‘Widow’s Bay’ Is One of Apple’s Boldest Swings Yet. Plus, ‘Top Chef’ Restaurant Wars.

Chris and Andy talk about the news that Laura Dern is replacing Helena Bonham Carter in ‘The White Lotus’ Season 4 (9:15), Yung Lean’s dazzling new music video (4:08), and the updated box office tracking of ‘The Mandalorian & Grogu’ (16:31). Then, they discuss the first two episodes of ‘Widow’s Bay,’ the Apple TV series starring Matthew Rhys, and highlight how the show seamlessly balances elements of horror and comedy (19:32). Later, they react to ‘Top Chef’ Season 23, Episode 8 (57:02). Finally, The Watch: After Dark (01:08:58). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Additional Video Supervision: Donald LoBianco Order and it will come. Like today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:05Speaker 00

  I need sports staff to clear the room.

• 0:08Chris Ryan?

  Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. And joining me in the studio, looking for the next Martha's Vineyard, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 0:22Andy Greenwald?

  I'm excited for today's show, kind of a genre zag.

• 0:25Chris Ryan?

  It is a genre zag, especially from the scaredy cat across from me here. Andy, we are going to be talking about Widows Bay, which is a new show on Apple TV. We're going to talk about Top Chef. We have a little bit of news at the top. We have some, a grab bag of popular culture that we're going to hit on from the world of movies and music and television. It's great to see you. It's Thursday. We can keep, let our hair down. If we have hair, let it down.

• 0:47Andy Greenwald?

  You want to unveil something?

• 0:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, my trip to Turkey.

• 0:51Andy Greenwald?

  Is this time?

• 0:52Chris Ryan?

  It fucking worked out.

• 0:53Andy Greenwald?

  Can I, can I ask you a quick question before we get into it?

• 0:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 0:56Andy Greenwald?

  About podcasting. I, you know, as always, I am a dedicated follower of your appearances across the podcasting space. And I really was enjoying your appearance on the Bill Simmons podcast.

• 1:06Chris Ryan?

  Until?

• 1:06Andy Greenwald?

  The other day.

• 1:07Chris Ryan?

  There's no but.

• 1:07Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. But I was, so you kindly went on the Bill Simmons podcast. You had an invitation to come on, I think, in the assumption that you would be there to be.

• 1:16Chris Ryan?

  So I will say this.

• 1:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:18Chris Ryan?

  To Bill's credit.

• 1:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:19Chris Ryan?

  I was on Bill Simmons's pod the other day. Typically, I have gone on in humiliating moments in Philadelphia sports. And sometimes it feels a little humiliating for me personally.

• 1:29Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 1:29Chris Ryan?

  That being said, days before, Bill was like, you haven't been on in the NBA playoffs, have you? And I was like, I have it. And then he hit me up on Tuesday and was like, are you around? I was supposed to do the mailbag with them that morning, I think. And instead came on for the night shift with, with Late Night House.

• 1:45Andy Greenwald?

  And which is a great team. You guys are great together. I, I thought that you guys were going to suggest some local, like, Kill Rock Stars bands to be cheap halftime entertainment.

• 1:56Chris Ryan?

  Did you get to the late, the late part of the pod?

• 1:58Andy Greenwald?

  I'm getting there.

• 1:59Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:59Andy Greenwald?

  But here's my point. I want to bring this relevant. This is not just for the sports heads out there.

• 2:02Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:02Andy Greenwald?

  So you came on feeling good about the Sixers had a really nice victory. And he wanted to talk about Derrick White.

• 2:09Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 2:09Andy Greenwald?

  And how he was slightly disappointing. What is the TV equivalent of that? If I came on here and I was like, Chris, Beef Season 2 is everything I want in a TV show this year. And you were like, Ali Wong kinda didn't show up this year. And I just kinda focused on what she was doing instead. Like, how could we do that for TV?

• 2:28Chris Ryan?

  I-

• 2:29Andy Greenwald?

  To each other?

• 2:29Chris Ryan?

  I don't mean to throw this back at you, but is it kinda like talking about Euphoria without ever having watched Euphoria?

• 2:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. However, now you're giving me ideas that what I could do instead is just talk about how I spent my Sunday nights in 2018 and 2021, or whenever that show came up.

• 2:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:48Andy Greenwald?

  Made a nice dinner?

• 2:49Chris Ryan?

  I-

• 2:49Andy Greenwald?

  Went to bed?

• 2:49Chris Ryan?

  I was wondering if you heard the Greenwald bait at the end of that whole segment.

• 2:53Andy Greenwald?

  I haven't made it there yet, no.

• 2:54Chris Ryan?

  Okay. All right, there's something in there for you.

• 2:56Andy Greenwald?

  There's a little Easter egg for me?

• 2:57Chris Ryan?

  Well, cuz I believe this argument started during the LA Confidential taping that you were obviously a part of.

• 3:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 3:04Chris Ryan?

  But there has been like this, like, rolling debate between me and Bill and others about R E M versus the Replacements.

• 3:12Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I heard that you touched on this.

• 3:14Chris Ryan?

  And I did-

• 3:15Andy Greenwald?

  You heard?

• 3:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Oh, like in the Washington Post?

• 3:18Andy Greenwald?

  No, what I do is I talk to people who listen to the podcast. I just have like, remember, remember Varus on Game of Thrones? Like, I have a little army of, what do you call them? Little birds?

• 3:28Chris Ryan?

  Master of whispers, yeah.

• 3:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I've got some podcast birds.

• 3:30Chris Ryan?

  Little birds. And we, you know, a lot of the problem with this argument is that the parameters of the, what are we arguing about is not quite clear. Like, I can tell Bill wants to just say R E M's better than the Replacements, which he's more than welcome to say, but his point is more like, you guys think that the Replacements were bigger, but R E M was the biggest. And I'm like, I have no doubt.

• 3:51Andy Greenwald?

  That's true.

• 3:52Chris Ryan?

  I was there.

• 3:52Andy Greenwald?

  That's objectively true.

• 3:54Chris Ryan?

  But-

• 3:54Andy Greenwald?

  R E M briefly was the biggest band in the world.

• 3:56Chris Ryan?

  But I can imagine you are R E M over Replacements guy.

• 4:00Andy Greenwald?

  This is a head versus heart thing. This is tough. I-

• 4:03Chris Ryan?

  You are one of the biggest R E M fans I know.

• 4:05Andy Greenwald?

  R E M is my gateway, R E M is my everything. Like, R E, here's, you know, prior to this moment, I think the most revealing and nerdy, nerdiest thing I've ever said about my own self-lawer on this podcast was talking about the Twin Peaks fanzine I made on dot Matrix printers in my middle school.

• 4:21Chris Ryan?

  It's nice that you think that's the nerdiest thing you've said on this podcast, but that's okay.

• 4:25Andy Greenwald?

  About my past. Everything since then, when you were watching Euphoria, is fair game.

• 4:33Andy Greenwald?

  My best friend Lara and I were so into R E M in like 1990. That we made our parents take us to Athens, Georgia. We begged to have a spring break trip to Athens, Georgia. Just to be in the town they were from. And I believe, unconfirmed, 30 plus years later, I believe maybe we met their manager's mother.

• 4:56Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's nice. How did you do that? Did you walk around Athens being like, R E M, R E M, please come out?

• 5:03Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, you know, you have to do it more in code, you know? You know, you have to sort of do like, like sing little scraps of song, song H like into bushes? And then maybe some people will come out. No, I was like, you know, you would, one had read in a magazine that like Michael Stipe enjoyed the vegetarian hot dog.

• 5:19Chris Ryan?

  You just drove down 95 to Athens, Georgia?

• 5:21Andy Greenwald?

  No, we flew. We flew in an airplane.

• 5:23Chris Ryan?

  Must be nice.

• 5:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it was, listen, the economics were different then. You know what I mean? A family of four could take a trip to a college town without bankrupting the whole year.

• 5:33Chris Ryan?

  Were you doing it under the auspice of an early college visit?

• 5:36Andy Greenwald?

  I was 13.

• 5:37Chris Ryan?

  There would be.

• 5:38Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, it was purely, I can't believe this. Like now I'm on the other side of this. And if my children were like, please, please take us to the home of the creator of the amazing digital circus. The weird cartoon that's on Netflix. I would say, I would say, who's this? Why are you texting me? But they, but my, our moms took us on this trip to do relatively nothing.

• 6:04Chris Ryan?

  If I, if Faust came to me, you know, wait, is Faust the guy that the devil makes a deal with? Or is Faust?

• 6:10Andy Greenwald?

  I think if Faust came to you, he'd be like, don't take the deal.

• 6:13Chris Ryan?

  Okay, if I was offered a devil's deal where I had to do something terrible, but I got to know. What your life would have been like if you had attended the University of Georgia.

• 6:23Andy Greenwald?

  First of all, drafted by Howie Roseman.

• 6:27Andy Greenwald?

  I would have been, I would have been a 11th year senior water boy.

• 6:32Chris Ryan?

  Still have eligibility.

• 6:33Andy Greenwald?

  Still have some eligibility left. No, but to your question.

• 6:36Chris Ryan?

  Red shirting for anxiety every year.

• 6:40Andy Greenwald?

  Any red shirt for anxiety?

• 6:41Chris Ryan?

  I'm sure. Now you can.

• 6:43Andy Greenwald?

  Can I do it right now? Because I feel a little exposed. The, so R E M was like my gateway drug to all indie music and was my favorite band when I was a kid. And then from there, I went to other places, including discovering The Replacements, who became much more important to me like high school into college.

• 7:00Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 7:00Andy Greenwald?

  So I kinda can't do it. But if the argument is who is objectively bigger, it's unquestionably R E M, but Replace, The Replacements whole, the reason we love them is because they were so self-defeating and such a giant mess.

• 7:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think also there was like a definitive cutoff point where R E M obviously stopped touring. Bill Berry left the band. They made like one or two more records after Bill Berry, even without Bill Berry?

• 7:20Andy Greenwald?

  They, they continued to make records and tour for 14 more years.

• 7:24Chris Ryan?

  Well, I guess I got my facts wrong there. I just was, there was something about like the.

• 7:28Andy Greenwald?

  But that, that was the end of the.

• 7:30Chris Ryan?

  Had a little bit more like mythology, not mythology, like there was a little bit more like, do you think they'll ever get back together? Do you think they'll ever tour again?

• 7:37Andy Greenwald?

  And then they did.

• 7:38Chris Ryan?

  And then they did.

• 7:39Andy Greenwald?

  Did you go to that show?

• 7:39Chris Ryan?

  I didn't. But I'm not actually a big reunion show guy.

• 7:43Andy Greenwald?

  You just, you know what I was doing at that moment? I was slowly pulling in the high ground, like I just won a big handed poker and you just yanked the tablecloth and took it back.

• 7:52Chris Ryan?

  No, it's not that. I just, I, I've seen, I think of the reunion shows that I've seen.

• 7:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 7:58Chris Ryan?

  Mission of Burma is still by far the best.

• 7:59Andy Greenwald?

  Cool. Do you go to the My Bloody Valentine show?

• 8:03Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 8:04Andy Greenwald?

  I think that I have structural damage still to my sternum.

• 8:08Chris Ryan?

  Wait, which, which era?

• 8:09Andy Greenwald?

  At Roseland, like, I don't know, 15, 16 years ago.

• 8:13Chris Ryan?

  No, I didn't. Do you still have like bad hearing because of that?

• 8:16Andy Greenwald?

  Huh? Sorry? I felt it in my bones. This is, by the way, we haven't had like a meeting with the higher ups in Sweden recently, but I imagine this is doing numbers. Like this is the best way, this is the best way to start a podcast.

• 8:26Chris Ryan?

  I think it's okay to open with like a little bit of chatter. It's, that's my, as the executive producer of the show.

• 8:31Andy Greenwald?

  So are you and House on the, is your point that like you like The Replacements more or they've lasted longer?

• 8:34Chris Ryan?

  I think we were more like, Bill, Bill was sort of trying to say like, I have great music taste and House and I were, I think, a little bit rejecting that. House also referenced Minor Threat and Fugazi.

• 8:46Andy Greenwald?

  Hell yeah.

• 8:47Chris Ryan?

  Which I think might be the first time those bands have come up on any of Bill's podcasts and in the 20 years he's been doing it or whatever.

• 8:53Andy Greenwald?

  I think the word's minor. And the words threat have appeared.

• 8:56Chris Ryan?

  They might be like Franz Wagner is a minor threat to get 18 points tonight.

• 9:00Andy Greenwald?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 9:01Chris Ryan?

  But I mean, the band minor threat.

• 9:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 9:03Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk a little bit about.

• 9:04Andy Greenwald?

  The Chicago front office strategy is Fugazi right now. How is that?

• 9:07Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 9:08Andy Greenwald?

  See, I can do it.

• 9:09Chris Ryan?

  There is no front office.

• 9:10Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 9:11Chris Ryan?

  Uh, okay, there's not a lot of TV news this week.

• 9:14Andy Greenwald?

  There's some culture news.

• 9:15Chris Ryan?

  Uh, we could do this, which is Laura Dern is replacing Helena Bonham Carter. We talked about that on Monday on White Lotus.

• 9:21Andy Greenwald?

  Laura Dern replacing Helena Bonham Carter, Graham Plathner replacing Janet Mills. Who you got?

• 9:26Chris Ryan?

  He's not replacing her, she just ran out of dough.

• 9:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, well.

• 9:29Chris Ryan?

  That's what happens when you run up against socialist. All of those small donations, you know? That's how I get by.

• 9:37Chris Ryan?

  Every guy gives me a buck.

• 9:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, every guy who sees you?

• 9:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:40Andy Greenwald?

  Awesome.

• 9:40Chris Ryan?

  Um.

• 9:41Andy Greenwald?

  That's great. Laura Dern, Mike White reunited.

• 9:44Chris Ryan?

  Here's the question, is, you know, the White Lotus, the Natasha Rothwell character, the Jennifer Coolidge character, obviously connective tissues in multiple seasons. Laura Dern, voice acted in season two.

• 9:57Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:58Chris Ryan?

  As Dominic DeGrasso is Michael Imperiali Ollie's character's wife. Do you think Mike White got in his bag and was like, she's, she's coming to France?

• 10:10Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's an option. That's a very cool idea. That, that hadn't occurred to me.

• 10:14Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I, there's something about the immediacy with which this happened, you know? And if you were like, I have to create a whole new character out of whole cloth and why they're here and what their role is, because it did sound like he was like, we're scrapping that character.

• 10:29Andy Greenwald?

  It, it, don't you think it's a little bit like when we needed a first guest for Stick the Landing and somehow you got the call?

• 10:35Chris Ryan?

  Was I first?

• 10:36Andy Greenwald?

  Well, on our list, yeah.

• 10:38Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 10:38Andy Greenwald?

  We actually changed the scheduling a little bit so you didn't, you know, we don't want

• 10:41Chris Ryan?

  to get into. Behind the scenes stuff?

• 10:42Andy Greenwald?

  But, but you know what I mean? Like Laura, they clearly have a, a, a deep connection and creative relationship.

• 10:47Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 10:48Andy Greenwald?

  Under the circumstances that they are currently filming. And what's interesting, you know, that was an easy call to make. I think what's interesting is what you said is the most interesting thing. Slightly below that was just in the, the, the release that he was writing an entirely new character for her, which suggests. Like I lazily assumed that that character was in some way connected to Steve Coogan's character. Like, maybe they were a couple.

• 11:10Chris Ryan?

  Two roots.

• 11:12Andy Greenwald?

  My other favorite thing is the White Lotus is like normie famous now in the way that like I saw there were tabloid photos of like Helena Bonham Carter in first photos since shock White Lotus exit. And it just looks like Helena Bonham Carter.

• 11:25Chris Ryan?

  What periodical was this?

• 11:28Andy Greenwald?

  The Tatler? I don't know.

• 11:29Chris Ryan?

  What was it? Was it Daily Mail?

• 11:31Andy Greenwald?

  Probably. I mean, I saw I saw this on on the internet's front page Reddit, but like she's just, she just looks like Helena Bonham Carter.

• 11:38Chris Ryan?

  Sure. She's probably just like, I'm going to Pratt, you know?

• 11:40Andy Greenwald?

  Genuinely so. But she did not look particularly troubled or different.

• 11:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:45Andy Greenwald?

  That's cool.

• 11:47Chris Ryan?

  That'll be interesting if the Daily Mail and the New York Post and whatever gets like involved with like set photos of White Lotus if it's achieved that status. I'm sure it actually has.

• 11:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 11:56Chris Ryan?

  You don't want to be in that paper. It's never a good thing if you show up in in the New York Post.

• 12:02Andy Greenwald?

  I'm trying to think. I'm trying to think the alternative of that. Like if you if you hit a game winning home run for the Mets.

• 12:07Chris Ryan?

  That's possible. Right.

• 12:07Andy Greenwald?

  Which I mean, is that possible?

• 12:09Chris Ryan?

  Nine. Don't come on. Don't tempt fate. Nine times out of 10, if you're in the New York Post, it's a bad thing.

• 12:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. Have you ever been in the New York Post?

• 12:20Chris Ryan?

  Kind of. I think I appeared in a story that my wife was wrote in like 2002, 2003.

• 12:29Andy Greenwald?

  Was it about subway surfers?

• 12:30Chris Ryan?

  No, honestly, it was about the smoking ban and whether it was still being enforced.

• 12:34Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:34Chris Ryan?

  And so.

• 12:35Andy Greenwald?

  It was, you mean, like in 2002?

• 12:37Chris Ryan?

  Whenever.

• 12:38Andy Greenwald?

  It was new.

• 12:38Chris Ryan?

  Mike kicked it in. When did you do that?

• 12:41Andy Greenwald?

  So you're saying it was like on the heels of the ban?

• 12:43Chris Ryan?

  I feel like he let us smoke after 9/11 for a little while. When did he ban cigarettes? No, Giuliani threw 9/11.

• 12:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 12:49Chris Ryan?

  And then Bloomberg comes in and oh.

• 12:50Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, we that was in the backdrop of 9/11 was the mayoral election.

• 12:55Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 12:55Andy Greenwald?

  You know?

• 12:56Chris Ryan?

  Well, I just remember Rudy at Yankee Stadium.

• 12:58Andy Greenwald?

  Mark Green would have let you keep smoking, probably.

• 13:00Chris Ryan?

  Um, was he another candidate?

• 13:02Andy Greenwald?

  He was the presumptive next mayor of New York until 9/11 happened. And then Giuliani was like, I gotta stay mayor.

• 13:09Chris Ryan?

  Oh, right. You're such a good custodian of New York political history.

• 13:13Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's important.

• 13:14Chris Ryan?

  Um, okay. So we have the Laura Dern thing.

• 13:16Andy Greenwald?

  I'm sorry. Were you pro or con in Phoebe's article?

• 13:19Chris Ryan?

  I was. I know. I did research. I like helped her.

• 13:24Andy Greenwald?

  What were the places you went to see if they were gonna?

• 13:26Chris Ryan?

  We were up on like the Upper East Side. And it was like going to different bars and I like we all we kind of like split up 25 bars, which in New York is like three blocks and you that's

• 13:36Andy Greenwald?

  Rookie numbers, by the way.

• 13:37Chris Ryan?

  And you just walk in and you'd say to the bartender like you'd have it you'd order you have to order something and then you'd be like

• 13:42Andy Greenwald?

  Oh no, wait, you had to get a drink too?

• 13:44Chris Ryan?

  Are we allowed to smoke? And you know, you wouldn't you wouldn't expose them, but you would be like percentage wise, you know, in this sample size, like this is how many people are still letting you smoke.

• 13:53Andy Greenwald?

  Are you willing to do that again?

• 13:55Chris Ryan?

  I don't think anybody would let me do it, especially not out here. All they care about is wellness.

• 13:59Andy Greenwald?

  Would you try that?

• 14:01Chris Ryan?

  No, I mean, there's I don't really smoke that much.

• 14:04Andy Greenwald?

  Don't the legend is better than reality.

• 14:08Chris Ryan?

  I don't know how to segue to this. You wanted to talk about a music video.

• 14:11Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I just thought it was great.

• 14:13Chris Ryan?

  Can you set it up a little bit?

• 14:14Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't have in front of me, but like this is no Yung Lean's video.

• 14:17Chris Ryan?

  Swedish rapper turned crooner, I guess, in some ways, Yung Lean.

• 14:22Andy Greenwald?

  Multi-talented fellow.

• 14:23Chris Ryan?

  He did a song with a, I think, producers named Generation.

• 14:27Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 14:27Chris Ryan?

  Or producer, I'm sorry, I don't know. And he put out like a two-part epic single and Romaine Goffres.

• 14:36Andy Greenwald?

  That's your man.

• 14:37Chris Ryan?

  Who I like his filmmaking quite a bit.

• 14:40Andy Greenwald?

  Is he Costa's son?

• 14:41Chris Ryan?

  He did, he is. Is that an nepo baby to you?

• 14:44Andy Greenwald?

  Jury's out.

• 14:45Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 14:47Chris Ryan?

  It's heavily, heavily influenced by Toshiaki Toyoda's Blue Spring, a Japanese film from a while ago. It's basically about a bunch of prep school kids beating the shit out of each other and treating each other terribly. But in this Yung Lean video.

• 15:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 15:05Chris Ryan?

  There is like a last

• 15:06Andy Greenwald?

  14 second mark.

• 15:07Chris Ryan?

  A coda, like a kind of four or five minute endpoint where it's just got this incredible choreography and you texted me last night delighted about it.

• 15:15Andy Greenwald?

  I was partly joking that we should talk about that as a main text.

• 15:18Chris Ryan?

  You didn't say I'm joking, you said, let's talk about this tomorrow.

• 15:23Andy Greenwald?

  That's probably, that does sound like me. You got me. That's my classic, straight down the middle.

• 15:29Chris Ryan?

  This has become quite a big thing on the internet, though.

• 15:31Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I just thought, I mean, it just, it just filled me with joy because choreography is the best special effect in the world. And it was incredible to see something, just, it just felt really exciting.

• 15:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:40Andy Greenwald?

  To, of all the things that are thrown at us and like all these harrowing images of Helena Bonham Carter shopping, untroubled by being fired from a television show, to see something that was so viscerally thrilling, exhilarating, shocking, new, magnetic, and it's just, it's just dancing.

• 15:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:57Andy Greenwald?

  And it's, it's an incredible one-shot and we can still make stuff. And that's pretty much where I was at with it. I thought it was beautiful.

• 16:02Chris Ryan?

  I thought it was fabulous filmmaking and I also just like really love it like every couple of years, maybe every year. You know, you get an example of the music video is like a still really viable form, which is really cool. And the pod's called The Watch. We tell people what to watch. They should watch this.

• 16:19Andy Greenwald?

  Or we just say what we've watched.

• 16:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but like I think people draft off us, you know, like they're like, where could we go that these guys have been?

• 16:26Andy Greenwald?

  I think they use us, a couple of other pods, and they make a consensus big board and then they, they watch what they want to watch.

• 16:31Chris Ryan?

  Should we get to the, the main event today?

• 16:33Andy Greenwald?

  You're, you're being very silent on the Mando and Grogu numbers.

• 16:35Chris Ryan?

  Talk to me about them.

• 16:36Andy Greenwald?

  No, I got nothing. They're just like, it hit tracking and it's, it's now projected to make $80 million over Memorial Day weekend, which is, which is quite a large amount of money.

• 16:44Chris Ryan?

  I guess like in retrospect, I don't know what I thought would be a, I did not think that this movie was going to perform up to expectations. I, I maybe, I would be very curious to see if it gets over, what is it, I think, considered the Star Wars Mendoza line, which is Solo's box office numbers?

• 17:00Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think the, the argument that they are going to make, which I think will be interesting to watch the spin, will be, we didn't spend that much on this. And haha, we got you to watch a TV show in the movie theater. They won't add the haha part. That's me editorializing, but. There will be an enormous amount of spin on background and on foreground saying, "This is actually a different, you dummies don't get it. This is a different strategy."

• 17:24Chris Ryan?

  Because it's a part of like a huge, like, multi-platform storytelling initiative?

• 17:29Andy Greenwald?

  No, that we just didn't spend very much money on this. And so, we spend more on marketing and the number we got to is profitable for us. Whereas, even if it makes the exact same amount of, and I would believe this, this isn't necessarily spin. If it makes the exact same amount of money as Solo, I would imagine this movie is going to be more profitable. Because Solo was a famously tortured development process in which the director was replaced, directors were replaced like two-thirds of the way through. That was going to lose money regardless to a degree that we probably will never know the full extent of. Whereas, this maybe it won't, but all of that is them spinning the fact that this kind of just looks like a Verizon commercial.

• 18:07Chris Ryan?

  Is there any interest in your household in seeing this?

• 18:12Andy Greenwald?

  None.

• 18:12Chris Ryan?

  None?

• 18:13Andy Greenwald?

  But they also have no interest in Star Wars.

• 18:14Chris Ryan?

  Right. I don't know, maybe they were just like, "Grogu's cute."

• 18:18Andy Greenwald?

  Nope, no, no interest in Star Wars, no interest in Harry Potter. It's weird, the way that they're uninterested in specific properties.

• 18:26Chris Ryan?

  R E M.

• 18:27Andy Greenwald?

  That their father couldn't care less. One day, we'll figure out what the common denominator is.

• 18:31Chris Ryan?

  Uh, yeah, I mean, the anticipation for this, I think I've gone from like, "I won't be seeing this," to like, "I'll see this out of professional obligation," I suppose.

• 18:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, alright.

• 18:40Chris Ryan?

  But...

• 18:41Andy Greenwald?

  Does that mean Sean begged you to see it?

• 18:43Chris Ryan?

  No, nobody begged me to do anything. I mean, it's just, uh... Nobody does. I mean, it's not like anybody's just like, "Please, see Mando."

• 18:51Andy Greenwald?

  Josh Demaro on the phone.

• 18:54Chris Ryan?

  It's either I'm gonna have to cut 1,300 more jobs if you don't go see Mando.

• 18:59Chris 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 has 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.

• 19:32Chris Ryan?

  All right, let's get to the main thing, because this is an exciting-

• 19:34Andy Greenwald?

  It is.

• 19:35Chris Ryan?

  Development.

• 19:35Andy Greenwald?

  We are not stalling.

• 19:36Chris Ryan?

  Widows Bay is a new show that's on Apple TV. The first two episodes are already up, although I believe the listed release date was the 29th. I think it went up maybe a little early, maybe I don't know how to really read release dates. It's created by Katie Dippold, who is a pretty accomplished screenwriter, who did a pretty hilarious Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy movie that he worked on, the Ghostbusters reboot, worked on Parks and Rec-

• 19:59Andy Greenwald?

  And is responsible-

• 20:00Chris Ryan?

  For-

• 20:01Andy Greenwald?

  -one of the greatest tweets of all time.

• 20:02Chris Ryan?

  You are the key master of social media, you tell me.

• 20:06Andy Greenwald?

  Remembering the time that I dressed, my friends were having a Halloween party, and I dressed up as the Babadook, and it was really more of an adults drinking wine situation.

• 20:15Chris Ryan?

  And isn't there a picture of her dressed as the Babadook, with everybody else is dressed normally?

• 20:19Andy Greenwald?

  Lives rent-free in my head forever. And weirdly, that tweet, I think, is more relevant to this show than some of her other credits.

• 20:25Chris Ryan?

  So it's created, the first episode written by Katie Dippold, and then it's directed by, I think in its entirety?

• 20:32Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, non-in its entirety, but you know, it's Hero Moray, the great Hero Moray, Atlanta-

• 20:37Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Station 11.

• 20:39Andy Greenwald?

  But the other, but the other directors on this are Andrew DeYoung, who did Friendship and works with Tim Robinson, T. West, who I think has done-

• 20:45Chris Ryan?

  Ty, yeah.

• 20:46Andy Greenwald?

  Ty West has done some films that you have seen and I have not.

• 20:50Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 20:50Andy Greenwald?

  Um, Hero did, I believe, five-

• 20:53Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 20:53Andy Greenwald?

  -of the 10.

• 20:54Chris Ryan?

  The logline for this is, quote, "A skeptical mayor of a New England town refuses to bow to the superstitions of the residents who claim that the place is cursed." It stars Matthew Reese, a pod favorite, as Mayor Tom Loftus, Kate O'Flynn, now a watch favorite, who plays his colleague Patricia in City Hall.

• 21:13Andy Greenwald?

  She's a British West End favorite.

• 21:15Chris Ryan?

  And was in a show that I loved a lot called My Lady Jane from-

• 21:19Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, that she was in that.

• 21:20Chris Ryan?

  About two years ago, yeah, and she's fantastic in that. And then it has basically a that guy, character actor, all-star team.

• 21:29Andy Greenwald?

  Take the cast conversation, put it down the road a minute, because I can't wait to talk about that.

• 21:33Chris Ryan?

  This show is awesome.

• 21:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 21:34Chris Ryan?

  Uh, these first two episodes are fantastic. I think this is the best use of Apple's money, because I think, looks like they bought a town, like they bought an island-

• 21:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 21:44Chris Ryan?

  Uh, that I've seen since the iPhone 14.

• 21:47Andy Greenwald?

  The MacBook Neo is pretty cool. I saw it in the store the other day.

• 21:50Chris Ryan?

  Uh, no, this is, this is what I- This is what I want Apple TV to be doing more of and to be trying more of. And when you see what Katie Dippold and Hero Morde do with the first two episodes, you're gonna be like, why does everything else look like and feel like what it looks like and feels like?

• 22:08Andy Greenwald?

  And why is everything else written the way that it's like? I think this is phenomenal. This is, we are, we are suddenly in the clover here. Cause I love Beef Season Two and I think this show is astounding. Like I, this is, this is gonna mean something to you. I watched the pilot twice.

• 22:24Chris Ryan?

  Did you?

• 22:25Andy Greenwald?

  I don't watch anything twice. That Yung Lean video, I barely remember it.

• 22:30Andy Greenwald?

  I think this shit-

• 22:31Chris Ryan?

  You should start sending me like 18 things you wanna talk about on the podcast and then be like, oh, I wasn't serious about hockey.

• 22:37Andy Greenwald?

  That's, hockey's the one thing I don't text you 18 times a day about. That was cherry picking. I text you constantly. I, I thought this was just like a revelatory and joyful-

• 22:48Chris Ryan?

  So good.

• 22:48Andy Greenwald?

  Experience. And one of the places we should start, and, and I, I wanna get in the weeds with it because all of the small details are so expert. And it's not just the production values of where it's shot. It's the filters on the cameras that Hero is using to make it look and feel a certain way with such taste and aestheticism and specificity. But also in watching the pilot, what I was finding myself admiring so deeply was the very, very classy and subtle ways and efficient ways that Widows Bay achieves exposition. Where in the flurry of action that opened the show in the first six or seven minutes, there's a phone call to the police chief, who's another one of these great Mount Rushmore of that guys. It's Kevin Carroll, who we loved on The Leftovers.

• 23:31Andy Greenwald?

  And in their first interaction, Kevin Carroll's chief of police says, why do you wanna be, why are you mayor of this town if you hate everyone in it? And it's just another little brick to build a character in the flow of the show.

• 23:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there's-

• 23:41Andy Greenwald?

  But the biggest thing we have to talk about, I'm sorry to cut you off, is the fact that this show walks a tight, a genre tightrope that I did not believe to be possible.

• 23:49Chris Ryan?

  It is possible, but-

• 23:51Andy Greenwald?

  You have to educate me on this.

• 23:52Chris Ryan?

  So, this, this show mixes comedy and horror. And there are-

• 23:57Chris Ryan?

  Comedies that have scary moments and there are horror movies that have funny moments, but blending the two genres seamlessly is difficult. I'll give you a couple of examples that I think did it well. Cabin in the Woods.

• 24:11Chris Ryan?

  I think you could make the argument that there are elements of Scream, the Scream franchise, that where they indulge in like a kind of meta horror comedy that like where they're

• 24:19Andy Greenwald?

  Awareness of the tropes?

• 24:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, commenting on what's happening. Fright Night, I mean, there's plenty of examples like

• 24:25Andy Greenwald?

  I like Fright Night.

• 24:26Chris Ryan?

  People might even consider Ghostbusters to be like a little bit of a comedy horror, although I don't think it's like super scary.

• 24:32Andy Greenwald?

  The library scene.

• 24:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but it's a difficult thing to pull off because it's,

• 24:38Chris Ryan?

  if you're being funny when you're being scared, you wind up either not being funny or deflating the fear. You're just deflating the scares. And I think sometimes it can be a pressure valve release for people, but like for the most part, when it comes to horror, I like it treated fairly seriously. Like I want to, I want to lose myself in the moment and really feel like, what's happening on screen could or is happening. You know, it's like that, that's part of the joy of it is the visceral kind of like present tense of it.

• 25:08Andy Greenwald?

  Not to muddy the waters, but you had me watch the Resident Evil trailer

• 25:11Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:11Andy Greenwald?

  just a moment ago. And I will not be seeing the film, but I was able to admire exactly what you're saying

• 25:18Chris Ryan?

  It's fucking intense.

• 25:19Andy Greenwald?

  It was intense and it was visceral and there was seemingly as much attention paid to like the physicality of like bodies dropping or tentacle, like whatever. It is in reality. So what you see and feel visually is incredibly captivating

• 25:35Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 25:35Andy Greenwald?

  and present. If, if the main character of Resident Evil in the trailer like turned, did a Jim Halpert face to the camera, it would definitely make me relax more and would undercut the whole point of it. And, and this show is not, that's not what Widows Bay does. So what the path that it chooses feels unique to me and fair and quite artful.

• 25:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I would say that most of the comic moments or the punchlines in this or the comedy moments are very situational so far.

• 26:02Andy Greenwald?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:03Chris Ryan?

  So they are not glib, kind of mugging, everybody's sort of talking like they're James Gunn characters kind of comedy. It's Everything is about like, there's a specific character that Matthew Reese is playing, and he has very specific people working around him, and all the comedy becomes out of character. All the comedy comes out of like, this guy's like this, this woman is like this, and there's like these funny interactions that they have. But on top of that is the possibility that these people are all living in like a Stephen King nightmare, where there's fog rolling in, there could be zombies, whatever, what have you.

• 26:41Andy Greenwald?

  I joked about the tweet, Parks and Rec is a huge, huge, huge foundational piece for the show. What should we call this, Parks and Wretch? What should we do? We can workshop that. The point being, I would say Parks and Rec and the Treehouse of Horror episodes of The Simpsons.

• 26:55Chris Ryan?

  Paranormal and Rec?

• 26:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, let's keep going. This is a safe space, and we can always ask them to cut our bad ideas. Right, guys?

• 27:02Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 27:03Andy Greenwald?

  The town of Widows Bay is a, or the island of Widows Bay, it is somewhere in New England. I thought it was like Massachusetts-esque, it might be Maine-adjacent, but it is an island that has not been discovered, has not become, it has not gone viral for its aesthetics, it is not a vacation hub, it is not really anything. And the mayor, Tom Loftus, played brilliantly by Matthew Reese, again, like the casting, get someone who can be a compelling emotional actor, but also knows his way around a joke. He is essentially the Mayor Leslie Knope of this town, who wants what's best for everyone, even if they don't agree with him. And he is very motivated to publicize this place and bring it, drag,

• 27:46Andy Greenwald?

  kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Among the things keeping it in the early part of the 20th century is that there is no cellphone service, there is no wifi, it is all connected by landlines, everybody knows each other, et cetera, et cetera. In the first moment, you are introduced to this absolutely wonderful rogues' gallery of locals who have quirks in the way that aren't, like, again, they're not making fun of people, but it's just a familiar type of single cam comedy that we've encountered before. And then, on the third level, there's also this deep, deep bench of fake history, where there are funny headlines, like the way there used to be murals in Parks and Rec, and there's even funny paintings, the way there used to be murals in Parks and Rec, like, you know, about a dead man found by horse, and things like that.

• 28:31Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Priest eaten by whale.

• 28:33Andy Greenwald?

  It is elevated, and it's funny, but what's- Incredible about the turn, and I did want to talk to you about my ability to just not only, not only watch and endure things that were scary, but just love them, was that the show understands something that I think maybe you do too as a fan of the genre, that like the emotional line between laughing and hysteria and crying out in shock or fear, it's not that much distance between those two emotional responses.

• 29:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Heroes talked about that in interviews.

• 29:03Andy Greenwald?

  So there is that kind of like hysteria, literally, that can veer from one to the other relatively quickly, and it's just on that line in a way that feels really, really natural to the piece and really captivating because I was like, man, we can, I'm not joking, the reason I sent you the Yung Lean video was, I was like, look, I've just watched Widows Bay, and now I've watched this, and we can still do stuff.

• 29:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:28Andy Greenwald?

  The old stuff still works if you recombine it in a new form.

• 29:32Chris Ryan?

  I think you're absolutely right. There's also a really good, they're playing some cool tricks. You're right. The cellphone thing is a very slick way of saying, you can't ask the questions of why won't they just text each other to say-

• 29:47Andy Greenwald?

  Don't go into the call space.

• 29:48Chris Ryan?

  The fog is coming. Yeah, right. So now you've got like a kind of 90s, 80s sort of level of like communications with people. There also are, you were speaking about the exposition. We're not doing exposition dumps, though. They're exposition hints.

• 30:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 30:05Chris Ryan?

  So there is, for instance, Steven Root, well, again, another like, you guys got Steven Root, this is gonna be watchable. Steven Root plays a very agitated old timer who is the antagonist of the mayor, Tom Loftus, and may have been a mayor himself at some point, plays a guy named Wick, I believe. And, you know, he is insisting that the island has, quote, awoken, because there was an earthquake, as the episode opens, or as the season opens, there's an earthquake, and that this island has now got like, kind of like a curse that's been activated by this earthquake, and that there will be things that happen over the next couple of days that like portend for really bad shit coming.

• 30:47Chris Ryan?

  But the way he kind of puts these breadcrumbs out is not in an annoying like, oh, so let me guess, I have to watch like four hours of this before we get to an answer about this. Like, you can kind of tell there is an old wives tale about this island that nobody who's born there is allowed to leave. And then if they do leave, they die relatively quickly after reaching mainland. And there's something going on with Tom Loftus's family where the mother is not there. We don't know where she is. And the son, who is natural native to the island, Tom Loftus was born off the island, but summered there. His son was born on the island. And his son is a little bit of a juvenile delinquent.

• 31:27Chris Ryan?

  But there is obviously a motivating fear, but also drive on the part of the mayor to be like, is this, is this old wives tale, is this piece of folklore true? Is my son ever going to be allowed to leave this island?

• 31:41Andy Greenwald?

  He says he has, but I.

• 31:43Chris Ryan?

  I don't think, I did not believe him. And if he did, I imagine it was quick, you know, or something like that. And it just produces an anxiety around it. And I love, you know, look, we all grew up with run past that house, don't walk. And.

• 31:58Andy Greenwald?

  Hold your breath by the graveyard.

• 31:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, just like all sorts of little like old wives tales that we probably adhere to longer in our lives than we even admit. And some people still do to this day, you know, like some people don't like walking over cracks in the sidewalk. Some people, you know, it doesn't matter, but the show really effectively plays on that psychology. And it's like, do I really want to find out whether my cynicism is going to get me killed?

• 32:20Chris Ryan?

  So it's really, really, really effective in that way.

• 32:25Chris Ryan?

  I found. I'm trying to think of a comp for what Matthew Reese is doing in this. First of all, let's just take a second to admire what he has done over the last 10 years. Right? So you got the Americans, one of your favorite shows. We were big fans of Perry Mason. I was a very big fan of him in Beast in Me.

• 32:46Andy Greenwald?

  I was a fan of him in Beast in Me.

• 32:48Chris Ryan?

  And those are several different performances.

• 32:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 32:52Chris Ryan?

  He is kind of, I would say, like, always got a degree of. A kind of suave literacy to his performances and to his characters. This is another guy. This is another kind of color for him. And he is playing point guard in this show because he's got 10, 11 people to pass to at any given moment.

• 33:17Andy Greenwald?

  You know, he's the star of Presumed Innocent, season two.

• 33:19Chris Ryan?

  And Presumed Innocent, I did not know that.

• 33:22Chris Ryan?

  Like, there's a scene in the second episode where he has a long interaction with Tim Balls from Righteous Justice.

• 33:28Andy Greenwald?

  Just the names we're saying. I'm gonna say them all at once at some point, but yeah.

• 33:32Chris Ryan?

  It's the ingenious invention of this show is to just like put a very, very, very competent leading man in moments where he's throwing passes to

• 33:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 33:44Chris Ryan?

  the best character actors that Hollywood has, that TV has. I mean, what were some of your favorite supporting performances?

• 33:50Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I want to get into that, but I just think you're right to point out, like, what Reese is doing is astonishing and you understand why the town loves him, even though he is not super famous, because there aren't many people who can do what he can do. The type of performance he's giving is this like fever dream combination of Ted Danson and Steve Carell.

• 34:12Chris Ryan?

  It's really good.

• 34:13Andy Greenwald?

  In that like you are a talented actor who has charisma, gravitas, suave, suavity charm, but you can get down in it and you can laugh too. And also you can become hysterical, you know, but there's a generosity of it. Where he just seems to be enjoying the note that he's being asked, the notes he's being asked to play while everyone else gets just like, you know, hit the laugh button time and time again. So Cato Flynn is amazing.

• 34:39Chris Ryan?

  He's hysterical.

• 34:40Andy Greenwald?

  As Patricia, who like when the plot of the pilot is that a New York Times reporter, played by another icon of this podcast, an actor we love, Bashir Salouhuddin from South Side.

• 34:54Chris Ryan?

  Justin.

• 34:55Andy Greenwald?

  And Top Gun Maverick. Plays a, what a CV, plays a New York Times journalist who's, you know, it's Tom's dream to have the Times write about the island and.

• 35:05Chris Ryan?

  He just needs him to say, this is the next Martha's Vineyard and like the entire fortune of the island is going to change. And we're introduced very quickly to the idea that this is a place that's resisting the outside world and because of that, the infrastructure of the town is kind of falling apart.

• 35:18Andy Greenwald?

  Patricia, the first thing she asked Tom about the reporter is, did you tell him about my paintings? Kevin Carroll, we mentioned from The Leftovers. Dale Dickey as Rosemary in Office Associate.

• 35:28Chris Ryan?

  And Gossip, Tom and Gossip.

• 35:29Andy Greenwald?

  And Gossip. You won't recognize her name, but you will recognize her face and her voice almost instantly. Next to her in the office is Jeff Hiller, who won an Emmy for Somebody Somewhere and was just on Pluribus. Steven Root. Evan, Tom's son, is played by Kingston Roomy Southwick, who was the son on Presumed Innocent, season one.

• 35:49Chris Ryan?

  That presumed innocent coaching tree, really, it's giving.

• 35:52Andy Greenwald?

  His sister was Chase Infiniti in that. I mean, remarkable, remarkable stuff. Nancy Lenahan, who is just brilliant and funny in limited minutes on the paper, is Jerry. Tim Balz from Righteous Gemstones. The bald guy in the band from Righteous Gemstones is one of the guys on the island. Neil Casey, who's a funny actor, who's in the Ghostbusters reboot. The great Toby Huss from Holden Catch Fire as the Reverend. Like, the thing that I'm trying to communicate is not how amazing these people are. And it's not even like what Katie and Hiro have done here is like a dream of like anybody who has the opportunity to make television. These are the people you want to give jobs to and you want to work with because they make everything better. And how fun would it be to be on an island with all these creative people?

• 36:35Andy Greenwald?

  It's that they came into this with the strength of material, strength of point of view, to tell Apple what's best. Now, I'm not, it's not fair to suggest that like any one streamer or network is monolithic and that there's some like internal pushback to good ideas or interesting casting. But if you don't come in as the creator with a backbone and a point of view and some institutional or historical reputational muscle, you are going to get moved off your square in the margins.

• 37:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:06Andy Greenwald?

  And in the margins, I mean, like, I don't know what the arc is for Patricia and for Tom, but in a traditional sitcom, that's the couple that's going to happen. And once that's maybe the possibility, which I don't know if it is, and I don't know if I would want it to be. Kato Flynn is the person who will get like the respectful nods in the meetings, but won't get the part.

• 37:27Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:28Andy Greenwald?

  Everyone, it seems like that they wanted, got the part in a way that feels cohesive. And it's the same way with like, what would this show be if they hadn't filmed on location somewhere in Massachusetts?

• 37:38Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 37:39Andy Greenwald?

  It's not half the show that it is.

• 37:41Chris Ryan?

  Look, I am not going to comp it to shows that don't do this well, but I can think of a dozen off the top of my head where when you're watching, you're like...

• 37:52Chris Ryan?

  Nobody here chose their outfit. No character woke up in the morning and put their clothes on.

• 37:57Andy Greenwald?

  You're on to something.

• 37:58Chris Ryan?

  And in this show, it's briefly mentioned that Tom was coming to the to the island as like, kind of like a rich kid from the mainland, right? Like, and that, like, he would come and hang out with the townies, but like, always got to go back to his nice life. And while this has kind of been brought up, I noticed like, how Tom was dressed, which is kind of like, Jade Crew, spring, summer, like, well put together, nice pair of jeans, button down tucked in blazer. And, you know, he's being very earnest. Like, he seems like he wants the best for the island. But you're right, like, the way you communicate difference can be in whether a guy tucks his shirt in or not,

• 38:42Chris Ryan?

  or what kind of print he wears.

• 38:44Andy Greenwald?

  How the corduroy jacket fits him or doesn't.

• 38:46Chris Ryan?

  Exactly. And it's like a guy who has like, three really good outfits, you know, and everybody else is kind of like, I'm wearing a rain slicker. Or like, I, I'm still allowed to smoke indoors.

• 38:57Andy Greenwald?

  I thought of you.

• 38:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And it's just an attention to detail that I associate with Hero Marai's stuff.

• 39:08Chris Ryan?

  And that I think it's easy in TV to kind of be like, here's the scripts, here's the set, like, put them in beige or gray and have them talk. And you can get much deeper than that. And these episodes are about 38 to 45 minutes long, which I think, I am gonna keep banging this drum that that makes a huge difference.

• 39:29Andy Greenwald?

  Sweet spot.

• 39:31Chris Ryan?

  And you can just see that there's like, a real depth of vision and artistry going on in like, all the departments.

• 39:37Andy Greenwald?

  So I want to talk about briefly, the one other small triumph in this show that we clearly love. I can't wait to watch more. The first episode, the pilot, works brilliantly and does something that surprised me in this day and age, which is it walks us to the precipice of what the show is about and then pulls it back. Smart, smart TV making. There's more road ahead. Let's enjoy it. And then when it does something even more remarkable, even in this day and age of changing production models and things, second episodes are still a bear. Second episodes, despite the fact that we are not in the, other than the pit, we're not in the, let's churn it out, keep it going, production model that we used to be in, that caused the reputation of second episodes to dip, in which it was like people's second albums, like you

• 40:22Andy Greenwald?

  have a lifetime to make the first, then you have two weeks to make the second. So the second episodes are generally the pilot again, while you find your footing with a new people, group of people in writer's room. Second episode of Widows Bay is a completely different look into the show. It's a haunted house episode and it, every moment is packed with the kind of detail and possibility that you're describing. It gives us the show's first, I believe, genuine jump scare and horror moment.

• 40:47Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's also like a real taste of the supernatural.

• 40:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, but within it, it also has some of the more, two-episode sample size, elite jokes thus far, like when spending the night in the local inn in advance of the tourists coming as a dare.

• 41:01Chris Ryan?

  Well, just to prove it's not haunted.

• 41:03Andy Greenwald?

  To prove it's not haunted. Tom is there at the honor bar and then he looks at like, he opens the cabinet that all B and Bs have of like Dick Francis paperbacks and like self-help books and board games. And the board games that he finds include Daddy's Home, which he plays later. And then two looking like small box, like Uno card games. One is called Teeth and inside of it is just like a teeth extracting wrench. And then the other one is called Run and it is a deck of cards that he flips through.

• 41:36Chris Ryan?

  It says, don't run.

• 41:36Andy Greenwald?

  It says, not yet, not yet, not yet, not yet, not yet, run. I will carry these, the beauty of these jokes with me for quite some time.

• 41:46Chris Ryan?

  When this show was first sort of getting promoted, they did so with a VHS quality, I guess, like, travel ad for the island from, from earlier, like from decades ago. And it was, you know, like a guy basically standing on a, on a rocky beach being like, welcome to Widows Bay, like, come along. And then like the guy walks away, but the camera doesn't move. And it has a real like, a little bit of a Twin Peaks vibe to it. The thing that the second episode made me think of and about the viability and maybe perhaps the legs of the show and with Apple as as Foundation and Silo and many other shows and season five of Waiting.

• 42:29Andy Greenwald?

  For all mankind.

• 42:30Chris Ryan?

  They will let you finish the story. So the second episode, though, I was like, is this X-Files?

• 42:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 42:37Chris Ryan?

  Could they do like monster of the week? We're never quite sure if it was real or not.

• 42:43Andy Greenwald?

  Because it is not, as the first episode implies. Oh, it's not a zombie show. It's not like one thing is happening to this island. This island is fucking weird. And weird stuff happens here, much like, you know, funny, heartwarming stuff happens in Pawnee.

• 42:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:56Andy Greenwald?

  And that's engaging, but it's also viable for long term if you have that kind of creative grip on what the thing is that you want to do.

• 43:05Chris Ryan?

  The thrill of the second episode actually came early on before any of the scares come is I realized that, much to my chagrin, that the New York Times writer had left because I loved the character and I loved the actor.

• 43:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 43:20Chris Ryan?

  But it took away any kind of like false timeframe or

• 43:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 43:25Chris Ryan?

  Or anything where it was like, we have to solve all of this so that this guy, when he leaves the island, will write well about us. It's like, no, he's already left. We're we're OK now, but we're not, you know? And it's it's really cool when a show is like, why don't we do like, each episode has its own vibe, rather than each episode is essentially people coming back and forth and talking to each other, and then there's like a false cliffhanger at the end. But we're only doing this over the course of three days or whatever.

• 43:54Andy Greenwald?

  That's where I see the other two influences that I would throw in there. We talked about Parks and Rec a lot, clearly, but Mike Schur, who is Katie Dippold's boss on Parks and Rec, is the reigning champion of classic sitcoms that have a little bit of The Wire-esque mutability and serialization.

• 44:12Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:13Andy Greenwald?

  Enough to engage modern audiences, but enough of the old stuff, too, to keep you keep things a little bit lighter and make it, you know, so that these shows don't sink under the weight of their own plot or premise. The other show that I was going to throw out there is, do you remember The Third Day?

• 44:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, of course.

• 44:29Andy Greenwald?

  Third day was a pandemic.

• 44:30Chris Ryan?

  Did we ever watch the live episode?

• 44:32Andy Greenwald?

  The live episode, so this was a pandemic era HBO co-pro experiment starring Jude Law, made by essentially experimental theater people and directors, that at the midpoint of the season, there was a day-long theatrical happening that was livestreamed that in some way advanced the plot. Did we spend our day doing that? I mean, it was the pandemic. Like, I read The Magic Mountain for sport. Like, I probably did watch it, but...

• 45:00Chris Ryan?

  Double brag.

• 45:01Andy Greenwald?

  Kinda. It was pretty good. But not Dr. Faustus, clearly, though, in terms of my, you know, Thomas Mann knowledge.

• 45:09Chris Ryan?

  I guess I just never really thought about, is Faust the guy? Faust is the guy who makes the deal, or Faust is what they call the devil?

• 45:14Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 45:15Chris Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 45:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, the devil's like, "Doctor." You know what I mean? And he's like, "Please, call me Faust." I believe that's the translation from German.

• 45:26Andy Greenwald?

  "You and I are friends. Let's talk. What do you want, Faust?" The... Anyway, it's a tough watch, that show, but it was engaging. And I wonder, I want to ask, if we get the chance, Hero and Katie, if they ever watch that show, because there is an element of, "Things don't work the same here." And are you trapped here? I don't know. Are you?

• 45:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:50Andy Greenwald?

  The kind of like brinksmanship, in terms of like, how far is this thing really gonna go, that was very engaging on that show, too, because there was a mania to it and a creative, like, full creative commitment to the bit.

• 46:04Chris Ryan?

  The, you know, the font of the title card is, it'll make you think of Stephen King, but it's not explicitly Stephen King font. And I guess I would leave it there, which is that there are... Are some things that like where their influences on their sleeve or in fact lead with their influences in order to like kind of create a mood board for it. And I'm sure that they did that here. But it was just different enough where I was like, cool font.

• 46:34Andy Greenwald?

  Look, the

• 46:34Chris Ryan?

  Cool show, you know, like

• 46:36Andy Greenwald?

  The story of the agony of influence of in our contemporary era is, I think, a divide between the properties and projects that are just clearly attempts to recreate entertainment from the creator's childhood.

• 46:55Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 46:55Andy Greenwald?

  Versus ones that are like, I was raised in a circulating bath of Amblin and Spielberg and eighties, you know, Ghostbusters. And that informed who I am. And now I'm going to do this with it. And the more success, to my mind, the most successful things do that, you know?

• 47:14Andy Greenwald?

  I I'm actually curious, like what I just described, which category do you think Stranger Things falls into? You watched the whole thing.

• 47:21Chris Ryan?

  Well, by the

• 47:22Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not trying to take a shot, I'm just curious.

• 47:23Chris Ryan?

  I think you'd probably be surprised, but still like bored by the fact that it turned into like James Cameron at the end.

• 47:30Andy Greenwald?

  Also eighties.

• 47:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but it is essentially like closer to Terminator and Terminator two.

• 47:37Chris Ryan?

  And almost like the never ending story and like, you know, sci fi epics.

• 47:41Andy Greenwald?

  It was all in a blender.

• 47:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, whereas the first couple of seasons are very much rooted in like Goonies and and and that kind of thing. I think that's it for what it was made for me. I mean, like, I I honestly don't have any critiques of it. I don't, I didn't, I didn't really have like

• 47:57Chris Ryan?

  everything that like my brain would be like, oh, let me guess, you're not going to tell us like why this. I was like, no, this is like really working. And I think part of it is the runtime, the pace and the production is just so fun to be in that you're not really sweating the the like, the little things. So

• 48:14Andy Greenwald?

  Look at us. This is the Predator handshake meme of comedy fan and horror fan.

• 48:18Chris Ryan?

  Well, I'm curious because, you know, I think we were probably like mixed towards not happy about, um, Margot's Got Money troubles. And I cannot say that I'm looking forward to the revival of Ted Lasso. There's a couple of sci fi shows that Apple has, like obviously For All Mankind, Silas coming back. I think they'll do the last, I think they're ending Foundation now. I don't even know if it's being promoted or not, or if

• 48:41Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know.

• 48:42Chris Ryan?

  But this?

• 48:44Chris Ryan?

  Star City, which we talked about glowingly, at least its trailer last week. And Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, which is coming soon with Tadi Adamizlani, which looks pretty gritty.

• 48:54Andy Greenwald?

  And friend of the pod Jake Johnson.

• 48:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and looks like kind of a provocative, interesting, modern thriller. I'm kind of curious what they're doing over there.

• 49:04Andy Greenwald?

  I think what I was saying before is probably fodder for a larger conversation about the state of the streamers. Like, Apple has so much money and its goals are so wide that you kind of can't make a declaration about what they are doing or not doing. They are essentially doing almost everything. And I think that I would love to get under the hood and try to understand what's working for them, what's working for audiences, and where any disconnects may have been in the creative process. Because for whatever problems we had with Margot's got money troubles, we are in the minority, I think. People just casually, like, industry, not industry, people are really enjoying it. And I think it's because it is, you know, like, from the production design to the performances, like, it's really, really well made.

• 49:49Andy Greenwald?

  That strikes me as something that is meeting its goals, you know, what it was set out to do. And if the vibe of the story of the book didn't work for us, then that's not necessarily the adapter's problem. I think that we've seen other examples of Apple shows where it feels like someone nodded off at the wheel on one side of it or another, in terms of the notes they were or were not giving, or in terms of just like the unfettered whatever.

• 50:10Chris Ryan?

  Maybe just like how production worked out, like, where we have stuff, stuff didn't come together, yeah.

• 50:15Andy Greenwald?

  But not everything good, like, when you think, when we talk about like the famous development processes of like these, the two remaining titans of like, really, let's get in here and develop, which are HBO and FX. I mean, they're grinders. They are incredibly demanding. I have seen the notes and the notes are brilliant and the notes are extreme and intricate. And not everything turns into a diamond if you squeeze hard enough. That doesn't work for everyone. Some creators, and they don't do that for everyone, I don't mean to pretend that that's what they do. But it's too facile to be like, Apple just shrugs and writes the checks and HBO, you know, obsesses over every detail. Broadly speaking, that's kind of probably true, but there are outliers on either side.

• 50:59Andy Greenwald?

  And there's also good quality from either side. I wish that Apple's stuff was a little more focused for the consumer.

• 51:09Andy Greenwald?

  But it almost doesn't matter if they do, whereas like Peacock, for example, I think what's fascinating about Peacock's recent choices editorially is it's very hard to imagine a consumer. And maybe I'm wrong. I'd love pushback on this, but like the average Peacock consumer who watches NBA. Okay, so far we're in Top Chef, we're in the larger Bravo universe, not necessarily me, The Burbs, The Copenhagen Test, and Miniature Wife. Like that is, that's a very broad brush. Apple can get away with it. Apple can be like, do you like F1? Yes. Do you like slow horses? Sure. Also, here's this, you know, quirky horror comedy. And then they sell, you know, 100,000 more MacBook Neos.

• 51:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I, you know, there has been some speculation about whether or not Tim Cook's resignation or stepping down will lead to-

• 52:03Andy Greenwald?

  Stepping up.

• 52:04Chris Ryan?

  Sure. To heaven? Where is he going?

• 52:07Andy Greenwald?

  No, I think he's taking on like a larger title, but he's no longer the CEO day to day.

• 52:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, but the, whether the new CEO will be like, why do we have this? You know, now, I think probably you could make the argument that it's been a net positive for Apple to be so forward facing in culture by being a part of things like F1 and Ted Lasso and putting Killers of the Flower Moon out or what have you. But I'm, I'm curious to see whether there's ever any like, hey, season five of that? Really? Like-

• 52:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, any curtailing of it, any changing. It's funny though, because the one thing, for all the criticism that people, fair criticism, I think people lobby at Netflix, Ted Sarandos's like, love of Hollywood, or love of SNL, or the things that he loves, isn't questioned. But then they're like, but is this good for, like, there's, Tim Cook, this is not a shot against Tim Cook, but it's just like, I saw a thing that was like, the only time he's ever seemed really enthusiastic or happy is when he's crossed paths with Lana Del Rey. Which, respect. But it's funny that like, you would think that someone who devoted so much capital to the sprawling entertainment wing of his company, that continually does feel a little bit unmoored from strategy.

• 53:24Chris Ryan?

  It's amazing what you can do when you don't buy data centers.

• 53:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 53:29Chris Ryan?

  You can make shrinking.

• 53:30Andy Greenwald?

  There you go. Right, but you'd think that he would be a little bit like, how fun. I visited SET and I do love this, you know?

• 53:35Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 53:36Andy Greenwald?

  He doesn't seem to be that interested in that, which is also fine, but the behavior of the company would suggest that he was like, in the same way like Jeff Bezos moved to Hollywood, you know, and he's just like, I like this.

• 53:48Chris Ryan?

  And then he moved to...

• 53:49Andy Greenwald?

  Where there are no taxes?

• 53:53Chris Ryan?

  There's a world in which, you know, I mean, Apple obviously is one of the more,

• 53:59Chris Ryan?

  one of the richest companies in the world, one of the most valuable companies in the world.

• 54:02Andy Greenwald?

  There you go, glazing them again.

• 54:03Chris Ryan?

  But if Steve Jobs, the movie written by Aaron Sorkin tells me anything, it's like, sometimes there's competition internally for what's getting resources. And if they decide, we haven't made something new, something really, truly mind blowing.

• 54:18Andy Greenwald?

  Since Ted Lasso, season two.

• 54:19Chris Ryan?

  Since Ted Lasso.

• 54:22Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 54:22Chris Ryan?

  Sophomore slum. No, like, there's often like a concern troll thing about Apple where it's like, where's the new iPhone? Where's the thing that's going to change culture entirely?

• 54:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, well, there's also nothing more to do with a phone. Like, now there's four lenses on the camera.

• 54:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly. But like, would you argue that like, maybe there's too much money being spent on TV and movies that could be going towards product development, or it could be going towards whatever else is core to their business?

• 54:48Andy Greenwald?

  Not if the alternative is like, an AI companion you wear around your neck, like, and then you can hang yourself with it. Like, I don't, I think that, that, that, this is not, I don't, I don't like read Bloomberg and Financial Times, this is not some like, big brain zag, but the things that I have heard, like, just casually that they did, you know, they, they went down the path of like, maybe we will make an Apple car, or maybe we'll make an Apple TV that's also the screen.

• 55:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:16Andy Greenwald?

  And I think that the, the, this proved to be smart, that they were like, let other people make those things, we will have our phones be the software for the car.

• 55:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:24Andy Greenwald?

  You know, so in that world, where there isn't that much more iteration to do in the hardware space. Having a studio, is it the worst thing? I don't know, but I, but I think your question, maybe this is the more of a Matt Bellany, the town type question is like, the soft power of producing content? What does that mean to their bottom line?

• 55:44Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 55:45Andy Greenwald?

  And how, how, how committed are they to it? Because if they, if they stopped.

• 55:51Chris Ryan?

  Well, then, yeah, you get, you.

• 55:52Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I know we're like, the arc light hasn't reopened.

• 55:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:55Andy Greenwald?

  But like, if Apple stopped making TV, this whole thing collapses.

• 55:58Chris Ryan?

  Thing that I saw, which it was admittedly a tweet, and I did not then interrogate the truthfulness of it.

• 56:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 56:03Chris Ryan?

  Was the announcement by that, like, the Kyoto.

• 56:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yes, Kyoto's gonna like, shut down.

• 56:09Chris Ryan?

  And this is if you're driving around Los Angeles, you see these trucks that say Kyoto on the side, and it usually means there's a shoot going on. And I still saw them, you know, even in the, the dark days that we've been in, but them announcing that they're like, they're out on Hollywood.

• 56:23Andy Greenwald?

  It was a weird announcement and a depressing one at a moment when, and it's not just the like, you know, happy headlines coming out of like, the, you know, there's no writer's strike, that things are moving. There has been a slight drumbeat of, it's coming back. Like, there's more production happening. Netflix just bought the CBS Radford lot.

• 56:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there's another big soundstage going up on Santa Monica.

• 56:47Andy Greenwald?

  So there was, so that, that was maybe more of like, uh, who knows? Is that, is that an outlier or is that an indicator of the real economy?

• 56:55Chris Ryan?

  Well, let's take a quick break. We're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about Top Chef, cause Restaurant Wars happened this week.

• 57:01Chris Ryan?

  Okay, we're back. Let's talk about Top Chef. I wanna talk to you more broadly about something, rather than, we're gonna get into the, the details of this episode, um, which was Restaurant Wars. Do you like Restaurant Wars? I was like, like, this is, this is the backbone of the show. This is what like, like, like the merge in Survivor, this is what it kind of all builds up to, and then the game changes afterwards, and it really usually, I think, functions as like, a mile marker to be like, we're entering the home stretch here with these chefs. But I was curious whether or not you think Restaurant Wars is a barometer for who's good at Top Chef versus who's good at cooking?

• 57:38Andy Greenwald?

  I think, I'm of two minds of it. I think generally, it is a very good. Benchmark midpoint of the season. Partly just because of the nature of it. We're 23 seasons in. I believe it's been a part of every season and the chefs are aware when they get to eight, what they're going to be doing. And they maybe have had some strategy and some thought. And the history of the show comes to the fore in a way that's fun in that they're aware of the pitfalls of being front of house or whatever. I also think that it's one of the few times to your point where like we actually see what these contestants might be like in a real world professional setting.

• 58:12Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 58:12Andy Greenwald?

  As opposed to the heightened manic creative nonsense of the show. So I think that's really, really good. I also do think the front of the house stuff is incredibly revealing and incredibly important because as you and I talk about all the time offline, when you're not texting me about hockey is like restaurants are mostly good or bad because of the service and the experience.

• 58:35Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 58:35Andy Greenwald?

  And that is underlooked by a lot of these. And it's also basically divorced from the reality of Top Chef. So I like all that. The thing that bugs me is they can't stop fiddling with it. There have been seasons when they go shopping for decor like this season and there have been seasons when they don't. I think the ones where they don't are better, where they explain their vision and then they have to, you know, make do with it. But like, I don't think these guys are necessarily good at shopping. Clearly in this case, some of them weren't. And beyond that, if they're just giving 24 hours to throw some cloth up in an abandoned Carolina warehouse, it's not really going to sell the deal anyway. So focus on the other stuff instead. And I felt the same way about the this year iteration of takeout orders too.

• 59:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:20Andy Greenwald?

  Which is just like, I understand you want to try something new and that certainly is part of restaurant life post COVID. But it was just ultimately it was distracting and it's a split mission. Like if you only have 24 hours and you have to have a dish that travels well, like I think you're setting them up to a fail in a way that doesn't showcase their talents or reward the viewers of the show.

• 59:40Chris Ryan?

  So it's interesting you bring up this, this twist that happens in Restaurant Wars, which is essentially like trying to recreate the panic of the bear within an already tense situation with, with like starting and, and serving at a restaurant over the course of one night, two sittings with only like a day or two of prep.

• 1:00:01Chris Ryan?

  I was watching Survivor last night, Survivor 50. This is a spoiler for this last episode of Survivor 50. I hope you don't mind, but you know, they have successfully introduced a bunch of like twi- here, until now, never seen before twists.

• 1:00:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:17Chris Ryan?

  Last night, um, they get their customary letters from home, which is always a really emotional moment for the Survivor people. They've been out there for like three weeks and like they get these letters from their loved ones and they all cry. When that happened, they also brought out Mr. Beast.

• 1:00:32Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:00:32Chris Ryan?

  Mr. Beast walked out with a briefcase that said, beware, and said he would be back at tribal council to like reveal what the beware, like chaos was gonna ensue.

• 1:00:43Andy Greenwald?

  And, and people know who this guy is.

• 1:00:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, he's probably the, one of the most famous YouTubers in the world. I, I wonder if your older daughter knows who Mr. Beast is. Okay.

• 1:00:51Andy Greenwald?

  But they, but like in the same way that like, you know, when we were in the eighties, I was like, oh, that's Valerie Bertinelli. You know what I mean? Like I wasn't a fan.

• 1:00:58Chris Ryan?

  He does things where it's like, I gave away $250,000. You just had to spend a night in Alcatraz for it. You know, like it's, it's a little bit Running Man. It's a little bit Squid Games. He did the Squid Game, Mr. Beast Games.

• 1:01:10Andy Greenwald?

  Is he, is he running for mayor of LA? Is that a better plan than Karen Bass's plan? I'm listening.

• 1:01:20Chris Ryan?

  Well, his twist basically like upended tribal and while I think tribal sort of ended in a very entertaining place, it's not, it's not pure Survivor. It's not pure Survivor gameplay.

• 1:01:32Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 1:01:32Chris Ryan?

  And I thought that the takeout thing was an interesting wrinkle and ultimately did not, I think the right team won Restaurant Wars, which was Dwayne's team.

• 1:01:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:01:44Chris Ryan?

  But it was kinda like either commit fully.

• 1:01:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:01:49Chris Ryan?

  And fucking go into like, somebody has to work a to-go window.

• 1:01:54Andy Greenwald?

  No, what, what I would suggest, and maybe this is coming and maybe they talked about it and this is actually a bad idea in practice. Do a ghost kitchen.

• 1:02:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:01Andy Greenwald?

  Challenge where you have to create a ghost kitchen that's gonna appear on the app. So you could get, like, they love getting branded. Get the apps involved.

• 1:02:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:09Andy Greenwald?

  And then they have to see like how many.

• 1:02:11Chris Ryan?

  I'm sure all these people have dreamed their whole life of getting to a ghost kitchen and making Goop Kitchen teriyaki bowls on Top Chef.

• 1:02:18Andy Greenwald?

  It's a fair point, but if also if we're being like, what is the industry now? There you go. Did you see like New York Magazine covered the New York arrival of Goop Kitchen? The way they once covered like the greatest French chefs like deigning to set foot in the Isle of Manhattan?

• 1:02:33Chris Ryan?

  I did not see the New York Magazine.

• 1:02:34Andy Greenwald?

  Very cool. Um, yeah, it's, it's a sign of the things like, we can't have it both ways. We have been praising the season for some feeling the editorial hand more from time to time, which is appropriate when you are on season 23 or in the case of Survivor, double that. That didn't work for me because we had chefs and certain and teams that were more than capable of doing this in ways that were compelling on their own. Now, they can't count on that. Like if these chefs had like totally shit the bed or like not been mismatched in ways that didn't work, then we may have been complaining about wishing there were more wrinkles to it because they were all bad at doing the one thing they had to do. But I felt a little bit disappointed with the extra

• 1:03:19Andy Greenwald?

  distraction because ultimately what the takeout thing did was give them a chance in the edit to say, Dwayne's team and her performance was clearly superior, but some people lacked cutlery.

• 1:03:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:31Andy Greenwald?

  Which was not as dramatic, maybe.

• 1:03:33Chris Ryan?

  Well, because I think that the thing that I didn't understand was that these people are just gonna like go outside of the restaurant and eat. So that's why I guess the cutlery was important. But I was mostly like, when they're like, do you need cutlery? I'm like, no, I'm taking it out and going home with it. So I, I'm fine, you know? Uh, the one other thing I made major note I had from this was that, you know, when this season began, I think my excitement, and I'm still really into this season, but my excitement was largely around the separation from the pack of Rhoda, Anthony and Lawrence, and the ensuing competition that would come out of that. Because I was like, you know, sometimes you have a Buddha and it's just like wire to wire. Nobody's gonna beat this guy. This was like, ooh, and if there's like a big three and then there's like maybe a late breaker

• 1:04:14Chris Ryan?

  and you could have like a pretty tight, like it's anybody's ballgame going into, into the finale.

• 1:04:23Chris Ryan?

  Now, it's kind of been like that, but not as good as I thought it was gonna be. Because Lawrence and Anthony have kind of come back down to earth. And Rota has been in Last Chance Kitchen the entire season, seemingly. So I was curious whether or not you even had a feel for what these people are cooking right now.

• 1:04:39Andy Greenwald?

  I thought, I mean, one of the things that can happen in a way that I really enjoy in Top Chef is that you could be thinking someone is mid for weeks and then, like Oscar, and then not only is he charming enough in front of house, he makes the best dish of Restaurant Wars. And then everyone was like, well, that's exceptional. And you like to see it, you know? I like seeing people rise to the occasion and prove why they're there and make it seem as if they could be competitors, even though I don't really think that's the case.

• 1:05:07Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:05:07Andy Greenwald?

  We should mention, we failed to mention, since we talked about it a lot last week, like, Seeger was back.

• 1:05:12Chris Ryan?

  Yes. They did, they did the thing that we thought they were gonna do, which is Seeger just didn't go to Last Chance Kitchen, because obviously they shot

• 1:05:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:23Chris Ryan?

  two days or three days of the show before they did an LCK. So they just had Seeger like, kind of in the wings, yeah.

• 1:05:30Andy Greenwald?

  So it's a little bit of a bummer, but just in terms of like, it is, I don't know what fair is, but okay, he's back.

• 1:05:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I don't know if those guys were at a competitive disadvantage from his, where he was, head was at, and then making him executive chef was a choice.

• 1:05:44Andy Greenwald?

  True. I think, I could be wrong, but I don't know if I will be. I think that there are only three potential winners of the season, unless something bizarre catastrophic happens. You got them. Rota is now back. Sorry for the Last Chance Kitchen spoiler. But Anthony and Lawrence and Rota, they are

• 1:06:05Chris Ryan?

  The best chefs.

• 1:06:06Andy Greenwald?

  They're the best chefs and seemingly the best competitors, although Rota clearly had a pretty spectacular slip up. I don't see the path for everyone else in terms of whether it's their abilities or their consistency, which is kind of a bummer.

• 1:06:20Andy Greenwald?

  And even if like, it's been interesting this season, my, my daughters are all in. Finally, took 23 seasons, but they love watching the show with me, which is quite meaningful for me. I love doing that, but they love Brandon. They like the twins, but they were super into Brandon, I think because he made ice cream for the dessert challenge and seemed to speak their language. But like, I don't even know if he was a contender because real contenders who know how to play this game, don't do what he did, which was essentially make himself invisible and put his name on something lacking. Like, that was just such a weird strategy fail in, in the one episode every year that they know they're going to be in.

• 1:07:00Chris Ryan?

  Remind me, Brandon was the one who came and helped his brother when his brother had kind of?

• 1:07:04Andy Greenwald?

  Which they showed, like, he's an incredible, um, he was incredible sous chef. He clearly is a very talented, very fast and backstopped everything.

• 1:07:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, when Jonathan was like, oh, I haven't cut any herbs and service is about to start.

• 1:07:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, but then what did he make for his own dish was a gloopy rice pudding with four soda raisins on top.

• 1:07:23Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:07:24Andy Greenwald?

  Like, that's, that's never going to win.

• 1:07:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:27Andy Greenwald?

  And it was weird lack of focus, and I think that that focus is the thing. Cause you could criticize people like Lawrence and Anthony for like, playing down slightly to the competition or playing it safe.

• 1:07:35Chris Ryan?

  Well, Anthony having immunity in Restaurant Wars was also like, kind of like, well, you can just go do XO, you can do executive chef and then.

• 1:07:43Andy Greenwald?

  He also made a hideous, like insanely weird looking choice to make a dish that was like one thing and then he just poured something else on top of it, which is.

• 1:07:50Chris Ryan?

  He also put okra in it, which is like, you're just tempting fate with Tom.

• 1:07:53Andy Greenwald?

  Slime on slime.

• 1:07:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:54Andy Greenwald?

  But, um, but playing it safe in a field like this kind of makes sense. I, I thought, I, just going back to your first question, like, Dwayne was so good at front of house and made it seem easy, which is what good restaurants should feel like. I was actually, I thought that was a really nice showcase for her and her ability.

• 1:08:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I thought she was quite good. I was worried with the edit that they were giving her, when she was like, the thing about me is I'm super organized. And I was like, this is either you're calling your shot or this is gonna be like your montage at the end.

• 1:08:22Andy Greenwald?

  Let me tell you something, it is really fun. I recommend this for you with your ward or whomever, like to watch reality TV with young minds that have not.

• 1:08:30Chris Ryan?

  Don't know about hero edits and stuff.

• 1:08:31Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly. So they think that I am some like Nostradamus, I'm Bill James, like I'm pointing out the inefficiencies on the field in ways that they have never understood and they want to bring me into the front office. They look at me like I'm a wizard, when I'm like, that person is going to win or lose. No question about it, you know, or they're like, I'm predicting the winner.

• 1:08:52Chris Ryan?

  She's good that it's gonna be central, it's gonna be her, yeah. Uh, okay. Well, that was, that was pretty much all I had for Top Chef.

• 1:08:58Andy Greenwald?

  Great. You, you have anything for After Dark today? Anything?

• 1:09:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I'd love to address, uh, what an amazing sports week this has been.

• 1:09:06Andy Greenwald?

  I love.

• 1:09:06Chris Ryan?

  First of all, like this will probably be going up. By the time this goes up, I think the Sixers will, will be playing, uh, game six in Philadelphia against the Celtics. But I just want to talk to you about hockey.

• 1:09:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but it's me with a rake. I'm gonna watch this game and I know it's gonna happen.

• 1:09:22Chris Ryan?

  I am not. I have to go to a dinner. I can't get out of it and maybe I don't even want to get out of it.

• 1:09:27Andy Greenwald?

  Are you gonna be, are you gonna be eyeing your phone?

• 1:09:29Chris Ryan?

  I try not to do that.

• 1:09:31Andy Greenwald?

  That's good.

• 1:09:31Chris Ryan?

  Um, but I wanted to know how you felt about the Flyers overtime one, nothing win over the Penguins in the NHL Stanley playoffs. Because you never commented on the 37 text messages that me and Zach sent last night on it.

• 1:09:46Andy Greenwald?

  First of all, I was knee deep in my re-watch of Widows Bay. Don't regret it. I did respond to you with a share from four minutes, 14 seconds clip of the Yung Lean video. So I was in my bag. You know what I mean? I felt fine. I don't.

• 1:10:02Chris Ryan?

  Did you watch the highlight?

• 1:10:04Andy Greenwald?

  No, because I don't want to experience FOMO.

• 1:10:06Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:10:06Andy Greenwald?

  I think I've made, I've made a decision. I'm gonna stick with it. I did feel like Zach was putting on a little bit thick with his text saying, oh my God, I can't believe hockey is like this. I've never felt so alive. Like, I thought like, I felt like Gary Bettman was like paying him a little bit, some, some, some spare loonies.

• 1:10:24Chris Ryan?

  To influence you?

• 1:10:26Andy Greenwald?

  Just to be like, maybe he's texting that to a lot of people.

• 1:10:28Chris Ryan?

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:10:28Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know.

• 1:10:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:29Andy Greenwald?

  He works for a culture magazine. Maybe he's, you know, setting the tone.

• 1:10:32Chris Ryan?

  I thought it was great. It was, uh, and it's just been an electric week when it comes to athletics.

• 1:10:37Andy Greenwald?

  So the, I mean, it's, it's like soccer in the sense that like this, this like sudden death feeling of like, oh my God, anything can happen in this moment. When the improbable happened and the Flyers won, what sort of, how would you characterize the noise that came from your body and how did you behave?

• 1:10:55Chris Ryan?

  Was it?

• 1:10:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:56Chris Ryan?

  Let's fucking go.

• 1:10:57Andy Greenwald?

  You went low?

• 1:10:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:59Andy Greenwald?

  The truth is, these moments reveal and I tend to go real high in those moments. I don't think I do well, like when good things happen in sports and the true. Spirit comes out.

• 1:11:10Chris Ryan?

  That was a heck of a slapshot.

• 1:11:12Andy Greenwald?

  Wow. Touchdown, fellas. Yeah, like, but you, you went.

• 1:11:17Chris Ryan?

  Do you guys wanna get some light beers under?

• 1:11:21Andy Greenwald?

  2.5% is my limit. Yeah, it's not awesome. It's not awesome. I'm, I'm impressed that, that, you know.

• 1:11:29Chris Ryan?

  You got anything for me for, for After Dark?

• 1:11:31Andy Greenwald?

  Characters revealed in those moments. No, no, I'm not, I'm not prepared.

• 1:11:36Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:11:37Andy Greenwald?

  You got me watching Resident Evil trailers, you know, like, I'm just, I'm kind of on your street today. I'll see what I can do.

• 1:11:43Chris Ryan?

  We're gonna be back on Monday. We're gonna be talking about, uh, Euphoria. We're gonna be talking about

• 1:11:52Chris Ryan?

  culture.

• 1:11:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think probably culture. Um, here's a question for you.

• 1:11:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:57Andy Greenwald?

  Big movie this weekend coming out, uh, Devil Wears Prada 2.

• 1:12:01Chris Ryan?

  I, I've seen Devil Wears Prada 1. I can't say that-

• 1:12:05Andy Greenwald?

  First of all, it's the most rewatchable movie of the century, from what I understand.

• 1:12:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:11Chris Ryan?

  I, I like that movie.

• 1:12:12Andy Greenwald?

  Good movie.

• 1:12:12Chris Ryan?

  I, I like Emily Blunt in that movie. I, uh, I wasn't like, this, the story needs to go on. But why not, you know? I'll, I'll eventually see it. It's not a first weekender for me. I had to go see Hocum this weekend with Adam Scott.

• 1:12:28Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, that isn't like-

• 1:12:29Chris Ryan?

  A horror movie set in an Irish hotel.

• 1:12:32Andy Greenwald?

  A lot of things that interest you. I, um, this is a big movie in my household. This is a-

• 1:12:38Chris Ryan?

  Devil Wears Prada 2?

• 1:12:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, my children are very, very, very eager to watch it.

• 1:12:43Chris Ryan?

  Have they seen the first one?

• 1:12:44Andy Greenwald?

  No, they just love fashion. Yes, yeah, they, yeah, that's a, like, if, I'm not trying to tell, I'm not trying to tell Hollywood what to do, but like, if you wanna really engage with specifically my children, 11 Things I Hate About You would be a billion dollar box office hit, judging by the continued enthusiasm for that film.

• 1:13:03Chris Ryan?

  If they just, like, remade it, or do you think, like, if they revisited some of those-

• 1:13:06Andy Greenwald?

  No, I, I don't know. I just mean, like, the, maybe this is a conversation for, for, for the big picture or something, because like, the, the passion, the, the selective passion that my daughters have for the few movies that they like is so intense and not really-

• 1:13:26Andy Greenwald?

  Because they have those options, they, I think it has limited their interest in checking for new things. You know, like, why go see that one? We could just-

• 1:13:34Chris Ryan?

  So why go see The Christopher's? Where you can just watch Devil Wears Prada 1-

• 1:13:38Andy Greenwald?

  Again.

• 1:13:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:38Andy Greenwald?

  Or Clueless. Again. But, but this is a, but there's a, you know, big 12 months of, of Tom Holland content coming, so that's gonna, that's gonna do numbers.

• 1:13:48Chris Ryan?

  Like The Odyssey?

• 1:13:49Andy Greenwald?

  Well, my older daughter loves, uh, three things in this world. Greek mythology, Tom Holland, and Zendaya. So, yeah, we're gonna be there. Now, do you think, this is for after, maybe this is for the future for the summer? Maybe we should have an episode where Uncle Chris makes his, Uncle Chris explains Christopher Nolan to a 13-year-old?

• 1:14:11Chris Ryan?

  Your mind is the scene of the crime.

• 1:14:14Andy Greenwald?

  She'll be coming in cold to his particular aesthetic vision.

• 1:14:17Chris Ryan?

  Should I do it as Bane?

• 1:14:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:19Chris Ryan?

  I'll, I'll, I'll give it some thought.

• 1:14:20Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you.

• 1:14:21Chris Ryan?

  Thanks to Kai and Kaya for producing today, and we will be back on Monday. Everybody have a great weekend.