Is ‘Widow’s Bay’ Too Good? Plus ‘Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed’ and ‘Top Chef’

(00:00) Chris and Andy talk about the latest media shake ups at 60 Minutes before discussing what movies like ‘Backrooms’ and ‘Obsession’ might say about TV’s own need for fresh voices (09:33). Then they play a ‘Star City’ inspired game (18:55) about alternate POV spinoffs. Later, they break down the latest episode of ‘Widow’s Bay’ (30:19), check in on ‘Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed’ (46:11), and share their thoughts on the penultimate episode of ‘Top Chef’ season 23 (01:07:04). 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 Stefano Sanchez 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.

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  I need support staff to clear the room. Stand up and walk, now!

• 1:11Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com. And joining me in the studio, he doesn't want a refund, he just wants the person who did this to find out, it's Andy Greenwald!

• 1:26Andy Greenwald?

  That was a joyful opening for what might be a sad show. I wanted to let you know that I have accepted an offer to run 60 Minutes.

• 1:35Andy Greenwald?

  I feel qualified to do this, based on...

• 1:37Chris Ryan?

  You have a little bit of a built-in vibe to you, you know?

• 1:40Andy Greenwald?

  Wow! In what sense?

• 1:41Chris Ryan?

  Gadfly.

• 1:42Andy Greenwald?

  Overconfidence.

• 1:43Chris Ryan?

  Spectacled, yeah.

• 1:44Andy Greenwald?

  Ready to tear down boomer privilege.

• 1:46Chris Ryan?

  Moving from industry to industry, just sort of like, hey guys, let's open the box and then throw the box off the table.

• 1:51Andy Greenwald?

  Jokes aside, I do believe I was a finalist, but his writing credit on The Idol, I think, is what pushed him over the top.

• 1:57Chris Ryan?

  We can talk about 60 Minutes if you want, we can also talk about...

• 2:01Andy Greenwald?

  Name them, name the stuff.

• 2:02Chris Ryan?

  Widows Bay.

• 2:02Andy Greenwald?

  Hell yeah.

• 2:03Chris Ryan?

  Maximum pleasure guaranteed.

• 2:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 2:05Chris Ryan?

  Top Chef.

• 2:05Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 2:06Chris Ryan?

  I have a prompt for you that's related to Star City but will not involve... People having watched Star City.

• 2:11Andy Greenwald?

  And will not be in its native Russian.

• 2:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I have a couple of things to say. One, you can email us at the watch at Spotify.com. You can follow us on Instagram at the watch pod underscore.

• 2:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 2:20Chris Ryan?

  You, that's on Instagram. And then you can watch us on YouTube at the Ringer dash TV channel along with the Prestige TV pod. They're going to be rocking Cape Fear on Friday. You and I both gritting our teeth trying to decide. Are we jumping back in with Max Cady? I don't know. Um, what else? What else? What else? You can also listen to us on Spotify or wherever you get podcasts. I told you what we're listening to today. And Star City, we'll probably talk about episodes two and three in detail on Monday. So if people are watching. I will repeat to anyone who skipped through our Star City conversation, A, I love it. B. You don't need to have seen For All Mankind to appreciate it.

• 3:03Andy Greenwald?

  Star City got the rare CR Instagram boost.

• 3:07Chris Ryan?

  Did it?

• 3:08Andy Greenwald?

  But you, you posted on Instagram that you like it.

• 3:10Chris Ryan?

  Because I don't think in the title, it talked about how much I liked it. And Star City is one of these weird shows that people are like, like I was texting with a friend last night. It's like, you should watch Star City. And, and she was like, an Apple show that no one's heard of? Say less. Like, um, which we will be talking about Apple TV. It's a weird Apple TV moment. They've got a ton of stuff on right now.

• 3:33Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, this, this moment is an argument for their frankly borderline irresponsible strategy, which is to flood the zone. And they have a number, a disproportionate number of good to very good to, in one case, absolutely great series on the air right now.

• 3:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:52Andy Greenwald?

  Um, so, so kudos to Tim Apple.

• 3:55Chris Ryan?

  I did have a Star City thing for you. Hey, do you like?

• 3:58Andy Greenwald?

  Hey.

• 3:58Chris Ryan?

  I actually really like with the 60 Minutes stuff.

• 4:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 4:03Chris Ryan?

  I don't, when's the last time you watched 60 Minutes?

• 4:07Chris Ryan?

  Like sat down and watched it.

• 4:09Andy Greenwald?

  And Andy Rooney retired when?

• 4:12Chris Ryan?

  I mean, his spirit is with us in the room. Let me just say.

• 4:16Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, blink twice.

• 4:20Chris Ryan?

  Blink twice if Andy Rooney has been doing this podcast with me.

• 4:23Andy Greenwald?

  Um, conservatively, I would say 1989.

• 4:27Chris Ryan?

  Are we really sure Sydney Sweeney knows what she's doing?

• 4:32Andy Greenwald?

  Show me the light.

• 4:33Chris Ryan?

  Why did I Jiminy Glick that?

• 4:35Andy Greenwald?

  When's the last time you saw 60 Minutes?

• 4:37Chris Ryan?

  Sam Levinson.

• 4:40Andy Greenwald?

  This is, there's opportunity here. Do you want to commit to this?

• 4:43Chris Ryan?

  Um, yeah, 60 Minutes. Have you watched it?

• 4:45Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 4:46Chris Ryan?

  I watched it some with my mom over the last couple of years. It was obviously a staple. And I think for most people, it's kind of a, the tick, tick, tick means it's time for school next tomorrow.

• 4:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, it means football's over.

• 4:59Chris Ryan?

  I watched a, uh, episode not too long ago because it got recommended to me somehow. I think in YouTube to watch, uh, none other than Scott Pelley piece about, uh, ghost truckers, Serbian ghost truckers. I spoke about this story on the, uh, on the wait a second podcast with Jason and Tyler.

• 5:20Andy Greenwald?

  Singer of Serbian ghost truckers on the pod when I was.

• 5:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. I mean, they broke up after that. That's okay. No, but, uh, it was a great, uh, piece about trucks on the American highways that are basically circumventing Department of Transportation rules. I don't know if the Department of Transportation has rules any longer. Yeah.

• 5:40Chris Ryan?

  All those guys are just bronzing statues in DC now, getting ready for 250.

• 5:45Andy Greenwald?

  Sean Duffy's making his reality show.

• 5:47Chris Ryan?

  Um, but it was an incredible piece of journalism that like definitely made me look at

• 5:52Andy Greenwald?

  trucks.

• 5:53Chris Ryan?

  The roads and trucks differently. Uh, so it's disappointing if it winds up going away or turning into something that it is a pale shadow of itself.

• 6:03Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I just separate and I'm not going to sit here and pretend.

• 6:06Chris Ryan?

  Tiltation of itself.

• 6:07Andy Greenwald?

  I, I don't watch, I didn't watch the Stephen Colbert program. I don't watch 60 Minutes. I'm not going to engage with the merits of those programs specifically, or the larger conversation about market trends for late night shows and television broadcast news.

• 6:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:21Andy Greenwald?

  What the joke at the top was more like, I just find this all so. Borderline despicable, the ego and the incompetence in a perfect encapsulation of what living in America has felt like for the last 10 years, where people who have, it's not about having reverence for the institution, like, listen, who are bigger hashtag disruptors than the two of us?

• 6:43Chris Ryan?

  That's true.

• 6:44Andy Greenwald?

  It's about the presumption that you-

• 6:46Chris Ryan?

  Watching TV on our phones.

• 6:47Andy Greenwald?

  The presumption that the Barry Weis's of the world, the Nick Bouldens of the world, know better because they are challenging orthodox group think or whatever, that you could be a Vanity Fair editor and a screenwriter, both of which are fine professions, and be like, yeah, I could probably run the most stable and respected news organization in the history of television news internationally probably as well. The ego of that is fucking lame and why we are where we are.

• 7:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that my only take on it really is that this is the, this is an example in the media, like, you know, you could make your arguments about how much it costs to run a late night show and versus what it actually brings in in terms of ad revenue versus what it brings in terms of viewership. 60 Minutes is a profitable and popular television show that I think is relatively popular across a political spectrum because-

• 7:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it is not the nation.

• 7:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:46Andy Greenwald?

  It never has been.

• 7:47Chris Ryan?

  So it's strange that, I think, to me, what I respond to in the stories that I've read about the upheaval at the show is just a disgust on the part of the new leadership with the principles and processes that go into making 60 Minutes.

• 8:05Andy Greenwald?

  Ugh, principles.

• 8:06Chris Ryan?

  But it's just the idea that, like, you know, because this may not bend around the shape of a narrative that I want out there or that I want to tell, I want to do away with certain methods of producing good journalism. And it's just like, I think journalism just became too big of a tent.

• 8:24Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 8:24Chris Ryan?

  Where it's just like, they're, they're just, I just think that, like, 60 Minutes did a really good job telling stories that people didn't know in a very fastidious way. And now it's like, gonna be yet another bastion of op-ed.

• 8:37Andy Greenwald?

  You could just ask Gemini, bro. Look- I just feel like these like the these avaricious climbing bootlickers are behaving like nothing's ever gonna swing back and maybe they're right.

• 8:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:50Andy Greenwald?

  And jokes on us, but generally pendulums swing and then what are we doing? And then what are the ruins that we're left with? So, I don't know.

• 9:00Chris Ryan?

  Cool.

• 9:02Andy Greenwald?

  See you guys next week. Talk about the Top Chef finale.

• 9:04Chris Ryan?

  Prompts with you for the for the top of the show. I have participated in and listened intently to Sean and Amanda documenting this moment in movies on the big picture. So I went on.

• 9:17Andy Greenwald?

  How do you document it when you're not on the show? Do you take notes?

• 9:20Chris Ryan?

  When they documented, I listened to their document.

• 9:22Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, oh, oh.

• 9:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Andy Greenwald?

  They've been documenting.

• 9:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I was on the Backrooms episode and the Obsession episode, talking about those two movies individually. And then since then, Sean and Amanda have talked really, really intelligently about like what it means for movies. Sean wrote a great piece in on his Substack projection about, you know, I don't even know, is it project? It is projections. I for a second, I thought it was a singular projection, but that wouldn't really make sense.

• 9:47Andy Greenwald?

  Not the way he lives his life.

• 9:49Chris Ryan?

  No. On his Substack, he wrote a great piece about like what this moment means in movies. And it has been a minute since I have felt that way about TV. I also have a different relationship to television than Sean does to movies where I think Sean very much sees the movies as a kind of like quasi third space religious kind of pastime for himself and television is cool.

• 10:13Andy Greenwald?

  This is how I feel about movies and TV too, honestly. I don't think he's wrong.

• 10:16Chris Ryan?

  No, yeah, but I don't have like that William H Macy and Sports Night like tearful conversation about television being the American Campfire kind of thing.

• 10:26Andy Greenwald?

  I have a William H Macy and Boogie Nights attitude towards people working between the two medians.

• 10:33Chris Ryan?

  What am I trying to ask about this? We've had conversations before about whether any outsiders could come into television and talked about the hurdles to like independent television making and how expensive and complicated it is to put together a long form series, but. It does feel like obsession and backrooms have moved into like pole position and moved movies into like a real like center of the culture, kind of everybody you know, people at the gym, people at the coffee shop are like, hey, have you seen backrooms? Have you seen this? Like, what's, what did you think of it?

• 11:05Andy Greenwald?

  So I would say it's interesting the way you're framing it because I think there's a different way to look at it. I think there's a way to look at the rise, and in important ways, certainly for the Big Picture Podcast and the movie industry, to look at the success of those movies as fresh blood coming in, fresh voices, fresh perspective, and audiences' desire.

• 11:21Chris Ryan?

  And getting away from IP.

• 11:22Andy Greenwald?

  Taken on those trips. What I would counter with is the most recent comparison to something like a phenomenon like backrooms would be the pit. And the reason I say the pit is not because these are young people showing you a fresh way in. That is the opposite of what the pit is. It is old hands. What both have done, though, I would say, is remind people why we engage with these mediums in the first place in a collective celebratory way. Meaning, the pit has both reminded multiple generations and taught a new generation that this little box used to give us a story every week, and it used to give us stories

• 12:04Andy Greenwald?

  that we were excited about, surprised by, compelled by, and it built over time, and we would talk about it. Like, I think it is safe to say that, like, in terms of watercooler chat, if people even, for those of you who aren't working from home, like, the pit dominates. People were talking about it in a way that we used to talk about television shows. So I think that in terms of putting things back in the center of culture in a way that felt both affirming for those of us who work in those spaces, but also giving us a sense of optimism that maybe a new generation might begin to speak that language. That would be the comparison.

• 12:40Chris Ryan?

  That's an awesome take.

• 12:42Andy Greenwald?

  Thanks, man.

• 12:42Chris Ryan?

  I gotta tell you, I, you know, I don't even have like one that's comparable. I think that, you know, I was listening to The Town and Matt and Lucas Shaw were talking about this phenomenon. And Craig chimed in, Craig Horbeck, who was our producer on the Rewatchables as well. And was just like, you guys are going back and forth about whether studios are gonna keep making IP. And he's like, the point is, is that like, younger people don't give a shit about 1980's franchises.

• 13:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 13:10Chris Ryan?

  Or 1990's franchises. And we'll see. I mean, there's a world in which you can A/B test this easily. But like, there's a world in which Cape Fear is a sensation. There's a world in which like, not a single person you know watches it. It's an example of something where it was like, who is asking for this? Is this even intellectual property that is worthy of expansion?

• 13:31Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 13:32Chris Ryan?

  They've had two movies. You can say you're going back to the book, but we all know like, people are tuning in to watch Bardem do De Niro and do Mitchum.

• 13:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 13:40Chris Ryan?

  Um, what is kind of like, you're taking something that was a polished diamond of a thriller and now expanding it, I believe, to 10 hours.

• 13:51Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think the comparison though, I think Cape Fear's, the margin for, Cape Fear isn't gonna convince anyone. I think when we talked about it before, that at whatever level these conversations exist at Apple, I don't think they are actively saying, or at least they're not even addressing the idea of like, reinventing Cape Fear for a new generation.

• 14:08Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 14:09Andy Greenwald?

  This is comfort prestige food for a generation that doesn't go to the movies anymore.

• 14:13Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 14:13Andy Greenwald?

  The comparison, I think that Craig was right to point out would be, there's a fucking He-Man movie opening this weekend.

• 14:19Chris Ryan?

  And it's apparently pretty good.

• 14:21Andy Greenwald?

  But, but, okay.

• 14:23Chris Ryan?

  Stopped you dead in your tracks, didn't I?

• 14:24Andy Greenwald?

  That is not, that was a take.

• 14:26Chris Ryan?

  I was not a He-Man man, but was, so I don't know.

• 14:30Andy Greenwald?

  Those toys were fine. Those toys.

• 14:33Chris Ryan?

  I think that there are guys out there who are waiting to see Skeletor do his work like this for a long time.

• 14:39Andy Greenwald?

  Wake me when Tony Gilroy does the Orko spinoff. Okay? Just let, let me know when that's on the docket. Okay, you're too afraid of my dangerous ideas. That's why I'm in here.

• 14:51Chris Ryan?

  I recently saw a bunch of behind the scenes photos of Tony on the set of Michael Clayton, you know, wearing a cool parka and going like this. We should just Photoshop it.

• 15:03Andy Greenwald?

  To be clear, Orko was the floating magician who didn't have a body and was just like a shirt.

• 15:09Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 15:10Andy Greenwald?

  That was a cool time for us to watch cartoons. My, my point isn't even that like, I don't, the Masters of the Universe thing, even if it's good, there's a cynicism baked in the root of it. Where like, I don't think there's even, they're not converting a new generation to like, follow the story of Eternia. There wasn't even really a story. From everything I understand about the movie, it's like apologizing for itself as the bit throughout, which is just such loser cul-de-sac culture shit.

• 15:37Chris Ryan?

  Somewhere at Venice, Venice Beach, uh, at the outdoor gym in Venice Beach, some guy's like, there is a story!

• 15:44Andy Greenwald?

  Well, that's because guys, I've always been an Adam, not a He-Man. Like, I think there's, there's two types of, there are two genders, you know? So I get it, but, uh, but yeah, like, I think we would both want the fresh, young voice in television, but television is a, such a profoundly different beast and it's a lot harder. I mean, television is an assembly line, even at its most prestige or auteur-driven. You still need to, unless you're being asked to do something that is radically outside the norm of a series order, you have to conform in ways, and you have to have, you have to kind of know what you're doing or surround yourself with people who know what they're doing in a way that I think is less, I mean, that exists in movies, obviously, but I think it's less interventionist, maybe, in movies,

• 16:29Andy Greenwald?

  where a kid has a vision for something and then obviously he has line producers and professionals like making it a movie. But that's different than saying, "We will write this and execute it across 10 hours and deliver it in a traditional television."

• 16:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I think, you know, we're gonna talk about some series today that I think have, have grappled with some of the requirements of being what they are, you know, and being, being told in the, in the format that they're being told. I do feel like, you know, maybe the closest comparison I have, it's not necessarily, they're nowhere near as big as these, uh, films have wound up being. But the moment that I'm thinking of for TV... Is probably that, and my dates could be wrong, but that 17 through 20 era of Atlanta Fleabag.

• 17:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:16Chris Ryan?

  I May Destroy You, industry coming on, this feeling that not only was there diversity of POVs, but there was like a generational shift and that people were speaking to of like a cohort of the audience that often doesn't feel kind of seen or addressed or vocalized, you know?

• 17:38Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's right.

• 17:39Chris Ryan?

  And I think that that felt like also formally, we were getting some different kinds of stuff then.

• 17:43Andy Greenwald?

  I think you're right. I think I'm being too conservative in my vision in that way. Like, there was a moment when, it wasn't just that there was a moment when streamers needed to get attention, not just retain subscribers, so they were willing to take bigger risks on things in the hopes of, in the hopes of hitting a homerun, but that creators like Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Donald Glover and a host of others, Michaela Cole, I would put in there as well, essentially jumped the line in what has been, often to its detriment, but sometimes parentheses, the pit, not to its detriment, kind of stodgy and kind of wait your turn.

• 18:21Chris Ryan?

  Yes. And there's like a 10 to 12 year process of starting at the bottom of a writer's room and then getting all the way up to executive producer.

• 18:28Andy Greenwald?

  An example we use a lot is like Mad Men, the Mad Men pilot was the spec that Matthew Weiner wrote when he was working on the Ted Danson sitcom Becker in order to be hired by David Chase to spend however many years, four, five, six years at his knee, basically, writing that show before he got a chance. And the reason he got a chance, when he was older than those creators we just mentioned, was because AMC was in a position that a few years later Netflix and Amazon were in slightly, where they were like, we'll do the thing everyone else won't. And we're kind of, kind of past that.

• 19:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah. We talk about IP and we roll our eyes.

• 19:05Andy Greenwald?

  Us?

• 19:06Chris Ryan?

  A bit.

• 19:07Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 19:08Chris Ryan?

  Right now, I'm going to play a little game with you about a piece of IP, because apparently For All Mankind is IP. We talked a little bit on Monday's show about Star City, which is the series on Apple that's already aired two tomorrow. It'll be the third episode where it's a sort of retelling of the period of For All Mankind from the POV of the Soviet space program. I don't know, I would assume that Apple's going to give this show more than one season just because it, that's, that's Apple's MO, but I don't know if they're going to time jump at the exact moments that For All Mankind has, so it might be interesting, there may be some, you know, if you were a For All Mankind completist, you might be able to watch Star City and be like, oh, so that's what it looked like when this happened that

• 19:52Chris Ryan?

  was off screen in For All Mankind. Um, anyway, I want to play a fun game with you because we'll talk more about episode two and three on Monday, but, uh, take a well-regarded, or not, uh, show, and then craft an alternative POV of the main narrative. So this is kind of what Star City is doing. Now, you are not restricted to following a letter of the law way of this prompt, but I thought, what else would you use Star City here?

• 20:20Andy Greenwald?

  Um, well, I've got five options.

• 20:23Chris Ryan?

  Jesus. You know, you walk, can I just tell people, he walked in with none. That's what, that's what I'm working with here. He is, when the light goes on, he can compare backrooms to the pit, and he can come up with five other Star Cities.

• 20:36Andy Greenwald?

  In my offense, I started my day on London time today. So you're, these are peak hours right now.

• 20:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Um, well, it's transfer, you know, the transfer window is open in England, so.

• 20:47Andy Greenwald?

  Do you, do you, could we transfer ourselves? Uh, you want to go back and forth?

• 20:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, let's go back and forth.

• 20:53Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 20:54Chris Ryan?

  And, and you're doing so well today, I want you to go first.

• 20:56Andy Greenwald?

  Um, okay. Uh, which one should I start with? Well, summer, I'll start with the most obviously Star City, which is, if we take the premise where For All Mankind is a respected and beloved show that has never set the world on fire, and you're going to tell the Russian side of events, are we ready for a spinoff of the Americans? Called the Russians?

• 21:18Chris Ryan?

  So wouldn't the Americans actually be the American side of things?

• 21:22Andy Greenwald?

  Uh.

• 21:25Chris Ryan?

  It wouldn't be Noah Emmerich's home life?

• 21:28Andy Greenwald?

  The season of television would be the KGB trying to ferret out deep cover American agents in Moscow in the eighties.

• 21:40Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 21:40Andy Greenwald?

  See what I mean?

• 21:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:42Andy Greenwald?

  Like-

• 21:42Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I see.

• 21:43Andy Greenwald?

  Can we-

• 21:43Chris Ryan?

  The Russians, right.

• 21:44Andy Greenwald?

  How small can we make the aperture for something that we would like?

• 21:48Chris Ryan?

  And are Star City using those Lithuania sets all year round?

• 21:52Andy Greenwald?

  We could do like the pit in the night shift where they just keep rolling.

• 21:56Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 21:57Andy Greenwald?

  Use the same cast, honestly.

• 21:58Chris Ryan?

  Um, okay, my first one?

• 22:00Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:01Chris Ryan?

  The smoking section.

• 22:02Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, you've named these shows?

• 22:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 22:04Andy Greenwald?

  Ah, damn, see, that's what I could have done yesterday.

• 22:06Chris Ryan?

  The smoking section.

• 22:07Andy Greenwald?

  All right.

• 22:07Chris Ryan?

  The X-Files, as told from the POV of the cigarette smoking man.

• 22:11Andy Greenwald?

  Hell, yeah. Now, I'm gonna-

• 22:13Chris Ryan?

  It's basically a guy who loves smoking and has to like fend off these pesky FBI agents from time to time as he tries to bring aliens to his theater.

• 22:23Andy Greenwald?

  It's autobiographical. This is a deeply personal project.

• 22:27Chris Ryan?

  I'm always fending them off.

• 22:29Andy Greenwald?

  My only, first of all-

• 22:30Chris Ryan?

  Cash, stop calling me man.

• 22:32Andy Greenwald?

  Instant green light. Who are you casting as the younger cigarette smoking man? Because the original actor sadly is no longer with us due to, not due to the cigarettes.

• 22:39Chris Ryan?

  Well, uh, he's one of those guys that looks like he was born 64 years old.

• 22:44Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 22:45Chris Ryan?

  It's hard to imagine him as Nicholas Geiseltine or whatever his name is.

• 22:50Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, because no one looks like that anymore.

• 22:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, so who, who do you-

• 22:54Andy Greenwald?

  Who looks like shit?

• 22:56Chris Ryan?

  It's not who looks like shit, it's like, he's a guy who was probably pretty attractive.

• 23:00Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 23:01Chris Ryan?

  And then, and then smoked three packs a day until he looked like, uh, Mike Schmidt's Fielding Glove, you know?

• 23:07Andy Greenwald?

  So you want to cast someone almost too beautiful?

• 23:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:10Andy Greenwald?

  So maybe you do want Geiseltine. He's ready to go to TV after this movie.

• 23:14Chris Ryan?

  Let's do that, let's do Nick.

• 23:15Andy Greenwald?

  Do you like it?

• 23:16Chris Ryan?

  I don't know, he's in He-Man.

• 23:18Andy Greenwald?

  No, I know. So you think that this is a soft landing spot for him?

• 23:21Chris Ryan?

  It's a zack, once he's done being swole for He-Man, he can come-

• 23:25Andy Greenwald?

  He could smoke away the pounds? Okay. I like it.

• 23:29Chris Ryan?

  Okay, go ahead. You're doing your next one.

• 23:31Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, uh, my next one is a show called, uh, Recreation and Parks. It is a comedy show set in Eagleton, Indiana, starring Parker Posey. And it is just that side of the story of the run of Parks and Recreation. Which for people who don't watch the show, there was a kind of like echoing The Simpsons. There was a Springfield Shelbyville, like there is the evil other town. In the case of Parks and Rec, it was Eagleton where everything was rich and fancy and perfect. And the Parks Department there was run by Parker Posey's character, who was Leslie's friend turned nemesis. And who doesn't want Parker? Sam Elliott was on the show.

• 24:10Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. He was in Eagleton, wasn't he?

• 24:12Andy Greenwald?

  He was the, uh, he was the hippie Ron.

• 24:15Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 24:15Andy Greenwald?

  Who wore sandals.

• 24:16Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 24:16Andy Greenwald?

  There's a lot there. We could do it.

• 24:18Chris Ryan?

  Sam Elliott would love to be sitting in more television shows at this point. So, yeah.

• 24:22Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, who can blame him?

• 24:24Chris Ryan?

  Uh, my next one is Veep.

• 24:26Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 24:27Chris Ryan?

  Vice President John Hoynes's POV on the Bartlet administration. Nicholas Gazeltean.

• 24:35Andy Greenwald?

  This is so, this is so niche right now. We are going so small bore.

• 24:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. But what if we brought in some of the cast of Veep to work in his office?

• 24:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 24:47Chris Ryan?

  You know, just have to have Hitmaker, you know, get, get Tony Hale in.

• 24:52Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, but is it, but they're earnest now? So the zag is Veep was a show that prefaced, that like foreshadowed the clown car of American politics in the decade to come. So when you watch Veep now, it feels really prescient. Whereas if you watch Parks and Rec now, you're like millennial cringe.

• 25:08Chris Ryan?

  Yes, right.

• 25:09Andy Greenwald?

  So.

• 25:09Chris Ryan?

  And if you watch West Wing, you're like, is this the expanse?

• 25:12Andy Greenwald?

  Truly.

• 25:13Chris Ryan?

  What are you talking about?

• 25:14Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, this is for all mankind where there's an alternate. So this would be zagging back to earnestness.

• 25:21Chris Ryan?

  This would be a bad TV show because it would be a guy being like, damn, I'm frustrated. This other guy is really kicking ass.

• 25:27Andy Greenwald?

  What do you mean it's a bad TV show? That's Breaking Bad.

• 25:29Chris Ryan?

  But you could have the campaign, you know what I mean?

• 25:32Andy Greenwald?

  All TV shows are men frustrated that other men are doing better.

• 25:35Chris Ryan?

  No, but those guys are all really good at one thing, right?

• 25:38Andy Greenwald?

  On those shows.

• 25:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, like I'm good at advertising. I'm good at math.

• 25:41Andy Greenwald?

  Who played Hoynes?

• 25:42Chris Ryan?

  Tim Matheson.

• 25:43Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, right. So what was he good at? Like what, or what?

• 25:46Chris Ryan?

  Fundraising, I think.

• 25:47Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 25:47Chris Ryan?

  I think, I think he was the Texas.

• 25:50Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, but let's.

• 25:51Chris Ryan?

  He was a Texas politician.

• 25:52Andy Greenwald?

  Let's, let, let me, let me push you the way a good showrunner might like, how do we storify that? Like, what, you want to add something that makes it more interesting? Or is he hosting parties in Texas and he becomes privy to something?

• 26:02Chris Ryan?

  Maybe I start to connect the C R I P C U.

• 26:06Andy Greenwald?

  Wait, say it again. C R I P C U. Print it.

• 26:10Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and we have John Hynes working in, in, in conjunction with, uh, the cigarette smoking man to bring aliens. This'll stop Bartlet.

• 26:20Andy Greenwald?

  And what's amazing is we never saw, we, like Bartlet was seeing all kinds of crazy shit with like, like cornfields and bees and oil.

• 26:29Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 26:30Andy Greenwald?

  And still he was just like, what heals America is our common thread of decency.

• 26:34Chris Ryan?

  Is, is granting clemency to a turkey.

• 26:37Andy Greenwald?

  Every, more often than you'd think.

• 26:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Uh, you got another one?

• 26:42Andy Greenwald?

  That's great.

• 26:42Chris Ryan?

  I got one more.

• 26:44Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, yeah, I mean, this is sort of obvious, but Industry NYC.

• 26:49Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I have an industry one as well.

• 26:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, which would be the events of industry of the past few seasons, but told through the Pier Point New York office.

• 26:58Chris Ryan?

  The Adler, the Adler verse.

• 27:00Andy Greenwald?

  The, the expanded Adler verse where, and here's what, this is the part that's going to be slightly different. And I want you to stay with me because it's kind of breaks canon a little bit. But the sexy young people who work on Wall Street go out and do drugs all night and fuck each other in sexually curious ways.

• 27:14Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I was gonna say.

• 27:15Andy Greenwald?

  So that's kind of like.

• 27:15Chris Ryan?

  What if the, all they did was go get matchas and, and work out and walk their dogs?

• 27:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. They just like, they live in Williamsburg and they just go to the Equinox that's next to the Chase Bank now.

• 27:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, storify that.

• 27:30Andy Greenwald?

  I think we lived it.

• 27:30Chris Ryan?

  My industry spinoff is called Valley Boy. And it's the previous season of Industry told from the perspective of Rob living in California.

• 27:40Andy Greenwald?

  That's a good show, actually.

• 27:41Chris Ryan?

  And he could just be like-

• 27:42Andy Greenwald?

  It's not even the perspective of the season. It's just put that character and all of a sudden the audacity is interesting.

• 27:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:47Andy Greenwald?

  Right?

• 27:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:47Andy Greenwald?

  I'm sorry, that was astray. We haven't watched it, but I, I think our lack of interest is-

• 27:51Chris Ryan?

  No, I haven't, I haven't checked it out, so I don't know. But those, those are my three. Did you have one more you wanted to do?

• 27:55Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, yes, well, I have two more. Um, one, one is called, um, Thoroughbreds.

• 28:02Chris Ryan?

  Did you just name it in this moment?

• 28:04Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 28:04Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 28:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 28:06Chris Ryan?

  Okay, Thoroughbreds?

• 28:07Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't know we had to come up with cool names.

• 28:08Chris Ryan?

  You guys-

• 28:09Andy Greenwald?

  And what are thoroughbreds, Chris? How do you define a thoroughbred? What is a thoroughbred?

• 28:12Chris Ryan?

  A racehorse?

• 28:13Andy Greenwald?

  Not just a, not just a racehorse. What, using a different adjective? What, what makes them racehorses?

• 28:19Chris Ryan?

  Uh, they run fast.

• 28:22Andy Greenwald?

  Fast horses, baby.

• 28:23Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 28:23Andy Greenwald?

  This is a show-

• 28:24Chris Ryan?

  Slow, fast horses.

• 28:25Andy Greenwald?

  This is a show set in the modern England, English, secret service with the people who are good at their jobs.

• 28:32Chris Ryan?

  Oh, so the, um-

• 28:34Andy Greenwald?

  Kristen Scott Thomas.

• 28:35Chris Ryan?

  Who's the blonde lady who's, uh-

• 28:37Andy Greenwald?

  She's the head of the dogs?

• 28:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:38Andy Greenwald?

  No, but it's not even about the dogs because the good agents don't need the dogs.

• 28:42Chris Ryan?

  It's the Kristen Scott Thomas side of things, like when she's not dealing with Gary Oldman.

• 28:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, like, it's just the agency in London with Kristen Scott Thomas and they don't fuck up and like pass gas all the time.

• 28:51Chris Ryan?

  And actually have like big things to do, not just like, yeah.

• 28:54Andy Greenwald?

  What's wrong with that?

• 28:55Chris Ryan?

  Some spy died on a bus.

• 28:56Andy Greenwald?

  Like, you know what the pit taught us? It's like, show about doctors doing doctor stuff. Good.

• 29:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:01Andy Greenwald?

  Spy show also.

• 29:04Andy Greenwald?

  The last one is, you know, I, I think what was interesting about Star City was that it took, it began in the same place essentially that For All Mankind began. For All Mankind begins with the Soviets landing on the moon and spins off an alternate history. Star City begins however many years later, I think it's six or seven years since For All Mankind premiered, despite however many seasons they've put out. Same, went back to that, that in, initial alternate history hinge point and went off. So I'm going back to the pilot episode of a beloved series, um, all the way back to 2007, when a little show called Mad Men began with a young woman coming to Don Draper and saying,

• 29:46Andy Greenwald?

  "We would like to hire your firm to do the advertising for our department store." And Roger Sterling said, "Why don't they get a Jewish firm?"

• 29:57Andy Greenwald?

  Reader, I listened.

• 29:58Chris Ryan?

  Jewish Mad Men?

• 29:59Andy Greenwald?

  Mad Mitzvah, baby. It's just the ad game with guys who-

• 30:05Chris Ryan?

  It's the Krummholz?

• 30:06Andy Greenwald?

  It's, it's 100% Krummholz.

• 30:09Chris Ryan?

  Who else is in it?

• 30:10Andy Greenwald?

  I should, see, I didn't do all the homework here. Um, but I'm sure we could probably find a couple Jews in Hollywood who are ready to act on a television show. Um, Krummholz is obviously the heavy.

• 30:22Chris Ryan?

  He's, he's the draper?

• 30:24Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know if he's, no, he's not the draper. Um, you need, you need more of like, if we're looking for a young, half Jewish stars, at least like, you need like a Shalhoub energy to be the young person, but Krummholz is like, Krummholz is definitely the Sterling, Roger Sterling. Uh, it's his family firm. And, uh, you know, basically everything is the same, except you can't mix meat and dairy.

• 30:46Andy Greenwald?

  That's it.

• 30:46Chris Ryan?

  Can't mix it?

• 30:47Andy Greenwald?

  No. Keep kosher. You can't-

• 30:49Chris Ryan?

  Do you keep kosher? You don't do that, right?

• 30:51Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 30:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:51Andy Greenwald?

  How long have we known each other?

• 30:52Chris Ryan?

  You love having a steak with a glass of milk.

• 30:56Andy Greenwald?

  I had one right before this podcast. You could tell by my energy.

• 30:58Chris Ryan?

  Um, okay. So that's like, uh, we'll, we'll get back into Star City, uh, on Monday.

• 31:03Andy Greenwald?

  That was fun as hell.

• 31:03Chris Ryan?

  Um, you love a game.

• 31:05Andy Greenwald?

  I do love a game.

• 31:06Chris Ryan?

  I, I don't know that we didn't really award each other points. So who knows who won? But if you guys have your own ideas for Star City shows, hit us up.

• 31:13Andy Greenwald?

  Also, if you have any ideas over who won, make that very clear in the emails. I won't see them.

• 31:19Chris Ryan?

  Would you like to do Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed first, or would you like to do Widows Bay first?

• 31:23Andy Greenwald?

  You, you, you call it, man. We're staying on the Apple platform.

• 31:27Chris Ryan?

  You know what? Here's the problem with Widows Bay, which is-

• 31:30Andy Greenwald?

  This will be the first problem.

• 31:31Chris Ryan?

  Uh, it is, is now getting, is Widows Bay too good? You know, like, I almost-

• 31:37Andy Greenwald?

  Is that your concern?

• 31:38Chris Ryan?

  Well, you know, I, I hate being like, you texted me this because people aren't privy to this, but you were like, so it's just showing off now?

• 31:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 31:45Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, this episode, Your Baggage, uh, which aired on, uh, I think Tuesday night, right?

• 31:51Andy Greenwald?

  Sure. This week.

• 31:52Chris Ryan?

  Written by Emma Ketchum and directed by Andrew DeYoung. Andrew DeYoung did, uh, the Mushroom Trip episode from a couple of weeks ago.

• 31:59Andy Greenwald?

  He directed the Tim Robinson movie Friendship and their big Chair Company vibes in this episode.

• 32:04Chris Ryan?

  Um, basically is about every character confronting their past. Patricia with the boogeyman, uh, Evan and Tom trying to come to grips with what happened to Evan's mother and Tom's wife and Wick. Kind of going over a childhood trauma that split him up from Jerry, who works in the historical society and now has a nice enough but annoying husband. And, you know, this was obviously a bit broadcast when the previous episode ended with, we got him. It's all good. And there's a great moment at the beginning of this episode that was, um, kind of reminded me of, uh, Pulp Fiction when they're in the diner and they're kind of like-

• 32:44Andy Greenwald?

  They're wearing the clothes that they-

• 32:45Chris Ryan?

  The banana slugs t-shirts and they're like, you know, just kind of at peace, uh, before there's an armed robbery. But I, I almost am like getting to the point with this where I'm like, I don't really have any notes, man. You guys are able to every week do an homage pian to a great American, other subgenre or explicitly a film. Um, the monster of the week thing continues to work seamlessly. The running time of the episodes makes none of them a chore. Uh, there is legitimate, like this would be among the best slashers I have seen in years if they just made this into a movie.

• 33:25Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 33:26Chris Ryan?

  But also is the funniest thing I have seen in a long time is watching Kate O'Flynn run from an incredibly slow but persistent slasher, who is the incarnation of Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers.

• 33:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 33:39Chris Ryan?

  What did you think of this episode?

• 33:40Andy Greenwald?

  I want to, I feel like I, I loved everything about it. I am not historically a fanboy of any kind, but I believe I wrote hell yeah Patricia in my notes. Like I was fucking on Twitter in 2014.

• 33:52Chris Ryan?

  Yes, queen.

• 33:53Andy Greenwald?

  When she had the shotgun because it felt so good.

• 33:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:57Andy Greenwald?

  And then her holding the shotgun on the hopefully dead, not undead body of the boogeyman throughout his cremation process was incredible. Um, so I am just loving it and I am a fan, full stop. But I always want to engage with the show also in the myriad ways in which it just fucking impresses me. And a moment ago, I was, I was half kidding, but I was talking about like showrunners saying like, how do we make it story? Because you can have all the good ideas in the world and you can have all the speculation and- Thematic dream making, but how do you do it? Communicate it practically because that's actually what the job is. And so two examples of this episode are just remarkable to me. And what Katie Dippold, who's the creator and showrunner, is able to accomplish in by making these decisions

• 34:42Andy Greenwald?

  that seem obvious or seem simple once they're done well, but actually many, many shows, good shows, struggle to find them.

• 34:50Andy Greenwald?

  Week to week, it dazzles me. So one, number one would be, um, where are we in the real time story? And how can we take advantage of that moment? So you could look at the fact that they've dispatched the ancient evil supposedly at the end of the last episode and think of it maybe in a way where you're like greedy to get on to the next thing. You're worried about a lull. You want to show the audience, you want, but no one's seen the show yet. So this is entirely in your own head. And the fact that, that she and her writers were like, no, let's let them sit in a moment of happiness and peace. And what does that look like? And more importantly, not just what does it look like in terms of the comedy? What does it look like in terms of storytelling opportunity? What can we explore?

• 35:33Andy Greenwald?

  Second point was the past, your baggage. I think I saw an interview that Katie did this week, or one of the writers, I believe it was Katie, saying that-

• 35:45Chris Ryan?

  Is this the script notes one that she did?

• 35:46Andy Greenwald?

  It could have been. I didn't listen to the whole thing. I just saw the, um, I just saw this as a takeaway, but that initial, the, the big shift in the episode that made it click for them was that they were going to tell Patricia's story with a boogeyman in flashback and then they realized not to do that. And that unlocked everything in the episode because it connected it to the forward momentum. It's a smart choice after back to back episodes, one of which was a giant flashback and one of which was about an ancient evil. But then the execution to make Patricia in real time complaining about her takeout order and then running screaming out of her house from a masked killer with a knife. Make that feel both like tonally and emotionally and narratively consistent with Tom and Matthew

• 36:31Andy Greenwald?

  Reese's really affecting performance.

• 36:34Andy Greenwald?

  Weeping over the fate of his deceased wife?

• 36:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:38Andy Greenwald?

  How do you do that in a way that, but they do. They, it does not feel like whiplash to go between those storylines.

• 36:44Chris Ryan?

  There was two really lovely, surprising, in the hands of another show would not have maybe gone this way moments that I wanted to throw at you. And I think it ties to what you're saying here. The Matthew Reese, um, the Tom and Evan conversation is something that you could draw out for episodes. And for all I know, because of the thunderstorm and the terror of the island, like Matthew Reese is gonna go, or Tom's gonna go back on his promise to take Evan to Boston. I assume he will.

• 37:14Andy Greenwald?

  I'm glad it didn't happen in this episode.

• 37:15Chris Ryan?

  But Evan basically being like, I get it. Like when, when, when, when his dad explains to him what happened and show, and he's got these letters and he's like, you shouldn't have hid this from me. And he, you know, Tom is like, it's, it would make me sadder than I already am for you to know what happened to your mother.

• 37:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 37:38Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and Evan kind of forgives him. And also they have like a hug, like, like there is like a genuine moment there. And most other shows would be like, now these two are, are angry at each other. So Evan is gonna put himself in danger so that Tom has to save him so that they can realize the true spirit of Christmas. So that's one thing.

• 37:57Andy Greenwald?

  The, the show has the confidence and fearlessness of something like they're, they're not afraid to resolve story.

• 38:02Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 38:03Andy Greenwald?

  Because there's a belief that they carry, rightfully so, that there is more story to mine.

• 38:07Chris Ryan?

  There's also like the kooky Patricia stuff. When she shows up at the book club and Chrissy, is that who it is? I think who, or Chris gives her like the riot act and is like, you're just insane. And that's why nobody's your friend and like, you're just so fucking weird and bye, bye. And then Patricia tases her. And she's like, I'm sorry, she's the worst. She's just the fucking worst. There, it's just great that you give a character like Patricia, like full-bodied POV to be like, I know I'm weird, but like, she is a bitch.

• 38:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, she sucks. The, sometimes, the other lesson, I think, from successful rooms is sometimes, all of the work that you do is in pursuit of the simplest solution.

• 38:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:50Andy Greenwald?

  And you can feel, in the same way you can, Top Chef judge can taste when dough has been overworked, you can tell when a show has been big-brained too much. And I'm glad you mentioned the Tom scene. I circled that. Like, the line about the pictures, "They make me sadder than I already am," is a thunderclap. Like, that is, that is such simple writing, but it is everything. It's all you need to know as an audience. It's all Evan needs to hear. And I also think, like, we are under, when we've been praising, I know we've praised him last week. We've been praising all the great character performers, but Kingston Rumi Southwick, who plays Evan, has such an interesting affect as a performer, where he, he's very soft-spoken,

• 39:33Andy Greenwald?

  and he underplays things in a way that is so refreshing for young actors, A. But B, it allows him to both express the anger and the resentment, and the surprise and joy that was more childlike. But then, more than anything else, it allows us, I think, to understand the forgiveness coming off of that line. And all of that, that story, that resolution, for now, was started seven weeks ago.

• 40:00Chris Ryan?

  Well, and also, when you think about how this show started, this is another example of what we're talking about in terms of knowing how to pace character development rather than story.

• 40:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 40:11Chris Ryan?

  A lot of other shows would have Tom and Wick at odds for, like, four episodes, five episodes, six episodes, of like, Tom is this buttoned-up, new money, trying to, like, modernize the island. Wick is this myth, myth-believing...

• 40:29Chris Ryan?

  Old wacko who thinks that the fog carries a demonic spirit and he is gonna do everything he can, he's gonna keep setting off like the storm sirens and you know, like that could have been the tension of these episodes for three hours, four hours, and then you could be like, now Tom believes and now the second half of the season is going. And instead, Tom's pretty much in like, he's like, I don't really love the way we're going about doing this, but I believe by the end of the second episode, you know?

• 40:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it, good character writing is yes ending.

• 41:00Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 41:00Andy Greenwald?

  So to your point about Patricia, she is crazy, but also Chris is the worst.

• 41:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:05Andy Greenwald?

  Um, Wick is right, but also he's a weird, sad, lonely guy.

• 41:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:10Andy Greenwald?

  Tom is a, a kind of a prick, but also deeply, deeply hurt and sensitive. And you know, all of these things can be true. And if you embrace that, again, all this comes from a level of confidence and I hope we can talk to Katie about it. I'm sure, I've never met a showrunner who says, I was quite confident about this.

• 41:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:30Andy Greenwald?

  No one ever will, but I, it, it strikes me that more than anything else, that this show is the product of enormous creative confidence and, and on the part of Katie, but also on Hero Marai and Andrew DeYoung and every other director and writer performer we've, we've called out. Like whatever the secret sauce is, they all understood the assignment.

• 41:48Chris Ryan?

  Uh, do you know?

• 41:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 41:51Chris Ryan?

  Do you understand the macro, what is happening here? Cause you were able to kind of be like, ah, yes, you know, the, there could be another and, and the lineage of the Warren family might actually extend to Evan or Patricia or whoever it is that we, you know, might be. I am so dazzled on an episode to episode basis of, with the, not only the monster of the week, but the homage of the week and how they are like, doing a Jaws episode, or doing a haunted house episode, or doing a Halloween episode, or doing, um, a Wicker Man episode, that I am, uh, actually a little bit behind on my, so what, what is going on here? Like Richard Warren made a deal with Satan, but

• 42:35Chris Ryan?

  maybe not to protect this island and now his lineage is cursed, but?

• 42:40Andy Greenwald?

  And so the curse will continue as long as the lineage lives on the island.

• 42:43Chris Ryan?

  And they thought they ended the lineage with Richard Warren, but now it would seem that did not happen.

• 42:47Andy Greenwald?

  No. So my assumption is that Evan is the lineage and this creates an issue of Tom wants to take him off the island, which will kill him, but Wick and others may want to kill him. And that that would be challenging.

• 43:01Chris Ryan?

  So though Evan being the part of the lineage would indicate that Tom is not, it's that his mom was?

• 43:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 43:07Chris Ryan?

  Okay, and then.

• 43:09Andy Greenwald?

  A matriarchal line, if you will.

• 43:10Chris Ryan?

  And just in terms of the way that these different spirits get activated, like so for the boogeyman, that's just like, hey, if you, every day that goes by, something is gonna happen.

• 43:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 43:24Chris Ryan?

  Until you guys end this.

• 43:26Andy Greenwald?

  The less I know about the the TikTok of that, not the website, the like clock, the happier I am. I don't want an answer as to why the boogeyman was activated the day after Richard Moore, you know, I I I don't, even even as we reach the point in the series, which is probably the same time it would happen in a movie, where the metaphor goes away.

• 43:47Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:48Andy Greenwald?

  You know, like, I think there's, it's a, it's a, it's a trope of this sort of storytelling where it's like, the boogeyman does represent, you know, adolescence or insecurity or whatever, and no one believes in it, but until it starts slashing everybody.

• 44:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:02Andy Greenwald?

  And then it just becomes an action movie, we are at that point, but I don't really wanna know, and I'll be very curious to see how the show handles a resolution in the short term while still being invested in this being a boogeyman of the week next week.

• 44:17Chris Ryan?

  Fair enough.

• 44:17Andy Greenwald?

  I I wanna ask you, before we move on, what made this, in your mind, an excellent evocation of the silent, slow, masked knife killer?

• 44:30Chris Ryan?

  I I think it's the setting. There's something very Haddonfield about the the streets of.

• 44:36Andy Greenwald?

  Widow's Bay.

• 44:36Chris Ryan?

  Of Widow's Bay, the way DeYoung kind of shot that scene where it's got evocations of, I think definitely the first Halloween and maybe even the second, maybe the second, where there's, there's a lot of like screaming and crying and banging on doors and people turning their lights out and people like ignoring the the hysteria happening outside their house.

• 44:57Andy Greenwald?

  Kitty Genovese.

• 44:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and and a little bit of that.

• 44:59Andy Greenwald?

  Like in real life.

• 44:59Chris Ryan?

  And I thought that the.

• 45:03Chris Ryan?

  Um, just when you think he's dead, he's not. He pops back up stuff. The, you know, the, the scene with the ambulance drivers was amazing. It's like, hey, welcome back, pal. He's like slashes at his throat. So there was just a real, the, the, the thing that you, that would be the, the biggest hallmark is the slow, methodical pace of the slasher.

• 45:23Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 45:23Chris Ryan?

  That seems to always keep up with the running, screaming victim. Um, and then Patricia turning into the final girl in the, in the, in the last few minutes and hilariously holding a shotgun on him in the ambulance and then in the.

• 45:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it's amazing.

• 45:37Chris Ryan?

  Um, not sure exactly how that cleared all, all barriers of like investigation to the point of cremation that night, but.

• 45:47Andy Greenwald?

  I'm okay with it.

• 45:48Chris Ryan?

  I'm all for an expedited municipal.

• 45:50Andy Greenwald?

  Also, Bashir was on Painkillers.

• 45:52Chris Ryan?

  Um, that's right.

• 45:53Andy Greenwald?

  You know, the little character moments of him in the convenience store being like, I have to eat this year and my wife doesn't want me to, like, there's just a humanity that exists in every frame of the show. That's not just serving the, how can we frame this correctly? But because I'm a relative novice, which is to say I'm too scared to watch those movies, I didn't know that it would be possible for no one to be inside of the mask.

• 46:16Chris Ryan?

  Oh yeah, it's, it can be a spirit.

• 46:18Andy Greenwald?

  Do you know what I mean? Like, cause there's the scene, the Wick scene is interrupted or it ends with him seeing that someone has broken in and stolen the, stolen the murderer's mask, which is a cool thing to have on display. So I, my mind was wondering, I thought maybe someone had been, either had always been the boogeyman and re, re-energized, or someone had been like, uh, captured by the spirit. So I didn't know if the mask was going to come off and she'd shot Dale.

• 46:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:43Andy Greenwald?

  You know, or someone from the office.

• 46:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:45Andy Greenwald?

  I'm glad it wasn't that.

• 46:45Chris Ryan?

  Jeff Hiller or something. Yeah.

• 46:47Andy Greenwald?

  That's Dale. That's what I meant. That's what I thought was going to be in there.

• 46:49Chris Ryan?

  Um, oh, I got confused with Dale Dickey. That's why.

• 46:52Andy Greenwald?

  Dale Dickey, who play, I did the same thing, who plays Rosemary.

• 46:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Did you have any comments on Shell Bashir's late breaking pregnant wife who is about to give birth and.

• 47:04Andy Greenwald?

  Hopefully not on the island.

• 47:04Chris Ryan?

  And Patricia's like, we gotta get you off the island.

• 47:07Andy Greenwald?

  It's just, it's just.

• 47:08Chris Ryan?

  But there's a thunderstorm coming.

• 47:09Andy Greenwald?

  It's just good plotting.

• 47:11Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk a little bit about Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, which Blink and You Miss It is now up to episode four.

• 47:17Andy Greenwald?

  And we missed it. We were behind.

• 47:19Chris Ryan?

  Yes, on Apple TV. This is a new series from...

• 47:23Andy Greenwald?

  David J. Rosen.

• 47:24Chris Ryan?

  David J. Rosen, who's worked on Hunters, has worked on Citadel, has worked on Sugar.

• 47:28Andy Greenwald?

  Who wrote the novel, I Just Want My Pants Back.

• 47:31Chris Ryan?

  I don't know that one.

• 47:31Andy Greenwald?

  Twenty years ago.

• 47:33Chris Ryan?

  What is that?

• 47:33Andy Greenwald?

  It was like a young adult's novel about living in New York and hooking up with chicks, and it was turned into, briefly into, an MTV series, executive produced by Doug Liman.

• 47:43Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 47:44Andy Greenwald?

  That lasted one season.

• 47:44Chris Ryan?

  Okay, cool. Does he get his pants back?

• 47:47Andy Greenwald?

  I can't tell you that. You might watch it.

• 47:48Chris Ryan?

  Uh, this one stars Tatiana Maslany as Paula, a magazine fact checker going through a rough divorce and custody battle, who blows off steam one night having cam sex with a guy named Trevor.

• 48:00Andy Greenwald?

  Not one night. Seems like it's ongoing.

• 48:01Chris Ryan?

  I think that's, I'm saying, one night.

• 48:04Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, you're setting up the pilot?

• 48:05Chris Ryan?

  She happens, yeah.

• 48:06Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, oh, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. You're accurate. I was like, don't, put some respect on that relationship.

• 48:13Chris Ryan?

  And during this experience that they're having together through their screens, he gets attacked on screen, and Paula sees this. But it becomes apparent that this attack was part of a scam, and then it becomes apparent that this scam has gone haywire, and Trevor has been killed. Paula investigates and pulls at a thread that undoes her life. So, you watched two of them?

• 48:35Andy Greenwald?

  I watched two.

• 48:36Chris Ryan?

  I watched, let's, I'll say three. I am, I started the fourth one. Um, what did you think?

• 48:43Andy Greenwald?

  I really, really enjoyed what I watched, especially the pilot. David Gordon Green directed it, and I really appreciated,

• 48:55Andy Greenwald?

  I really appreciated something that I think is hard to pull off in this contemporary moment of TV, which is that it was highly stylized, it is screen-dependent. I would say that this may be the most successful product integration show that Apple has had in a number of years, and I don't mean that as like a backhanded compliment. The show correctly uses the most annoying Apple ringtone to be annoying. The show does depend on FaceTiming on MacBooks and having your phone available at all times in ways that feel relevant. But I think it's hard, it's a hard... Needle to thread to have something that is frenetic and highly stylized and about, you know, the collision of crime into a normal existence, but also feel like there,

• 49:40Andy Greenwald?

  someone is keeping, someone's touching grass in terms of trying to remember at all times, who this character is and who she wants to be and what her relationship is with her ex-husband, played by friend of the pod Jake Johnson, with her TikTok trend dancing daughter Hazel, and her coworkers in her life. So I really appreciated the way, the entry point for the story, the style in which it was done, but mostly the fact that I was, I felt like it was focused on the right half of that equation throughout the first episode. I'll also say that like, another very contemporary thing that I see with a lot of these shows is we collectively

• 50:21Andy Greenwald?

  are getting better and better at premise and asking cool questions. And then when pilots become series, that's when the real work starts. And so in watching episode two, I was like, okay, now I see the shape of the storytelling taking place. And that was a bumpier transition, but it's harder work, you know?

• 50:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:40Andy Greenwald?

  To go from one to the other.

• 50:41Chris Ryan?

  I think I see what you're saying. You know, the, the rest of the episodes almost feel closer to like, whatever the Apple version of the Safdie brothers is, you know, like where I think it's more or less like 80% to 20% unrelenting tension, anxiety, how the hell is she going to get out of this situation? You've got an interesting, so visually and tonally, I feel like it really ramps up in the second, third, fourth episode. They also weirdly, not weirdly, but they are trying to have kind of a couple of different treatments of the mystery story. For one thing, Murray Bartlett plays, quite obviously, I think, the killer, I would assume. I mean, we don't know.

• 51:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, we don't know, we don't know more, but he is introduced one way and then pretty quickly established as the other.

• 51:28Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 51:29Andy Greenwald?

  Murray Bartlett from Looking in White Lotus fame, great actor.

• 51:32Chris Ryan?

  He's great in this.

• 51:35Chris Ryan?

  It's cool how they split the mystery quote unquote, or the investigation to the extent that there is one. So Paula is trying to get to the bottom of what's just happened with, um, with Trevor, but Murray Bartlett's Frank character is trying to investigate Paula, you know, and so you've got these sort of two convergent mysteries. There's two things that I think are not rubbing me the wrong way, but I'll be interested if we continue with this show to kind of check in on. One is there's a little like Apple expansion pack happening as the episodes go on where we keep bringing in supporting characters.

• 52:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 52:13Chris Ryan?

  Um, and, and now it's like, we're up at like eight, you know, now I would say that the show seems pretty cutthroat so far in terms of endangering people, uh, and having stakes and it's pretty cool. So there's that. And then there's also just they're playing around with flashbacks and you were talking about the widow's bay thing with the idea of showing Patricia's boogeyman experience as a flashback and instead doing it in the present tense.

• 52:40Andy Greenwald?

  Always if you can do that.

• 52:41Chris Ryan?

  They're doing a lot of like cliffhanger and then flashback to explain the cliffhanger.

• 52:49Chris Ryan?

  Not a lot, but they've done it a couple of times on maximum pleasure. And I don't know if I love it because it turns into a little bit of like, we're built, we're wrapping the story around, the concept of a cliffhanger rather than wrapping the story over how a cop would find out about information or how somebody would be like, I'm in a tough situation. I need to be transparent about this, but obscure that. And instead it seems like I'm on a TV show. So wouldn't it be cool if at the end of an episode, you found out this isn't my first dead body that I've encountered? Or wouldn't it be cool if we found out like, you think that this woman is like this, but she's actually like that because we went back, you know, it's, it's just, it is, it is a way of telling a story, but it, it isn't quite worked for me on this one.

• 53:34Andy Greenwald?

  It's funny, or it's annoying, depending on your perspective, to be TV brained enough as we are, and maybe many of our listeners are to see things come in and out of fashion narratively. I think in how long it takes for the messages to be sent, like the tipping point of exciting scene six weeks earlier.

• 53:55Andy Greenwald?

  The amount of time it took for creators to realize, A, everyone else was doing it, and B, audiences were rebelling against it, there's a long tail. Because then it takes years of producing things to move on from that. Similarly, like, something like DTF, which, you know, we engaged with briefly, but like, enough to say, there is a similar, there's some similar things at play here.

• 54:15Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:15Andy Greenwald?

  Um, in terms of surprising, maybe not a murder in the way you think, told through flashback with quirky cops. In that case, um, it was Richard Jenkins. In this case, it's Dolly DeLeon, who was in Triangle of Sadness.

• 54:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:28Andy Greenwald?

  There is a, uh, we are in the midst of a golden era of, um, cam content and OnlyFans stuff.

• 54:36Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 54:37Andy Greenwald?

  Both, I, I meant, we are.

• 54:39Chris Ryan?

  Margot, Maximum Pleasure and Euphoria, yeah.

• 54:42Andy Greenwald?

  But also what we've been up to.

• 54:44Chris Ryan?

  Well, only for the two of us, though. We're just straight, straight.

• 54:48Andy Greenwald?

  Hey, man! Yeah, we don't, exactly.

• 54:50Chris Ryan?

  The Watch After Dark is actually just Andy and I camming.

• 54:53Andy Greenwald?

  What's fun is that, like, there was a period of time when Sam S. Mail wouldn't text. He would only communicate over Signal because he was worried about, you know, being hacked. And so that's why we have stopped texting and calling. We only communicate over CamSoda.

• 55:03Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 55:04Andy Greenwald?

  Just the two of us.

• 55:05Chris Ryan?

  Remember Chatroulette?

• 55:06Andy Greenwald?

  Remember? I got, I'm still holding on to that. Anyway, um, yeah, and so I, I would say that I appreciated the use of screens as mitigating factors and intimacy and the chat stuff on the show because it is, A, well, because A, the relationship that, um, that Paula has with her camboy is gentle. And there's other layers to it to be unwrapped, but it is like emotional and interesting and surprising. And then there was a great scene where she's talking to her colleagues at work, and it's one of those like hinge moments of like, what do we gain by spilling it and what do we gain by withholding? And she's like, "I was being scammed by a camera that I had come inappropriately connected to." And they're like, "Oh."

• 55:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:50Andy Greenwald?

  "That's the most interesting thing you've ever said," and they hug her. Um, you know, one of those, that, the, the boy is the, uh, um, Julia Louis-Dreyfus's son.

• 55:58Chris Ryan?

  I didn't know that.

• 55:59Andy Greenwald?

  You know, "I'm on Nepo watch." He's good. I'm just watching.

• 56:02Chris Ryan?

  Now, is he in the Campean kind of? Like, I'll allow it, or?

• 56:06Andy Greenwald?

  He seems like he was raised right.

• 56:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, so I'll, thank you for asking, I'll allow it, but we are monitoring.

• 56:11Chris Ryan?

  I saw, then the Times did a piece about, or maybe it was Wall Street Journal, did a piece about, uh, Leon Black's son, who's in charge of like a shadowy but very important, like, United States government investment fund kind of thing. And I was like, how'd he get that job?

• 56:26Andy Greenwald?

  Just, you know, he worked harder than everyone else.

• 56:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I, uh, the, I'll, I'll swing back to the positive, but the other thing that I was, the only other thing that I was slightly bumping on, and this is not, this is actually not criticism, this is a reflection of getting a show made for Apple TV, which is, I struggled with Tatiana Maslany being a woman who is struggling with all aspects of her life, including her appearance. She is a lovely, charismatic person who reads as young. She's certainly plausible as a 40-year-old woman who with a child, like, I'm not arguing her acting chops or whether I could buy it, but in a different world, this is the Melanie Linsky Show, and, and I'm like, it clicks into place a little bit more, but that's not Apple's business model.

• 57:11Chris Ryan?

  I have not, uh, you know, she obviously broke onto the scene with Orphan Black.

• 57:16Andy Greenwald?

  You haven't really seen her very much, huh? Tat.

• 57:19Chris Ryan?

  Should I have?

• 57:19Andy Greenwald?

  Did you what? I'm just saying, like, there are actors who are big, but if they are big on shows, like, I don't think.

• 57:24Chris Ryan?

  I watched Orphan Black for like a season or two.

• 57:26Andy Greenwald?

  I didn't, I thought maybe you were Orphan Black and She-Hulk ignorant.

• 57:30Chris Ryan?

  I am She-Hulk ignorant. I find that she has, like, the appropriate kinetic energy for something that's this show.

• 57:35Andy Greenwald?

  Million percent.

• 57:36Chris Ryan?

  You know, you need.

• 57:37Andy Greenwald?

  The rhythm of the show she's got.

• 57:38Chris Ryan?

  And she's athletic, and there, there's things that demand her climbing through skylights and jumping off. I mean, the first episode, or is it the second episode where she gets the tin can in her arm is crazy. Cool. It's, it's like, it's a cool show, you know, as with everything, there's like, uh,

• 57:59Chris Ryan?

  Do I urgently feel the need to keep up with this? Or like, is this something? I don't, I don't really know what the, the alchemy is anymore of like, what eclipses. That was fine watching it for three or four episodes versus like, this is now what I'm watching for 10 weeks.

• 58:13Andy Greenwald?

  I think this is, this one for me stands out a little bit because of, there's a, there's, there's surprise. Like, I think Jake is playing slightly against type.

• 58:21Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 58:22Andy Greenwald?

  And I think he's doing a great job. I think that one of the hard things to navigate in, you know, the last 30 years of television, which are essentially shows about people with families being drawn to the dark side, is how do you balance the family stuff? I think the stuff with, Hazel is the daughter's name in this? I think that's being, I think it's pitched at the right place for me to believe that, so far anyway, through the episodes I've seen, it hasn't tipped fully into genre. It is still attempting to be someone. The most fantastical elements of the show so far aren't the crime and violence. The most fantastical elements of the show so far are that A, she drives around New York all day, and B, she's still employed as a fact checker at a magazine.

• 59:02Chris Ryan?

  Do you think they shot this in New York?

• 59:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. I think so.

• 59:05Chris Ryan?

  Not my New York.

• 59:07Andy Greenwald?

  Why not? Your New York included magazines, so.

• 59:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, no, I don't mean that. It's just like, the, the traffic situation seems pretty, pretty relaxed. And is it set in Ridgewood?

• 59:17Andy Greenwald?

  It's Queensy.

• 59:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Keep an eye on that.

• 59:21Andy Greenwald?

  Aren't you happy to see like, that they're still, that magazines are still employing a vibrant fact checking department?

• 59:25Chris Ryan?

  I am.

• 59:25Andy Greenwald?

  Before Barry Weiss takes over as editor in chief?

• 59:27Chris Ryan?

  I am.

• 59:28Andy Greenwald?

  I thought that was cool.

• 59:29Chris Ryan?

  I, I hate to do this.

• 59:30Andy Greenwald?

  It's a fun show.

• 59:31Chris Ryan?

  The only thing I was thinking while I was watching it, because I, I think there are several shows, I just can't think of one off the top of my head, that take this kind of like unbelievably tense premise. And they're just like, and now let's tell it over the course of 10 episodes. But I was watching this and you know, as I think about how Widows is employing monster of the week, or how The Pit is doing a medical procedural, but with durational storytelling over the course of a day. So you can have some new school ideas about making TV. I almost feel like I'd be more curious about the version of this show that is Paula.

• 1:00:13Chris Ryan?

  Solving this whole thing in an episode. And then the rest of the season is Paul, a private detective, helping people who've been scammed.

• 1:00:21Andy Greenwald?

  Wow, look at you. Look at you.

• 1:00:24Chris Ryan?

  I wonder if that's a more durable, repeatable like idea.

• 1:00:29Andy Greenwald?

  Or is that something that David J. Rosen has considered?

• 1:00:32Chris Ryan?

  For season two, perhaps that's true. And I, I, I think because of Widows, I have been looking at different TV shows and being like, was this written for TV? Was this, and was this written to be something that's exciting to watch every week? Other than how is the story going to end?

• 1:00:51Andy Greenwald?

  Well, 100%. I mean, it is Katie Dippold of Widows Bay worked in Parks and Rec. And I think it is one of the enduring legacies of Mike Schur's television shows is that he found a sweet spot. It's different in the 30 minute realm or the now the 35 minute realm. A sweet spot of you can, you can tune, you can tune in week to week, but there is a larger spine of a serialized story and I'm not afraid of pushing towards it. But you're not going to be, you're never going to see an episode that's just connective tissue. Whereas at least on one episode, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is more of the new school approach of we are going to light a match in the first episode and it will burn through.

• 1:01:29Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and dynamite happens in episode 10.

• 1:01:32Andy Greenwald?

  But within that framing, the show that made me think of, speaking of another person who could have starred in it is Run, which was the, the one season Phoebe Waller-Bridge show with Donald Gleason and Merritt Weaver. And that show started with similarly like an enormously grabby and exciting premise. But I didn't feel like, and I feel like the marketplace agreed with me. It didn't have the conviction or the gas or the horses to make it a season to, to earn that, that beginning. This Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed seems more successful to me for that type of show.

• 1:02:06Chris Ryan?

  Fair enough. Let's hit TC real quick, Top Chef, before we get out of here. I just want to tell you a personal anecdote since it's culinary corner. It's culinary corner before it's Top Chef.

• 1:02:16Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:02:17Chris Ryan?

  So I've been kind of seduced by these Instagram and YouTube's of like, clean out your pantry pastas or clean out your pantry like, hey, do you have keepers and this?

• 1:02:30Andy Greenwald?

  Look what you can do.

• 1:02:31Chris Ryan?

  So I was like, I have some like fly by Jing instant noodles. What's in my pantry slash fridge that I can like get going and and and create like I had some rotisserie chicken.

• 1:02:41Andy Greenwald?

  And emulsify with pasta water.

• 1:02:43Chris Ryan?

  Uh, why?

• 1:02:44Andy Greenwald?

  We'll get to that.

• 1:02:45Chris Ryan?

  Okay. I mean, I know that that's supposed to happen. Do you do that with like ramen too?

• 1:02:49Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I don't make ramen. I don't make ramen at home. I only go to like a true like Kotoari shop where like each ingredient is made. But this isn't about me.

• 1:02:57Chris Ryan?

  I'm fucking out, dude.

• 1:02:58Andy Greenwald?

  This isn't about me.

• 1:02:58Chris Ryan?

  I quit. I don't want to do this show no more.

• 1:03:00Andy Greenwald?

  Sorry.

• 1:03:01Chris Ryan?

  Um, so I was like, okay, I'm going through it.

• 1:03:05Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, I was like, okay, I got the rotisserie chicken, looking for like kind of a, an acid, maybe like a pickle kind of thing.

• 1:03:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13Chris Ryan?

  But I was like, I could use some green in here.

• 1:03:15Andy Greenwald?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:03:15Chris Ryan?

  And I came across some frozen peas in our freezer.

• 1:03:19Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 1:03:20Chris Ryan?

  Um, my wife, historically, uh, this is, is not violating HIPAA by saying she has a bum knee and often needs to ice her knee.

• 1:03:30Andy Greenwald?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:03:30Chris Ryan?

  And these peas are her knee, knee peas. On Reddit, these are,

• 1:03:39Chris Ryan?

  so I go on Reddit, the expiration date for these peas is November of 2025.

• 1:03:43Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, it's not, it's not as bad as I thought.

• 1:03:45Chris Ryan?

  And I should note that they have been thawed out upwards of 25 times.

• 1:03:50Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, here we go. So that's kind of like, what is like, what is your age versus your real age?

• 1:03:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And so on Reddit, of course, you can be like, these peas are past their expiration date. Should I eat them? Can I eat them? And everybody's like, yes, that's just a suggestion and if they've been frozen. And I get like pretty deep into the process.

• 1:04:11Andy Greenwald?

  The, of your mise en place and your prep and your.

• 1:04:14Chris Ryan?

  And, and you know, I've, I've kind of like scraped the freezer burn off the peas.

• 1:04:19Andy Greenwald?

  Individually?

• 1:04:20Chris Ryan?

  No, but like, I kind of like washed them a little bit to thaw them out a little bit. And then I go back to the Reddit thread and I was like, it seemed like that went on for a while. Let me see what they're talking about.

• 1:04:30Chris Ryan?

  And apparently there's a whole thing about boo boo peas, peas that people keep just for

• 1:04:36Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, this is a thing?

• 1:04:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And they're like, don't eat the boo boo peas. Because that's where listeria can get in when you're thawing out and freezing and thawing out and freezing. So just as a public service announcement, I stopped this. I mean, this was an incredibly boring dinner because I did not have a green. And I didn't really have a pickle or an acid for it. It was just basically chicken with

• 1:04:59Andy Greenwald?

  Chicken with noodles?

• 1:05:00Chris Ryan?

  Sweet and spicy ramen noodles.

• 1:05:03Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not mad at this.

• 1:05:03Chris Ryan?

  But I would say that it was dull and I almost got listeria. And my wife was pretty pissed off that I used her boo boo peas.

• 1:05:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, how's her knee?

• 1:05:13Chris Ryan?

  It's fine, but she was like, you gotta get, next time you go to the

• 1:05:16Andy Greenwald?

  She finished this dinner you cooked for her and tried to stand up.

• 1:05:18Chris Ryan?

  Oh, no, she didn't. It hurt. She was out. I was, this was a solo, like.

• 1:05:23Andy Greenwald?

  If you ever eat, frozen peas, you know, they, they cycle through real, you know, like on the other videos we watch on Instagram, where people are seeing how the Guinness is drinking this evening? When they're just like, people have been hitting it. So it's like, it's fresh, you know, the tap and the lines are clean.

• 1:05:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you want to let 12 guys go first.

• 1:05:41Andy Greenwald?

  These like, that like giant dude prime mutton is like, the lads have been drinking it into form. And I'm like, what is the form? Is it physically your form? Because that is what I'm most worried about. Despite my love of a fine stout.

• 1:05:52Chris Ryan?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:05:53Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway, that

• 1:05:55Chris Ryan?

  The lads.

• 1:05:56Andy Greenwald?

  The frozen peas in my house are constantly eaten into form because, and I will, you're going to say this came from me with my kudawari ramen, but it did not. My children, who have relatively conservative palates, I would say, i.e. they're just kids, normal kids about this. One of their favorite snacks is frozen peas. Not heated. They like bowls of frozen peas to just pop in.

• 1:06:18Chris Ryan?

  How's that texture wise? Is that good?

• 1:06:21Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, have you ever had a frozen grape?

• 1:06:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that's not my favorite.

• 1:06:24Andy Greenwald?

  No, so I, I don't share this passion with them, but I'm just letting you know that the peas are eating into form constantly. So if you need a bag for any purposes, or if Eevee needs one.

• 1:06:34Chris Ryan?

  Will they hit some frozen peas, roll it back up and throw it back in the freezer? Or they kill a whole bag on a sitting.

• 1:06:41Andy Greenwald?

  First of all, this presupposes that they are helping themselves and doing anything independently. Despite their advanced age.

• 1:06:50Chris Ryan?

  I have noticed.

• 1:06:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:52Chris Ryan?

  You've got some notes for your kids recently.

• 1:06:54Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 1:06:55Chris Ryan?

  About about their contributions to the to the house.

• 1:06:57Andy Greenwald?

  And let me tell you, they are receptive to those notes. There is nothing they like more than when old pops says, maybe you could have picked that up.

• 1:07:07Chris Ryan?

  Do you think when they go out into the world in a couple of years, like the light switch is gonna flip and they're gonna be like, I know how to do this?

• 1:07:13Andy Greenwald?

  This is what we all hope.

• 1:07:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Andy Greenwald?

  This is what we all pray for. I don't, I try to think that like, cause, cause when you're like, one, one thing that young parents come up against a lot is like their kids come up from school and they act insane. And then there's a worry that they are acting this way in school. And then good teachers or lying teachers will say, they behave, they behave all day. And then being home is like, then the shackles come off.

• 1:07:38Chris Ryan?

  It's Mardi Gras.

• 1:07:38Andy Greenwald?

  They get it all, they get it all out.

• 1:07:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Andy Greenwald?

  You know, it's a rum springer every day at 4pm. So my hope is that they would not, let's say, leave chipwich wrappers decorating the windowsill in the homes of their friends or people they respect.

• 1:07:52Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:07:53Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know.

• 1:07:53Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:07:53Andy Greenwald?

  But the, but all the way back to your point about the frozen peas.

• 1:07:58Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, I, I take the bag out, frozen, I pour some frozen into a bowl.

• 1:08:02Chris Ryan?

  Back in there.

• 1:08:02Andy Greenwald?

  Seal it up.

• 1:08:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:04Andy Greenwald?

  Put it back in.

• 1:08:04Chris Ryan?

  Okay, good to know. Top Chef, uh, the penultimate episode of season 23, which Andy and I have had a fair amount of notes for.

• 1:08:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:13Chris Ryan?

  I don't have a ton of like nitpicks about this one. It was my favorite episode of the season, I think.

• 1:08:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, fair.

• 1:08:19Chris Ryan?

  I realized that it's sort of like the Matrix where you're like, you're using your eyes for the first time. I felt like the judges were basically like food. Like they were so delighted.

• 1:08:30Andy Greenwald?

  They liked everything.

• 1:08:31Chris Ryan?

  That they were like finally real cooking. So we got down to, uh... Sherry, Lawrence, Rhoda, Jonathan.

• 1:08:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 1:08:40Chris Ryan?

  And

• 1:08:40Andy Greenwald?

  That's your final four.

• 1:08:41Chris Ryan?

  They were asked to do basically a plating um, exercise where they could choose these sort of exotic or funky uh, delivery systems for their

• 1:08:52Andy Greenwald?

  This is after the stupid 20 questions thing.

• 1:08:54Chris Ryan?

  Uh, yeah, I mean, I, I enjoyed it because it just seemed funny that they would be like spinach and he's like, no. And they were like, I'll put some spinach in.

• 1:09:01Andy Greenwald?

  I'm paying very close attention.

• 1:09:03Chris Ryan?

  Um, and it was very funny that they all got mad at Jonathan for asking questions that they thought were stupid. Um.

• 1:09:09Andy Greenwald?

  Those questions were dumb as hell.

• 1:09:10Chris Ryan?

  Well, I don't really even know what, like, it didn't seem like a big deal that he asked if it was side dish, but like, I am often the person who asks a question where somebody's like, why are you fucking asking that?

• 1:09:18Andy Greenwald?

  Who does that?

• 1:09:19Chris Ryan?

  Uh.

• 1:09:19Andy Greenwald?

  In interviews?

• 1:09:21Chris Ryan?

  No, not in interviews.

• 1:09:22Andy Greenwald?

  Well, Jesse Armstrong once. No, I'm just kidding. You've never, you've never done that.

• 1:09:27Chris Ryan?

  Uh, it just seemed like based on the judges' reactions to the food.

• 1:09:31Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:09:31Chris Ryan?

  That this was at a high, high, high level.

• 1:09:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:09:34Chris Ryan?

  And they pushed each other. Even Jonathan, who as soon as he was like,

• 1:09:39Andy Greenwald?

  So bizarre.

• 1:09:39Chris Ryan?

  I am making bread and butter. I was like, thanks for playing.

• 1:09:42Andy Greenwald?

  But also, I want to put a pumpkin on a candlestick.

• 1:09:44Chris Ryan?

  Well, I, the only tension for the episode was really like, is Lawrence gonna accidentally fuck up his rice wrappings, his, his sort of, uh,

• 1:09:53Andy Greenwald?

  The rice rolls.

• 1:09:54Chris Ryan?

  The rice rolls. Is the, because he's making Carolina and it didn't steam and

• 1:09:59Andy Greenwald?

  But that wasn't, the issue was that he, the episode implied, or at least tried to create drama from the implication that there was some fuckery with the oven, not intentional.

• 1:10:08Chris Ryan?

  Jonathan used it first.

• 1:10:10Andy Greenwald?

  And it lingered on Jonathan being like, I set it up for you, bro.

• 1:10:12Chris Ryan?

  And he's like, it's all good. It's gonna take a few minutes to cool down to the steaming setting and then you're good. And then Lawrence walked back over like five minutes later and was like, this, this thing is not.

• 1:10:22Andy Greenwald?

  And so then he had to kind of like, rather brilliantly, like ad hoc, multiple trays steaming in pots.

• 1:10:27Chris Ryan?

  And it just made it a little bit thicker, I guess.

• 1:10:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that was the drama.

• 1:10:30Chris Ryan?

  Um, I thought that.

• 1:10:34Chris Ryan?

  Each one of those winning dishes or the dishes that passed through to the final three were amazing looking. Um, Rhoda's especially on the tree bark. I don't know that I would want to eat off of tree bark, but it would look really cool.

• 1:10:47Andy Greenwald?

  Someone hasn't been to Noma.

• 1:10:48Chris Ryan?

  Uh, not it. Certainly not. You know what I mean?

• 1:10:52Andy Greenwald?

  What an ally.

• 1:10:52Chris Ryan?

  So I, I, I stand with my brothers online. Uh, what did you think of this episode?

• 1:10:59Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, you're right. It, it's a shame that it took 14 weeks to get to an episode in which the challenge is creative and is met with, with a, an elevation of execution. Like that's what the, that's what the show is supposed to be.

• 1:11:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. It wasn't like, and you have 12 seconds to do it.

• 1:11:17Andy Greenwald?

  But, but also like it was challenging and they elevated their game. They rose to the challenge, which hadn't really happened consistently. And I generally say a version of this every year, which is like, unlike some more drama forward competition shows, excellence begets excellence on Top Chef. Like the best episodes are ones where Tom is happy, where everyone has done a good job and the conversation is more about like nitpicks rather than like how obvious it was that someone just face planted. Um, that said, it was obvious Jonathan was going home even when it was revealed he did a very good job because the ambition of what he was doing was so much less than what everyone else is doing. And the plating was kind of silly.

• 1:11:52Chris Ryan?

  Do you think Tom's been a little bit cranky this season?

• 1:11:55Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I think he should be. Um, I think there's every reason to be cranky, but, but the counterpoint is when he's really happy and Kristen's like, oh, happy Tom is here.

• 1:12:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:03Andy Greenwald?

  And he seems quite engaged. He still can be engaged when it's all going well. I think the criticism remains the criticism, which is there is something that just feels claustrophobic and off about the penultimate episode to send people to the finals. And I'm not even sure if they traveled for the finals. Usually they're like next week or they tell them like, you're going to Paris or you're going to Grand Teton or Star City if we get a brand activation. Like, correct me if I'm wrong, but they didn't say anything about where they were going. And it looked like they didn't do, they used to take a long break, like four to six weeks.

• 1:12:37Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I think they take a break because I think I noticed I always, I always enjoy when people come and they have like a slightly different look.

• 1:12:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. That said, it will be another wind horse fingers, like if they just didn't travel and they're just like still in the Carolinas somehow about the budget things. Because this is the penultimate episode and we're supposed to be this crowning achievement before we get to. The, the, the, obviously challenging, but also the known quantity of make the best meal you've ever made.

• 1:13:05Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:13:06Andy Greenwald?

  And in the episode to send people to that great opportunity, they played 20 questions in the studio and then picked out plates in the studio and then filming picked up in a relatively claustrophobic restaurant with the great John Yau of Cato here in LA being like, who did a good job?

• 1:13:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:22Andy Greenwald?

  It feels so small and that's a bummer and maybe that's, as I say every week, like that's the reality of it now. Or maybe, you tell me, maybe this is just a nitpick when the execution was good enough.

• 1:13:38Chris Ryan?

  I think that the, when, when the cooking feels like it's push, like I feel like those three, those four chefs, but specifically the three that advanced were actually pushing each other.

• 1:13:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I agree with that.

• 1:13:48Chris Ryan?

  Like I think that there's even, there's this awareness that Rhoda has momentum and that she's, and, and that she's won a bunch of things. There's like, I think Sheri is actually like beyond her cooking, like an interesting television character who clearly has a lot of self-confidence and is a little bit, I don't know, is she prickly? I don't, I don't even.

• 1:14:09Andy Greenwald?

  My kids hate her. Sorry Sheri, but like I'm watching the season for the first time finally with the kids.

• 1:14:13Chris Ryan?

  But I think she's like, I think I can win this and like, I'm going to kind of operate from that assumption and, and, and I just, you know, this, this season.

• 1:14:20Andy Greenwald?

  She's peaking at the right time.

• 1:14:21Chris Ryan?

  This season has had a lot of like false starts. It's had a lot of like pratfalls. It's had the weird last chance kitchen situation. So it's nice to see it ending with like three people whose food I would want to eat and who I think are, are pushing each other. We should wrap it up there. Thanks to everyone for listening and we'll be back on Monday with some Star City and maybe like a, you know, a couple of other surprises, but I'm not exactly sure.

• 1:14:48Andy Greenwald?

  Well, there's stuff we haven't, like we haven't, we started Legends, we didn't finish it. There's a couple of other shows that I'd like to check out like Amadeus. So there's, there's things in the ether.

• 1:14:56Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I have a really hot recommendation for you.

• 1:14:58Andy Greenwald?

  You've watched something?

• 1:14:59Chris Ryan?

  I did. I don't know if you can handle it.

• 1:15:02Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, that's fair.

• 1:15:03Chris Ryan?

  Are you watching Dark Wizard?

• 1:15:05Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I should watch that. Yeah, so.

• 1:15:07Chris Ryan?

  Bro, so first of all, it's seriously scratching my 100-foot wave itch.

• 1:15:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. Same filmmakers or just HBO documentary?

• 1:15:14Chris Ryan?

  HBO documentary about a mountain climber, a free solo climber, Dean Potter, and his rivalry with Alex Honnold. And just in terms of like, the aesthetic of, he was wearing Patagonia and climbing in Yosemite in the mid 2000s. It's awesome. I will say no more, but it is fucking tense.

• 1:15:35Andy Greenwald?

  I can probably handle it. I was knee jerk avoiding it because.

• 1:15:38Chris Ryan?

  My wife's like palms were sweating watching it.

• 1:15:40Andy Greenwald?

  You just get a frozen peas on them. Just Doctor House, just whatever you need. I selfishly was like, I feel like I've done enough with Potters and Dark Wizards and HBO recently. But now, but I said that glibly, not knowing it was a documentary about mountain climbers at all.

• 1:15:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:58Andy Greenwald?

  So I think that's a good rec. People have been talking about it.

• 1:16:01Chris Ryan?

  Uh, okay. So we'll see you guys on Monday.