You Need to be Watching ‘Furious.’ Plus, ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Preview

Chris and Andy discuss the news that Netflix has acquired the rights to five more years of ‘The Walking Dead’ and what that tells us about the direction the streamer is going in (05:10). Then they do a short preview of ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ (20:10), before talking about why you should be watching ‘Furious,’ the new Hulu crime show starring Emmy Rossum and Scoot McNairy (31:38). Subscribe to the ⁠Ringer TV YouTube channel⁠ here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Editing and Engineering: Jamie Yukich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:05Speaker 00

  I need sports to have to clear the room.

• 0:08Chris Ryan?

  Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the Ringer dot com. And joining me in the studio is interests are music, fashion and film. It's Andy Greenwald.

• 0:25Andy Greenwald?

  Charles XCX.

• 0:26Chris Ryan?

  We actually have Charlie XCX on the show today doing an unplugged performance of

• 0:30Andy Greenwald?

  Do we?

• 0:31Chris Ryan?

  The new Strokes album. Yeah.

• 0:32Andy Greenwald?

  That's phenomenal.

• 0:34Chris Ryan?

  No auto tune.

• 0:34Andy Greenwald?

  Will you be playing the role of David Cronenberg?

• 0:37Chris Ryan?

  Yes, over the final track, I will be like, I don't like this Strokes album. It's great to see you. It's a

• 0:44Andy Greenwald?

  Just incredible slander, by the way. People will hear this Strokes slander before they hear the Strokes slander that you did on what is now next week's episode.

• 0:52Chris Ryan?

  I have no problem just being open about it. First of all, I don't rise to the level where Julian Casablanca is going to write a diss track about me. Second of all, I'm one of the world's great promoters and proponents of Room on Fire.

• 1:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I know. So that's why your talk that no one can hear until Monday shocked me.

• 1:10Chris Ryan?

  And I do the work and undercover undercover of darkness.

• 1:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, a great song.

• 1:17Chris Ryan?

  The best Strokes song. It's the best Strokes song.

• 1:20Andy Greenwald?

  Among many on the best Strokes album.

• 1:22Chris Ryan?

  Angles?

• 1:23Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's Room on Fire, dude.

• 1:25Chris Ryan?

  No, undercover darkness is not on Room on Fire.

• 1:27Andy Greenwald?

  It's on Angles?

• 1:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 1:29Andy Greenwald?

  This is, this is

• 1:29Chris Ryan?

  A great podcast.

• 1:32Andy Greenwald?

  First of all, we have a lot to talk about today. I'm excited about a new TV show, but I do think it is important to note, I do not buy it when you're like, I don't rise to the level of a Strokes diss track, because one of the great joys of life and late period friendship with you is just discovering random people who just out themselves as like big time CR heads.

• 1:54Chris Ryan?

  Like who?

• 1:55Andy Greenwald?

  Or like, you know, members of Congress, for example.

• 1:57Chris Ryan?

  Who's a member of Congress who did that?

• 2:00Andy Greenwald?

  Many, there are numerous senators on both sides of the aisle. This is true. People listen to these shows.

• 2:06Chris Ryan?

  There's no Republican senators who like the rewatchables, are there?

• 2:09Andy Greenwald?

  If there was one, who do you think it would be? I think it would be Josh Hawley.

• 2:12Chris Ryan?

  No, Josh is busy.

• 2:16Chris Ryan?

  He's got Fauci in his sights, you know?

• 2:19Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 2:20Chris Ryan?

  Josh, my guy. No.

• 2:22Andy Greenwald?

  He's gonna DM you.

• 2:23Chris Ryan?

  He seems like a bad dude.

• 2:24Andy Greenwald?

  Regardless.

• 2:27Andy Greenwald?

  This is our Thursday energy today. Chris is, this is

• 2:30Chris Ryan?

  Today on the podcast, Andy and I are going to talk a little bit today about a, a modern syndication story, television syndication story, because news came across Deadline today that Netflix was going to be paying a handsome fee to AMC for the Walking Dead franchise and the rights to broadcast it for five years. I want to talk to Greenwald about that. And also, we have a new show that we love, Furious on Hulu, starring Emmy Rossum and comes from Liz Merriweather. And it is basically what I had been pining for when a couple of weeks ago, I think I did this with Joe, where we were talking about the, the dog days of summer and the drought on TV and not really getting that fired up for Ted Lasso, season four,

• 3:15Chris Ryan?

  and not really sure what's on after, after Dragon and a couple of other things end. And not kind of out of nowhere, Furious hits us. So I'm excited and I'm excited about how excited Andy is.

• 3:27Andy Greenwald?

  I'm excited.

• 3:29Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk a little bit at the top. Do you have anything you wanted to get off your chest?

• 3:36Chris Ryan?

  Were you, did you have any topics you wanted to bring to the pod? Like, did you, you had all these like hidden

• 3:40Andy Greenwald?

  No, I mean, I'm on

• 3:41Chris Ryan?

  Prompts and like

• 3:42Andy Greenwald?

  No, I'm

• 3:42Chris Ryan?

  Secret segments that you wanted to do.

• 3:44Andy Greenwald?

  I'm on the record as from the beginning, saying it was a lab leak. So I have nothing to hide from you. Bring it.

• 3:51Chris Ryan?

  Do you really think that?

• 3:52Andy Greenwald?

  I've arrived here. No, can I tell you the real truth? This makes me a terrible podcaster. I have no opinion. I actually don't care.

• 3:58Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 4:00Andy Greenwald?

  Everything seems fine.

• 4:01Chris Ryan?

  We're still talking about The Walking Dead, right?

• 4:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I think that it was designed. Yeah, no, I don't have it. Do you have a take?

• 4:07Chris Ryan?

  No, I don't think so.

• 4:08Andy Greenwald?

  You a big lab leak guy?

• 4:09Chris Ryan?

  I don't know enough about it.

• 4:11Andy Greenwald?

  How many?

• 4:12Chris Ryan?

  That doesn't stop me from commenting on a lot of things I don't know a lot about, but this one I just don't know a lot about.

• 4:16Andy Greenwald?

  Historically, are you a big wet market or dry market guy?

• 4:19Chris Ryan?

  We've talked about this. I love a wet market.

• 4:21Andy Greenwald?

  I know. It's much more interesting. Dry markets are what, like sacks of lagoons?

• 4:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's like, I think they have spice places in Silver Lake. I don't need to go

• 4:30Andy Greenwald?

  It's true.

• 4:30Chris Ryan?

  To Wuhan for that.

• 4:31Andy Greenwald?

  Although I think that would have reinvigorated my coverage of Game of Thrones, because I did spend the last three seasons talking about how if only we could get back to Essos and the various like spice traders. I never actually used the term dry market. Like, I feel like that could have been a good look at me.

• 4:46Chris Ryan?

  I don't think it was in our lexicon back then. Um, did you want to, did you want to ask me anything? Your, like, you had these segment ideas.

• 4:53Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I think we should, I think we can, let's do more news and then let's see if we had to do any padding at the end. I do have some segments. There's something I really enjoyed watching, but I like, let's, let's talk syndication.

• 5:03Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 5:03Andy Greenwald?

  You, you, you had a, you had a vision.

• 5:06Chris Ryan?

  Netflix pays $500 million for five more years of The Walking Dead universe. This comes from Deadline.

• 5:11Andy Greenwald?

  To be clear, they're to continue to air the universe.

• 5:13Chris Ryan?

  They've been doing it for a while. But Deadline, quote, Netflix has renewed The Walking Dead, paying $500 million to AMC Global Media for five years of rights to the original zombie franchise and all of its spinoffs. The deal is co-exclusive, enabling the series to also stream on AMC Plus starting next year, which is kind of funny, because basically AMC Plus is a very easy add-on to the Amazon Prime channels package.

• 5:40Chris Ryan?

  So Netflix is paying $500 million to also air something that is like readily available on Amazon, which is just amusing to me. The 371 episodes of the original series and its six spinoffs will stream on Netflix in the UK, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, and other new territories, along with the United States, where it has been since 2011. So I wanted to talk to you about this for a couple of different reasons. We had a mailbag question that we'll be addressing Monday. So this is a little bit chronologically off.

• 6:12Andy Greenwald?

  Julian C. in the Lower East Side.

• 6:14Chris Ryan?

  He was just like, don't knock auto tune until you try it, bro.

• 6:20Chris Ryan?

  We had a mailbag question that was more about producer fees.

• 6:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 6:25Chris Ryan?

  And how do producers like when Reese Witherspoon gets a taste of Lucky or whatever Hello Sunshine is up to, you know? Well, how does she make her money? How much is, how much does she get paid when she is an executive producer on a show?

• 6:40Andy Greenwald?

  That's what we do on this podcast. We look out for the little guys like Reese Witherspoon.

• 6:43Chris Ryan?

  I believe in small businesses. And that's one kind of syndication story or one kind of like economic story within the industry. But this is an interesting one, just because syndication used to be the lifeblood of television, you know, like when we were growing up, the idea was you get to 100 episodes on a network television show or any really kind of television show, for the most part, a network television show. And then it would go on to TBS, local, local networks. Who among us can forget the lazy days spent watching PG rated Sex and the City episodes on E Entertainment Television?

• 7:24Chris Ryan?

  This is now the Netflix model where they obviously rely on Walking Dead and its ancillary properties as a kind of staple

• 7:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 7:34Chris Ryan?

  Of, of like what viewing hours? Because otherwise, why would you cut a half a bill check to ostensibly, not a competitor, but like, you know, they are

• 7:45Andy Greenwald?

  It's non-exclusive, is what you're saying.

• 7:47Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and it's non-exclusive, but obviously like, it's good for The Walking Dead because it keeps these shows in circulation. And every once in a while, like Daryl Dixon will just pop into the, to the top 10. And I saw some people make this comment. I'll ask you, if you're going to pay $500 million for the rights to air Walking Dead, how much do you think it would cost outright to buy the IP off of AMC to be able to make more Walking Dead?

• 8:16Andy Greenwald?

  I hadn't considered the question. I mean, I think that what's important to think about is that AMC's investment in this IP and in this franchise has been not just like a saving grace of the network as it's gotten more and more subsumed by the bigger fish of the tech streaming corporate merger era, but like, it is their lifeline. Like, the story that you're, you're citing in Deadline immediately pivots to AMC holding stock price and how it, how this affected it. It's, it's unbelievable, like that they have this. And it also helps understand why they continue to mine the IP themselves to keep things in production, to always have a show on the air, even though, and look, I'm not pretending

• 8:59Andy Greenwald?

  our podcast is at the Van Cart of representing what people watch uniformly across the country or the world. But I think you can fairly say that like, recent eps of Dead City don't hit quite as hard in the monoculture as the original Walking Dead did. I did see like at Comic Con that it was like Lauren Cohen, who's still on these shows.

• 9:20Chris Ryan?

  Well, she was gone for a while. And then I think she came back for The Ones Who Live.

• 9:24Andy Greenwald?

  Sure. And, and that they're doing a multiverse episode where her, her sister, I guess the actress was Emily Kinney.

• 9:30Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 9:31Andy Greenwald?

  Who died in the episode with, sorry, 10 year old spoiler alert. It was the episode with, with what's his name from Gregory from Abbott Elementary?

• 9:40Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:40Andy Greenwald?

  And, and my, my dear friend and the very talented Christine Woods, I believe, is the one who pulls the trigger on her. Anyway, she's back in a multiversal episode where, what if she was still alive?

• 9:49Chris Ryan?

  There's multiverse, there's Walking Dead multiverses?

• 9:51Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just saying, like, that's where we're at with the IP, where they're like, let's just do an episode where we can bring everybody back.

• 9:55Chris Ryan?

  You know what it kind of reminds me of is like the CW, where they had seven DC related Berlanti verse

• 10:03Andy Greenwald?

  The Berlanti verse.

• 10:03Chris Ryan?

  Shows that were kind of always cranking, always doing crossovers, always having multiversal. Yeah.

• 10:09Andy Greenwald?

  That is the CR Glenn Gary Glenn Ross crossover, always be cranking, I believe. And they, but like, this is what keeps that network afloat in a lot of ways. And no disrespect. And so it just seems to me I mean, the conversation about syndication is separate, but this just seems to me to be good business, because the other thing that is made clear in the article that Netflix is doing with this is that it is buying the rights for many more territories globally that Netflix exists in than AMC has ever gotten to.

• 10:38Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 10:38Andy Greenwald?

  So it is spreading the good word, almost like an infectious disease that transforms people into something other than what they were. So it just seems like good business, and the number is the number, but that's really insignificant to Netflix in the scheme of things for another reliable bedrock plank of their programming, especially when, you know, in their more expansive era, they were spending that much money easily on making three times as many original shows per year purely for the sake of catalog enhancement.

• 11:09Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and I was curious what, I mean, like, every once in a while on Instagram, I'll get like videos of actors opening up a residual check and being like, $1 for being on like SVU six years ago or something. Like, I'm curious whether like Kim Dickens gets like a balloon payment, you know what I mean? Like, not to pocket watch Kim Dickens.

• 11:30Andy Greenwald?

  Should I text her?

• 11:31Chris Ryan?

  I mean, you're the guy, but like, you're the one with Kim Dickens in the contact list, you know? But I was, you know, whether or not, so much of what Netflix does is buy out backends, right? Because that's why a lot of their movies, quote unquote, cost what they cost is because the payment is for all of like, in perpetuity, your sort of payment for this movie comes in a front-end check rather than, man, you know, Fugan Men's been on TNT a lot, so I keep getting checks for that.

• 12:01Andy Greenwald?

  That's definitely the case for movies, and it was the case for TV shows. I can only speak to, from the writer's side of it, I do know that in the recent, not the most recent, but I think the strike era renegotiation, one of the things was, you have to provide some metric for shared success.

• 12:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:17Andy Greenwald?

  And there are tiers in which if you hit, I don't know if it's the top 10, if you hit 100,000 views, a million views, or whatever, you can, you get something extra, get a little sweetener. It is not like the era of just green checks arriving for people all the time for something they did 17 years ago, those days are over.

• 12:35Chris Ryan?

  I was on an episode of Roseanne, look at my house!

• 12:37Andy Greenwald?

  But to your question about specifically the actors, I have no idea. And I have no idea if, for example, the contracts that Andrew Lincoln and Jon Bernthal signed in 2009, or whenever it was.

• 12:48Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 12:49Andy Greenwald?

  Reflect the same industry realities that the contract Coleman Domingo signed when he was starring in the other one, what was the other one called? For You're the Walking Dead.

• 12:58Chris Ryan?

  Oh, right.

• 12:59Andy Greenwald?

  So I don't know if there's a difference, if there's a difference there in terms of era, or if there is still some, and I don't mean to cast aspersions on AMC, although there has been quite a long, and I believe still slightly unresolved, court case that Frank Darabont brought.

• 13:15Chris Ryan?

  The Walking Dead rights and The Walking Dead, I, like, that whole thing has been very litigious, yeah.

• 13:20Andy Greenwald?

  And Frank Darabont, who brought it to TV, was suing, and, anyway, so I'm not trying to cast aspersions, but there is a long history in, all caps, this town, of companies being like, gosh, we still haven't really turned the corner on profit yet.

• 13:33Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 13:34Andy Greenwald?

  So we'll get back to you. That, I don't know the answers, is what I'm saying, and it, the large thing that you can, the larger takeaway is just the opacity of all of this now.

• 13:43Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 13:43Andy Greenwald?

  It used to be pretty clear, to your point, like, people would say, infamously or famously, people would be like, I can pay my mortgage every year because I did five lines on Friends.

• 13:53Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 13:53Andy Greenwald?

  That is just a lifeline, you know, that I get to participate in, which is pretty good. It's not to date myself, I don't think it's actually possible to date ourselves more than we do on a weekly basis, but I really, truly believe that my first understanding of the passing of time was watching the 5:00 or 6:00 PM hour of Fox 29 in Philadelphia go from, like, MASH 3's company and It's a Living to Seinfeld.

• 14:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:19Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean? Like, shows that, or no, first Cheers, and then it's like, wait a second, that, and Family Ties, and it's like, you see your childhood moving through.

• 14:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's kind of like when you are watching a guy and they're like, at the ancient age of 34, Bryce Harper takes the, and I'm like, I remember when Bryce Harper was in high school, and I was like, drinking, you know, like.

• 14:38Andy Greenwald?

  Also, when people are like, wow, I can't believe the corpse that was once Kyle Lowry has finally admitted that he too is just dust.

• 14:45Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 14:46Andy Greenwald?

  And it's like, at the age of 38, this pathetic pile.

• 14:50Chris Ryan?

  But I also was like, very old when he won the national championship.

• 14:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I remember, we had to wake you up. You had your life alert, and you were doing your Nosferatu in bed.

• 14:59Chris Ryan?

  I do wonder whether or not this, I mean, I don't know how interesting people find all of this, but I do wonder whether or not this recommitment to The Walking Dead universe on the part of Netflix is going to be tied at all to the rumored always-on channels that they're developing?

• 15:16Andy Greenwald?

  Good, look at your little industry thinking here, I like it.

• 15:19Chris Ryan?

  Well, I was just like, you know, for them, what would you put in these different buckets, right?

• 15:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 15:23Chris Ryan?

  Like, you could, would they be title-based, would they be genre-based, would there be, you know, would there be comedy, like, specials? I could totally see that. But if you have six series of Walking Dead, you could just basically like, put them in the spin cycle and have them on all day long.

• 15:44Andy Greenwald?

  I hope Ted Sarandos is listening. I mean, I know he usually does, but in the bath, like Mallory Rubin does, but.

• 15:51Chris Ryan?

  Not in Mallory's bath.

• 15:52Andy Greenwald?

  No. Separate tubs, like a Cialis commercial.

• 15:55Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 15:56Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think this is very smart on your part, the idea that like, to diversify, they're going to have to have always-on channels, or like, maybe different ad tiers where they just show stuff and become more TV more overtly. But I think, so a Walking Dead channel would do numbers for them. But the one thing that I got excited about when you said that was, you know, remembering the glory days of HBO, HBO 2, HBO 3, HBO 4, what if they had channels that was like Netflix 1.0, and it was just Lilyhammer and like, House of Cards?

• 16:24Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:24Andy Greenwald?

  And then it was like Netflix 2.0, and it's Orange is the New Black, and Master of None, and Mindhunter, and then Netflix 3.0, and it's just Flora's Lava.

• 16:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:33Andy Greenwald?

  24/7.

• 16:34Chris Ryan?

  And Virgin Canyon, or whatever it is.

• 16:36Andy Greenwald?

  Like, they should own their history, you know? So much of the internet, just, it's about, what are you doing for me now? Like, let's really, really do it. Or they do Netflix, oh, Netflix like, .5, is it's just a blank screen with a mailing address, and you send a red envelope to them, and they send your show back.

• 16:53Chris Ryan?

  Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage, That I Never Returned.

• 16:56Andy Greenwald?

  Well, then, then no one else ever got to see it.

• 16:59Chris Ryan?

  I know. I robbed some, some other guy with glasses.

• 17:03Andy Greenwald?

  Not to do the age thing, but like, did you engage much with the red envelope era? Was that something that was in your household?

• 17:11Speaker 03

  Um, I think, like, we got Netflix, yeah, I think we got Netflix, but like, it was like a very short window of time.

• 17:19Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  And then we're like, oh, wait, we can just have this all on our television.

• 17:24Andy Greenwald?

  It was quite useful, I have to say.

• 17:27Chris Ryan?

  There was a great system. It was also just like, it was just something that worked really, really well, and I think made people like, deeply engaged with what they were watching, and it was, it was a great library system.

• 17:38Andy Greenwald?

  The thing that it actually did for me that I'd never considered was how much it helped the TV watching, because, you know how you famously were too busy to watch TV from 1998 through 2006?

• 17:52Chris Ryan?

  Brother, I think it was closer to 10.

• 17:54Andy Greenwald?

  Sure. I also didn't watch the first seasons of, like, when The Sopranos went, like, you were in on the wire from the beginning, but I only got into it like, season three, and the red envelopes brought me home, baby.

• 18:08Chris Ryan?

  Well, there was also like, the sensation of crisscrossing Brooklyn, looking for the next disc in the 24, season two collection.

• 18:17Andy Greenwald?

  So you would, would you ever engage with 24, missing the hours of 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM, and you'd skip to 9:00 PM?

• 18:23Chris Ryan?

  Phoebe and I binged it. I can't remember if we then became weekly 24 watchers, because I can't remember, I think it was season three, and I don't really remember what that guy was getting up to then.

• 18:33Andy Greenwald?

  I bet it involves strapping people to chairs.

• 18:35Chris Ryan?

  I'm pretty sure that when I, there was an LA season.

• 18:40Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. I think I saw that season. Yes, I watched that season.

• 18:43Chris Ryan?

  I think I watched that season.

• 18:44Andy Greenwald?

  Isn't that the season when Edgar and what's-her-name are like, in the glass, and like, we say goodbye to one of them, and, oh, man. One of my favorite eras that I feel like we should get back to, speaking of 1.0.

• 18:54Chris Ryan?

  It's Kiefer Sutherland electrocuting guys with lamps.

• 18:57Andy Greenwald?

  Let me take it a little further. There was a period when you were still outside, as the Philly Special Podcast would say, but you were also engaging with TV to a degree.

• 19:10Chris Ryan?

  Sure, yeah, like Lost, Friday Night Lights, yeah.

• 19:12Andy Greenwald?

  But what I remember most about it was that you were really watching television in the way that I watched Food Network, in terms of like, oh, now I know how to mince garlic, because you would watch House, and you would give medical advice. You would watch 24, and you would expressly talk about what you would have done the same and what you would have done differently in these high-octane interrogation scenarios. That was a really interesting way to approach the media.

• 19:34Chris Ryan?

  He was not really much of a de-escalator, and I feel like I have a more conciliatory personality, I'm a little bit more conflict averse.

• 19:41Andy Greenwald?

  No, but that was not your attitude, like, entering, like, the Hi-Fi bar in 2004, you never went in and be like, hey, everyone, let's take it down a notch.

• 19:48Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 19:49Andy Greenwald?

  You know what I mean?

• 19:49Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 19:50Andy Greenwald?

  You also didn't think that one of us was a traitor to our country. So, that was a cool attitude, though, it was a cool era.

• 19:56Chris Ryan?

  It was a cool era. Why don't we, why don't we talk about Furious?

• 20:01Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, I wasn't sure if you wanted to pivot to your Spider-Man fan casting, but we can do that at the end.

• 20:07Chris Ryan?

  No, no, no, let's do that now. I did want to ask you, what's the Spider-Man plan?

• 20:13Andy Greenwald?

  Thanks for asking.

• 20:13Chris Ryan?

  It's like, we're sadly not recording next week, we have two shows next week, but we're not live recording or doing any post-Spider-Man recording.

• 20:21Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's good, I think we can let the first reactions die down, and then we can come in with some truth bombs.

• 20:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:26Andy Greenwald?

  I, I like the way you asked me that, the way like, like, PSAs ask if you have a disaster plan.

• 20:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:33Andy Greenwald?

  Like, what do you have packed and ready to go? It's honestly, at that level, in my house, my daughters are completely locked in on this movie, and have been for a while, leading me to do, I think, maybe my first ever, like, two weeks out ticket purchase.

• 20:45Chris Ryan?

  Really?

• 20:46Andy Greenwald?

  Just so like, I could lock down the.

• 20:48Chris Ryan?

  Well, after you learned your lesson from Odyssey, where you're like, I'll go see it in IMAX 70, the way Christopher Nolan asked me to.

• 20:54Andy Greenwald?

  And the only place showing it was fucking Ithaca.

• 20:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:56Andy Greenwald?

  And it's hard to get there, as a dad. So we are, we are locked in, and we are ready. It's interesting, because, I guess it's not interesting, like, their desire, well, my 13-year-old's desire to see it is entirely Tom Holland and Zendaya.

• 21:12Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 21:13Andy Greenwald?

  I think the nine-year-old's desire to see it is entirely her sister's interest in Tom Holland and Zendaya, but they do like those movies.

• 21:18Chris Ryan?

  They do like those movies.

• 21:19Andy Greenwald?

  They do like those movies a lot, they like Spider-verse cartoon movies a lot, and I'm actually feeling.

• 21:27Andy Greenwald?

  I really hope it's good because they're so excited.

• 21:31Chris Ryan?

  So that's an interesting wrinkle to it where you'll go to The Odyssey, maybe, and you're just like, let me kick the tires here and see whether Emily Wilson was right about this.

• 21:40Andy Greenwald?

  Emily Wilson and I approached it the same way, with the same level of rigor and cinematic history in mine.

• 21:45Chris Ryan?

  But Spider-Man, do you think you have a more open heart? Because your kids are so fired up, you're like, it's gonna take a lot to disappoint me about this?

• 21:51Andy Greenwald?

  Well, yes, for sure, but I am...

• 21:56Andy Greenwald?

  You know what? I'm just gonna say this. I actually have no idea because everything... I've tried to clamp down the filters and no spoilers to the degree that I'm capable of not having spoilers. But the two strands of information that seem to be dominating about the movie are, one, vibes that maybe it's mid and there's no clear villain or whatever. And the other one being, well, it's not a Spider-Man movie, it's a Peter Parker movie, and those are always the best stories anyway. So thus, it's good.

• 22:25Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 22:26Andy Greenwald?

  Weirdly, and I know you often look to X.com for accuracy in reporting.

• 22:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I have it open right now and just translating this to Grok.

• 22:35Andy Greenwald?

  Are you getting a lot of really, really, really passionate posts about how John Watts ruined those other movies? And now finally, we have gravitationally accurate swinging?

• 22:50Chris Ryan?

  Now, are you getting those on for you or are you getting those in following?

• 22:53Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, no. I only follow EJ Smith and other Eagles beat writers. So it's not... I mean, maybe.

• 23:00Chris Ryan?

  But you're for you. That's a very, very specific thing.

• 23:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and so for you thinks, I hate the director, John Watts.

• 23:08Chris Ryan?

  But you don't.

• 23:08Andy Greenwald?

  Absolutely not. He seems like a lovely guy, and those movies were very enjoyable.

• 23:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:12Andy Greenwald?

  Especially the last one. Also, I'm not a guy... I'm idiosyncratic in some ways, but I don't make or break my interest in Spider-Man media based on the gravitational reality of swinging.

• 23:25Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 23:27Chris Ryan?

  You've got principles.

• 23:28Andy Greenwald?

  The swinging in The Ice Storm, maybe, but the swinging in Spider-Man Homecoming trilogy? What do I know about that?

• 23:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:35Andy Greenwald?

  You know?

• 23:35Chris Ryan?

  I have not gotten a lot of that served to me recently.

• 23:38Andy Greenwald?

  Is yours just mostly Josh Hawley fan edits?

• 23:41Chris Ryan?

  Let's see what it is. Let's dial it up.

• 23:43Andy Greenwald?

  This is one of the new segments I wanted to do. What does the algorithm say for you?

• 23:50Chris Ryan?

  There's a bunch of stuff about Kawhi Leonard,

• 23:53Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 23:53Chris Ryan?

  The Odyssey, the Idaho murders, heat getting made, and Ross Duhigg leaving The New York Times for 60 minutes.

• 24:03Andy Greenwald?

  That is for you. That's really accurate. I would have guessed five out of the six of those things, and I would have started with NY Times op-ed writers going to the Garden of Vary. Mine is just Vic Fangio making fun of Anthony Fauci.

• 24:17Chris Ryan?

  That's your for you.

• 24:18Andy Greenwald?

  This is the top of my for you.

• 24:20Chris Ryan?

  Did he make fun of Fauci?

• 24:21Andy Greenwald?

  He went to his press conference and he's like, "I'm just gonna be like Fauci." Did you guys see that?

• 24:27Andy Greenwald?

  So glad football's back.

• 24:28Chris Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 24:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, man.

• 24:33Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's my DC, I guess.

• 24:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 24:37Andy Greenwald?

  Your District of Columbia?

• 24:38Chris Ryan?

  No, my defensive coordinator.

• 24:40Andy Greenwald?

  Your vision for what Washington should be. Anyway, yeah, I didn't know that the fandom was like, finally, Tom and Zendaya are freed from the shackles of this schlock merchant, and this movie's gonna be incredible.

• 24:53Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I had no idea that that was a narrative.

• 24:56Andy Greenwald?

  It's just interesting that like this... But that is also definitely one of the planks that is fueling this movie to what may be the biggest opening in five or six years.

• 25:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:04Andy Greenwald?

  It is... People like Spider-Man movies, and they like the fact that they are generally pretty good and haven't been tainted by the occasional misfire recently, but they also just like the stars a lot.

• 25:14Chris Ryan?

  Do you think that there is a correlation between... Spider-Man will obviously do bonkers numbers, almost regardless of whether or not people are like, "It's mid." But do you think an astronomical performance from this movie bodes well for Doomsday?

• 25:29Andy Greenwald?

  No, but it will be interpreted as such, for sure.

• 25:32Chris Ryan?

  The sheep will think that.

• 25:34Andy Greenwald?

  The sheeple on their for you pages. They don't understand the real...

• 25:37Chris Ryan?

  The sheep detectives know better, you know?

• 25:39Andy Greenwald?

  Did you see that?

• 25:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:40Andy Greenwald?

  Did you see that?

• 25:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:41Andy Greenwald?

  You have so many mysterious things about you.

• 25:44Chris Ryan?

  Sheep detectives are pretty good.

• 25:45Andy Greenwald?

  I heard it was good.

• 25:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:46Andy Greenwald?

  But did you go to the theater to see it?

• 25:48Chris Ryan?

  No, we watched it on streaming.

• 25:50Andy Greenwald?

  Who was the pilot on that?

• 25:52Chris Ryan?

  I said there's a movie where sheeps solve a crime.

• 25:55Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, she's gonna watch it.

• 25:56Chris Ryan?

  And my wife was like, "That sounds incredible. Let's fire that up."

• 25:58Andy Greenwald?

  I have been, you know...

• 26:01Chris Ryan?

  Not sheeps.

• 26:02Andy Greenwald?

  That is plural.

• 26:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:03Andy Greenwald?

  I have been a loving third to your couple for many decades, and I 100% could have predicted exactly how that would have gone. Like, I see it.

• 26:15Chris Ryan?

  My wife responds really well to these two things.

• 26:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 26:18Chris Ryan?

  One, animals solving crimes.

• 26:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 26:20Chris Ryan?

  Two, found footage horror.

• 26:26Chris Ryan?

  Where a fogloric witch rises out of the woods to kill many people.

• 26:30Andy Greenwald?

  Are you seeing what I'm seeing, though?

• 26:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:32Andy Greenwald?

  Connect the streams. Go right now into Jason Blum's office and be like, "There is a terrible murder, found footage at a farm."

• 26:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:41Andy Greenwald?

  And the only people left to solve it are the farm animals.

• 26:46Chris Ryan?

  Why not?

• 26:47Andy Greenwald?

  That would do numbers. Anyway, no, I just think that the... I think the uncomfortable truth is that the Spider-Man movies have succeeded so entirely because they have been... I mean, you watch those first... I re-watch the trilogy now, and I completely forgot that the whole beginning of the first one is about lost Avengers tech being picked up by the wrong people. Like, the shoehorning is so much more intense than I remembered. But I think I'm not alone in that the cultural memory of what was good about those movies is never the crossovers. It's Tom Holland's performance of Spider-Man and Zendaya and whatever, and the lighter tone, and the fact that broadly, they were in their own...

• 27:24Chris Ryan?

  Sandbox, even if they had to make adjustments for the larger Marvel thing.

• 27:29Andy Greenwald?

  And that the third movie did multiversal storytelling about as well... I mean, we'll see, but I think about as well as it can be done because it was entirely emotional about the character that we'd grown to love and had stakes and everything like that. And so I think if this movie does well, it's because people are like, "I'm interested in these characters, not necessarily this type of movie or storytelling." And my fear is that based on the spoiler stuff that I think we both have known for a while, is that if this is more of a backdoor pilot to the next brand-new day of Kevin Feige's grand MCU and the stories he wants to tell, I think that would be a bummer.

• 28:06Chris Ryan?

  I will say this. I saw recently that Holland is like, "I'm happy to play Spider-Man for as long as I'll have me." And he's 30, so I guess that would probably be, say, 10 more years, although...

• 28:16Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, you say that, but...

• 28:18Chris Ryan?

  Have we ever had a 45-year-old Spider-Man?

• 28:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man: No Way Home, and I would imagine in Doomsday as well.

• 28:26Chris Ryan?

  I think Tobey Maguire was younger, but by playing poker all night for six years, he aged a little bit.

• 28:33Andy Greenwald?

  Tobey Maguire, like, what's interesting is that as we age, and we are, people really talk about moisturizing and sun protection, whatever. But then you just hold up Tobey Maguire, who I believe has not seen Earth's sun in many decades, and that's a different kind of cautionary tale.

• 28:50Chris Ryan?

  I do think that more comic book franchises should strive to get to movie number six. Because my favorite thing about comic books is not the origin story. It's the story five years in where they're like... Or just like a run where they're like, "Yeah, of course, we already know how these people got their powers."

• 29:12Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, you don't... The origin story stuff, yeah, let's move on to that.

• 29:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I don't want to restart Spider-Man.

• 29:16Andy Greenwald?

  But to these movies...

• 29:17Chris Ryan?

  This will be my last Spider-Man. Like, Tom Holland is my final Spider-Man. Yeah, I'm willing to say that.

• 29:25Andy Greenwald?

  Where are you going?

• 29:28Chris Ryan?

  If I'm 55 and I'm like, "Let's see if Pipsqueak McGee can relaunch the Spider-Man franchise." Like, we've got problems.

• 29:37Andy Greenwald?

  I'm trying to think who it is. It's like Son of Mr. Beast is gonna be...

• 29:44Chris Ryan?

  He's half minion, half beast.

• 29:46Andy Greenwald?

  Now I'm interested. I think the...

• 29:48Chris Ryan?

  Half sheep detective.

• 29:51Andy Greenwald?

  You're just giving these ideas away for free. I constantly tell you that. I mean, but to this series's credit, we actually never saw the Tom Holland origin story. He is Spider-Man at the beginning of Homecoming.

• 30:02Chris Ryan?

  I forgot about that.

• 30:03Andy Greenwald?

  And I believe, you know...

• 30:05Chris Ryan?

  I have to admit, I do not have a comprehensive memory of these Spider-Man movies the way, say, maybe Godfather and Godfather 2. So I don't remember what happened in the Jake Gyllenhaal movie. They went to Europe for that. I know that, right?

• 30:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, they went to Europe.

• 30:19Chris Ryan?

  Kids take a lot of trips.

• 30:21Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it's a pretty elite school.

• 30:24Chris Ryan?

  Academy.

• 30:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think they get a lot of opportunities. But yeah, but I'm sure there's a podcast of us nine years ago being like, "Actually, it's really interesting. They chose to forsake the origin story, and we're just gonna join it." And you could be like, and you were probably like, "That's what I want out of a Spider-Man, an 18-year-old with no origin story. No notes."

• 30:42Chris Ryan?

  John Watts, you've done it again.

• 30:44Andy Greenwald?

  And then you, then you, then we both like compared our

• 30:47Chris Ryan?

  Forty pages.

• 30:48Andy Greenwald?

  Elizabeth Warren 2020 stickers and we were like, things are gonna shape up great for this version of the multiverse.

• 30:55Chris Ryan?

  Uh, fuck. All right. Well, let's talk about Furious.

• 30:58Andy Greenwald?

  But wait, are you gonna see Spider-Man?

• 31:00Chris Ryan?

  Uh, yes, I'm actually gonna see it this weekend on vacation.

• 31:02Andy Greenwald?

  Nice. Is that because you told Phoebe it's about a spider solving a crime?

• 31:07Chris Ryan?

  We are hanging out with, with my, my, with Phoebe's best friend's family and we are taking the, the, the kids to Spider-Man.

• 31:14Andy Greenwald?

  And is their interest because they are spider completists or because of their

• 31:18Chris Ryan?

  I haven't had a chance to really interrogate them about it. Sorry.

• 31:22Andy Greenwald?

  Seems like you're really just walking into this blind.

• 31:24Chris Ryan?

  She was like, I wanna see Spider-Man. I wasn't like, let's go through the top 10 reasons why you wanna do that.

• 31:29Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 31:29Chris Ryan?

  And why you don't wanna see like Blue Heron, you know, like I was like, let's go, let's just go to Spider-Man. I don't ask any follow-ups. Um, okay. Now finally, let's talk about Furious on Hulu. Uh, the first three episodes were released, I believe, last week. I first kinda heard about this show a while back, then, you know, filed it away and then saw that Roxana Hadadi on Vulture had written like a really glowing piece about it. So my eyebrow went up and, um, you know, it's really cool. The wide spectrum of people who have hit me up about this.

• 32:01Andy Greenwald?

  Really?

• 32:02Chris Ryan?

  Like Waz was like, yo, Furious is amazing.

• 32:05Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:05Chris Ryan?

  And there's something in, there's something to that. There's something to a show so specific in its tone.

• 32:13Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:13Chris Ryan?

  Appealing to so many different people in my life.

• 32:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 32:16Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and it appeals to me. I thought, uh, this show, I wanna try and articulate exactly what I wanna say here, which is that there's lots of things in this show that you have quote unquote, seen before.

• 32:28Andy Greenwald?

  For sure.

• 32:29Chris Ryan?

  It's definitely in a tradition of, uh, cop procedurals and serial killer stories that will ring familiar. And there's even dynamic scenes, dialogue, things that you're like, ah, yes, the troubled, but genius detective. Ah, yes, you know, like her complicated relationship with a possibly platonic partner or whatever. And yet every scene kinda has its own cadence. And it, it's like watching someone play a jazz standard and then take it off into a completely different direction that you've not heard before.

• 33:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 33:04Chris Ryan?

  And I, I, I, that's down to the performances, which are soulful and they're not just like, oh, I'm gonna do all the little bits that my character does and I have like all these little like, um, quirks that I'm gonna rely on. Like they are, I, I am struck by how much time Emmy Rossum's Alice character who plays in, she's an FBI agent.

• 33:26Andy Greenwald?

  A new FBI agent.

• 33:27Chris Ryan?

  A new FBI agent who's, uh, come over from NYPD after, uh, I think best way to phrase it would be unofficially accusing a, a coworker of domestic violence that she was in a relationship with, but never brought it like official charges against him and then was ostracized. From the NYPD, she goes and she becomes an FBI agent and is put, um, on the, on the tail of like this burgeoning serial killer who is stalking men in New York. And that serial killer is played by Lola Petticrew, who we fucking loved on Say Nothing a couple of years ago. Uh, Emmy Rossum's partner, Danny Kelly, no relation to Danny Kelly, works at The Ringer.

• 34:06Andy Greenwald?

  That we know of.

• 34:06Chris Ryan?

  Uh, is played by Scoot McNairy. And, um, it's, you know, the first three episodes set up this cat and mouse game where we know who the cat is and we know who the mouse is. You know, we are seeing 50% of what the serial killer does, 50% is what the, the cops chasing her, the agents chasing her are doing. Um, I, but you will be watching this and you're like, there, even moments where you're like, I have seen this scene before in other shows and in other movies. And they'll just do something different. Like, I, I'm struck by how much time Emmy Rossum's character spends listening and watching people and how she's such a powerful performer in this that that in and of itself is like appointment television.

• 34:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 34:50Chris Ryan?

  It's like watching her like stare at somebody and process what they're talking about and how she like, how she is sort of framed in this show is just great. Um, I can't wait to hear what you think about it. I know that you're very fired up about it, but it's really cool to have a new show that we're really pumped up on.

• 35:05Andy Greenwald?

  I agree. And let's just to take a step back, say that like, let's, let's talk about why you guys should be watching it. And then maybe we could do a little.

• 35:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we don't have to get into any spoilers yet. We'll, we'll do that in a, in a minute.

• 35:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Um, I, you know, it, I, some say I don't watch as much TV as I used to. And some say I don't enjoy as much TV as I used to.

• 35:26Chris Ryan?

  So I'm in the room with us right now?

• 35:27Andy Greenwald?

  I don't need to say, I don't need to say people's names.

• 35:29Chris Ryan?

  I don't think that.

• 35:30Andy Greenwald?

  No, Kaya knows what she did.

• 35:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:34Andy Greenwald?

  But.

• 35:34Chris Ryan?

  She has a lot of Reddit burners.

• 35:35Andy Greenwald?

  But as of 9:56, I said this as I came in, at 9:56 PM, when I had seen zero episodes of, of Furious. And when I sat down to record with you this morning, having watched all three that are available, I experienced like old school excitement and exhilaration over something being not just better than I had anticipated it to be, but something being so energizing, exciting, fresh and thrilling.

• 36:01Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:02Andy Greenwald?

  That it, it, it's, it's Bugs Bunny meme. Gotta go back to the old me. Uh, I love this show and I'm invigorated by this show and I did not see it coming. Um, we should say that the origins are pretty interesting, that it is loosely based on a 1987, I believe, movie that I have never seen called Black Widow. Have you seen that movie?

• 36:25Chris Ryan?

  I, I don't think so. Um, I've heard of the movie, but I don't think.

• 36:27Andy Greenwald?

  It's a, it's a, it's a late period Raffelson, which makes it interesting to me, but it's Deborah Winger and Teresa Russell. Dennis Hopper is in it as well. Uh, the person who adapted it.

• 36:37Chris Ryan?

  That must've been a fun set.

• 36:38Andy Greenwald?

  Loose, must've been a memorable set. Raffelson, Hopper, and the two women starring in the movie, um, is Liz Meriwether, who is well-known for being the creator and honestly, the wonderkin of New Girl on Fox a number of years ago. And since then has had a, a more diverse career venturing into drama, um, with The Dropout, which is the Liz Meri, uh, sorry, Too Many Liz's. She worked with Liz Hannah on that and it starred Amanda Seyfried as.

• 37:07Chris Ryan?

  As Elizabeth Holmes.

• 37:07Andy Greenwald?

  Another Elizabeth, Elizabeth Holmes. Um, last year, she was the executive producer of, uh, Dying for Sex on FX.

• 37:14Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 37:16Andy Greenwald?

  It is as exciting to me in a TV world, I think, as it was for the movie world when the guy from The Whitest Kids You Know made Barbarian.

• 37:27Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 37:27Andy Greenwald?

  Or made.

• 37:28Chris Ryan?

  To see the person who made New Girl make this.

• 37:30Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. And see that the person who made New Girl made this. And what all it requires is just a slight dial shift in one direction or another. Which isn't saying that Furious is a comedy, although it is incredibly funny and it is incredibly surprising in its deployment of comedy. And it's incredibly agile in the way it integrates the comedy of awkward life into something that is oftentimes quite horrifying. Specifically, Rob Delaney, who is a very funny actor and a very good actor, has a two-episode appearance in this show that gives him a chance as an actor to play the spectrum of almost every human emotion.

• 38:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:12Andy Greenwald?

  But it never attempts to squelch what makes him charming in catastrophe. It just leads emotionally to a different kind of catastrophe in the hands of the show. So it is an incredibly nimble, I think, tightrope walk of tone, one that I'm really impressed with. But more than anything, I, I was just incredibly excited by the way it takes elements of, you know, like, like lurid 80s and 90s, um, serial killer thrillers, like I was thinking, like Copycat.

• 38:42Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 38:43Andy Greenwald?

  With Sigourney Weaver.

• 38:43Chris Ryan?

  Do some bone collecting.

• 38:44Andy Greenwald?

  Let's, let's talk about it. And, and with a much more modern strain of understanding and a much more, I would say, um, female perspective on an understanding of violence and trauma and victimhood. But at least through three episodes, this is not a show about violence and trauma and victimhood. It is a show about people living in the aftermath day to day in life, in a life that just by existing, contains victimhood and violence and trauma. It's not treated like a, you know, there is not a before and after for these people's lives.

• 39:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:21Andy Greenwald?

  There is just their lives. And it is unflinching in that. And, you know, there, there are some hashtag girl dad moments that are real tough in the, in the show already. But, um, it's doing something so, so interesting that I can't look away.

• 39:38Chris Ryan?

  There's something incredibly contemporary about it. And I, I wanna celebrate it for that because you mentioned that the ideas of, uh, victimhood and trauma like are, are front and center here. But that, those ideas are like debated by characters within the world of the show. So, uh, there is a, the show kind of like jumps up a notch, I think, when Alice, who, you know, is, is being, she's assigned out to work for a, a special agent who works in human trafficking and sex crimes. Uh, the, the agent's name is Nora Washington, who's played by Quincy Tyler Bernstein, um, who is a very quirky idiosyncratic character who also confronts Alice with.

• 40:27Chris Ryan?

  I think a, how do I say this? A way of thinking about her character that I don't think I've seen on TV shows in a long time. Where she's not only asking Alice to basically work through and get over her own experiences with abuse. Because there is like a greater good and a greater mission for her. But she's also getting into the nuances of whether or not someone who was a victim and be like, if you're a victim, does that mean you are a good person somehow?

• 40:58Andy Greenwald?

  That you have now earned some sort of righteousness.

• 41:00Chris Ryan?

  Yes, or that you were incapable of wrong because you are working through your trauma. And we can start getting into somewhat more detailed discussion of the show. But essentially what is happening is that this character Catherine, who Lola Petticrew plays, is working through a kill list. Like she has a list of men who are responsible for her corruption and her.

• 41:21Andy Greenwald?

  She was trafficked as a teenager, yeah.

• 41:24Chris Ryan?

  And there are sort of philosophical debates among characters about like, what is she then? What is her sort of, where does her personhood start? Where does her responsibility start for what she's doing? Versus how a system failed her or a group of men destroyed her? And it's like a fascinating debate to watch take place among characters. Not that it's stopping the action or getting in the way of any of that. But I thought to really reckon with that stuff in the context of a cop show essentially, or procedural is really wild and pretty breathtaking.

• 41:59Andy Greenwald?

  And it runs right at, with a deep understanding, I think. It runs right at audiences' sympathy triggers. That when we watch a TV show, whether we try to do it with an elevated intellectual mind, or just like laundry folding to annoy Emmy's husband Sam Asmael. Our brains naturally reach for the characters and try to sort them into good and bad.

• 42:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:24Andy Greenwald?

  We look for POV characters, we look for sympathetic characters. We look for the shows, the show to in ways overt and unsubtle, or maybe subtle and artistic to give us a permission structure for who we are meant to root for. So that we can become more empathetic and engaged in the action of the show. So we're not, you know, just on our couch, we're right in it with the characters. And right from the beginning, the show does not allow you to do that. The characters interrogate it themselves, as you're saying, with this really brilliant scenes where Nora is doing the very TV thing of giving this untested, clearly traumatized person, Alice, a chance. And the other characters are like, what the fuck? And then after the other characters say, what the fuck? She pulls her aside and is like, what the fuck?

• 43:08Andy Greenwald?

  You better get it together because I am doing this for this reason and I also have motivations. The show also does it really, really, I would say uncomfortably and radically with Catherine.

• 43:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:18Andy Greenwald?

  Who is both a lurid serial killer who does terrible things on screen.

• 43:24Chris Ryan?

  wears cool masks and shit.

• 43:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and says, you know, and is clearly disturbed in a way that is familiar to audiences of watching disturbed serial killer shows. But also is profoundly a victim, is when left alone to her actual self, a child in ways that are upsetting. And then specifically in the second episode, there is a, the show immediately pushes its cards into the middle of the table by having a character, I guess we'll now get into slightly spoiler territory, but a character, a victim, a monster from Catherine's past, his daughter shows up. And I was immediately, it's like a topsy-turvy feeling of like, you can't do this because then you can't be okay.

• 44:09Andy Greenwald?

  You can't emerge from the scene rooting for Catherine as an avenger of bad people. It immediately complicates it. And then what was crazy to me about that episode is Liz Meriwether like handles it in a certain way. Like putting the victim, in this case, the man like off screen, and allowing the killer and the daughter to have some scenes that are certainly not wholesome.

• 44:31Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 44:32Andy Greenwald?

  Where you're like, well, at least it's gonna be okay.

• 44:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:34Andy Greenwald?

  And then.

• 44:35Chris Ryan?

  I think that's also the first sign that she's like basically still that age.

• 44:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 44:38Chris Ryan?

  Emotionally.

• 44:39Andy Greenwald?

  And then it lulls you as a viewer into a sense of almost forgetting that there's going to be a recoil from this because the show is still the show.

• 44:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:46Andy Greenwald?

  And then what happens at the end of the episode is absolutely horrifying, without any guardrails about how to feel about it. And I thought that was really bold and really rare. Shows in ways that are like really big and clumsy and clunky and network mandated, hold your hand these days. And then shows that are artfully done kind of sometimes hide the handholding.

• 45:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:08Andy Greenwald?

  But still nudge you in a direction. And this show resists that.

• 45:13Chris Ryan?

  I think one of the criticisms I have of a lot of current one hour dramas is that why do we need this 60 minutes? You know, what are you guys doing with this runtime, with this episode count? What was essential about these various buckets that you're filling to the story? Because in my mind, because I don't work within the television industry, I'm like, it seems like you have 42 minutes of story this week, why don't you tell that?

• 45:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 45:39Chris Ryan?

  You know? The episodes here vary between like 40 to 50 some minutes. And I have to give the show a tremendous amount of credit for using every moment well. Not always dazzlingly or brilliantly. But there's a moment in the third episode that I wanted to highlight. So somewhere in this three-episode run, we're introduced to Jake Lacy's character. It's a great piece of counter-programming casting where Jake Lacy plays Alice's ex-boyfriend, who also was her abuser. He's still on the force. And basically what happens is we're led to believe that Scoot McNairy's character was the one person who spoke up for Alice in like her fallout from this relationship.

• 46:23Chris Ryan?

  He has been ostracized and sort of, nobody talks to him anymore. But this guy, Marshall, has now, you know, gone on with his life. And that's the understanding until we finally get like a real Marshall scene. And the scenes that they choose to like give Jake Lacy are really, really interesting and provocative. Because first he's sort of like, I was drinking, you know, he has this tearful confession to Alice.

• 46:49Andy Greenwald?

  Because he see, they go to because they are of course working together. I mean, that's the other thing. It's a TV show.

• 46:54Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 46:54Andy Greenwald?

  So let's bring the characters in contact with each other. Let's not pretend that this isn't a contrivance. And they go to a shelter for abused women.

• 47:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:03Andy Greenwald?

  Domestic, victims of domestic violence. And he sees a woman who has been hit and he is overcome.

• 47:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and he's like, did I do that to you? And she's like, did you hit me in the face? Yes. You know, and he's crying and he's talking about how he was drinking at the time and he only remembers little parts of it. And he eventually convinces Alice to come to his house because his mother is entering hospice, I believe, right?

• 47:25Andy Greenwald?

  Well, that she's come home and she still misses you and she thinks of you as a daughter.

• 47:29Chris Ryan?

  They were kid, they were boyfriend and girlfriend from like a very young age. Like high school sweethearts. And she goes to the house to visit with the mother and the mother, it turns out that this is all a ploy for the mother to pressure Alice to recant any unofficial statements she may have made about Marshall so that he can make lieutenant. Because it's holding him back. And in that moment, like, you know, you just get this completely nuanced, in-depth picture of this guy that is still like pathetic and, you know, he is not a good person by any means. But it chooses to show a bunch of different sides of somebody rather than just,

• 48:11Chris Ryan?

  that's the guy who beat Alice up and he's a piece of shit and he's gonna get what's coming to him eventually.

• 48:15Andy Greenwald?

  And it does it quickly. This is the third episode.

• 48:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:17Andy Greenwald?

  Where it immediately adds the shades and layers and, and still somehow is holding true to this idea of what is right and what is wrong, even as it feels like it's slipping through Alice's fingers. And have to talk about casting. I think Emmy is phenomenal in it. And I think it's like a really, really careful performance. It's a studied performance, you know? It is one that clearly was given a lot of thought in terms of how to control her physical body in the performance and what she is carrying every time she walks into work or what she's releasing when she goes home.

• 48:55Chris Ryan?

  Her hair, various points.

• 48:57Andy Greenwald?

  It's really well done and has a lot of layers, I imagine, still to be revealed. Lola Petticrew, we love from Say Nothing.

• 49:07Chris Ryan?

  Too fucking blacked out in this.

• 49:09Andy Greenwald?

  And particularly like, it's a very like, it's giving Jennifer Jason Leigh, you know, and I mean that as a very big compliment.

• 49:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:21Andy Greenwald?

  There's something remarkable about being able to do, and maybe this is a companion comment to what I was saying about Rob Delaney, but to like, to be character and caricature and deeply honest at the same time, and to be able to sort of toggle between those extremes is awesome, but-

• 49:36Chris Ryan?

  Also to be a kind of slick crime show and serial killer show where there is a cheap thrill in watching the Catherine character like change disguises as she moves through New York City and blackmail people and have all these little safe houses that she goes to. She's like a sort of, like an attending live-in nurse for someone. She, you know, has all these little like, kind of, home bases. And that part is kind of exciting to watch because that's, that's kind of like, you know, you're watching the guy from Pelican Brief change into a completely different person, you know, like, it's, it is really neat, but it's also like, always in service of character.

• 50:19Andy Greenwald?

  So, I just think the other reason why I'm so enthused about the show is it's a really good articulation of something that I tried to articulate many times when shows fail at this. But it's that like, great things are really defined by small choices. And there are examples of that all across the show. One is, is casting. I mean, whether it's Scoot McNairy, who we always like, getting a chance to play a more prominent part that has different layers, different, it showcases a different kind of charisma than he usually brings, or is allowed to bring, whether it's-

• 50:55Chris Ryan?

  I have a comment on him.

• 50:56Andy Greenwald?

  Let's, let's circle back. But Quincy is brilliant in this show. And Quincy's a brilliant actor and has been and is on stage a lot. Doesn't get parts like this, often. And parts like this aren't written to magnify actors as specific as Quincy, in both in appearance and in affect and how she delivers lines. And it's thrilling every time she's on screen.

• 51:17Chris Ryan?

  The hospital scene that she's in is-

• 51:19Andy Greenwald?

  It's killer.

• 51:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:21Andy Greenwald?

  Rob Yang, who plays an FBI agent, is incredible. And Steve Way, who was on Rami, is, plays the, the person suffering from, I believe, muscular dystrophy, who Catherine takes care of.

• 51:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:34Andy Greenwald?

  And like, those scenes are fantastic, and funny, and present. And it's like, oh, it's another layer here. And to your point about like, how time is used, we've introduced a new context, two episodes in, and I'm like, leaning in more. It does not feel like filler for the cat and mouse game to, you know, to fill eight episodes of what was adapting a two-hour movie. But like, but it goes into the script. Like, when we meet Scoot McNairy's character, Danny, the first thing he does is pinches out a cigarette with his fingers. And before the audience can be like, wait, what, what's going on? Alice goes, why did you do that? Didn't that hurt? And he went, it really fucking hurt. I don't know why I did that.

• 52:11Chris Ryan?

  Yes. And it's because he's nervous to see her, because he's like-

• 52:14Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 52:14Chris Ryan?

  I think he's nervous about all the cops who are gonna be sort of ridiculing her when she's on this, in this crime scene. But yeah, I mean, the scene, the, there are- I, you know, I did this talk with Shane Black a couple of weeks ago. I guess by the now, it'll be last week, at a movie theater when we were, you know, we were introducing, or talking about Nice Guys. It was the 10th anniversary of Nice Guys. And he's so sharp when it comes to the conventions, or talking about the mechanics of screenwriting. And a lot of what he does is exploits tropes. So, something will become a cliche or a trope, and what he does is say, but what if it went this way, you know? And he was, he was like,

• 52:56Chris Ryan?

  you have to be very careful, though, because before you know it, the inversion of the trope is the trope.

• 53:03Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, it sure is.

• 53:04Chris Ryan?

  And so he's like, you always have to be kind of aware, like, you pull a move a couple of times, and then other people pull the move, and then all of a sudden, there's 10 movies and 10 shows that have done the like, what if we were getting off the elevator, but the gunfight was happening already, so we just stayed on the elevator and went away? Like, there is a moment in Furious where we are being set up-

• 53:27Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:28Chris Ryan?

  -to be incredibly sympathetic for this young girl who Nora and Alice are talking to about being a witness in a trafficking case.

• 53:35Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 53:35Chris Ryan?

  And we're like, oh, god, you know, Alice gave her the, gave her her blazer. There's a good gesture, and what's gonna happen?

• 53:41Andy Greenwald?

  Won her trust.

• 53:41Chris Ryan?

  And then we find out that she's in the hospital. She's been beaten and unconscious, and is now on a breathing tube. And what does Nora do when she walks into that, that scene? She's just like, she was a trafficker. I was flipping her, you know? Every time she turned a girl, she got to work less. And it's introducing this idea that there is not a good and a bad, and a hero and a villain in this world. When you get into the underworld, everybody is compromised, everybody is, has a boss, everybody is both a criminal and a possible witness. And you have to get used to this kind of thing if you're gonna do this work. And I thought that was just such a great inversion. Because what we should have is like, this is why we do it, to protect girls like this, and we failed her, but we're not gonna fail X.

• 54:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, the hero's journey.

• 54:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly. And instead, it's like, see this? This is how fucked up what we do is. She's a trafficker, and I was gonna flip her, and she got, she got put in, in a hospital because of that.

• 54:38Andy Greenwald?

  And, and what does Alice say to Nora? What's that smell? And she goes, tequila. I'm drunk.

• 54:43Chris Ryan?

  Yes. It's the middle of the night, yeah.

• 54:45Andy Greenwald?

  It's, it's just these little things that just remind you that someone, there's a lively mind at work here. There is something with a point of view, there's a spirit, there's a tone that, that, that they are searching for, and that they are, that they are finding with the help of collaborators who are in on it. Like, I think one of the other things that's really noteworthy about the show is the music. The score is by Ariel Marx-

• 55:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:06Andy Greenwald?

  -who's done a bunch of movies. Shiva Baby, I think, worked with, was on a previous television show. But like, it is not a conventional score. And you notice it.

• 55:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:16Andy Greenwald?

  And that can go one of two ways. And what it did for me here was, again, signaling, something's at work here. Something is active. This is a choice. This isn't music that is designed to fill the whole marked music in your budget-

• 55:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:28Andy Greenwald?

  -or in your show. It's part of the storytelling. The opening credits, the fonts, the design, it's all part of it.

• 55:33Chris Ryan?

  I did take issue with Rob Delaney's character playing geese before he had sex with Catherine.

• 55:41Andy Greenwald?

  Talk about it.

• 55:41Chris Ryan?

  Well, I just, it was just like a random, kind of a random needle drop, you know?

• 55:45Andy Greenwald?

  I, I feel like this is a, in the brief, the broad brushstrokes we saw of him, I think that he probably-

• 55:53Chris Ryan?

  It's like, I like music.

• 55:55Andy Greenwald?

  Right. And so he, he looks at what has gotten B&M on Pitchfork, and just buys the CDs.

• 56:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:01Andy Greenwald?

  Do you know what I mean?

• 56:02Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 56:02Andy Greenwald?

  My guess is he wouldn't have been able to be like, well, 3D country was better.

• 56:06Chris Ryan?

  That's what I say.

• 56:06Andy Greenwald?

  You know, just fucking-

• 56:12Andy Greenwald?

  So, I, I, I felt like that was earned for him. But I, you know what else I think? I think there was a discussion.

• 56:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:17Andy Greenwald?

  I bet this conversation happened.

• 56:20Chris Ryan?

  I'm talking about tropes and invert- no, you wanted-

• 56:23Andy Greenwald?

  I wanted to ask you about, I also, I found the direction really good. And what I thought was interesting about it, sorry, that was really insightful commentary, but Brian Kirk directs the first two episodes. And he has directed things, I think, in this vein before. Like, I, I think he has a very, I'm looking at his, like, he's done, he's done Game of Thrones episodes, he's done Penny Dreadful, he did a bunch of Day of the Jackal. So he has done big-ticket shows that don't necessarily subvert. And I don't mean those shows are bad. I'm saying that he is able to deliver a mood and a vibe.

• 56:58Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 56:58Andy Greenwald?

  And what I thought was cool about his episodes, and Karina Evans, who directed the third episode, is that they also seem to be, there just seems to be a consistency of aesthetic point of view and vision, in that they are, in no time are they running from the fact that they are making a New York City thriller based on an 80s movie. But within it, there is room for life. Like, the style that is, we have, we have all seen style done by more, and I'm not saying this is who Brian Kirk is, but sometimes when you hire someone who does one thing really well, the thing that that person does well is signaling so strongly to the audience that the audience can struggle to identify what makes this one special.

• 57:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:37Andy Greenwald?

  And sometimes that's the goal, is, is a streamer's just like, you know, we do well in the women in peril space, so we're gonna make more shows like that. Because they will, there's a floor for that, and it's a pretty high floor. And so I was impressed by the way that the direction communicated something that was familiar, like you were saying at the top, but still had room for, for surprise.

• 57:57Chris Ryan?

  I wanna plant my flag on something here.

• 58:00Andy Greenwald?

  I'm excited.

• 58:00Chris Ryan?

  But I want to give, if listeners don't wanna contemplate where the show is going, and they just wanna end our conversation now, I think this will be the final segment of the episode, so people can feel free to, to peace out. Scoot McNairy's character is giving real Evan Peters and Task vibes.

• 58:17Andy Greenwald?

  In terms of his long-term.

• 58:19Chris Ryan?

  Viability.

• 58:20Andy Greenwald?

  Long-term viability on the show.

• 58:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, his. Just when you, when you are that nice of a guy.

• 58:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 58:26Chris Ryan?

  And you're like, I will sit outside of your bathroom while you shower for the first time.

• 58:31Andy Greenwald?

  Because the shower is traumatic for you.

• 58:32Chris Ryan?

  Because the shower is traumatic, but I will just stand watch. And he's such a good dude and he's like, you know, I stood up for you and all these things like, it's either going one of two ways.

• 58:43Andy Greenwald?

  Is one of the ways back to what appears to be his native Boston? Because his accent choice is interesting.

• 58:47Chris Ryan?

  The accent is the accent.

• 58:49Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 58:49Chris Ryan?

  You know what I mean? We work, we work with what we've got. I think that maybe his backstory is like, I'm from Boston, but I came to New York to be a cop. You know, like.

• 58:57Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. I buy it.

• 58:59Chris Ryan?

  But it's gonna, speaking of those inversions, you know what I mean? Like, you don't get to be that nice.

• 59:05Andy Greenwald?

  I thought you were gonna say that he, because there's the reference of like, did you ever go to this tug joint where all the cops went?

• 59:11Chris Ryan?

  No, I didn't even get a handjob in high school.

• 59:13Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think he protests too much?

• 59:16Chris Ryan?

  Oh, you think he's gonna wind up on Catherine's list?

• 59:17Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think he's the handjob king of Bayside? You know what I mean? I'm sure that's a hard fought for title. Like, I'm sure there are a lot of guys literally jockeying for that.

• 59:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's like one of those years where one guy's batting 340, the other guy's batting 338, you know?

• 59:31Andy Greenwald?

  And it goes down to the wire?

• 59:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:33Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think that's possible. Okay, any other flags you'd like to plant? Because I, I'm interested too that you're watching it with crime show mind. That like, you're like, there's gonna be a solve here, there's gonna be a surprise here. I'm not saying there won't be.

• 59:46Chris Ryan?

  I, my only, my only hesitation is we have been down this road before, which is like incredible prestige crime show that starts like gangbusters and then has to like maintain tension by, you know, we, we all watched Presume Innocent, you know?

• 1:00:05Andy Greenwald?

  So are you saying, is this the Shane Black in you being like, what once was novel has now become habit?

• 1:00:11Chris Ryan?

  No, I'm just saying that like, it's hard to do these things over the course of six hours, eight hours, whatever it's gonna be.

• 1:00:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I agree. And it's especially hard to do these things when, as you said at the top, we know who the cat and we know who the mouse.

• 1:00:21Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:00:22Andy Greenwald?

  But what's interesting about it and what gives me, I mean, everything about this gives me a lot of confidence and excitement about finishing the series. But, um, you know, when we were speaking and I, we are, we are like Desmond on Lost. We are unstuck in time currently. I think I was about to say, remember when we talked about something that I think is actually part of Monday's mailbag?

• 1:00:41Chris Ryan?

  It's August, that's okay.

• 1:00:42Andy Greenwald?

  But there was, there is a conversation in a podcast you guys will enjoy soon, a brief one, about contemporary spy shows reluctance to engage in the world as it is. And I, I like, so far, I like the, this show, Furious's instinct to go big and to reach for the headlines and to suggest that in, you know, in a, in an Epstein era, that, that, that, that the targets that begin small will inevitably go up the food chain.

• 1:01:10Chris Ryan?

  They sure will.

• 1:01:10Andy Greenwald?

  To apex predators and, you know, a built-in culture of trafficking.

• 1:01:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:15Andy Greenwald?

  And that that is.

• 1:01:16Chris Ryan?

  It's got a little true detective when it, you know?

• 1:01:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, yeah, I mean, I.

• 1:01:21Chris Ryan?

  It has that, it has a little bit of that, you know? It's like, how, how, how, how far does this go?

• 1:01:26Andy Greenwald?

  And, and again, who knows where we go in the number of remaining five episodes? But like, calibrating this stuff is so much harder than it seems when it's done well. How are we going to do a micro story or a macro story? Are we trying to make a point? Are we trying to make you entertained? You know, is this funny? Is this serious? Is it, how much do we indulge in people's suffering and trauma?

• 1:01:47Chris Ryan?

  Especially in the demands that streamers make where you front load, front load your shows. I mean, this, this show starts with Catherine killing a guy by injecting fentanyl into him. You know, like, it is, it is like, it's grabby, so.

• 1:02:00Andy Greenwald?

  It's grabby and I don't mean to disrespect the Hulu Television Network and all the programming that they make that I like and all the programming they make that I don't engage with. But Hulu does true crime and does mini-series pretty well. Like, that is, it has a brand identity. So this being on the service makes sense. And then you, you dig deeper and it's, so far, it's just so much better and so much more interesting than I think I would have expected. So I'm, I'm, I'm curious, is it, is it Ghost in the Machine? Or is it, is the machine gonna win?

• 1:02:32Chris Ryan?

  It's interesting. We'll have to see. So let's stop there. Andy and I will be back on Monday with a mailbag episode and next Thursday with an Anthony Bourdain special in honor of Tony being released. I hope everybody is gonna have a great weekend. And thanks to Kaya, Kai, Sarah, everybody for preaching.