‘Euphoria’ Season 3, Episode 5 and the ‘Cape Fear’ Trailer. Plus, Why ‘Legends’ Is Crime Drama Excellence.

Chris and Andy talk about the trailer for Apple TV’s ‘Cape Fear’ (4:43); A24's ‘Crystal Lake,’ a ‘Friday the 13th’ prequel series, getting a release date; and how streamers are still recycling known IP for new TV shows (16:02). Then they make the case for why you should be watching ‘Legends,’ a Netflix crime drama from the creator of ‘The Gold’ (26:27). Later, they discuss ‘Euphoria’ Season 3, Episode 5 (38:58). Finally, The Watch: After Dark (01:00:36). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Email us! [email protected] Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Additional Video Supervision: Sarah Reddy 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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

• 0:25Speaker 01

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

• 0:37Speaker 02

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

• 0:57Speaker 01

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

• 1:24Speaker 02

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

• 1:35Chris Ryan?

  This episode of The Watch is presented 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.

• 2:09Speaker 04

  Stand up and walk now.

• 2:12Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am the concubine of New York Knicks fandom at The Ringer. And joining me on the other line, a longtime fan of 50 foot women, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 2:27Andy Greenwald?

  There's a lot to unpack there. I mean, first of all, I appreciate you meeting with your vulnerability.

• 2:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you know what? You have to learn to take the L with dignity. And we're going to talk a little bit about the Sixers and my travels back to Philadelphia for game three, which was humiliating. And I basically sat in a cuck chair for two and a half hours while New Yorkers screamed at all of the players for the Philadelphia 76ers. We're also going to talk about Euphoria and a new series on Netflix that Andy and I are both really excited about called Legends. It's great to see you, man. It's important to see a friendly face in these dire times. I have a couple of news items for you, but I just want to check in. You look great, great flannel.

• 3:12Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, thanks. Yeah, you know, the weather is quite hot here. You're missing that.

• 3:16Chris Ryan?

  Is it really?

• 3:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it's getting warm, getting up to close to 90 today.

• 3:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's a brisk spring day here in Philadelphia.

• 3:23Andy Greenwald?

  You're back in your element, I can tell.

• 3:25Chris Ryan?

  I sure am.

• 3:26Andy Greenwald?

  You know, I'm not the person on this podcast who keeps his finger on the pulse of things. In fact, I keep my fingers far away from all pulses whenever possible, including lentils and other legumes. That said, I have been noting with interest with Brian Windhorst's fingers, the possibility that CR month is maybe expanding into CR year, metastasizing, if you will.

• 3:47Chris Ryan?

  Why?

• 3:47Andy Greenwald?

  And here are some of the things. There's just been some, there's been just some like cultural dominoes falling that are really lining up for you. And I feel like we should be tracking them here on the podcast.

• 3:57Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:58Andy Greenwald?

  One of them is, you know, you and the rest of your cohort knocked out Janet Mills in Maine, which I think is great because you hate establishment Dems and you're ready for a new voice in Washington.

• 4:07Chris Ryan?

  I love body art.

• 4:08Andy Greenwald?

  Also, you've also, you also have tattoos. Two. The Virginia Supreme Court knocked down the redistrict, which I know you also hate gerrymandering. People don't know this about you, but you always just want an even playing field. That's something about you. The third thing is, I don't know if you saw this yet, because it's not really like our wheelhouse or what we ought to be discussing generationally, but the new Charli XCX video came out last week.

• 4:32Chris Ryan?

  I did see that.

• 4:33Andy Greenwald?

  And for those who don't know, the video is called "Rock Music." She declares the dance floor to be dead and that now it's all about headbanging in mosh pits. And in the video, not only does she attend a show with a ferocious pit, she also smokes so many cigarettes that she walks around a, I imagine, New York City apartment that has basically like obelisks of cigarette butts raised to the ceiling. And I just feel like you are the vanguard of culture.

• 5:07Chris Ryan?

  Oh, you think I brought hot girl cigarette summer to the forefront?

• 5:12Andy Greenwald?

  I just feel like it's not a coincidence that two weeks ago, you're talking about the basement show in El Soreno, and now Charli XCX is like on board with you. You are a tone setter.

• 5:21Chris Ryan?

  No, I mean, so I saw, I saw that she is, she is pivoting to early aughts rock sound, right? Is that the, is that the word on this?

• 5:30Andy Greenwald?

  Unclear, but it is a pivot. It is a pivot.

• 5:34Chris Ryan?

  I can't, I can't, nor would I want to claim credit for cigarettes coming back. I think we need to blame our leaders for creating an environment where people are turning to cigarettes, you know?

• 5:43Andy Greenwald?

  Because what's the point? Yeah, okay.

• 5:46Chris Ryan?

  Exactly.

• 5:46Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's right. All right, well, I'm just saying, I'm watching this stuff, okay? I'm just, I'm just monitoring it now.

• 5:50Chris Ryan?

  I almost, I almost broke the seal on a pack of Camels this weekend, on Friday night specifically, for obvious reasons because of the Sixers, but couldn't find, you know, I went to a gas station. She was like, "We sell no nicotine products."

• 6:04Andy Greenwald?

  I think you misheard. I think she said, "We sold out." Have you seen what's going on with the sports teams?

• 6:09Chris Ryan?

  Have you heard about this CR night?

• 6:11Andy Greenwald?

  Or that. Yeah, exactly.

• 6:13Chris Ryan?

  Andy, I wanted to talk to you about two, uh, two sort of TV news related things. One is, um, just a brief, we can, we can hit it and skip it thing, uh, with Apple's Cape Fear adaptation. They released the full trailer, um, which is kind of a funny thing because you and I and everybody we know, we're sitting around, we're like, there was a lot more to Cape Fear, you know, that we didn't get to. Uh, and those multiple film adaptations of the John D. McDonald novel.

• 6:41Andy Greenwald?

  The biggest, the biggest problem was they started with Cape Fear. Why don't you start with Cape Dread? Cape simmering anxiety. Do you know what I mean? Like you can really stretch this.

• 6:49Chris Ryan?

  Cape, there's just something not right, you know?

• 6:52Andy Greenwald?

  Ultimately Cape existential terror. Why are we out of nicotine? But we'll get there.

• 6:56Chris Ryan?

  But, uh, you know, so there's, there's a new multi-part. I think it's, I think it's eight episodes, but I, maybe they haven't even announced the amount of episodes, but it seems like it's gonna be time consuming. Ten, ten episodes from, uh, Nick Cantosco, who is a showrunner and a TV creator that I have a lot of time for. Javier Bardem is playing the famous Max Cady role, which was played before by Robert Mitchum and Robert De Niro. So a meaty, meaty part there and Bardem is one of our best actors. So I'm sure it's gonna be worth watching that. Uh, Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson play the Bleier couple at the center of Cape Fear. But, uh, what did you make of the trailer, which, you know, gets, it, it seems to center Amy Adams's character

• 7:40Chris Ryan?

  more than maybe previous adaptations have.

• 7:42Andy Greenwald?

  Good use of center. I think that's appropriate. Well, a couple of things. I would say that, um, Nick Cantosco, who's a really good television creator, his background, going back to Channel Zero, is in horror stuff. And so I appreciated that that seems to kind of be the tone here, psychological horror, but certainly a monster movie with Javier Bardem playing the monster. That's a smart pivot. I think that probably makes, and for, it probably makes for an entertaining series. I think that Javier Bardem seems engaged to play a monster again, perhaps for the first time, unambiguously since No Country For Old Men. Looks good. Morten Tidlin directed it.

• 8:21Andy Greenwald?

  I have two concerns. And by the way, Kai, if you'd like to speak your concern about the over-representation of New England on Apple TV, feel free to jump in. I don't want to put you on an island with it.

• 8:30Chris Ryan?

  Oh, do you think New England is like the new Eastern Europe in terms of shooting locations?

• 8:34Speaker 06

  Well, we have Widows Bay, and now we have Cape Fear. That seems like a lot of ocean-centric New England horror shows, to me.

• 8:41Andy Greenwald?

  Listen, you're not, Chris and I thought we slayed the beast in game seven last week. Like, we didn't think we had to go back there for a while, and yet professional obligations demand it. My main issue here is one, if you thought 10 episodes was long, this trailer is too long. Like, I don't need two and a half minutes explaining to me that Max Cady's a scary guy who laughs inappropriately that's going to be menacing this family. Like, I get it. I think this is actually one of those things where a teaser trailer is enough. And also, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna run from the allegations. My number one issue here is, unless they steer into it, the couple at the center of the chaos, as you said, played by Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson, which to me is like enjoying a delicious mayonnaise sandwich on white bread.

• 9:24Chris Ryan?

  You're a Patrick Wilson fan?

• 9:26Andy Greenwald?

  I am a Patrick Wilson fan.

• 9:28Chris Ryan?

  Are you?

• 9:28Andy Greenwald?

  You know what? I'm a Patrick Wilson fan. I enjoy his work.

• 9:32Chris Ryan?

  What's your, name, your top two Patrick Wilson works?

• 9:36Andy Greenwald?

  Aquaman and Aquaman 2.

• 9:37Chris Ryan?

  Okay. You're not gonna take it, you're not gonna take it seriously, we can't rank things?

• 9:42Andy Greenwald?

  No, come on. Wasn't he in, he's in Angels in America, wasn't he?

• 9:44Chris Ryan?

  Uh, yeah. He's-

• 9:47Andy Greenwald?

  And that episode of Girls?

• 9:49Chris Ryan?

  -guy from the Midwest, right?

• 9:51Andy Greenwald?

  And the episode of Girls?

• 9:53Chris Ryan?

  Girls. So those are two smaller parts in long ago HBO series.

• 9:59Andy Greenwald?

  Little Children?

• 10:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. He is in Little Children. I'm a Conjuring guy, so me and Pat go way back.

• 10:05Andy Greenwald?

  Fargo, season two, I want to say. I just, it's, it's just, it's, I'm noting the pairing, that I feel like either, because I find them both, I find him interesting and bland, intentionally so, and I think he plays into that role well, as like, look, here is, like, here is the white guy that can be the, either the fall guy or the stand-in for life's ills or whatever, and then he has a little more something going on behind it. So you steer into it. I don't find Amy Adams as captivating as you do.

• 10:36Chris Ryan?

  I think I wish I could tap Bill Simmons in right now.

• 10:39Andy Greenwald?

  Is he a big fan?

• 10:40Chris Ryan?

  He is the opposite of a fan. He is an Amy Adams hater, or at least does not understand how she has so many Oscar nominations. That's one of his big pet peeves. Nominating Amy Adams for Oscars gives him the ick.

• 10:53Andy Greenwald?

  This feels like after game seven against the Celtics, this feels like coming home.

• 10:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:58Andy Greenwald?

  This feels like I'm back working at the right place, you know, where I'm understood.

• 11:01Chris Ryan?

  My takes on this, I'll save. Obviously, I haven't watched the screeners yet. I'm curious to see what they do with it. It's coming in June 5th. The only question I have, and this is actually gonna feed into my next topic I wanted to bring up with you, is the degree to which there is a contemporary, perhaps younger generation, relationship with the story, the characters of Cape Fear. So for us.

• 11:27Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 11:28Chris Ryan?

  It's kind of indelible, right? Like, it's like this was Martin Scorsese's big blockbuster effort. I believe there was some script trading with Spielberg going on where this might have even been Schindler's List or something like that. Like, I can't remember what it was, but there was.

• 11:45Andy Greenwald?

  It wasn't. I don't think it was that, but you're on to something. This is absolutely

• 11:48Chris Ryan?

  There was something where Spielberg was thinking about doing this and then traded

• 11:48Andy Greenwald?

  true.

• 11:52Chris Ryan?

  it to Scorsese for a different, something else. I can't remember. I've talked about this on rewatchables. I just don't remember the research.

• 11:58Andy Greenwald?

  It's Schindler's List, which is insane.

• 12:01Chris Ryan?

  So what a sliding door.

• 12:03Andy Greenwald?

  Wow.

• 12:04Chris Ryan?

  And I think that I'd be curious to know whether or not there's like a 28-year-old person who's just like, this just looks cool. And I don't really have any preconceived notions, nor do I have the baggage that tells me, what can, what can there, how can there possibly be a 10-hour series about this, when the whole purpose of the two adaptations of the book? Are the the sort of vice leg grip it puts you in for two hours. But most people getting through Cape Fear would not want that grip to go on that much longer. I mean, the whole point of a thriller is it takes place in this kind of condensed period of time.

• 12:43Andy Greenwald?

  I think that what what Nick has said, Nick Antoska, is that he found more inspiration from the John D. McDonald book, The Executioners, that inspired the original Cape Fear film and obviously the second Cape Fear film. And as someone who has read all 26 Travis McGee novels, I support going back to the original John D. McDonald text. I think that's interesting. But your question, and this is something I don't think we should spend more time on on the hand wringing, but I do think it's worth noting that like, this is, you said, like, what young people may find in this. I think that like Amy Adams, Patrick Wilson, and Javier Bardem means that Apple is either comfortable or just rich enough not to worry about attracting much young interest in this.

• 13:23Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 13:24Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean? Like, this seems to be, I don't think, I think you could go broke trying to squint and discover a larger programming strategy from Apple. I think they just fall in love with stuff or fall in like with stuff and put it out, and that's the extent of it for the most part. But if you did want to-

• 13:44Chris Ryan?

  And then do their shows for four or five seasons, or however long.

• 13:47Andy Greenwald?

  But but in this case, I think you you could make the argument, and I'm not sure if they would, how strongly they would endorse it, that things like Presumed Innocent have proven to them that there is a market for adults, you know what I mean by that, like, like entertainment, that, like, again, Presumed Innocent is not like a sexy, Scott Tureau is not necessarily burning up the YA shelves, but like, there is a cohort of people who pay for their streaming services that fondly remember that book and movie. And this may be something that you could put into the same bag. The reason I said we shouldn't do any hand wringing over this, but I remain pretty fascinated by what their strategy is.

• 14:28Chris Ryan?

  But you just can't resist.

• 14:29Andy Greenwald?

  I can't help it because there has been some stuff recently, and again, I don't-

• 14:32Chris Ryan?

  What am I gonna do with my hands?

• 14:34Andy Greenwald?

  You're not here to hold them. There's been some data released, and I- Never know how to trust online streaming data like who's reporting it or not because these services are generally quite opaque. But there was, there were some numbers going around about debut week streaming numbers for Apple series historically. And it was interesting to look at that like shrinking started quite low, but I assume at this point it's one of their most reliable shows in terms of audience.

• 15:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:02Andy Greenwald?

  To go by this like debut week thing, Pluribus unsurprisingly had quite a big debut number. I think it was like 3.5 million views in the first week. And remember, not many people pay for Apple TV, so it's, it's numbers are smaller than like an HBO debut or what have you. And Widows Bay was at 2.5 million, which they said was fine, but in line with things that hadn't succeeded. Margot's Got Money troubles, which was a huge promotional expenditure for them and investment was 2.3. So I, I don't know what they're seeing in terms of both attraction and retention.

• 15:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, budget versus return on investment. And meanwhile, they have like several blockbuster sci-fi shows that they're deep into production on multiple seasons.

• 15:46Andy Greenwald?

  And, and, and do you think that they have separate buckets for, um, this is a show that will attract more subscribers because it's a proven commodity? Or is this the show that we are feeding to our existing customers because we know they like it? So.

• 15:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think that that's a really good question. I mean, the reason why I, you know, the next thing I wanted to talk to you about was a, a show coming from NBC Peacock. And, you know, I'll give this to Apple. I don't always like their shows, um, but they do have an identity and they do have a commitment to seeing stories. Run and seeing stories out and, you know, they're on, I think there's, I saw a graphic of all the stuff that is currently in production for them. And it was a full, full.

• 16:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 16:33Chris Ryan?

  Networks worth of television shows that are some are in season four, five, six, have spin offs, you know, like have been rebooted. You know, two of the Bill Lawrence shows are essentially going into their act two. Allah like Shorzy where it's like, we're just gonna give these guys a different thrust now, but it's still all the people you know and love. It's kind of a fascinating gambit that, you know, I think we were always a little skeptical about like, so what are they gonna just put phones in all these shows or like, what happens when people stop renewing after their, you get a year of Apple TV free with the purchase of a new iPhone stuff happens. But it just really seems like Tim Cook stepping down aside.

• 17:15Chris Ryan?

  They've just decided to fill a void where all these traditional networks used to be, which is here is multiple shows per month, coming back on relatively regular schedules with all the biggest stars. It's kind of just like they're just doing TV. The thing I wanted to ask you about was this Friday, the 13th show called Crystal Lake, which NBC Universal did their upfronts, I believe on Friday or recently at least, and announced some release dates for-

• 17:46Andy Greenwald?

  I think it was this morning.

• 17:47Chris Ryan?

  Oh, is it this morning? Okay, so they announced a bunch of release dates for upcoming shows, including Amy Poehler's new show Dig, which I'm really excited about. And the renewals of a couple of things like The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins. But most interestingly to me was the announcement that Crystal Lake, a long gestating Friday the 13th prequel, will finally be airing October 15th. Now, Andy, I have zero expectation that you will either watch this or be interested in what I'm about to tell you, but I hope to make it at least somewhat relevant to our pod purposes by talking about this show-

• 18:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 18:26Chris Ryan?

  Is basically a lens through which to view television history in the 21st century. Because-

• 18:34Chris Ryan?

  For almost 23 years, they've been talking, and when I say they, I mean various people involved in the rights to Friday the 13th, have been talking about doing a Friday the 13th TV show.

• 18:45Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 18:46Chris Ryan?

  Now, infamously, there was a series, like Friday the 13th, the series was, I can't remember who broadcast it, but it was only, it wasn't, it wasn't related to the movies at all. It was basically a haunted antique shop, X-Files type show, which I only really know about because I know David Cronenberg directed one of the episodes. And so it's just a curio for me. But in 2003, they were starting to develop this. It got, you know, at various stages of, I think they shot a pilot for the CW and the CW turned it down. So for like, for a while there, it's going. You would hear about some sort of like, the Friday the 13th rates, the Friday the 13th development rates, like, happening. 22, it

• 19:27Chris Ryan?

  kind of like, really kind of heats up because it's announced that A24 is gonna become a producer on the show.

• 19:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 19:36Chris Ryan?

  And that Brian Fuller, who at the time was pretty hot shit coming off of Hannibal, was going to showrun it, was gonna be the TV creator. And he, he, he's pretty vocal in his communications about what he's working on, was like, I have complete creative control.

• 19:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 19:52Chris Ryan?

  Listener, he did not. Brian Fuller was not only canned from the gig in 24 around the writer's strikes, but also ran into some of his own problems based on some behavioral stuff.

• 20:05Andy Greenwald?

  Just to jump in, I do think it's accurate that during his time at the controls, he did have complete creative reign. But his reign on the short, his reign on the top was short, like the proverbial, proverbial leprechauns. I could barely get that out, but I'm proud that I did.

• 20:20Chris Ryan?

  Honestly, if you did it any better than that, it would probably be weirder.

• 20:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, you're right. It was pretty weird regardless.

• 20:27Chris Ryan?

  So 22, like, he comes and goes. And 24, it's announced that he's leaving. But around 24, because of the amount of money that's being thrown around in streaming television at the time, It's rumored that Charlie's Throne is gonna take over the role and that this is always gonna be about Pamela Voorhees, Jason's mother, and I don't know, I don't wanna spoil anything for people, but she's a bad hombre in the first movie. And, you know, the idea of Charlie's Throne coming off of like Fury Road and being in this series is pretty hilarious. I mean, I think they had like sets reserved or built and like it was ready to go.

• 21:04Andy Greenwald?

  And Kevin Williamson was rumored to be involved at this point?

• 21:07Chris Ryan?

  So he, I believe, had been working on the Brian Fuller iteration.

• 21:11Andy Greenwald?

  That's the creator of Dawson's Creek.

• 21:12Chris Ryan?

  But Nick Nantosco was then brought in for a minute and I don't believe is involved in the Crystal Lake now. It's being run by Brad Caleb Kane, who's got a litany of credits, but most notably worked on Warrior and something else recently that I thought was pretty decent, but he was an executive producer on something. But in any case, it's just a fascinating.

• 21:35Andy Greenwald?

  He was on It. Welcome to Derry.

• 21:37Chris Ryan?

  Welcome to Derry. That's right. He was in the Macheteverse. And then, so like, it's just a kind of a fascinating tale of a piece of property that honestly, like even dudes like me probably don't have a lot of hope for. And I don't know for people like Kai and Kaya, they're like, ah, yes, Jason, the hockey mask. But if I remember correctly, one of the issues here is not unlike the Thomas Harris Silence of the Lambs rights.

• 22:01Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 22:02Chris Ryan?

  I don't even know if they're allowed to have a hockey mask in this show because of the difference between the film rights and the TV rights. This show now stars Linda Cardellini. It's coming out two weeks before Halloween on Peacock. And I'm curious, but it is something where I'm like, as the movies start to come up with kind of, if not necessarily like wholeheartedly original ideas, they are at least unwinding themselves a little bit from the comic book dependency.

• 22:33Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 22:34Chris Ryan?

  And from some of the IP dependency. I say that knowing that Devil Wears Prada 2 is

• 22:40Andy Greenwald?

  Dominating.

• 22:41Chris Ryan?

  Gangbusters in the box office, but it practically feels fresh. The idea of hanging on to, what if we did a prestige version of Friday the 13th for 20 some years?

• 22:55Andy Greenwald?

  It's really weird.

• 22:55Chris Ryan?

  Arriving at a Peacock show coming in October, which I am still kind of interested in seeing, is kind of wild. And it also dovetails nicely with Cape Fear, which is Friday the 13th is a slasher classic. It is about kids at camp getting chased by a guy with a hockey mask.

• 23:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 23:13Chris Ryan?

  The underlying reasons for all of that, nobody cares.

• 23:19Andy Greenwald?

  We did not spend playground time in the 80s, wondering why Jason was broken and who hurt him.

• 23:25Chris Ryan?

  Do you think Jason's mom had a bad marriage? Like, what's, what happened there?

• 23:28Andy Greenwald?

  Let me tell you something. I was a child, for every one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movie releases, and never once was I like, what happened to Freddy? What's his trauma? You know, that was never a question or a concern. I will give this.

• 23:43Chris Ryan?

  Neighbors of Elm Street had it in for him and that.

• 23:46Andy Greenwald?

  They burned him or something?

• 23:47Chris Ryan?

  They did. That's why he looks the way he looks.

• 23:49Andy Greenwald?

  So he has a legitimate bone to pick.

• 23:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And he picks a lot of bones out of people still breathing rib cages when he puts his hand through them.

• 23:58Andy Greenwald?

  Well, so maybe.

• 23:58Chris Ryan?

  In the dreamscape.

• 23:59Andy Greenwald?

  So really, it's a hero story. I, we're actually not that far away from that, considering like, there are prominent people in this country who are like, the empire was right.

• 24:11Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 24:12Andy Greenwald?

  It's not that far away. I do give credit to this, to this production.

• 24:15Chris Ryan?

  Freddy was a sovereign citizen.

• 24:18Andy Greenwald?

  Of the dreamscape world, that when they shot this last year in New Jersey, did you see that they shot it under the working title Mama's Boy? I respect that. That's pretty good. To your point, this could be good. And it would be delightful for everyone who cares about these things, and hopefully, I would imagine, people who don't know they care going in, that this is pretty good. It does, as someone who doesn't engage with any horror content, remind me a lot of Bates Motel, which is, which was the Psycho prequel series that focused on the antagonist's mother. So it is not unexplored territory to do this, and I guess it was relatively successful. That was your, your beloved Vera Farmiga was on that show, if I remember correctly.

• 24:59Chris Ryan?

  My favorite therapist.

• 25:01Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, it's the departed.

• 25:04Andy Greenwald?

  Is one of your reasons why you've never fully committed to therapy is because that you have an ideal in mind?

• 25:09Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 25:10Andy Greenwald?

  And it's Vera Farmiga in The Departed?

• 25:11Chris Ryan?

  Straight up. Why don't you give me a bottle of scotch and a revolver?

• 25:19Andy Greenwald?

  I wonder if you, do you think therapists are Google-able by their feelings on The Departed? Like whether they think there are some like ethical violations in there or not?

• 25:29Chris Ryan?

  I, I mean, it's just, she, she is honestly, can I just be, be real with you on the movie 23? The hottest woman I have ever seen in that movie.

• 25:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. I think that's fair. I think that's fair. I think people need to understand if this is going to be CR year truly.

• 25:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:42Andy Greenwald?

  I think we need to be transparent with each other. And I think, again, now we will see if fashion moves in your direction.

• 25:48Chris Ryan?

  And, and therapists start being incredibly inappropriate.

• 25:51Andy Greenwald?

  If, if therapy moves in that direction as well. I think you are right to frame this in terms of the last 10 to 20 years of just IP strip mining. This may end up in, with a good show, which is great for everyone. It is hard to make it-

• 26:08Chris Ryan?

  But are we going to poison the groundwater in the process?

• 26:10Andy Greenwald?

  No, not even that so much as like, it's very hard to make anything, full stop. And it's very hard to make something good. So if they were able to do it, ultimately, we don't need to do a postmortem on how they got there. But there is an element of this where you, you, you know, the, the tech overlords who have come in to streamline everything and, and Uberify everything in this industry as well are unquestionably the villains and just fundamentally anti-art. But every so often you get a case where it's just like, we've been trying to develop a story no one particularly is asking for, for 22 years, and we have spent untold tens of millions of dollars to get there. And now we've also, now we've leveraged, or A24 has leveraged us, or we've leveraged A24 in their quest to expand their purview, like all to get here.

• 26:56Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe, you know, at this point, maybe Doug from, from IT could have been like, guys, what if we don't do it? You know what I mean? Like, like that, there is that element to that with these kinds of, that's it. I don't, I truly don't know. Like, will these things continue to just pop up like zombies, like the few that actually survive their long gestation? Uh, or have we really turned the corner from this and this is the last shining echo of light from a distant star? I don't know.

• 27:26Chris 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 that you can actually join in on 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.

• 27:57Chris Ryan?

  Let's get into a full throated endorsement of a new TV show. So out of, out of all the concern trolling we just did for, for two non-existent shows or shows that haven't aired yet, I wanted to get our full shoulder behind Legends on Netflix. We got a few emails, so the watch email back box, you can always hit us up at the watch at spotify.com. We always love your emails. We'll do a mailbag soon and I'll try to interpolate some when we discuss Legends in more depth, perhaps next week. So six episodes, obviously Netflix, it's already up. Andy and I both watched two. This one stars one of our favorite actors, Tom Burke, who people may remember from Steven Soderbergh's Black Bag from last year.

• 28:38Chris Ryan?

  It stars Steve Coogan in a unusually straightforward role. Although I am really enjoying the master Michael Caine impersonator slowly becoming Michael Caine.

• 28:53Andy Greenwald?

  That's the best insight I could possibly give.

• 28:55Chris Ryan?

  He's just doing a really good Michael Caine role where he's like on the cop who tells you what to do. Hayley Squires, who folks will probably seen on their screens before. What was like the Hayley Squires' biggest thing?

• 29:07Andy Greenwald?

  I, this is gonna be insufferable, but I'm gonna say it anyway, but I am British theater.

• 29:13Chris Ryan?

  Are you gonna say you saw her at Donmar Warehouse or something?

• 29:15Andy Greenwald?

  No, I saw her at All My Sons with Bryan Cranston and Papa Essidu earlier this year, and she was awesome. I know it's ridiculous and rarefied air, but you've experienced this too. That it is, I saw Tom Burke last year with Cate Blanchett on stage. Like I saw Coogan do Doctor Strangelove. Like it's really cool that all these really good actors work on challenging things. And then they get a call to like, play a copper for a couple of weeks. And they're like, that's awesome. I know I'm projecting, but I feel that enthusiasm on the screen.

• 29:40Chris Ryan?

  I think I saw the kid who plays young Jason Voorhees outside of the Xfinity Mobile Arena on Friday night, urinating on an M.B. jersey.

• 29:50Chris Ryan?

  So on TikTok.

• 29:51Andy Greenwald?

  Different cultures, you know, but, but people are working. That's what matters.

• 29:54Chris Ryan?

  Um, this show is set in 1990 in England gloriously. Uh, and I say that as somebody who is currently staring at the soundtrack, which features Happy Mondays and Depeche Mode and Stone Roses and a bunch of like Manchester classics and British club and alternative rock hits from that era. Great soundtrack. And it comes to us via the showrunner, creator, writer Neil Forsythe, uh, who, people who listen to this podcast may remember as the writer, creator of The Gold. The Gold was one of me and Andy's like out of nowhere faves from a couple of years ago. And then he did a second season, which I criminally admit I have not watched. And nor do I even know where to watch it because I think it was on PBS briefly and maybe on like a PBS

• 30:40Chris Ryan?

  streaming service, but I haven't checked it out. In any case, Andy, when we were chatting about this off the pod, I want to steal something you said and throw it back at you as a prompt.

• 30:51Chris Ryan?

  And this is, oh, I should say, a crime drama about an influx of heroin hitting England in 1990 and the Customs House Department of the Home Office or the Customs, basically the Customs Department of, um, the English government, um, sending in a bunch of undercover agents to try and, uh, stem the tide of heroin flooding into the country in 1990. Uh, and Steve Coogan plays the sort of ex undercover agent slash police officer. We haven't really gotten so far into his backstory, who leads these, uh, several of these cops and the, they're all played by squires and, um, and Tom Burke and Amal Amin, who's also quite good as a cop named Bailey or a customs agent named Bailey.

• 31:35Chris Ryan?

  When I was talking to you a little bit off pod, you were, you, you said something really insightful, which is, is this guy now his own genre? Is Neil Forsythe now his own genre? What would you describe as Neil Forsythe as a genre? It's really so specific. So if you would watch The Gold, which we encourage you to do, you will feel instantly at home with this show and also instantly relieved in a way that Netflix also understood his unique talents and gave him the platform because The Gold would have crushed on Netflix for the same reasons that Legends is already climbing the global top 10.

• 32:13Andy Greenwald?

  Neil Forsythe is uniquely talented at making incredibly complicated historical moments shine dramatically and emotionally with an almost like brutalist shorthand. What I mean by that is, like The Gold, which is about a very infamous, I think more infamous if you lived in the UK than if you were us, but infamous robbery and the after effects of that robbery, Legends is about customs officers infiltrating, as you said, like the heroin distribution networks of the UK in 1990.

• 32:54Andy Greenwald?

  Its heroes are people who usually check suitcases at the airport.

• 32:59Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 33:00Andy Greenwald?

  And it is absolutely suffused with a British specificity in terms of Margaret Thatcher's political interests, in terms of Turkish immigration, in terms of council estates and the politics and being from a place like Liverpool versus not being from a place like Liverpool. And yet it feels galactic in terms of like, oh, I understand everything about this. I understand the safe house where they're meeting and how people have plausible deniability and people are getting in over their heads. And there's a shorthand, you said, we don't know that much about Steve Coogan's Don character. We know exactly as much as we need to know.

• 33:40Andy Greenwald?

  When these characters sit down in a room, they are all primed to say not just the most expositionally efficient thing they could say, they say it with a flair and panache that is a hallmark of good writing. So when we covered the first season of Narcos, I think we both enjoyed it a lot, but we joked even then about the Boyd Holbrook voiceover and how really the show was like an elevated Wikipedia of the series, where historical events were being dramatized for our eyes in a way that was gripping.

• 34:09Chris Ryan?

  That's old Pablo right there.

• 34:11Andy Greenwald?

  Pablo Escobar was his name and drugs were his game.

• 34:14Chris Ryan?

  Joel Embiid came back from an appendectomy a little early for my tastes.

• 34:20Andy Greenwald?

  See, now you're kind of.

• 34:21Chris Ryan?

  But it seemed to work for the New York Knicks.

• 34:23Andy Greenwald?

  You're performing your trauma in a way that Freddy Krueger also did, that I'm a little, we're going to get to that at the end. I just want to say that in lesser hands. This show would be basic AF or confusing. And when I watch it, I thrill to the dramatics of it and the specificity of it. But I also marvel at its just brutal efficiency, honestly, to get us to this place. If you watch this pilot, the characters go from unknowns to deep undercover within 55 minutes, and there's not a wasted second.

• 34:58Chris Ryan?

  And all the things that take them from A to B, or actually A to G, basically, all the middle letters are so deeply pleasurable, including a recruitment drive, culling of recruits, a montage of training, different recruits being good at different elements of the job, like some are good at paperwork and some are good at picking locks. And all of the period details are so perfect, whether it's the car models or the references to European Cup finals that they're making. And then the music is just like, it's not hitting you over the head like, oh, here's a needle drop just out of nowhere.

• 35:40Chris Ryan?

  It's like walking into like college parties or estate council parties or pubs and stomp something on the radio. But it's very scene setting without spending a billion dollars to recreate Trafalgar Square in 1990.

• 35:59Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe when we do another Mailbag at some point, we could come up with like a working list of the six things that you watch television for in heaven. And just as a way to sort of point to them that like, not every show has to do all of them. And actually, shows get worse when they try to do too many of these things. So one thing that you've been talking about in regards to our coverage of Euphoria is that you're not bored and that you're often surprised. And there's a visual dynamism, and we'll get into that when we talk about that show. That is not what you come to Legends for. But you come to Legends for you learn something, you travel somewhere, and you also get that deeply pleasurable hit of watching a creator, filmmaker, showrunner, who loves things, certain things,

• 36:45Andy Greenwald?

  as much as you do in the audience and knows that sometimes, like, a perfect pop song only uses the same three chords. So a recruitment scene, you know, a character having a surprising core competence. The small details of characters getting to know each other in a rough and tumble way and realizing they're going to be friends for life. Like, there are these crime novel, crime television show, crime film beats that he runs right at and does his version of within this world. And then on top of that, you have Tom Burke, who is in, like, year 10 of being the next that guy, I think.

• 37:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, all the way back to, like, Furiosa, yeah.

• 37:22Andy Greenwald?

  And he's the lead of, like, of J.K. Rowling's other adaptation that's been on, was on Cinemax, the C.B. Strike series. He's a star of that. He's done romantic dramas in the UK. He's always hotly tipped to be hotly tipped, and he's a star. And at some points, you squint and you're like, he's also well into his 40s. And I think he's supposed to be passing as someone with a young family, but also, who cares? This is TV, man. He's really good at it.

• 37:51Chris Ryan?

  There is something kind of fun about the fact that this is, this kind of, it goes hand in hand with Widows' Bay to Me, where it's just a complete clarity of intention and tone. There is a menace of violence, there's a threat of violence, but so far, it's not, like, I mean, it's a little bloody, I guess, but not after a couple of episodes. But they just hand, everything is handled in, like, the exact way that I think that the showrunner wants it to be perceived. And that is, that is deeply pleasurable. We can hit it more in depth, like, next week when I'm back. Or no, maybe when, because we're going to be apart from each other a couple of episodes, but I hope to finish this one off with you at some point.

• 38:34Andy Greenwald?

  It's, it's, how jarring is it to see, because we're about to see Steve Coogan in The White Lotus, and Steve Coogan's career over the last 10 years plus, like Philomena and stuff, like he is, he has been in a period of like, let me try things, let me see where the floor is and where the ceiling is for me.

• 38:50Chris Ryan?

  Still doing Alan Partridge though, you know, he still does, and he was doing the trips like up until recently.

• 38:54Andy Greenwald?

  But like, is it jarring to see him in this role? Because I think you nailed it when you said he's doing Michael Caine, but really doing Michael Caine, and now I'm all the way in. I didn't, I don't think he's bad at all. He's, honestly, I didn't know this about the show. I didn't know it was Neil Forsythe. I turned on Netflix on Friday after getting back from dinner, and there's Steve Coogan in a TV show, and I said, sure. But did, did you bump it all, not bump, but were you surprised?

• 39:13Chris Ryan?

  He's got something, man. I mean, he's got screen presence where there's a, a sequence in the second episode where he has to answer like two different phones, both calling with emergencies, and he's also calling his boss, and it's just a lot of landline drama, and...

• 39:27Andy Greenwald?

  And some characters have cell phones though, but not the government?

• 39:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but like, he's able to basically like command the screen and be the, the, the load-bearing wall of, of this show. It's really, it's, it's a really great turn from him.

• 39:39Andy Greenwald?

  It's also, I would imagine, a little bit subversive and fun, because famously, he has had his own struggles with illicit substances in the past, and here he is playing like an absolute straight...

• 39:51Chris Ryan?

  He's like, we gotta get this heroin out of this country.

• 39:53Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I think he probably agrees with that sentiment now, without, without question. Do you think that, and we'll talk about this again when we get, circle back to it, but one thing that I really appreciate about Neil Forsythe also is that he is, he's Scottish himself, he's from Dundee, and that Scotland exists in a, like, a vortex on this show that's like a little bit, where's Sauron from? You know those references.

• 40:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and it's also like, like when somebody has to take heroin to Scotland, they're like, oh no, not Scotland.

• 40:21Andy Greenwald?

  That's exactly it. Like, if that's where he's from, but he's just like...

• 40:24Chris Ryan?

  You're a Kurdish heroin dealer, and you're worried about Scotland. This is amazing. Let's wrap up the pod today, or wrap up the TV part of the pod today with a trip through LA Knights. Euphoria, episode five, Kitty Kin, or no, Little Pig, this Little Piggy, right?

• 40:41Andy Greenwald?

  This Little Piggy.

• 40:42Chris Ryan?

  You know, you are watching this series

• 40:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 40:46Chris Ryan?

  as a pilgrim, new to the lands of Euphoria, and watching each episode is the, this is only the fifth episode of Euphoria that you've ever watched.

• 40:56Andy Greenwald?

  And by the way, I appreciate you using religious language to describe this because, as you know, I recently finished Jonathan Franzen's excellent novel, Crossroads, which is a lot about religion, and I'm learning a lot about religion and its ecstasies, and also its privileging of abasement, and how one must sometimes suffer. And in that suffering, there is a freedom.

• 41:17Chris Ryan?

  Are our characters on Euphoria not suffering?

• 41:20Andy Greenwald?

  Well, that's how I connect to them, because I too am suffering. But please, continue your setup.

• 41:26Chris Ryan?

  Your knowledge of Euphoria lore is limited, but your heart is open to the possible pleasures of the show. I was curious, though, as this episode starts with a, some would say hysterical, some would say thrilling, some would say cringe, 10-minute sequence of Sydney Sweeney's Cassie character becoming the 50-foot woman, the famous sort of sci-fi B-movie about a 50-foot woman who catches her boyfriend cheating on her. And we get gigantic replicas of Sydney Sweeney's breasts smashing into skyscraper windows. We get lots of lurid

• 42:05Chris Ryan?

  sexual behavior from her, all in a kind of crazed montage explaining her, you're her OnlyFans fame that is taking off. Do you have a quote-unquote "relationship" to the Sydney Sweeney stardom discourse, and also like her?

• 42:23Chris Ryan?

  Rumored political leanings, et cetera.

• 42:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 42:26Chris Ryan?

  That you feel like the jokes hit necessarily in this, in this sequence?

• 42:30Andy Greenwald?

  I want to thank you for your attention to my interest and curiosity in the Sydney Sweeney project. I also want to gently deflect and reflect the question back to you.

• 42:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:44Andy Greenwald?

  Let me, look, let me be honest with our listeners. I've long wanted to jump in feet first into the Sydney Sweeney discourse, and I'm grateful to you and the good folks at The Ringer for giving me an opportunity.

• 42:54Chris Ryan?

  It's this kind of fucking centrism that's dead, dude. This is not going to win an election anymore.

• 43:00Andy Greenwald?

  Totally right.

• 43:01Chris Ryan?

  Say it with your whole 50-foot woman chest.

• 43:04Andy Greenwald?

  These are the talking points that the DNC provided me on the subject of Cassie Howard and Euphoria.

• 43:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:10Andy Greenwald?

  That, you know, America's a great country and there's room for all sorts of, genuinely, genuinely, I was so perplexed by all of it because I absolutely couldn't tell what I was watching. I, if it is a satire of Sydney Sweeney's public persona over the last few months and years, I get it. I was aware of the jeans commercial and all of that. So I understand, like, in the political stuff, and it doesn't matter as long as people are talking. Like, I, I guess I appreciated it as a very robust, some might say, buxom

• 43:54Andy Greenwald?

  engagement with the larger cultural talking points. As television on a show that I was trying to find a way into, I found it off-putting and bizarre.

• 44:08Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 44:08Andy Greenwald?

  And I need to know genuinely, as a longtime fan of right-leaning celebrities, what you thought of this and how it spoke to you.

• 44:22Chris Ryan?

  Hold on, I have to close out of the window of Caitlin Clark walking out to Morgan Wallen at his concert in Indianapolis. Um, no, I, I, I think you need, I mean, for the, for the purposes of like accuracy, like I like this show. I really don't give a shit what like Sydney Sweeney is doing.

• 44:39Andy Greenwald?

  No, I know. So my genuine question is, you have said over the course of this conversation.

• 44:43Chris Ryan?

  Here, I'll make the case for the 10 minutes.

• 44:44Andy Greenwald?

  Because wait, I, I wanted to preface this by saying you have repeatedly, uh, said that you enjoy, I'm, I'm not trying to put you on the spot like a gotcha. I mean, you have said on this podcast that you have liked her performance and this character's arc on the show when it was a completely different show. So I actually need you to tell me.

• 45:02Chris Ryan?

  She can be like a wildly funny comic actress. And I also think that I've seen her in, there's a specific performance that she gave in reality, which was, um, the movie made about reality winners arrest that I thought was really good. I, that's, that's the bits aside, like, you know, I think she, she's capable of really good work. This 10 minute sequence, if you want to make the case for it, is about how the feedback loop of the modern digital ecosystem and internet ecosystem will explode someone, will make people like turn into monsters or transmogrify or become like, it's all of that. I think the most central image of those first 10 minutes is definitely

• 45:41Chris Ryan?

  Sweeney is Cassie looking at the comments about her OnlyFans videos and like that seeming to set off some sort of chain reaction inside of her brain.

• 45:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 45:51Chris Ryan?

  Um, it's also like, kind of funny and grotesque and also really interesting that Sweeney is, is going along with this portrayal of her, I guess. Like I, I don't know the best way to put it, but like she's, she's a willing partner, I assume in like how this is happening. And then when it comes to the line that I think is going to get clipped a lot, which is her appearing in 2024 Euphoria timeline on

• 46:20Chris Ryan?

  I guess Manosphere or like LA Digital Media Podcast. And when they ask like, you sound like a Democrat and she says, I'm not retarded. Like, that's going to get clipped to hell. And they knew that making the show. And this sequence is also about how there's no such thing as bad press. And here we are talking about a show that you've never watched before because it's interesting. Now, I don't know whether you are regretting that decision. But it is kind of this fascinating thing of like engagement with the engagement with the engagement.

• 46:52Andy Greenwald?

  I agree. I just think there's no bottom. That so far, aside from a few moments, all tied to Zendaya's performance. This season is meta to the point of abstraction. That I just find like, again and again, the show's worldview just fundamentally, I think, mistakes cynicism for insight. That there is something powerful being stated, observed, uncovered, revealed by pointing a camera at it and being like, isn't that evil? Isn't that awful? Aren't people really, really at their heart, kind of thirsty, hungry, desperate, bad?

• 47:37Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. Great. Then why, but I don't find, I just, I found last night incredibly frustrating because without something grounding it. It was the Tarantino karaoke just overwhelmed everything to me. Like, characters, you know, like Alamo's pants being too small and then turning it into Samuel L. Jackson at the beginning of Pulp Fiction, overreacting about the burgers. You know, it's like, that's, by the way, that's my, that's how I remember Pulp Fiction.

• 48:07Chris Ryan?

  You remember it being that he's overreacting.

• 48:10Andy Greenwald?

  It's about one man overreacting.

• 48:14Chris Ryan?

  I think he went in there with the intention of killing those guys that happened to have a burger. And he, he said, it's a tasty burger.

• 48:21Andy Greenwald?

  It is a tasty burger. You're right. So let me rephrase that. He finds happiness in the burger.

• 48:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:26Andy Greenwald?

  Otherwise, like I, I guess I made it five episodes before ending up in this kind of frustrated place where I feel like I also am buried up to the head and someone's about to club me and club me in the forehead about it. Like I, I, I think I just desperately lack, and I, I walked into this. I get this. I walked into this willingly, but I, I'm starting to wonder more and more, would I feel differently? Or would I feel worse if I had an emotional attachment to anyone on the screen? I need you to talk about it.

• 48:51Chris Ryan?

  I don't feel anything at all. I think that I still have hope that there's something going on with the Rue and Nate characters. And I, Nate has been completely abandoned as somebody with any kind of connective tissue to the past iterations of the character. But there, you, you kind of jokingly mentioned the suffering leading to salvation thing.

• 49:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 49:14Chris Ryan?

  Earlier. It's, it's kind of obvious that's what's happening. Like they're literally cutting pieces of Jacob Elordi off. They are burying Zendaya in the desert and this will now be the second near death experience she has. She is not in the trailer for next week, but I am assuming that she was not decapitated in the desert by Alamo. And that now we're going to have five episodes of, four more episodes of Euphoria.

• 49:39Andy Greenwald?

  Honestly, I'd respect it. I'd respect it.

• 49:41Chris Ryan?

  I think that the project here is about whether or not you can have a soul and live in the greater Los Angeles area. It's like, I think that's the idea behind the show. I don't know whether or not these characters are the right vessel to get at that.

• 49:58Chris Ryan?

  There are certain combinations of characters that I really like. Honestly, thought the Alamo and Maddie conversation of Bob's big boy was pretty electric.

• 50:06Andy Greenwald?

  I, I, I really agree with you because well, there's two things happening here that I want to, three things that I want to give credit to. Sam Levinson fucking loves movies. You can tell. And the stylistic decision making, not just like now we're going to do Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, but we're also going to really pay attention to dressing Maude Apatow's character like she's in a Howard Hawks screwball comedy who's wandered into the wrong movie. Like all the way down to, well, what does Tarantino do really well? He does people talking at diners really well. So let's do a diner scene, maybe either maybe worthy of the imitation and the flattery. The other thing is I don't have in front of me, I'll call it up in a moment, but like the cinematography and the lighting is beautiful.

• 50:50Andy Greenwald?

  But what's our man, I haven't been saying his name, our guy AAA who's playing Alamo is giving a really, really good performance on the show.

• 51:02Chris Ryan?

  It's also a pretty significant part of the show. So it's like, it's interesting that they have, in a lot of ways, like Lori and Alamo have taken up so much real estate in the series compared to say Lexi or Jules or Nate.

• 51:15Andy Greenwald?

  By the way, I don't want to be glib. I was calling him AAA, but it's Adewale Akonue Agbajie.

• 51:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:20Andy Greenwald?

  He's, he's great on this.

• 51:21Chris Ryan?

  The only other thing I would say is just that like his instincts for depicting addict psychology, I think are pretty, pretty shorthanded. And Rue repeatedly finding herself in a situation where she can't be fully honest with anybody in her life is a hallmark, I think, of somebody who's dealing with addiction, is struggling with addiction, even struggling with being sober is, is like, how honest can you be with any one person at any given time? She can't be honest with Jules about what they're doing. She can't be honest with Alamo about what she's doing. She's not honest with Lori about what she's doing. She's not honest with Maddie, really, about what's going on when, when Alamo walks into

• 52:06Chris Ryan?

  Bob's Big Boy. And, you know, what they're putting that character through, I think we're only going to really be able to understand it. Same thing with Nate at the end of the series or at the end of the season. But I do find it, this wasn't my favorite episode. I also watched it after like. An evening out watching the San Antonio Spurs. So it was like a long basketball game and then I came back and I was like, Cave Sidney Sweeney's giant chest is destroying downtown Los Angeles.

• 52:36Andy Greenwald?

  Kind of like what Wemba Yama did last night as well, isn't it?

• 52:39Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 52:40Andy Greenwald?

  That was, she got whistled for a flagrant.

• 52:42Chris Ryan?

  Flagrant too.

• 52:44Andy Greenwald?

  Could have been the name of the episode.

• 52:46Chris Ryan?

  Trying to see if I have any other notes here. I do have a pet theory that we're going to find out that this season of Euphoria is in fact a storyline on LA Knights. It's interesting that like LA Knights seems to be the vortex that's drawing all these characters in. Jules is painted for it. Lexi works on it. Now Cassie is on it.

• 53:08Chris Ryan?

  And it would be kind of fun if it just turned into like, uh, this is a very special episode of LA Knights.

• 53:14Andy Greenwald?

  I like, I know this runs counter to things I said at the beginning of the season, but I actually, I'm finding LA Knights to be kind of grounding, partly because I think Sharon Stone and Colleen Camp are funny and I like their presence on the show. And, you know, but that said, look, I think the most interesting thing about last night's episode to me was that I don't know of many other shows that have run right at a fundamental truth of our culture and of our, certainly of the entertainment industry, which is that old world stuff, the stuff that we cover, the stuff that motivates us, that inspires us, is dying, is Jurassic. And what the way most people engage with things is not this. It's vertical video. It's straight to consumer.

• 53:58Andy Greenwald?

  It's OnlyFans in name or Patreon, which is just like what Substack is just intellectual nerd OnlyFans, right? Like it's, that's, that's what the industry is. And so the moment when Matty like upsells Alamo on the potential of his business is interesting. The moment, and you counter that with Cassie being so blinkered to think, or at least so old world in her mentality, that she's willing to give up what is clearly a multimillion dollar opportunity to audition for a role of, what was it? Like job applicant? To audition for someone auditioning on a television show. That completely rewires her brain and she's like, now I will be famous.

• 54:42Andy Greenwald?

  But what she really means is now I will be legitimate or now my mother will know where to watch me on TV. That's a fascinating place for. Any kind of conversation these days, maybe not a fascinating place for our podcast, but like, it's interesting to see it play out on the screen in a way. And uniting all of these worlds that OnlyFans kind of legitimizes things that have been marginalized. That's all really interesting.

• 55:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's, it's, that has been a weird theme of this, this season, where it's like, the, Maddie's boss makes her get rid of Kaitlyn as a client earlier in the season.

• 55:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and then it's like.

• 55:15Chris Ryan?

  And now, like, is like, kind of interested, but at the same time, Cassie desperately wants to be on like, traditional forms of media because that somehow ratifies or validates her celebrity. And then there's like, you know, Nate asking Cassie to get into a faux relationship with the guy with the TikTok house. Uh, I don't know, I don't really know what they're doing, Nate. I don't know what he's been doing with the $30,000 cash injections that Cassie's been giving him. Maybe he's like on Calci, but I'm not sure.

• 55:46Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I, I, I thought that entire scene was despicable.

• 55:50Chris Ryan?

  Like, just. Him getting his finger cut off?

• 55:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. I, I just.

• 55:54Chris Ryan?

  You don't think he dances to vinyl, that character?

• 55:57Andy Greenwald?

  What was he dancing to, Mel Tormé?

• 55:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:59Andy Greenwald?

  Sure. Sure, man. Like, everything, let's just, let's just find it in the moment, you know what I mean? Let's just like, feels good, let's.

• 56:06Chris Ryan?

  Let's fix it on set.

• 56:07Andy Greenwald?

  Let's do it. I, there are a lot of ideas on the screen.

• 56:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Okay.

• 56:13Andy Greenwald?

  That's what I'm, and, and I'm trying, I'm white knuckling it, man, in pursuit of my faith and in my belief in you.

• 56:21Andy Greenwald?

  There were a couple of weeks when I didn't like it, in quotes, but I, like you, I was like, I'm not bored and I appreciate the aesthetics, or I appreciate.

• 56:30Chris Ryan?

  Were you bored last night?

• 56:31Andy Greenwald?

  The effort. I found last night mostly excruciating to watch, yeah. Cause it's also, it's like, it's 50, 58 minutes, 61 minutes.

• 56:40Chris Ryan?

  It was an hour and one minute.

• 56:42Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, it's, that's too many minutes, man. It's just, it's too many minutes. No one who needs to hear me talk about this. I want to hear you talk about it more because you have, as a fan of serialized television, I think you have some relationship with characters' journeys. And so when I'm watching this, last night's episode, and I'm like, Rue suddenly seems just a lot more credulous.

• 57:02Chris Ryan?

  Passive.

• 57:03Andy Greenwald?

  And passive and kind of clueless about stuff.

• 57:05Chris Ryan?

  I don't find passivity to be like, that to me is like, someone being in control of their own destiny is kind of like, like a ability. I'm like, I don't know, these are like weird rules that we make for TV characters that I don't really give a shit about. Like, some people get pushed around in their life and wind up like...

• 57:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, no, I'm not, that's not what I'm arguing. I'm saying, is the Rue that you watched over multiple seasons, the same person who is driven to the desert by Marshawn Lynch and told to dig a hole until it comes up to her chin, is like, oh, I guess this is my job now?

• 57:35Chris Ryan?

  I suppose she's like aware on a deeper level how fucked she is. Like, she's basically at the center of like a pain triangle among drug dealers and the DEA. So like, there's really not a lot of outs for her. And I think that's an experience probably where it's like, it's all fun and games until it's really not, when you, when it comes to like buying drugs and being a drug addict and stuff. I don't necessarily, I mean, it's obviously like a fantastical and like deeply like spaghetti western fate to be digging your own grave, but I like spaghetti westerns. I just found that like the Rue and the Nate culminations of those two arcs this episode hit different because we had literally seen

• 58:18Chris Ryan?

  them go through those experiences before. So I wasn't like, oh no, Nate now loses his finger. I wonder if he'll really change this time. It's like, obviously Nate is going through some reverse Frankenstein's monster thing, and Rue is going through some quasi-religious Passion of the Christ thing to kind of find the truth of what the Bible is supposed to be telling her because she has this block when it comes to a higher power.

• 58:42Andy Greenwald?

  There is just something, maybe it is something like a born again thing that I just am observing, and I don't say this like with judgment, like I think that Sam Levinson believes that it's all kind of bullshit, and he's seen it, and he's been through it. And one of the things I think he feels, there's an element of like a provocateur. In a grand artistic sense that I think he seems to subscribe to, which is just like, you think you're above it on your living room couch, but you fucking look at these websites too. And you know that I'm casting porn stars because you're looking at porn stars. Now you're watching them too, and now you're complicit in this too. And my actors are complicit in it and you think-

• 59:19Chris Ryan?

  But your use of the second person is quite pointed here.

• 59:21Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I mean, like, you think Sydney Sweeney can't act? Well, now she's, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have her do a long monologue from Shakespeare and have people watching her do it, and then have people watching people watching her do it. Because that's what all of this is about, man. We're all just watching and we're all finding our way through it. Or even similarly, like, for me, as a, as a noob, like, the totally confounding character of Jules and that performance and that, and, and their role on the show, which is like, I'm gonna objectify the person you guys are already objectifying, but within the show, she is objectified as well, and how does that make you feel? It's a lot, and, you know, it's a, and it is not a usual relationship between artist and

• 1:00:06Andy Greenwald?

  audience that we find on television. And I think it's important to note that, like, that is a little bit more cinematic, I think. Or it's like, I don't know if you've been following, I assume you've been following, you've been busy with the Sixers, but the Venice Biennale opened last week. So I'm not sure how across it you've been, but this, this Austrian artist Florentina Holsinger, are you aware of what she's been doing in the Austrian pavilion?

• 1:00:27Chris Ryan?

  You're the fucking best, right?

• 1:00:28Andy Greenwald?

  Her, her thing, no, it's been on, like, people have seen this because it's been on Instagram and stuff, but like, her thing is that, you know, she is the art. And so at the, the Austrian pavilion, she has a water tank set up and she is jet skiing in circles nude, and like, that's what she's doing. But she also opened the pavilion by they hung a giant bell, and then she hung herself nude as the thing, the hammer inside the bell that rings. And I feel like-

• 1:00:52Chris Ryan?

  Marina Abramovic did this shit like a couple of years ago, though, right?

• 1:00:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, well, Quentin Tarantino did this shit years ago, too. I'm just saying, like, I, I, I am not saying this to mock. I have plenty of other opportunities on this podcast to mock or sneer or, you know, wring my hair with moral piety, but I am saying that there is an element of provocation- Inherent in this season that I respect and that I'm trying to identify as its own thread in the larger cultural quilt that is not very common. Because and honestly, I think this is sometimes I haven't asked him about what he thinks about this season, but I do think that that's partly what our buddy Sam Smail always responded to on the show or on the Idol or something, because I think he fundamentally disdains accommodation.

• 1:01:40Andy Greenwald?

  Like, he does not want the audience to be comfortable. He gets mad, not just if you're folding laundry, but if TV shows do the things that I was just praising Neil Forsyte for doing. You know, like, oh, here's something that we've seen shows do before, and isn't it fun to see them do it, but in Scotland? Like, anti that. So, bravo, question mark, but also, I wanted to just go take a long walk around my neighborhood and think about the choices I've made after that Nate scene. But maybe that's the point.

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• 1:04:05Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk about choices briefly. Watch after dark remote. So I don't know if we can really get the lighting change that we're accustomed to.

• 1:04:12Andy Greenwald?

  Do you have shades on those windows?

• 1:04:13Chris Ryan?

  Should I turn off my, my, my mother's kitchen light here?

• 1:04:18Chris Ryan?

  So I came across the country for family reasons, but also because I was like, this is the rare opportunity to go see the Philadelphia 76ers play a home basketball game, home playoff game, which I had not seen since 2012. We have not gotten past the second round.

• 1:04:34Andy Greenwald?

  In 20, 25 years, I believe.

• 1:04:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. The 2012 team, which was the last team before the process is sort of, you know, famously derided for like being second round and out guys. But here we are in 2026 and you know, perhaps, perhaps I was flying too high off that Boston, that Boston pack, but I flew out here. Myself and Nick from Bad Brother went to the game on Friday. We had a fantastic Philadelphia evening where we, we started, we got a Guinness. And then we went to old original Nick's roast beef.

• 1:05:12Andy Greenwald?

  Great spot.

• 1:05:14Chris Ryan?

  I had a roast pork sandwich with some horseradish on it and a yingling and I was like, goddamn dude, it's the best city in the world. And we pull up on Xfinity Mobile Arena. I was curious, what's your favorite iteration of that arena? What was your, what bank sponsorship did you prefer?

• 1:05:33Andy Greenwald?

  It's the Wachovia Center for me.

• 1:05:35Chris Ryan?

  We were talking core states. We were like, did core states have like a real?

• 1:05:39Andy Greenwald?

  Core states, yeah, that was better because the thing about, first of all, I love banks. I love them.

• 1:05:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And I love when they change hands.

• 1:05:48Andy Greenwald?

  They provide so many basic services and some of them even have cafes now. So thank you, banks. But I do appreciate, like Citizens Bank Park at least has the word citizens in it. So you can squint and be like, that's for all of us. Core states has a similar like, oh, it's essential.

• 1:06:08Chris Ryan?

  Pennsylvania is a core state.

• 1:06:09Andy Greenwald?

  It was one of the original 13.

• 1:06:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:12Andy Greenwald?

  Once we got into these, yeah, Xfinity Mobile, come on.

• 1:06:16Chris Ryan?

  So we were walking up to this, to Xfinity Mobile off the subway and it was kind of like, took the subway, by the way, very nice experience.

• 1:06:24Andy Greenwald?

  It's a great experience to get to the sports complex.

• 1:06:26Chris Ryan?

  And we were talking about like, what do you think the ratio of Knicks fans to Sixers fans is going to be? And I, pride comes before the fall. And I was like, I think like 70, 30 Philly, right? Like first, second round game in a minute, like.

• 1:06:42Andy Greenwald?

  And they made a concerted effort, at least I, so I thought, to limit sales to like a certain zip code or whatever.

• 1:06:50Chris Ryan?

  I don't even know if they actually did that, but the problem was.

• 1:06:53Andy Greenwald?

  Are you saying you don't take Josh Harris at his word? Okay, let's, we'll get back to that.

• 1:06:57Chris Ryan?

  When we were on the train,

• 1:06:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:00Chris Ryan?

  I noticed a lot of people wearing Phillies regalia.

• 1:07:05Andy Greenwald?

  Good.

• 1:07:06Chris Ryan?

  And I was like, oh, they can't possibly be playing at the same time.

• 1:07:12Chris Ryan?

  They were.

• 1:07:13Andy Greenwald?

  You sure?

• 1:07:14Chris Ryan?

  The Phillies were playing the Colorado Rockies.

• 1:07:17Chris Ryan?

  The mildly hot Phillies were playing the Colorado Rockies.

• 1:07:20Andy Greenwald?

  By the way, CR year, things are trending in your direction in baseball, too.

• 1:07:25Chris Ryan?

  Oh, because I like Don?

• 1:07:27Andy Greenwald?

  You like Don Mattingly, but also you're like, talk to me after game 60.

• 1:07:30Chris Ryan?

  That's what I said. I said that. So maybe.

• 1:07:33Andy Greenwald?

  I'm saying, you said that.

• 1:07:34Chris Ryan?

  So anyway, we're walking up and it becomes apparent that we're closer to like 50 50.

• 1:07:40Andy Greenwald?

  All right.

• 1:07:40Chris Ryan?

  As the amount of Knicks jerseys we're seeing.

• 1:07:45Chris Ryan?

  And I did see several Knicks fans doing an interview with a citizen journalist who had a Calci microphone. I don't know what futures predictions they were making, but it did not involve my future and or if it did, it was like, this guy's going to be really miserable. We get in there and you're like, okay, like, this is it, man. I I'm just a grown man at an NBA playoff game. Like, what could be better than this? And we sit down and they got the white t-shirts out and we're like, fuck, yeah, like Josh Harris spares no expense.

• 1:08:16Andy Greenwald?

  The white t-shirts of surrender. Yeah.

• 1:08:20Chris Ryan?

  I we sit down and we're next to like five lovely people from New Jersey in Knicks jerseys. And then to our left are more fans wearing Knicks regalia. And then in front of us, a lovely couple comes in and they are obviously Knicks fans. And increasingly in our section, and I think it was the same, it was more like 80 20 Knicks to Sixers fans. And what happened then was a brief moment in the first quarter where Tyrese Maxey threw back to back alley oops to VJ Edgecombe and I almost leapt over three rows to high five the only other Sixers fan in our section. Then we got fucking boat raced.

• 1:09:03Chris Ryan?

  And that's when it really got dark because the people around us were relatively pleasant, except for the guy up in the upper deck who shouted, let's go Knicks during the moment of silence for Sixers coach Nick Nurse's brother, who recently passed away. That guy's a fucking scumbag. And if Buddy Ryan was still alive, he never would have gotten out of Philadelphia. And sometimes I wonder whether we need to go back to the old us.

• 1:09:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:09:28Chris Ryan?

  You know what I mean? Like, I don't like the reputation that Philadelphians are like alcoholic hooligans, but when you let something like that happen, it's pretty embarrassing. The most terrible thing that happened was the Knicks then go on like, you know, just this epic run that basically went on for seven quarters. You know, they destroyed us, then kicked the shit out of us yesterday in game four. But during, we get to halftime, and me and Nick are like, I kind of want to leave. Like, this is not actually fun. But then in my mind, I was like, you know what? Not everything in life is supposed to be fun. Like, we kind of have consumerfied everything. It's like, fuck me. Fuck me for coming here, you know?

• 1:10:10Andy Greenwald?

  You're like Nate on Euphoria. You're just seeing something through.

• 1:10:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Cut it off.

• 1:10:15Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't need it anyway.

• 1:10:16Chris Ryan?

  Just cut it off. And I think the bottom, hitting bottom, is being in a men's room, but getting to that inner men's room line where you're still waiting for the urinal.

• 1:10:29Andy Greenwald?

  But now you're in a bathroom.

• 1:10:31Chris Ryan?

  Full of Knicks fans on IG Live, filming other men urinate, going Knicks in four, fuck Embiid. I may be on, I might be on some guy's Instagram, having a halftime piss and thinking about what led me to this place in my life. Forty-eight years old, honestly, like, just being humiliated in public on the internet. I have no idea what happened to that footage.

• 1:10:59Andy Greenwald?

  I hearted it. I did see it. Out of respect, I did not repost it. But you come off well, you know?

• 1:11:10Chris Ryan?

  Kai should clip that, clip me in the bathroom.

• 1:11:17Andy Greenwald?

  But just running underneath this.

• 1:11:18Chris Ryan?

  See, our month takes a new turn.

• 1:11:22Andy Greenwald?

  I so I have I have a couple of things to respond to here. I did, I wanted to say in my own defense that last week when I was watching the Sixers be buddy buddy with with the Celtics at the end of the series. I was saying that maybe, maybe we need to Bugs Bunny meme sports again and like, Lord forgive us.

• 1:11:38Chris Ryan?

  You want guys to be pissed at each other, yeah.

• 1:11:40Andy Greenwald?

  And you you were like, oh, no, come on, we're all in the league together. This is a fraught one because genuinely, I'm on the record as saying this and I'm OK with it. I think that the Knicks should be good because for 20 years, they were dog shit and that's dumb because Madison Square Garden is the coolest place to see basketball and it's a storied franchise and it's more fun when they are good last week accepted. Also, we both have many Knicks fans in our life.

• 1:12:10Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I I should say like, congratulations to them.

• 1:12:13Andy Greenwald?

  Sure, that sounds very genuine.

• 1:12:15Chris Ryan?

  And also.

• 1:12:16Andy Greenwald?

  First, let me talk about pissing and now let me talk about congratulations.

• 1:12:19Chris Ryan?

  One of the other indignities that we suffered was that was the first time I've knowingly been in the same building as Timothy Chalamet. No, that's a lie. I went to a a complete unknown screening that he, no, he wasn't at that. So like, that was the first time I've ever been in the building with Timothy Chalamet and it was him dicking all over the the Xfinity Mobile Arena.

• 1:12:40Andy Greenwald?

  But you have.

• 1:12:40Chris Ryan?

  Sitting courtside. Who sold him that ticket?

• 1:12:43Andy Greenwald?

  We need to name names.

• 1:12:45Chris Ryan?

  Who sold him that ticket? Just just let me know, who sold him that ticket?

• 1:12:47Andy Greenwald?

  Name, time to name names.

• 1:12:49Chris Ryan?

  Was it M. Night Shyamalan?

• 1:12:50Andy Greenwald?

  You were just saying that the new James Elroy book actually suggests that the people who name names during the communist witch try witch hunts of the 50s were the heroes. So maybe we need to bring back that aesthetic.

• 1:13:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Spike was there, Ben Stiller was there, it was ridiculous, dude.

• 1:13:06Andy Greenwald?

  Tracy Morgan was there for the, not the fifth or sixth time you were in the same room with Fat Joe. So that's always, you guys, you'll settle that offline, but you know, we understand that that's been simmering since the Rucker. I.

• 1:13:19Andy Greenwald?

  It's hard because we have friends from there. We chose to live in New York City, not Philadelphia for the best years of our life. So I get it. But I am, my sports fandom is forever chilled by the fact that one of the most fun things about our shared teens and 20s was that when we would come home from college, or just come home from living in New York, we would always go to a Sixers game at Thanksgiving. And I remember that we went to a game, it was maybe, in my mind, it's the first Iverson game we ever went to. And it was the beginning, or maybe it was even before Iverson, it was Jerry Stackhouse was going to be the answer. And I just remember going to the arena, and it was, and we were playing the Knicks, and the team was garbage. And they were doing Fan Cam. And you know,

• 1:14:04Andy Greenwald?

  it's like, well, it'd be you, fan of the game, fan of the game. And it settles on this lovely woman. And they came to her and they were like, you ma'am, you're the Sixers fan of the game. What do you have to say? And they handed her the microphone, and she said, I just want to say, go Knicks. And like, I hear her voice sometimes when I'm trying to like, talk myself to sleep by thinking about like, Sixers two-way players who might make it. So this really burnt. This was, it's egregious. And I don't understand why it happens, because the Mets, who, I mean, of bad NL East teams, I mean, I think we all, I think there's a clear winner and a clear loser. And it's not, you know, it's reverse. Like, is it a numbers thing? Is it a ticket scarcity thing?

• 1:14:49Chris Ryan?

  Apparently, there's a couple of different things. For one thing, just anecdotally from Uber drivers in Philadelphia, they're like, this team is not that good. And if you can make a thousand dollars selling your tickets, I don't blame anybody. I don't know, that's anecdotal, based on like, two Uber drivers. I think one of the major problems is that MSG is so expensive. Knicks games are so expensive. And the Knicks fandom is something of a diaspora, where there's like, a lot of New Jersey Knicks fans, there's a lot of people who can't maybe get into MSG for any games. Philly is like, a very easy commute to get down, and I guess relatively cheaper.

• 1:15:26Andy Greenwald?

  And great restaurants, you know, nightlife.

• 1:15:29Chris Ryan?

  It was tough, man. It was just like, if I had known, would I still have done it? Yes. I would have, you know?

• 1:15:36Andy Greenwald?

  It's good. It's good to go out and meet your voters. You know what I mean? Like, really understand the electorate. I genuinely think this is a

• 1:15:46Andy Greenwald?

  Franchise problem. I think that if it was a well-run franchise by someone who, I don't know, I'm just spitballing here, didn't also own the Washington Football Team and is also in the Epstein files, like, maybe the curse would be lifted and maybe things would work out a little better. And also that maybe people would genuinely believe, because it was really cool to beat the Celtics. I genuinely love with my whole heart Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, and I will always love Joel Embiid, and I'm happy for him, both that he beat the Celtics. And as he said last night, though I haven't ever accomplished anything, I can be a good man and a good father. And I'm like, you know, I might print out that quote hanging on my wall.

• 1:16:30Andy Greenwald?

  There's real wisdom in the post-game interviews.

• 1:16:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:33Andy Greenwald?

  But beyond that, like, why would anyone believe? Like, especially with all of this just like, fucking tiki-tack, like, load management, contract juggling, like, but if we're all healthy at the same moment, somehow we might, things might break, right?

• 1:16:49Chris Ryan?

  We should have believed because we beat the fucking Celtics. We beat Boston.

• 1:16:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, so I'll always have that. I was not kidding when I said, raise the banner. Like, that, like, there should be a banner that says that to encapsulate this era. There should be two banners from this era. One is beating the Celtics in the first round of the 2026 NBA playoffs. The other one was Zaire Smith surviving the peanut allergy.

• 1:17:10Chris Ryan?

  That's right. Was it sesame seeds?

• 1:17:12Andy Greenwald?

  Or the, he went into anaphylactic shock, and they should just raise the EpiPen to the rafters. And every time Mikal Bridges dunks on us, he should point to that. That's what I feel.

• 1:17:25Chris Ryan?

  Well, that was my week. And I drank a lot, so.

• 1:17:32Andy Greenwald?

  Well, you look great. You wear it well. Now we can focus on, are you gonna focus on baseball now, or are we just focusing on the June 1st AJ Brown trade?

• 1:17:43Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. I don't know what I'm gonna do now. I thought maybe I would start reading more.

• 1:17:47Andy Greenwald?

  Sounds dark. Might I recommend Crossroads? Quite good.

• 1:17:53Chris Ryan?

  I mean, you're such a bookfluencer, man. I know that.

• 1:17:57Andy Greenwald?

  You're just upset because Phoebe and I have been texting about it. Like, then you're cut out of it. That's all.

• 1:18:01Chris Ryan?

  It's all right.

• 1:18:02Andy Greenwald?

  I get it.

• 1:18:02Chris Ryan?

  I like you guys having an independent relationship from me.

• 1:18:06Andy Greenwald?

  Because I send her the videos when they come up on the internet. I'm like, your husband's pissing online again. And she's like, oh, I thought he didn't go on Twitter anymore. I'm like, no, no, literally. And then we try to, we try to clean it up. We have Spotify's best black bag ops.

• 1:18:24Chris Ryan?

  Kaya and Kai for indulging in that, that episode of The Watch After Dark.

• 1:18:30Chris Ryan?

  I am not going to be on Thursday's show.

• 1:18:32Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah, I gotta get, I gotta figure out a show.

• 1:18:34Chris Ryan?

  And then you are not on next week's shows.

• 1:18:37Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 1:18:38Chris Ryan?

  Because we are doing some traveling.

• 1:18:40Andy Greenwald?

  Ship's passing.

• 1:18:41Chris Ryan?

  But I hope when we reconvene, you're all caught up to date on Euphoria, that you continue to watch Euphoria diligently, and that you don't turn into a guy who's like, now I have to watch three episodes of Euphoria the night before. I'm checking in with Chris. Don't do that.

• 1:18:58Andy Greenwald?

  Dude, glimpse behind the curtain, like, nobody cares what we have access to or like how we watch things. But it's been a, it's a tough sled that like, they have denied screener access to Euphoria season three. It's just, it's just that like-

• 1:19:12Chris Ryan?

  Sam's still tinkering.

• 1:19:13Andy Greenwald?

  Sure. No, I don't want to interrupt his process.

• 1:19:15Chris Ryan?

  It's getting a dial.

• 1:19:16Andy Greenwald?

  It's just that like, I do wonder, and I'm try, I try to be better than this, but I wonder if I would enjoy it more if I could control my experience rather than being like, ah, now to end my restful weekend with the sound of Jacob Elordi screaming as a man who uses a fucking garden shears to take off a finger. Do you know what I mean? Like, is there a little anger in my voice when I say that? Maybe.

• 1:19:36Chris Ryan?

  Thanks to everybody for helping produce the show today. We will be back with you guys on Thursday, just minus me. Greenwald solo show? Who can say? I can't wait to find out. And then next week.

• 1:19:48Andy Greenwald?

  I'm gonna do a Pablo Torre-style investigation of Josh Harris's myriad web of business interests. Do you think that would do numbers? Especially if I didn't research it?

• 1:19:58Chris Ryan?

  Yes. And then you got sued. We have to get some indemnification for the company first, but then feel free.

• 1:20:06Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, I'll see what I can do.

• 1:20:07Chris Ryan?

  The views expressed in this podcast exclusively are to Greenwald's. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you guys soon.

• 1:20:24Speaker 04

  Chief Financial Playmaker Fernando Mendoza. You are worthy of financial security. Budgeting is not restriction, it's freedom. You are smart. You are capable. You are giving your money a purpose. You are learning the language of saving, of growing. Now streaming. Member FDIC Copyright 2026 US Bank.

• 1:20:51Chris Ryan?

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