The ‘X-Men’ Cast, ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ Footage, and More D23 News. Plus, ‘Lanterns’ Series Premiere and ‘Furious’ Episode 6.

Chris and Andy talk about the official casting announcement of the upcoming ‘X-Men’ reboot (2:54), additional ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ footage (16:18), and more news from D23 (23:31). Later, they discuss the series premiere of ‘Lanterns’ (31:19) and ‘Furious' Episode 6 (55:21). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of The Watch and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Studio Production: Sarah Reddy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is now streaming on Disney+.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  What are you waiting for? Hop on.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  The must-see galactic adventure comes home on Disney+.

• 0:42Speaker 02

  This is the way. Our only chance is to work together.

• 0:47Speaker 02

  I like this kid. Always wear your seatbelt.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu now streaming on Disney+. Rated PG-13.

• 1:05Chris Ryan?

  I need sports staff to clear the room.

• 1:08Speaker 04

  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, having just received a hologram to inform him that Andy Dalton is now their QB2 for the Eagles, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 1:29Andy Greenwald?

  I like this because it's both very specific to my interests, but also is something that could have been communicated from 2016.

• 1:37Chris Ryan?

  Sure. Yes, that's right.

• 1:39Andy Greenwald?

  You are the best at this.

• 1:40Chris Ryan?

  We are going to talk about lanterns. We are going to talk about furious. We'll talk a little bit about the old Disney 23 celebration.

• 1:46Andy Greenwald?

  Can we talk about the Eagles preseason or QB2 battle?

• 1:50Chris Ryan?

  Like, I watched two minutes and I was like, this is, this is sub, sub sport to me.

• 1:55Andy Greenwald?

  Some of us do the work.

• 1:57Chris Ryan?

  Did you watch? You didn't watch this? You didn't send a single text message about it?

• 2:00Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe I sent them to my other more active chats.

• 2:02Chris Ryan?

  Um, thanks for noticing my facial hair. This is the lioness beard. This is happening. This is going to go on until we get to the bottom of who sent the Belarusans to Joe's house and we get Joe free. We bring Joe home.

• 2:16Andy Greenwald?

  Is this also because you want your body to do it and not a pill? Thus, I don't know what it is in this context, but I think we can all guess.

• 2:26Chris Ryan?

  That would be funny if I got hymns, but just for like a mustache.

• 2:30Andy Greenwald?

  Is it possible, just asking for a friend, is it possible for hymns to get misdirected in your body?

• 2:35Chris Ryan?

  Or any pill that does that.

• 2:36Andy Greenwald?

  Sure, sure, sure. No free ads, but I'm just saying, I don't know necessarily how it works, but like if you took a pill that's like, your hairline will come back, but you just start developing like robust Alec Baldwin pelt.

• 2:46Chris Ryan?

  I mean, would you trade that?

• 2:48Andy Greenwald?

  Would I trade top for?

• 2:49Chris Ryan?

  Would people trade, trade that? No, not top for bottom, but if you were like.

• 2:53Andy Greenwald?

  Coming in so hot on Monday.

• 2:55Chris Ryan?

  You go, you get more hair back, but it goes everywhere.

• 2:58Andy Greenwald?

  Or you have no idea. You can't choose where it goes, but you get it. Wow, that's a real like monkey paw kind of question for the, for all the fellows out there.

• 3:07Chris Ryan?

  For, for, for people who are caring, Van's going to come on next Monday and we're going to talk about lioness.

• 3:13Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, good.

• 3:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:14Andy Greenwald?

  Will you also ask him these, these other hard-hitting questions?

• 3:17Chris Ryan?

  Well, you're not going to be here.

• 3:17Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, I'm going to provide you with a list of questions that I'd like you to ask Van for me.

• 3:21Chris Ryan?

  I'm probably not going to regard those with any seriousness because you don't take lioness seriously enough. That's what I've realized.

• 3:27Andy Greenwald?

  Not as seriously as some people on Instagram.

• 3:30Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:30Andy Greenwald?

  Are you going to, are you going to address your errors in last week's?

• 3:33Chris Ryan?

  My silence was deafening. Um, apparently, uh.

• 3:36Andy Greenwald?

  Go through it.

• 3:37Chris Ryan?

  Those were German shepherds.

• 3:38Andy Greenwald?

  No, and apparently dogs can't be racist.

• 3:42Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I take issue with that. I think Samuel Fuller takes issue with that. I don't think that they're born racist. Do you know what I mean? It's a nature and nurture thing.

• 3:53Andy Greenwald?

  Uh huh.

• 3:54Chris Ryan?

  You know what, man? Let's not even worry about it.

• 3:56Andy Greenwald?

  Let's stretch. You got a long show.

• 3:59Chris Ryan?

  About it. Let's not even worry about it. Uh, I do want to talk to you a little bit about Disney. That was sort of the big announcement on Friday was they filled out a little bit more of the X-Men cast. They showed a little bit more of Doomsday. I think at the venue, they showed some Starfighter.

• 4:17Chris Ryan?

  I, uh, I want to open up the floor to your, the headline that grabbed you the most.

• 4:22Andy Greenwald?

  No, I, we gotta, we gotta run through it because I don't have the full list. I think we should, should we start with X-Men and we'll work our way back from there?

• 4:28Chris Ryan?

  I can run through it for you, man.

• 4:30Andy Greenwald?

  Let's start with X-Men. Let's start with X-Men. I, how, that was my NFL preseason game. I was live checking that one. I was, I was watching. I was texting about that.

• 4:42Andy Greenwald?

  What were your initial thoughts as a fan of both the X-Men and of corporate fan events?

• 4:50Chris Ryan?

  I thought, I like the cast and I think that Jake Schreier, who's directing it, was saying all the right things about where he was going to be pulling from with Claremont and Chris Claremont and Jonathan Hickman is, is sort of inspirations as far as X-Men writers go.

• 5:10Chris Ryan?

  I liked the fact that he was like, and that Feige echoed this, that the thing about X-Men is that we haven't even scratched the surface of cool stories that involve them.

• 5:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 5:21Chris Ryan?

  How much time is it going to take to get this off the ground in terms of storytelling? Not in terms of production because the movie is dated for 28.

• 5:28Andy Greenwald?

  May 28.

• 5:29Chris Ryan?

  But, um, how much heavy lifting before we get a full flight X-Men storyline that feels like, you know, we're at basically where say Spider-Man is now, where like, if they wanted to keep making Hall and Spider-Man movies, they, they are like, they're going now. They know what the tone is.

• 5:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 5:47Chris Ryan?

  They know what the look is.

• 5:48Andy Greenwald?

  And as I think you're alluding to, he's established as a character and with a relationship to a rogues' gallery and friends and allies and other heroes in the city itself. Whereas the question with something like X-Men, which I think allowed, which is one of the reasons why some people, uh, we won't need to name names, thought maybe it would be a, they would go all in on like a TV universe for them. That, that was also definitely in the era that we were talking about. That era has now ended last week about putting the content directly onto streaming services, but that it is so soap operatic and so enormous and that, and the sort of the, the eras and the eras of storytelling. So to do it in a two-hour movie, to your point, is this going to be Charles recruits his X-Men?

• 6:31Chris Ryan?

  Is it Jean Grey shows up in Westchester and, and a full-headed haired Professor X is there?

• 6:38Andy Greenwald?

  And he's like, what's up?

• 6:40Chris Ryan?

  Walking around.

• 6:41Andy Greenwald?

  So actually, you know, we love living up here. We don't miss the city at all. There's a great theater, you know, we can still get the same.

• 6:46Chris Ryan?

  Alison Roman opened a place right by here.

• 6:49Andy Greenwald?

  You know, the tin fish supply up here has really improved. Um, okay. So run through the cast. Let's talk about it.

• 6:54Chris Ryan?

  Kit Connor, who, here's the thing I really admire about this cast is they are making pretty significant bets. I saw some people make the, the comparison of got a lot of these X-Men on rookie contracts.

• 7:07Andy Greenwald?

  I love that.

• 7:07Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Kit Connor as Scott Summers. I, I liked him in Warfare. People liked him in Heartstopper. I haven't seen that. Sadie Sink, people just saw in Spider-Man: Brand New Day as Jean Grey. Christopher Abbott and Adam Driver are the big additions here from the cast of girls.

• 7:25Andy Greenwald?

  Let's circle back to both of them.

• 7:26Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Indy Navaretti, who is incredible in, uh, in Obsession, obviously is playing Rogue. That had been rumored to be Kaylee Spaney and Indy Navaretti was rumored to play Mystique. That is not happening. Maya Boyd is playing Storm. Samara Weaving, uh, playing Emma Frost, already posting thirst traps of herself reading Emma Frost comics.

• 7:47Andy Greenwald?

  Do you feel like those have pushed your own thirst traps of you reading Emma Frost comics off of the headlines?

• 7:54Chris Ryan?

  Which, what should I post thirst traps of? Me watching lioness?

• 7:59Andy Greenwald?

  I think that there is a.

• 8:00Chris Ryan?

  Forty-two zins in the, like, kind of like.

• 8:04Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 8:04Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 8:05Andy Greenwald?

  Just, just you, like.

• 8:08Chris Ryan?

  Watching lioness with like a pouch of Big League Chew.

• 8:10Andy Greenwald?

  Or what if you like took a large caliber rifle and walked down like a downtown Los Angeles street having robbed a bank, sort of, you know?

• 8:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:18Andy Greenwald?

  People would be like, oh my God, it's happening. Then you would get arrested.

• 8:21Chris Ryan?

  And that's in the cast. And then Adam Driver is playing Mr. Sinister, which is a fascinating, meaningful, interesting choice.

• 8:30Andy Greenwald?

  Ridiculous. Yeah. So let, let's go into the specifics of these, these linchpin castings.

• 8:36Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 8:37Andy Greenwald?

  Driver, there was too much smoke for it not to be a kind of fire here, especially like a couple of weeks ago when Feige was sort of wink, winking.

• 8:45Chris Ryan?

  I keep asking him.

• 8:45Andy Greenwald?

  I keep asking him.

• 8:48Andy Greenwald?

  It is, I think we definitely, Driver has an incredible career in which he somehow is spoken about. I mean, I think he's a phenomenal generational talent, but he's spoken about as if he has always long eschewed the, the sort of cape shit and he's just like not a part of that world. He was Kylo Ren. So he went right into Star Wars.

• 9:08Chris Ryan?

  He wanted to keep playing Kylo Ren. He made movies where he goes, he's fighting dinosaurs, like that dude.

• 9:13Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, that got buried. That was like a George Clooney Nespresso commercial from the 90s. You know what I mean? Like, nobody talks about that movie.

• 9:19Chris Ryan?

  I think the, the streets remember.

• 9:21Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah?

• 9:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:22Andy Greenwald?

  This, which street? Oak Street? Where the dinosaurs are still rampaging?

• 9:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:26Andy Greenwald?

  So I think you can look at it this one of two ways. I mean, you can look at it the cynical, like, you know, one for them allows him to keep making James Gray movies where he walks around the streets of New York in period costume.

• 9:36Chris Ryan?

  I mean.

• 9:37Andy Greenwald?

  Which I will be there for that. I want to be clear.

• 9:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:41Andy Greenwald?

  The second thing would be that, um, this creative team and the idea of starting something new and fresh and not necessarily, you're not necessarily signing up for Secret Wars 2, where the Beyonders were in like a leisure suit. When you sign this contract means that this might be a fun thing for him to play. The more hopeful version of this is.

• 9:59Chris Ryan?

  You dropped something, King, and it was a Beyonders reference.

• 10:02Andy Greenwald?

  Which camera's on? They know. The streets know. They have an ally up here. The best case version of this, I think, is that he was really interested in the idea that they brought to him, which was, we're not doing what everyone expects, which is Professor X versus Magneto. And then there'll be like a lot of chin stroking articles being like, you know, it's actually an analog of the civil rights struggle. In fact, the Mr. Sinister that emerged in the Jonathan Hickman comics is an absolutely.

• 10:30Chris Ryan?

  Who are you talking to, man?

• 10:32Andy Greenwald?

  Other things that emerged.

• 10:33Chris Ryan?

  I've read those, yes.

• 10:34Andy Greenwald?

  I know, but okay, so. When the character was introduced in the 90s, it was just like pure 90s. Like, now, here's a guy who looks like Colossus, but we colored him differently, and his name is Mr. Sinister. And he's real into, uh, uh, blood science and genetic stuff. And like, who would have thought that later on, he would become a thought leader?

• 10:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 10:52Andy Greenwald?

  And I listened to his podcast. But-

• 10:55Chris Ryan?

  Diary of a CEO.

• 10:57Andy Greenwald?

  Honestly, Andrew Mr. Sinister Huberman out here. The thing that Hickman did that was so cool was he made him like, super campy and over the top and a little bit insane.

• 11:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:06Andy Greenwald?

  And that-

• 11:07Chris Ryan?

  A little bit.

• 11:08Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just trying to like-

• 11:10Chris Ryan?

  I understand.

• 11:10Andy Greenwald?

  Onboard people here. So I think the idea of him playing like a fanatic is pretty fun and interesting. And a definitely, the same kind of zag we would have seen. We, we have seen the playbook before, I think specifically with the Tom Holland movies, where they're like, we're gonna pick this up not from a, not from a stopped position. We're gonna pick it up like when they're already in motion. And we are not going to pick it up with the biggest possible villain.

• 11:34Chris Ryan?

  It also would appear-

• 11:35Andy Greenwald?

  We're gonna build to something.

• 11:35Chris Ryan?

  That they are not doing. Now, the youth of, of Professor X would suggest a, what was the James McAvoy, the first one? Was that in, uh-

• 11:47Andy Greenwald?

  First Class?

• 11:48Chris Ryan?

  First Class, which I, I liked quite a bit. The youth would suggest an origin story, however.

• 11:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 11:56Chris Ryan?

  However.

• 11:57Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 11:57Chris Ryan?

  With all the incursion timeline, dice shaking that's gonna happen-

• 12:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 12:03Chris Ryan?

  In Doomsday and Secret Wars. You could- Just shave the head and have like a younger Professor X, right? Like, we don't have to ha- We're not necessarily joining these guys with a middle-aged Professor X and a, you know, middle-aged Magneto or what have you.

• 12:19Andy Greenwald?

  A, a couple of things here. To us, respectfully, Christopher Abbott is a, a young fellow.

• 12:26Chris Ryan?

  No, I know. He's, he's, he's a 40-year-old something.

• 12:28Andy Greenwald?

  When the film comes out, he will be 42 years old.

• 12:30Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 12:31Andy Greenwald?

  Um, there are people in the studio who probably think of that as still, you know, more senior.

• 12:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:35Andy Greenwald?

  Um, but still viable, I'm sure, just as a, you know, as a thought leader or leader of a factional separatist superhero team. I think that like, it, it's kind of, it's, it's not, the, the idea that these characters are supposed to be elderly British actors is really a construction of the successful-

• 12:54Chris Ryan?

  That's Fox thinking.

• 12:55Andy Greenwald?

  Bryan Singer. That's outdated Fox thinking. And if I may, just grab hold of another piece of stray random IP, for example. We all love Alan Rickman and, and Maggie Smith, but those characters from, it's-

• 13:10Chris Ryan?

  Harry Potter.

• 13:11Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Uh, the canonically, like, the, the Snape character is 30, not Alan Rickman. And I love Alan Rickman.

• 13:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:18Andy Greenwald?

  So I think the idea that like, that, that Professor X is just 15 years Jean Grey's senior, it was fine.

• 13:24Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 13:24Andy Greenwald?

  That's a big 15 years at that time.

• 13:26Chris Ryan?

  I was just gonna say that it would seem that this is a, a, an X-Men story that we have yet to see yet. We have not seen yet. It's not gonna be Dark Phoenix. It's not gonna be Apocalypse. It's not gonna be-

• 13:38Andy Greenwald?

  No, it's Charles Xavier-

• 13:39Chris Ryan?

  Days of Future Past. It's, yeah.

• 13:41Andy Greenwald?

  Charles Xavier with a hymns prescription. But where will it go? And what has Mr. Sinister done?

• 13:47Chris Ryan?

  That's up to Beast to figure out.

• 13:48Andy Greenwald?

  That's up to Beast! That's why he's-

• 13:50Chris Ryan?

  That's why Charlie Melon was like, I can't do it.

• 13:52Andy Greenwald?

  Can't do this. I have a luscious locks. My question for you, I mean, also, I just like Christopher Abbott a lot. I think he's a very interesting, surprising actor, and I think that's a very cool choice.

• 14:01Chris Ryan?

  I saw him on, uh, on stage off-Broadway. Danny in the Deep Blue Sea with his soon-to-be partner, Aubrey Plaza. And he had a broken leg and still performed.

• 14:10Andy Greenwald?

  Wow. Wow. You saw him do it on a cold rainy night in Stoke, is what you're saying?

• 14:14Chris Ryan?

  Worried that I had COVID. Well, I mean, you know, we all were back then. It was sort of still early days, but it was, uh, it was like a, a real like, 50/50 kind of thing.

• 14:24Andy Greenwald?

  Did you have it?

• 14:25Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 14:25Andy Greenwald?

  You sure?

• 14:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:27Andy Greenwald?

  Can't have it if you don't test.

• 14:28Chris Ryan?

  I, I, this was, this was 23. I think I did test.

• 14:31Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. Good for you.

• 14:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:32Andy Greenwald?

  Um, I wanna talk about-

• 14:34Chris Ryan?

  And I still test. Sometimes I test just to see what's going on.

• 14:38Andy Greenwald?

  On the way in here, we're like, why are you swabbing again?

• 14:40Chris Ryan?

  I was like, influenza B. Interesting.

• 14:43Andy Greenwald?

  That should be fine. I wanna ask you about, is it, are we saying, do we say Navaretti?

• 14:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:48Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. I wanna talk to you about her because I'm, I am unfamiliar with her game. I've not seen that film.

• 14:53Chris Ryan?

  She's as good as it gets.

• 14:54Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's, it's exciting. Do you, I'm not trying to be, I'm not trying to have a hot take here. I have historically thought, you know what? This story, everyone knows this about me. This is what I lead with. Rogue, coolest, scariest X-Men power probably of all.

• 15:09Chris Ryan?

  Can't touch.

• 15:10Andy Greenwald?

  But also, I think the least well-executed in the history of the comics-

• 15:15Chris Ryan?

  The Anapquin era.

• 15:16Andy Greenwald?

  And on-screen. Partly because the character, at least in the Claremont comics, is so much like a, well, I declare, sugar. You know, I can't touch you, except for six issues every year when someone, you know, does something to my powers and I can kiss Gambit.

• 15:32Chris Ryan?

  Right. Jean puts a bubble around us and we can make out.

• 15:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 15:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:35Andy Greenwald?

  Sounds nice. Um, do you feel like this is, is this exciting casting because of the performer? Is it exciting casting because of the performer and the role?

• 15:44Chris Ryan?

  I'm not a Rogue guy.

• 15:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, okay.

• 15:47Chris Ryan?

  I'm not a Rogue guy.

• 15:47Andy Greenwald?

  Speak your truth.

• 15:48Chris Ryan?

  It's not, it's not a problem. It's just not a fave.

• 15:51Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:52Chris Ryan?

  I would love for them to take the, the Cajun down 10%.

• 15:57Andy Greenwald?

  But she's not Cajun. She's just Southern.

• 15:59Chris Ryan?

  Southern.

• 15:59Andy Greenwald?

  Gambit is Cajun.

• 16:00Chris Ryan?

  Gambit's Cajun, sorry. She's Rogue as, as she-

• 16:03Andy Greenwald?

  She's, she's from America's south.

• 16:04Chris Ryan?

  Okay, so, let's, let's bring the SEC down 10%.

• 16:10Andy Greenwald?

  That's the way to put it.

• 16:10Chris Ryan?

  Not that, I'm not saying that that's a, that's an issue. I'm just saying, I would love for them not to saddle her with a big accent.

• 16:16Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 16:16Chris Ryan?

  She can handle it. She would be great.

• 16:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 16:18Chris Ryan?

  But it'll just be everything everybody talks about is, is the accent. Um, but Rogue, not, not my fave, but honestly, neither is Mystique.

• 16:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 16:26Chris Ryan?

  Well, I'm a Jean guy. That's just who I am.

• 16:28Andy Greenwald?

  Are you okay? Do you wanna speak to your listeners now? How do you feel about the fact that, that after 40 years of just sort of shrugging, they have finally just given up and being like, this, Jean Grey does not have a code name? Cause she was saddled with the dumbest code name of all time.

• 16:43Chris Ryan?

  Ms. Marvel, right?

• 16:44Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 16:45Chris Ryan?

  Star Girl?

• 16:46Andy Greenwald?

  Marvel Girl.

• 16:47Chris Ryan?

  Marvel Girl.

• 16:47Andy Greenwald?

  Ms. Marvel is someone else.

• 16:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that's Carol, right?

• 16:49Andy Greenwald?

  Ms. Marvel then became Captain Marvel. Yeah, she got promoted.

• 16:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:53Andy Greenwald?

  From the, from the magazines to the army. Uh, Marvel Girl, then she was Phoenix, but that's, that's, that's a tainted chalice.

• 16:59Chris Ryan?

  Yes, it is. It is. And I think if we could see in Brand New Day, she got that Phoenix in her. So I'm sure that will get addressed in some film later.

• 17:07Andy Greenwald?

  I'm so excited for the memes. Like Jalen Carter x-ray, but it's just got Phoenix inside of him? Come on.

• 17:14Chris Ryan?

  You got that dark Phoenix in him.

• 17:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yes! I love it.

• 17:17Chris Ryan?

  I know you, you were desperate to talk about Doomsday some more. I just wanted to give you some space to do so.

• 17:22Andy Greenwald?

  I, I just, I just don't think they're doing anyone any favors with this right now. And they need to like, take the W that people are interested with Spider-Man and move on. I say that genuinely, it is a, we identified this, as did many other people, as a Herculean, a marketing effort to begin with, where they are building an entire movie that is the direct sequel to, until Brand New Day, the biggest, highest grossing movie in the history of the American box office. And the entire movie is about a character that no one knows anything about and has never been on screen before.

• 17:56Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 17:57Andy Greenwald?

  Um, yes, he is played by the actor that everyone loves, but they are not showing that in the trailers. So they are having to establish this guy's bona fides in the same way that every summer Ben Simmons would post an Instagram of him like, in the gym, you know, and be like, ready to go get it. Everyone's like, wow, he's gonna really shoot basketballs this year. And then he didn't. Um, all of that said, this new footage, which just has Sue Storm, a character that America looked at and said, okay.

• 18:23Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 18:24Andy Greenwald?

  Saying, Victor was wonderful. We loved him. He was great at dinner parties, but then they took things from him and now he's a monster. Okay, tell me more about this guy that I've never met. It's like we all ha- it's like their collective girlfriend in Canada is this guy Doctor Doom. And worst of all, in this trailer, the, the fucking scene where Thor confronts him? Did they film this in Harrenhal? Like, it is the most negative space, nothing burger slop chamber I have ever seen. Like, I, I just don't know why they are pushing this as an, as an iconic image for an audience that has just seen the beautiful Glimmering Streets of Glasgow, Scotland, double for New York.

• 19:07Andy Greenwald?

  Like, at least show me some sort of flora or fauna to suggest that you are remotely on a planet. You know?

• 19:16Chris Ryan?

  Trying to decide if I'm gonna zag.

• 19:17Andy Greenwald?

  I know. Watch this. Zoom in on him. But, let's see the thought process.

• 19:20Chris Ryan?

  Here's what I liked.

• 19:22Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 19:22Chris Ryan?

  It wasn't inert. People were yelling.

• 19:26Andy Greenwald?

  You mean the characters?

• 19:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it felt like something was at stake. It felt like something bad happened. And, and they were like, Victor, what did you do? I like that.

• 19:33Andy Greenwald?

  You know what he did? He killed Fox's X-Men in the first five minutes of the movie. We all know that's what he did. And Shang-Chi is like, oh damn, I saw those movies. Like, what, what do you mean? What did you? Victor, what did you do? We don't know you, man. We don't know you. We have never met you.

• 19:54Chris Ryan?

  Do you think it's cool that this is what this pod has turned into?

• 19:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 19:56Chris Ryan?

  Just screaming about Victor Von Doom?

• 19:58Andy Greenwald?

  It's where it was always headed. This was-

• 20:02Chris Ryan?

  This is like the fourth pod in a row that we have led-

• 20:04Andy Greenwald?

  Whatever.

• 20:04Chris Ryan?

  With like a big opening segment about Marvel lore.

• 20:07Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, passive voice. Who among us sets the agenda?

• 20:10Chris Ryan?

  Who's doing this?

• 20:11Andy Greenwald?

  Who is the schedule maker for this podcast? I am, I'm plug and play. You set me up for anything, I'll talk about it.

• 20:17Chris Ryan?

  I think it looks as bad as it can possibly look.

• 20:21Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, there you go.

• 20:22Chris Ryan?

  I think visually, I, I think there are educational films being played at the Camden Aquarium that look better than this. But I, I did like a little bit the fact that they let my boy Pedro yell at him, you know? And get his, get his triple frontier back.

• 20:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I like that.

• 20:41Chris Ryan?

  You know, and they, they have like, there was just some drama palpable in it.

• 20:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 20:46Chris Ryan?

  Which I had been, you can't have, you can't not have both. You can't have it look like it was shot on like 2017 volume software.

• 20:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 20:55Chris Ryan?

  And also have people be like, but what do you mean, Victor? You know, like you have to yell, you have to moat, you have to feel it.

• 21:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, yes.

• 21:03Chris Ryan?

  Then they create, then the incursions matter, you know?

• 21:06Andy Greenwald?

  I would, this is a new character I think you should develop between now and December, where you are like the old Rada instructor, you know? Like some of these actors came up under your tutelage in the London theater scene. You have molded them like maybe Aaron Pierre worked with you before he went Hollywood. And then they call you in to the set, the London set of Doomsday. And you're like, no, no, Victor. You know, like you're just, you're going up to everyone. You're going up to like a pile of styrofoam and ping pong balls. You call it Evan, and he's, Evan's actually over there catering. And you're just trying to get them to feel what they can't see.

• 21:42Chris Ryan?

  Did you ever expect girls to be so important to the Marvel Universe?

• 21:44Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you. That was, that was the take I was missing. Um, yes.

• 21:48Chris Ryan?

  You did, but did you think it would be women from Girls who populated Marvel?

• 21:52Andy Greenwald?

  I mostly watch Girls for the Boys. There's my take.

• 21:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:55Andy Greenwald?

  No, uh, first of all, the Sosha Mamet in Madame Web Erasure will not stand.

• 22:01Chris Ryan?

  You see, she's in Industry, season five?

• 22:03Andy Greenwald?

  I did.

• 22:05Andy Greenwald?

  I did. Do you think that I, I kind of like, it's almost like Mickey and Conrad are now ordering from the prestige television menu? Like they got access to a different thing on Postmates, you know? Where it's just like, oh, Karen and Chip good now. Like we can now access-

• 22:19Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 22:19Andy Greenwald?

  The higher, it's great, the higher priced items. I think that's going to be cool. Do you, uh, would you like to comment on Girls' return to prominence?

• 22:29Chris Ryan?

  I saw that Lena Dunham and Carly Rae Jepsen-

• 22:31Andy Greenwald?

  I was about to talk about this.

• 22:32Chris Ryan?

  Are doing a 10 Things I Hate About You musical that opens next year.

• 22:36Andy Greenwald?

  This is, this, this is gonna go down a treat, as they say in my household.

• 22:40Chris Ryan?

  And I wonder whether or not like, Girls will wind up deciding the next presidential election, one way or another. That we open up the, the doors and we say, you know what? We haven't discussed this show enough. We haven't litigated it enough.

• 22:55Andy Greenwald?

  You think that's going to become a hot button issue between-

• 22:58Chris Ryan?

  Ossoff and AOC?

• 23:00Andy Greenwald?

  Who, whose Girls bona fides are, honestly, that's tough.

• 23:03Chris Ryan?

  You're such a Barney, John Ossoff.

• 23:05Andy Greenwald?

  Generationally, they're right in there to talk about it.

• 23:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:08Andy Greenwald?

  That's the exciting thing to look forward to.

• 23:09Chris Ryan?

  Uh, it's, it's always amusing when, when like some, like we talked about this a lot with Short Term 12, where-

• 23:15Andy Greenwald?

  Short Term 12 being like the-

• 23:17Chris Ryan?

  Destin Daniel Cretin's independent film that had Michael B. Jordan, Brie Larson, John Gallagher.

• 23:23Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 23:23Chris Ryan?

  And Rami Malek.

• 23:25Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 23:26Chris Ryan?

  And all those people went on to make-

• 23:27Andy Greenwald?

  Lakeith Stanfield.

• 23:28Chris Ryan?

  Lakeith Stanfield, blockbusters, et cetera. And now you've got Girls supplying, supplying the demand.

• 23:34Andy Greenwald?

  That's exciting. Um, which are you more excited for in May 2028? X-Men or the Democratic primary?

• 23:42Andy Greenwald?

  See, they don't do that on other podcasts.

• 23:45Chris Ryan?

  I just wish we could integrate them into, like we could bring them together.

• 23:47Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 23:49Chris Ryan?

  Like maybe different X-Men characters just voicing the platforms of the candidates?

• 23:56Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm. If you would have given me five minutes to prepare for this idea, I would blow your doors down, but I can't do it on the fly. I'm really, really, maybe we'll just circle back at the end of the pod.

• 24:06Chris Ryan?

  Who do you think Wolverine would voice?

• 24:08Andy Greenwald?

  No, that's the thing, like there's, there's a lot of-

• 24:09Chris Ryan?

  Wolverine would have been Plattner.

• 24:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Problematic.

• 24:13Chris Ryan?

  Northern, you know, problematic.

• 24:15Andy Greenwald?

  Northern-

• 24:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:16Andy Greenwald?

  Here suit.

• 24:18Chris Ryan?

  Always testing how much he can heal.

• 24:19Andy Greenwald?

  Absolutely overconfident in terms of the damage he can sustain while remaining in the fight. That is- Jits. Wow, there's a lot here.

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• 26:01Andy Greenwald?

  There were a couple other Disney things that are less interesting to you. Like I, I imagine you didn't-

• 26:05Chris Ryan?

  Oh, is this gonna be like Bluey stuff?

• 26:06Andy Greenwald?

  I imagine you didn't check us. I watched Lioness for you, you monster.

• 26:10Chris Ryan?

  Eighteen minutes of it. You didn't even get to the dogs.

• 26:13Andy Greenwald?

  Three episodes of Bluey and it's all dogs.

• 26:18Andy Greenwald?

  Boom. Defeated. Uh, I assume you didn't check out the tangled live action trailer or whatever.

• 26:26Chris Ryan?

  Is that Mandy?

• 26:27Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, the original is Mandy.

• 26:28Chris Ryan?

  Okay, who's in the new one?

• 26:30Andy Greenwald?

  Other people.

• 26:31Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 26:32Andy Greenwald?

  Milo Manheim, who I know you remember from the Zombies franchise and Disney.

• 26:36Chris Ryan?

  Is that an actual person or is that a character? Okay.

• 26:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. We'll, we'll circle back to that. Yeah, I think the, I, I do think we have to address the fact that I, they released like a teaser of the Bluey movie. And I brought it on my, uh, my cellular device over to my nine-year-old first. And instantly she was like, oh, is this, it just begins with a little balloon. She's like, oh, is, is this Bluey? And she leaned in and then it revealed Bluey and Bingo in glorious computer animated 3D. And she said, oh God, no. This ruined my childhood. And I said, respectfully, you are still a child.

• 27:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:15Andy Greenwald?

  And without a pause, she said, my early childhood.

• 27:21Andy Greenwald?

  It's gonna be a lot to overcome. The, the move to 3D computer animation.

• 27:25Chris Ryan?

  Do you think when you're nine? You know how like you don't really remember? I, I personally don't really have a lot of memories until kindergarten, right? Like-

• 27:33Andy Greenwald?

  Kindergarten's five. You had memories at nine.

• 27:36Chris Ryan?

  I know I had memories at nine, but do you think when you're nine, you remember when you're two?

• 27:41Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm. No, I, I can, thank you. Finally, I'm, I'm a value add to this podcast. No, they do not remember. They do not remember. I, I think-

• 27:51Chris Ryan?

  Cause that would be funny if you were just like a grizzled nine-year-old, like, when I was two.

• 27:54Andy Greenwald?

  I had it so good. No, I did, my older, my older daughter, my older daughter did say- Early pandemic was peak for her because she didn't know what was going on and she didn't have to go to school anymore. And

• 28:07Chris Ryan?

  Didn't she have Zoom class?

• 28:09Andy Greenwald?

  She, she, she like, not tearfully, she like confessed to me that sometimes during second grade Zoom, she clicked off and looked at other things.

• 28:17Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 28:18Andy Greenwald?

  I was like, I, I forgive you. Sometimes when I'm writing a screenplay for money, I also click and look at other things.

• 28:25Chris Ryan?

  Sometimes when Chris is talking.

• 28:26Andy Greenwald?

  I have nine tabs open right now. The drift is real.

• 28:31Chris Ryan?

  When Chris is like, Kyle interrogated her. We're in the rules of the Geneva Convention.

• 28:35Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, wow. Yeah, no, that's good for her. That's a big breakthrough.

• 28:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:39Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, well, those, those were the big announcements, I guess. There was nothing really like Star Wars-y, right? There was just like-

• 28:45Chris Ryan?

  They showed Starfighter, but I was not invited to do-

• 28:47Andy Greenwald?

  They showed the movie?

• 28:48Chris Ryan?

  No, they showed like a minute of it or whatever. And then I think, I think, actually, I couldn't tell if I was being gaslit by Twitter when I looked at it, but somebody was like, Sean Levy said something about the movie Drive. And I, I didn't, I don't know if that was true.

• 29:02Andy Greenwald?

  That he was remaking it?

• 29:03Chris Ryan?

  That it was like influencing Starfighter, but I don't think that's true.

• 29:07Andy Greenwald?

  You should, you should pause and we should make a whole podcast about that statement. Like, let's just-

• 29:11Chris Ryan?

  I think that was literally like somebody did it in Twitter. It was like, just to, just to be like-

• 29:16Andy Greenwald?

  Just to get you worked up?

• 29:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. They didn't get me worked up.

• 29:19Andy Greenwald?

  Frozen 3?

• 29:20Chris Ryan?

  Did you see Kristen Bell showed up at a Savannah Bananas game and just started singing songs?

• 29:24Andy Greenwald?

  What do you mean showed up? Like, uninvited?

• 29:26Chris Ryan?

  No, she was like invited, but I wonder whether she's like, if we're gonna make this live action Frozen, I'm in this shit. And I'm gonna show you why.

• 29:33Andy Greenwald?

  I'm gonna show you why.

• 29:35Chris Ryan?

  She's like, I'm not getting cut out of this.

• 29:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. I, I mean, that's tough. I mean, that's like the, that, that's the wicked path, right? Where like, what's her name?

• 29:43Chris Ryan?

  Adina.

• 29:44Andy Greenwald?

  Adina, but also, um, you know, your, your girl.

• 29:48Chris Ryan?

  The Chennawith?

• 29:49Andy Greenwald?

  Chennawith, yeah.

• 29:50Chris Ryan?

  You think she's my girl?

• 29:51Andy Greenwald?

  Not in terms of our artistry, but politically and religiously, I think you kind of are more aligned. That they, that they had to like show up for like a little cameo and wicked one.

• 29:59Chris Ryan?

  Don't let the beard fool you, dog.

• 30:01Andy Greenwald?

  In which direction? The beard is keeping me guessing. I can't tell if it's fundamentalist or just hip. Uh, anyway, no, Frozen 3 is not, that's a cartoon though. So we're excited for that.

• 30:12Chris Ryan?

  Like, I think that it's inevitable that they're gonna get Frozen live action going.

• 30:16Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I think it might-

• 30:17Chris Ryan?

  She can't play Elsa, right?

• 30:18Andy Greenwald?

  It might be inevitable, but, well, she's Anna, first of all. I know you know that. We were just testing me. But I, but I, I'd like to think, I don't know, I'm just a humble, not even stockholder. But I'd like to think that the Moana reception maybe was a little bit of a brushback pitch of like, you might act to actually have to think of something new. But then again, the rest of the announcements were-

• 30:40Chris Ryan?

  Josh DeMarra seemed really chastened. He seemed like, we hear you.

• 30:44Andy Greenwald?

  As he was up there being like, Coco 2, Incredibles 3, Starfighter 2, Drive. Just a Starfighter just driving, wearing gloves. Who cares? You watch that! Okay, but for real, though.

• 30:57Chris Ryan?

  We did this bit a while ago where like, we were just like, just make Drive, but with Jedis.

• 31:02Andy Greenwald?

  If, in the first 10 minutes of Starfighter, Ryan Gosling puts on space gloves.

• 31:10Chris Ryan?

  If they drop tick of the clock, like, I'll never leave the theater. I'll just, I'll move in there.

• 31:15Andy Greenwald?

  They won't do that.

• 31:15Chris Ryan?

  They'll do CBS Sunday Morning, like, featurettes about like, the guy who won't leave Starfighter.

• 31:24Andy Greenwald?

  No, I'm perfectly comfortable here.

• 31:27Chris Ryan?

  I live on a diet of cookie dough. And diet RC.

• 31:32Andy Greenwald?

  No impossible nuggets for you.

• 31:34Chris Ryan?

  Um, all right, let's, uh, let's get into the television from Sunday.

• 31:37Andy Greenwald?

  All right, all right.

• 31:38Chris Ryan?

  Uh, would you-

• 31:39Andy Greenwald?

  Can we just say, I don't mean to cut you off, I did just want to say at the top that we did see the film Tony, but because it's only in like seven theaters.

• 31:46Chris Ryan?

  Thirty-five.

• 31:48Andy Greenwald?

  Thirty, okay, so a factor of seven. We won't talk about it till later in the week, but we both highly recommend-

• 31:52Chris Ryan?

  I think we'll talk about it. I will, maybe what we'll do is we'll record something on Thursday and we'll, we'll put it at the very, very end of my conversation with Van about Lioness on Monday.

• 32:00Andy Greenwald?

  And see what happens. So like, after an hour of you and Van-

• 32:05Chris Ryan?

  See how many people in the studio quit and protest?

• 32:09Andy Greenwald?

  An hour of you and Van talking about extraordinary rendition techniques. And at the end of it, I'm like, you know, every food story is really a story of people.

• 32:17Chris Ryan?

  Did you know that in, uh, the third episode of Lioness, the two lionesses take a bath together?

• 32:23Chris Ryan?

  And they get interrupted.

• 32:25Andy Greenwald?

  Interrupted from what?

• 32:26Chris Ryan?

  From, from bathing and other things. From communicating love physically with each other.

• 32:32Andy Greenwald?

  I can't, are you trying to get me, what, what is your, what is your intention here?

• 32:35Chris Ryan?

  I wanna see if that makes it any more interesting, with Slice of Life, you know?

• 32:38Andy Greenwald?

  When you call them lionesses, it feels like it's a National Geographic show.

• 32:41Chris Ryan?

  They are lionesses.

• 32:42Andy Greenwald?

  But are they bathing each other in the manner of actual lions?

• 32:45Chris Ryan?

  No, they, they're taking a straight up old, old school bath together.

• 32:48Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, that's, that's wonderful.

• 32:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:51Andy Greenwald?

  Do the, do the lionesses generally like stick to the pride like that? Are they-

• 32:55Chris Ryan?

  This is, I think, a new wrinkle for lionesses.

• 32:58Andy Greenwald?

  I also-

• 32:58Chris Ryan?

  I'm honestly surprised Joe's letting it happen. But that's-

• 33:02Andy Greenwald?

  Did Joe burst in? Be like, is there a room for me? No, I only take cold showers.

• 33:06Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 33:07Andy Greenwald?

  How many lionesses are there any given time? I thought there was only one. I thought it was like a Highlander situation.

• 33:12Chris Ryan?

  There are two on Joe's team right now.

• 33:14Andy Greenwald?

  Does someone else have a team?

• 33:16Chris Ryan?

  No, there's only one lioness's team. And, and, and Alexandra, the Ukrainian double agent, knows who they are. She's like, you are lioness, you are lioness. And then she points at Joe and goes, and you are the lioness.

• 33:29Andy Greenwald?

  That sounds like luck. You know what I mean?

• 33:31Chris Ryan?

  Oh, she just guessed because it's the three women there?

• 33:33Andy Greenwald?

  And it's a show called Lioness.

• 33:35Chris Ryan?

  Bobby's there too. She didn't call her lioness.

• 33:37Andy Greenwald?

  What did she call her?

• 33:38Chris Ryan?

  Nothing. She was just like, and you're her team. Anyway, you, I'm giving you out of context lioness stuff. It does-

• 33:43Andy Greenwald?

  That's my favorite kind of lioness stuff.

• 33:45Chris Ryan?

  Let's do Lanterns first. How about that? New show.

• 33:48Andy Greenwald?

  All right.

• 33:49Chris Ryan?

  New us. This one is pretty highly anticipated by your boys. And for good reason, because it comes from Chris Mundie, who, uh, was one of the main creative forces behind Ozark, Damon Lindoff, who is one of the main creative forces behind Lost and Leftovers, uh, and Watchmen, and Tom King, who is a beloved and adored critically and commercially comics writer.

• 34:14Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:15Chris Ryan?

  Author of, anything in particular you wanna highlight?

• 34:18Andy Greenwald?

  Tom King?

• 34:19Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:19Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, he's had incredible runs on, I mean, uh-

• 34:22Chris Ryan?

  Vision, right? I mean, it's really Tom King's moment, when you think about it.

• 34:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 34:26Chris Ryan?

  Because Supergirl was supposed to be based on his-

• 34:28Andy Greenwald?

  His Woman of Tomorrow comic. He's done runs, uh, Vision, I think is a masterpiece. But at DC, he's done runs on, he's done Wonder Woman, I think he's written Batman. He's, he, he is really the dude who-

• 34:41Chris Ryan?

  Him and Hickman.

• 34:42Andy Greenwald?

  He's not like Hickman, but in terms of if you wanna hire someone to radically rethink what the possibilities of something that already exists could be, he is just otherbrained about that. He's a genius about that stuff.

• 34:52Chris Ryan?

  This is a small screen rendering of the beloved DC superhero, which in this story gets bifurcated between at least as far, so far after one episode, two lanterns, Hal and John, Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre respectively. And, um, it's a time hopping, grounded detective show that also has elements of intergalactic, uh-

• 35:15Andy Greenwald?

  Intrigue?

• 35:16Chris Ryan?

  Intrigue and cop, and, and police work. Uh, in 2016, Hal Jordan is half-heartedly training Jon Stewart to be a lantern, even though Earth only gets one at a time. Being a lantern for laypeople means being some kind of space cop, uh, protecting Earth from extraterrestrial invaders. I think that's fair to say. And Jordan and Stewart are drawn to an apparent mass shooting in rural Nebraska, where they become embroiled in the lives of a sheriff named Carrie, played by Kelly McDonald. Her lawyer husband Billy, played by Jason Ritter, very nice job by him. His father William, a mysterious, possibly government affiliated militia leader, played by Garrett Dillahun, awesome to see him on screen, also to see

• 35:56Chris Ryan?

  him back on HBO. And William's wife Zoe, played by porno Jag Nathan, who, uh, is also an HBO vet.

• 36:04Andy Greenwald?

  Night of.

• 36:04Chris Ryan?

  In Night of. Uh, the pilot, uh, is, is a real, it's like a pilot. It's called Pilot, and, and it is got a lot of work to do. Do you think it did the work?

• 36:19Andy Greenwald?

  It's, it's almost a hard, it's too hard of a framing, I think.

• 36:22Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 36:23Andy Greenwald?

  I, I would say that through one episode, and I know there are some critics who have seen more, we, we like to, we like to go one at a time. Um, I, I was reminded at once of two things. I was reminded of the fact that the lift to get something like this that is as burdened, or blessed, depending on your point of view, with so much history, IP, understanding, perception, uh, expectations, fan expectations, to get it off the ground to begin with is enormous and, and almost superhuman. Um, and not just that then, to grab the wheel as aggressively as Mundie, King and Lindelof have done here, and try

• 37:05Andy Greenwald?

  to turn it in the span of 50 minutes from what it always has been, and what people who do know the character think of it as, which is intergalactic space cops, and make it true detective, also in an HBO prestige type investigatory program.

• 37:21Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:22Andy Greenwald?

  You feel the G-forces fighting them at every turn. There is so much exposition. There is so much, um, table setting. And then you make it something that is set in multiple timelines, which is also incredibly challenging to do. So I would say that I found this pilot to be incredibly engaging, incredibly entertaining, promising, but deeply effortful. In that there was no moment when I felt it relaxing into the show that it could well become, and become quickly. That's not a problem. Like, we have years of experience on this podcast, let alone in our lives.

• 37:58Chris Ryan?

  I seriously-

• 37:59Andy Greenwald?

  Understanding that pilots are hard.

• 38:00Chris Ryan?

  I never mind when it's, it's fleet of foot. It's when it grinds and is, it's when TV is like, this is going to be a slog, and it's not going to be funny at all, and it's going to be like so self-serious about its like own setup and stuff like that. And I think that there's-

• 38:16Andy Greenwald?

  It isn't that.

• 38:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's not that at all. You know, a lot of exposition in this, in this episode. But the highs should really-

• 38:25Chris Ryan?

  Make people bullish on this because the, and this is, we'll get into some details of the plot now. So if you haven't watched Lanterns yet, you can skip to Furious, or you can honestly probably just take the week off and then come back when I talk to Van about lioness. It's the scene where Hal interrogates the alien, which is a scene that you've seen, like it's not, it's not unheard of to have that kind of interaction, was so well done.

• 38:55Andy Greenwald?

  Great.

• 38:55Chris Ryan?

  And it was the first time I think we got to see Kyle Chandler's iteration of the Green Lantern actually be worth his weight, you know, other than like his ability to put on a ring and fly. Like that was actual detective work he was doing to some extent. I thought that was so good. And the turn that the, that the alien basically makes midway through when they're talking about Harry Potter, of all things.

• 39:21Andy Greenwald?

  I was gonna say Hal's genius alien test is something that you would have failed.

• 39:26Chris Ryan?

  I know he went to Hogwarts.

• 39:28Andy Greenwald?

  Did you know that in 2016?

• 39:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 39:31Andy Greenwald?

  Under pressure in a police station in Nebraska, you'd have full access to that.

• 39:36Chris Ryan?

  I can't do any of the sorting or any of the other stuff, but I know that that kid went to Hogwarts.

• 39:40Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. But that's also the same way, like you know that like Andre Ogudala went to Arizona, right? Like you know, you just, in your bones, you know, the colleges people go to.

• 39:49Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 39:49Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 39:50Chris Ryan?

  For the, I mean, up to a point, but up to a point, there, there's Instagram accounts there where they shout at men on the street and they say, hey, where did, where did Judd Buechler go to college? And it's like, I know, Arizona Wildcats.

• 40:03Andy Greenwald?

  We should, we're only talking about, see, this is, you're an alien because you only studied Arizona.

• 40:08Chris Ryan?

  No, I mean, up until 2000, I would say 2005, six, seven, eight, I'm, I'm from, from 85 to 2005, I'd say I'm pretty confident about where any basketball player would.

• 40:22Andy Greenwald?

  Particularly if they were coached by Lute Olson and the other Arizona Wildcat community.

• 40:28Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 40:29Andy Greenwald?

  You are busted, alien.

• 40:32Chris Ryan?

  When this, when this show sings, it sings. When Dylan Hunt is on screen, it sings. When Aaron Pierre and Porta Jagnason are chatting at the bar.

• 40:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 40:44Chris Ryan?

  It's, it's going. Like there is a lot of stuff here that they have to like introduce us to a concept that maybe some people don't understand, introduce on top of that. Not only are there no galactic space cops, but there's a reason for that. There's been this alien discovery.

• 41:00Andy Greenwald?

  And the world is okay with it. And that this guy is a celebrity. We understand they're aliens. And then the next piece is, that's incredibly challenging, is we have to make the audience believe that a man who could fly to Alpha Centauri and back is going to willingly put himself into a jail cell to be near someone that he thinks is an alien. Like that, that, that the stakes can go from galactic to local and regional that effortlessly. In that, I thought that in many ways, and I do not mean to discount the work of Chris Mundy here, because A, we don't know the actual inner workings of the, the way that these three honestly alphas delineated their responsibilities. But everything I understand

• 41:45Andy Greenwald?

  about him is that he is an incredibly affable, like consensus builder and really good at the, the, the less glamorous parts of showrunning, which is making everyone buy in. So I'm not trying to minimize him, but I will say that this episode in many ways did feel like a conversation between Tom King's comic book specialty, which is saying, yes, Green Lanterns, but now they are investigating a crime scene in Nebraska and there's a tough talking female sheriff who doesn't give a shit that he can make anything out of it.

• 42:12Chris Ryan?

  It's also a mass shooting that's taking place the year that Trump gets elected. Like it's, they, they are very purposeful with what they're choosing.

• 42:18Andy Greenwald?

  And if you are a comic book, even casual reader, I think you are at this point used to the idea of like, oh, Tom King's Green Lantern number one just came out and it's a really interesting new spin on it. So that part, the places where I saw Damon at his best is that when Damon runs right at the, the kind of, the impossible to, to, to understand or the impossible to articulate thing and makes a joke about it, you know?

• 42:45Chris Ryan?

  To give you an example of that.

• 42:46Andy Greenwald?

  Well, like just the way that Chandler is just like, actually, you know, aren't you supposed to be like, you know, an intergalactic peacekeeping force? And he's like, actually, the universe is pretty peaceful.

• 42:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:56Andy Greenwald?

  Or he's just like, when he describes the origin story of Green Lantern as it exists in the comic book, which is this test pilot finds a crash, an alien ship having crash landed and the pink guy gives him a ring. And he's just like, he either said, good luck, good luck or fuck off. And I don't know which it was. Like make the joke about it and make the subtext text. So we all understand that we can move on.

• 43:17Chris Ryan?

  And so there's another thing, which is many writers may not take this as seriously, but Lindelof last night, a bunch of interviews with him were released, you know, in the aftermath of the episode. And honestly, just because I'm not very familiar with Green Lantern, this didn't strike me as completely outrageous, but like, you know, Damon was sort of put in a position to be like, I'm really sorry that we've killed Hal Jordan.

• 43:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 43:44Chris Ryan?

  And the reason why we had to do that was, I think for a variety of reasons, but he was sort of being cheeky when he said, you can't say you, you have to pry the ring from my cold, dead hands, unless you're willing to make Hal cold and dead.

• 43:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 43:57Chris Ryan?

  Now, it's a, it's a Lindelofism, but it's also a Mundyism. If you've seen Ozark, to be like, the thing that should happen at the end of the first season happens in the first episode.

• 44:07Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. So you, you watch this pilot and it's, there is an element of like the giant in Twin Peaks going, it is happening again, but for Kyle Chandler in a prestige television show. Literally that maybe the third thing he says on screen is you'll have to pry this from my cold, dead hand. So it's very Mayor of Kingsdawney.

• 44:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:23Andy Greenwald?

  In the sense that like, we know, but now the, the show is going to play with time. So he is not off of the show. There's just going to be.

• 44:29Chris Ryan?

  Also with galactic space cops and magic rings, like you could, you could theoretically bring him back.

• 44:33Andy Greenwald?

  You could, but I also think that they are making, this is where it starts to fit into the, the James Gunn verse in a, I think a relatively interesting way, which is they, he's chose, like he likes Guy Gardner as his favorite Green Lantern, clearly. And that guy, and Nathan Fillion will show up as that Green Lantern. It seems to me, Aaron Pierre has already been, been announced as co-starring in Man of Tomorrow, that that's what they're doing going forward. So it's okay. I mean, even more so than Marvel. Marvel has had a more recent thing where there's like, now there's a new Hawkeye and she's a young woman and they've, they've rebooted their characters, Miles Morales being maybe the most famous example of it. DC's been doing this since before anybody cared about stuff. Like I made a passing joke last week about the Golden Age Green Lantern, who is a guy named Alan Scott. So Hal Jordan isn't even the first one.

• 45:19Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 45:19Andy Greenwald?

  It's just the first one where they created this backstory of him being a space cop with a magic ring and not just a guy in a hood wearing, holding a, literally holding a lantern.

• 45:27Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 45:27Andy Greenwald?

  So they've chosen which one they want to use. So I like the fact that maybe I'm reading too much into it, but all of these eras, Gunverse, the Feige, MCU, whatever, in this fullness of time are fleeting. So choose, make a decision, make a history, make this the guy that taught the other guy and have the fun with him now while you have him on the show. I like that. I was fine with it. And again, it also speaks to the actual like under the hood challenges of this episode, which is you have to not only introduce the entire mythos, but you also have to introduce this one guy who you have to care about so much that the episode ending with him being dead in the future lands. Otherwise, he's just another guy. And I think it did.

• 46:09Chris Ryan?

  It was interesting because the, the interviews after the episode were so like, we, we know people are going to be outraged, but I thought what was cool and the best moment was that.

• 46:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 46:23Chris Ryan?

  The Kelly McDonald and Aaron Pierre characters come upon his dead body in the same stadium where this mass shooting has taken place, where he's convinced there's been, and this is where he was brought when he was younger and indoctrinated into becoming a Green Lantern in the first place. And he's sitting there, you know, dead and they're not crying, you know, like they're just like, kind of almost like this is, this was always going to be where it ended up.

• 46:49Andy Greenwald?

  He has no ring.

• 46:50Chris Ryan?

  And he has no ring.

• 46:51Andy Greenwald?

  Let's talk about, let's talk about some of the casting decisions here. Chandler's great. Chandler is.

• 46:59Chris Ryan?

  He's going big, bigger than I thought he would go.

• 47:01Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's, I think it's good. I mean, I think that again, it is, it's funny that, that I, when the, when they announced it and what it was going to be, and there was some talk about like, oh, how will this fit in with James Gunn's aesthetic? This is not James Gunn's aesthetic, but having a guy with a superpower ring doing shots at a bar is James Gunn's aesthetic. Like that is some overlap there.

• 47:23Chris Ryan?

  And playing like ironically, like a funny song, like a bunch.

• 47:26Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Being, being of the world is kind of what Gunn likes to do with these characters and make them bigger than life with their personality. So I thought that fit. He is, you know, Matthew Reese has now given him a run for his money, but I think Kyle Chandler is in the television Hall of Fame. And just of like, every time he's on screen, you just like him and you want to be rooting for him and you're invested in what he's doing. So he brings that charisma to everything that he does. I think manufacturing chemistry is challenging. I think a couple of moments in the pilot spoke to it directly that like, this guy eats ribs and Jon Stewart is a vegan. Aaron Pierre is like carved from a lab to be a superhero in these types of movies.

• 48:10Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 48:10Andy Greenwald?

  He is a, they are very different energies, which maybe is good.

• 48:14Chris Ryan?

  I thought, so my argument for it is that it, there was at least a arc to their chemistry, which matched the arc of the characters' relationship. And I thought by the time they get to the bar, he, you know, the, the Jon Stewart character is speaking more freely about what he thinks of what Hal Jordan is doing.

• 48:32Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 48:32Chris Ryan?

  And isn't just keeping everything to himself and taking deep breaths and calling him sir. So by the time they get to the bar and Hal Jordan's doing this somewhat ridiculous, I'm going to play a country song 10 times in a row until these guys at the pool table beat me up in order to get arrested so that I can go to the, so that I can interview this guy who's already in jail, which it turns out he doesn't really need to do because he could have, you know what I mean? Like it's this elaborate ruse that doesn't matter. And Aaron Pierre calls that out. Like Jon Stewart calls out, this is a stupid idea.

• 49:03Andy Greenwald?

  Hanging a lantern on it. We call that.

• 49:04Chris Ryan?

  There you go.

• 49:06Andy Greenwald?

  I, I found the.

• 49:11Andy Greenwald?

  The Jon Stewart backstory where his father is a stern military man who William tells his children every night to be a bit much. That struck me as something that probably looks sick as hell in the first two panels of Green Lantern one written by Tom King and was like a maybe a slight bridge too far.

• 49:30Chris Ryan?

  You just didn't like it from a childcare perspective?

• 49:32Andy Greenwald?

  Or? No, food waste primarily.

• 49:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:35Andy Greenwald?

  You know, like that, that apple could have been in his lunch tomorrow.

• 49:37Chris Ryan?

  And if it's a red delicious, it might as well get shot anyway.

• 49:41Andy Greenwald?

  Can we do apple talk?

• 49:42Chris Ryan?

  If you want.

• 49:43Andy Greenwald?

  Turn the lights on later and we'll talk about overrated fruits because I'm there for that.

• 49:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. That said, then the next shot of the show, no pun intended, I found this fascinating. It is Jon Stewart waiting to get picked up by Hal Jordan outside of Spotify Studios downtown LA.

• 50:02Chris Ryan?

  It's true.

• 50:04Andy Greenwald?

  I think you and I both have either driven behind or nearly been sideswiped by Hal Jordan, as it turns out, right around here.

• 50:12Chris Ryan?

  Hal Jordan needs to work on making rights unread.

• 50:14Andy Greenwald?

  I think like many people in LA, I thought that was funny.

• 50:19Andy Greenwald?

  My other, I do want to say a couple of other positive things about the show, but I definitely found myself, again, just coming into a cold, thrown a little bit by some of the casting, not because of the actors, because I love every actor that has had a speaking role on the show thus far. It was the, what I can only assume to be accounting for the time jumps that I was instant, look, love is love and age has no distinction, right? But like.

• 50:45Chris Ryan?

  So you're wondering about Garrett Dillon being Jason Ritter's father?

• 50:47Andy Greenwald?

  When they walk in to see the owner of this militia ranch and Garrett Dillon was there, I was like, cool, he's got an older brother. Or Garrett Dillon, potentially being an alien himself, had Jason Ritter at the age of 15.

• 51:00Chris Ryan?

  You think he's an alien?

• 51:01Andy Greenwald?

  No, I'm just saying.

• 51:01Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 51:02Andy Greenwald?

  But maybe he is because he looks like that.

• 51:05Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 51:05Andy Greenwald?

  And has a fully adult 40 year old son. Similarly, you realize then later, because Kelly McDonald, you don't want to have people wearing prosthetics in these time jumps, past the point of whatever, like that's in the spirit of good television, they've made the right choice. But I was totally confused by everyone's age and role when Pornogagathon comes out and they're like, hi grandma. I was like, what? To whom?

• 51:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:29Andy Greenwald?

  But then you see Kelly McDonald at the end and they have not changed her appearance at all. And she has had a five year old and 10 years later she has a.

• 51:36Chris Ryan?

  He's now all state quarterback.

• 51:38Andy Greenwald?

  And I'm saying that.

• 51:39Chris Ryan?

  I wasn't, I would not have predicted that for that kid.

• 51:43Andy Greenwald?

  He got the trick, he got the magic. What are you talking about? I would have.

• 51:47Chris Ryan?

  I just, it just, it seemed like that was not, he was not slinging it. I was like, oh, you know.

• 51:53Andy Greenwald?

  Well, first of all, what was the thing with Nebraska quarterbacks? Didn't they all like, they were just ran the option or something?

• 51:58Chris Ryan?

  They used to, but now Matt Rule has brought like more of a pro system.

• 52:01Andy Greenwald?

  I wonder if this is an alternate history because maybe, maybe he's not really, like he's all state for Nebraska.

• 52:08Chris Ryan?

  But it's not going to translate to the higher level.

• 52:10Andy Greenwald?

  No, because he can't throw the deep ball.

• 52:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:11Andy Greenwald?

  Nor has he ever been asked to unless a superhero is like, just imagine it happening.

• 52:16Chris Ryan?

  That's the thing is like, I know that, I know visualization is important for quarterbacks, but I don't think you can truly close your eyes like you have the force and throw a ball through a tire.

• 52:24Andy Greenwald?

  Some people, I mean, Cole Payton, maybe, I don't know. I, uh, do you think, to be honest, in terms of 10 year time jumps from 2016 to 2026, which unlike many of the things in the episode, we have experienced.

• 52:37Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:38Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think you personally are more on the Jon Stewart trajectory of like, now I've just got a cool beard, but otherwise I'm exactly the same? Or are you more like the child who is young and fresh and throwing a ball and then is now six foot eight and?

• 52:54Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I think we would have to go back to 2015, 16 and look at what we looked like back then.

• 52:59Andy Greenwald?

  I've looked.

• 53:00Chris Ryan?

  And?

• 53:01Andy Greenwald?

  You look exactly the same.

• 53:02Chris Ryan?

  You're a real archivist.

• 53:04Andy Greenwald?

  I am.

• 53:04Chris Ryan?

  You're a personal archivist.

• 53:05Andy Greenwald?

  I am, well, because I'm the one who's trying to get our papers in order for when we donate them to the University of Texas at Austin.

• 53:11Chris Ryan?

  I see, I'm, I'm open, I'm thinking about Oregon.

• 53:15Andy Greenwald?

  Why?

• 53:16Chris Ryan?

  Because.

• 53:16Andy Greenwald?

  Because you want to visit there more? Do you have a lead in with like the?

• 53:20Chris Ryan?

  I think Phil Knight.

• 53:21Andy Greenwald?

  You're wearing a hat, first of all.

• 53:22Chris Ryan?

  Phil Knight could do some real stuff for us.

• 53:24Andy Greenwald?

  You're wearing a hat right now?

• 53:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:27Andy Greenwald?

  Are you that easily swayed?

• 53:29Chris Ryan?

  I mean, everybody else in college football is.

• 53:33Andy Greenwald?

  What's our NIL rate?

• 53:34Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 53:35Andy Greenwald?

  That's smart. Okay, so that didn't, that didn't throw you at all, like the, the different?

• 53:39Chris Ryan?

  The age difference didn't throw me at all. I think that there was probably some stuff that would have been, it was funny watching it with, with my wife, who admittedly it was second screening and kind of like, I will watch this so that you will then turn furious on.

• 53:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 53:55Chris Ryan?

  And we got about 20 minutes in and she was like, wait, did he say aliens? And I was like, yeah, he did. And she asked me to explain the alien situation and I was like, I don't think I can.

• 54:06Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's actually a good test audience because this should appeal.

• 54:10Chris Ryan?

  Not because I'm, my NDAs I've signed, but just because of like, I just don't understand it myself.

• 54:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 54:16Chris Ryan?

  They're moving quickly through this story.

• 54:17Andy Greenwald?

  But let's see. And, um, yeah, I mean, I, it has all the elements to be successful and I'm, I am actively excited to watch more of the show.

• 54:27Chris Ryan?

  Did you?

• 54:27Andy Greenwald?

  So we can leave it there.

• 54:28Chris Ryan?

  We can.

• 54:28Andy Greenwald?

  But.

• 54:29Chris Ryan?

  I wanted to ask you about how you felt like this first episode did introducing hot button issues, so to speak, in terms of, um, a very white militia, but is more protective about, rather than American isolationism, it's global isolationism against extraterrestrial forces.

• 54:50Chris Ryan?

  There was a couple of things in there, but what did you, did you think that that felt watch many to you?

• 54:54Andy Greenwald?

  The alien knew that there was a controversy about Barack Obama's birth certificate.

• 54:57Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 54:59Andy Greenwald?

  Did you, did that make you lean in? Were you, were you curious about that?

• 55:03Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 55:04Andy Greenwald?

  That settled business for you? Uh, I, look, I genuinely, there's two things. One, this is a new cop show that, that has a cast that I love, the creative team that I love, that is going to try something pretty unique, which is to be two things at once completely.

• 55:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:20Andy Greenwald?

  And not try to hide either ball and be honest about both. It's not, you know, when this was announced, there was a part of me that was like, will they be investigating a murder during a time when Hal Jordan is on prob, cop, space cop probation and doesn't have his ring?

• 55:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:34Andy Greenwald?

  So they will ground it. I love that that's, it's not that. The secondary thing that I will be watching for, which is less, less passionate and more intellectual is how high can you push the ceiling of something that has so much to do just to get to the starting gun?

• 55:51Andy Greenwald?

  And I think that's in a way is actually answering your question, which is if you are making a true detective-esque show that jumps between 2016 and 2026, set intentionally in Nebraska, playing with some hot button issues, if you took out the space cop part of it, it might have more, it might have more opportunity to soar. And become something, you know, uh, ecstatic, transportive, fascinating, moving. Whereas often I do find the ceiling for, uh, for these sorts of adaptations to be, did you pull it off or not?

• 56:25Chris Ryan?

  Well, you know, it's funny is like, I want to get to furious, but the Trojan horse thing of, you know, we're making a DC show, but what we really want to make as a true detective, like.

• 56:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 56:36Chris Ryan?

  Cop show.

• 56:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 56:37Chris Ryan?

  It's like cop shows aren't, you could make a cop show. Like, it's not like you're like.

• 56:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 56:41Chris Ryan?

  What I'd like to do is make a portrait of divorce, but since you can't do that, I have to have a murder in it.

• 56:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 56:44Chris Ryan?

  You know what I mean? Like, it, it'll be interesting to see the, the relationship between those two things because it's not like you needed to do one to get another one on the screen.

• 56:54Andy Greenwald?

  No, and it, the, the, the reason why this is of particular interest is because we know from their work and from their public statements that like Tom King and Damon Lindelof love comic books and love things that make comic book sense, comic book logic. And Damon has done it with Watchmen, but Watchmen as, A, as a subject matter is, has always been intentionally more adult and challenging and intellectual. And then he took it and went wild with it and didn't really use the source material other than as a springboard.

• 57:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:26Andy Greenwald?

  And tried to update it. This is by design, it's not that it's more conventional, but it's, it's coloring within the lines more. It's just sort of trying to determine where the lines are. For that reason alone, I would watch the whole season.

• 57:37Chris Ryan?

  Absolutely.

• 57:37Andy Greenwald?

  But there was enough in this to make me even more intrigued. And I guess, I guess what you're hearing is like, I really want the show to transcend both genres and become something really unique and special and maybe it will.

• 57:51Chris Ryan?

  All right, man, let's talk about furious. This was the sixth episode, uh, of eight and, um.

• 57:59Chris Ryan?

  I loved how this one had some of the more conventionally thriller-y cop procedural tropes, whether it's, and she become, she, out of nowhere, she's face to face with the killer. Or some of the more like office drama, like Nora taking a really long time to get to Ed's office to buy Alice time at the, at the shelter, et cetera. All these things are happening, and in each case, the creative team behind this show pushes the boundaries and, and goes past what's expected of, of any show like this, to interrogate

• 58:42Chris Ryan?

  character, to push the limits of comedy in, in a moment, any given moment, like Nora doing the shoe tying thing. I thought it was, it was a really, really great episode that, you know, obviously you could probably be a little bit persnickety and be like, so now there's location trackers on everybody, you know, like with, with the cops, like that's something that, yeah.

• 59:08Andy Greenwald?

  That's probably true.

• 59:09Chris Ryan?

  It's probably true, but in any case, like, I thought it, I thought it was really an excellent episode, but what did you think?

• 59:15Andy Greenwald?

  I thought it was incredible. I think this show is elevating week to week. I think it's one of the best things of the year, and, and, and I think it's, it honestly is just giving me, giving me life in the sense that there's still places to push this. There's still ways to engage with what we traditionally think of as TV, or what we think TV has become, and devotes, devote yourself to it and still find the ways to move the needle in terms of surprise, to play with expectation, to go deeper, to be bolder. I thought this episode had just god tier bones and construction, meaning that no matter

• 59:57Andy Greenwald?

  who is making a show like this, in any circumstance, there's going to be a conversation in the writer's room at some point about how are we going to cross the protagonist and the antagonist? It is a hallmark, it is a, honestly, bordering on cliche of cat and mouse stories, where there's going to be a moment when the cat and the mouse cross. It's the diner scene in Heat, it's.

• 1:00:18Chris Ryan?

  It's the car in Task, it's.

• 1:00:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:00:21Chris Ryan?

  It's the catacombs in True Detective, yeah.

• 1:00:23Andy Greenwald?

  So, it's gonna happen. The question is, what are you gonna do with it? How are you gonna dress it up? How are you going to sell it to us? How are you going to present it to us in a, in a new way? And just in terms of construction of both of these women find themselves in a fixed place of refuge with stories to share, and reasons for being there, that as Catherine says to Alice in the episode, you weren't lying about that, that are legitimate. And then pairing it with Nora and her own journey inside the mousetrap that is the FBI office, and as you said, the like, the office hijinks of just getting from one place to

• 1:01:07Andy Greenwald?

  another, but also the one-on-one confrontation in a way with her abuser, in a different sense. And the fury that's in the title, and also the powerlessness and hopelessness of these collisions with entrenched male power, twinning them the way they did while finding room for the, the Danny and Alden runner, is, it's the kind of thing where if you, you know, people know this, that like in the scripted TV process, you write, you have the outline of the episode that gets noted, and then you get sent off to script. Like, if you just showed me or anyone the outline of this episode, I think the response would be delight, because they've just cracked it, a way to do it, and then the script.

• 1:01:46Chris Ryan?

  Because of the things that happen, or because of the way that they happen?

• 1:01:49Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, I, I think that what I'm trying to articulate is that one of the genius things about this show is not that it is breaking the mold, is that it is finding new corners and new pathways within the mold to make it all feel fresh and make me reconsider my relationship to why I'm into molded shapes to begin with.

• 1:02:06Chris Ryan?

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:02:07Andy Greenwald?

  So, I think what I'm, so I think it's more the latter. It's like, this was going to happen, this is the appropriate place rhythmically in an eight-episode season to do it, but I didn't expect to do it like this. And then the beauty of it, when you confound some expectations but flatter others, you create a scenario where, and I want to know what you think about this, but like as soon as we saw Marshall in the car drinking tracking Alice, fairly confident where it was going to go, and how it was going to end.

• 1:02:35Chris Ryan?

  Down to the, he's gonna get, something is gonna happen to him because of Catherine.

• 1:02:38Andy Greenwald?

  Because the gun that we see there, yes. Did I feel cheated when that happened? Because I was like, oh, I saw it coming? No, I felt like it walked us to the inevitable place for where this episode needed to go. I, I can't say it enough, I've been saying it weekly, like I just find the watching of this show thrilling, both on terms of the plot, but also in terms of the thought that goes into every scene of it.

• 1:03:00Chris Ryan?

  Here's, here's a different way of putting what I said in the beginning, that kind of more gracefully like echoes what you've just said, which is that if you imagine the script as like a mixing board, like the way they would mix a piece of music, the way that they will turn up certain aspects of it to throw you off, like, so for instance, one of the things that I was thinking as I'm watching this episode last night is, oh, they're really pushing the comedy pretty hard. Like, they're, they're almost over-leveraged on like, how funny the, the Danny and Alden

• 1:03:38Chris Ryan?

  thing is, and Nora's journey through the FBI building and being like, how's your mom? It's my dad. Ah, yeah, I thought he was gonna make it, you know?

• 1:03:49Andy Greenwald?

  Or Troy dropping down to his knees also, thinking that's what we were doing.

• 1:03:52Chris Ryan?

  And all that stuff is so like comic, that when Nora finally gets to Ed's office, and she starts doing the usual like, aha, I've got you exactly where I want you, but then they actually cut the line and let her do this theatrical monologue essentially, with some incredible flourishes of language, like, you know, they speak with feathers and all this stuff. It, it hits so much harder because of the daffiness of the journey to get there, because it's, it's such a great left turn.

• 1:04:27Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 1:04:28Chris Ryan?

  You know, if, if she had been like, I'm gonna fucking get to Ed and tell him what's what, watch the, watch me do this, and it's like your whole time you're anticipating it, I think you're like, oh yeah, you've been building up to this amount, but of course, like, that's not how real life works, or it's not how the reality of this show works.

• 1:04:43Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:44Chris Ryan?

  And by that same token, I think, you know, they are, they are playing with these, these kind of cliched characters, maybe, not even cliched, but like, the idea.

• 1:04:56Andy Greenwald?

  Familiar tropes.

• 1:04:57Chris Ryan?

  Familiar characters, like the abusive boyfriend, like the driven cop, like the, the, the serial killer out, out beyond any recognition, and it's like, then they pull them back in different ways. And, you know, that scene with Marshall and Alice is like harrowing, but they know what they're doing when they have him like listening to Sublime and singing along, because they are trying to basically be like, look at this, look at this little goofy guy sitting in the car, and then he becomes the biggest monster arguably of the show again, you know, like, and him screaming at her, look what you're, look what you've done to me, like, you made me do this, which is obviously a classic abuser, you know, concept of like,

• 1:05:39Chris Ryan?

  it's you who is making me do this to you, but, you know, for, for him to be confronted with, with true vengeance in that moment is.

• 1:05:48Andy Greenwald?

  Cause she hesitates.

• 1:05:49Chris Ryan?

  And it, and I think it's confrontational with the audience, because it's like.

• 1:05:51Andy Greenwald?

  Do you want him to get shot?

• 1:05:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:54Andy Greenwald?

  And she hesitates, so he gets shot.

• 1:05:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:56Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's worth considering that like the familiar tropes, when done correctly in a build like this, that's the skeleton, but the sinew is anything but conventional. The sinew is just, the emotion of the characters and the trauma, the trauma and the traumatic history and the lived lives of the characters is anything but expected. Nora is, to your point, dramatic, theatrical, a force of nature, and also an alcoholic. Catherine may have killed Alden's mother, and Alden in that moment says, I don't care, because she did give me the one thing that I've always wanted, and so because of that, that's, that, that, that ends the conversation for me.

• 1:06:41Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:06:42Andy Greenwald?

  The Catherine scene, when, after she's doped Alice.

• 1:06:47Andy Greenwald?

  Is, I mean, Lola Pettit Cruz is amazing in it, but the line when she says, "This isn't even my body. These aren't even my fucking hands."

• 1:06:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:57Andy Greenwald?

  Is so disturbing and so, I mean, again, the idea that she is physically dissociated from herself and her, her physical being is horrifying to imagine, built into the history of the character and challenging for the audience to sort of expect and understand.

• 1:07:17Chris Ryan?

  It's sort of like a bleeding edge between perpetrator and victim because that,

• 1:07:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, who's responsible.

• 1:07:22Chris Ryan?

  Those coping techniques that, that the woman in the shelter is obviously repeating to her, where she's just like, you're present, you're in your body, you know, all that stuff, is, you assume, taught to her to cope with the trauma that she's endured.

• 1:07:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:07:39Chris Ryan?

  At the hands of these men, but she's using it to cope with the trauma that she's inflicting on other people, too.

• 1:07:45Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 1:07:46Chris Ryan?

  And yeah, that whole scene in the shower with the green light, I thought was very knowingly an homage to Silence of the Lambs, the basement scene with Buffalo Bill and extraordinary.

• 1:07:57Andy Greenwald?

  We should shout out Destiny Akaraga as the director. She directed the last two episodes. Again, the sign of a well-run ship to me is who knows what went on behind the scenes and what each director brought or didn't bring, or what they had to fix and post or not fix or whatever. But when you feel an aesthetic consistency that you, you check the names because you're like, another banger, it's, it's a credit to both the director and the system and the production. Similarly, this episode was written by Colleen McGinnis, whose name you may remember from 30 Rock, from SNL, from Rami, like another historically, historically a comedy writer.

• 1:08:36Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:37Andy Greenwald?

  So yeah, it's funny, but also this is like, we've been saying every week, like Liz Merriweather did New Girl and did this. And it is incredible to see when you have a bunch of multi-talented, but talented in diverse ways, people rowing in the same direction here. Like it's, I don't know, I just, I'm floored by it. We didn't even, I mean, we talked about the Nora scene. We didn't even talk about Quincy Tyler Bernstein in that scene.

• 1:09:01Chris Ryan?

  I mean, she's, she's really, really, really extraordinary.

• 1:09:04Andy Greenwald?

  It's one of the performances of the year.

• 1:09:05Chris Ryan?

  It's like up there with, with Kato Flynn with, for me at least, the discovery, a discovery of the year in terms of what this person is bringing to the table. And then also like you've got scenes like where Michael Kostroff, who people remember as Maury from The Wire, shows up. And it is an exposition scene. He's letting Danny know like where things stand, what he wants. You get a little bit of like feds versus cops jurisdictional banter, but fully delivers what is usually like a very like, I want results.

• 1:09:37Andy Greenwald?

  I'm glad you brought that up because he comes in throwing gas. And it's so knowing because your point is important. The audience, like of a baseline TV audience sees that guy and we're like, okay, we're in an East Coast urban show somewhere in the law and order realm. I don't mean law and order literally, but it's like, is it The Wire? Is it Cops? Whatever. I would imagine when you talk to actors who do, you know, who, who do a day here or do a day there, that the balancing act is really tricky because you show up and you want to like, you really want to make the most of your small meal. You know, these pretzels are making me thirsty famously. But you also don't want to steal the spotlight from the plot, from what you're trying to serve. He came in throwing gas

• 1:10:20Andy Greenwald?

  and Scoot McNairy was ready for it. And the production itself was ready with like, to catch, you know, it's like, it was built for that. So we notice it. It's hard to describe other than the fact that it's such a welcome thing because there are no scenes off on the show.

• 1:10:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:36Andy Greenwald?

  That what I've been trying to tell people, not just on the podcast, but in life, why to check it out. It's primarily, you may think you know what it is from the log line or from the poster or whatever, but give it two episodes and realize that every scene surprises you in one way or another. And that alone is a gift. But the fact that now it's rolling, two episodes left, and I don't feel that episodic either, it's not bloat. It could be one of, I've started, eight is the new 10, as, as we're saying here in Hollywood in terms of episodes. It's not always the right number. Even 10 isn't always the right number. Sometimes it's clearly by the time you get to this, you know, the, the end game, you're rounding third, there's too many episodes left or there's clearly not enough time.

• 1:11:18Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:11:20Andy Greenwald?

  I, you know, talk to me in two weeks, but it just feels like it's well, they've, they've managed it well.

• 1:11:24Chris Ryan?

  If you had to guess, is, did Nora really get hoodwinked by Ed there? Or do you think she was using like a fake laptop as, or some, like, is there something?

• 1:11:39Andy Greenwald?

  No, I think she got got because the laptop was wiped because Alden just put it all on a thumb drive.

• 1:11:44Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:11:44Andy Greenwald?

  The thing that I didn't fully understand, and maybe we're not meant to, is at the very end, Danny has the thumb drive.

• 1:11:51Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:11:52Andy Greenwald?

  And he goes outside of the building to find out.

• 1:11:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:54Andy Greenwald?

  What, what's on it. And I think maybe other audience members as well assumed he would be scrolling to Catherine.

• 1:12:00Chris Ryan?

  Right. And then he gets to Alice, right?

• 1:12:01Andy Greenwald?

  Or to the name of, of her friend who's, she's trying to avenge. But he gets to Alice?

• 1:12:06Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:12:07Andy Greenwald?

  Is the implication that Alice is a part of this?

• 1:12:10Chris Ryan?

  I don't know.

• 1:12:10Andy Greenwald?

  Or is that a different Alice? And he was just looking because he loves Alice?

• 1:12:13Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. I, I, I mean, Alice was meeting people online, but I don't know whether, I don't know how that works.

• 1:12:22Andy Greenwald?

  It wasn't, so you didn't walk away from that scene being like, aha. You didn't, you didn't, I, I got to that point and I was worried that, yeah, I did a huh like that, too. Okay, good. And then, and then you, were you doing picture in picture lioness bathtub scenes?

• 1:12:36Andy Greenwald?

  Are there more than one?

• 1:12:38Chris Ryan?

  No, not yet. First time they've bathed together.

• 1:12:42Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, well.

• 1:12:43Chris Ryan?

  Which is cool.

• 1:12:44Andy Greenwald?

  It's a long deployment. Saves water.

• 1:12:47Chris Ryan?

  That's just good stuff from us today. I think.

• 1:12:51Andy Greenwald?

  We'll let them be the judge.

• 1:12:52Chris Ryan?

  Thursday, I'm not sure what we're going to talk about.

• 1:12:54Andy Greenwald?

  You don't know?

• 1:12:54Chris Ryan?

  No, not yet. I'll, I'll, but I'll, I'll let you know. And like I said, you'll probably miss next Monday's Furious.

• 1:13:03Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it depends how much, you mean, you wanted me to like, we could, we could pre-record some stuff.

• 1:13:09Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:13:09Andy Greenwald?

  We're not sure yet.

• 1:13:10Chris Ryan?

  All right.

• 1:13:10Andy Greenwald?

  It really depends how much time Van needs.

• 1:13:12Chris Ryan?

  This is good stuff for, for our listeners to, you know, hear, hear how we put this all together.

• 1:13:17Andy Greenwald?

  Don't you think?

• 1:13:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:18Andy Greenwald?

  What if instead of After Dark, we just did procedural corner?

• 1:13:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:21Andy Greenwald?

  Where we talked about our plans and like.

• 1:13:23Chris Ryan?

  Because then you would just be like, hmm, interesting idea. I'll text you when I, when I've decided.

• 1:13:27Andy Greenwald?

  You don't think that's compelling?

• 1:13:28Chris Ryan?

  Thanks to Kaia, Kai and Sarah. And, and we'll be back on Thursday. And I promise you this. I'm not going to bring up a single X-Man on that episode.

• 1:13:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Okay. We'll see. I think you're addicted.

• 1:13:40Chris Ryan?

  That's my pledge.

• 1:13:41Andy Greenwald?

  All right. We'll see.

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