Pod Insights The Watch Is Marvel Back? Plus, ‘Buffy’ Reboot News, and ‘The Pitt’ Episode 6 About this episode Chris and Andy talk about the trailers for ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’ (11:57) and ‘Captain America: Brave New World’ (18:47) and discuss whether the MCU might be getting good again. Then, they discuss the news that Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao is involved in a potential ‘Buffy’ reboot (30:16), before breaking down the latest episode of ‘The Pitt’ (41:47).
Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald
Producer: Kaya McMullen
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Transcript 11,065 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Look, it's not that confusing. I'm Rob Harvilla, host of the podcast 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, except we did 120 songs. And now we're back with the 2000s. I refuse to say aughts. 2000 to 2009. The Strokes, Rihanna, J Lo, Kanye, sure. And now the show is called 60 Songs That Explain the 90s: The 2000s. Wow. That's too long a title for me to say anything else right now. Just trust me. That's 60 Songs That Explain the 90s: The 2000s, preferably on Spotify.
0:38 Speaker 01 I need sports to have to clear the room.
0:41 Chris Ryan? Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. And joining me in the studio, looking like Galacticus.
0:54 Andy Greenwald? Nope.
0:55 Chris Ryan? Galactus?
0:55 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, keep it though.
0:57 Chris Ryan? It's Andy Greenwald. What's up, man?
1:01 Andy Greenwald? One of the things I love about you, and there's so many, is I think sometimes you mess up comic book stuff on purpose to signal that you're still cool.
1:08 Chris Ryan? I would never admit to it one way or the other.
1:10 Andy Greenwald? No, I know.
1:11 Chris Ryan? Greenwald, it's great to see you. It's great to have Kaia back on the pod today on the dials. A couple of housekeeping things.
1:17 Andy Greenwald? Okay.
1:18 Chris Ryan? Number one, we often have just casual sports banter on this podcast. If you would like to hear it happen for an hour, Unchecked by Shiel Kapadia on the Philly Special Podcast, Andy and I appeared on the Philly Special Pod as a Super Bowl preview pod. That should be going up today. Shout out to Shiel, shout out to all the guys down in New Orleans making great Super Bowl content for The Ringer. Would you like to comment?
1:39 Andy Greenwald? I just want to say that was the highlight of my year. That was a dream come true.
1:43 Chris Ryan? It kind of was disturbing how much happier you were doing that pod than The Watch.
1:46 Andy Greenwald? That's the only pod I listen to.
1:48 Chris Ryan? A couple of housekeeping things. You can watch The Watch on YouTube at ringer-tv is the channel. You can watch us on Prestige TV on the YouTube channel, talking about Severance, talking about the pit, talking about Jalen Hurts, all sorts of things.
2:03 Andy Greenwald? Can they watch us talking about Jalen Hurts?
2:04 Chris Ryan? If you want to see us in short form video or candid photos, I'm doing tons of get ready with me's meal preps. It's all happening.
2:12 Andy Greenwald? Nice, nice.
2:13 Chris Ryan? On the watchpod underscore on Instagram.
2:16 Andy Greenwald? How I travel. Yeah. My daughter just showed me a YouTube. Of a woman whose whole YouTube personality is making fun of other people on YouTube.
2:25 Chris Ryan? That's a huge thing.
2:26 Andy Greenwald? But like, that is, that is an Ouroboros that I am just unaware of. But I also think they're unaware of. I was trying to ask my younger daughter why she thought it was so funny that this woman was like naming her Stanley water bottles and showing that she was flying in a luxurious way, but it wasn't actually luxurious. And she said, no. She just thought it was funny. Do you know what I mean?
2:46 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
2:46 Andy Greenwald? So I, anyway, I'm thrilled that we're on YouTube.
2:49 Chris Ryan? Today on the podcast.
2:51 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
2:52 Chris Ryan? We go back to our, to our old friends in Burbank. Marvel Studios.
2:57 Andy Greenwald? So great.
2:58 Chris Ryan? We're gonna talk a little bit about Fantastic Four, the trailer dropped the other day. I have an email from a listener about Captain America Brave New World that I'll be sharing. We also wanted to talk a little about your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Is that what it's called?
3:12 Andy Greenwald? Yet Galacticus, you nailed it again.
3:13 Chris Ryan? Uh, which we skipped around on. A little bit of other news and we'll talk about The Pitt, episode six.
3:19 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, was it five or six? Six.
3:21 Chris Ryan? Six.
3:21 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
3:22 Chris Ryan? So this episode's gonna be going up Thursday evening. So people, check out The Pit, check out the pod. Monday, we will be back. We'll be talking about Severance. We'll be talking about Paradise, I imagine. The only show that matters.
3:34 Andy Greenwald? This is, yeah, we gotta catch up on Paradise. I have not yet seen the fourth episode, which I guess is sort of jaw dropping from, maybe they all are.
3:41 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
3:42 Andy Greenwald? Maybe not for the reasons intended, but we're gonna find out. This has been a big week for us as we get into this. We've made a lot of memories together this week and I wanted to just check in, see how you're feeling about it because we recorded our podcast on Monday. Later that evening, we went downtown and we were very lucky to be guests of our friend, Mina Kimes, on a charity podcast that she did. Mina Kimes and Lenny Show that you can listen to or watch on YouTube. Yesterday, we were invited to speak at a class at AFI here, which was really fun. I think we both really enjoyed that. And earlier today, we did the Philly Special Podcast and look at us, still here, looking at each other. And like, is there anything you wanna get off your chest? Do you feel like this has been broadly good for us?
4:20 Chris Ryan? It's interesting. It's interesting to be taking this step with you after so many years of, of really doing the Martin Luther Lewis thing across town.
4:28 Andy Greenwald? Just taking their show on the road?
4:30 Chris Ryan? It's fun. I would say I've, I've enjoyed myself.
4:32 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, me too.
4:33 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I've seen you more than I've seen my wife.
4:35 Andy Greenwald? Yep.
4:36 Chris Ryan? But that's cool, you know?
4:38 Andy Greenwald? I did try to get your wife to come out Monday. I sidechanneled just to see.
4:42 Chris Ryan? Did you really?
4:43 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, just, you know, just check in.
4:44 Chris Ryan? You texted my wife behind my back to be like, come to the Mina pod?
4:48 Andy Greenwald? Well, I was worried about you, you know, I just. No, I think it was on the group chat. But I did think the other thing, and I'm mostly bringing this up because I wonder if our listeners will notice. If this helps with our rapport, or is in fact hindered it.
5:01 Chris Ryan? No.
5:01 Andy Greenwald? Because we're all talked out. Because not only did we do all those things, but we also talked on the phone on the way to the Mina Pod, on the way back from the class yesterday.
5:10 Chris Ryan? We were looking for parking.
5:11 Andy Greenwald? Okay, I was trying to make it sweeter.
5:12 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
5:14 Andy Greenwald? We did end up parking next to each other.
5:15 Chris Ryan? Before we get into all this Marvel stuff, before we get into the TV talk, I want to try and keep a consistent energy with these non non-TV letters of recommendation.
5:26 Andy Greenwald? Oh.
5:27 Chris Ryan? Things that we're enjoying, things that we're just taking down in our free time. When we're not under the eye of Big Lumen, you know?
5:35 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
5:35 Chris Ryan? Just grinding tape.
5:36 Andy Greenwald? You're not gonna believe what I've got. Yeah, go on.
5:38 Chris Ryan? What is your non-TV letter of recommendation this week?
5:40 Andy Greenwald? You want to go first?
5:41 Chris Ryan? No, I want you to go first.
5:42 Andy Greenwald? Okay, I'm gonna grab it, because you're not even gonna believe this. And we are on video now.
5:45 Chris Ryan? Okay. You're gonna grab it?
5:46 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, yeah, I brought it. It's something I want to recommend to you, too.
5:50 Chris Ryan? Okay, great. That's awesome.
5:51 Andy Greenwald? Phil, bam.
5:52 Chris Ryan? Andy's reaching into a beige bag. I've noticed that his color story has started to become quite muted.
5:58 Andy Greenwald? I know. Well, that's because you were really popping this week. Your darker tone today.
6:03 Chris Ryan? It's raining, yeah.
6:04 Andy Greenwald? Okay, so I brought a graphic novel.
6:05 Chris Ryan? Holy shit.
6:06 Andy Greenwald? That I never thought I would. Do you know what it is? Can you see?
6:08 Chris Ryan? Is it?
6:09 Andy Greenwald? This is so crazy. It's Transformers.
6:12 Chris Ryan? Oh, okay. I thought this was like Age of Apocalypse. I was about to freak out.
6:16 Andy Greenwald? Just like triggered? Would you be like Mark S. at the end of that episode of Severance?
6:20 Chris Ryan? Okay, it's a graphic novel with the Transformers.
6:21 Andy Greenwald? I want to be clear about a couple of things. Transformers were enormous deal to me.
6:25 Chris Ryan? Your energy level just got way too high.
6:27 Andy Greenwald? Okay, let me one.
6:29 Chris Ryan? No, I just.
6:29 Andy Greenwald? I just want to say that.
6:30 Chris Ryan? Never heard you talk about the Transformers.
6:32 Andy Greenwald? Because I'm nervous. This is a little weird. Like, I was gonna say they were huge for me in 1984.
6:37 Chris Ryan? Okay.
6:38 Andy Greenwald? Okay, because the toys were cool.
6:39 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
6:40 Andy Greenwald? Thus endeth my interest in the robots in disguise. I have not seen the Michael Bay movies. I do not care about any of that. And it's carried on to the next generation. I don't want to gender it, but my children think Transformers are, quote, stupid. Okay, so they have not been a part of my life. So I was very surprised when I read a recommendation for this online, but there is a new comic book series published by Image, written and drawn by a guy called Daniel Warren Johnson.
7:07 Chris Ryan? Okay.
7:07 Andy Greenwald? And it's incredible. The art is so beautiful and so compelling, and he found a way to make these just like toy licensing stories really, really compelling, and I recommend it.
7:18 Chris Ryan? Where does it take place in the sort of Transformers chronology?
7:22 Andy Greenwald? It starts it over. It's basically like they wake up on Earth having fled Cybertron, but like now Optimus Prime has these moments where he like sees like everything here is so soft and beautiful.
7:34 Chris Ryan? Just wait a couple of years, Optimus.
7:35 Andy Greenwald? Exactly. I guess it's still the 80s. But yeah, I mean, I take a look. I think it's like, I think it's really interesting and really compelling and
7:45 Chris Ryan? Oh, these Americans with their USAID. So beautiful.
7:49 Andy Greenwald? We must help them.
7:50 Chris Ryan? Nothing's gonna happen to that.
7:51 Andy Greenwald? No, I do feel like the Decepticons' argument that everything here is fragile and squishy and thus fun to destroy might resonate in a different way. But anyway, I never thought that I would be using this podcast to be like, hey, Transformers content is cool, but this guy Daniel Warren Johnson is really talented and I recommend people checking it out.
8:08 Chris Ryan? That's a great letter of recommendation. I'm gonna go for a novel that I'm reading right now. It's called Playworld.
8:14 Andy Greenwald? Okay, point Dexter.
8:15 Chris Ryan? It's by an author named Adam Ross.
8:18 Andy Greenwald? Oh, I want to read this.
8:19 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I got just straight up. I'm drafting off of Anthony Jeselnik's book recommendations. I've mentioned this before, but Anthony Jeselnik, obviously one of the more accomplished stand-up comedians in the world right now, is a voracious reader who makes these recommendations on his Instagram. He used to or was doing them on his pod for a while, but now mostly throws up a book every week on Instagram that he's loving. Playworld is a novel about a young, like early teen child actor slash high school wrestler.
8:51 Andy Greenwald? Okay.
8:51 Chris Ryan? Who is having an affair with an older married woman. And is set in the early 80s in New York City and has a both sense of place with that, a sense of mayhem with like this kid moving through like performing arts school and his day job as like an actor on a square one type TV show. And obviously having this sexual experience with this older woman.
9:18 Andy Greenwald? Your voice got weird. I know my voice got weird when I said Transformers, but I watched your mouth.
9:24 Chris Ryan? Fucking Megatron jumped out.
9:26 Andy Greenwald? I watched your mouth catch up to your brain in that moment being like, and now I'm gonna say this sexual experience with an older woman. You're like, that's what I'm gonna say next. Okay, we're part committed here.
9:37 Chris Ryan? Okay, uh, it's great. People have compared it to, it has a little bit of a like, of like a Holden Caulfield, Salinger kind of vibe. I think that its descriptions of childhood, especially in like a big east coast city in that time period are very resonant to me. It's a beautifully written book, and I highly, highly recommend it. So that's Play World by Adam Ross.
9:59 Andy Greenwald? Did you find in your own high school experience, which was later than the book, the time the book is set?
10:04 Chris Ryan? Yes, that was more than the 90s.
10:05 Andy Greenwald? Was there a lot of overlap between?
10:07 Chris Ryan? I thought you were gonna ask something else.
10:09 Andy Greenwald? I might. It's, I got that in my pocket in case things get dull.
10:13 Chris Ryan? Did I ever meet a transformer in real life?
10:15 Andy Greenwald? A transforming older woman in real life. Um, no, I didn't, in my experience, I didn't have a lot of crossover between wrestling team and the plays.
10:24 Chris Ryan? Yes.
10:25 Andy Greenwald? Those were often, they were competing, they were at the same time, and they were kind of different camp.
10:30 Chris Ryan? Wrestling, I, so, I never was into wrestling. I never really enjoyed it. Um, and I was way more into like, I think basketball happened at the same time as wrestling, or was wrestling a fall sport?
10:41 Andy Greenwald? No, wrestling and basketball and the winter play at my school were all the same time.
10:46 Chris Ryan? I probably would have liked, I mean, I couldn't, I couldn't get less playing time doing wrestling than I did play, playing high school basketball. But it, you know, I just enjoyed the culture of hoops, you know?
10:56 Andy Greenwald? Oh, I wasn't asking if you yourself wanted to put on a singlet and grapple.
10:59 Chris Ryan? Was there like a lot of actors who wrestled and wrestlers who acted is what you're asking? No.
11:03 Andy Greenwald? Okay. So, so basically, I've just myth busted.
11:06 Chris Ryan? You sure have.
11:07 Andy Greenwald? You're a letter of recommendation.
11:08 Chris Ryan? Get back to Transformers now.
11:09 Andy Greenwald? Sorry, Adam Ross. Why'd you recognize real? Did you know that Optimus Prime isn't his name, but Prime is his title?
11:15 Chris Ryan? Um, speaking of giant robots in the sky?
11:18 Andy Greenwald? There you go.
11:18 Chris Ryan? Is Galactus a robot?
11:20 Andy Greenwald? No.
11:20 Chris Ryan? No, he is a god.
11:22 Andy Greenwald? I mean, definitionally, maybe. He, he is a, a like a-
11:26 Chris Ryan? World swallower?
11:27 Andy Greenwald? Celestial space being that is absolutely the zenith of 60s Jack Kirby what the fuckness of a villain for the super team is going to be a massive, purple helmeded man god who eats planets. And his arrival is announced by the coming of his herald, the Silver Surfer.
11:45 Chris Ryan? Played by Julia Garner in the new film Fantastic Four: First Steps, which had a trailer drop earlier in the week and already has 200 million views on YouTube.
11:52 Andy Greenwald? How many do we have on YouTube? Tell me after.
11:55 Chris Ryan? Slightly less. Uh, the reason I want to talk about this-
12:01 Chris Ryan? Is I put my hand on the on the
12:04 Andy Greenwald? Trunks. The Infinity Stone.
12:06 Chris Ryan? And I feel a train coming.
12:07 Andy Greenwald? Oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah.
12:09 Chris Ryan? And I don't know whether or not like it's just they've had enough at bats at this point or like there's been some inertia, but like watching the Fantastic Four trailer. I have mixed emotions about it generally, but it's undeniable that it feels like there is a lot of excitement for it and that this is going to be a pretty big movie. I don't know what your relationship is to FF, but what did you think?
12:33 Andy Greenwald? I was very excited of on a just a gut fanboy level about this about this trailer. I think I am on the record as drips and drabs of information have come out as saying like, it just feels like not just a throwback to 60s era Marvel storytelling, or even 10 years ago Marvel MCU storytelling when they were when they were good at this, but a very, very strong return to what Kevin Feige was just so uniquely good at that got this whole thing rolling, which is being able to both intuit and then express the core tenet of a character or of a franchise or of what makes this special and different from other comic book stories.
13:13 Chris Ryan? Okay.
13:13 Andy Greenwald? And for me, and clearly for him and for the other people at Marvel, it's that one, this is a family and two, that it's at its best with this kind of whiz bang 60s Jetson style utopia and that they weren't going to try to say that yes, while Sokovia was falling from the sky, this was also happening.
13:33 Chris Ryan? Talk about Sokovia a few minutes.
13:35 Andy Greenwald? But so I, I really, really love, love that. Like this is, it was a, it's, it feels weird to be saying, ah, that classic Marvel touch in 2025, but it's been a minute.
13:45 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
13:46 Andy Greenwald? And it feels focused. It feels like it understands the assignment and it has a great cast. And are there little nits to pick? And certainly.
13:57 Chris Ryan? How did you feel about the possible use of AI in the movie poster?
14:00 Andy Greenwald? I just ignored that.
14:01 Chris Ryan? Okay.
14:02 Andy Greenwald? I don't. There's only so much time in the day. You know, there's only so many things to get upset about, or so they tell me. Is that where, where did you rank Marvel's use of AI in the Fantastic Four poster?
14:13 Chris Ryan? That upset me most this week.
14:15 Andy Greenwald? International aid in America's role in the world. Like, it's just, it's, this is not.
14:21 Chris Ryan? Tweeting at Elon relentlessly, like, what will you do about this incursion?
14:25 Andy Greenwald? Not my country. It's great.
14:29 Andy Greenwald? Redirect your bright boys onto the things that matter most.
14:31 Chris Ryan? Um.
14:32 Andy Greenwald? I, I, I like that. I, and also the way it sort of like wrapped its arms around a lot of different pieces of the Fantastic Four heritage. Like, it's the same conversation, heritage. It's like the same conversation that I tried to have with you about something that I think you feel is deeply stupid, and I respect it, which is that Superman has a super dog.
14:49 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah.
14:49 Andy Greenwald? And similarly, there's a urban legend, I don't know if it's ever been proved or disproved, that the reason why, when there was a Fantastic Four cartoon in the seventies, that is the way a lot of people, not now older people, learned about the Fantastic Four, where the members of the group were Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Thing, and Herbie the Robot.
15:10 Chris Ryan? Mm-hmm.
15:11 Andy Greenwald? And the urban legend was that, that the network said, "We can't have a boy who's on fire on television," because, I mean, look at us, boys will just set themselves on fire. So they put a robot in it. I, it's this-
15:22 Chris Ryan? Are you saying young men are impressionable?
15:24 Andy Greenwald? I'm just saying I'm happy to be a hashtag girl dad.
15:27 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
15:27 Andy Greenwald? So the fact that, like, they've reclaimed that, like, well, Herbie is part of this, and it's Baxter Building, and it's like a retro New York, it's fun. The, how, how did you feel about, of all the things that I thought the trailer would do, reminding us the Thing is played by Cousin Richie from The Bear was not in my top ten?
15:47 Chris Ryan? I thought that was a decent clove of garlic to throw at us, to quote-
15:51 Andy Greenwald? For spice.
15:52 Chris Ryan? Um, because, obviously, the movie's probably not even done yet, um, in terms of, like, locking all the special effects and everything.
16:00 Andy Greenwald? Right. It's a summer release, right? End of June?
16:02 Chris Ryan? It was an effective teaser. I thought it kind of was, the Thing's banter was a throwback to some of the Weeden stuff.
16:09 Andy Greenwald? Mm-hmm.
16:10 Chris Ryan? You know, like, just that kind of, like, "Hey, we're all hanging out, we're all kind of actually, deep down, like, just like you, we're making dinner and stuff like that." I thought that was- Probably like the best foot forward for it because it offsets the like incredibly sincere stuff between Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby about family and stuff like that, which maybe I'm a little allergic to at this point.
16:32 Andy Greenwald? Allergic, yes. I also, though, I will always have a soft spot for the kind of like contemporary retconning of ideas that Stan Lee and others came up with when they were just smoking grass in the early 60s. Like, there's a guy made of rocks, and this trailer's like, he's always been our rock. I'm like, okay, that's pretty good.
16:50 Chris Ryan? Obviously, like, is the implication then that like this is taking place after they have become the Fantastic Four and like are?
16:57 Andy Greenwald? Yes, that it's not an origin story. Clearly, they filmed flashbacks to their space mission. And that allows Eben Musbackrak to appear actually in the movie. My children were asking, they're like, can he turn into the rock? I'm like, no, no, it's the tragic heart of the character. It's Ben Grimm from the Lower East Side, and yet he, and then they, to the degree to which they tuned out faster than you just did, was remarkable even for them.
17:23 Chris Ryan? What earth is this taking place on?
17:25 Andy Greenwald? I think that what we know about this is that this is a different multiversal earth that will inevitably be crashed into the others as we head towards.
17:32 Chris Ryan? So this is like, just, just so I understand, like, we're still gonna be messing around with like realities, like that's like necessary for like the Secret Wars thing and like.
17:41 Andy Greenwald? Yes, they, there's no indication that they are, that they've diver, they've removed Kang, but they have not diverged from the plan to essentially do the Jonathan Hickman Avengers leading into Secret Wars storyline where all the multiversal.
17:54 Chris Ryan? Which is pretty badass.
17:56 Andy Greenwald? It's awesome. Crash into each other, and that allows them to tell the biggest possible story, but also cross-pollinate with alternate versions of characters from previous movies, TV shows, films, and then come out of this theoretically with the plan for whatever the future, the friggin' 2030s plan for this universe is with, you know, Michael B. Jordan as Black Panther, as I keep throwing out, to be proved right about one thing once, or whatever else may, may come of this. But I think, you know, I think it is a, if you are a fan of this stuff and you are not as cynical as we often are, then I think this is actually a pretty good summer because Superman and Fantastic Four are both optimistic, brightly colored reboots, basically. Like, we're starting from scratch here, and Fantastic Four is going to crash into something else.
18:41 Chris Ryan? Zagging from reality.
18:42 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, I was gonna say, say, they didn't really read the room, but maybe we need it more than ever.
18:47 Chris Ryan? I got an email at our Watch Podcast inbox, which you can hit us up at [email protected] . I forgot to mention that earlier when I was talking about all of our projects, all of the verticals that we have. This comes from Angelo Spagnolo, and he says, are we underrating-
19:02 Andy Greenwald? Do you say Spagnolo?
19:03 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
19:04 Andy Greenwald? Any relation-
19:04 Chris Ryan? Not sp- not spelled the same way.
19:06 Andy Greenwald? As Spags, the coach. Okay, good. Because I wouldn't accept a question.
19:09 Chris Ryan? Are we underrating the crossover appeal of the new Captain America? Anecdote, my wife has no interest in Marvel movies, but we go to the theater often, so she's seen the Captain America Brave New World trailer five to six times. She said something I never would have expected, quote, "I'm compelled by a red Hulk. I don't know why." Wow. Anyway, could this movie be a lot bigger than I or anyone expects? In the absence of anything filling the Marvel void, I do wonder whether, like, we've just kind of come all the way around the track.
19:44 Andy Greenwald? I agree with this.
19:45 Chris Ryan? And now, like, people are gonna go see Brave New World, people seem really excited for Fantastic Four, people seem really, like, they're already like, ah, can you see Doom in the trailer?
19:53 Andy Greenwald? People are excited about rooting out secret reds in the US government. I feel like that one is in step with the moment. It's really funny, the red Hulk thing, because I think we touched on this, that like, I think in a different moment, they were planning on that being a secret of this movie.
20:11 Chris Ryan? There's a lot of people out there who are like, I didn't know the Hulk was red, and then you say, it's Harrison Ford, and they're like, you have my attention.
20:18 Andy Greenwald? My seven-year-old had that conversation with me this morning.
20:21 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
20:22 Andy Greenwald? Not the Harrison Ford part, she doesn't know what that is.
20:23 Chris Ryan? Many people in this country are wondering about red Hulk.
20:25 Andy Greenwald? But she's like, Hulks are red now? And I was like, yeah, well, the Hulk, blah, blah, blah. Then she stopped me, and she was like, why is it the Hulk? That's stupid.
20:31 Chris Ryan? Oh, interesting. She wants it to be Hulk.
20:33 Andy Greenwald? Man. Gosh, she just, just, from the mouths of babes, you know? That one's free, Fike.
20:38 Chris Ryan? There's like a younger generation of people who have started calling the West Village West Village. Did you know that?
20:44 Andy Greenwald? They've dropped the "the"?
20:45 Chris Ryan? Yeah, on Instagram.
20:46 Andy Greenwald? But that's like when New Yorkers come here, and they're like, I took 101. And you're like, no, no, it's the 101.
20:51 Chris Ryan? The 101.
20:51 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, it's the five. Is it okay to police language still? Can we do that? I will. I don't care.
20:57 Chris Ryan? That's the language you're worried about?
20:59 Andy Greenwald? What do I have to lose? Yeah, that's, that matters. I, I think that there are, there are moments when you or we can like Monday morning quarterback the industry and say like, ah, they, they marketed this thing really well. They, they read the moment. They were prepared with the story that people wanted to see, or they built up to this thing with the, you know, the, the serialized storytelling. And then there are times when it just feels like they, I guess, again, to their credit, lucked into something.
21:28 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
21:29 Andy Greenwald? And the brave new.
21:30 Chris Ryan? It's kind of like the Lakers. It's like, it's like, this is a team that had a title back in 2020 or whatever, like the bubble title was.
21:38 Andy Greenwald? 2020.
21:38 Chris Ryan? And kind of like dragged ass around for a couple of seasons and like looked fine, but not that great. And we're pretty good this year, but who knows? And you're like, ah, but like their time has passed. And soon LeBron will retire and AD, who knows if he can carry the team?
21:53 Andy Greenwald? Then what happened?
21:53 Chris Ryan? And then they get fucking Luka Doncic. And this is, that's what Marvel is with the Fantastic Four.
21:57 Andy Greenwald? People coming up to me on the street being like, sir, sir, why did Dalton Connect have to die for this?
22:02 Chris Ryan? They needed, they needed a lot from it.
22:04 Andy Greenwald? No, but what I mean in this case is it's not just a Fantastic Four thing. It's the Brave New World development went on for so long that it went from being like.
22:12 Chris Ryan? A disaster to like really considered.
22:14 Andy Greenwald? No, it went from we can do anything. We can make any, any one Captain America and make a movie and have it make this much money to being like, oh, maybe we can't. We will do a lot of reshoots. We will literally remake the movie multiple times. And then by the time they finish, it does seem to be like, hey, it's February. There's a Red Hulk. Cool. Like that actually is all it takes sometimes. And it was in the end, a smart pivot to do something that they've been afraid of, of doing in the past, which is, it's just a movie, man. It, it, I think they've said that there's no like big.
22:45 Chris Ryan? That you can almost go see this and not, you don't have to know what Loki, what happens on Loki season two.
22:50 Andy Greenwald? No, and frankly, I'm still a little unclear as to what happened in Loki season two.
22:55 Chris Ryan? I want to talk to you a little bit about another piece of Marvel content that came out recently. And that is the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man on Disney Plus. It's an animated series.
23:06 Andy Greenwald? It's the Hulk. It's your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.
23:09 Chris Ryan? Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.
23:12 Andy Greenwald? I can't believe you checked this out.
23:13 Chris Ryan? I had only heard about this show.
23:15 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
23:16 Chris Ryan? Because the kid who voices Spider-Man, when they were like, like, "Did you have any concerns about playing Spider-Man's voice?" And he was like, "I was worried it was gonna be like woke and annoying."
23:30 Andy Greenwald? Uh huh. I saw that he said that.
23:32 Chris Ryan? He's walked that back, whoever that kid is.
23:35 Andy Greenwald? He said he was just concerned it was gonna be woke. He didn't think it was gonna be annoying. Great. Well done.
23:43 Chris Ryan? I don't really like animated shows. I did this because you watched a couple of these, or one of these with your daughter.
23:49 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, this is Super Daddington episode, yes.
23:51 Chris Ryan? Really got into it. But then, I'll tell you what happened to me. A couple of the Street Team members, the CR Street Team guys out there, DM'd me, hit me up, threw up the signal, and were just like, "Just so you know, there's Sokovia content in here." Now, I sped through some episodes after the first one, just to see, you know, I wish you could do Ctrl+F Sokovia for any piece of content.
24:14 Andy Greenwald? Mostly, so, now, was your interest in this because you wanted to see how one of the most fundamental geopolitical moments in the MCU was going to be recreated in the Steve Ditko-esque cel-shaded animation style? Or were you wondering how those accords have filtered down to the street?
24:31 Chris Ryan? Yeah, what's the ripple effect on Queens?
24:33 Andy Greenwald? Okay, there it is.
24:34 Chris Ryan? I did not get to that. I know that there, this is taking place yet again in a different timeline, right? So, in this timeline, there is still like, the airport battle from some Civil War takes place later in the series.
24:49 Andy Greenwald? Okay.
24:50 Chris Ryan? But I didn't catch any major Sokovia stuff yet. I've only really watched, like-
24:54 Andy Greenwald? Look at the things you do servicing.
24:56 Chris Ryan? This is a useless piece of podcasting by me, because I was like, there was something I was interested in that I didn't diligently seek out.
25:01 Andy Greenwald? Okay. Do you want to seed the floor? You good?
25:06 Chris Ryan? Tell me about how this brought you closer to your child.
25:08 Andy Greenwald? It genuinely did. Like, this is always gonna bleed into this, but like, it is kind of amazing that my younger daughter is doing things that I never thought would happen as a parent, which is like, "Tell me about the X-Men." I was like, pulled the car over. I was like, "You're gonna be late for school today." I've waited for this my entire-
25:26 Chris Ryan? I'll write a note.
25:27 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, they'll understand.
25:30 Andy Greenwald? So, she does like this stuff and is interested in like, the interconnected stuff. And we've talked about before that like, the Spider-verse movies are just catnip for them. They love those movies, both because they're exciting and interconnected, but also they're funny and awesome. So she was prepped as a Spider-Man fan. But the thing about the show, and it's show run by a guy called Jeff Trammell,
25:51 Andy Greenwald? I think it really hits a fantastic sweet spot between hard fandom and just light entertainment. It has a lot of style. I was saying, it is kind of like Ditko-esque in the way that it looks retro, but it's also-
26:02 Chris Ryan? Yeah, it looks like newspaper print.
26:04 Andy Greenwald? But it's fun to me to see the way, yes, but the way that they have sort of picked and chosen the bits and pieces of 60 years plus of Spider-Man mythology to do what they want with it.
26:17 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
26:17 Andy Greenwald? So Peter Parker is a kid, he is in Queens. They've just chosen to do the young, hot Marisa Tomei-style Aunt May, which I know got your attention. In this show, Norman Osborn, who is traditionally a villain, may still be, is now more like the Tony Stark mentor that was from the MCU movies. Our guy Coleman Domingo following up Sing Sing with a vocal performance as Norman Osborn in this, which is fun to see. But also, they've just done little things that, you know, are completely original, little Easter eggs that don't matter as Easter eggs. Like, Peter Parker's best, really only friend in high school is Nico Minoru, who is a character in The Runaways. And historically has no connection to Spider-Man, but makes sense. They're similar age, kinda outcast vibes.
27:02 Andy Greenwald? And it was, I, it was really fun watching the show. This is not moving any large prestige TV needle, it's just very high-quality, all-ages entertainment that drew me in on a dramatic level more than I expected.
27:18 Chris Ryan? What I imagine is that if I had a kid- I would, uh...
27:22 Andy Greenwald? Well, no, let's play this out. You had a, you have a 15-year-old ward who you want to stick at shortstop.
27:28 Chris Ryan? I was trying to decide between wrestling and acting.
27:30 Andy Greenwald? And you're like, "I've got a novel for you that's about both and sexual experiences."
27:35 Chris Ryan? I wonder whether or not your unsatiable appetite for Spider-Man origin stories is because you get to experiencing them the first time through your kids. Do you know what I mean?
27:45 Andy Greenwald? I mean, I definitely am having-
27:46 Chris Ryan? Like, I started this thing up and aside from like, whatever, I was just like, "I can't watch this kid in high school get bit by a spider again." Like, this is like, I've, I've definitely nailed that down.
27:55 Andy Greenwald? This time, the spider was interdimensional and involved a fight with Doctor Strange.
27:58 Chris Ryan? And I enjoyed the Doctor Strange that was like, less British.
28:02 Andy Greenwald? Well, I mean, he's never British.
28:03 Chris Ryan? Yeah, but you know what, like, deep down he is. You know what I mean?
28:06 Andy Greenwald? Cause of the cummerbells?
28:06 Chris Ryan? Yeah, you know, like, you know, he's just like, holding on for dear life.
28:10 Andy Greenwald? Do you feel the way about Doctor Strange that Trump feels about the Panama Canal? Like, it needs to be ours or Greenland is just like, has always been ours?
28:19 Chris Ryan? Doctor Strange is of great military value to us.
28:22 Andy Greenwald? Tariffs on the UK until we reclaim Strange?
28:25 Chris Ryan? I also, I just want to point out, I just think that like, the Doctor Strange is essentially like, a pretty good wizard with an incredible cape.
28:35 Andy Greenwald? Well, that, yeah, okay.
28:36 Chris Ryan? As represented in this show and I think now is also making me rethink all I know about Doctor Strange.
28:41 Andy Greenwald? Or about capes?
28:42 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
28:43 Andy Greenwald? Are you ready? We're on camera now. Are you ready to like, back that up?
28:45 Chris Ryan? If the Eagles win, I'll wear a cape on Monday.
28:47 Andy Greenwald? I love that. Do you have one on?
28:49 Chris Ryan? I will knit one from scratch, yeah.
28:52 Andy Greenwald? I, I think that, I, I find this interesting. I'll try to keep it at a minimum on the podcast. But it is interesting to reengage with MCU with my kids and see what they respond to, what they don't, what has, what I feel has aged well and what hasn't. Like, they're very, they very much enjoyed the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, which on rewatches are super fun. So there is an element of that, but I also think that what the show-
29:13 Chris Ryan? Isn't the third one not fun, though?
29:14 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, we haven't done the third one yet. Weirdly, for children, they like animals and maybe don't want to watch them be tortured in CGI glory. Um, I just think that this is of a piece with what we were saying about Fantastic Four and Superman, which is, there is, for me- Me, anyway, and for a bunch of people, there is still mileage in the core conceit of these things when they are not just so obviously, you know, massive money plays for streaming IP dominance with just the weight of everything riding on their shoulders. This is just, yeah, I still like, you know what? I still like my Spider-Man, Young and Troubled. Maybe like a protagonist in an Adam Ross novel.
29:53 Chris Ryan? Sure.
29:53 Andy Greenwald? You know? I just think it's a pretty good show.
29:57 Chris Ryan? The animated stuff has been good. You didn't like X-Men 97 that much.
30:01 Andy Greenwald? I liked it, but I am not the audience because that, not my X-Men. Truly, though, like, I didn't watch that cartoon.
30:08 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
30:09 Andy Greenwald? But the fact that it's sort of celebratory in that mode seems great to me. I'm happy. I'm happy for people.
30:16 Chris Ryan? You know, we're talking about Spider-Man, we're talking about these legacy characters being reintroduced. I wanted to throw another news item at you, which has some Marvel connective tissue.
30:24 Andy Greenwald? Okay, I'm ready for news.
30:26 Chris Ryan? And this was from a Variety story earlier in the week that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is nearing a pilot order at Hulu. This would be a reboot that Sarah Michelle Gellar would be coming back for. And most noticeably, or notably, is that Chloe Zhao, director of Nomadland.
30:46 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
30:47 Chris Ryan? But also The Eternals.
30:48 Andy Greenwald? That's how I know her.
30:49 Chris Ryan? Would be attached to direct at least the pilot and assume, I assume, play some role in.
30:54 Andy Greenwald? It's weird, that didn't come up when we were in Norway with her.
30:56 Chris Ryan? No.
30:56 Andy Greenwald? Last year.
30:57 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
30:57 Andy Greenwald? Somehow.
30:57 Chris Ryan? She didn't mention it to us.
30:58 Andy Greenwald? She kept it, kept it quiet.
30:59 Chris Ryan? She was just like, Andy, I know you really appreciated the football sequence in Eternals.
31:04 Andy Greenwald? No, I know you appreciated Brian Tyree Henry's performance.
31:08 Chris Ryan? This is, I love Buffy.
31:10 Andy Greenwald? Are you a Buffy guy?
31:11 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
31:11 Andy Greenwald? This is like.
31:12 Chris Ryan? Buffy's incredible television.
31:13 Andy Greenwald? You and Battlestar, like, you have these secret, kind of like, Ringer verse Aje's passions.
31:18 Chris Ryan? It's more stuff that, like, Battlestar, I legit think is one of the best shows of. The last 20 years.
31:23 Andy Greenwald? Mm hmm.
31:24 Chris Ryan? Buffy is probably also that, um, obviously is a different kind of television making than for the kind we talk about now in terms of it's it was a long running, you know, like a WB show.
31:36 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
31:37 Chris Ryan? Joss Whedon is not a part of this, uh, so if that is the number one reason why you watched Buffy is the banter and the repartee and everything, I don't know what this is gonna be. Chloe Zhao's participation in this is very interesting to me and kind of like makes me 10 times more curious as to like how you would want to interrogate this character or whether or not it's a new generation of vampire slayers that SMG is kind of over like, you know, shepherding through or.
32:05 Andy Greenwald? And we should say Sisters Nora and, uh, Lila Zuckerman, who show ran, uh, Poker Face, wrote the script and they're veteran TV writers.
32:12 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
32:14 Andy Greenwald? I mean, I, I think it's interesting.
32:15 Chris Ryan? Beyond the Buffy part.
32:17 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
32:17 Chris Ryan? Uh, it is, every six weeks, we basically do a kind of three minute bit on the pod about a show from our lives that is, uh, obviously the option is running up and they're like, let's, let's, let's.
32:31 Andy Greenwald? On our lives?
32:32 Chris Ryan? No, but like Friday Night Lights.
32:34 Andy Greenwald? Oh, sure.
32:34 Chris Ryan? The reboot, you know, uh, like now Buffy.
32:38 Andy Greenwald? Mm hmm.
32:38 Chris Ryan? I think that we're seeing like a lot of like when television worked, you know, like, let's start that again.
32:43 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
32:44 Chris Ryan? You know, obviously Suits LA is about to start. What do you think of it as like more of an industry story rather than like whether or not you're excited about Buffy coming back?
32:51 Andy Greenwald? I think it's incredibly hard to, to capture lightning in a bottle once, let alone twice. And I think that we've seen with a lot of these reboots, it can be very, very tricky. You know, there were a bunch, a bunch of projects were announced with similarly big fanfare and either never came to fruition or just kind of appeared and disappeared and trickled away. Um, weirdly, we didn't cover the ignominious end of the Frasier reboot, which I believe is not moving forward, but like that is a, that is an example that I think is relevant only because, uh, not just that it's a reboot with a same actor playing an older version of the character, but a reminder that, um, a new version of a show isn't just competing with every other show that's on the air, it's competing with the original version.
33:35 Chris Ryan? Sure.
33:36 Andy Greenwald? So the fact that Frasier remains popular doesn't mean people wanted to see slightly older Frasier. Similarly, people are still finding Buffy.
33:44 Chris Ryan? That's the problem with it.
33:45 Andy Greenwald? That was the major problem.
33:46 Chris Ryan? What young Frasier.
33:47 Andy Greenwald? I do think Helsey Grammer would agree with our take on Dr. Strange.
33:50 Chris Ryan? Why not do young Frasier?
33:52 Andy Greenwald? Oh, like Young Sheldon?
33:53 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
33:53 Andy Greenwald? Like, he's just kind of an obnoxious know-it-all. Like, yeah, this is a great idea.
33:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
33:59 Andy Greenwald? And like, but like, he would have to be younger than he was on Cheers.
34:03 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
34:04 Andy Greenwald? So like him in graduate school.
34:05 Chris Ryan? Full head of hair, you know?
34:06 Andy Greenwald? Yeah. I'm having trouble because I picturing the show you're pitching versus what we know about young Kelsey Grammer's behavior, which I think was not very Frasier-esque. So I, I think you and I would probably be more interested in young Kelsey. As a television show, like an 80s period piece.
34:26 Andy Greenwald? No, but do you know what I mean? Like Buffy is still out there for people to watch and discover.
34:30 Chris Ryan? Yes, I think that-
34:31 Andy Greenwald? So what is the new way into it, or are we just trying to do more of the same? And then again, Chloe, this is all unknowable because the Chloe Jau involvement suggests like, oh, is this a, is this an Oscar-winning pedigree? Or is the truth more likely, as disclosed in some of the press releases, this was her favorite show, growing up. And she might not want to show what it would be like if Buffy was actually, could only defecate in a bucket.
34:56 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
34:56 Andy Greenwald? She might just want to make-
34:58 Chris Ryan? Buffy worked at an Amazon warehouse.
34:59 Andy Greenwald? She might just, now, now I'm listening, but she just might want to bring it all back.
35:04 Chris Ryan? Sure.
35:04 Andy Greenwald? Work with her friends.
35:05 Chris Ryan? Good for her.
35:06 Andy Greenwald? We don't know. But do you feel Buffy is in the same category as FNL in terms of like-
35:10 Chris Ryan? As you were just talking-
35:11 Andy Greenwald? This is holy.
35:11 Chris Ryan? I think it's a pretty, it's a pretty important show to a lot of people. I love, I love it. I, I can't, I don't nearly have an encyclopedic knowledge of it, but like, I remember it being on a lot in my house and just really, I've, I've always enjoyed it. There are very few shows that have successfully come back in any way. I actually think Veronica Mars was an example of a show that did it right. They've done, they did this sort of crowdfunded movie that was very much fan service. But when they actually brought back like a kind of grizzled, fucked up Veronica that had to do like an LA noir story, I was like, actually, like, this is pretty cool.
35:47 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
35:48 Chris Ryan? But for the most part, when people clamor for, you know, that, that extra season, that bring it all back. I just think you see too many of the seams where you're like, when you watch Party Down, and you're just like, man.
36:01 Andy Greenwald? That's a great example.
36:02 Chris Ryan? I think Lizzie Kaplan was like, super important to the show. And also, the show was about these people at this age and this point in their life.
36:10 Andy Greenwald? It's very different to see when people who are on the cusp of maybe almost losing their shot versus people well into their 40s and 50s, still doing a podcast, for example.
36:20 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
36:20 Andy Greenwald? And just, I'm sorry.
36:21 Chris Ryan? But we never stopped. That's the thing.
36:23 Andy Greenwald? That's key. I think the other example of that would be Justified.
36:27 Chris Ryan? Yes.
36:27 Andy Greenwald? Right? Which is, we praise to high heaven, everything about the conception of the reboot. Like, you could just take another Elmore Leonard novel, and you can update it to the present moment, and have it, you know, it's never been like, a rip from the headline show, but like, what would it mean for Rayland to be older, and in a different city, and in a different place in time? And we watched it, and we were like, it wasn't as good as Justified. It was all well-intentioned, right?
36:50 Chris Ryan? Yeah, it just didn't have, um, I don't think it just, it just didn't have that, like, frisson that Justified had. And I think Justified got a, an ascending to actors, like, they caught all of them, Goggins, like, at a perfect time, and had the perfect sort of field of play for them to like, show their, show their wares on. Uh, it's a very mixed metaphor.
37:13 Andy Greenwald? How's your Natalie Z stock?
37:14 Chris Ryan? I'm still holding.
37:15 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, you gotta hold.
37:16 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
37:17 Andy Greenwald? That's a long play. I agree.
37:18 Chris Ryan? Shhh. That's all I have, as far as non-Pit-related content. Are you watching anything else? Is there anything else that we're not talking about? I'm watching Rogue Heroes. Shorzy's coming back soon.
37:29 Andy Greenwald? I thought it was back.
37:30 Chris Ryan? It's back in Canada.
37:32 Andy Greenwald? Oh.
37:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah. Trudeau's holding it back from us.
37:35 Andy Greenwald? I was gonna say, is that part of, has that been affected? By recent political maneuverings?
37:39 Chris Ryan? I don't know. Um.
37:40 Andy Greenwald? Release the cut.
37:41 Chris Ryan? Yeah, Paradise I'm watching.
37:44 Andy Greenwald? I mean, I, I could tell you that I'm watching other television shows, but I would be lying. I'm just watching, uh, Philadelphia Eagles social media content.
37:51 Chris Ryan? I feel like we need to get through Sunday before we can, we can do a full accounting of, of what you should be spending your time doing.
37:56 Andy Greenwald? It's worth noting that if the Eagles win, my definition of catching up on Paradise may be different.
38:02 Chris Ryan? Have you actually considered what will happen to you if they win?
38:06 Andy Greenwald? I think it will, like, do I think I will actually leave my body?
38:09 Chris Ryan? Like you said, you were like, the 17 Super Bowl exists as a kind of dream for you. Like, have you thought, like, it was like, you were like, I almost didn't feel like you participated in that season.
38:19 Andy Greenwald? I do feel that way.
38:21 Chris Ryan? This season, you have actively participated in it.
38:23 Andy Greenwald? I've been dangerously participating for the last few seasons. I don't know. I mean, do you? I mean, I don't.
38:30 Chris Ryan? God, I can't believe we're talking about this again.
38:32 Andy Greenwald? I don't know. I will, I, I think that, I feel confident in this team. And I actually think they're going to win. You know, and I was watching a press conference with President Harris the other day, and it made me feel good about my optimism. You know, and my rock solid belief in things that I support.
38:49 Andy Greenwald? I know, I don't know what'll happen. It always feels, I mean, this is a terrible thing to say. Maybe most people are like this. This isn't like a Philadelphia thing, but like, it feels more familiar and more expected to lose. So I would like to win very much.
39:02 Chris Ryan? I think there's something about being out here that just, it makes it like, if we win or we lose, nobody's gonna care about us. You know, like, I do, yeah, I wish we were in Philadelphia. Like, if we show up at a bar on Sunday at 8:00 PM and we're just like, let's get fucking celebration drinks going.
39:18 Andy Greenwald? 8:00 PM?
39:20 Chris Ryan? When's the game gonna be over?
39:21 Andy Greenwald? Oh, no, I agree. I didn't know if you meant 8:00 AM or 8:00 PM. I feel like it would be different.
39:24 Chris Ryan? Yeah, if we show up at like 8:00 PM at a bar and we're like, let's go, and everybody's gonna be like, it's Sunday.
39:28 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, we gotta drive. It might be a little rainy tomorrow.
39:30 Chris Ryan? Like, we have like a bruschetta you guys can have, you know, like?
39:32 Andy Greenwald? I mean, the example that I use when I tell people about what it's like to live here is, and we've talked about this probably on the pod. But a couple of years ago, you very kindly got tickets to see Phillies Dodgers game on my birthday or around my birthday. And it was you, me, Fantasy and Zach Baron.
39:47 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah, I remember Sean was very nice about that.
39:49 Andy Greenwald? Sean was so, Sean is always a great person to watch Philadelphia sports with, as a New Yorker. And the Phillies were cruising to a win, and we were enjoying a nice $35 beer. Yeah, but really, we were paying it forward for the Dodgers, you know, just helping them build their nest egg.
40:04 Chris Ryan? Anything I could do for that deferred payment.
40:06 Andy Greenwald? And we were winning, and I was like, what a nice birthday present this was, and it felt great. You know, it's a beautiful place to watch a ballgame, 70-degree weather, like, sitting in a warm bathtub. Water and then in the ninth inning, I believe the Dodgers hit back to back to back home runs.
40:20 Chris Ryan? Yes.
40:21 Andy Greenwald? Rip rip the our heart from our chest like the villain in Last of the Mohicans.
40:24 Chris Ryan? The early season game.
40:26 Andy Greenwald? No, I didn't mean that, but it was like.
40:27 Chris Ryan? Yeah, we we lost. Yeah.
40:28 Andy Greenwald? My point was there was something so narcotizing about the California air.
40:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
40:32 Andy Greenwald? I was like, this is fine. It literally was. I was the this is fine dog. And I do think that that does make a difference here.
40:38 Chris Ryan? I remember when the Eagles won the Super Bowl last time.
40:43 Andy Greenwald? What a thing to say, by the way.
40:45 Chris Ryan? I went home and watched the Cloverfield movie that was dropping on Netflix that night.
40:49 Andy Greenwald? Oh, yeah, you had to work.
40:50 Chris Ryan? I didn't have to. I love content. I love I love storytelling.
40:54 Andy Greenwald? Do you? So do you have a plan like do you are? Is your Sunday tightly scripted after the the final whistle? Do you have things that you know you're gonna have to get into?
41:05 Chris Ryan? Oh, like do I then go home and watch Severance kind of thing?
41:08 Andy Greenwald? Because it's earlier here than it is in the East Coast.
41:10 Chris Ryan? Um, I think if they win, I'll just spend the night celebrating and watching the celebrations.
41:16 Andy Greenwald? At my house?
41:17 Chris Ryan? Sure.
41:18 Andy Greenwald? Great.
41:18 Chris Ryan? Wherever.
41:19 Andy Greenwald? I heard the wherever.
41:20 Chris Ryan? If they lose, I think it'll be like a like handshake and then I go home and then it's just like I'll watch Rock Heroes or something.
41:29 Andy Greenwald? Yes. Okay. It'll be a harder road for me because my children are actively rooting for the Chiefs because of Taylor Swift.
41:35 Chris Ryan? I don't want to talk about that. I don't know if I can be polite about that.
41:37 Andy Greenwald? I don't think you should be. I think I think life's been pretty good for them, you know, and I feel like we have to.
41:43 Andy Greenwald? They have to have some of the legacy of where we're from.
41:47 Chris Ryan? Let's talk about the pit.
41:49 Andy Greenwald? Best.
41:49 Chris Ryan? A hard show to maybe do weekly recaps of, I have realized, but like still nonetheless. Had a lot to recommend and a lot to love about this episode. I am obviously I thought four was among the best episodes of the year.
42:03 Andy Greenwald? Incredible.
42:04 Chris Ryan? Um, and we talked about five a bit, right?
42:07 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, I mean, I don't think we did.
42:08 Chris Ryan? We did four and then we like mentioned five, I think.
42:10 Andy Greenwald? I I think the challenge of that was the fact that we both thought four was so outrageously exceptional, just so phenomenal. Um, and five was not. Five was a fine episode of a show that we are growing to love. And in comparison to four, it was fairly pedestrian.
42:27 Chris Ryan? Sure.
42:28 Andy Greenwald? Right? Um, but.
42:31 Chris Ryan? So we're talking about six.
42:32 Andy Greenwald? In a way, six, I mean, it's very old fashioned to have this kind of relationship to a TV show, not just that it's weekly, but that like that there are highs and there are, the highs can be very high and the lows aren't too low. I thought that this episode, broadly speaking, was, it wasn't TV at its best, the way Moments of Four were, but it was absolutely the pit at its best, in that it had scenes that were excruciating, relatable, human, present, no wily at its best, specifically the scene when he finally tells, not that he had been avoiding it, but he was-
43:07 Chris Ryan? The teenage boy's mom.
43:07 Andy Greenwald? The parents of the teenage, of the teenage boy who had the accidental drug overdose, that they've done everything now-
43:14 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
43:15 Andy Greenwald? To determine the fact that he is brain dead and they need to begin to process this. That scene, like the previous scene of letting go and saying goodbye, was just beautifully understated, incredibly performed, devastating and gripping to watch. And then, this is also an episode that ends with, "Hey, be careful. Are you fighting?" credits. Like, you know what I mean? Like, this is TV.
43:36 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
43:37 Andy Greenwald? The highest of highs out of nowhere, and then they're like, "Okay, we gotta keep these trains moving." I find that, that symbiosis increasingly, not just pleasant in the sense that it's like the way we used to watch things, but I'm very, very emotionally attached to it now. I'm loving the experience of watching the show week to week with its, with its, it's not a roller coaster, but with its ups and downs.
44:01 Chris Ryan? Well, it's also very cool, because I think in a traditional medical procedural, you would have, each patient gets introduced at the beginning of the episode and then they're-
44:10 Andy Greenwald? Wrapped up.
44:11 Chris Ryan? It gets concluded at the end of the episode, whereas the teenage girl who's trying to terminate her pregnancy, like, she is, she's been there for like an episode and a half. Obviously, the teenage boy who overdosed on fentanyl has been there from the beginning of the season, pretty much, I think. And then you're starting to see certain plotlines come to fruition a little bit like this sort of presence of Javadi's mom, who's a big wig at the hospital. You're learning a little bit more about the doctors. I really, like, my favorite part of this episode was Santos dropping a scalpel into Garcia's foot.
44:45 Andy Greenwald? I wanted to talk about that, cuz.
44:46 Chris Ryan? I didn't really ever think about that being something that could happen at a hospital, but I guess like.
44:50 Andy Greenwald? Really? With all the sharps around?
44:52 Chris Ryan? Well, if I was a doctor, I would do that to people all the time, cuz I'm a little bit of a butter fingers, which is probably why I'm not a doctor among.
45:00 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, I mean.
45:01 Chris Ryan? Lack of understanding of chemistry and biology.
45:04 Andy Greenwald? Part of the show does make me so glad that like, human beings are so varied and diverse in their interests and experience. And that we self-select in ways that allow us to have most jobs covered, you know? Certainly not in terms of international aid anymore, but other than that, we have it pretty much on lockdown. Like, even the least likely character, I'm blanking on her name, Javadi's daughter.
45:28 Chris Ryan? Javadi, what's, like, Nadia, I think is her name.
45:30 Andy Greenwald? Oh, that's, oh, yes.
45:31 Chris Ryan? Javadi's her last name, yes.
45:34 Andy Greenwald? Javadi Junior, that despite, you know, her own experiences and she faints earlier and she's under a lot of pressure. She's like, oh, could I please have a chance to correct this hip displacement? Okay. Like, there are times in all of our lives when we are asked to do things when a sense of self-knowledge can be respectful to everyone. Like, no, I would not like to do that. But there are people who are like, sick, that's cool.
45:58 Chris Ryan? I mean, I was wondering also, like, I know why we have anesthesia, you know, cuz it's because pain-wise, we shouldn't be awake for certain things. But I think it would also be like, you don't wanna know what goes on behind the scenes here with all the chaos and stuff like that. You should be knocked out for that.
46:15 Andy Greenwald? You shouldn't be observing it. Now, I thought about that too in this episode, that like, when hypothetically, maybe it happens to all of us, you know, at one time or another. When we are brought in. I'll use eye statements when I am inevitably brought in because you've dropped six knives on me in our Super Bowl celebration on Sunday. And you know, you're sort of like at the mercy of everyone and your eyes are darting around like, I'd like to think that the adrenaline and endorphins and everything are so crazy, you won't really remember.
46:43 Chris Ryan? Yeah, Garcia operating through a scalpel to the foot is.
46:47 Andy Greenwald? I will also say, and I know drugs have changed and medicine has changed to a degree that I haven't re-watched ER recently to know, but the most said words on this show are in order propofol, ketamine and fentanyl.
47:01 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
47:03 Andy Greenwald? They seem, because you know, you read like, remember when there was like the, like the Sacklers and Oxycontin, there was a whole move of like, we have to curb the automatic prescription of these painkillers.
47:13 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I think they're trying to keep it like where it's like, you're not doing it like outside of the hospital.
47:17 Andy Greenwald? But they're real quick to be like, hey, what are you in for sore throat, morphine drip?
47:21 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
47:21 Andy Greenwald? You know what I mean? Like, I get it. It seems pretty smart considering the chaos that's going on. But then you also have moments, like in this episode, when there's the guy who, oh, no, it's the, it's the kids who crashed the ambulance.
47:33 Chris Ryan? The frat boys.
47:35 Andy Greenwald? I did not expect this, Zach, that they're just like, I just, I just wanted him to be happy and be liked.
47:40 Chris Ryan? Yeah, he's like outsider.
47:41 Andy Greenwald? No, I'm going to jail. Kind of you should. I know that we're, everyone deserves good medical treatment, but like, maybe, maybe that's okay. Anyway, there's the.
47:52 Chris Ryan? You can have both.
47:53 Andy Greenwald? That's one, that's the kid, the driver is the one whose collarbone, right, has collapsed into his, his like trachea.
47:59 Chris Ryan? Yes.
48:00 Andy Greenwald? And so Dr. Hadi, whose name I forget.
48:02 Chris Ryan? Dr. Langdon.
48:03 Andy Greenwald? Thank you. I like mine better. Grabs the bone with forceps and pulls it up. And he says.
48:10 Chris Ryan? My wife did not like that.
48:11 Andy Greenwald? This part is seared into my mind. This is going to hurt. You know what I mean?
48:17 Andy Greenwald? In that moment, the kid's like-
48:17 Chris Ryan? I think he says that this is gonna burn a little bit.
48:19 Andy Greenwald? No, no, Chris, I rewatched.
48:21 Chris Ryan? Oh, you did?
48:22 Andy Greenwald? No, I didn't. I'm not, I'm chicken. I didn't rewatch. But I was dialed in at that moment. There was no second screening. He's like, "We're going to put some anesthetic. That will burn a little bit."
48:31 Chris Ryan? Oh, okay.
48:32 Andy Greenwald? But the physically wrenching of your chest bone out of your breathing hole is gonna hurt. And the kid just nods. Do you think in that moment, hypothetical, you're flat on your back, you've classic joyride with frat bros? I mean, that was your experience.
48:48 Chris Ryan? My collarbone is blocking my trachea.
48:50 Andy Greenwald? And a doctor is looming over you with forceps and he's like, "Hey, quick heads up, just wanna, you know, communicate, it's important. This is going to hurt."
48:57 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
48:58 Andy Greenwald? What is your reaction, do you think, in the moment?
49:02 Chris Ryan? Get more ketamine, please. Like, just, just full-
49:05 Andy Greenwald? Just Michael Jackson me. Just get the propofol drip. I think that I trust, much like the mother of the kid with the twisted scrotum, I think I do have that relationship with-
49:16 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I have to admit-
49:17 Andy Greenwald? Medical professionals. Where I'm like, "Oh, you're here? Thank you." I would nod. I would nod.
49:21 Chris Ryan? My wife was like, I blanched at that. Like, I was super into the collarbone thing. And when the scrotum torsion happened, I was like, "Oh, this is a lot."
49:34 Andy Greenwald? And she was fine with it?
49:36 Chris Ryan? She was just like, "You're so, you guys and your precious balls, basically." Like, you know, like, "This is what you can't take." And I was like, "Yeah, but like..."
49:44 Andy Greenwald? Is that so wrong?
49:45 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I mean, it's pretty traumatizing, man.
49:47 Andy Greenwald? Why can't everybody have sensitive parts?
49:49 Chris Ryan? I was, when I, like, I just think it's, I just think it's a thing that I don't wanna contemplate.
49:56 Andy Greenwald? Okay, so maybe you've answered, maybe you've answered the question that I was gonna ask you, which is,
50:03 Andy Greenwald? gun to your head or scalpel to your foot?
50:05 Chris Ryan? Well, also, doesn't Collins go the wrong way the first time?
50:09 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, so I'm saying, okay, let's assume that Collins goes the right way. Scalpel to your foot, would you rather have Dr. Langdon with forceps lifting your collarbone? Or would you rather have Dr. Collins with, let's be honest, a little bit of a smirk on her face, detuning the piano?
50:26 Chris Ryan? I definitely, 100 times out of 100, want my collarbone, cuz that's also like a dope story.
50:31 Andy Greenwald? You don't think that's a good story?
50:32 Chris Ryan? You never pay for a drink again if you have that story. If you're like, "My ball got wrapped around like the wrong part of the tree bark," like, that's fucking terrible, dude.
50:43 Chris Ryan? But-
50:45 Andy Greenwald? What would the main character of Adam Ross's play choose?
50:50 Chris Ryan? What would Optimus Prime have wanted?
50:52 Andy Greenwald? Oh, he'd do anything for his people. He doesn't care. He's their leader, but like.
50:57 Chris Ryan? I'm sure Kai is thrilled.
50:58 Andy Greenwald? Would you rather, Kai made a terrible mistake a moment ago. Let's just let everyone know. She texted us both in real time and was like, the brake, the emergency brakes are off.
51:06 Chris Ryan? Yeah, you guys don't have, there's no, no studio conflict.
51:09 Andy Greenwald? Coming in here. Um, okay. Do you, is your answer the same collarbone or ball? If you know you're going to prison as soon as the collarbone is lifted?
51:18 Chris Ryan? Absolutely.
51:19 Andy Greenwald? You would still rather that?
51:20 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
51:21 Andy Greenwald? Even though.
51:22 Chris Ryan? Wait, only, wait, if I have, if I have ball.
51:25 Andy Greenwald? Okay, let's take away.
51:26 Chris Ryan? A ball injury, no prison. Collarbone injury, prison.
51:30 Andy Greenwald? Yes.
51:32 Andy Greenwald? And ball injury resolves pretty quickly. It's like a couple.
51:35 Chris Ryan? I feel like I honestly, like, I just have read and watched so much prison stuff recently that I just, not recently, but over the course of my life that I just don't want to go.
51:43 Andy Greenwald? Which like, are you talking like Rachel Kushner's The Mars Room? Are you talking about prison movies on Cinemax?
51:49 Chris Ryan? Yeah, you know, that, all of it. Yeah. Nobody is like, prison's cool.
51:53 Andy Greenwald? The one, you know, I'm really interested though, in your kind of Department of Governmental Efficiency read on Dr. Collins in the ball scene because she is a little bit like, you got two of them, big boy. You know what I mean?
52:07 Chris Ryan? Well, I think given everything that they're experiencing at the ER that day, you know, this kid, as long as he doesn't have some sort of major problem is like, pretty low. I will say that like, it's interesting to see like, I wonder sometimes whether or not, like, you keep seeing in the waiting room and there's like our, our boy who's just been sitting out there with his chest pains for like hours, right?
52:31 Chris Ryan? Your boy. But then they get like, like randos get in, you know what I mean? Like.
52:37 Andy Greenwald? Well, that's why they're out there doing triage. They're like.
52:39 Chris Ryan? I guess so.
52:39 Andy Greenwald? They're like, this guy seems like a dickhead, um, so he can sit with it. This prince, this young prince.
52:46 Chris Ryan? Who got his ball wrapped around.
52:47 Andy Greenwald? Has just played tetherball in the wrong direction. And he needs to be addressed. I appreciated that system. It does seem to be-
52:54 Chris Ryan? I wonder if there's gonna be some more interrogation of what happened there.
52:58 Andy Greenwald? With the ball?
52:59 Chris Ryan? Yeah, with him. Like, how did that happen?
53:01 Andy Greenwald? Well, this is actually a weird way of saying something that I, this is not a concern troll. This is something I wonder in terms of the ratio of storytelling. Like, when the guy came in, having fallen off the ladder, and seemed relatively fine and they avoided a problem, when they were wheeling him back from the CAT scan, I was like, he's definitely gonna go tacky cardic-
53:24 Chris Ryan? Tacky cardic, yeah.
53:24 Andy Greenwald? Galacticus here, you know? How many ones and dones can we actually have to keep us on our toes?
53:32 Chris Ryan? The show's dedication to realism gets tested when it becomes, you know, when it's like-
53:36 Andy Greenwald? When everything is-
53:37 Chris Ryan? 15 episodes and you gotta have some cool stuff happen.
53:40 Andy Greenwald? Last thing here, that same guy, the guy who fell off the ladder, got a lot of good jokes about pay someone to do the home reno, completely agree. When the wife and daughter come, and the daughter's like, "I would like to see my father", and the mother's like, "He'll be fine. The doctors have it."
53:56 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
53:56 Andy Greenwald? Whose side are you on there? Who you got?
53:58 Chris Ryan? Uh... I am on, wait, if I'm the doctor-
54:03 Andy Greenwald? No, no. Like, do you feel like, are you mom or daughter in that case? Do you feel like you'd like to see your loved one regardless? Or do you feel like you're more team mom being like-
54:14 Chris Ryan? Oh, I'd like to, I'd like to see them.
54:15 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, that is my, that was my nightmare.
54:18 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
54:18 Andy Greenwald? That was my nightmare. Actually, no, my number one nightmare is my daughters will be like, "That's fine."
54:21 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
54:22 Andy Greenwald? "He'll be okay. He never should have been on a ladder."
54:24 Chris Ryan? Um, we can wrap it up there?
54:25 Andy Greenwald? We could. Are we sure we should?
54:27 Chris Ryan? I mean, we can just keep talking about the Super Bowl until it happens, if you want to. I will say that we'll be back on Monday.
54:34 Andy Greenwald? One way or another.
54:35 Chris Ryan? And I'm sure we'll have some thoughts on the game, but we'll also have some thoughts on Severance, and maybe another show, Paradise, is possible.
54:41 Andy Greenwald? I think we gotta catch up on Paradise.
54:43 Chris Ryan? I know you really wanna do ride along.
54:44 Andy Greenwald? I feel like it's interesting to me, and I like the half hour format very much. Let me just say. Also, generally, Chris, there are a number of movie trailers and things and-
54:56 Chris Ryan? Usually come out during the Super Bowl. We can weigh in on Kendrick Lamar's halftime performance. Thank you to Kaia. Thank you to Chris. We'll be back on Monday.
55:03 Andy Greenwald? Go Birds.
55:04 Chris Ryan? Go Birds.
Previous Grammys Recap, 'Severance' S2E3, and What's Going on in 'Paradise'? Next The Eagles Win! Plus, Super Bowl Trailers and ‘Severance’ S2E4. Page updated November 4, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated