Pod Insights The Watch ‘Beef’ Is Back: Season 2, Episodes 1-5 and ‘Top Chef’ S23E7 About this episode Chris and Andy talk about the official announcement of director Joseph Kosinski’s ‘Miami Vice’ reboot starring Michael B. Jordan and Austin Butler (6:32), and the news that James Mangold is adapting his 1997 film ‘Cop Land’ into a TV series (10:33). Then they discuss the first five episodes of ‘Beef’ Season 2 (16:12). Later, they react to ‘Top Chef’ Season 23, Episode 7 (55:33). Finally, The Watch: After Dark (01:10:13).
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Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald
Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady
Additional Video Supervision: Sarah Reddy
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Transcript 15,692 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 The best part of waking up? A full cup of Folgers coffee and music on full blast.
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0:30 Speaker 01 Chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life. Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine.
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1:35 Speaker 03 I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now.
1:41 Chris 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, and he was a boy from school, it's Andy Greenwald. That was a Hot Chip reference. What's up, brother?
1:56 Andy Greenwald? You're looking good today.
1:57 Chris Ryan? You're looking good today.
1:58 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
1:59 Chris Ryan? You know what? This is actually the two genders, except for one gender, but like, you know, like it's two ways to wear the same, literal same outfit. We're both wearing jeans.
2:08 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
2:09 Chris Ryan? And a denim shirt today. It was unplanned. I don't really know what to do about it. I guess I could take mine off and, and get the gun show going, but...
2:16 Andy Greenwald? We rarely have things in common, so this does really strike me as odd. You are, for those not watching along, um, on the video feeds.
2:24 Chris Ryan? Yes.
2:25 Andy Greenwald? You are also continuing to wear a Phillies hat, which is wild, because I would like to state on the record before we get into our table of contents today, that since you declared that the baseball season is irrelevant until game...
2:35 Chris Ryan? Sixty.
2:36 Andy Greenwald? Sixty, the Phillies have not won a game.
2:38 Chris Ryan? Yes.
2:38 Andy Greenwald? They have been in absolute catastrophic freefall since you announced...
2:42 Chris Ryan? I, I, we have a whole segment to do at the end of Watch After Dark, which comes after Top Chef After Dark.
2:49 Andy Greenwald? Right.
2:49 Chris Ryan? Which will be largely about Philadelphia sports and where I need you to be.
2:54 Andy Greenwald? Okay.
2:54 Chris Ryan? I need you to put a fucking jacket on and join me on the ice. But I will say this.
2:59 Andy Greenwald? Mm-hmm.
2:59 Chris Ryan? Joel Embiid seen practicing.
3:01 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
3:03 Chris Ryan? Mike Vrabel's infidelity, possibly torpedoing the A.J. Brown trade. I think now is the time to strike and have a coup against Bill.
3:10 Andy Greenwald? I was gonna say.
3:11 Chris Ryan? This is when I take over rewatch.
3:13 Andy Greenwald? He's weak. This is actually...
3:14 Chris Ryan? This is him at his weak.
3:16 Andy Greenwald? This is Putin's whole strategy. Do you understand? He knows he has a smaller, less rich country, but he sees the long game. He's like Littlefinger, and what he does is he just chip, chip, chips away, and the next thing you know...
3:27 Chris Ryan? And then when the Sixers lose in five and A.J. still gets traded, he kisses me full on the mouth and goes, "I knew it was you."
3:32 Andy Greenwald? No, he just shows you your new office on the fourth floor.
3:37 Chris Ryan? Wait, is that like, like lockjaw?
3:39 Andy Greenwald? No. Oh, yes. No, I, I just feel like generally with Putin, if you run afoul of him...
3:47 Chris Ryan? Make sure the windows lock.
3:48 Andy Greenwald? And don't touch doorknobs.
3:49 Chris Ryan? Greenwald, great to see you, man. Uh, I haven't said this in a while, but you can email us at [email protected] . Uh, we've been getting some cool emails. I'm gonna collect some for a mailbag coming up soon.
3:58 Andy Greenwald? I think we should get all kinds of questions in this mailbag. I'm tired of being limited to like...
4:01 Chris Ryan? Oh, ask us anything?
4:03 Andy Greenwald? What are the five best prestige TV shows? Come on.
4:05 Chris Ryan? Ask us anything. Mailbag incoming.
4:07 Andy Greenwald? I think, I think it's time to be more free with our takes.
4:10 Chris Ryan? Yeah, so [email protected] if you want to email us anything.
4:14 Andy Greenwald? Consider it our Substack. You know what I mean?
4:16 Chris Ryan? Sure, man. And then Instagram is the watch pod underscore. You can watch us on YouTube at the ringer dash TV. Rob Mahoney put up a really lovely video essay about the pit that our guy Kai Grady worked with him on. So shout out to them, shout out to Prestige TV, who are also covering Beef in increments. They're doing three, three, three, I believe, or three, three, two, or however they're doing it.
4:40 Chris Ryan? We're going to talk about the first five episodes of Beef today.
4:42 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, we are.
4:43 Chris Ryan? Beef season two.
4:43 Andy Greenwald? I can't wait.
4:44 Chris Ryan? I would like to say something in the, in the spirit of accountability.
4:47 Andy Greenwald? Okay.
4:47 Chris Ryan? I believe that I was rather flippant in my like Beef got bad reviews and I don't want to watch it. Shame on me. Shame on me. For one thing for this. It's impossible to really, I don't believe the numerical system people have established, the Metacritic numbers or whatever, to say, this is getting this meta score or whatever. I believe Beef is doing fine with the critics. But you know what? It's doing better than fine with me.
5:15 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
5:16 Chris Ryan? And it just goes to show you, do your own research. If you've learned anything over the last six years.
5:20 Andy Greenwald? You know what I appreciate? You taking a page from your heroine, Lori Chavez DeReemers playbook. And when stories were swirling, you were like, you know what? This is untenable. I have to address these things.
5:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
5:32 Andy Greenwald? And remove myself in the discourse.
5:34 Chris Ryan? I'm stepping down before, before the ethics committee gets to me.
5:37 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, I mean, the other response was you could have sued Rotten Tomatoes.
5:41 Chris Ryan? Yes, that's true.
5:42 Andy Greenwald? For fake news.
5:42 Chris Ryan? But you know what? Like, I, I think, I think there are things to critique about this season of Beef. But I'm excited to talk to you about it. I had a couple of news items for you.
5:51 Andy Greenwald? Okay.
5:51 Chris Ryan? One is a real, like, I don't know if I want to do this to top the show because I needed to be safespace.com to do it. But obviously some Michael Mann Extended Universe stuff in the news this week. First of all, yes, I did see Mayor Mom Donnie quote heat. Look.
6:07 Andy Greenwald? What's your comment at this time?
6:08 Chris Ryan? I couldn't be happier. Like, if that guy ever wants to go get a cup of coffee and stare at each other and say, "I do pods. I do what I do best," you know, like, whatever he wants to do.
6:18 Andy Greenwald? Here's the thing. I want to put this out there. There is a non-zero chance that he is a Rewatchables listener.
6:24 Chris Ryan? Well, there's a non-zero chance also, like, he's available. Like, this guy knows how to reach the people. He did Side Talk, like, he's done Adam Friedland, like, he...
6:33 Andy Greenwald? You think this is his next stop in his media tour?
6:36 Chris Ryan? The forehead is Mom Donnie.
6:38 Andy Greenwald? Oh, for you guys. I thought he was gonna come to our podcast.
6:39 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah. I mean, like, whatever, wherever he wants to...
6:42 Andy Greenwald? With these six secretarial labor burns, he knows where to show up.
6:45 Chris Ryan? He's probably gonna do, do like, a Rob Mahoney video essay on the pit. This is how we fix healthcare.
6:51 Andy Greenwald? I would, I would love that. I think that's very exciting, and I think that we should make this happen, because you're, you know how TMZ just recently announced they are going to DC?
7:00 Chris Ryan? Yes, they are in DC.
7:01 Andy Greenwald? I think this is, this is a good next move for you guys. I think that this is the next world you need to conquer.
7:07 Chris Ryan? Democratic socialism?
7:08 Andy Greenwald? Sure, whatever you want to call it. I'm, I'm just saying, I think that, like, the merging of these worlds, because you, you notice that there are people, like, occasionally pundits online, like a Matt Iglesias or something, will be like, "I would like to be third chair on JMO," you know? Like, I think that this is all possible for you.
7:25 Chris Ryan? So we should just bring in the political pundit class, is what you're saying?
7:29 Andy Greenwald? I think that there is a, there is precedent for, with Rewatchables, when certain, like, celebrities or actors are fans, they have made appearances, or they've talked about it, you know? So I think, why not Senator Chris Murphy? You know what I mean?
7:41 Chris Ryan? Why not? He was, he was here. I think he did Press Box. I mean, these guys are in the mix. Maybe they should do, like, a car wash, where they do, like, Press Box, they do rear tailgate, they can hear Joel's wrestling story, and then they can come on.
7:52 Andy Greenwald? They can show up with a blue Oxford shirt.
7:53 Chris Ryan? And just be like, "Are we sure beef's good? I mean, are we sure?"
7:57 Andy Greenwald? What is their truest form? The sad thing is, we're all the same age now.
8:00 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I know. Seriously.
8:02 Andy Greenwald? So, it's fine.
8:02 Chris Ryan? Um, anyway, in the man universe, I just wanted to say that I, I have clocked the fact that Joseph Kaczynski's, um, much-talked-about Miami Vice adaptation or reboot is going to be called Miami Vice 85.
8:15 Andy Greenwald? Hell, yeah.
8:16 Chris Ryan? I need a trach kit because I'm choking on it. This is absolutely ridiculous. I am so excited that he is going to bring his very, very, very polished, like, the true air of Tony Scott's, like, kind of, like slick Hollywood filmmaking. And that he is going to neon the fuck out with 85, or maybe he's got a different vision of 1985.
8:40 Andy Greenwald? I think this vision, whatever it is, is going to be seen through slatted blinds at midday.
8:45 Chris Ryan? Yeah, and I think it's actually pretty smart to not try to outmodern the Michael Mann, you know, feature version of Miami Vice, which is kind of like, you know, become like a bit of a modern cult classic.
9:01 Andy Greenwald? This is you in the hot dog suit, wondering, wondering who's responsible for this.
9:05 Chris Ryan? We have to find the guy responsible for this.
9:08 Chris Ryan? There's a part of me, there's a small part of me.
9:12 Andy Greenwald? Which part?
9:12 Chris Ryan? That, I can't tell if it's my head or my heart, so maybe it's my trachea. It's, there's a part of me that is as if not more excited for this than I am for Heat 2.
9:24 Andy Greenwald? Wow. Thank you for sharing this here.
9:27 Chris Ryan? Because Heat 2 still feels like speculative to me. Like, it still almost feels too real, too crazy to be real, that they're gonna do this, that they're gonna do a globe-trotting crime epic with two of the biggest, best actors alive, and a crazy supporting cast, if rumors are true. This Miami Vice 85, Austin Butler is Sonny Crockett, Michael B. Jordan is Ricardo Tubbs. I don't think that those Tom Cruise rumors about him playing the villain are real. But crazier things have happened in this, in this little world of ours, so, I don't know. I mean, you, you have, do you ever watch Miami Vice the show when it was on in the 80s? Not in the 80s, but have you ever watched it?
10:09 Andy Greenwald? I've watched it sparingly. I have, it was, I don't know if it was the same thing in your house, but it was illicit, because it was on late.
10:16 Chris Ryan? You just watched it from the landing.
10:17 Andy Greenwald? Yes, it was watching through a crack in the door kind of stuff. Or if you had a sleepover with friends who had a more liberal sleep schedule.
10:23 Chris Ryan? There's a bunch of guys wearing denim shirts.
10:25 Andy Greenwald? Just like sitting around holding hands. In the dark?
10:28 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
10:29 Andy Greenwald? In their gremlin sleeping bags, being like, this is the best one.
10:31 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
10:33 Andy Greenwald? It's a who's who of character actors, guys. Yeah, or, or, you know what the big thing was? This is very generational, but I bet Senator Chris Murphy will get the reference. There was always like the one friend who had a TV in their room, or that they could wheel into their room for sleepovers.
10:48 Chris Ryan? Yes.
10:48 Andy Greenwald? And then you could watch.
10:49 Chris Ryan? Did you ever have the kid who had the TV come out of the floor, or come out of like the half wall?
10:53 Andy Greenwald? I heard about those kids.
10:55 Chris Ryan? Dude, I knew a kid that had that.
10:56 Andy Greenwald? God damn.
10:57 Chris Ryan? That took like five minutes for the thing to rise, but it was worth it. Every minute, you were just like, fuck.
11:01 Andy Greenwald? 2001 soundtrack playing.
11:03 Chris Ryan? Go away.
11:05 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, man, that was, those are exciting times. I think that this movie sounds fantastic. I think maybe the other thing you're responding to potentially is that calling it Miami Vice 85 really seems like they're going to be dialing in on the aesthetics of what already made it America great.
11:19 Chris Ryan? Yes.
11:19 Andy Greenwald? Whereas Heat 2 is the movie that Michael Mann is going to make next, which is of great interest, but increasingly with this cast list and you say a global, what's a global crime romp?
11:29 Chris Ryan? I think.
11:30 Andy Greenwald? It feels less connected to what made the original special, and maybe more a celebration of where these people are now.
11:36 Chris Ryan? I'm a huge fan of the last two Joseph Kaczynski movies.
11:39 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
11:40 Chris Ryan? And I, I think that he will bring, he will infuse this with an energy that I'm very interested to see. Michael Mann, like, is my Jesus. So I won't doubt him.
11:52 Chris Ryan? But like, I, I, I just want to see some set photos, or I want to see like, yep, we're rolling in, in this year, you know?
11:58 Andy Greenwald? Okay.
11:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
11:59 Andy Greenwald? Thank you for sharing that. That was very vulnerable.
12:01 Chris Ryan? Thanks, man.
12:02 Andy Greenwald? That's why I wore this shirt.
12:03 Chris Ryan? The only other thing I had for you today was that, uh, I saw an announcement that Paramount is going to get behind a series adaptation of another cult classic, honestly. James Mangold's, um, I believe, early 2000s.
12:19 Andy Greenwald? God, what year was that? I think it's earlier than that. I think it was 90s.
12:23 Chris Ryan? 1997.
12:24 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
12:24 Chris Ryan? James Mangold's 1997 crime drama Copland.
12:27 Andy Greenwald? Let me set the scene for you. A young, young fellow, no TV in his room. Goes to the mailbox to get the hot, off the press issue of Movie Line magazine. Where in addition to a scorching interview with someone who was in probably Body of Evidence or something. There was like-
12:42 Chris Ryan? Willem Dafoe tells all.
12:43 Andy Greenwald? Literally. There was a little piece about how Sylvester Stallone is gonna, you know, dust off his acting boots and really give it a go.
12:51 Chris Ryan? Well, he did, and it is one of my, one of my favorite crime dramas of that decade.
12:55 Andy Greenwald? Is it?
12:56 Chris Ryan? Oh, Copland's incredible.
12:57 Andy Greenwald? Is it Leota?
12:57 Chris Ryan? Yeah, Leota, Harvey Keitel, Robert Patrick. Um, briefly, Edie Falco.
13:04 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
13:05 Chris Ryan? Um, and Stallone.
13:06 Andy Greenwald? Very dramatic ending, if I remember correctly.
13:07 Chris Ryan? Yeah, it's just fantastic. Uh, anyway. This is actually a film to series adaptation that I think makes sense because for people who don't know, the concept of Copland is essentially a town in New Jersey that a bunch of New York cops have essentially taken over-
13:25 Andy Greenwald? Yep.
13:25 Chris Ryan? -as their like, soft retirement home slash place from which they do nefarious business. And Sylvester Stallone's character is the cop who polices cops, but not very aggressively. Like, he's part of a kind of, you scratch my back, I scratch yours.
13:40 Andy Greenwald? And he is, he is deaf?
13:41 Chris Ryan? He's, he's lost hearing in his one ear, yes. Um, and a cop who has to police cops is a good logline for a TV show that lasts multiple seasons.
13:53 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, especially because it comes with a setting.
13:54 Chris Ryan? Mm-hmm.
13:55 Andy Greenwald? Like, a town that runs by a different set of rules.
13:57 Chris Ryan? Yes. Now, you don't have to set this in New Jersey to New York, although that was definitely like, the, the sense of place in Copland is one of the major draws of it. It's so evocative-
14:06 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
14:06 Chris Ryan? -of those towns when you get over the George Washington and you're driving south and you're just kind of like, what's going on over there? What's going on over there? And these are all like, these kind of commuter towns that are very, and even like, the way New Jersey is kind of set up, where it's like, everything is like a village or a township.
14:20 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, and in order to turn, you have to turn right and then loop back around these weird roads.
14:24 Chris Ryan? What's that about? We never got to the bottom of that.
14:26 Andy Greenwald? Do you think Copland voted for Mikey Sherrill for a governor?
14:28 Chris Ryan? Can I, can I ask you that, something?
14:30 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
14:30 Chris Ryan? Do you think it would be better if we had more shit like that in Los Angeles instead of like, the-
14:34 Andy Greenwald? Like roads-
14:35 Chris Ryan? Death Race 2000 that is Left Turn on Yellow?
14:38 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
14:39 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
14:40 Andy Greenwald? Any follow ups?
14:41 Chris Ryan? No, I mean, I just, I just think we could, we could do some interesting stuff here with, with driving. If we ever had that wherewithal.
14:47 Andy Greenwald? I think the problem, here's what I blame most in Los Angeles. It's the groundlings. I think that there is a culture of improvisation that has leached from the feeder theaters to Saturday Night Live into people's approach to traffic.
15:01 Chris Ryan? In this analogy, what's the feeder theater?
15:03 Andy Greenwald? Well, any improv theater, because I watched someone just-
15:06 Chris Ryan? You, you mean like people's driving has become more and more free jazz?
15:09 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
15:10 Chris Ryan? Who, where, where, like, who is like responsible for that?
15:14 Andy Greenwald? I'm assuming, I just think it's the culture of yes and.
15:16 Chris Ryan? I think it's the culture of everybody being like, I'm looking at Google Maps.
15:20 Andy Greenwald? I saw someone today turn left to get here where we are at lovely Spotify in downtown Los Angeles. It was the most impressionistic left turn I've ever seen. It was like Monet looking at water lilies for the first time. There, we were on the bridge turning off and there were four cars coming and there's no signal. So normally what one does when one has an arrow that it's allowed is one waits for the oncoming traffic to cease.
15:44 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
15:46 Andy Greenwald? Not only did they turn in front of those cars, they then started to turn more to delay the impact of those cars? As if they just took a little more time?
15:53 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
15:54 Andy Greenwald? It would get them there?
15:56 Chris Ryan? It's, it's tough out there.
15:57 Andy Greenwald? It was like watching Will Ferrell in 1993.
15:59 Chris Ryan? But you know, the reason why I bring this up is I was thinking about some, you know, Cape Fear coming soon on Apple TV, which I think will be an extended version of like the story we know and love of, of Max Cady. You know, presumed innocent from a couple of years ago or a year or so ago on Apple TV. Essentially expanding a very taut two hour thriller.
16:20 Chris Ryan? That's not ordinarily what I go for when it comes to these kinds of like big screen to little screen adaptations. But something like Copland, which obviously I'm drawn to anyway because of the subject matter and because of the, the original treatment of it. If Mangle's involved, I have a lot of belief. The other creative involved is the old man creator, Robert Levine. I think that like, that's just like a really smart way to make a cool TV show. Now you could just definitely like dial it up as mayor of Kingstown too, and just kind of have it be like guys walking in rooms. It'll probably be pretty decent either way, but I, I like the thinking here.
16:54 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, I do too. I also like you concerned trolling TV shows about men walking into rooms.
16:58 Chris Ryan? I mean, it's well, it's all we got, right? They haven't figured out a better way to make TV, right? Let me know.
17:04 Andy Greenwald? No, I mean, Lioness, there's a woman in the room.
17:06 Chris Ryan? Sure. Yeah, for sure.
17:07 Andy Greenwald? You got that.
17:09 Chris Ryan? This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike, or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for? That's when Prime's same day delivery adds your back. Getting you exactly what you need, fast and reliably, so you can actually join the moment instead of watching from the sidelines. Same day delivery, it's on Prime. Visit amazon.com/prime to find millions of items delivered fast, available in select areas. Terms apply. Should we just talk about beef?
17:44 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
17:44 Chris Ryan? Did you have anything else you wanted to bounce off me? You said you had a question for me.
17:47 Andy Greenwald? I think it's, I think considering my long disposition on left turning, I think we should just get into our show.
17:51 Chris Ryan? Sure. I mean, it's your show too, man. You can, you can call, call an audible if you want.
17:55 Andy Greenwald? I work better within a structured offense.
17:57 Chris Ryan? Let's talk about beef. Okay, so not unlike the first season where I think I went into it and was a little bit like, what do we got here? What's on, what do we got on our hands? And then found myself just completely enamored with it and, and talked to Sonny and Jake from behind the scenes on the show at one point for the podcast.
18:14 Andy Greenwald? And we should say Lee Sung Jin, who is the creator of the show, goes by Sonny.
18:17 Chris Ryan? Goes by Sonny. And Jake Schreier, who I think, believe these two are now collaborating on the X-Men adaptation, which is a pretty big deal.
18:25 Chris Ryan? This is three years after the first season. This is an anthology show, so the concept of beef is one I think we can interrogate. And what unites these two seasons is, I have not revisited the first season, obviously. But I'm curious to know if you drew any connective tissue to the other two. Obviously, Sonny takes the idea of an inciting incident and, and really explores the studio space with it, because from this inciting incident, so many different things kind of get brought into this, this whirlpool of distress, right? This season, the new installment tracks the collision between two couples, working in and around a high-end country club called Montevista, which I believe is like set in, in like in Santa Barbara, I believe.
19:07 Andy Greenwald? Santa Barbara County.
19:08 Chris Ryan? Yeah. And then the one couple, Josh and Lindsay, who are in their 40s, played by Oscar Isaac.
19:14 Andy Greenwald? Excuse me, Lindsay's 39. That's a plot point.
19:16 Chris Ryan? Uh, Josh and Lindsay were in and around their 40s. They live in Ojai and work at this country club. Lindsay, not so much. She's hoping to be brought on as an interior designer. Josh is the general manager. There's another couple, Ashley and Austin, who are far lower on the totem pole in, at the job. The job totem pole at this country club. And Ashley's a cart girl. Austin is hoping to catch on as a trainer of some kind at the club. And one night, they witness in the first episode, a fight between Josh and Lindsay, a volcanic fight, that they surreptitiously record and then use as tacit,
20:01 Chris Ryan? then explicit blackmail over the first couple of episodes. Then the show explodes and the show goes in 100 different directions, but not, I don't mean that in a messy, unplanned way. I think what I wanted to talk to you about first with the show is we did five episodes. So we have a couple more, we can maybe hit that on Monday if you'd like to. But like, what are some broad headlines about this season for you so far?
20:23 Andy Greenwald? As I said to you last night, call me Liver King the way I'm loving this beef. This may be my show of the year so far.
20:28 Chris Ryan? Wow.
20:29 Andy Greenwald? I loved it. I was completely, completely riveted and engaged with almost every aspect of it. Excited to talk about in detail why I'm excited to talk about some of these performances. But I was specifically thinking about what Sonny has done here and what he's established across two seasons. And I think that he is one of, if not the best example of a television auteur. What he is capable of doing within the Netflix model is remarkable. I wish it wasn't unique, but it is rare in that he is able to tell a sprawling, but I think very focused thematic story across multiple episodes
21:11 Andy Greenwald? that has the necessary propulsion to keep you clicking, to keep you watching television, but doesn't ever feel, because we've been bumping up over the last few weeks against a lot of pilots, a lot of new series that feel like, well, that kind of could have been a movie or that kind of is going to be best expressed over five seasons. It's in the wrong box.
21:29 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
21:30 Andy Greenwald? He is a master at this specific sized box, and that is not a small thing. The second thing I was feeling as I was watching and loving these episodes was, I was trying to think about why I found this so appealing. Because as you and longtime listeners know, I tend to be drawn to smaller studies that capture the minutia of daily life. You know.
21:50 Chris Ryan? For example?
21:51 Andy Greenwald? Well, you will spend a night watching a horror film in the theater. And I will spend a night watching The Taste of Things, one of the most charming and beautiful French films of recent years about sumptuous cooking in the 19th century.
22:03 Chris Ryan? We can only be us.
22:05 Andy Greenwald? Elite Juliette Binoche performance. It's on Hulu now. The thing that I love about Beef that really crystallized at some point, I believe it's in, it might have even been in the first episode. I did watch them pretty stacked on top of each other.
22:18 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
22:18 Andy Greenwald? When the characters are scrolling, when the characters are Googling, when the characters are WhatsApping and texting and Instagram messaging and then going into recently deleted, the way they're living their lives online on a show. I realized that, first of all, interiority, as I love it, or as generally we love in novels, is extremely exterior these days.
22:43 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
22:43 Andy Greenwald? We perform interiority all the time in our daily lives, whether it's the pictures we post or whether it's the wellness journeys we embark on or even just bringing everything up in either actual therapy or therapeutic talk. Like, the business of interior lives is about making that external. And I feel like Sonny has really captured that moment in a way that it feels artful and true. And specifically, there's a moment early on, and then we can get into the specifics. But early on in the season, Carey Mulligan, who I think is brilliant always and incredibly so in this series, is toggling between conversations and Googles and life choices the way we all do. And she's reaching out to an old flame and then blocking the old flame and then engaging with someone else,
23:26 Andy Greenwald? which causes her to go back and unblock the old flame. And the immediacy of her emotional decision making is so dysregulated, but also so available to her, that that then finds its match in the way these characters bounce off of each other, like, super radical free electrons in this fishbowl of contemporary society.
23:46 Chris Ryan? You're really tapping into something there. Because it's also the thing that I think maybe, at some points, makes my skin crawl when I watch it.
23:54 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, it's intense.
23:55 Chris Ryan? You know, not necessarily because I, probably partially because I recognize it in myself. But, you know, there's often this trope about like, well, would digital, would cellphones or would smartphones have ruined this movie?
24:08 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
24:08 Chris Ryan? And we're often like, yes, Die Hard would be five minutes long if people could text, you know? It's strange to watch a show feel native to that in a really, really perceptive way. So much of the deception, the betrayal in this show is fueled by, or the mechanism it's expressed through is deleting text messages, is, you know, like, basically that kind of almost digital forgery that goes on if you are in an untrusting relationship, or any kind of relationship. And there's like, you know, to what extent are people's phones there, an extension of their own, you know, personal, private thoughts? And to what extent
24:53 Chris Ryan? are they just a piece of like, tracking machinery that is following your wants and impulses? And, you know, it's not like this is a digital surveillance show, but a lot of what goes wrong for these characters happens because people have fucking computers in their hands all the time.
25:09 Andy Greenwald? And it is not an impediment to the storytelling. It is often the source of storytelling.
25:13 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
25:14 Andy Greenwald? One thing that we, I think that we celebrate whenever we see it, is when we can recognize, even without behind the scenes interviews or access to the showrunners, moments when it felt like they had painted themselves into a corner and they were like, actually, this is, this challenge is an opportunity. Everything about this show flows from the reality of what they carry in their pockets. The video doesn't happen if they don't have it that way. The seething jealousy of other people's lives that fuels everything all four of these characters do in different social strata, wouldn't happen if they didn't have this in their pocket all the time. They are living, you know, we've often talked about how like, it's hard to break through as a TV show, because you're competing against everything that's ever been made all the time. And this show is about how it's almost
25:56 Andy Greenwald? impossible to be alive when you're competing against every other person who's alive and has ever been alive.
26:01 Chris Ryan? Yes.
26:02 Andy Greenwald? And how do you stay within your own life? So it is, use the word native. I think this show is native to our time in a way that feels very, very exciting, and gets the details right, in the sense that you know the creators are being observant. In the way that Austin tosses out the word late-stage capitalism, as if it was something that had been on a high shelf and he had just recently reached and taken it down, the way that when-
26:25 Chris Ryan? And Austin is played by Charles Melton.
26:26 Andy Greenwald? Who is incredible.
26:27 Chris Ryan? And Ashley is played by Kaylee Spaney, who I think is remarkable in this.
26:30 Andy Greenwald? When-
26:30 Chris Ryan? The four leads are astonishing in this.
26:32 Andy Greenwald? When Lindsay, and this sentence alone is gonna give you a sense of the show if you haven't watched it yet. But when Lindsay and, um, oh my god, I'm blanking on Oscar Isaac's character's name.
26:41 Chris Ryan? Josh.
26:41 Andy Greenwald? Josh are driving, looking for their missing dog named Burberry. She says, in the middle of her, you know, absolute anxiety spiral, oh, Childish Gambino just shared-
26:54 Chris Ryan? My next door post.
26:55 Andy Greenwald? My next door post. And, uh, when they go to a rescue, and they say something about like, I saw Gambino's post. And he's just like, he's a nice guy. The specificity, it would be different if they were like Donald Glover shared it.
27:09 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
27:10 Andy Greenwald? That, even in that small line, it communicated to us their relationship with celebrity.
27:14 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
27:15 Andy Greenwald? And the people that they do or don't know, and how intimate they are with them. Every moment is considered in a way that I found really thoughtful and exciting.
27:21 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I, I think that there's, when I'm watching this show, I have basically, and I, I'm curious whether you ever do this with this or other series. You're having essentially the front, this, this sort of superficial visceral experience of like anxiety and or just tracking the various threads. And I should mention at this point that very quickly into this show, Josh, who, you know, essentially his identity is being the general manager of this country club. The country club is, uh, taken over by, um, a Korean company run by someone named Chairwoman Park.
27:55 Andy Greenwald? Played by Oscar winner Yoon Yoo Jung.
27:57 Chris Ryan? That's right. And-
27:58 Andy Greenwald? Who's awesome.
27:58 Chris Ryan? She is fantastic. And, uh, it brings in like a whole other element to the show, which involves like her husband, uh-
28:08 Andy Greenwald? Who's played by the legend Song Kang Ho.
28:10 Chris Ryan? Yes.
28:11 Andy Greenwald? Who starred Parasite and Memories of Murder, one of my favorite actors alive, and he's just-
28:15 Chris Ryan? He plays a plastic surgeon working in Seoul, uh, who loses a patient. And that is in its own sense, like a triggering event for the entire series. And, uh, Eunice, who's, uh, uh, Chairwoman Park's assistant, is also a very important character. But it blows out of the doors of the Ojai Country Club into a kind of much bigger canvas. So you're watching it and you're tracking it and you're kind of like analyzing all of the like, oh, this document was left out on somebody's table. So they saw it and it's there's a lot of embezzlement stuff going on. And then there is like the other part, which I think I'm much more into, which is thinking about beef rather than necessarily watching it. I don't find this anxious or uncomfortable to watch at all. Maybe it's
29:00 Chris Ryan? not my favorite show of the year, but it's probably the smartest show of the year. And I think it has the most to say. And I think it it's it's the deepest so far, you know, like, and maybe that should be
29:10 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
29:11 Chris Ryan? That alone should make it the best. But I think that seeing these three couples at various stages of their life, essentially like late twenties, late thirties, early forties, and then much older, like senior citizens, essentially.
29:25 Andy Greenwald? Well, the chairwoman is 20 years older than her husband.
29:27 Chris Ryan? Chairwoman's probably in her 60s, right? Late 50s?
29:31 Andy Greenwald? Chairwoman? The actress is approaching 80.
29:33 Chris Ryan? Right.
29:34 Andy Greenwald? And the and and her husband is 50.
29:36 Chris Ryan? You say chairwoman is much older than her husband?
29:38 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
29:39 Chris Ryan? Yes, sorry. Yes. So the chairwoman is approaching 80, but the the husband is probably in his 50s. But in any case, much older than Josh and Lindsay. And the way the show kind of depicts love getting corrupted, no matter what age you are, depending on your economic situation. And also love getting corrupted regardless of your economic situation, you know, that there is essentially this coarsening, brittle and brittle thing effect that happens to any kind of romance.
30:11 Andy Greenwald? This was a hallmark of the first season as well, which is that the show escalates and then asks what comes next. We've talked about this came up in our industry conversations, I think, recently. And when we were thinking about the way characters fight on that show and then the types of and in relationship, actually, to the way characters fight on or fought on Succession. And one of the things that was remarkable about Succession was that when Tom and Shiv went at each other, it felt apocalyptic. And then the show wasn't afraid to say, the day after. What happens in the smoking ruin? How much more is there to bomb? What is, what remains alive? And the thing that, that Sonny does so well is he pushes his chips in on these fights that can, you know, the smallest piece of kindling can ignite them between the characters.
30:54 Andy Greenwald? But that, the, the, the fight that begins the series is immediately spun into something else. Where Lindsay is like, oh, you know, if you, if you don't have fights like this, then you're hiding something. Which plants a seed in Austin's mind about what, what honesty is worth and how it's expressed in relationships. And it allows us to see a little bit further in the emotional journey of these characters. As they get more increasingly caught up in these like Byzantine plot elements that are compelling. And beautifully stacked on top of each other. But the show doesn't succeed or fail on the back of them. Which is something that I really, really like. It, it succeeds and fails on its continuing emotional archaeological dig of these people.
31:34 Andy Greenwald? All of whom who are given the full sweep of personhood and all of whom are, can be both buffoons and victims in equal measure.
31:44 Chris Ryan? Do you think that when characters are as well drawn as this and are given, to use your words, the full suite of personhood? It kind of obviates the need to have the, do you like these people conversation?
31:57 Andy Greenwald? I hope so. I think, yeah, I think it's a great question to ask and I find it, I mean, I find that to be the most boring question you could ever ask about art.
32:05 Chris Ryan? It is, but I do think that there's something to the durational experience of watching television. Where you have to like at least spending time with them. You don't necessarily have to want the guy to be your babysitter, but you want to see them over and over and over again.
32:20 Andy Greenwald? And partly because they are, they can be competent in ways that are compelling. They can be charming in ways that are entertaining or funny often, which is something that the show is able to do quite well. But the other thing that keeps you coming back, and I think kept people coming back to Succession. Not just from a baseline like kill the rich attitude, but from a, oh my God, that excruciating moment of vulnerable humanity is pretty relatable. And it kills me that someone I hate like Kendall or, you know, or in this case Josh. Is also capable of that moment.
32:53 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
32:53 Andy Greenwald? That's what the best shows do, and that's what the show is, to me, is doing through five episodes.
32:59 Chris Ryan? There, in what I've read about the making of this season, it sounds like Sonny wrote very specifically for the people who he cast. So not necessarily originally, because I know that others had been in the mix for the show. I mean, you had mentioned.
33:14 Andy Greenwald? Originally, and rarely, rarely, you know, hit lists or wish lists get leaked or get announced. The first stories about Beef Season Two said that the four actors were circling the parts, and it was Kaylee Spahney and Charles Melton and Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, who I think would have been phenomenal in this. And I actually think Jake Gyllenhaal would have been better than Oscar Isaac, an actor who, you know, in Cold, I like more, but we can talk about that specifically.
33:44 Chris Ryan? I disagree with you about that. I think I'm a little bit warmer on the Oscar Isaac performance here than you are. I wonder what it is you think. Why do you say that?
33:54 Andy Greenwald? Okay, so my, there are certain things that you can just tell, like, you can, I don't know if you can tell, but like, Charles Melton is incredible in the show. He is so, so good at doing something that a lot of actors struggle with, even great actors. Gosling is good at this, too, being dumb, and putting that in quotes, but also somehow soulful.
34:16 Chris Ryan? Yeah, Brad Pitt's been the master of that.
34:18 Andy Greenwald? It's, but this is, this part is Brad Pitt's performance in Burn After Reading, but with the humanity filters set slightly differently. He is kind of buffoonish, but he also weeps when a bee dies in their apartment, which tells you a lot about him, both good and bad. I think, and I think that like, little decisions, too, just suit and flatter the actors. Like, I think Carey Mlgan is amazing in, I think, everything I've ever seen her in. I think she's one of our best actors. The decision to let her be British in this is so crucial.
34:52 Chris Ryan? What she said is, I knew that it would require this, this performance was going to require a degree of improvisation that would just be much easier if I wasn't also worrying about accent and dialect.
35:02 Andy Greenwald? And so we don't know what the original conception of the character was, but adding in certain details about her life before Josh and about-
35:08 Chris Ryan? Dating a royal, yeah.
35:10 Andy Greenwald? Being photographed in the Daily Mail, being posh, and then finding herself in circumstances that her friends back home were probably all heart on Instagram, but the reality of which is a lot more diminished than people might realize, is pitch perfect. I, I love Oscar Isaac. He's, as long as we've been doing this podcast, he's, we've talked about him like one of our favorite actors, which, which he is. I find him less, he's so good and uniquely good at being nebbishy. I mean, Inside Lewin Davis is a masterpiece. But there's something about his presentation and his physicality recently where he looks like he's still auditioning for Moon Knight. And he looks super ripped and good and healthy. And I know that's part of like the Ojai lifestyle and presenting as someone
35:53 Andy Greenwald? who can hang with the rich people and Benny Blanco and Michael Phelps, as he does in the show. But it is slightly, to me, makes his neediness and his vanity and his weakness impenetrable.
36:05 Chris Ryan? There's also, I think it's important to note that that character is kind of living in a state of suspended animation where he's still like trying to get like the sickest stereo setup, you know, and, and has sports memorabilia all over his man cave, you know, and is like, kind of like, I am going to preserve this version of myself. And, and I think that that explains also like why he looks the way he looks like. He's trying to stay as long as he can in his child, like his, his best version of his body.
36:33 Andy Greenwald? And it does track that like people who are rich and successful and famous wouldn't, they would bring him along because he looks the part, even if he can't play fully the part with his finances and, and everything else. I, this, this is just a, it's a, it's a minor note because when he and Carey Mulligan are going at each other, he's exceptional. When he's sort of looming over Kaylee Spani and threatening her and stuff like the perform, the, the granular details of the performance are spectacular. But there is something, like when I see Jake Gyllenhaal on screen, I don't trust him. Like, I just, and I think that's a key part of some of his best performances, going back to what I briefly thought was a masterpiece of television, Presumed Innocent.
37:16 Andy Greenwald? But that is something that he knows how to use, even in like the Spider-Man movie he was in. You're like, he's using his charisma, but there's something spoiled there.
37:25 Chris Ryan? Well, it's telling that it was Hathaway and Gyllenhaal, because clearly Sonny has like an eye for pre-existing chemistry between performers, and they've been in at least one film that I can think of before. Mulligan and Isaac have played across from each other in Drive and in Lewin Davis, and obviously are very familiar with each other as performers, and I think it works really well. And on the flip side of it, Spani and Melton, I think, have this kind of like, perfect vibe of like, I can't remember how long they're supposed to have been dating for, but they-
37:59 Andy Greenwald? A year and a half.
37:59 Chris Ryan? But they're engaged, and it has that like, a lot of this show is about what does marriage mean? And what is your duty and what is your sense of loyalty to somebody made out of?
38:15 Andy Greenwald? And do you lift each other up, or do you weigh each other down?
38:17 Chris Ryan? Sure. I mean, I think that that inevitably happens in every marriage, but like, the sort of bonds that people have and like, how they want to define each other through their relationships is really fascinating. So we'll talk a little bit more specifically about the episodes now. The first two, I don't really have a ton to say about, we've kind of set them up as these inciting incidents. It's important to know that Spani's character actually has a medical issue with her ovary that is going to need surgical attention at some point, but she doesn't have the money, she doesn't have health insurance because of her current status at the country club, how she's working. She uses this blackmail footage to sort of start to attain more and more status, both
38:58 Chris Ryan? up the chain of command at the country club, but just getting financial and benefits, financial benefits. And to me, the series really takes flight in episodes three, four, and five.
39:10 Andy Greenwald? I agree.
39:11 Chris Ryan? Three-
39:13 Chris Ryan? Features a wonderful escapade of Carey Mulligan's character and Oscar Isaac's character have long thought of starting a B and B. And then they decide they want to start a B B and B, which is a Bed Bath and Barn. And in the barn, they would hold concerts because they've they they remember and go to see Hot Chip at the Hollywood Bowl. Or LCD Sound System at the Hollywood Bowl.
39:37 Andy Greenwald? The the the aging millennial details are choice. Also, that exact dream that they have floated above Los Angeles like a giant thought balloon out of every house on the east side during COVID. Like, that is so.
39:50 Chris Ryan? We could move to Palm Desert and and Queens of the Stone Age could play there.
39:53 Andy Greenwald? It's so much cheaper there.
39:54 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
39:56 Chris Ryan? And they go on this sort of fact finding mission to to see like another couple's version, very similar version of their their idea and just immediately let their dream die like as they walk through the realities of what they would have to do, but also the the scale at which they would have to be successful.
40:15 Andy Greenwald? And who they would be competing against.
40:16 Chris Ryan? And who they would be competing against and how difficult that would be. I even thought that the the way that so Josh texts Troy, who's played by William Fickner, the great character actor, who's the sort of alpha of the country club in terms of rich guys and is like, you know, we're thinking about doing this. And instead of being like, yes, I'll invest, he's like, you should meet my friends who are doing it already. And it's just such like a perfect like, that's how a dream gets killed is with the one person not showing any interest and telling you, by the way, someone else is doing this already. I just love that whole episode. And then that episode culminates with a great fight between Austin and Ashley. That ends with her jumping out of a moving vehicle.
41:00 Andy Greenwald? Shout out Lady Bird.
41:02 Chris Ryan? And then she winds up in the hospital and her medical condition in the in episode four is this harrowing like other side of the pit.
41:09 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
41:10 Chris Ryan? Adventure where she, you know, has got this huge deductible. Josh comes.
41:15 Andy Greenwald? And she doesn't understand what deductibles are. It's a great.
41:17 Chris Ryan? Yes. And Josh comes and offers to help her, but only if she shows him that she has deleted or is deleting all of the backups of the video in the cloud, which again is this sort of like three layers of mistrust and.
41:33 Chris Ryan? And everything as attached to, you know, all these digital devices that we have is that nothing is ever really deleted.
41:39 Andy Greenwald? And a lesser show would run from that, either because the creators are old and don't know that things stay in your recently deleted folder or on the cloud, or because it would dramatically, they would feel like it would dramatically cut off their opportunities. The show brings it in and makes it part of the story.
41:53 Chris Ryan? And there's all this stuff happening while they're in the hospital waiting room, waiting for Ashley to be seen, seemingly firm injuries from falling out of the car, but really like what's really coming is this, the ovary situation is kind of coming to a head, is that there are these text messages between Austin and Eunice, Chairman Park's assistant, there is Austin being somewhat surreptitious about his designs on becoming a unlicensed physical trainer for the club, but then Ashley is also responding to these text messages and then deleting all of them, and then Eunice is responding when Austin sees the phone to text messages that he hasn't sent to his mind. So it gets very, very, not
42:34 Chris Ryan? convoluted, but like, kind of complex when it comes to the ways people are communicating. And the fact that Josh kind of holds medical attention ransom for Ashley is a final straw. She, she has to go into emergency surgery, they have to remove an ovary, and at the end of that, she is like, I will have my, my revenge in this life or the next, and winds up releasing unintentionally, perhaps, Josh and Lindsay's dog. And that leads to my favorite episode of the, the series so far, which is five, where Lindsay has to spend an hour looking for Burberry while Josh goes to play with hot chip.
43:11 Andy Greenwald? At a chalet in Utah, off of a private jet. Episode four, we should note, Jake Schreier did a brilliant job directing the first episode, and I believe he came back for the finale of the season, but Sonny directs this four. It is a Lynchian fantasia in a way that is not annoying, which I think is worth noting.
43:29 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
43:30 Andy Greenwald? Because it is a very challenging tone to strike where you can have, you can have, you know, silly jokes and humor, like, not in that episode, but like Austin, Austin thinking that, that- Invoices written for M I S C, Misk is a misspelling of mist.
43:47 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
43:47 Andy Greenwald? And he imagines that someone named Marta is providing mist for the club every morning. But also have like, kind of creepy, kind of funny, just very unnerving glimpses of healthcare crises.
43:59 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
43:59 Andy Greenwald? In Ventura County, all at the same time. And then these just constant, subtle is not the right word, but appropriately rhythmic beats of the show's thematic drum, where like, Ashley does not know how healthcare works because she's never had it before. And in fact, the strongest opinion.
44:17 Chris Ryan? Health insurance, yeah.
44:17 Andy Greenwald? Sorry, this is health insurance, but the strongest opinion she voices, at least through five episodes, is the preference, Gatorade flavor preference. That's, that's what she feels the most strongly about anything.
44:30 Chris Ryan? The whole Gatorade thing has killed me.
44:31 Andy Greenwald? In her life. It's remarkable. Did you ever feel, I don't.
44:36 Chris Ryan? It's like, what does he say? In my professional opinion, the quench comes through.
44:40 Andy Greenwald? The quench is the same?
44:40 Chris Ryan? Yeah, the quench is the same.
44:41 Andy Greenwald? Did the, they're very funny jokes in this season. Did any of it ever take you out? I wondered, like, there's a moment when, because the one question I had, this is the latest criticism that I'm going to offer, because I think ultimately I don't believe this to be true, but there were a couple of moments when it felt like the characters, particularly Ashley and Austin's intelligence level toggled.
45:06 Chris Ryan? Mm-hmm.
45:07 Andy Greenwald? Based on how good the joke might be. Whereas Austin is sort of the golden retriever, sweet, not so smart guy, and thinks Misk is mist. In that episode alone, and obviously she's been injured and potentially concussed and has a knee and is experiencing torsion in her ovary.
45:23 Chris Ryan? I like that you said has a knee, like you're Joe Buck.
45:26 Andy Greenwald? She has a knee, she's out with a knee.
45:27 Chris Ryan? A.J. Brown's got a knee.
45:28 Andy Greenwald? She was. That she, you know, gets the deductible stuff all mixed up, but then also thinks that the hospital pain scale is numbered like Letterboxd.
45:39 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
45:40 Andy Greenwald? Which was super funny.
45:42 Chris Ryan? I mean, like, I, I think that.
45:43 Andy Greenwald? It didn't, it didn't bother me. I wondered if you bumped on it.
45:45 Chris Ryan? It, it doesn't bother me. I, that kind of stuff doesn't bother me, nor does, uh, nor does a guy being obsessed with hot chip really bother me. You know what I mean? Like, it's, specificity is what roots it in reality to me, so.
45:57 Andy Greenwald? Totally. By the way, you should mention, the reason she jumps out of the car. Is not any proof of infidelity. It's that she sees that Eunice's Instagram is private. And yet Austin has been allowed entry into her private Instagram. That is a very contemporary concern. That is not a dramatic act out beat that I would say that my parents would flag.
46:17 Chris Ryan? Uh huh.
46:17 Andy Greenwald? Were they to know how to turn on Netflix? Or what Netflix was? Or what Beef is?
46:22 Chris Ryan? That's the thing is I do wonder for people who are not like glued to their phones. Like how some of this plays? No, I have no problem with the humor. And I also thought like that episode four was a really great example of something that's incredibly tense. And everything is kind of building towards Ashley's surgery. But he still takes moments to have Austin have that weird interaction with the woman at the.
46:43 Andy Greenwald? Totally.
46:44 Chris Ryan? At the um.
46:45 Andy Greenwald? Vending machine.
46:45 Chris Ryan? Snack machine, vending machine. And you know, the woman brought in on a 5150 who's tripping balls and like, there's just flourishes. And it feels very, very lived in, even though it's a Netflix show that has like movie stars in it. It feels very much like, and I, for me, the reason why four and especially the end of four. The face Kaylee Spaney makes when Josh's long promised like white glove treatment comes through way too late. And the guy is like, oh, I wish Josh had called me earlier because I could have gotten you seen immediately. And we probably like the underlying message being we could have saved your ovary. Her nostrils flare for just a second and you're like, man, Josh is fucking dead.
47:28 Chris Ryan? Like this is, and it is. I always remember Tina Fey talking about Rachel McAdams in Mean Girls. And how like you can tell you've got a movie star when she can do a page of dialogue with an eyebrow arch. Or with like, with one gesture.
47:43 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, you can cut the words.
47:44 Chris Ryan? And Kaylee Spaney does not have to say a thing. But she is like, this guy just might've robbed me of having a baby. I'm gonna make it my life's mission to bring him down. Now that fluctuates over the next couple of episodes, kind of going back to the, the, the Shiv and Tom corollary that you brought up. But. To see her in the very next episode being Carrie Mulligan's therapist as they walk around Ojai looking for this dog is it's its own kind of thriller because you're like, what like, when is she gonna find out? When is she gonna find out?
48:19 Andy Greenwald? And the way that the the the characters emotional arcs are not always jammed into each other because they are not in service of the plot and not to compare and contrast because they are very different shows with very different goals. But I think one of the things we were bumping on with Margot's Got Money troubles is that any interiority of characters' lives or emotional state was so clearly created to be serviced by someone else's to advance the story of healing and unconventional family structure and it's plot, plot, plot.
48:48 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
48:49 Andy Greenwald? This allows us to have that moment unsaid about how Josh literally leveraged her future over his own concerns by potentially blackmailing her back over medical care. And in I believe it's the previous episode, there's that absolutely incredible sequence in which Carrie Mulligan's character, wearing a red light face mask,
49:09 Chris Ryan? Is look at your phone.
49:10 Andy Greenwald? sees is is trying to trying to follow up on an assignation with an old flame. And then he begs off and then she immediately Googles and sees on Daily Mail that he's seeing someone else and she just starts laughing slash crying maniacally and then chases a Plan B pillow with a glass of red wine. So Bravo. This is this, this is, this is cinema.
49:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
49:32 Andy Greenwald? And I, I, and I love it. I do have to ask if, if anything cut close to home to you. I mean, I know that we've probably all been to a hot ship show or two in our lives. Have you, have you ever gotten mad at someone for getting COVID at mezcal night? That seems CR coded to me.
49:47 Chris Ryan? Uh, getting mad at somebody for having COVID?
49:50 Andy Greenwald? No, just like-
49:50 Chris Ryan? I let a British guy cough into my mouth. That's how I got COVID the first time. I mean, it is what it is. I was so good. I had the fucking Johnson and Johnson. Nobody was touching me for a minute. And then I go to England for the first time and some guy comes up to me after a live show. He goes, mate, and then just starts yelling at me about Crystal Palace, like into my larynx. And I was like, that's it. I had the worst fucking flight anyone in America has ever had coming back. I'm really sorry now in retrospect, because I was COVID positive. I didn't find it out till I got to LAX because they had those cool tests.
50:24 Andy Greenwald? Uh huh.
50:25 Chris Ryan? And I was like, that's, that's definitive proof.
50:28 Andy Greenwald? That's a funny story.
50:29 Chris Ryan? That the novel coronavirus rampage is through my body.
50:32 Andy Greenwald? Despite the best efforts of Woody Johnson's vaccine.
50:36 Chris Ryan? Uh, what was the question? So no, I don't give a shit about that. And I had some mezcal nights with you, brother. And if I had gotten the, the big 19 from it, so be it.
50:44 Andy Greenwald? All right. So what if I didn't mess up mezcal night, but let's make it Beef Season Two specific? What if I, what if?
50:49 Chris Ryan? Your mezcal nights were great.
50:50 Andy Greenwald? Thanks, man.
50:51 Chris Ryan? Man, remember that mezcal mixtape we used to get?
50:53 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, the little tasting flights we would do.
50:54 Chris Ryan? Getting tobacco here.
50:55 Andy Greenwald? And then be like, oh, it's almost 11 PM.
50:57 Chris Ryan? Is that bubble gum? The funny thing was like, it would be, you'd serve it and it would be like, are you tasting the bubble gum? And I am, I am tasting gasoline. This is fucking firewater, dude.
51:09 Andy Greenwald? So just staring at you, seeing if you're picking up the subtle notes of like saddle leather and regret.
51:15 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
51:16 Andy Greenwald? Baked into each glass. On Beef Season Two, though, Ashley's COVID, not Ashley.
51:24 Chris Ryan? Lindsay.
51:24 Andy Greenwald? Lindsay's COVID diagnosis keeps her husband from seeing Top Gun Maverick in the theater.
51:29 Chris Ryan? Uh, it was Bullet Train. Oh, no, it was right. It's Top Gun Maverick. You're right. That's a very great fight.
51:35 Andy Greenwald? It's very Los Feliz coded.
51:37 Chris Ryan? It's also just a fight that like, the way they're like, this is the problem with fighting with you is that you like completely misremember things like.
51:44 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
51:44 Chris Ryan? It's, it's just a very, very accurate depiction of long-term relationship fighting.
51:48 Andy Greenwald? And to Oscar Isaac's credit, his best moments on the show so far are the fights. And there's a moment when she's like, I've caught you in an egregious lie. The lie is whether or not she approved a doorstop that he had sourced on Amazon.
52:01 Chris Ryan? Oh, she's like, I'm gonna go look this up on Amazon, right?
52:03 Andy Greenwald? Yes. And she's, and she's like, you absolute idiot. And his face is the most alive that it is in the entire series.
52:10 Chris Ryan? But speaking of like their, their kind of chemistry, it's like when he, and I've seen this pointed out on, on, online. So I don't want to pretend like this is like my, my. My blind observation here. The moment where he breaks into a British accent to mock her. She breaks a little bit, or maybe doesn't, but like she certainly like has like this moment of nervous laughter. And I'm like, you could do that a million times and may not get that reaction. And like, you know, let's see Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal do that. That's all I gotta say.
52:40 Andy Greenwald? It can, well, her British accent is quite good.
52:42 Chris Ryan? Right. Canonically. If she was playing Lindsay. Um, I did want to ask you, because I think it comes out more in the final episodes, which we can talk about next week. But the international intrigue, the Dr. Kim, chairwoman, park part.
52:59 Chris Ryan? Where, where, where, where did you kind of, how do you feel about that additional sort of three to four characters? And a huge other swath of plot being laid on to?
53:08 Andy Greenwald? Well, there's two things. One, when you are this tightly focused on the emotional lives of characters that I'm interested in. Add more plot. The plot becomes secondary to that. The plot becomes the scaffolding of the roller coaster that the people I'm paying attention to are riding on. And if there's an extra loop in there, it's probably better for the characters. That's generally my approach to stuff. When it's working, I only note that stuff being preposterous or outlandish if I'm not bought in.
53:35 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
53:35 Andy Greenwald? If I'm bought in, I'm on the ride. Um, two, something that I really appreciate about the series. Again, I hope we get a chance to, I've never, I'm calling him Sonny like I've met him, never met him. Would love to talk to him about this show.
53:47 Andy Greenwald? This is-
53:47 Chris Ryan? Come back on the watch, brother.
53:48 Andy Greenwald? This is a show that clearly is fueled by someone's interests. That he's interested in things, he's interested in exploring dynamics. Um, and has some unique perspective to bring to these dynamics. And so there's a scene when they talk about, or there's Whoosh, the tennis pro brought in from Seoul. And when he and Lindsay are talking about like things that Dr. Kim can do to change how she looks, you know? Or improve subtle things. Or even the way the country club wives talk about going to Korea and what Korea can do. So this, this idea of Korean culture, Korean skincare, Korean beauty standards being folded into the batter of upper class.
54:27 Andy Greenwald? California Life, that's pretty real.
54:29 Chris Ryan? I was curious whether or not there were elements of K-drama that like
54:32 Andy Greenwald? Oh, that we might not even be.
54:33 Chris Ryan? Like the, the sort of plotting and the way that this is, this is playing out. I mean, obviously, K-drama is like a blanket term for a lot of different kinds of storytelling. But I was reading a little bit about it. I can't say that I have like, watched a ton of it.
54:45 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
54:46 Chris Ryan? But I was curious whether or not there were hallmarks. This would be a good, good thing to talk to Sonny about because like I'm, I wonder whether or not there, there is an influence there in terms of like, the way the, the, the plot almost yes ands into.
55:00 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
55:00 Chris Ryan? Like into the stratosphere.
55:02 Andy Greenwald? But I think that works, whether, I think that'd be very interesting to find out because that's not, that's not a genre show that I'm particularly familiar with. But what it does in practice with this season of television is that it raises the ceiling. The possibilities for the Josh and the, the two couples skirmishes are limited if they are just bound by the economic and societal limitations of those two characters. You put, you raise the roof when you put in William Fichtner's character who can just put people on planes and just give him advice and take, you know, and, and, and make things, A, make the people who are higher, which is Josh and Lindsay, make them want something.
55:47 Chris Ryan? Yes.
55:47 Andy Greenwald? And then you bring in something on top of that.
55:48 Chris Ryan? Well, everybody always wants something.
55:50 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
55:50 Chris Ryan? That's the great thing of, yeah.
55:51 Andy Greenwald? And you put people on top of that, then suddenly the embezzlement or the blackmail can go higher.
55:56 Chris Ryan? Well, that's it.
55:56 Andy Greenwald? The stakes can get bigger, which works for what the show, to me, works for what the show does. And then when you put two, one Oscar winning, certainly two Oscar caliber actors, I would have to imagine having fun.
56:08 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
56:08 Andy Greenwald? Playing these parts, playing these parts with each other as a married couple, which is not something I think they probably, I don't know if they've ever acted together before, but I doubt they've played that. It's awesome. I mean, Song Kang Ho is like a leading man writ large.
56:21 Chris Ryan? Yes.
56:21 Andy Greenwald? And he is having fun playing a character part. And that is such a luxury on a show like this.
56:27 Chris Ryan? We'll wrap up Beef Monday with Euphoria. How about that?
56:30 Andy Greenwald? You thought, you were like, guess what? This podcast is vegan now, but nope. We love beef.
56:34 Chris Ryan? I just was, all I did was like pass along, like, I guess this should, I shouldn't do the news. You know what I mean? Like, I just was like, hey.
56:40 Andy Greenwald? You know what?
56:41 Chris Ryan? I've seen some mixed reviews of this show.
56:43 Andy Greenwald? You know, it's like, even the greats can be swayed by misinformation campaigns or honeypots.
56:49 Chris Ryan? It's the first time it's ever happened to me.
56:50 Andy Greenwald? I know, but Eric Swalwell said the same. You know what I mean? So.
56:54 Chris Ryan? That ain't right.
56:55 Andy Greenwald? I'm just saying.
56:56 Chris Ryan? That ain't right.
56:56 Andy Greenwald? Not for what brought him down, but he was involved with a, you know, Chinese asset.
57:00 Chris Ryan? Well, that never got proven, right?
57:01 Andy Greenwald? I feel like now's the time we could talk.
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58:49 Andy Greenwald? And sharper than ever. Things are gonna get messy. But if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything. Dexter Resurrection, new season now streaming on the Paramount Plus Premium Plan. Talk about it.
59:04 Chris Ryan? I want to talk to you about Top Chef instead.
59:06 Andy Greenwald? It would be incredible if.
59:07 Chris Ryan? I don't know if we have special Top Chef.
59:08 Andy Greenwald? If litigious Swalwell stands took down our podcast because of just one stray.
59:13 Chris Ryan? Get in line. I don't really want to talk about the food.
59:17 Andy Greenwald? Hmm.
59:17 Chris Ryan? Really. I mean, I've been to Cracker Barrel and I liked it. This episode is a grueling experience for the chefs. This is Monday's episode of Top Chef, obviously. They have to make a Cracker Barrel-esque item from Cracker Barrel's all-day menu. They get put into breakfast, lunch, and dinner assignments, but it seems like it was a difficult challenge. Even our boy Lawrence just undercooked a bunch of chicken tenders, which he didn't know was possible.
59:45 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, that nice pink in the middle.
59:46 Chris Ryan? Uh, that was hardcore, the way Kristen was like, no. You know, she was just like, this is, this is not safe to be eating. Do you believe in bringing chicken tenders up to an appropriate temperature before serving?
59:59 Andy Greenwald? As a, as a parent of children, yes, I do.
1:00:02 Chris Ryan? You also spent a lot of time in England and they got chickens everywhere there.
1:00:05 Andy Greenwald? Of all different internal temps?
1:00:07 Chris Ryan? You ever know, come on, man, when we watch British food content creators, the, the chicken, there's just like, and then I'm just gonna dab that salmonella off the cutting board before I put all my veg on it.
1:00:19 Andy Greenwald? The chickens look healthier.
1:00:20 Chris Ryan? Yeah, they are yellow. I'll say that for them. They do this Cracker Barrel challenge. That's the quick fire. The elimination begins essentially immediately in the studio, where all the chefs, much to their own chagrin, have to make dessert because it's always funny. There's like one or two people who are like, yeah, I was a pastry chef, but a lot of them fucking hate dessert and making it. And it is going to be judged not by Tom and Kristen and Gail, but by Top Chef fans who live in Charlotte.
1:00:46 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, I was gonna say, up to that point, I was like, hello, where was the call?
1:00:49 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:00:49 Andy Greenwald? But.
1:00:50 Chris Ryan? Um, and honestly, those fans were delightful and it, there was like a nice experience of like, what it must be like, you know, when Tom is like, this is shit. And like somebody who doesn't eat that food all the time is like, goddamn, that's like the best dessert I've ever had. These desserts were supposed to mirror several classics, you know?
1:01:13 Andy Greenwald? That Queen Charlotte would have enjoyed.
1:01:15 Chris Ryan? Yeah, Melissa Benoist, the actress who's on a Netflix show that's set in North Carolina, I can't remember, but she played Supergirl, and she's a huge fan of Top Chef.
1:01:24 Andy Greenwald? Sounds nice, yeah.
1:01:25 Chris Ryan? She seemed delightful, yada, yada, like Anthony winds up winning the elimination challenge. It's pretty close to see who goes home. And also, the chefs, I don't think the judges elected Anthony. I think he won based on a vote, right?
1:01:39 Andy Greenwald? No, the crowd vote.
1:01:41 Chris Ryan? Oh, it's for the three top?
1:01:43 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, and I think the crowd vote had a sway in the final decision making, or at least, or maybe, or maybe you're right, maybe they had the, they had a voice.
1:01:50 Chris Ryan? Okay. Don't we all? And the more important thing is the elimination. Dwayne's pretty close to getting cut, I think, because she basically picked a caramel cake.
1:02:01 Andy Greenwald? Caramel cake, which looked quite nice.
1:02:02 Chris Ryan? And made something completely different.
1:02:04 Andy Greenwald? And then, and then just poured brown caramel foam on top of it.
1:02:09 Chris Ryan? Yes, and it was, they were pretty savage about Dwayne's, but like, this is the age old Top Chef, like, are they really only judging these people based on the dish they have in front of them, or is there a, does your cumulative kind of expertise or skill go into it? I, I usually would say it's impossible not to think of that, you know, and everything somebody's cooked until, up until that moment. But Roto is a good example of somebody who I thought was like running away with it and then went home, or not home, went to Last Night's Kitchen. Anyway, Dwayne doesn't go home, Justin does.
1:02:43 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
1:02:44 Chris Ryan? After the elimination, it's announced that Restaurant Wars is next.
1:02:47 Andy Greenwald? As it always is.
1:02:48 Chris Ryan? And while this is happening, Jennifer, who is Justin's partner in life, and also on the show with him, a contestant with him, Jennifer, who has been experiencing these, like, some nerve pain in her left arm or in her arm, now she's experiencing discomfort or like, some like temporary paralysis in her face, it looked like she was...
1:03:07 Andy Greenwald? Bell's palsy.
1:03:08 Chris Ryan? Okay.
1:03:09 Andy Greenwald? This is not like, I'm not breaking HIPAA, like, they, she's posted on Instagram.
1:03:12 Chris Ryan? Okay, so she's...
1:03:13 Andy Greenwald? But she had an attack of, I think, for the first time in her life, Bell's palsy, which is quite scary.
1:03:17 Chris Ryan? Yes.
1:03:17 Andy Greenwald? And treatable.
1:03:18 Chris Ryan? And Joel Embiid had that.
1:03:19 Andy Greenwald? Exactly.
1:03:19 Chris Ryan? So it looks like Jennifer is now broken the kind of, like, seal on like, you need to go get medical attention and leave the show.
1:03:29 Chris Ryan? Here's where I want to get into it with you.
1:03:31 Andy Greenwald? Okay, because I want to get into it when the episode started. So I'm raring to go.
1:03:35 Chris Ryan? Oh, I'm sorry. I was just giving people a recap of what was happening. I wasn't trying to like-
1:03:38 Andy Greenwald? Because I think the, as you should have, the end of the episode shenanigans that led into Last Chance Kitchen-
1:03:44 Chris Ryan? Right.
1:03:45 Andy Greenwald? Uh, is about who actually has been eliminated and who will be rejoining the show.
1:03:49 Chris Ryan? So for people who forget, Seeger was eliminated last week and did not go to Last Chance Kitchen. And when Last Chance Kitchen started, Tom was like, this is very un- uh, uncommon.
1:04:00 Andy Greenwald? And then we will explain at the start of next week's episode, which they did not.
1:04:04 Chris Ryan? And then Jennifer goes home for a medical at the end of this episode, and her partner, Justin, has been sent to Last Chance Kitchen, but is given the opportunity to simply go back into the show-
1:04:16 Andy Greenwald? As the most recently eliminated.
1:04:17 Chris Ryan? And replace Jennifer. And he turns that down to go be with Jennifer, but then does do Last Chance Kitchen eventually.
1:04:25 Andy Greenwald? So this reinforces something that has been explained, I think, or at least alluded to. Last Chance Kitchen shoots later. So-
1:04:32 Chris Ryan? Two days later, in this case.
1:04:33 Andy Greenwald? So Justin had time to, having withdrawn from the competition, make- see that she was not having something more extreme, you know, there was worry she was having a stroke or something. She's been diagnosed, she's safe, and she encourages him to give it another shot and to go into Last Chance Kitchen, which he does, um, briefly.
1:04:48 Chris Ryan? Yes, and loses to Rhoda, and-
1:04:51 Andy Greenwald? But Rhoda-
1:04:51 Chris Ryan? Rhoda is not then sent back into the competition. So the, I suppose that the suggestion is that Seeger is going to come back next week.
1:04:58 Andy Greenwald? This has not been confirmed, but this is obvious, and they're playing very coy with it in ways that are kind of annoying.
1:05:01 Chris Ryan? I don't think it's good television.
1:05:03 Andy Greenwald? I don't either. And I would say it's particularly not good television, because this was a catastrophically bad episode of Top Chef across the board, because it did three of my least favorite things that the show seems to inevitably have to do at some point during a season, maybe for vegetarian reasons. Got the big three. Big three of Top Chef no-no's.
1:05:18 Chris Ryan? Let me guess one.
1:05:18 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
1:05:19 Chris Ryan? Uh, a corporate tie-in.
1:05:21 Andy Greenwald? A absolutely wedged in nonsensical corporate tie-in that Cracker Barrel, "Nice restaurant to go to when you're on a road trip, no problem." But to have Kristen be like, "We all know and love their famous crispy-edged pancakes." Which camera? No, we don't. We don't all know that. Thank you. Go on. Two.
1:05:37 Chris Ryan? Uh, making them do back-to-backs.
1:05:40 Andy Greenwald? Nope.
1:05:41 Chris Ryan? Making them-
1:05:41 Andy Greenwald? You sound like Joel Embiid.
1:05:43 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:05:43 Andy Greenwald? He hates back to backs.
1:05:44 Chris Ryan? Well, the fucking Bell's policy came from somewhere.
1:05:46 Andy Greenwald? Just saying.
1:05:48 Chris Ryan? And how about them never leaving the studio?
1:05:51 Andy Greenwald? Ding. Absolutely ridiculous, especially when Last Chance Kitchen is there too. And the attempts to make it classy and like hang different lights and then bring normals in to taste their food. The entire episode feels claustrophobic and detached from any actual reality or presence. I will give them some grace here because last year, when it was Top Chef Canada and it was like Top Chef Warehouse in Canada.
1:06:14 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:06:15 Andy Greenwald? Or so we're told.
1:06:15 Chris Ryan? Whole Foods in Canada.
1:06:16 Andy Greenwald? Was really, really egregious. If you have to do one of these to then pay for or save money for some larger field studies later, okay.
1:06:24 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:06:25 Andy Greenwald? But yeah, those two.
1:06:25 Chris Ryan? What's number three?
1:06:26 Andy Greenwald? Desserts. I don't care about desserts.
1:06:29 Chris Ryan? Well, that's a you thing.
1:06:30 Andy Greenwald? No, but I also think that it's not good television when two thirds of the contestants are like, "Thank you for asking me to do something I don't like doing and I'm not particularly good at."
1:06:41 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:06:41 Andy Greenwald? That's not very compelling. And then I also don't-
1:06:43 Chris Ryan? You should know that Andy is the kind of guy who sends me Instagrams of steamed fish and is like, "I am Paul Atreides now." This is my, like, my dream in life is to eat this.
1:06:53 Andy Greenwald? Very, very clean. Very clean fish. I've also, I also ordered cheese for dessert. So like, let's, you know, let's be honest about who we are here. I'm not saying I don't, I can even like a dessert, but if they don't like it-
1:07:05 Chris Ryan? You know what? I like a fucking ice cream cone. You know, like, let's just be honest. Like, I kinda, like, I don't, it doesn't need to be too fancy. I like a bread pudding. I like a lot of different things.
1:07:13 Andy Greenwald? I even like baking, the Great British Baking Show I enjoy as well, but baking primarily is science and ratios and not like wild improvisation, which some of these chefs maybe are more talented at. And I also think that like the palate fatigue of all these people just, just shoveling in the sugar makes for kind of a muddled, uh, judging experience.
1:07:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I have to imagine that that is difficult.
1:07:33 Andy Greenwald? I still think this has been a strong season editorially and vibes wise certainly, but-
1:07:40 Andy Greenwald? I am very unimpressed with the contestants so far. Unless the Rhoda elimination really was like accidentally axing your main character too early and she will rise triumphant from the underworld, like Norpheus who didn't look backwards. I don't really think that there is a, maybe something, someone will emerge. Sometimes people go on a heater later.
1:08:01 Chris Ryan? I think Anthony and Lawrence are clearly the two best chefs and like they are kind of being treated as like supporting characters to the twins.
1:08:09 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
1:08:09 Chris Ryan? Jennifer and Justin. Dwayne's got a lot of camera time.
1:08:13 Andy Greenwald? I think these are very charming people.
1:08:15 Chris Ryan? Sure.
1:08:15 Andy Greenwald? But I don't.
1:08:16 Chris Ryan? Oscar, you know.
1:08:17 Andy Greenwald? But in the show, it struggles year to year. I mean, it's only can rise as high as the contestants raise it. And Tristan was another, Tristan and Buddha are generational, like in the sense of like what they were bringing, point of view.
1:08:30 Chris Ryan? Yeah, we've had wire to wire guys a couple of seasons in a row now.
1:08:32 Andy Greenwald? And guys that, you know.
1:08:34 Chris Ryan? Not in a row, but we've had, we've had them.
1:08:36 Andy Greenwald? Guys who elevate everyone else. Because if there's a frontrunner, people are chasing or trying to get more experimental. And like this season, we seem to have a lot of just fine folks.
1:08:44 Chris Ryan? Yes.
1:08:44 Andy Greenwald? Who, whose highs are not nearly as high. So that, all of that was diminishing the experience. It was a weak episode, but then to have it, to kind of have it both ways and be like, there's an exciting mystery to come. We've never had this happen before. I mean, really, it's just a bummer that one of your contestants had a health issue and you have to bring back someone.
1:09:01 Chris Ryan? I just don't under, I, I think that Survivor is just very communicative about like, this person needs to go home and here's what's gonna happen and here's this and here's that. Like, there's a lot of over explaining.
1:09:12 Andy Greenwald? Mm-hmm.
1:09:12 Chris Ryan? And I don't understand why they couldn't have done something in the edit to be like, the reason Seeger is not in Last Chance Kitchen is because Last Chance Kitchen shoots several days after the actual competition shoots on any given moment.
1:09:28 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
1:09:29 Chris Ryan? And Seeger, it was a, we were aware that Jennifer was not going to be able to finish the competition. But I, I guess my.
1:09:36 Andy Greenwald? Well, the reason is because.
1:09:37 Chris Ryan? My confusion is that.
1:09:38 Andy Greenwald? It would have spoiled the Justin element.
1:09:40 Chris Ryan? Yes, but they gave Jennifer this morning that she was gonna be eliminated if she missed any more quick fires or any other elements of the show.
1:09:48 Chris Ryan? To me, that kind of indicated that they did not think that she was going to be on the show long term.
1:09:53 Andy Greenwald? Right.
1:09:54 Chris Ryan? It's totally fine. I don't want them to kick her off in any way, but there's something strange about like, where has Seeger been now for like three days?
1:10:01 Andy Greenwald? He's in the stew room. He's just waiting, focused, drinking Josh wines.
1:10:04 Chris Ryan? Right. So, I mean, we got an email from a friend of Seeger's or from a former colleague of Seeger's that was like,
1:10:11 Andy Greenwald? Written in the first person?
1:10:12 Chris Ryan? Just not that they're feeling like the show is not capturing his personality, you know? And that I'll be interested to see what happens if he is back next week.
1:10:20 Andy Greenwald? Do you think we'll have a new Seeger when he comes back? Humboldt, rested, ready?
1:10:24 Chris Ryan? Well, I mean, there's an element of that as well, where it's like, did this guy get to like go home and conceptualize recipes for three days while everybody else is doing back to back Cracker Barrel dessert challenges?
1:10:36 Andy Greenwald? Can I throw something out there?
1:10:37 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:10:38 Andy Greenwald? It's too soon to go back to an All Stars season.
1:10:41 Chris Ryan? You won it.
1:10:42 Andy Greenwald? I think we might be approaching the time. They've done this a few other times where there have been some returning favorites who get another chance.
1:10:48 Chris Ryan? Kristen guarantees Jennifer can return whenever she wants.
1:10:52 Andy Greenwald? Sure. Although, you know, she seems very talented, but there was, I can't, like when Justin was talking about her and actually his behavior towards her and his lightened demeanor in Last Chance Kitchen, when he was freed of the stress of how she was doing, was very touching and I think really appropriate. And they seem like they have a good relationship. But he's like, she was crushing this competition before this happened. And I did not see evidence of that.
1:11:12 Chris Ryan? Well,
1:11:13 Andy Greenwald? So it's less more-
1:11:13 Chris Ryan? When does her arm get screwed up? Like the second episode, right?
1:11:16 Andy Greenwald? It's less her opportunity to excel, although maybe she will when she comes back. It's that there have been years when they have sort of just given a little, we'll goose it a little bit by bringing back some like almost, almost words and also rans, just to give it a little more verve. And I think maybe we're headed back to that.
1:11:33 Chris Ryan? Um.
1:11:34 Andy Greenwald? How would you have done? First of all, we're avail. That email address is out there to come taste things, preferably not a dessert challenge in the beautiful state of North Carolina.
1:11:44 Chris Ryan? I would have loved to have done the pepper judging.
1:11:48 Andy Greenwald? What?
1:11:48 Chris Ryan? That would have been really interesting.
1:11:49 Andy Greenwald? You, hold on. We might have to switch the lights for this. You wanted to be in the 120 degree greenhouse, eating a progressive meal
1:11:57 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:11:58 Andy Greenwald? of catastrophically hot peppers?
1:11:59 Chris Ryan? Like, do you want me to go judge Cracker Barrel food? Like, I want to go experience something that I'll never experience otherwise.
1:12:05 Andy Greenwald? I'm going to go on the right. I also would like to have new experiences. I would like to have-
1:12:10 Chris Ryan? No, you don't. You want to have the clean white fish challenge.
1:12:12 Andy Greenwald? Delicious. I'm just saying, I don't want to experience- All the new things still awaiting me on camera. Do you know what I mean?
1:12:19 Chris Ryan? Oh, I'm not worried about that. I have a pretty good constitution when it comes to that stuff.
1:12:23 Andy Greenwald? How would you do on Hot Ones?
1:12:25 Chris Ryan? Here's, I, I've talked about this before. I'm, I'm, I am. No one can hit me when it comes to Szechuan spice. Like, like.
1:12:33 Andy Greenwald? I didn't know this about you.
1:12:34 Chris Ryan? Szechuan, like.
1:12:35 Andy Greenwald? The numbing spice.
1:12:36 Chris Ryan? I'll, I'll fucking die eating that stuff. Like.
1:12:39 Andy Greenwald? Really?
1:12:40 Chris Ryan? Fly by Jing, extra fucking spicy on everything.
1:12:44 Andy Greenwald? But numbing spice is different than like the Carolina Reaper spice.
1:12:49 Chris Ryan? I know. I'm saying like, I have a different relationship to different kinds of spices. The Reapers, I never ate, Danny Chow ate one in front of me at Grantland once, and I thought he was gonna have a fucking heart attack. Um, I, I find, I just, I'd love to know. I haven't, I haven't, I haven't really dipped my toe into that.
1:13:06 Andy Greenwald? This is what keeps you young and makes me quite old. You know, your willingness.
1:13:10 Chris Ryan? To try new things.
1:13:11 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
1:13:12 Chris Ryan? But you, I think, I think that, I just have like a much more like, kind of like adventurous palate, I think. You know more what you like.
1:13:19 Andy Greenwald? No, I like to try almost anything, but I am not a fan of extremity for extremity's sake, in television or in spice.
1:13:27 Chris Ryan? I think that the Szechuan stuff opened up a new dimension of like how I like to eat food.
1:13:31 Andy Greenwald? Do you like?
1:13:31 Chris Ryan? Leaking everywhere.
1:13:32 Andy Greenwald? That's the thing. When like your ears start ringing and you're a little bit like in this reality, but also Desmond from Lost and experiencing parts of your childhood at the same time.
1:13:41 Chris Ryan? Daniel Faraday is whispering to me. Uh, do you want to do any sports before we go for After Dark?
1:13:47 Andy Greenwald? Um, yeah, where are you at? It's draft day.
1:13:49 Chris Ryan? Uh, before we do draft day, I want to ask you how many games in a row the Flyers have to win before you pay attention?
1:13:54 Andy Greenwald? It's interesting that they are, uh, having a moment right now.
1:13:57 Chris Ryan? On the precipice of sweeping the Pittsburgh Penguins.
1:14:00 Andy Greenwald? First of all, Pittsburgh is a friend to us.
1:14:03 Chris Ryan? Sure.
1:14:03 Andy Greenwald? They've given us the pit. They've given us.
1:14:05 Chris Ryan? Bain.
1:14:06 Andy Greenwald? Bain. Bain's greatest moment. They should have a plaque there. Uh, sandwiches with french fries in them. Great town. This year alone, I've been on the record as saying something true, which was, I don't think it was controversial, but it was, wasn't my greatest moment. Where I said the impediment to me watching heated rivalry wasn't the, the full frontal sex scenes, it was ice hockey. I, I am so deeply uninterested in ice hockey. I haven't, I haven't watched your beloved Shorzy.
1:14:35 Chris Ryan? No.
1:14:36 Andy Greenwald? I, I'm not a, I'm not a hockey guy.
1:14:38 Chris Ryan? Playoff hockey, there's nothing like it.
1:14:40 Andy Greenwald? That's what everyone says.
1:14:41 Chris Ryan? There's just nothing like it.
1:14:42 Andy Greenwald? Find a new slant. What do you, what do you, everyone, everyone, the only argument anyone I've ever heard, I've ever heard anyone make for hockey is playoff hockey.
1:14:50 Chris Ryan? This guy, like, this guy, uh, Tripit, uh, on the Flyers, getting his head beaten in at the end of game two.
1:14:57 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
1:14:57 Chris Ryan? And they just fucked him up in game three. Like, they came back 5-2. It was just like...
1:15:02 Andy Greenwald? How many rounds of playoffs await? This is the first round.
1:15:05 Chris Ryan? Multiple.
1:15:06 Andy Greenwald? Okay.
1:15:06 Chris Ryan? So I'll, I'll hit you up if we make it to like the conference finals. How about that?
1:15:11 Andy Greenwald? I mean, I, I am rooting for the Flyers.
1:15:14 Chris Ryan? Thanks.
1:15:14 Andy Greenwald? Above all other teams.
1:15:16 Chris Ryan? And they're also like, the thing you might like about them, young guys who seem to like each other.
1:15:20 Andy Greenwald? That is, that's what draws me to most things. Weirdly, I like beef, which is not about young guys liking each other.
1:15:26 Chris Ryan? As far as the Sixers go.
1:15:28 Andy Greenwald? That was pretty cool.
1:15:29 Chris Ryan? Not getting my hopes up, but yes, that was very cool.
1:15:31 Andy Greenwald? I, my, my trademark luck didn't turn that game.
1:15:35 Chris Ryan? Which is you checking in on it?
1:15:36 Andy Greenwald? Me? I thought, I thought by checking in on it, it would cause like the entire team to suffer Bell's palsy.
1:15:41 Chris Ryan? My question I have about draft day is what are you going to do with all your time when draft is over?
1:15:47 Andy Greenwald? First of all, unlike Mike Vrabel, I'm not taking off day three of the draft to pursue my mental health. I will be locked in across all three days. What's nice about the draft for me...
1:15:56 Chris Ryan? Honestly, the funniest thing anyone's ever done has been like, I'm gonna go into counseling after the first round.
1:16:01 Andy Greenwald? After the first two rounds. That shows respect for all involved here. I, um...
1:16:07 Chris Ryan? Can you imagine like how that conversation with his wife went, where he was like, I definitely need to go see a professional after I make four draft picks?
1:16:15 Andy Greenwald? Yes, after I spend time with the fellas. Like, I definitely would schedule all things for after the NFL season.
1:16:22 Chris Ryan? We're just gonna go to Sedona after that to just kinda like...
1:16:24 Andy Greenwald? Rebuild.
1:16:25 Chris Ryan? Yeah, debrief on the whole thing.
1:16:27 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, that's right.
1:16:28 Chris Ryan? Me and Elliot Wolf.
1:16:29 Andy Greenwald? We'll bring the whiteboard. Um, I...
1:16:32 Chris Ryan? No, what's your, what's your next obsession after the draft?
1:16:34 Andy Greenwald? You don't understand. The thing about the draft that I like so much is that after the draft, we come away with, you know, four to eight new characters in my life who actually have no accomplishments in midnight green, or Kelly green, as the case may be. Thus, I can then spend the next three or four months cleanly fantasizing about them all becoming Hall of Fame players and getting along. That will help me sleep.
1:16:57 Chris Ryan? And driving well.
1:16:57 Andy Greenwald? That will, yes.
1:17:01 Chris Ryan? I shouldn't have said that.
1:17:02 Andy Greenwald? I always, well, or Big Dom will drive them. That's what I thrive on. That's my preferred mode of sports. I'm beginning to think that I'm an offseason warrior.
1:17:11 Chris Ryan? Oh, I definitely think you are.
1:17:12 Andy Greenwald? Have you always thought that?
1:17:13 Chris Ryan? Yes. Not in a bad way, but I think that this is where you thrive, is in narratives.
1:17:17 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
1:17:17 Chris Ryan? And in media, but not necessarily in game tape.
1:17:21 Andy Greenwald? And in like parasocial friendship projecting.
1:17:24 Chris Ryan? That's fine.
1:17:25 Andy Greenwald? Of like, well, you're all in the same draft class, fellas. And then, and then the Instagram mods for like Philadelphia Eagles will post them of like showing up at the NovaCare complex. And I'll be like, look at that, they fit right in.
1:17:37 Chris Ryan? We should do a bit of you doing the Carey Mulligan thing from Beef, like wearing a red light mask and like flipping through.
1:17:43 Andy Greenwald? And it was just me rewatching when Howie Roseman called Jaylen Hunt and he said, what's up, big pimpin? But I'm crying because there have been nights like that. Here's something, here's something you can guarantee. If you ever need my attention, anyone in the, anywhere in the world, you people I know, strangers, just go near me and play the video of how we drafted Cooper DeJean. It's like three minutes cut together to make it seem like it was fait accompli, you know, it was all easy. If that auto plays in any moment of my life.
1:18:13 Chris Ryan? It's like you're taking a bump. It's like.
1:18:15 Andy Greenwald? I'm just, it's like you, you at Hot Pot. I dissociate completely and I live only in that reality.
1:18:22 Chris Ryan? Uh, it's been wonderful talking with you today. I did, I really did enjoy talking about Beef with you.
1:18:27 Andy Greenwald? It was good, see?
1:18:28 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
1:18:29 Andy Greenwald? No, the only thing that Beef was lacking, chili crisp.
1:18:34 Chris Ryan? Seriously. Uh, Sarah, Kai, Kai, thank you so much for producing and, and cutting and directing and lighting and making sure that we put our best foot forward.
1:18:44 Andy Greenwald? Well, I think our wardrobe person took the day off.
1:18:46 Chris Ryan? On Monday, on Monday, we're going to talk about Euphoria, episode three.
1:18:53 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
1:18:53 Chris Ryan? And we're going to talk about maybe the last few episodes of Beef and maybe there's some other stuff to chat about.
1:18:57 Andy Greenwald? Well, we, we actually made a blood oath that we would check out the audacity at some point.
1:19:02 Chris Ryan? Yes.
1:19:03 Andy Greenwald? So we should probably do that.
1:19:04 Chris Ryan? Um, I'm going to Ohio this weekend, so.
1:19:06 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, boots on the ground reporting.
1:19:07 Chris Ryan? I know, I'll, I'll get to the bottom of Burberry.
1:19:09 Andy Greenwald? Would you begin Monday's show with kind of like a verbal column in the style of Thomas Friedman in the New York Times? About taking a cab ride and what you observed.
1:19:20 Chris Ryan? In this Ohio farm-to-table restaurant.
1:19:23 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
1:19:24 Chris Ryan? People are wondering what.
1:19:26 Andy Greenwald? You could do it.
1:19:26 Chris Ryan? Thanks, everybody, for listening and watching. We'll talk to you guys on Monday.
1:19:38 Chris Ryan? Now streaming on Paramount+. I'm Dexter Morgan. I've been killing killers for half my life. It gets to you. You're having a midlife crisis. I'm not ready for that. He's back. I'm older. I'm wiser.
1:19:53 Speaker 06 And sharper than ever. Things are gonna get messy. But if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything. Dexter Resurrection. New season now streaming on the Paramount+ Premium Plan.
1:20:09 Speaker 06 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.
Previous ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ Footage, ‘Euphoria’ S3E2, and ‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles’ Episodes 1-3 Next ‘Beef’ Season 2 With Creator Lee Sung Jin. Plus, ‘Euphoria’ Season 3, Episode 3 and ‘House of the Dragon’ S3 Teaser. Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated