on the show, we're going to talk about The Paper, the Office spinoff that just had its first trailer released. We're going to talk a little bit about the shakeup at Paramount. Andy and I are not necessarily casting our industry insider flag up, but we do have an observation about some of the people that they've brought on at Paramount since Skydance finished its acquisition and they did with their merger. And then also, we're going to be talking about a show that I think is going to probably, if I had to guess, show up on both of our top 10s, which is a series called Eastern Gate, which is on Max, HBO Max. It came out in January. It was recommended by critics.

• 9:53Chris Ryan?

  It was recommended by Tracy Letts. I neglected it. I neglected it. And then I've just watched it, binged it over the last couple of days. Andy's watched a bunch of the episodes. So we're going to talk broadly about Eastern Gate and how it's like, it's just exactly what we wanted right now.

• 10:07Andy Greenwald?

  Today's the day we'll make the case for it. It will be spoiler free and then maybe we'll circle back after we finish the first season, which is a very, very, very manageable six episodes.

• 10:16Chris Ryan?

  Very tight six. Greenwald, this Paper trailer. So this is going to be an original, I think it's initially going to be released on Peacock. The first four episodes are going up on Peacock in September at some point. And then they're going to do two a week going forward. And by all accounts, I think it's also going to wind up on NBC at some point, right? Like this will probably be something that they're cross promoting in that way.

• 10:41Andy Greenwald?

  I haven't heard that as a confirmed fact. I think it's probably safe to assume that everything is cross-platform these days to a degree that I don't even know if it's being covered half the time when things just pop up places. But. Yes, it is announced and presented as a Peacock original, which I think is probably helping it, honestly, to fly a little bit under the radar, considering the imprimatur of its creator.

• 11:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so this is where I wanted to actually go. You have something that you are marketing openly as a continuation of The Office, in so much as it is the documentary crew who followed Dunder Mifflin for years and years.

• 11:16Andy Greenwald?

  And famously, the best part about that show is the crew. Love the crew. Thrilled about that.

• 11:22Chris Ryan?

  Finally happen upon another subject, which is this Ohio local newspaper that they start documenting that is, I think, owned by perhaps tangentially, like, an offshoot of Dunder Mifflin, because I think it is like a paper company, you know, subsidiary.

• 11:40Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think, and I'm sorry to get in the weeds before we even get onto the field, but like, do you think this documentary crew spent the last 10 years just like hustling grants, emailing Sheila Nevins, being like, no, we can do it again?

• 11:53Chris Ryan?

  Well, they always had the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to fall back on.

• 11:56Andy Greenwald?

  That's the thing. I was like, thank God they got their, sunk their teeth into something right before the safety net went away.

• 12:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, if I, if all else fails, I could be an usher at the Kennedy Center.

• 12:06Andy Greenwald?

  Because like even the great, like Frederick Weis, that was really good, by the way. Like even the great Frederick Weisman is just like, I will make an eight-hour film about the Idaho State Legislature. Doesn't take 10 years to do it? I don't think.

• 12:18Chris Ryan?

  I assume that they've probably like, like had some, you know, they did some shorts. They did, maybe they did some true crime for Netflix in the interim. But this crew, whoever they are, are back and they're covering a local newspaper.

• 12:29Andy Greenwald?

  My uncle is the founder of Moderna.

• 12:32Andy Greenwald?

  He says I can get a summer job. Anyway.

• 12:37Chris Ryan?

  A local Ohio newspaper that's down on its luck, as all local newspapers pretty much are. And in an effort to revive their fortunes, they hire a new editor in chief, played by Dom McLeeson, who is using an American accent. I will note that because one of his co-stars, Sabrina Impacchiatore, from White Lotus, gets to be, I was honestly, this was, I'm on pins and needles waiting to see what accent she was gonna whip out. And she's just going White Lotus in it.

• 13:07Andy Greenwald?

  To be clear, I think that's her English.

• 13:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but her accent is Italian accented English.

• 13:14Andy Greenwald?

  So you were holding Sabrina to a standard where you thought she'd bust out like Portuguese?

• 13:19Chris Ryan?

  No, I thought she was gonna open her mouth and be like, hey, guys, do you like looking at TikTok? Like, I didn't think she was gonna be like, oh, I love to blog, you know, like.

• 13:29Andy Greenwald?

  Again, I'm just trying to center your viewpoint here. Like, do you feel like American papers are for Americans?

• 13:34Chris Ryan?

  No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying I keep eye track, honestly. So one of the things I'm doing with my mom right now is we are rewatching Band of Brothers. And it is stunning how many people in Band of Brothers are in fact not United States paratroopers, but are British actors or Irish actors or whatever. So it's always funny to see like four guys who are like, hey, how is the streets of Chicago in the summer? You know, like, because they're just like hanging on for dear life. So I was curious what Sabrina was gonna bring. I'm very excited. I loved her in White Lotus. Anyway, Don McGlissom plays the newly hired editor in chief of this newspaper. Frankly, seems like a Jim Michael hybrid where he is at once the like,

• 14:19Chris Ryan?

  can you get a load of this guy guy? And also the main character, like the sort of, it's gonna rise and fall with him.

• 14:27Andy Greenwald?

  Earnest and perhaps romantic lead as well, yeah.

• 14:29Chris Ryan?

  2025, journalism and the newspaper industry gone through some convulsions even since this show probably was conceived.

• 14:37Andy Greenwald?

  It's true.

• 14:38Chris Ryan?

  Uh, what did you think of the trailer?

• 14:41Andy Greenwald?

  I thought the trailer was very, very, very pleasant. And I mean that as genuinely a compliment. I thought that you could feel the Greg Daniels of it. I mean, Greg Daniels is the, he's the person who adapted The Office for American television. And he's back at it, this time with Michael Cohen, I believe this is a co-conspirator.

• 15:02Chris Ryan?

  He's worked on Nathan for you, yeah.

• 15:05Andy Greenwald?

  So the way you could feel it, I think, are in the healthiest possible ways. It's not just the blocking and the cameras setups and the fact that it's just like, you know, once again, we're mockumentary observing something. It was in the faces of the secondary and tertiary characters. Like, I think, you know, I recognized Alex Edelman, who has a successful stand-up career. He's on the show. But other than that, everyone else had that guy or that gal faces. Not super polished, but nice looking. You want to spend time with them. It seemed like the lessons that were learned. And what's interesting about this for me is I've been recently re-watching The American Office with my kids.

• 15:47Andy Greenwald?

  And like with other comedies that you watch in hindsight, you can be like, we don't need to start with the first one. We could start like a little bit into season two. And the lessons learned in real time that you can see in season two of The Office, just like you can in season two of Parks and Rec, is a show finding its voice and finding its strength in the power of its ensemble.

• 16:06Chris Ryan?

  It's so funny that you say this, just because yesterday, my mom asked to watch Monty Python's Flying Circus, and I had like a five-minute personal conversation about whether we should start with the first one. And I was like, it's just, it's just in the back of your head. You're like, will I miss certain things? And you're like, it's Monty Python. No.

• 16:22Andy Greenwald?

  No, but it's really, but this is relevant because I keep wanting to introduce my kids to Monty Python, because I want them to be bullied as much as I was. And the problem with it is, especially for this generation, which is, well, you know what? I'm gonna stop this. I was about to say, this generation, which does its best with like, you know, best ofs, clip shows, like, impatience. And that said, like, I'm the one who's really, really enjoying the three best clips from the most recent Good Hang with Amy Poehler and the Jonas Brothers. Sorry, Kaia, but like, I am the problem. I'm enjoying the clips as well. Monty Python, for example, is a show where you're like, I want them to hear the hits or see the hits. And if you turn on season three, episode seven, you might get like, you know, the

• 17:06Andy Greenwald?

  hide-and-seek Olympics, but you're also gonna get like Terry Gilliam just like J-o-ing in a closet with a bunch of old issues of Reader's Digest cutouts. And it's a tough sell for an eight-year-old, let alone an 80-year-old. So anyway.

• 17:19Chris Ryan?

  You were watching Office with your daughters, and you didn't know whether to start at the beginning.

• 17:24Andy Greenwald?

  This just felt like a very gentle, promising show that understands.

• 17:31Andy Greenwald?

  It's the trailer suggested that there isn't going to be a long on-ramp to potential success. It felt very homey already in the trailer, which I think is the goal. And I think it's also smart that it's, this is why I was harping on it before it being a Peacock original, because it feels a little bit like just smart programming. People, certainly, you know, the folks, the big brains, the big brain Brad's at Peacock understand that what drives their service is A, Kaia watching Bravo content.

• 18:03Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 18:04Andy Greenwald?

  And B, nostalgia sitcom good vibes, right? Like, let's just, let's, let's just spend time with these shows that we love. It kind of feels nice that the mandate for the show is to slot in with previously existing good hang vibes as opposed to we need to reinvent the format or be as noisy as possible to grab what remaining eyeballs are left on broadcast television.

• 18:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think that, you know, like, the idea of even like, I'm sure that you wrote your fair amount of The Office is About to Be Back blog posts back in the day at Grantland.

• 18:37Andy Greenwald?

  Do you remember that I wrote, I reviewed the entire Thursday night lineup every Thursday and Friday?

• 18:43Chris Ryan?

  You were incredibly mentally healthy back then. You've really improved.

• 18:46Andy Greenwald?

  Much better now, yeah.

• 18:47Chris Ryan?

  But even the idea of like, doing a trailer breakdown for the paper or for The Office would have been absurd back then. You wouldn't be like, oh, what Easter eggs are there? There is an Easter egg in this one where Oscar from the original Office seems to have caught on with this Toledo newspaper. So it seems like his career is sort of plateaued in some ways, or maybe it's a lateral move to go from Dunder Mifflin to the Toledo newspaper. But yeah, I mean, I'll be curious to see what connective tissue they try to have with The Office and whether or not they pull any Pam Beasley emergency breaks to get, to get like some, some sweeps week kind of stuff. But honestly, I'm really looking forward to it. Gleason's great, even if it's kind of like, um, trying to bail out a canoe full of holes.

• 19:30Chris Ryan?

  I do like stuff set in newspapers. And it's a charming little trailer and I'm really excited for the show.

• 19:37Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's going to pleasantly surprise people.

• 19:40Chris Ryan?

  There you go.

• 19:41Andy Greenwald?

  Which I don't know, I don't know if that's what the, the log line of our chat would have been when it was announced.

• 19:49Chris Ryan?

  Aside from you guys never, your daughters, they never, they never checked out Summer I Turned Pretty, right?

• 19:58Andy Greenwald?

  Well, my older daughter, it was at sleep boy camp. I feel like

• 20:02Chris Ryan?

  That might have

• 20:02Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like, I feel like she's aware.

• 20:04Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 20:05Andy Greenwald?

  But no.

• 20:05Chris Ryan?

  I'm aware. Let's just put it that way. It's a big, it's a big show in my house. Do you know the first episode of the third season had 25 million viewers?

• 20:14Andy Greenwald?

  Sorry.

• 20:16Andy Greenwald?

  What are we doing? Do you think?

• 20:18Chris Ryan?

  That's like working like the NBA finals.

• 20:20Andy Greenwald?

  What do you think the first five minutes of our podcast in which I talked about Steven Soderbergh's recent output, recent through April did? Like, just in terms of like swerving into the zeitgeist.

• 20:32Chris Ryan?

  Well, I think if we switch the topics, this podcast would be more successful. If we like flipped them and it was like, it's T S I T P summer.

• 20:40Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. All right. What do you, what do you have to say about the show?

• 20:44Chris Ryan?

  I get it. It's compelling. It's compelling stuff. I, I mean, I think that like a lot of younger skewing shows, I'll say this, my wife loves this show and is, is very invested in the central romance or romantic triangle between Conrad Fisher, his brother Jer, and this girl Belly, Isabella. And these two brothers are kind of vying for her love.

• 21:06Andy Greenwald?

  Whoa, that's something, no wonder we don't understand the show.

• 21:09Chris Ryan?

  Because we're all children.

• 21:10Andy Greenwald?

  Children, this is, we got all the ways.

• 21:12Chris Ryan?

  But she's just like, I'm in paradise. Uh, you know, and I'm, if, if it needs to be said, I'm team Conrad. I don't, I don't think that's much of a, much of a competition, but we'll, we'll see where Jenny Han takes us over the course of the next couple of months. We just had a very electrifying Conrad POV episode. So the streets are, streets are chatting about that.

• 21:33Andy Greenwald?

  Is it fisheye lens? Like he's a ghost haunting the other story? So recently, I've been looking.

• 21:39Chris Ryan?

  This is small, local newspaper.

• 21:43Andy Greenwald?

  I've been, um. Watching like this is also a side of my mental decline this summer. I think that I I now am like fully just shrug emoji and watching a lot of the branded content that I'm being serviced. So like, I definitely have thoughts about Dave Franco and Alison Brie's together marketing campaign. So but like, the fact that like actors have to do such specific hijinks all the time. There's I have a point to this, by the way.

• 22:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:09Andy Greenwald?

  So for example, there was like a like a lad Bible or bro Bible or whatever that is thing that like David.

• 22:16Chris Ryan?

  I think there's both. But yeah, I mean, like, really, it has to be specific.

• 22:20Andy Greenwald?

  It's like Old Testament or New Testament, whatever. It's the Bible. So it's Krenzwick and Nicholas Holt doing their Superman promo tour. And the conceit was they each had to eat beloved snack foods from each other's home country. And I watched like all 11 minutes of it, even though it is just dreadful, because they get served.

• 22:41Chris Ryan?

  But when I'm like, do you want to watch X? You're like, oh, who has the time?

• 22:45Andy Greenwald?

  But this is the X, the horror movie, or Elon Musk's social media platform?

• 22:51Chris Ryan?

  TK Show, yeah.

• 22:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I'm busy. I'm busy on bro Bible, dog. Just I'm reading from the hymnal. But my question was genuinely, do you think us watching young coded content that is actually popular, like Chris and Andy's sample Wednesday, season two, would that do numbers, Kaya? Or even if it's the equivalent of David Krenzwick being forced to eat a cracked single of American cheese, and you can see on his face, how disordered his eating became to become Superman?

• 23:22Chris Ryan?

  Well, this is actually, you bring up a good point. I want Kaya to answer whether or not you and I weighing in more heavily on summer I turned pretty would change our demo. But when a movie, let's just say like Fantastic Four, doesn't quite live up to financial expectations, right? Like, whether you think it flopped or died on the vine or whatever. I mean, it's did very well first weekend and is now kind of cratering a little bit. When that happens, do you think Vanessa Kirby and Pedro Pascal are like, I can't believe I had to do the Vanity Fair lie detector test all for nothing?

• 23:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 23:54Chris Ryan?

  I wonder if there will be like a pivot where it's like, you know, everybody has to do hot ones and all these goddamn shows and all these little things. And then when they get through it and their movie doesn't do well, are they like, can I have my life back and not pet puppies while answering like relationship quiz questions?

• 24:08Andy Greenwald?

  Like, yes, except for the fact that Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby and Evan Moss Backrack were doing this nonsense while they were furloughed from year three of making another version of the same movie. Right? Like this was their vacation from being these people that have been roundly accepted by the global movie going public, you know? It's not like, I, I, I, I bet, I bet this was a weirder week on set, I guess, in London is what I will say. Um, only because I think that they were probably looking for a little injection of.

• 24:43Chris Ryan?

  What do you mean? Oh, cause they're shooting Doomsday now?

• 24:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, they've just been shooting it.

• 24:47Chris Ryan?

  I thought you were like, they're shooting Fantastic Four, part two now.

• 24:50Andy Greenwald?

  Second steps? No, I wish. I loved it.

• 24:54Chris Ryan?

  Going through the list of, of headlines here for us that I wanted to hit.

• 24:58Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 24:59Chris Ryan?

  This is just really, um, honestly, this is for the heads. I just need to address this really quickly. Uh, Leonardo DiCaprio is apparently the price tag to get Heat two made. Um, Matt Bellini talked about this a little bit in his column, um, what I'm hearing, but Mann submitted a screenplay reportedly to Warner Brothers and he's like, that, that will be two hundred.

• 25:20Andy Greenwald?

  Michael Mann, by the way.

• 25:22Chris Ryan?

  Michael Mann. Um, Mann does not often submit screenplays. He likes to, he likes to tweet, like, he likes to do a little bit of a draft, take a walk, you know, fix some notes.

• 25:32Andy Greenwald?

  Check Pro Bible for what Mann should do.

• 25:35Chris Ryan?

  Michael Mann submitted his Heat 2 screenplay to Warner Brothers and he was like, "Here you go, and that's gonna be 200 mil to make this." They balked. Apparently, they are trying to get Apple involved as a partner on the project. And one of the ways in which this can go from a fever dream that me and my collective brethren are having to an actual film is if Leonardo DiCaprio, apparently, who's expressed some interest, signs on to be a part of the film and act in it. I think the chatter seems to be suggesting that he would play young Neil, young Robert De Niro, which is interesting because Leonardo DiCaprio is 50, and when Robert De Niro

• 26:19Chris Ryan?

  made Heat, he was 52. So unless Leonardo DiCaprio is doing the John Voight character...

• 26:27Andy Greenwald?

  Or doing the Irishman.

• 26:29Chris Ryan?

  I don't know, but like, I mean, I suppose you could say like, you could make him look younger. If anybody could look younger, I'm sure it's Leonardo DiCaprio. But it is pretty interesting that this is being at least elevated to like Matt's and trades level of discussion.

• 26:47Andy Greenwald?

  For what it's worth, and it's worth a lot in terms of my own desperate hope and optimism, 50 looks a lot younger than it used to.

• 26:56Chris Ryan?

  Oh, my God. He doesn't look a day over 42.

• 26:59Andy Greenwald?

  That's not what my children said when they saw the One Battle for Another trailer.

• 27:04Chris Ryan?

  Really?

• 27:05Andy Greenwald?

  I brought this up on the pod when you were away, but like, you know how like...

• 27:11Chris Ryan?

  It's interesting what you'll let them watch.

• 27:13Andy Greenwald?

  They played it before Superman and Fantastic Four.

• 27:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:18Andy Greenwald?

  So there's like varying levels of psychic destruction that one could do to a child if one is a parent. And I don't traffic in that sort of thing. I don't lean over and say like, "Santa Claus isn't real," or whatever. But leaning over and saying, "That's Jack from Titanic," had a similar effect.

• 27:37Andy Greenwald?

  Like, the vehemence with which my daughter said, "No",

• 27:42Chris Ryan?

  No, it's not Jack, or no, I don't want to see a film based on Tom Pigeon's Vineland, okay.

• 27:47Andy Greenwald?

  No, they wanted Vineland, but they wanted it to be much more book accurate.

• 27:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, right. More of a sort of text.

• 27:53Andy Greenwald?

  Do you, but, okay, but as a heat connoisseur, would you accept this tax? Like, do you think it's worth it? Could Leo play that part?

• 28:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, they would figure it out.

• 28:04Andy Greenwald?

  Who would he be taking it? Because we still don't know. There was all the rumors of it's Austin Butler, it's Bernthal, it's-

• 28:10Chris Ryan?

  It's Driver, it's Jeremy on White.

• 28:13Andy Greenwald?

  It's Jeremiah on White.

• 28:14Chris Ryan?

  It's like the Bear cast meets, you know, meets the like White Noise cast. I don't know. I mean, like, I think that I will, I will believe that this project happens when they are like, "Look at this, it's shooting", basically, like onset paparazzi photos. Just like the same, same thing with the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sequel, where I was like, "There's no fucking way this is happening", and they're shooting it for seven months in LA and Greenwald.

• 28:39Andy Greenwald?

  I can walk over there.

• 28:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. So, I want to believe, but I won't get hurt. Refuse to get hurt by it.

• 28:45Andy Greenwald?

  I appreciate that.

• 28:47Chris Ryan?

  And giving Michael Mann $200 million right now is, is not a guarantee of return on investment.

• 28:52Andy Greenwald?

  I will say that I recently re-watched a film, Miami Vice. I'm not sure if you've ever seen it. And I did Google the cost of Go Fast boats. And they are not reasonable. Like, there's no, there's no version of it where you can get like the, you know, the more affordable Trader Joe's version of the boat.

• 29:09Chris Ryan?

  Wait until Trump's tariffs on fast kick in, you know? Just on going fast at all.

• 29:14Andy Greenwald?

  Anything over 60 bucks? Can I ask you, since Big Picture is on hiatus, can we just burn through, like, your absolute fast Rorschach test, back of the napkin response to the two trailers of movies with full names in the title?

• 29:31Chris Ryan?

  Ellen McKay and Jay Kelly?

• 29:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 29:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Ellen McKay-

• 29:35Andy Greenwald?

  First of all, congratulations. This is a great week for Irish people, I guess.

• 29:38Chris Ryan?

  Ellen McKay's the new film from James L. Brooks. It's been in production for, it seems like, quite a while, and it stars, um-

• 29:47Chris Ryan?

  Now I get confused because her name is

• 29:48Andy Greenwald?

  Emma Mackey.

• 29:49Chris Ryan?

  Emma Mackey, Ella McCay. Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Woody Harrelson.

• 29:55Andy Greenwald?

  Albert Brooks, Iowa Debray.

• 29:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, a lot of people. And is about a young woman who I think becomes governor. And also works out some family issues that she has. And it's, you know, Brooks is the master at large ensemble dramedies. And so that's what this looks like. I think, I think it's funny to, kind of in the same way we're talking about the paper. It's funny to watch a trailer for a James L. Brooks movie. It's like, this is not going to be The Odyssey. It's not going to feel like a major motion picture event. It really doesn't portray whether or not it's going to be a good film or not. He isn't, he is an aging man, but that doesn't mean that he can't pull this off. And I think he's, his sensibility and his comic timing and his, and his way with actors, hopefully is a timeless skill and a talent.

• 30:43Chris Ryan?

  And I'm, I remain hopeful for this film, even though I think it's Jamie Lee Curtis. When she's like, you're 34 years old and you're the governor. I was like, what the fuck is happening?

• 30:55Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think it's the Kathy Hochul story? Is that like?

• 30:58Chris Ryan?

  No, because Kathy had to wait for decades, man, for her spot. What do you think of Ella McCay?

• 31:05Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I think I'm with you because like, when you reach a certain age, AKA the age of people who are even interested in-

• 31:12Chris Ryan?

  AKA the age of Neil and Heat.

• 31:14Andy Greenwald?

  AKA the age of Neil and Heat 2, the prequel.

• 31:18Andy Greenwald?

  A movie that speaks in the James L. Brooks cadence is such a rarity and it is nostalgic. And the real answer I have for you is I wish someone half of James L. Brooks's age had the juice and gravitas to make a movie like this with this cast.

• 31:33Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 31:35Andy Greenwald?

  But we don't live in that world, so I'm happy that he gets a chance to do it again in the spirit of like, you know, I, I am a fan of great masters just kind of rewriting the same book.

• 31:45Chris Ryan?

  Making ladies governor, yeah.

• 31:47Andy Greenwald?

  Or just, and you know, and finally just getting woke, you know, in the capital cities of America.

• 31:54Andy Greenwald?

  That said, this, I mean, like Julie Cavner narrating and then like, it's about her mother. But then it's also, it, it did seem, it did seem a little, little loosey goosey.

• 32:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:06Andy Greenwald?

  But I like, I like this Emma Mackey. She seems good.

• 32:09Chris Ryan?

  I'm gonna let stove god cook here about J. Kelly.

• 32:12Andy Greenwald?

  Look, I mean, Noah Baumbach is old enough to play Neil in Heat 2, right? I think he's actually a little bit on the senior side for that. But this is one of my favorite genres of movie, not just like the Noah Baumbach thinky movie, but the aging star sort of struggles with what was it all for? I love this shit. This looks so good to me. And I especially like, my favorite George Clooney performances are when he just plays a, you know, a different shading of his own charismatic self. I think that's his best skill. And he's clearly playing a version of himself here. Like, and we were texting about this. I've never been a big Sandman guy.

• 32:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:55Andy Greenwald?

  You will not be hearing a review of Happy Gilmore 2 on this podcast because it should surprise none of the people who wanted to tans me when I watched Monty Python Bend or want to tans me now. I never saw Happy Gilmore 1. And when I found out that it wasn't a prequel, you know, I didn't know what to do with myself. All that said, I am a huge late blooming fan of Adam Sandler, the human being, as he appears on like the Conan O'Brien, Mark Twain thing. And he seems like a really nice guy to the people he works with and his family. And I just feel like Baumbach was like, these are two beloved performers and archetypes. Let's just let him cook with an incredible cast around him and the great Emily Mortimer co-writing the script. Like, I'm checking for this movie. I'm very excited about it.

• 33:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it looks, it looks really good. I think it would have been funny if Charlie Kaufman had made this movie and they just called it George Clooney.

• 33:40Andy Greenwald?

  Boy, this is why you're the best.

• 33:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, right.

• 33:45Andy Greenwald?

  You fixed it.

• 33:46Chris Ryan?

  It's obviously like a knowing kind of wink at Clooney's own celebrity. But I think, I hope this one works out for Noah. You know what I mean? It's been a minute. White Noise didn't quite click with the, with the streets.

• 34:00Andy Greenwald?

  Are you worried about how their household finances are doing? Or are you?

• 34:03Chris Ryan?

  I think they got that Narnia dough. You know what I mean?

• 34:05Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like Narnia is gonna be fine.

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• 36:17Chris Ryan?

  Jay Kelly is going to come out on Netflix in the fall, I believe, and it will probably be an awards contender. It brings me to our next subject that I wanted to throw at you, which is Netflix adjacent. So as I mentioned at the beginning of the pod, Skydance completed its acquisition for Paramount, which just shout out to Daddy Dave, shout out to his daddy Larry, shout out to all the great people at Skydance and how they're working out journalistic ethics these days. I think-

• 36:43Andy Greenwald?

  Seems awesome. Seems like it went really smoothly and they all seem like they're on the up and up.

• 36:48Chris Ryan?

  They're going to split the company into three divisions. So we got studios, direct to consumer, which is always my favorite because I am the consumer and they just go direct to me, and TV media. And of those divisions, Andy, I actually want to talk about the DTC because the recently released org chart of Paramount Skydance, or Paramount comma a Skydance company,

• 37:10Chris Ryan?

  you'll see the name Cindy Holland. Now, longtime listeners of the pod may remember us discussing Cindy Holland. I don't think she's ever been on the show, but she's been discussed because she was essentially one of the architects, if not the architect of Netflix's foray into streaming television when they went from red envelopes to something you watched on your TV or laptop.

• 37:31Andy Greenwald?

  Wait, wait, can I do it? She helped them go from red envelopes to red carpets with her award slanted, award-directed prestige fair. Go on. How was that?

• 37:44Chris Ryan?

  Let the guy host twice and he's just like, I know better.

• 37:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 37:49Chris Ryan?

  Cindy Holland is going to be basically overseeing some, it's a pretty murky org chart, but I think you could, safe to say Cindy Holland's making a lot of television decisions, streaming television decisions at Paramount.

• 38:03Andy Greenwald?

  That is safe to say. This is in terms of like the insider industry news, she's, she's who people, she's who the agencies are talking to again. She's leading that.

• 38:14Chris Ryan?

  Paramount Plus and Paramount in general, I think most people think of the Sheridan Universe and Star Trek Universe, and those are definitely the staples of that. We're talking specifically about Paramount Plus and that area of the company rather than the Comedy Central, MTV, VH1, BET kind of collection of linear cable channels that they have.

• 38:41Chris Ryan?

  So other than those two sort of staples, the Taylor Sheridan stuff, the Star Trek stuff, some Robert and Michelle King shows.

• 38:50Andy Greenwald?

  There's a third plank of what they feel is working for them, and that's the Butterworth Barrio. You know, I think that's, so that would be The Agency, that would be Mobland, I believe he's working on. So that's considered to be like a successful and safe.

• 39:07Chris Ryan?

  An international play to some extent, I bet. Yeah, right. So they've got these three planks, and Cindy Holland is, for lack of a better way of describing her, someone with really good taste.

• 39:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 39:21Chris Ryan?

  And over the years at Netflix here, some of the shows that she was, she helped bring to the screen, obviously House of Cards, which was their big flagship show for the first few years of Netflix's streaming TV endeavor, Orange is the New Black, a frequent award winner, The Queen's Gambit, Scott Frank's mini-series that became a global phenomenon, Stranger Things, which remarkably is wrapping up this year, and in the interim between its two seasons, I saw that like, it was somebody had basically wrote us an email that was like, you guys should track all the stuff that's happened in the world since the last season of Stranger Things.

• 39:58Andy Greenwald?

  Jesus.

• 39:59Chris Ryan?

  Mindhunter, Russian Doll, the OA, The Crown, et cetera. So somebody who takes swings, takes chances, in the case of things like The Crown and Mindhunter, writes big checks to big-brained creators and producers and directors who have a vision of what they want to do. You know, famously, we had heard that large chunks of season two of Mindhunter were reshot for Fincher's specifications, and Netflix was just like, sure, whatever you guys need, you know? That is the kind of relationship having and building that I think you get with her.

• 40:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 40:34Chris Ryan?

  So right now, I don't think you are a very big PP watcher, big Paramount Plus watcher. Every once in a while, I'll get you to fire up Landman or Lioness or whatever, but for the most part, that's my neighborhood. If I told you, or if I asked you, "Hey, Andy, in two and a half, three years when we're sitting here, Paramount Plus is currently the like seventh most popular streamer by some, by a lot of metrics. So it's, it's, it's not doing great. But if I told you in two and a half years, if I asked you like, "Where is it now?", would you say Paramount Plus has made five shows that we loved over the last two years? Would you say there's been a huge growth explosion because they've nailed a couple of big tent poles?

• 41:18Chris Ryan?

  Like, where do you think this goes from here?

• 41:20Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think Dan Bungino's talk show probably contributed to a lot of new subscribers, as well as Cash Patel's Crime Hunters.

• 41:26Chris Ryan?

  Are those guys both, they're not on Paramount Plus, are they?

• 41:30Andy Greenwald?

  Well, the way these things worked out, no, they're in the administration of the United States government, but I assume, um, no, well, okay, well, jokes aside, I think, uh, the, this is a perfect, it is a perfect landing spot for the correct executive in this moment. Now, I say this, I've never met with Cindy Holland, I don't know her at all, I've never worked with her, but she does have a sterling reputation and, you know, someone who does, who works fairly and is, is pleasant to work with, but also someone who is still driven by actual good taste, which, you know, many people who work in TV have, but not many are empowered to use in their day-to-day business decisions anymore.

• 42:11Andy Greenwald?

  So I, you know, her, she was the perfect person to build up Netflix's brand because, you know, as I was trying to do in my, you know, I, I, my dress rehearsal segue that I was doing for you about the, the red carpet, you know, to get the attention and to get the respect and to get stature in the industry, she was the person to do it. And she was programming things that other people wouldn't, in not, in a way not too dissimilar from what AMC did when it bought the scripts that other people wouldn't, that turned into Mad Men and Breaking Bad. It's been communicated to me that I, that like Orange is the New Black is her number one baby, in the sense that that was a passion project for Gen G Cohen that she loved also. And she empowered and programmed and turned it into an enormously successful show for the service

• 42:56Andy Greenwald?

  and also one that won many awards, best case outcome. Her voice and vision was certainly not faltering, but Netflix's own direction and mandate changed. And that and and she was a victim of the pivot to the gourmet cheeseburger era in the Netflix cafeteria.

• 43:14Chris Ryan?

  The Bella Vazaria coined term.

• 43:17Andy Greenwald?

  What Paramount has working for it, Sheridan, Butterworth, Star Trek. It's all of the things that Cindy Holland traditionally hasn't really paid cared that much about. I mean, maybe there are shows that she likes in that realm. But I think it's a good match where she's not only being hired for her gravitas and stature in the industry, but she's being hired to Orange is the New Black Paramount Plus.

• 43:40Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 43:40Andy Greenwald?

  Again, not specifically that show, but to to put it in like industry terms to broaden the the the audience share, broaden the appeal of the service. So I think that could be very interesting. I don't actually know what that will mean in terms of shows. Should we look at prior relationships she's had with people like Jenji Cohen? Maybe.

• 44:01Chris Ryan?

  I'm sorry, I'm just distracting myself because I was thinking about like if part of the settlement with Trump was he was like, we got to bring back porn stash. I gotta know what's going on with that guy.

• 44:12Andy Greenwald?

  I mean.

• 44:12Chris Ryan?

  Wait, what? Orange is the new black, but like a POV from his perspective.

• 44:17Andy Greenwald?

  And he's the hero.

• 44:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:20Andy Greenwald?

  That's very possible.

• 44:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, so I I think it'll be I think it'll be interesting. And at least in terms of like the ripple effect that it's had internally in the industry. People are kind of jazzed about the a quote unquote new player coming online. And in the sense that like it has been better than it was the last two years in terms of a marketplace. But any anytime there's like a buyer who is now empowered to like buy stuff. People are getting kind of jazzed about that, so.

• 44:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think my two cents are basically that it was a much different landscape when she was going all guns at Netflix. But the thing that I'm very hopeful about as a just as a TV watcher is that her instincts seem to take her to the thing that isn't currently on television. What is something that people don't have right now that they might want? What is something that is next? What is something that could be not a new franchise, but maybe like the kind of show that you would refer to as we want something like Stranger Things? We want something like Mindhunter. Well, nobody wants that because it's just expensive and only nine people watched it. But, you know, like, I think she's brave. And I think if I had a major complaint about TV right now is that we are.

• 45:29Chris Ryan?

  We're just in a real moment of stasis creatively where I think you're you're feeling, whether it's the after effects of COVID and the strikes or whatever, you're just feeling a lot of shows that feel like bland rewrites of a show you just watched seven months ago. Now, hands up, some of those shows I really like because there's just some times where I'm like, I want my stories. I like spies or I like cowboys or like whatever, you know, and it doesn't really matter to me if it's Terminalist or Terminalist Dark Wolf, you know, but I think for the purposes of pushing the plat, like the medium forward, it's good to have people like this in in places of power so that they can take a risk and you get something like the OA, which might not have been everybody's cup of tea, but

• 46:10Chris Ryan?

  was really like clearly the work of a creative mind going for it with some backing.

• 46:17Andy Greenwald?

  I'm very interested to see if she is being empowered to even on a smaller scale, do the kind of creator investing that she was able to do at Netflix.

• 46:29Chris Ryan?

  Like Natasha Lyonne and this person.

• 46:31Andy Greenwald?

  You go, Aziz Ansari with Master of None, which was a huge hit for them, both in terms of stature and awards and attention. The OA could be, what's interesting about a show like the OA is that it can be used as a representative of both sides of the same argument of like, look what you get when you empower an idiosyncratic creative or look what you get when you empower an idiosyncratic creative. David Ellison, you know, made, I was about to say made his bones, his bones were fairly well set out for him at birth, but.

• 47:04Chris Ryan?

  That was his first birthday present, bunch of bones.

• 47:07Andy Greenwald?

  It was just a big pile of bones, but like he did, he backed, again, this, I'm saying this out loud, it sounds insane as if this was some sort of a risky gambit, but he was like, yes, Tom Cruise, you should make more Mission Impossible movies at a time when other people weren't going to do that.

• 47:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but when Tom Cruise is like, I, that's going to be $500 million because like we're going to do this, this and this, and we're going to write it around stunts. He was like, all right, I'll find the money, you know?

• 47:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. And when Trump says, let's start scripting 60 Minutes, he's like, sure, you know, like, I think he's an agree, he's an agreeable guy.

• 47:36Chris Ryan?

  I'll lose the money. Yeah.

• 47:38Andy Greenwald?

  But regardless, I do think it's going to be interesting to see because and I also understand why it would be an attractive opportunity, government payola aside, because it's interesting in the ways that it is not a quote unquote successful service yet, but it is extremely successful in the limited ways in which it has achieved success.

• 47:59Chris Ryan?

  I also am just a little curious to know what is in the Paramount library that she might be in charge of developing.

• 48:05Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 48:06Chris Ryan?

  Is that like, I'm really just grasping it like the first thing that I think of when I see the Paramount Mountain, but like the Godfather Universe, you know?

• 48:18Andy Greenwald?

  Well, they did, they did make that.

• 48:20Chris Ryan?

  They did the offer about the making of the Godfather, but I mean, the actual Corleone family.

• 48:24Andy Greenwald?

  When I think of the, when I think of the Paramount Mountain these days, I think of ridiculousness. And is there, is there a prestige show there, you know? It's possible.

• 48:34Chris Ryan?

  In two and a half years, are you going to be here talking to me about how you always wanted to be the showrunner of ridiculousness?

• 48:40Andy Greenwald?

  One million percent.

• 48:42Chris Ryan?

  And just it's AI Chris being like, you're so funny, Andy.

• 48:46Andy Greenwald?

  If I haven't been detained at some sort of facility by then, yes, I will be honored.

• 48:51Chris Ryan?

  All right, let's talk about a show we love instead of just all this news, which is fine. There's a bunch of stuff coming up. Alien Earth is next week. Platonic is back. I kind of tapped out on the first season, but the second season has been getting really good reviews. That's the Seth Rogen Rose Byrne show.

• 49:04Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you for saying that. I tapped out on the first season. Seth and Rose back in my life at brobible.com or whatever it is that I'm looking at.

• 49:12Chris Ryan?

  Is this another you've gotten, because they try snacks, you like it?

• 49:16Andy Greenwald?

  No, I just like them so much. And I did see the like the autoplaying trailer on the Apple TV and I was like, I feel like maybe I kind of want this is my energy this summer, you know, I'm, I'm ready to go back to that show.

• 49:28Chris Ryan?

  I, coming up soon is Terminalist Dark Wolf, like I mentioned, which is the Taylor Kitsch prequel to Terminalist.

• 49:36Andy Greenwald?

  No spoilers about why it's not a sequel.

• 49:38Chris Ryan?

  I found, you know, some tattered Taylor Kitsch season tickets in the back of a drawer here and they're still valid. So I think I might still check that, check that out. I also saw that there is a show on Netflix coming out called Hostage, which stars Sir Ann Jones as the Prime Minister of England and Julie Delpi as the President of France. And they're embroiled in some sort of like blackmail hostage situation, which basically sounds like the bodyguard, but with prime ministers.

• 50:03Andy Greenwald?

  Netflix. Huh.

• 50:05Chris Ryan?

  It's coming out in a few weeks. Uh, obviously, The Paper and Task, those are all the shows coming out. But right now, Andy and I don't really have something that we were super focused on. Like I mentioned earlier, Eastern Gate came highly recommended, but was just one of those things that fell through the cracks. It's a Polish spy thriller that was released by HBO Max in January. I'm gonna do my best with the pronunciations of the names, but I apologize to any Polish speakers or people who care about pronunciations. It stars Lena Gora as a character named Iwa, who is, uh...

• 50:38Andy Greenwald?

  You could say it's Eva.

• 50:40Chris Ryan?

  Eva, okay. See, it's, this is a dialogue, you know?

• 50:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 50:44Chris Ryan?

  I don't have to walk the plank alone.

• 50:45Andy Greenwald?

  It's also donal, Gleason.

• 50:48Chris Ryan?

  What did I say?

• 50:49Andy Greenwald?

  In the original Polish, you said the M.

• 50:51Chris Ryan?

  I thought the N was silent.

• 50:53Andy Greenwald?

  No, the M's silent.

• 50:54Chris Ryan?

  Well, you know, make up your mind. You know what I mean? I'm really sorry about that, he's my countryman, but...

• 51:02Andy Greenwald?

  It's okay, we're good.

• 51:03Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Lena Gora stars as this sort of main, uh, Jane Bauer kind of spy of the show.

• 51:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, there it is.

• 51:11Chris Ryan?

  Um, and this show gave me some 24 vibes. This show gave me some early 24 vibes, in so much as the action is action-y. Like, when it turns up, when this spy thriller turns into a spy action sequence, it's not just like procedural ticky tack stuff. It's like kicking and fucking punching and shooting and blowing stuff up. So, action heads will be served here. It is obviously in Polish and in Russian, and it's about, uh, a hotspot that I honestly had never heard of before, but now I'm obsessed with, called the Solaki Gap, which is, uh, it's right on the border of Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus. And, goddammit, Andy, if the Russians don't want, want their little hands on that.

• 51:54Andy Greenwald?

  And, and so just to place it in the real world context, the show is set very specifically. And one of the best things about the show, I think, is its extreme specificity. It sets up scenes with the location, the date, and like the latitude and longitude and shit. It makes you really feel like you're zeroed in on it. And it's set in 2021, and it, basically, the, the, the thought behind it is that Russia is getting very... Very aggro and Russia is going to do something. Is it going to be Ukraine?

• 52:18Chris Ryan?

  I'm glad we just wrapped that. We got that all taken care of.

• 52:20Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly.

• 52:20Chris Ryan?

  So we can watch it as a period piece.

• 52:22Andy Greenwald?

  Well, spoiler, Ukraine is what it did, but the other alternatives were the Baltic states or this using their basically occupation already of Belarus to take out a NATO, a part of a NATO ally to claim this important shipping lane and move missiles there and really fuck shit up.

• 52:41Andy Greenwald?

  This show is so sick.

• 52:43Chris Ryan?

  It's so good.

• 52:44Andy Greenwald?

  This show is so watch coded that I would just like to personally apologize for not getting on to it sooner and also not realizing my deep, deep partisan passion for the Polish people and their long ongoing fight for freedom. Sorry about that. Didn't really, wasn't really checking for it, but it's pretty gnarly.

• 53:03Chris Ryan?

  This is like, when I, when I turn this on, it features an incredible opening sequence, opening 20 minutes, the first episode. It's quite graphic, but it's quite gripping. It felt like throwing a nicotine patch on. Like, I was like, I'm automatically regulated. This is so well done. The pacing is immaculate. Like, it's considered, but it's never belabored. It never feels like it's filler. It never feels like we have some plotline that utterly doesn't matter to the main thrust of the story. It is such a great white shark. It's just a hunting machine and it is like stripped down, but feels emotionally like

• 53:44Chris Ryan?

  alive because I think the performances, especially Lena Gore's, are so good.

• 53:50Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's really well said. I, for, for people trying to wrap their heads around it and our description of it, it does take some of the best pieces of a lot of shows that we've liked before. There's the, there's the global international espionage from a surprising point of view, as in not one of the major players that we loved from the bureau, which became the agency. Eva, who is a Polish spy, is pretty quickly in the series placed in a, under political cover, as a Polish consul in Minsk.

• 54:19Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 54:20Andy Greenwald?

  And there are elements of that that remind me of Borgen, or any of these other sort of like Nordic political dramas that people may have checked out over time.

• 54:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, she has the pantsuit.

• 54:28Andy Greenwald?

  She has the, it's really just the fashion. And then there's the, there's the more surprising action parts that, you know, to me, people's mileage may vary. I think there's a subset of people who might not be inclined to turn on Max and immediately change the dub setting to original Polish, which, side note, you have to keep an eye on because then when I did watch-

• 54:48Chris Ryan?

  You have to hit refresh on Max to get that to come up sometimes. Just a UX note, yeah.

• 54:52Andy Greenwald?

  No, that's not my concern. My concern is you, you do the right thing, you put it on and it's original Polish, and then you decide to unwind with, as I said, an episode of Conan O'Brien Must Go, and it too will be in Polish.

• 55:02Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. Also, you can't watch Bro Bible while you're watching the Eastern Gate because like you'll, you'll just lose what's happening.

• 55:08Andy Greenwald?

  You can't look up and down, exactly. But I was, like, the opening episode might be a litmus test of what kind of show you want it to be because I found it to be almost distractingly American in the sense that it starts with its noisiest set pieces. The legend that Eva is under when we meet her is very, very different from the woman she is revealed to be and the character she plays in the subsequent episodes. So in retrospect, it's incredibly cool and gripping and character, and from a character perspective, like very, very insightful and interesting opening. But my only hesitation on the show was, wait, what even is this?

• 55:50Andy Greenwald?

  It felt American TV in the sense that the pilot isn't necessarily instructive of what it will be in series over the next five episodes. The second episode for me is when it locked in and features a set piece at the end of the second episode.

• 56:02Chris Ryan?

  That's when she gets into her, her secondary cover as the consul, yeah.

• 56:05Andy Greenwald?

  And what happens at the end of the second episode is electric. It's a set piece that is so, so exciting and gripping. And as you said, Chris, I think that was a really smart point. Like, any of the strands that were given are relevant in a way that also reminded me of Libero. Like, there's such a deep bench of characters and a larger extending canvas of just places, worlds, issues that you were rewarded for sticking with it. And you start to feel really good when you recognize characters, even if, like to your point, like, I'm not entirely, like, my guy with the leather jacket and, you know, who's a little bit tired of this shit.

• 56:41Chris Ryan?

  Lang, yeah, I think that's his name.

• 56:43Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, yes, his name is Lang. I didn't know that, but I still love him. You know what I mean?

• 56:47Chris Ryan?

  I am only sort of on a, like, superficial level grasping all the nuances of who's Belarusian and who is Russian. And it's starting to, as I almost finished the series here, it's becoming a lower season. It's becoming a little bit more clear. I hope they do another season.

• 57:04Andy Greenwald?

  They are, it's renewed. It's renewed.

• 57:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, here's some other recommended, if you, I recommend Eastern Gate, if you like, Atomic Blonde with Charlize Theron, which I do. If you like Homeland, early Homeland.

• 57:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, good call.

• 57:20Chris Ryan?

  Elements of John Wick, not entirely, but like, I think it gets wiki at points, you know?

• 57:26Andy Greenwald?

  You don't think Eva's a little ballerina-esque? Is that what you're saying?

• 57:29Chris Ryan?

  That's what I mean, like, Wick, Wick Expanded, not, not in like, any kind of like, the continental and you have a gold coin, but just in her ass beating style, like.

• 57:36Andy Greenwald?

  Like Jen Wick.

• 57:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Jen Wick, that's good.

• 57:39Andy Greenwald?

  Jennifer, yeah.

• 57:41Chris Ryan?

  Jane Bauer, Jen Wick, 24, like, it's not as melodramatic or kind of hysterically plotted. Like, all of this stuff is like, what is a microaggression on the part of the Russian state? What is a false flag? What is, like, trying to provoke? What, you know, like, everything is about individuals trying to keep their nation-states safe from nuclear war, but while doing it, like, you know, crossing certain lines. It's, it's just, also, at six episodes, is one of the best binges I've seen this year, where you're just like, I would watch this in a weekend, honestly.

• 58:19Andy Greenwald?

  It's very well directed. The director is Jan Metichinsky, who I don't know anything about. It seems like he's done documentaries before.

• 58:24Chris Ryan?

  He was nominated for an Oscar.

• 58:26Andy Greenwald?

  For, for, oh, an Academy Award? I think, I think I would have heard.

• 58:30Chris Ryan?

  And Wojciech Bakenheim directed some of the episodes and he is also one of the main writers and I think, I think is the creator, although I just don't quite grasp the nuances of Polish credits there.

• 58:40Andy Greenwald?

  What's really cool about it, I think, just from a global perspective and why we are, we love watching international anything, though, is like, you cannot replicate the psychological underpinnings of a spy show set in a country that is a quote unquote "in the way," that it actually is

• 58:59Chris Ryan?

  It's a great point.

• 59:00Andy Greenwald?

  ground zero for the clash of nations. There is no protective cover.

• 59:04Chris Ryan?

  It doesn't hurt, it doesn't hurt that it has all this brutalist architecture and you're just like transported to this other part of the world that you don't get to visit, you know?

• 59:13Andy Greenwald?

  But a place, a part of the world that has been essentially fighting some version of this fight for centuries.

• 59:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:19Andy Greenwald?

  And there's a world weariness and an exhaustion with it that has just seeped into the every frame and the color palette and it's, you know, all the references you made make it clear that the show is in conversation with and in negotiation with contemporary TV storytelling, but it is 100% of its place.

• 59:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:39Andy Greenwald?

  And I'm so fired up about it. So you and I both, I watched four, I haven't finished yet, I'm gonna finish and then maybe we can circle back and talk to our listeners who've also checked it out.

• 59:46Chris Ryan?

  So kind of a weird beat for us, because if we do a pod on Monday, which I hope to do, I think we'll talk about Eastern Gate a little bit more and maybe talk about Families Like Ours, which is a Netflix series from a couple of weeks ago, maybe it was May, from Thomas Winterberg, who is a Danish director who made Another Round, which is that Mads Mikkelsen movie that was very critically acclaimed a couple of years ago, I loved that movie. And he made a movie, a show, a series that I have seen compared to Eternaut and Station 11. So I thought we could check that out over the weekend. It's, I don't know how many episodes, I think that's six or eight episodes, just another classic watch, fact check, and

• 1:00:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, we don't have, no way of knowing.

• 1:00:28Chris Ryan?

  It's just International Week here, I guess, on, on the watch while we get ready for Alien and everything else.

• 1:00:34Andy Greenwald?

  All you motherfuckers are on boat somewhere on Instagram, I see you, so

• 1:00:38Chris Ryan?

  I see you on BroBible.

• 1:00:39Andy Greenwald?

  This is

• 1:00:41Chris Ryan?

  I see you challenging Joseph Quinn to a snack eating contest on ProVivo.

• 1:00:46Andy Greenwald?

  This is our vacation. Just let us have this, you know?

• 1:00:49Chris Ryan?

  Um, thanks to Kaya, thanks to John, thanks to Andy. Uh, we will be back hopefully on Monday.

• 1:00:54Andy Greenwald?

  Watching Warsaw? You thinking it? Live show?

• 1:00:57Chris Ryan?

  Before a Philly live show, we gotta do Warsaw.

• 1:00:59Andy Greenwald?

  I think that makes sense.

• 1:01:00Chris Ryan?

  Uh, thanks to everybody. We'll talk to you soon.

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