‘Alien: Earth’ Failed Itself. Plus, Ethan Hawke and Sterlin Harjo on ‘The Lowdown,’ and ‘Slow Horses’ Is Back!

Chris and Andy talk about why the season finale of ‘Alien: Earth’ missed the mark and their interest level in potential future seasons (2:47). Then they break down the premiere of ‘Slow Horses’ Season 5 (38:57), before Chris is joined by ‘The Lowdown’ star Ethan Hawke and creator Sterlin Harjo for a live event at Brain Dead Studios to discuss the series premiere, why the project means so much to them, the inception of the Tulsa-based crime drama, and much more (49:24). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of ‘The Watch’ and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guests: Ethan Hawke and Sterlin Harjo Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Video Producer: Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm pro-football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carried sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit MDDAllies.com to watch my story.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at Caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 1:30Speaker 03

  For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters.

• 1:37Speaker 03

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

• 2:17Speaker 03

  a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tremfya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more, or visit tremfyaradio.com.

• 2:30Speaker 04

  I need sports to have to clear the room.

• 2:33Speaker 05

  Stand up and walk now.

• 2:36Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. And joining me in the studio, now he rules, it's Andy Greenwald. You've got a little pep in your step today, I can tell. I'd say, you know what, I've just been potting so much, I'm getting a little punchy. I did Zach Lowe yesterday, I've got you, we've got the big picture one battle after another pod, then we're just rolling back around. By the way, I've got you? Is that? Yeah. Is that what this has become? This is your hour, use it well.

• 3:10Chris Ryan?

  We do send this out, right? This is just... By the way, just, we have some really interesting stuff happening on the show today. It's a gangster-sized mega bonus episode of The Watch, because you and I, the usual, like, absolutely razor-sharp bands. The gruesome doosum. But then afterwards, so earlier this week, I did an event with Sterling Harjo and Ethan Hawke at Brain Dead here in Los Angeles, where they screened the first episode of The Lowdown, and then I chatted with those guys onstage. Kaia was there, Kai was there. The gang was there. Kaia was working. She definitely let me know it was work. Were you trying to like, socialize with her? I was just like, what's good, you know, come to the east side sometime.

• 3:46Speaker 07

  We hung in the green room for a little bit, you know, me, you, Ethan.

• 3:49Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 3:50Speaker 07

  Jay Chillin.

• 3:50Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 3:51Andy Greenwald?

  Nice.

• 3:52Chris Ryan?

  So we're gonna put that at the end of this episode. You can listen to that. Andy and I will get deeper into the lowdown. The first two episodes went up on Tuesday. It's one of our favorite shows of the year.

• 4:01Andy Greenwald?

  I love the show.

• 4:02Chris Ryan?

  Great show. Uh, we'll talk about that next week. So also, a little bit of like, a little bit of housecleaning.

• 4:08Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 4:08Chris Ryan?

  Uh, as you may have seen on our social feeds, uh, Andy and I are gonna be appearing at Vidiot's on Sunday night, hosting a panel talk, following a screening of the fourth episode of Task. Uh, that panel will include Tom Pelfrey, Mark Ruffalo, Brad Ingles being the director, uh, Sally Richardson-Woodfield. We'll be chatting there. That's, uh, KCRW Vidiot's event and...

• 4:30Andy Greenwald?

  We were on the low line of the Coachella poster in that.

• 4:33Chris Ryan?

  I don't know that we made the poster.

• 4:35Andy Greenwald?

  No, but that's fine.

• 4:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:37Andy Greenwald?

  You know, there's always surprise, like Weezer at Coachella last year.

• 4:39Chris Ryan?

  I believe the top of the poster said, "At the same theater that Sean Fantasy often sees films, we present."

• 4:46Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's right.

• 4:46Chris Ryan?

  Uh, no, in any case, what we're gonna do is run that on Monday, but we are also gonna chat, the two of us in the studio about Task, because how could we not?

• 4:56Chris Ryan?

  We have a lot to get through today because we have the Alien Earth finale, Slow Horses is back.

• 5:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 5:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And then whatever else is on our mind.

• 5:02Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, please, apparently we have a tight, tight window.

• 5:05Chris Ryan?

  I like to keep it moving.

• 5:06Andy Greenwald?

  Like Jalen Hurts, we can manage a tight window throw.

• 5:09Chris Ryan?

  Well, like Jalen Hurts, you're getting more aggressive with me.

• 5:11Andy Greenwald?

  In the second half of our lives. That's true, can I, uh, okay, do you wanna just get it, should we just get into it? Is there any other, uh...

• 5:18Chris Ryan?

  You know why I'm stalling a little bit?

• 5:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 5:20Chris Ryan?

  Why I've gotten up to the, I've gotten up to the line of scrimmage and now I'm checking to see if, if I need to, to call an audible? Is I don't wanna jump in and be in a bad mood about Alien Earth.

• 5:33Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 5:33Chris Ryan?

  Because Andy, I have to tell you, after the finale, here's my, here's my take. Alien Earth didn't, it didn't fail me. And it didn't fail the Alien franchise. I think it failed itself.

• 5:45Andy Greenwald?

  Whoa.

• 5:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you know?

• 5:46Andy Greenwald?

  Wow, you're being the high school coach, wow.

• 5:50Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, you wanted it to do better and get into a better college.

• 5:53Chris Ryan?

  For itself.

• 5:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 5:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:55Andy Greenwald?

  You see little tino morphs come and go, you know, but this one was special and you wanted more for it.

• 6:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so, all right, let's get into this. This is The Real Monsters. Guess who they were? And it's directed by Dana Gonzalez, written by Noah Hawke and Migzy, Migzy Penisono, sorry. And I think I, I've been pretty vocal, especially in the early parts of this season of finding a lot to like about this series. And then the second half of the season, especially, and then this finale, really, really, I felt pretty let down about. I'm not like, I'm taking my toys and going home. First seasons of franchise shows, you know, there's a lot of places to go. But I think when I got to the end of this episode and, needle drop,

• 6:47Chris Ryan?

  the hybrid kids have locked up all the mean adults. Yutani is on the way with an air force that she apparently did not feel the need to send the first time she invaded this island. And Wendy now controls two xenomorphs with her voice and all of networked digital equipment with her brain.

• 7:11Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think she could explain a VPN to me?

• 7:13Chris Ryan?

  She is the VPN.

• 7:14Andy Greenwald?

  Damn it. Yeah, you're right.

• 7:16Chris Ryan?

  She's gonna be sitting in your room when you get there and she's like, Andy, the Eagles are losing seven.

• 7:21Andy Greenwald?

  She's a very precocious network.

• 7:24Chris Ryan?

  It's like, well, is, where did we, where did we arrive? Like, what distance have we covered over the last eight and a half hours or whatever?

• 7:31Andy Greenwald?

  You don't want an ending of a season of television to be described as shocking for the reasons that I found this ending to be shocking.

• 7:38Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 7:39Andy Greenwald?

  Right? Like, I, I-

• 7:40Chris Ryan?

  Go off, King.

• 7:41Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, I, I'm not-

• 7:42Chris Ryan?

  You dropped something, King.

• 7:46Andy Greenwald?

  By the way, we were talking earlier off mic about how you would fare on a political ticket. And I just want to reiterate that once again, you are just so good at this.

• 7:56Chris Ryan?

  I will be Amy Poehler's Tim Walts.

• 7:58Andy Greenwald?

  So what?

• 8:00Chris Ryan?

  Actually, I guess that doesn't really work.

• 8:02Andy Greenwald?

  A folksy guy that's still lost. No, I just mean that like, even now, you were like, this show failed itself. I wasn't super into all of it, but I was super into some of it. You go. And I'm like, I am so.

• 8:16Chris Ryan?

  And the guy is like, record.

• 8:18Andy Greenwald?

  The guy leans in, rubs her hands together like the yellow suit meme.

• 8:25Andy Greenwald?

  I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be modest and controlled here as well. I think that what I mean is, I don't think I was the only audience member who checked to see how much time was left. Like, that's really what we're doing, which is just to move all of the pieces to the middle of the game board and then call game.

• 8:45Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:45Andy Greenwald?

  And then, you know, I think, I think most savvy viewers these days also know with a show of this caliber and of these production values, this expense.

• 8:55Chris Ryan?

  This talent.

• 8:56Andy Greenwald?

  When are we going to see season two? The show has not yet been renewed. It would seem likely that it will be, but when would we see a season two considering the challenges involved in the production of it? 2027 charitably?

• 9:07Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:08Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know if that is a safe bet to end this way when you have that much of a gap to make up for it. I just think that might be poor planning because it was an enormous letdown, frankly.

• 9:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I think that the thing that let me down was the roads not traveled.

• 9:25Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 9:26Chris Ryan?

  I do not think you can, I am not trying to be like, have bloodlust or anything like that, but I don't think you can really set a show in this world. Forget the previous Alien movies. If this was your first experience with Alien and you saw what the Alien did to the Magino in the beginning and then in the middle of the season.

• 9:49Chris Ryan?

  How can you go through the end of this season, the last episode especially? And the only people who really get it are red shirts? And then the guy who we thought had an alien burst out of his chest, thus destroying his organs, is resurrected as a zombie by the eyeball, which I guess that's a thing that it can do. It doesn't need any other organs?

• 10:12Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it doesn't need this sternum. You know what I mean? We're doing, sports science is doing incredible things these days.

• 10:20Chris Ryan?

  And then you have this situation where it's like you have a big fight between Moro and Kersh, but they're both fine. You have Dame Sylvia, like destroyed by grief and her decision making to prioritize, like the furthering of the science that she's been pursuing against her husband and her love and her life and everything and that like that. But she never actually articulates that. She just stares out a window for two episodes, basically. And I got to the end of this episode and I was just like, this is just such a punt. This is, this is not really like saying anything other than what is a human? And I think that the reason why it drove me crazy is because I think no one knows it.

• 11:01Chris Ryan?

  Because he hints that Hermit is gonna be the person invaded by this species. You know what I mean? Wendy's gonna have to make these decisions. What if a human being had then become a xenomorph? Like that is, or a xenomorph hybrid of its own? Like what does that do to their strange, constructive, dramatic relationship of brother, sister, but not really?

• 11:21Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 11:22Chris Ryan?

  That's really interesting. Kersh and Moro kind of just blindly fighting for their corporate entities, I guess, is the least interesting outcome of those two fascinating characters, who both hinted at different motivations and different allegiances and different kind of internal lives over the course of the season. And just to have it be like, I work for this guy, fight, fight, fight.

• 11:46Andy Greenwald?

  Well, the Kersh thing is particularly perplexing because if you just singled out his scenes.

• 11:54Andy Greenwald?

  It would be incomprehensible to me what his motivations are. Do you share that?

• 11:59Chris Ryan?

  No, I have no idea.

• 12:00Andy Greenwald?

  He appears to be a loyal synthetic person, scientist. He then seems to be quite clearly undermining his boss and allowing these creatures to run wild. And then when the moment comes that the rival arrives, he is blindly loyal again, as far as I can tell. That's a tough beat. I do get the sense, and not to read into performances, these are all professional actors, but we talked, I mentioned this last week when we were talking about the show, that Alex Lothar, one of my favorite current working young actors, seems perplexed in scenes in a way that isn't even dramatic. And it happened again this week. And I think what I'm picking up on, or at least what I'm supposing, is that it has to do with his

• 12:42Andy Greenwald?

  character, a good-hearted, big-hearted, one-lunged medic. His shifting attitudes towards mega-violence, where he seems completely fine with his sister unleashing hell through her alien protege on red shirts, but not his red shirts, but then later, kind of on his red shirts too.

• 13:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:06Andy Greenwald?

  The shocking episode ender last week of "What Did You Do?" is immediately wiped off the board.

• 13:13Chris Ryan?

  Well, your girl Nibbs is fine.

• 13:15Andy Greenwald?

  She's totally fine.

• 13:15Chris Ryan?

  She's dead. I was like, I don't think so. And then not only is she fine, but blemish-free.

• 13:19Andy Greenwald?

  So what was the issue? And how hard is it for even a emotional eight or nine-year-old to understand that Herman was trying to stop people from getting killed? I don't like Wendy's ability to solve complex quadratic equations and FaceTime from her own brain, notwithstanding, I think she would also be able to understand that her brother is just borderline trying to do the right thing. I think kids actually understand that often more than they understand nuance.

• 13:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:50Andy Greenwald?

  That was bizarre to me.

• 13:52Chris Ryan?

  It's also like there are directions that the show goes, like Wendy's seemingly unlimited powers, right? Which develop over the course of the finale episode to the point where she's gesturing in the air and controlling the entire computer network that governs this prodigy facility.

• 14:07Andy Greenwald?

  She is now able to basically hack any synthetic person who is on the wifi.

• 14:16Andy Greenwald?

  And yet it took seven episodes for her to understand that one of the most prominent people on the island, an island of about, you know, charitably 27 people total, is himself a synthetic person on the wifi.

• 14:29Chris Ryan?

  Well, that's Aidy Edmondson's character, right, Adam?

• 14:31Andy Greenwald?

  Did she just notice that?

• 14:33Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I think she-

• 14:34Andy Greenwald?

  Was it not relevant?

• 14:35Chris Ryan?

  Makes it, was she, was she's present for Boy Cavalier's speech about, "I made a fake dad," right?

• 14:42Andy Greenwald?

  She's present for that, so you could, you could do the TikTok of like, not the TikTok video, the like, in the journalistic sense of one thing leading to another, not in the, "Our brave patriots, Larry Ellison is gonna help save the social network, God bless commerce and free capitalism," um, that she heard that-

• 14:58Chris Ryan?

  As a vice presidential candidate, I have yet to weigh in on TikTok, but I think that there are good arguments on both sides of the acquisition.

• 15:05Andy Greenwald?

  God, I love this, I love this for you.

• 15:08Chris Ryan?

  What if I just ran for Veep?

• 15:11Andy Greenwald?

  For whomever.

• 15:12Chris Ryan?

  But whoever, yeah, like, I was like, Free Agent Veep.

• 15:16Andy Greenwald?

  Do you understand that you were born for this? Like, 25 years ago, you had a 100% approval rating in all bar conversations with any group of people. That is who you were.

• 15:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:26Andy Greenwald?

  And then, at the time, I imagine, at some point, Chuck Klosterman probably said something out loud, like, "If only there was a career path for a guy who has opinions about everything and everyone loves." Then, Bill Simmons invented podcasting.

• 15:41Chris Ryan?

  Larry Ellison invented the internet, yes.

• 15:43Andy Greenwald?

  And now here we are, so the next logical step is, everybody's Veep. CR. It doesn't matter.

• 15:51Chris Ryan?

  You don't have to like the top guy.

• 15:53Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 15:53Chris Ryan?

  The second guy's great.

• 15:54Andy Greenwald?

  Newsom, Ryan, Vance, Ryan, it all sounds American to me.

• 15:59Chris Ryan?

  And I think I could actually loosen both those guys up.

• 16:02Andy Greenwald?

  Oh my god, totally.

• 16:04Chris Ryan?

  Do you know? Because I could pod with them.

• 16:05Andy Greenwald?

  You could-

• 16:05Chris Ryan?

  Why don't we all pod together?

• 16:07Andy Greenwald?

  First of all-

• 16:08Chris Ryan?

  Three man weave, Vance, Newsom, Ryan-

• 16:10Andy Greenwald?

  And Marshawn Lynch.

• 16:11Chris Ryan?

  And it's favorite NBA teams to not win a title.

• 16:13Andy Greenwald?

  Everyone is podcasting now. Like, I don't mean like, everyone has a podcast, I mean, our government is now run by podcasters?

• 16:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes, yeah.

• 16:21Andy Greenwald?

  So, this does make sense. And we would clearly so much rather talk about your political trajectory than the finale of FX's $400 million alien television show.

• 16:34Chris Ryan?

  Anyway.

• 16:34Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, we'll return to this. Um, by the way, speaking of positivity-

• 16:41Andy Greenwald?

  They're the previously on Alien.

• 16:44Chris Ryan?

  It's the coolest invention of the show. Yeah, it's awesome.

• 16:47Andy Greenwald?

  It's awesome.

• 16:48Chris Ryan?

  The music's great in that sequence.

• 16:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, what was I talking about? We were talking about Wendy's powers.

• 16:54Andy Greenwald?

  And whether she knew, so right, you could say that that was the progression of her realization. But it does seem like someone who is in a Lamborghini internet body might be aware of what's a machine and what's not.

• 17:08Andy Greenwald?

  And she wouldn't need plot armor to accomplish that.

• 17:11Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 17:11Andy Greenwald?

  And I think that that in a vacuum, these small huh? Are we sure about that moments are insignificant. The greatest shows of all time have many of them.

• 17:21Chris Ryan?

  And I'll allow that Boy Cavalier and Dame might not understand the true extent of Wendy's powers because clearly we do not understand the true extent of the powers of AI now. Right? Like, so there is.

• 17:32Andy Greenwald?

  What do you propose to do about it, candidate?

• 17:35Chris Ryan?

  It's an interesting topic. And I think that what we have to do is get to the bottom of it. But also remember how we got here.

• 17:42Andy Greenwald?

  Do you know what's gonna be amazing is when your campaign, all your campaigns crashes and burns when the moderator, wait, when the moderator is just like, "One final question for candidate Ryan, how do you feel about the Avatar franchise?"

• 17:57Chris Ryan?

  I thought you were gonna be like, "How do you feel about cigarette smoking?"

• 18:00Andy Greenwald?

  Well, one of the two. And in the break room, you just see like, you know, like Donna Brazil, like, "No, no, don't say it."

• 18:11Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway, uh, these small things in a vacuum are all forgivable and almost not worth devoting a podcast to. But when the, especially the finale of a show is stitched together with an enormous number of huh?

• 18:30Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 18:30Andy Greenwald?

  Are we sure moments? You get, you begin to get the feeling, as I think I walked away from the series with, that the show was a meet, the story of the show, the narrative arc of the season was a means to an end, both to get to an end place where these people were in prison and she had some aliens. And the Lost Boys were now, you know, awakening man-robot children. But also that the points that Noah wanted to make were paramount. That was what mattered most.

• 19:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think that his interests in this story. If you told me that he actually had a take or a sci-fi story that he wanted to tell, that was about something like the hybrids, that is heavily referencing and based on Peter Pan, and that the xenomorphs are incidental to the entire thing.

• 19:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, they were.

• 19:23Chris Ryan?

  I would believe you, because it kind of seems like that's the case. And I don't mean that as an insult, because I think that there's like a clearly like Noah Hawke understands way more about making television, way more about what works on TV than I will ever like come close to grasping.

• 19:38Andy Greenwald?

  And is bringing a significant decade-plus body of work of what he wants to do and how he wants to use the medium to accomplish it artistically and thematically.

• 19:45Chris Ryan?

  And has done, on one occasion, you know, I was pretty skeptical just going into Fargo, about like, what the hell are you gonna do with a Coen Brothers movie that is 100% approval rating, but is also like, that's the story?

• 20:00Andy Greenwald?

  It's a closed circuit.

• 20:00Chris Ryan?

  And instead finds threads to pull on and has made a really, really cool show out of something, out of nothing. And then I, it makes sense that you would apply that same brain to something like this IP work. It's not that I think he's hostile towards Alien, I just don't think he knows what to do with it. Like, I don't, the aliens in Alien, I mean. Like, I think he's just kind of like, well, I don't want to repeat what Ridley Scott and James Cameron and David Fincher and Fetty Alvarez and, you know, Ridley Scott again, all these people have done. But I have to kind of tip my cap to like, a chest bursting scene, or an alien comes down

• 20:38Chris Ryan?

  from the ceiling seam. How can I spin it? And his way of spinning it is to make it a pet, an attack dog, really. And that's interesting. But it actually, like, what your viewer knows about aliens is that there is no, the alien takes a second to think about whether it's gonna kill you before, like, and then the guards arrive at the last second. Like, that's never happened in an Alien movie.

• 21:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 21:07Chris Ryan?

  The alien is like, watching you, and then it punctures you, and then it drags you away. And that's what makes it so fucking scary. There's no, there's no debate about what's gonna happen.

• 21:17Andy Greenwald?

  The, the moment I kind of left.

• 21:23Andy Greenwald?

  Like, there's a way when you are so enveloped in a program and you're just completely living in it, and even if things are inconsistent, you're just rolling with it because you're so completely immersed in it. And then there's like the first kick that kind of pushes you out a little bit. You're starting to watch and nitpick a little bit more. For me, it's in this episode when, under a island-wide lockdown and internet outage, when it is quite clear that the high-security lab has somehow failed yet again, and savage xenomorph, plural now, are free hunting, free-range hunting on the island. Dame Sylvia goes to the graves of the kids out somewhere on the side of a mountain, just to have a little

• 22:02Andy Greenwald?

  by-herself meeting. The alien finds her there, watches her, waits for her to turn around, looks at her, and then gets knocked away by guards who are not themselves immediately killed, to say like, "Ma'am, it's not safe out here."

• 22:16Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 22:17Andy Greenwald?

  Boy Cavalier is established as a preening, egotistical megalomaniac. This episode really underlines that he has ADHD.

• 22:27Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 22:28Andy Greenwald?

  He's playing with a pill bottle. This is a, it's a tough beat to introduce a plot point that, apparently important, 20 minutes into the finale.

• 22:35Chris Ryan?

  Adam says, like, you know, the extremity of your ADHD requires, yeah, a curse says that.

• 22:41Andy Greenwald?

  When he goes to visit the now-hostile, you know, galaxy-sized, powered Lost Boys, he walks into their cell with one security guard.

• 22:54Andy Greenwald?

  Neither of these scenes are particularly strong examples of human behavior, I would say. They are, it's behavior that is dependent on what you want the characters to do, the shot you want to take, where you want them to end up.

• 23:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's cool, like, the kid sitting in the cage, and him walking into the lion's den is a cool shot.

• 23:12Andy Greenwald?

  And Essie Davis realizing her life is over, except it's not, in front of a xenomorph is also beautiful and, you know, haunting, and she's, she is, to some degree, the only human avatar left on the show. But- All of this, for me, makes it fails because the central argument of the show is who are the real monsters? Well, I guess the takeaway is humans, but where are the humans?

• 23:32Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 23:32Andy Greenwald?

  I don't see them in the show. I see a white-blooded, completely inscrutable robot fighting a one-armed cyborg rage machine.

• 23:41Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 23:42Andy Greenwald?

  I see, and I see a bunch of little kids in superpowered bodies, and xenomorphs, and plant aliens, and sheep eyes, and Hermit being like, "I guess I'm a human, but what's going on here?" It's tough.

• 23:54Chris Ryan?

  You touch on-

• 23:55Andy Greenwald?

  For a finale to be this based, this dependent on, not just a, I'm sorry, not a finale, a season, to be dependent on locking mechanisms, to be, when it's really just a suggestion, it's just a whisper of a thought. A high-security lab, whether it's on the Magino, or it's on Boy Cavaliers Island, is really just another stop on the walking tour for anyone to go in and out of constantly. I think, for me, it summed up most when you have Hermit and Moro sharing one of these cells, and when Moro wakes up, and there's a, there's sort of a bizarre line of dialogue, I'll try and find, I definitely took it down, but he, the first thing he does when he wakes up, is he goes to the door and jiggles the handle. Classic high-security, future-

• 24:40Chris Ryan?

  Honestly, not a bad idea in that place.

• 24:42Andy Greenwald?

  No, that's what I'm saying. When he gets out, easily, he just grabs a set of keys from the guard and immediately unlocks his cyborg arm-

• 24:50Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 24:50Andy Greenwald?

  Because the guy was carrying the keys around.

• 24:52Chris Ryan?

  The keys to his cyborg arm, yeah.

• 24:54Andy Greenwald?

  Again, to make a story unfold in the way you want it to unfold, happenstance and convenience is gonna be a part of it. It's just the long chain of happenstance and convenience to get us to a place to set us up for a future season that rankles.

• 25:07Chris Ryan?

  I, I truly do try to stick to like what we were given on screen and not read too much into postseason interviews. Noah Hawke has talked to a couple of places, I think Hollywood Reporter is where I read this, where he talked about one or two things. One is that he typically works in 10-episode seasons, and this is the first time that he had worked in an eight-episode one. I don't, maybe, or he said, "This was eight." He also pointed out that he had to do, essentially, an alien movie to start the season.

• 25:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 25:37Chris Ryan?

  Gets back to Neverland for two episodes, then goes back out into space to do the Magino origin.

• 25:45Chris Ryan?

  Gets back and then has to, you know, basically has a three-episode arc to get to the end of the season. And I don't know whether that's like the strikes, the cost of making this, whether or not they had Timothy Olyphant for as much time as they needed him if they wanted to do certain things.

• 26:01Andy Greenwald?

  He seemed to avail.

• 26:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I have no idea, but I wonder if there's a better 10-episode season of this. And I also think that one of the reasons why you and I are so on edge about watching some of this stuff and we keep saying things like the lock and her powers, which have yet to be discussed until the end of being that massive. I mean, I know she's able to communicate with Hermit in the beginning of the season.

• 26:29Andy Greenwald?

  She's spending, yeah.

• 26:30Chris Ryan?

  But that would suggest that she already can do that. And why would you then let her roam free without an off switch?

• 26:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 26:36Chris Ryan?

  Right? We got an email a couple of weeks ago from someone named Alan, which was very good because I think he picks at something that probably for a solid chunk of our listeners is the case, which is basically we've gotten Andor pilled. And that ages ago, Tony Gilroy came onto the watch to talk to y'all about the Narkeena 5 arc of Andor, season one.

• 26:58Andy Greenwald?

  Season one, yeah.

• 26:59Chris Ryan?

  Tony talked about the writers' room and Luke Hall spending a lot of time figuring out how a space prison would work. Like if the prison had no bars, what would keep the prisoners trapped? Oh, the floor is electrified. That would mean the prisoners would be barefoot. Shout out Boy Cavalier. How do you prevent the guards from being shocked? They'd have to wear these heavy boot things and so on and so on and so on. But all that detail about the architecture and functions of the prison dictated the movement of the story. Would alien Earth have benefited from that kind of planning?

• 27:29Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's a great, great question. It's a great point. A couple of things in what you were saying. One is-

• 27:35Chris Ryan?

  Thanks for the email, Alan.

• 27:36Andy Greenwald?

  I think, and thank you for the dramatic reading of it. I think, I love, I love when you read emails on the show. It gives me time to-

• 27:44Chris Ryan?

  Do you actually?

• 27:44Andy Greenwald?

  Well, they're great emails.

• 27:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:47Andy Greenwald?

  Gives me time to check mine. No, the-

• 27:52Chris Ryan?

  Another fundraiser from Vice President Ryan?

• 27:55Andy Greenwald?

  Who's running for Attorney General in New Mexico again? Wait, it's Chris?

• 28:02Andy Greenwald?

  A couple of things about this. I think it's a very fair question to ask if due to budget reasons or production reasons, the the episode order was trimmed. There's a moment in this episode when I believe it's Adam basically narrates what's going on on the island that does feel like a lot of yada, yada, yada.

• 28:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Utani is on her way with her ships.

• 28:22Andy Greenwald?

  And a lot of like dreamy footage that definitely of scenes, not all of which were shot to be part of the montage of someone narrating.

• 28:27Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 28:28Andy Greenwald?

  That's just very clear. Artfully done, but like you can get that. You can get that sense. So there might have been more story left on it. I on the on the bone. I think that it's important when we talk about shows like this to always contextualize it by saying it's not as if all television shows in 2025 start from the same place in terms of budget, in terms of priorities, in terms of producers, executives, networks, hopes, dreams, creators, et cetera. What Andor did is a miracle for any number of reasons. The number one reason being it is exceptional television, like some of the best maybe ever made when we look back on this.

• 29:08Andy Greenwald?

  It is also not repeatable, not just repeatable, not not unrepeatable because, you know, margins have changed and Disney isn't investing in Star Wars that doesn't involve puppets as much anymore. It's not repeatable because it is a unique chemistry, not just of Tony Gilroy and material, but Tony Gilroy and Kathy Kennedy in charge of Disney at a moment of transition at Disney.

• 29:30Chris Ryan?

  I'd be like, we need hours of TV for Disney Plus.

• 29:32Andy Greenwald?

  And him saying, I can deliver it and him saying, okay, great. I'm going to hole up in my brownstone with my brother and Bo Williman and Tom Bissell. And we are going to spare no expense and we are going to operate on the highest possible level at all times. Everybody sets out to do that, but it's not always possible.

• 29:52Andy Greenwald?

  Noah, by contrast, works differently, thinks differently, has different aims and goals, but also the aims and goals of Fox, of FX, of John Landgraf, of the nature of like having a room and then shooting in Thailand, like all of this goes into it. So I don't want to hold them up next to each other and say, you know, one is better than the other. But I think that the larger takeaway from the email that I definitely agree with is the standard has been raised. And I think that what we're bumping on is a, the difference between a show that is dedicated to show, to giving us a complete thought, both narratively, but also thematically, politically, visually, artistically, which

• 30:31Andy Greenwald?

  is Andor, and a show that is a, maybe an imperfect vessel for what motivates the creator.

• 30:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, right.

• 30:40Andy Greenwald?

  And I am never going to come on this podcast and say, oh, I wish creators had less opportunity to express their innermost hopes, dreams and passions. But this feels a little bit at the end of these episodes, like an ill-fitting garment for some of it.

• 30:55Chris Ryan?

  I wonder whether or not also, there was something about this story that he felt like he needed to tell to get to the next one.

• 31:03Andy Greenwald?

  Which is a tough beat for contemporary television.

• 31:05Chris Ryan?

  But this is also a creator who has worked in a somewhat anthologized fashion in TV in the past.

• 31:11Andy Greenwald?

  Other than Legion, he has.

• 31:12Chris Ryan?

  And I would not be shocked if, now, he has said in his interviews, he was like, but it's, it is a very interesting situation because even though Wendy is like, we rule now, all these ships are coming, you know, and so.

• 31:27Andy Greenwald?

  Also, what does she rule over? Those people in the prison?

• 31:30Chris Ryan?

  I think humanity. I think that's kind of like, we don't work for you. You know, we're not showroom models. We are, you know, we are the, you're the showroom models.

• 31:38Andy Greenwald?

  Is that what the new skinny iPhone is going to say?

• 31:40Chris Ryan?

  [laughter]

• 31:41Andy Greenwald?

  That's why I'm not, I'm not updating to that new OS with the bubbles. Like, that's, no, thank you.

• 31:47Chris Ryan?

  Um, are you, do you think that there's any promise for future seasons in terms of like creatively, like your interest level?

• 31:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, I think the constant-

• 32:00Chris Ryan?

  I don't know, that's a good question.

• 32:01Andy Greenwald?

  No, but I think the constant of- the constant of our conversations over the last eight weeks have been, I think, incredibly impressed by some structural decision making and some just idea generating that is at the root here. And then some frustration with the- the sort of the straitjacket of the first season problem, you know, like- and then maybe beyond that, what we're starting to tease at today is like, maybe there's a cool show about AI and humanity and hybrid machine robot baby people, but is that an alien show? Do we want aliens in it?

• 32:42Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, the alien ultimately are the least interesting thing, you know, I think about this show, don't you think? In how they are deployed?

• 32:51Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I mean, I think that the alien is the show. I mean, if you just were like, it's about AI and synthetic people and immortality and Peter Pan, I would just be like, I'm not that interested in that.

• 33:02Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not that interested in it in a vacuum. But if you tell me every other detail about this is the same, in the sense that there is-

• 33:09Chris Ryan?

  The coolest shots in this episode are still like, the alien, you know, dissolve against the sun, you know, on a mountain top somewhere on this island screaming into the night, into the void, you know, like, that's cool to me, like, I don't know.

• 33:24Andy Greenwald?

  That's your platform. Single issue candidate. I'm interested in the stuff that I- I think I'm interested in a lot of the things that Noah is interested in.

• 33:31Chris Ryan?

  I think xenomorphs are the best part of this show.

• 33:35Andy Greenwald?

  They're Americans too. I think the- the world run by five cutthroat corporations with a blurring line between what is human and what is machine and a guy basically being like, I've invented immortality, but I'm really just mostly compelled by the works of J.M. Barry, and so I'm making sure that this follows like, the deep Peter Pan cuts? The moment where they're in prison-

• 34:00Chris Ryan?

  No, it's Shane.

• 34:01Andy Greenwald?

  When Wendy's like, actually Wendy was the most popular, and then, but Peter got mad later when she- Grew up, so he came and kidnapped her daughter. I'm like, it's like explaining the plot of Jurassic World 3 to me.

• 34:14Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 34:15Andy Greenwald?

  Let's stay focused here. We get the bit. Although I was impressed that in the finale Wendy's, you know, self upgrade finally allowed her to stop saying the boy genius.

• 34:23Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 34:24Andy Greenwald?

  She said boy K. I was like, let's go with that. But all I'm saying is, I actually found the most interesting template for a longer running Noah Hawke series to be the things that I think he was more interested in. And by the end, when they're refer, when, when boy cavalier is like, you know, all my toys are here. And these aliens are just toys to him. And there's still the sense that everybody just wants it. But why do they want them? They seem like a lot hassle. And I don't think that safety glass has iterated enough to really allow us to fully explore.

• 34:58Chris Ryan?

  They stopped developing safety glass at like the movie Ice Age in its release.

• 35:04Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's absolutely true.

• 35:10Andy Greenwald?

  They don't, on a fundamental level, and maybe this is, a few weeks ago, you were talking about how in some interviews, it seemed like Noah was saying, yeah, these people are stupid. You know, I'm paraphrasing. But at a certain point, the characters on the show are not serious people about what they're messing with and what they're doing. And it's hard then for me to take it seriously.

• 35:31Chris Ryan?

  The voice character is that it's kind of like making a, making a piece of art about someone who's a great writer and not showing the writing, right?

• 35:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, or something about a musician who writes the greatest song.

• 35:40Chris Ryan?

  This guy is a genius multi trillionaire and seems like a kind of an idiot. Now, you could say, oh, I can think of some examples in our current setup where that's the case as well.

• 35:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 35:51Chris Ryan?

  But there's really no evidence to suggest that this guy would even be trusted by anybody, you know, to do, to do any of this stuff. The last thing I'll just leave us with is the fact that still, these aliens have not gotten off that island. So. You could still theoretically throw a blanket on top of it and be like, aliens have never been to Earth, or nobody else knows about this, and nobody else is like, hmm, xenomorphs. I do think that he's gonna have to reckon with some kind of canon if he makes another season. And he's indicated that he'll have to start considering that more heavily. But, you know, I think my first red light, or my first alarm, was when it was kind of like, oh yeah,

• 36:33Chris Ryan?

  Prometheus and Covenant, that doesn't matter in this world, or like, that's alternative fiction. I admire the creative chutzpah, but it's like, well then, what are we watching then, right?

• 36:45Andy Greenwald?

  Is that the first time you've used Yiddish on this podcast? Shana tova, my brother.

• 36:52Andy Greenwald?

  That was a dog whistle for this dog.

• 36:54Chris Ryan?

  The high hollies, man.

• 36:56Andy Greenwald?

  As our resident alienologist, can you comment?

• 37:00Chris Ryan?

  Don't put that on me. I like it. I don't.

• 37:02Andy Greenwald?

  Are you running under Andrew Yang's no labels party?

• 37:05Chris Ryan?

  I don't want LV426 to get mad at me, but go ahead.

• 37:09Andy Greenwald?

  It's not about specifics. It's more about the traditional vibe of these stories. Is that they are more or less haunted house stories in space where everybody dies.

• 37:19Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 37:20Andy Greenwald?

  Except, you know, there's always one survivor, or Ripley, or whatever. This did invert that. Magino did the Alien movie.

• 37:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and then this was a different thing.

• 37:30Andy Greenwald?

  But in this, everyone of note, other than poor Isaac Rest in Power King, everybody else survived. Did that throw you?

• 37:39Chris Ryan?

  Yes, that threw me a lot. It threw me a lot.

• 37:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 37:43Chris Ryan?

  Not only because I just like, I want to see aliens get after it. It threw me a lot because I like watching things where the consequences and stakes that are obvious are actually followed through. And that's why I was like, put the eyeball on Hermit. I would love to see Alex Lothar be Frankenstein's monster. Like, let's see what happens when this happens.

• 38:05Andy Greenwald?

  I will say that, you know... The development process is so glacial often in television that there are things that are, I think broadly accepted, not just by the viewing public or by podcasters, but I think within development meetings and sales pitches and things that the industry has moved on from or has finally understood and taken and learned from. One of those is you can't start a pilot with the most exciting thing and then say one month earlier.

• 38:34Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 38:35Andy Greenwald?

  Black Rabbit was written and developed before this seemed to really sink into the consciousness, so Black Rabbit did it. The other one that I think one of the lessons from this past year, so Alien could not have caught up to it in its development process, is I no longer think that you are playing with house money when you are developing and spending on a massive IP, known IP franchise show, and you cannot spend, burn a season clearing your throat.

• 38:59Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 39:00Andy Greenwald?

  This season did not just clear its throat. The Magino stuff, the world building, I'm not trying to dismiss it. It went for it in ways that I think were very smart and met the moment. But broadly speaking, there were House of Dragon vibes to the sense that like, don't worry, we'll get to the good stuff in a larger story.

• 39:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think you're right. I think that there's something to that.

• 39:19Andy Greenwald?

  In The Last of Us, season two, ratings kind of proved that like you cannot bank on it. You cannot count on that same level of excitement, engagement, coming back with you ratings-wise. Again, that's not quality, that's not a quality comment. The ratings were down. So I think that big stuff that's being developed now will have to go in with that mindset. Either we make it every year or we tell the biggest possible story every year.

• 39:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's three years from now, we do Alien Earth, part season two, and it's about something completely different. And maybe Kersh is in it or whatever, but like, we've kind of changed the game board, the same way he does with Fargo.

• 39:56Andy Greenwald?

  I would also say, and again, the shows that are on television at the same time are not in competition with each other. It's not really fair to do it, but they are, because of the nature of a podcast, they are in conversation with each other. And one of the things that I was excited to talk about on Task, episode three, and we talked on Monday, was how Brad Anglesby is incredibly adept at giving characters their ISO hero ball introductory expository speech in ways that even if it's not natural, flows and is, you know, draws your attention and draws you deeper into the story and the world. I thought this episode was a... Did not succeed to that level. When you have moments like Morrow and Kersh are fighting to the death and Morrow suddenly

• 40:40Andy Greenwald?

  starts talking about John Henry.

• 40:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. The pop culture thing is maddening to me.

• 40:46Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I think, again, that is an interesting analogy. It is relevant. It's a good story to tell. I don't know if that was the moment for it. You know, and similarly, like Boy Cavalier, like walking into a room full of murderous hybrid baby robots and being like, let me tell you about my father. Read the room. You know, I know you owned the room and probably built the room and everything in it.

• 41:05Chris Ryan?

  Or just say that from outside of the gate, you know, even though when she opens the gate, that's probably a bad sign that like, but you're gonna get trapped in there.

• 41:13Andy Greenwald?

  Or maybe he's so smart because he understands that there really are no walls between any of us.

• 41:18Chris Ryan?

  That's right, man.

• 41:19Andy Greenwald?

  At any time. He clearly does not believe in security protocols.

• 41:22Chris Ryan?

  It's my campaign slogan. There are no walls.

• 41:25Andy Greenwald?

  That's beautiful.

• 41:27Speaker 09

  FanDuel is now available everywhere in the US.

• 41:35Speaker 09

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

• 41:45Speaker 09

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

• 41:57Speaker 04

  This episode is brought to you by The Home Depot. The Home Depot has everything you need to launch your holiday season in style. Upgrade your yard with this year's hottest holiday decor, including the showstopping towering Santa. Oh, I like that one. And his impressive reindeer, both 8.5 feet and both designed with incredible detail that stands out day or night. When you want decor that delivers impact, The Home Depot has it. Make your home Santa's favorite stop with the holiday decor you want, all waiting for you at The Home Depot.

• 42:26Speaker 10

  This episode is brought to you by Petivity. Cat parents are basically mealtime detectives. Who actually ate? Did they finish? Was that less than yesterday? The new Petivity Smart Feeder for cats turns everyday meals into meaningful health insights, helping you identify changes in your cat's habits and be more proactive about their health. Plus, you can feed them from anywhere. Take the mystery out of mealtime. Visit petivity.com, P E T I V I T Y dot com slash cat feeder to learn more.

• 42:55Speaker 04

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

• 43:39Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk a little bit about the first episode of Slow Horses, season five. We still have this lowdown thing to get to, so we can keep this brief enough because this is a setup episode for the most part. I found it to be the most viscerally kind of electrifying and almost confrontational of those slow horses. Here's the bomb. Here's the, here's the moment that brings, puts the case in motion. I love this season.

• 44:07Andy Greenwald?

  You've watched ahead.

• 44:08Chris Ryan?

  I have watched ahead and I will not be spoiling anything or talking about anything. And I love this season because it puts the thriller back in spy thriller. I think that, um, obviously they're following along with McCarron's books. This one is based on London Rules. As people may have read, this one is a Roddy centric season.

• 44:26Andy Greenwald?

  As his PR reps have clearly, like there's a big profile in the Times. This guy's front and center.

• 44:31Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, I think what I loved about this was where the fourth season. Felt a little bit like there's the Jack Lowdown's

• 44:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 44:40Chris Ryan?

  Season happening over here and then there is the the these two are running around over here Shirley and Marcus maybe are doing stuff. It feels like the band is coming back together and exploring the studio space. Finding out what they sound like live and it just feels like the propulsion is back in the show and I don't really need this series to be myth making and to be like, what's the bigger story about River? What is his? It's like Rivers trapped. All of these people are trapped. They also all can't admit that they prefer living in Jackson's world rather than the bullshit world of the park or wherever or outside.

• 45:24Chris Ryan?

  But tell me what you thought of the first episode.

• 45:26Andy Greenwald?

  I love the show. I love that it's in our lives every year. It's a gift. I was pleased to learn that it was based on the McCarran novel, London Rules, not the text I was sending you between September and March.

• 45:36Chris Ryan?

  Really?

• 45:37Andy Greenwald?

  Where I said.

• 45:37Chris Ryan?

  London Rules.

• 45:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 45:40Andy Greenwald?

  I, you know, look, the, the, the beauty and the brilliance and the stability of the show is that it has these books. The risk you run is that if there's a book that is, I mean, I haven't read them, so I don't know. I don't know if Spook Street was an off book, you know, and maybe not as strong as the others, but you are basically, you've made the decision to follow the tracks that were laid by the writer and I, I loved watching season four. I'm never going to take it for granted that we have it, but the things about the show that I am not particularly that, not particularly interested in include River being an action hero in a separate television show.

• 46:16Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 46:17Andy Greenwald?

  River's origin story, River's Oedipal relationship with his mean supervillain dad.

• 46:23Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 46:24Andy Greenwald?

  I don't really care like that's, that's kind of tangential stuff that makes it like a slow horses. You know, expanded universe and like, I, I don't watch it that way and it's fun and cool for people who, who do or might hit different when you're reading a book and you know, characters maybe bubble up and then disappear again and come back. This does feel like, I think, what I picked up on that you were responding to is that this season immediately, it starts off with a series of horrifying bangs, but you're immediately back in the tensions that made the show worthwhile to begin with of this misfit, this collection of misfit toys slash found family hate each other, are trapped with each other, and yet somehow keep showing up for each other. I think it also makes a difference that Saul Metzstein, who directed season three, which was excellent, is back

• 47:09Andy Greenwald?

  to direct this season.

• 47:10Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 47:10Andy Greenwald?

  And maybe there's also a little extra, little, you know, gas in his engine because this is Will Smith, who has won Emmys and has been the showrunner and main adapter of the series since season one. This is his swan song.

• 47:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:22Andy Greenwald?

  He's stepping back from the day-to-day showrunning after this.

• 47:24Chris Ryan?

  They're also back on home field. So being back in London, starting the season with, and we'll spoil the first episode going forward, the first sequence is essentially a mass shooting at a campaign stump promotional.

• 47:40Andy Greenwald?

  Not even. It's just like that guy has a table in a, what appears to be like a council flat. Like, he's just...

• 47:45Chris Ryan?

  And he's trying to register people and get them to vote for the Sadiq Khan stand-in that Nick Muhammad is playing.

• 47:52Andy Greenwald?

  Who is the current mayor in the world of Slow Horses.

• 47:56Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 47:56Andy Greenwald?

  He's the incumbent.

• 47:57Chris Ryan?

  And he is running against a populist demagogue, vaguely Nigel Farage-ish, a Farage-ish character. Slow Horses has done a really nice job of like, talking about the nuances between the conservative side of the British sort of political spectrum and their relationship to the more like National Front racist, you know...

• 48:21Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I heard that it's Sharia law there now. I'm very interested. I'll report back soon.

• 48:26Chris Ryan?

  And so, yeah, I think that it starts out with this mass shooting that takes place there. There's immediately like, questions about what we know as viewers versus what cops and agents are trying to catch up with.

• 48:38Andy Greenwald?

  And by the way, kudos to the production and to Saul Metzstein and Will Smith. Like, the show is... Very propulsive and very funny all the time. That opening was horrifying.

• 48:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:48Andy Greenwald?

  It was, I thought it was brilliantly, I don't want to say shot or executed, but it was brilliantly, they pulled it off brilliantly.

• 48:55Chris Ryan?

  But I liked it because I think most Slow Horses seasons start with a bomb goes off way down over there, or there's a murder, then it kind of spirals out from there. But I feel like the show needed something like that to kind of say like, hey, we know it's season five, but pay attention.

• 49:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and I just thought that the framing of it, there was, the most horrifying aspect of it was the silence that they lingered in. That usually it's like a knee jerk thing that anytime there is any kind of act of violence on television or movies, if you leave the scene, you hear the sirens.

• 49:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:30Andy Greenwald?

  You hear the approach, you hear a scream, there's a sense that, it's almost like letting the audience know, don't worry, society is here to pick up the pieces, the guardrails exist, and I really appreciated that it was just this horrifying funereal silence.

• 49:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and it kind of snowballs from there. You know, there's an attempt on Roddy's life, Shirley, maybe Shirley is obsessed with the idea that it was.

• 49:51Andy Greenwald?

  It's a white van, by the way, which is what Ethan Hawke drives in The Lowdown.

• 49:53Chris Ryan?

  That's true. And, you know, there's a lot of tension arriving from the internal kind of allegiances, but also dreams and nightmares of the members of Sly House, specifically Louisa leaves Sly House. And River is obviously like, I'm kind of the last, I'm holding the bag here. Like, I'm, I'm close to becoming one of those people that just spends the rest of his career here, and what's that going to mean for me? When I think I have like a higher purpose and I think I'm like the number one draft pick of all spies. Jackson is still Jackson, farting, drinking.

• 50:29Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, his, can you imagine his Grub Street diet?

• 50:34Chris Ryan?

  Oh my god, it's just like garlic noodles.

• 50:37Andy Greenwald?

  He starts with a full English, some of it ends up on his tie. He then, oh man, I meant to, the Tesco caterpillar, who has a name?

• 50:47Andy Greenwald?

  Someone's going to email me about this, including my friends in England.

• 50:50Chris Ryan?

  What's the Tesco caterpillar?

• 50:51Andy Greenwald?

  So he takes, they go to Tesco to get the supplies for the going away party.

• 50:55Chris Ryan?

  Oh yeah.

• 50:55Andy Greenwald?

  And one of the things that they get is a cake of this character.

• 50:59Chris Ryan?

  Oh yeah.

• 50:59Andy Greenwald?

  And there's gummies, and I've got them for my-

• 51:01Speaker 07

  Slinky or-

• 51:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 51:03Speaker 07

  Fuzzy?

• 51:04Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you. Colin. No, it's Colin.

• 51:05Speaker 07

  Colin.

• 51:06Andy Greenwald?

  Colin the Caterpillar. Thank you.

• 51:08Chris Ryan?

  It's like a Carvel thing?

• 51:09Andy Greenwald?

  London rules. Yes, we would think of it. I used the same analogy, then I had to explain Fudgy the Whale, and everybody was like, "It's time for you to fly home now."

• 51:16Chris Ryan?

  Did you have Carvel out in the West Coast, growing up?

• 51:19Speaker 07

  What is that?

• 51:20Chris Ryan?

  It's an ice cream chain, but they make ice cream cakes usually in like these proprietary cartoon characters?

• 51:27Speaker 07

  No, we had like Baskin Robbins.

• 51:29Andy Greenwald?

  Wait, I'm gonna get... Kaya, you were right. Colin is the Marks and Spencer version of it.

• 51:36Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 51:36Andy Greenwald?

  The classier version of the classic slinky.

• 51:40Chris Ryan?

  And what does Tesco sell?

• 51:41Andy Greenwald?

  Slinky.

• 51:42Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 51:42Andy Greenwald?

  So, Jackson then takes the slinky cake and a bottle of whiskey and almost dies smoking a cigarette. He doesn't clearly know about zins yet.

• 51:50Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 51:50Andy Greenwald?

  That might be season six. And then, after polishing off the cake, I believe, switches to garlic noodles and shrimp chips before exiting the office. It is a legendary run by my guy. It's firing on all cylinders in the... Like, if anybody who listens to the show wants to write for television, in ongoing television, I would just watch this episode as a primer on the possibilities of ongoing series and what you can do. Because it's so deeply rooted in character in the way that like the best sitcoms are, where everyone knows the role they play, and in the same way that like a classical music composer might know which section of the orchestra to use and how to have them interact, the scene of the going away party, everyone is playing their role, and like the ball

• 52:35Andy Greenwald?

  movement is elite. And like, and then the, and then the subtle gradations that you get only in the fifth season of a show, where Shirley is like, correct that something has happened to Roddy, and everyone's reaction to it is both A, in keeping with who they are, B, has ulterior motives, as Jackson says that he does.

• 52:52Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 52:53Andy Greenwald?

  But C, you also see where River is in his journey towards being more like his grandfather, more like his father, or more like Jackson.

• 53:00Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 53:01Andy Greenwald?

  And that he's pretty dismissive of it, too.

• 53:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:04Andy Greenwald?

  It's just a masterclass on, on how to manage a large ensemble.

• 53:09Chris Ryan?

  They also do a really good job of, in this season, I will say, like, finding new pairings. And mixing it up. And that's my favorite thing when you have a long-running show like this, is like shuffling the deck a little bit and being like, "What if these two hung out for a while, and what if these two had to do something?"

• 53:22Andy Greenwald?

  What do they have to say to each other?

• 53:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly. So...

• 53:24Andy Greenwald?

  Luis's face when River plants one on her?

• 53:26Chris Ryan?

  Great.

• 53:26Andy Greenwald?

  Great stuff.

• 53:28Chris Ryan?

  Just looking, looking over the tens.

• 53:29Andy Greenwald?

  Would you like to comment on that? Do you ever like, like, just politically where you'd like this relationship to go?

• 53:34Chris Ryan?

  Will they or won't they? Who can say?

• 53:37Andy Greenwald?

  Because you know what's good? I'm just gonna throw a little curveball to you before we go to our interview that we've been teasing now for 40-plus minutes. But like, but Zorin went back to the New York Times editorial board and they were trying to gotcha him. And he was like, nope. They were like, would you apologize to the NYPD? And he said, yes. And then they were like, oh, what subway seat would you like to sit in, sir?

• 53:58Chris Ryan?

  Do you have any takes?

• 53:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it's kind of amazing. If you just, this, this is my, that's my platform. I just speak my truth.

• 54:04Chris Ryan?

  Uh, let's get into that Lowdown interview. So this was, uh, recorded on Monday night. Uh, and I was, myself and Ethan Hawke and Sterling Harjo. It was really cool. A bunch of the cast of the Lowdown was in the audience. So it was really cool to see them interacting with Ethan and Sterling while they were on stage. They told some great stories and it was really awesome. I, I think I understood these guys like working together, but these guys are like, like creative brothers. And it's really cool to see someone of a different generation like Ethan Hawke just be like, now you are my guy. Like, let's, let's make stuff together and.

• 54:41Andy Greenwald?

  It's one thing Ethan Hawke is notorious for. He doesn't like making stuff.

• 54:44Chris Ryan?

  He doesn't. Um, it was a really cool chat. Thanks to everybody who came out and we will be back on Monday with another one of these where we have, uh, a panel talk, but this time with the cast and creators behind, uh, behind Task.

• 54:58Andy Greenwald?

  Kaya, will you be there?

• 54:59Speaker 07

  I will.

• 55:00Chris Ryan?

  East, east side, Kaya.

• 55:02Speaker 07

  That's right.

• 55:02Andy Greenwald?

  That's wild. Wow. We didn't see the culture we've got here.

• 55:05Speaker 07

  Venturing over to Eagle Rock on a Sunday.

• 55:08Chris Ryan?

  Traffic will be fine. Uh.

• 55:10Andy Greenwald?

  It's true, on a Sunday.

• 55:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, uh, Greenwald, great to see you. See you on Monday. My name is Chris Ryan. You are here for a special live taping of The Watch. Minus Andy Greenwald. He apologizes, uh, but I do have some special guests to introduce. So without further ado, let me bring out the creator and star of The Lowdown, Sterling Harjo and Ethan Hawke.

• 55:48Speaker 11

  Y'all are loud. I like that.

• 55:51Chris Ryan?

  Guys, thank you so much for doing this with me. I'm so glad everybody just got to watch the first episode. I talked about it a little bit earlier today when I was recording an episode of the pod with Andy and we were marveling at the fact that a lot of the shows seemed to be like almost pulled from our minds and like tapped into just so many of the things that we are interested in. I think you can really feel that this is something that you guys actually wanted to see on screen. So I wanted to know if we could just go through, take me through Genesis, take me through how this project came together.

• 56:26Speaker 11

  Yeah, I mean, it's funny because Ethan and I had met before Reservation Dogs. We started writing a project together and we just kind of became friends and like good friends and we'd share music together and we'd talk, we'd talk literature and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, and then he was in Res Dogs. And I think Ethan thought he was gonna be like, say I'll be a cameo or something, you know? I thought it was gonna be a cashier attendant or something. But, you know, as soon as Ethan Hawke said he's gonna be in the show, I was like, well, let me go and write you like the biggest role of one episode, you know? And so he became a Laura Dannon's dad and came down, we filmed, it was a great time. And that was kind of like, you know, we knew, I knew after that I wanted to work on something,

• 57:11Speaker 11

  like whether it's a film or whatever, like we needed to do something because we just gelled. And then, you know, I was kind of like thinking about what to do after Res Dogs. And there's this old script that I had had. It was actually a feature to begin with. And it was just like the first 20 pages. And I'd written the first 20 pages like 15 times. And a friend of mine inspired the character Lee. His name was Lee Roy Chapman. He's a journalist that I worked with at this place called This Land Press. I literally rode around with him in a white van. And he told stories about undercover, sort of underground stories of Tulsa, and we made this video called Tulsa Public Secrets.

• 57:54Speaker 11

  He passed away and I just was inspired to write this character. And it wasn't meant to be like a bio, but like a inspired by sort of the spirit of him. Cause he was also like, he was a journalist and he was sort of a thorn in the side to the establishment, you know, and um, he had a lot to do with like, kind of helping the Tulsa race massacre like that come out, which had been covered up in Tulsa, not talked about. And so, you know, through the work of this thing, we did a lot of work about truth. And anyway, so I started thinking about what would I do next after Reservation Dogs? And I was like, I'll turn this story into a pilot. I rewrote it, wrote it as a pilot, sent it to him under the guise that I wanted notes. And you could tell the rest of that.

• 58:35Speaker 05

  Well, it was, it was a really old school trick is what it was. He literally said, he, cause we had been writing together, you know, before Res Dogs started. So it kind of made sense. He's like, hey, I was thinking about submitting the scripts. Is this ready to go out? What do you make out of this? You got any notes? Does it work? And I was like, sure, sure. So I opened it up, I'm starting and I read about this character owns a bookstore. I'm like, this is me. Like, why is he not offering me this?

• 59:05Speaker 11

  Oh, I forgot to mention, I did sort of like, like when I was writing this character and rewriting some of what I already had, I did a sort of Ethan Hawke pass, cause I'd written for him already and knew him at this point.

• 59:16Speaker 05

  And I literally text him like, script's fine, but I should be in this. And Sterling just showed back, yeah, I can fix that.

• 59:26Chris Ryan?

  It's like, tell me a little bit about the specific nature of your collaboration. Cause you mentioned like that looking possibly trolling him for, for notes. But like, as the show starts to come together and as you start to map it out, Ethan, were you working with the writers? Was it more of a kind of, I'm on set kind of as a creative figurehead for the show? How did that work?

• 59:47Speaker 05

  It's a little mysterious. I really trust Sterling and this is Sterling's dream. This is his city. This is inspired by people and a world that, that he knows extremely intimately. I felt immediately when I read this first 60 pages, that I understood this guy. I, I, on some, I never thought twice about it. I wanted to play that character really badly and. And so we have a great, it almost feels like being in a band together. Where we would talk about ideas, we would talk about fatherhood, we would talk about what journalism

• 1:00:30Speaker 05

  means, we'd talk about Hunter S. Thompson, we'd geek out about different Jim Thompson, different things that we thought the show should feel like. And I really trusted him to lead. Once the show gets greenlit, you've got a couple of months to write a novel. And he doesn't need to be checking in with me constantly or having too many cooks in the kitchen. But I also felt that he really trusted me so that I would read drafts and be like, hey, wouldn't it be cool if I did this? And you'd be like, yeah, that'd be cool. Or that wouldn't be cool. And we found a vocabulary that was Lee together. And it was extremely rewarding and interesting to go.

• 1:01:14Speaker 05

  I had an incredible supporting cast every day that I would wake up. They're all sitting on that row right there. Raise your hand. Stand up. Stand up real quick. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, I had these amazing people that would give me energy. And it was, I think, part of my, we're like a troupe. We were a traveling troupe trying to make this dream come true. And I never felt like Sterling didn't want to hear my ideas, never. And I knew I was safe. He's very fun to work with.

• 1:01:57Speaker 05

  It's hard to say it with you sitting right here. It's okay. It's a little, he was asking me to jump off the high dive. And he was asking everybody to jump off the high dive. And he wasn't sure how we were gonna land, but he knew we were going to. By hook or by crook, we wouldn't finish until we did. And if I ever thought something was wrong, or some other cast member, Sterling's the first person to say, what do you mean? Why do you think it's wrong? All right, let's do, what do you think? What would be funny? And we also really like each other, so if he's not laughing, I'm not happy. And so it was a fun set to go to because my job was... Here's the other, there's a negative way of putting it. He gets bored so easily.

• 1:02:41Speaker 05

  And so you, if it's, if it's boring, I could look, I'd see him behind the monitor going, okay, this scene sucks. And he'd be like, yeah, do something else, you know?

• 1:02:50Speaker 11

  And he's, it's strange. It's like we're, you know, we were meant to work together. And, you know, we have such similar kind of like styles as far as blocking a scene goes. And we're also not precious. Like, once I write it, once it's down, it's like, let's, let's do whatever we can do to make this better.

• 1:03:13Chris Ryan?

  Can I actually just ask you a follow up for that? Like, you, you just casually mentioned some similar styles of blocking a scene. Can you tell me what that means? Because there is a energy that is present in this episode and consecutive, you know, following episodes where I love how Lee is like always moving through his space.

• 1:03:33Speaker 05

  Can I go?

• 1:03:34Speaker 11

  A lot of times.

• 1:03:35Chris Ryan?

  You can go whenever you want, by the way. Yeah.

• 1:03:38Speaker 05

  I'd be driving to set and we're, it's, the first thing that comes to mind, there's a million things that come to mind, but I know that it's the scene where I have to like pitch my idea for the story to my editor, the, at the, the Heartland Press in the, in the show. And, and I know what, I know that we're under time pressure and I know that the DP is gonna want me to sit there and the other person to sit there and we can get this scene really fast. So I'll sit there and I'm like, but you know what? You can't, you can't sit down, can't sit down, can't sit. If I do sit down, I'm getting right back up and that's gonna make it such a pain in the ass to shoot. And I've got a history of making movies. I know what a problem that is as a director, if an actor has an idea like that.

• 1:04:23Speaker 05

  Like, I have to pitch this to Sterling the right way. And instead of doing it the right way, I come in and go, I can't sit down. And, and, and Sterling's like, you can't sit down, you know? And then everybody else just has to roll with it.

• 1:04:35Speaker 11

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was interesting, like, you know, cause I don't, I don't know, like, we, we would come on set, he would say, yeah, I just don't feel like, I'm not gonna know, you know? Like, we gotta like, and we wouldn't even kind of finish. The sentences and then it would be like, well, just see what happens. We would do that a lot. Let's see what happens, you know, and we start walking around and start saying the scene. Usually we sit out, start trying to read the lines and then it's like, oh, let's just get out. Well, what if you walked over here? And it was, it's like, it was kind of like jazz in a way, you know, we're improvising as we go. But it always meant something. It's not like, I think that a lot of times people will look at a scene and it's like, okay, there's two people talking. Let's just have them talk. It's gonna be brilliant. We're gonna shoot it. It's gonna be brilliant.

• 1:05:17Speaker 11

  And it's not brilliant. Like, like, like, because you can also take those two characters sometimes. And I'm not saying I don't do that, but like, like, you could take those two characters sometimes and get to some sort of other truth about the scene with the way that they move within the scene.

• 1:05:32Speaker 05

  And you have a lot of experience now and you know what smells like real life and what doesn't. I'll do, I've never had this happen to me in my life. I'm doing a scene and I, in the back of my mind, know that I know the difference between when Sterling is really turned on and when he's like thinking about what's not working.

• 1:05:53Speaker 11

  Sure.

• 1:05:53Speaker 05

  You know, and I'm

• 1:05:55Speaker 11

  Gets real obvious.

• 1:05:56Speaker 05

  Yeah. But so we're at the scene, the cameras are rolling and all of a sudden my director walks in to the shot. This is boring. What is it? It's almost like he's trying to smell what's fake, you know? He's just standing there going, maybe go over there, maybe. What do you think? And then all of a sudden I'm like, okay, I got it. I'm free. I'm free. I was feeling trapped too. And, and once that happens and it, it's so exciting. One time we were in the middle of doing a scene and it wasn't in this episode, but still in the idea, we just start shooting the scene. It sounds like, what if he's wearing the same hat you are and it's bugging you? It's getting on your nerves. And it takes like a normal scene. It totally screws it up because right, we started doing the

• 1:06:41Speaker 05

  scene halfway through the thing. It's like, are you wearing my hat? He's like, well, it's not your hat. It's a hat. No, hats are my thing. And it's so weird and it doesn't make any sense, but it reminds me of like shit that happens with my friends. And so all of a sudden the scene smells real. Do you know?

• 1:06:54Speaker 11

  And like, if I, if I may, Michael, steal the story that you told the other day. I'm gonna do it. New nodding. Yeah. Michael Hitchcock, everybody.

• 1:07:06Speaker 11

  I went up to him before a take of whenever they're in the estate cell and I said, slap Lee on the ass when you get up there. And like, it's like that stuff that I feel like, you know, it's within the character, it's within the story. And Michael said that, you know, that told him everything that he needed to know about their relationship.

• 1:07:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:25Speaker 11

  And I think it does to an audience too, right? It's like, oh, they have history. They know each other. They flirt with each other. They mess with each other. They bug each other, you know, whatever. There's all this stuff that's kind of cooked into it.

• 1:07:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:36Speaker 11

  That kind of tells your history. And then, and similarly with, with Killer Mike, who is amazing.

• 1:07:46Speaker 11

  I mean, like, I love the familiarity that they have with each other. And they are just sitting across from each other. But it's like, you know, I remember Ethan going, maybe I should just like, try to sit in his, like, maybe I should sit here. And I was like, well, what if you sit there and then he kicks you out of it?

• 1:08:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:01Speaker 11

  You know, it's like, it's crazy.

• 1:08:03Speaker 05

  Reason for it, but it's just, right, get out of my barber chair. And then all of a sudden, they know each other. And you're, you're always hunting for those weird little behaviors that unlock character.

• 1:08:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, we were just talking about all the presidents met upstairs. The scene where he's like, is there anywhere you don't smoke? You know, and it's like, has nothing to do with Nixon, but you're like, oh, I totally understand the relationship.

• 1:08:23Speaker 05

  That movie's a great example that they play a lot of that movie in two shots and wide shots. And it's really great because you can see Hoffman and Redford's interaction.

• 1:08:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:34Speaker 05

  So you actually watch them working together and it's, you don't feel manipulated. And the film has a great sense of realism that's really heightened. And you feel like you're in the room with them because A, they're good and their behavior is good, but that the director was willing to say, actually, you know what's interesting about the scene is the way they're sitting, you know, that that's communicating something. And a lot of people just, they, they come in, they have a shot list in their head. And anytime an actor does anything weird, it's, it's in the director's way as opposed to how I view, which is trying to help.

• 1:09:07Chris Ryan?

  I wanted to ask you about how you go about creating with that, for lack of a better term, a vibe for a show. How much of what we just saw is, this is in my head and I'm trying to get it out through music, through cinematography, through how I block a scene and how I get performances out of actors versus? You show up in Tulsa, you turn the cameras on, you have certain performances and it's like lively and you find it on the day or you find it over the course of production.

• 1:09:33Speaker 11

  Yeah, I think there's some of that is like you show up in Tulsa with the camera turned on, even though I don't show up in Tulsa, I live there, but like it is in my head is this vibe. I don't know, like I have influences, you know, I've talked about the long goodbye, you know, we were watching, we talked a lot about the long goodbye and killing a Chinese bookie and like,

• 1:09:54Speaker 11

  you know, drowning pool, all these, all these, you know, the big Lebowski and all of these things. I don't know. It's what I see in my head. Let's say that. But I also got really good. I'm really grateful for, I think of it as like Altman or like Sydney O'Malley or someone like, when Altman was doing a lot of TV directing, you know, you're able to make mistakes and learn kind of what you want and you, and you learn kind of what you like. I did a lot of short documentaries.

• 1:10:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:19Speaker 11

  Some of it for the This Land Press that Heartland Press is, is based on, but I made a lot of short documentaries. And the thing about short document, making documentaries is you walk into a space, you have to right off the bat know where the camera goes, how to edit it, how to tell the story you're trying to tell and how to get a performance out of someone. And that was just like over and over this repetition. It trained me to be able to, I think, keep things alive and kind of moving and not feel too bored. But I mean, I guess, I don't even know if I answered the question, but it is a vibe that I want to create. Like I feel it, you know, but it is a feeling. It's hard to kind of explain it, I guess.

• 1:10:58Speaker 05

  The show you guys just watched is exactly what he described to me when we were first talking about what it would, and it happened slowly, shot by shot. It gets unveiled. I remember when I was younger and I was, I was doing Dead Poets Society with Peter Weir. I had the distinct feeling that he had seen the movie before, like 30 years ago.

• 1:11:26Speaker 05

  And he was remembering the movie. So it's kind of like you'd be blocking a scene. And when he'd be like, he'd just be looking, it's like something's like, it's not the way I remember it. You know, and then you'd go over and sit there or do something weird with your hair and be like, oh, that's it. That's in the movie. Like as if like he was, do you know what I mean?

• 1:11:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:45Speaker 11

  It's very strange to me because that is how it happens. And I think it's just, I am playing it in my head and I think about it for so long. Even before I write anything down, I'm thinking about what I want to write down. And I think about it for so long. And I write to music and I, and I do have the vibe in my head. And the, the beautiful thing about this, and this wasn't, you know, for filmmakers out there, like it wasn't like that for me in the first half of my career. It wasn't until Reservation Dogs that I got good enough, like confidence met with talent, I think. And I got good enough to see it in my head and then watch it come alive in front of me. And the beautiful thing about when it started happening with Reservation Dogs, and especially this is it was better than what, it was what I had in my head, but it was better.

• 1:12:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:31Speaker 11

  Yeah. But it wasn't always like that.

• 1:12:33Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk Tulsa, which is arguably your co-star in this, in the show. I've been there once last year and it was unlike any place else. And I think that this show does this incredible job of evoking that. Even did you spend much time there other than shooting Reservation Dogs before making?

• 1:12:50Speaker 05

  No, I'd just driven through Tulsa my whole life until, until Res Dogs. And when I got to that set and I felt it immediately. I felt so comfortable, the, the energy that, oh, you know, the production designer, the sound engineer, the first AD, the whole team are, they trust each other and they believe in each other. And they have a great, strange combination of.

• 1:13:19Speaker 05

  Immense gratitude for the privilege of getting to be a professional creative person met with this irreverence of like, I've got this opportunity, fuck it, I'm doing something with it. Yeah. You know, I'm not, and so it had a rebellious spirit and, and the humility of gratitude. And it was really pleasant to be on. And the way.

• 1:13:42Speaker 11

  Eric Edelston almost bought a house there. This guy was just like, he won't quit talking about it.

• 1:13:47Speaker 05

  It's, it had a, it wasn't just Sterling, it was the company of players and of people that really cared about making something to make it, not about what was going to happen later, or what it was going to get them. It's like, what are we doing today? Yeah. How could today be cool? And that's an energy that really, really turns me on and is pervasive in Tulsa. The history of Tulsa, the pain of Tulsa, the love of Tulsa is, it's right on the surface. And, you know, we, we, we've seen a lot of noirs in, you know, New York and LA and Chicago and Boston and New Orleans. And this is a really unique part of America that is actually extremely interesting to be at right now. Yeah.

• 1:14:32Speaker 05

  To talk about all the crimes of America are on the surface in, in Oklahoma. They're right there and you can see them in the people and the places, in the architecture. It's, it's alive and it's present. And so it's a perfect place for a noir.

• 1:14:50Speaker 11

  Yeah, it's also like, I don't know, I think there's something, and everyone can have this, there's this, especially, I'm talking about the film side of things, because there's such a lot, you know, it's growing, the film industry there, but it's like, it's been so few and far between, and we're all, all independent filmmakers. So when we got these opportunities, Res Dogs and, you know, something like Killers of the Flower Moon comes and shoots there, it's like, everyone is just so excited to be working on something. And I just think like, and, and that's not just Tolsons, you know, people from LA, crew from LA or, or crew from Louisiana or Atlanta would come and work as well with us. And, you know, like, they would just be crushed if they had to leave because they just felt something there.

• 1:15:34Speaker 11

  And it was that mix of what Ethan's talking about and also like. Just being so happy to be doing this. I mean, this is what we're doing. You know, we're trying to tell stories.

• 1:15:43Speaker 05

  I'll give you an example. We had the wrap party when we finally wrapped the show and it wasn't anywhere. It just was right where we finished shooting. A party erupted. We were on a street in Tulsa and, you know, somebody brought some beers, somebody brought-

• 1:15:59Speaker 11

  All of the trucks just lowered their, whatever that thing is.

• 1:16:03Speaker 05

  Yeah. And everybody just starts sitting on it and music was playing. Somebody lights a fire and everybody starts congregating. And I hung out there for a couple of hours. It's like, all right, this is, this is fun. I've never seen this happen, but I've got to go pack because I'm flying tomorrow. So I left for a couple of hours and I packed up the house and fed the dogs. And I was like, hmm. It's like now 12:30. I'm like, what if they're still there? So I get in the car and I drive over. Everybody's still partying. There's more people there. I'm like, all right, park the car and sit down for another couple of hours. And that, that doesn't happen.

• 1:16:35Chris Ryan?

  I wanted to ask you about the strip that Lee's bookstore is on because it is kind of a slice of heaven on earth. You've got Touch of Vinyl, the record store. You've got-

• 1:16:47Speaker 11

  Josh Fadum, Josh Fadum store, everybody.

• 1:16:50Chris Ryan?

  You've got the law offices, Megan Blair's Law Offices. And then you've got-

• 1:16:55Speaker 11

  Sweet Emily's.

• 1:16:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Sweet Emily's, which is a diner out of my dreams. And then-

• 1:16:59Speaker 05

  And Houdal.

• 1:17:00Chris Ryan?

  Houdal. And the moment Ethan walks into Houdal before he gets jumped and he's like, I'm home. And it's like, you've, I think everybody here has probably had that feeling walking into a used bookstore. You're like, I'm going to spend three hours here. This is awesome. Tell me about making this, this little world inside of Tulsa. Cause you had to construct that, right?

• 1:17:18Speaker 11

  Yeah. I mean, like, what's interesting is that block's really cool. I mean, my first feature film that I ever made, Four Sheets to the Wind, I shot there. So like, we just kind of like, in that same building. And I made a diner and I made a bar and the main character lived upstairs where Lee lives. And it just so happened that this building was free again and we rented it. And this old restaurant diner thing, nothing ever survives on that corner. And so we just like, I would love to open that diner, you know, like keep it. But like, we just, it was basically having a little backlot on Sixth Street in Tulsa and able to put, and we rented it all and we put all of the businesses right there.

• 1:17:59Speaker 11

  And it was just sort of, you know, because at first it was like, you know, at first he actually went to the cover show, it was like the Waffle House. Then he would come back to the bookstore. Nothing was closed, but it was like, what if they're all kind of close together? And then it just represents Tulsa as a street, a specific part of Tulsa, you know? And it just worked out beautifully, you know? And it's like, and you know, Cody Lightning, who plays Waylon, who's the wild guy with the cowboy hat, is like, you know, I kill people, Lee.

• 1:18:30Speaker 11

  Funny enough, he was the lead actor at 19 years old and four sheets to the wind in that block. So he got to come back and.

• 1:18:40Chris Ryan?

  You got to go come back and do security. Let's talk a little bit about the Lee that inspired this character and also some of the themes of the show itself. You know, I got a chance to watch, maybe it's the one that you made. I was like watching the YouTube about the Tulsa, Tulsa riot like in earlier today. And I was like, oh, I had no idea.

• 1:19:00Speaker 11

  Was it with Leroy?

• 1:19:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:01Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 1:19:02Chris Ryan?

  And I was like, yeah, I had no idea, like whether or not Ethan, you had drawn, was there a line where you're like, I'm going to be inspired by this character, but there are going to be certain flourishes that I bring?

• 1:19:14Speaker 05

  I should say that what mattered to me is, you know, I stolen sent the script. I loved it. So let's do this. I've never done it. I've never accepted a part. He certainly says a thousand times because I said it to him all the time. Like, I've never done this where I took a part where I haven't read it. That's my whole teaching, my whole understanding of performance is to understand the theme and metaphor of a piece so that my performance isn't about entertaining people. It's in service of a story. That's where, where you can get lost and lose yourself. And that's what feels really good to me. And I was like, I don't know exactly how to do this. And I wanted to understand what the lowdown was going to be about.

• 1:19:58Speaker 05

  What, what is it about besides making people be amused, you know, like? And it stolen came over to my house and showed me all these videos that he made.

• 1:20:08Speaker 11

  Kind of way later too. It was after we'd already, the script was already.

• 1:20:12Speaker 05

  It was much later. We knew we were really doing it. And you came over to the house and we watched a bunch of those and he sent a bunch of them to me. And what mattered to me is that the show is coming from a real place. The engine is.

• 1:20:27Speaker 05

  That this person has something to communicate. And what Leroy Chapman was obvious was a really special person and obviously somebody to be admired and somebody I was really interested in. But he also represented something to Sterling that really interested me. When I was growing up and like at first becoming an adult in the arts, you meet people who are extremely idealistic and their idealism and their passion is blistering and amazing and inspiring and it creates blind spots. They don't see the glasses of wine, their tail is breaking over, you know, because they're so hell bent to do this thing to them is noble.

• 1:21:11Speaker 05

  And that part of the character and that part of people that I do, it's a story I really love to tell of people who are willing to put themselves online for something they believe in and for something that is in service to others, that they see themselves as interconnected with their community and that my well-being is connected to your well-being. And the truth of being a journalist is very similar to the spiritual truth of wanting to be a performer, of to drive it, to give people something true to look at so you can see your own life, reflect on it, reflect on your culture, get outside of your own point of view.

• 1:21:55Speaker 05

  All these things are the mission of my life. And so I could see that in Lee and I could also, I mean, we have friends, I have friends who've died because they can't see those blind spots, you know, that their cause is noble, but the internal damage that's created or the damage to their family and damage to other things because they're so blindly in pursuit of what they love. And that contradiction of it being both noble and destructive seemed real to me. And these His Sterling's work with Leroy Chapman was inspirational to like, I knew that was the engine of the show. Does that make sense?

• 1:22:40Speaker 11

  Yeah, and it's also, I think, you know, the thing that he and I bond over and the character is like, it's scary to know that you're passionate about doing these things. And it's like, to what end? You know, like, we're sitting here and we did something that we can be very proud of. But there's also versions of us that did something and destroyed their lives or whatever, you know, they took some wrong turns or whatever.

• 1:23:07Speaker 05

  Hurt their family.

• 1:23:08Speaker 11

  Yeah, hurt their family, whatever. And he and I talked a lot about the father daughter relationship in that way, because at the time, when I was, when my daughter, my daughter was that age, and it was a lot of like, being an independent filmmaker, should I keep doing this? We were in, you know, it was hard to make money. I didn't know if I was ever going to make money. And I was very inspired by that. He's a father of two daughters as well. And, you know, as far as like Leroy too, it was like, it was kind of this, it was this idea, though, of, A, I didn't want him to feel, like, it wasn't a biopic, because I didn't want him to feel like he had to do one thing, you know, I wanted him to be free in that. And so that's why it was just kind of a jumping

• 1:23:48Speaker 11

  off point. But yes, like, it was to embody these people that kind of inspire us and sometimes, you know, get too close to the flames.

• 1:23:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I was, I found him to be an incredibly entertaining inheritor of the legacy of like, the private investigator over the course of, you know, probably all the books and movies that we love. And there are some guys who are just like, really laconic, and they'll do something a little bit just to watch what happens. And then there are the guys who are shambolic, and they kind of just happen into it. But Lee is like, I'm fucking jumping through the glass window here. And we'll see who reacts to what here. But you can tell, the Macon Blair character is like, he's a loon, but he's really entertaining. You know, the Mike's character obviously has this, everybody has this affection for him, but they kind of have to stay a little bit out of the blast radius, right?

• 1:24:40Speaker 11

  Yeah, it's scary to get me that close to someone like that, right? Like, you have to protect yourself too. But you care about him, but you also know, I mean, like, even, you know, Sienna East, who plays Dietra right over here, she's like, look, like, you're. She's like, you know, it affects me too. Like this is your place. This is my place of work as well. Cause I, one of my favorite lines is when he's like, yeah, people get beat up all the time. People always get beat up. You know, it's like, do they?

• 1:25:08Speaker 11

  I don't know if that's true. And you know, and, and Deidre's like, yeah, well you gotta like, this is our place of business. It also affects me, you know? And I think that that's kind of everyone's relationship with him. The one that loves him the most, I think, being his daughter, you know? And that's kind of the heart of the story. And that's the scariest relationship because it's like, that's the thing that you gotta protect.

• 1:25:30Speaker 05

  I'm excited for you guys to get to see the rest of the show because everything Sterling's talking about is manifest in the show.

• 1:25:37Chris Ryan?

  Even just in this episode, an incredibly, you're like a five tool player in this one because you've got to do humor, you gotta be vulnerable, you gotta get your ass beat a couple of times. And you are like the expository fulcrum for the show. Like you are the one who's like, and then all of this has happened and all of this might happen because of that. And it's like.

• 1:25:58Speaker 11

  Ethan's the best at saying, ah, we gotta get all this information out. Here, let me, let me just like, let me, let me just see how I can say it, you know? And like, just cooks it down to like really quick in a couple of lines and bam, the exposition is out the door. You know, it's great.

• 1:26:12Chris Ryan?

  But did you find that the like, the nature of the things that were being asked of you almost fueled the desperation of the performance or the character itself kind of?

• 1:26:21Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, there's a rebellious spirit to Sterling. There's a rebellious spirit to try to make a show like this and put it out into the homes of America and say, just to imagine that anyone would care, you know? And, and we had a lot of pressure on us and that and not enough time. And you can use that as permission to fail or you can use it as wood in the stove.

• 1:26:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:50Speaker 05

  You know? And so. I enjoy that. I felt like we were making an epic, you know, eight hour indie movie. And we were trying to shoot it well, trying to shoot it smart. And I know that all that has to do with preparation in your mind.

• 1:27:07Speaker 11

  And sometimes it's like, all those movies that we love, you know, like we're in LA right now. I'm sure all of you are like movie lovers. It's like, all those movies that we love. Well, somebody made them, you know, somebody blocked those scenes. Somebody wrote those words. They weren't superhuman. They were humans, just like us. But they were like, oh, I'm gonna say something. And they made the right amount of things and put it in a stew. And they wouldn't give up from making something interesting and seeing what was in their head, making it happen, you know? And that's such an attainable thing. And we just did it. I mean, we just fought for it day after day.

• 1:27:47Speaker 05

  I get so inspired, like, I watched, before we started, I watched The Long Goodbye again. If you watch the opening of that movie, it's amazing. There's this whole sequence about him getting cat food and this thirty, thirty minutes of a cat. You know, and this, and he-

• 1:27:59Speaker 11

  Best cat actor ever.

• 1:28:01Speaker 05

  When it first starts, he's sitting there in bed and you see all these marks on the wall above him. And you're like, what are those marks? And then he lights his first cigarette and you're like, oh, this, you know, the filmmaker in me goes, all right, who had that idea? That's a great, I mean, it's just a tiny detail. So easy to do the scene without that detail.

• 1:28:21Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 1:28:21Speaker 05

  And yet that detail makes the whole thing come alive. And the way he talks to himself and mumbles and you can't, you can just hear the studio executives saying, I can't understand what he's saying. And like, it's okay. Neither can I. It's cool. But it's, the, the pull to mediocrity is so strong. There's so much fear in whenever anybody's making art. That's not gonna work. That's not gonna work. And you do have to consider it all. You do have to think about it all. And you also have to sometimes just go, I think it's cool.

• 1:28:54Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 1:28:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And what do we remember that movie for? The Cats?

• 1:28:58Speaker 05

  They can't.

• 1:28:58Speaker 11

  Yeah. And I mean, like hats off to FX for giving us

• 1:29:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's true. A lot of them are here tonight. And I feel so blessed to have my first experience in television be with them, because these people are all really serious about putting substantive, meaningful art into the world and making it a commercial enterprise. You know, meaning like, what if we could do something really cool and have it work? And they're dedicated to it and they've been supporting us. And the only reason we were able to do that is because of the positivity that you built with Reservation Dogs. And they've done with a lot of shows besides the shows we're involved with.

• 1:29:39Chris Ryan?

  I wanted to know, what was the thing that surprised you most about making a mystery? To the extent that you would define this as one, but like, man, I get pretty cocky about it because I watch a lot of them and I read a lot of them. I'm like, well, you know, they've kind of tipped their hand here. Is there, was there a little bit of like, oh, now I'm in, now I'm the guy deciding like, who done it?

• 1:29:59Speaker 11

  Yeah, it's so difficult. Hardest things ever. Like, I can write people hanging out all day, you know? Like, I could do that in my sleep. And dialogue and character, like, I'm on top of it. Like, I got you. Throw a bit of mystery in there and a conspiracy plot.

• 1:30:19Speaker 05

  Just let's face it, it's four letters that are hard for you. P L O T.

• 1:30:27Speaker 11

  Most definitely. But it was such a good challenge. And I mean, like with Reservation Dogs, what Reservation Dogs taught me, because we would play, as you, we talked about, like, we would play with genre in different episodes, you know? And what I fell in love with was how much I could say in the episodes that I played, that I was sort of making a genre piece. And like, all of a sudden, I realized like, oh, you can actually say more with genre than you can just out there, you know, free balling or whatever. You know, like, you can say more within the parameters that you set up for yourself. And that's exciting to me. That's like super exciting. So that was exciting.

• 1:31:08Speaker 11

  But then, you know, once you're in the mystery of it all, I mean, here's the thing I have. I treat everything the same, which is like, whether it's blocking, whether it's like watching a performance, whether it's writing a scene, whether it's writing dialogue, I always, it goes through like my brain filter, which is have I seen this before? I don't want to ever see, I don't want to ever do something I haven't seen before. Or if it's, I've seen it before, I want it to be very different. And how do I change it? How do I put life into it? How do I bring something new to it? And I went after the, the plot and the crime the same way. And, and also, you know, hired Walter Mosley and other really great crime writers to help me. So, you know, that was also a part of it.

• 1:31:51Chris Ryan?

  Uh, one of my favorite things about this episode that you guys got to see is just the tapestry of stuff that the viewer gets introduced to Jim Thompson, Bob Wills, the, you know, seventies music, the seventies film font of the credit sequence. And I thought maybe as a last question, I'd ask you guys, what's one thing that you discovered? Writer, musician, something over the course of maybe making this show together or hanging out that you wouldn't have, didn't know about before, but you got turned on to? Cause I think a lot of people are going to get turned on to some really cool stuff by watching this.

• 1:32:27Speaker 05

  I'll, I'll start. Um, thank God. Help me with, um, there's, is she, well, she's not in this episode, but the wonderful actor who plays Pearl.

• 1:32:38Speaker 11

  Oh, Ken Pomeroy, a friend of mine.

• 1:32:39Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, okay. Well, one of the things about hanging out with Sterling that's so wonderful, which strangely, a lot of the best artists I've worked with, the best artists I've worked with have a love of other artists, painters, musicians, filmmakers, writers. And you're always telling everybody to go check this out and go check this out. And, um, music is a particular passion of yours. And you cast this young woman who I had never met before, who's just a brilliant singer, songwriter, and she can act. And it ended up making what could have been a two dimensional character, a really three dimensional presence in, um, in the show. And I could say the same thing about Jacob Tovar.

• 1:33:20Speaker 11

  Yeah.

• 1:33:21Speaker 05

  And so.

• 1:33:23Speaker 11

  Basically, I take the whole crew and everybody, we go listen to my friends play music like every week while we're shooting. It's pretty beautiful.

• 1:33:29Speaker 05

  And then you put everybody in the show.

• 1:33:30Speaker 11

  Yeah, then everyone's an actor in the show.

• 1:33:32Chris Ryan?

  That's not a bad life, man. Thank you guys so much for doing this and thank you so much for making such a great show.

• 1:33:38Speaker 11

  Thank you so much.

• 1:33:39Chris Ryan?

  Thank you to everybody coming out. Thanks, everybody at Brain Dead.

• 1:33:43Chris Ryan?

  Take care.

• 1:33:54Speaker 12

  What's the secret to being a great host this season? Keeping things deliciously simple, like mixing Simply Cranberry into a festive drink as guests arrive, or serving up a warm mug of Simply Apple on a chilly night. That means less time behind the scenes and more time in the moment with everyone. Crafted with real fruit, Simply juices and fruit drinks make any holiday drink effortless, inviting, and completely delicious. Simply. Say yes to simple.