Pod Insights The Watch Is There Any Room Left for Innovation in the TV Industry? And More Questions from a Thanksgiving Mailbag. About this episode Chris and Andy open up the mailbag to answer questions about the TV industry. They discuss if there's room left for TV innovation in this era of purse-tightening throughout the industry (5:46), what their media diets would look like if they weren't covering TV and movies professionally (25:21), and shows that they have loved that were panned by critics (36:26). Then, Chris talks about his new favorite Sunday night tv lineup: 'Special Ops: Lioness,' 'Landman,' and 'Yellowstone' (44:00).
Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald
Producer: Kaya McMullen
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Transcript 11,735 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Speaker 00 This is Bill Simmons. I am thrilled to announce our newest YouTube channel. It's called Ringer Movies. If you're a fan of our movie coverage here at The Ringer, then you're in luck because every episode of the rewatchables and the big picture now on YouTube.
0:13 Speaker 01 Like Bill said, Ringer Movies will feature full episodes of my show, The Big Picture, the rewatchables, as well as special live episodes, deep dives into movie history and a bunch of other fun stuff featuring other movie-loving Ringer personalities. Search Ringer Movies on YouTube and experience the joy. Chris Ryan impersonating Wayne Jenkins on camera.
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1:07 Speaker 03 I need sports staff to clear the room.
1:10 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 on the other line is producer Kaya McMullin. Hi, Kaia.
1:21 Speaker 05 Hi, Chris.
1:22 Chris Ryan? Today, we did a mailbag with Andy. We pre-recorded that on Friday, and I thought it was a really great conversation. Everybody from our Facebook group sent some really awesome questions. I really appreciate it. And there was a bunch of really big idea topics that I want to get people to as soon as possible. I don't think anybody needs to hear about my weekend, or the traffic, or what I ate, or anything like that. I did see a Nora.
1:43 Speaker 05 A little rain in L.A. Oh, sorry. Also, you saw a Nora. That's probably more.
1:47 Chris Ryan? I saw Nora, and it was as good as everybody says. Have you seen it yet?
1:51 Speaker 05 I haven't. I'm really wanting to see it. So, yeah, that's exciting.
1:55 Chris Ryan? Are you secretly waiting for it to come out on streaming?
1:58 Speaker 05 You know, I might be, but I also don't know the timeline for that. So we'll see.
2:03 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I would say of the award movies that I've seen so far, you know, and Nora is one of the favorites for Best Picture. I would say that that actually did feel awesome to see it on a big screen.
2:14 Speaker 05 I usually like to try to see at least one awards movie in theater per year. So like one year I went and saw Tar.
2:21 Chris Ryan? Yes.
2:22 Speaker 05 Last year, I mean, I guess I went and saw Barbie. So that sort of counts, but not.
2:28 Chris Ryan? Did you see Oppenheimer in the theater?
2:30 Speaker 05 No, I definitely waited for that one to come out on streaming.
2:33 Chris Ryan? Okay.
2:34 Speaker 05 And it definitely took me multiple sittings to finish it, but you know, it's all good.
2:40 Chris Ryan? But Andy and I talked about a bunch of big ideas in this mailbag. So I wanted to get to that, but I would be remiss if I didn't do some Taylor talk. This is now Taylor Sheridan's trio of shows that are on on Sundays is now becoming my Sunday night ritual. So Landman, Lioness and Yellowstone all being on on the same night. Really like those they get released during the day on streaming. So you can watch it whenever you want, but I've kind of started to to build myself a little Sunday night me time, me and Taylor.
3:10 Speaker 05 So it's like when you do the like ideal programming TV lineup, but it's just like entirely.
3:18 Chris Ryan? So I'll talk to you a little bit about Lioness and Landman when we get to the end of the episode. I'm kind of waiting for Yellowstone to wrap itself up before I make any comment on it, but we can, we can chat a lot. We'll do a little bit of a Taylor talk segment. Let's get into my conversation with Andy. But first, it's time for a special part of today's episode. It's our holiday gift guy brought to you by Apple Pay. Holiday shopping, it can be a lot, but when it comes to paying, it's never been easier or more secure than with Apple Pay. You just double click, smile at Face ID, tap, and you are out of there. No more fumbling for your wallet at the register. Just pay the Apple way. I've been thinking a lot about this, you know, for my, for the holiday seasons coming up. I think it's, it's about giving the gift to
4:03 Chris Ryan? myself of maybe a new living room setup. I have it set up right now where it's like more for an intellectual salon than it is for watching TV. And let's be realistic. Yeah, I, Kaia, I do a lot of TV watching. So I think.
4:16 Speaker 05 I know.
4:17 Chris Ryan? I think we have to give up the ghost about hosting an exchange of ideas and realize that what we're really exchanging is television being beamed into my eyes.
4:27 Speaker 05 Yeah.
4:27 Chris Ryan? So I'm in the market for a new couch.
4:29 Speaker 05 Okay.
4:30 Chris Ryan? And I am in the market for a new DVD player because Sean Fantasy has started to inception me with the idea of physical media being an essential part of my life.
4:38 Speaker 05 Wow, he's gone to you too.
4:40 Chris Ryan? So here's the thing, I can go to my local shopping complex, wherever it is, and I can bring Apple Pay with me on my phone and just knock out everything I want to get for this new living room right there, whether it's buying a new couch setup, whether it's getting a new DV player, whether it's getting a new TV, or maybe even getting into the home theater sound system situation. Cause you know, I mean, I think you want to try and recreate as much as you possibly can, the experience of being in a theater, especially when you're watching films like, you know, Furiosa and stuff like that at home. So I'm really psyched to do that. I think, I think I earned it. I would really get into maybe some posters too. I haven't really decorated the house much with like movie posters and stuff like that, but that would be another way you could use Apple Pay.
5:24 Speaker 05 Several Michael Mann posters?
5:26 Chris Ryan? Maybe I just do the entire Michael Mann filmography. So that, that would be it.
5:30 Speaker 05 Wallpaper?
5:30 Chris Ryan? Yeah. Maybe I make a giant modern art collage out of all of Michael Mann's movie posters. I don't think that would be disturbing at all.
5:39 Speaker 05 No.
5:39 Chris Ryan? So yeah, that's, that's kind of where my head is at. It's about a living room refresh, but thinking about it in terms of making it into a home theater. And I can't wait to tell my wife all about this. I think she's gonna be really excited about it. Yeah. Today's holiday gift guide was brought to you by Apple Pay. It makes paying for all your holiday gifts easy, simple and secure. So you can focus more on finding the perfect present. So this holiday season, pay the Apple way with Apple Pay. Apple Pay is a service provided by Apple Payment Services LLC, a subsidiary of Apple Inc. Any card used in Apple Pay is offered by the card issuer.
6:12 Speaker 06 Low energy, unfocused, foggy, you might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body. With a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration, no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.
6:46 Chris Ryan? Hey, man. How are you? Nice to see you.
6:49 Andy Greenwald? Great. I think this is going to be one of the most interesting segments we've ever recorded because we are both still on Greenwich Mean Time. And in the meantime, we're choosing to record over Zoom on a Friday afternoon, late. No Kaia watching us right now.
7:01 Chris Ryan? Friday, it's Friday, the 22nd. So this will go up on Monday. I'll also be doing a little bit of a topper, but we wanted to do some mailbag questions for the long Thanksgiving interregnum, the international break, as we call in European football. So I hope you're doing well, buddy. I just saw you yesterday for our episode, but you know.
7:18 Andy Greenwald? I'm holding down the home fort now. My children are at Wicket. So that means I'm not going to see them for another four and a half to five hours, I believe.
7:25 Chris Ryan? Let's get into these questions. We asked our Facebook group for them and they came up as usual, but these were particularly thought provoking, I thought. So Michelle asks, and this is something that I had almost wanted to bring up to you on Thursday. Michelle asks, is there any, is there actually any innovation left in TV? Feels like we're regressing back to things we've seen before, parentheses conglomerates, recreating cable, 30 minute workplace comedies, new doctor shows, booked TV show adaptations, as opposed to seeing innovations in the television space? Is there something you see as an innovation that's a lock within the next three years? Or an innovation that you're dying to see that you want to see someone take a chance on? Now, Andy, I was thinking about this.
8:06 Andy Greenwald? This is a good question.
8:08 Chris Ryan? Because I think that I can kind of break our podcasting life together down into a couple of different eras or phases. And if you look at that first few years that we were working at Grantland and we were doing Hollywood prospectus, I think that we were more or less recapping whatever the big show was on Sunday and talking about what it meant. Yeah, obviously, if you had a piece in Grantland, we would discuss that. But for the most part, it wasn't that weird for us to be like, alrighty, episode six, season three, Homeland. What's, what's Brody got cooking this week? And just kind of trucking along in that way. When we moved over to The Ringer in 2015, 2016.
8:48 Chris Ryan? That was right on the cusp of an era that I think is probably the most interesting few years in my television watching life. Not necessarily in terms of my favorite shows are from this year, but reliably you were getting truly remarkable boundary pushing work from voices who I don't think necessarily had had a place on American screens before, whether that was, and I'll just run through some of the shows from this era.
9:16 Andy Greenwald? Yeah.
9:17 Chris Ryan? You had Fleabag came out in 2016, obviously had a stunning second season that made Phoebe Waller-Bircher star. Twin Peaks The Return, I would wonder whether or not you would argue is like the peak of the medium in some ways for you.
9:30 Andy Greenwald? Depending on what day you catch me, sure.
9:32 Chris Ryan? That came out in 2017. Dark, which was maybe a niche show for us, but an example of Netflix programming, an international genre show that purposely laid out like a multi-season format and was honestly some of the most mind blowing sci-fi I'd seen, regardless of whether it was on TV or a big screen. You had Mindhunter, which ran from 2017 to 19. Atlanta started in 16. I May Destroy You came out 20, I think.
10:00 Andy Greenwald? It was earlier than that, but yeah.
10:01 Chris Ryan? Maybe earlier than that. 000 was 20. Barry started in 2018. Succession started around 2016, 17, I think.
10:09 Andy Greenwald? Mm hmm.
10:10 Chris Ryan? And it really felt like this collision of like new voices, directorial vision infused into the medium, matched with great writing. And honestly, with all these tech companies getting involved with these streaming services launching to catch up with Netflix, you had a kind of grand patronage of the arts, which I know now has kind of curdled and become, you know, what do we have in our IP library? What spinoff can we do? What prequel can we do? What sequel can we do? But there was this snapshot. I saw of the when we were podding from 16 to 20 till about covid, where we routinely had like these five or six shows where we're like, man, even if this isn't, even if I enjoyed watching Friday Night Lights more than this, or I enjoyed watching Lost more than
10:54 Chris Ryan? this, or I enjoy watching whatever, like, this is changing what I think TV can do.
11:00 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, I think, first of all, that was very, very well articulated and encapsulated. You're, I mean, who's jet lagged on this podcast? I thought it was you.
11:09 Chris Ryan? I kind of scribbled notes for that one. That wasn't often.
11:12 Andy Greenwald? Dazzled. I also think you're exactly right. And I think it's really interesting and important, the thing you said at the top, which is, if you made a list, which maybe we will someday, of our favorite shows of all time, you're not saying that all of them would have come from this period. But in terms of being immersed in the medium and being consistently surprised, consistently intrigued, consistently inspired, and maybe even frustrated, but in ways that led to other ways of thinking, other ways of seeing, like, that really was a kind of, dare I say, Renaissance. And do you know what happened the last time there was a Renaissance, also known as the Renaissance? That was when our, when our homie, Big Lorenzo Di Medici, was just cutting checks.
11:54 Chris Ryan? For sure.
11:54 Andy Greenwald? And.
11:55 Chris Ryan? And he's one of our favorite Di Medici's, you know?
11:57 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, definitely. I can name five or six others. I just started with him, you know, because I didn't want to insult you and your deep knowledge of Florentine politics and wealth. I'm not saying that Cindy Holland, the deposed Netflix creative exec, you know, was like a noble woman from Sienna in terms of like her contributions to contemporary tapestries, AKA television shows. But there was a really strange moment when the old system was collapsing. And we can look at it now as, in some ways, a giant unforced error, right? The intentional cutting of the cord by the industry from the profitable cable carriage era and going all in on streaming.
12:39 Andy Greenwald? And they needed to fill their libraries, and they needed to say yes. And they needed to say yes, not just to fill their libraries, but also to like, establish themselves as players, right? I mean, Cindy Holland was. Bidding against HBO for House of Cards. They were probably, you know, they were in the mix, um, trying to separate themselves in a way not unlike if you squint how we got the previous generation of Golden Age shows, right? Where AMC was like, well, we've got this money. We might as well say yes to the things everyone said no to. That was kind of repeated around the world. You mentioned Dark, which is a great call to consistently champion. Dark was, I believe Netflix Germany's first, uh, original show.
13:18 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
13:18 Andy Greenwald? And so it was like you had many Netflix's all over the world being like, look what we've got. Look what we've got. And we have to compete with our, you know, the, the, the domestic competition and we have to stand out. And we got some really interesting shows from that. I mean, eventually that also got a Squid Game. France gave us Lupin, which was fine. So step up France, but you know, you get what I'm saying.
13:37 Chris Ryan? Gave us the Bureau.
13:40 Andy Greenwald? Yes, but not.
13:41 Chris Ryan? Not in the way that you're describing. I know what you mean.
13:44 Andy Greenwald? God, you just knocked me off my square. I was like, God, if they gave me the Bureau, then that's enough.
13:48 Chris Ryan? It didn't give us the Bureau because it was answering a call to,
13:51 Andy Greenwald? Right.
13:51 Chris Ryan? to fill coffers of different like jurisdictions of an international technology company. That was just like a French television show.
13:58 Andy Greenwald? All of, and an exceptional one, but all of this is to say, I don't believe that innovation in a medium is dead. There are so, so many talented, uh, screenwriters. There's so many talented directors, showrunners, baby writers, people just getting their foot in the door. People who haven't even gotten their feet in the door yet. I mean, a month ago, we were talking about Chatterbel, which is a fascinating and really, really worthwhile independent TV show that you can purchase on Prime. That's someone operating outside of the system and showing that, you know, you can still, you can still try stuff. I say this in different versions, week after week this year. And I wish there was a time coming up when I felt like I wasn't going to be saying it. But there is such a chill over the creative community.
14:43 Andy Greenwald? There is such a feeling of stagnation of just a perpetual no. So the result of that is just you, you, what I, let me just say that like, What we see on our screens is what people want to pay for.
14:57 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
14:57 Andy Greenwald? It's not necessarily what people want to watch, but it is what people at the executive network, streamer level want to pay for. And there can be fantastic programs within that. I mean, two days ago, we were talking about the, or last week, I guess, considering when this is airing, we were talking about the trailer for The Pit.
15:16 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
15:16 Andy Greenwald? The kind of, the kind of don't call it ER, ER update that's going to be on Max in January. And I'm psyched for that. That could be awesome. That could be a wonderful, to use the wine term, expression of a classic terroir. However, it is not I May Destroy You. And there are going to be fewer I May Destroy You's until the market changes, the industry shifts, there are different people in the executive suites. I, you know, I'm not sure, but like, it is what it is, right? That up until, it feels like this year, like, we looked at HBO and we'd be like, oh, one for that, one for us, one for them.
15:55 Chris Ryan? Sure.
15:56 Andy Greenwald? And there's, you know, a lot of this is still strike affected. White Lotus is coming back. Last of Us looks pretty sick, but it's telling that we've had this run of like The Penguin into Dune Prophecy. And that is what people want to write the checks for right now.
16:10 Chris Ryan? Yeah, and I, I think it's fair to say that if you look back at the list of shows that I just rattled off there, some of them ran into and through COVID, you know, like Barry or Succession. Some of them, we have not heard a lot from those people or the projects that they've chosen to do. I mean, Phoebe Waller-Bridge obviously broke out with Fleabag into Killing Eve and has executive produced some stuff and has worked on some stuff like as, here's the pilot, but, you know, like, did she write run the?
16:41 Andy Greenwald? She kind of oversaw it, but I think that was part of her, but no, that was not her creation.
16:47 Chris Ryan? Yeah, well, we haven't got a new Phoebe Waller-Bridge show. And the next one we do get is apparently Tomb Raider. So it's like, we haven't had that kind of, here's this moment, all these people have broken out, and now they're going to seize that moment and continue this work. Now, I'm not saying that's their fault, but there is. You know, we got Atlanta, Mr. and Mrs. Smith and a appearance in a solo movie from Glover. He's also still making his music. He's doing other things, but it it didn't bloom the way I maybe I thought it would.
17:16 Andy Greenwald? What was the name of the other Donald Glover show that that was really challenging, but also really good that he oversaw as part of his deal on Amazon last year? I'm I'm completely blanking on it.
17:26 Chris Ryan? Oh, the horror show, the fan horror show. Yeah.
17:30 Andy Greenwald? I will say Glover is putting in the work, you know, like he he is, he could still walk things in and get some things on the air. And for whatever it's worth, like Tomb Raider might be amazing because when I saw that Glover was using his capital and his major deal.
17:43 Chris Ryan? Phoebe Waller-Bridge is doing Tomb Raider.
17:45 Andy Greenwald? That's what I mean, but I'm saying that, but when we saw Donald Glover with all the capital he had pivoting to Mr. and Mrs. Smith, we probably had a throwaway line, if not a conversation being like, ah, see, they got to him too. And then he made something really thought provoking and really, really.
18:00 Chris Ryan? And he was supposed to do it with her. Yeah.
18:02 Andy Greenwald? Exactly. I think there there are still things like, you know, the bear snuck in under the wire. And because of its price point and the the intensity and the know how of Chris Stor and his team, that got on the air. And I do think that's a significant show, not just because we like to watch it, but I think that in terms of what it is doing with the medium, I think that's pretty interesting. I think that to stay on FX, like English teacher is just so good. It doesn't break the wheel, but it is a completely developed voice and point of view. And that is as significant to me as, you know, a major, major league swing. The real area of like, oh, and by the way, just when we were looking, going through that era, I was also thinking, you know, who else is a good exemplar of that good era is our guy Hugo Blake.
18:46 Andy Greenwald? Who is just, he is an independent filmmaker, but for TV in the sense that like you and I will check out anything he makes. He takes his time on projects and what he comes out with surprises us and is always worth your time. And that started with the honorable woman. It continued with Black Earth Rising, right? And then the English, which was an absolutely dazzling thing.
19:05 Chris Ryan? It goes back to Shadow Shadow Line before that.
19:08 Andy Greenwald? Before that, because like Amazon didn't even know what to do with it. And I'd be very curious to see how, where and when he sets up his next project. Maybe it's already set up and like, but I would look to that as a. You know, sort of a bellwether of where we are. To me, the biggest example of what we're missing is another show from that era that would absolutely not get made today. And until we start to get shows like this again,
19:34 Chris Ryan? Well, I mean, I even wonder, I wonder Mr. Mr. Robot would get made today. You know what I mean? Like,
19:40 Andy Greenwald? Well, the show that I wanted to say is an example is The Leftovers.
19:43 Chris Ryan? Mm hmm.
19:43 Andy Greenwald? We do not have The Leftovers right now, and I don't know when we're going to get one again, and that worries me. And I don't mean specifically Damon, because he can do whatever he wants. But I mean, what is, what is the big swing emotional, ongoing drama show? And yeah, you mentioned Mr. Robot. Definitely, we're not getting that today. That's, that was another, let's take a flyer on it. And also, one of those times when a network, a network that was just cleaved off of its parent company last week in USA was like, yeah, okay, we like this. We are going to rebrand ourselves, you know, on how much we like this. It's a very different era. I don't think it's necessarily like all doom and gloom, but it's such a well-considered question, and you set it up really well to remind us that we are in a very, very different moment.
20:28 Chris Ryan? Yeah, and I think we'll probably come out of it. Right? It's a pendulum. It takes five, six years for things to kind of change, thaw, move. So we'll see. Now, there's a kind of mechanical writers' room question here that I really liked from Sergio. He says, "When The Good Wife was airing, the Kalinda husband arc," just take my word for it, "had so much hate online that the Kings, Robert and Michelle King, who made that show, decided to cut it short and not dedicate all of the episodes they had planned during the fourth season. Do you think that the filming model shows have right now, written and filmed basically in a vacuum and then delayed because Netflix has to wait for the dubbing of all the languages they offer or something, has affected the way that writers' rooms respond creatively to audience reactions?
21:10 Chris Ryan? And how is it that so many episodes were produced that this was even possible, as opposed to so few now, and is not sustaining the same level of episodics of storytelling? So maybe you're not the right person to ask about fan reactions to great work."
21:26 Andy Greenwald? I don't know what you mean.
21:28 Chris Ryan? But no, sincerely, you know, you got into television writing rooms a little bit like after this era would have been standard, where it's like, we're writing the season as we are filming it. That's more of a procedural network and cable kind of way of making shows. But were you guys still writing Briar Patch as you began shooting it?
21:50 Andy Greenwald? No, all the outlines were in and every script was done except my finale. So, no.
21:56 Andy Greenwald? And, you know, I think most shows try to have the scripts done, but it's often very hard to actually have them done, considering the way that the timing works. This is such a good question. I think the main thing that it speaks to, it's actually connected to the previous question in a way, or the previous answer. It's an ongoing series problem, I think, necessarily more than a how we make TV now problem, in the sense that we don't have very many ongoing drama series that can have something that you and I love and love the results of when it's done well, which is kind of a dialogue with the audience. Now, that can go way off the rails. There was a period, not 20 years ago, but a little less than 20 years ago, when every new hour-long show was trying to be Lost and trying to get that, like, you'll never
22:40 Andy Greenwald? believe what happened, like, that showed The Event, or there's that laundry list of these shows. And all of them failed because they weren't lost. But one of the reasons, I think, you kind of tell that they failed was that they were shows asking questions, like, they were, they were basically throwing sonar pings out, hoping to have, find something returned to them by an audience that wanted to hear it. So, you could almost feel them reading Television Without Pity in real time and trying to construct whatever the show was towards what it seemed like people wanted. Our friend of the pod, Josh Schwartz, talks quite openly about, he feels like he got a little bit lost in the sauce in the early days of the OC because of, he was, felt like a peer of the people watching TV, writing on Television Without Pity, and was in there responding.
23:26 Andy Greenwald? It's not always good when an artist has complete access to the audience and is responding. That said, one of the things that Lost was brilliant about and underrated for in the big conversation about, like, you know, but what are the answers? What did they know? Was all the brilliant, beloved things that they didn't know. Like Juliet and Sawyer were, that was not supposed to be a couple. That was off of chemistry and off of how a couple scenes went. You know, and there's, there's multiple examples of that, like, how they wrote hurly in the beginning versus how they wrote hurly at the end. Like, there's something kind of beautiful, and I've always thought this about TV, about, you know, unlike movies, you can kind of find yourself, you can find your story. The most famous example being Jesse Pinkman initially being meant to die in Breaking Bad
24:10 Andy Greenwald? before they were like, wait a second, this is working.
24:12 Chris Ryan? In The Wire, yeah.
24:13 Andy Greenwald? Exactly. So, what I think we're missing is that kind of relationship.
24:19 Andy Greenwald? I do think we're missing that kind of program that encourages that kind of relationship between the writers, not just with their audience, but the writers with their product, where they can shift, change, write towards something. And that really only happens when you have a moment to shoot it and then watch it and then think about it before you write it again. And we don't really do that as much anymore, both as an industry, but then also just in terms of the way production calendars are set.
24:47 Chris Ryan? This kind of ties into the previous question, but I think the only thing I would add to that great answer is that we also used to get shows routinely, well, once a year. It was pretty, even for, you know, the early seasons of Mad Men, the early seasons of Breaking Bad, yeah, you would maybe have like the half season to start the season and then it comes back with a second season or whatever. People started taking breaks longer after their shows sort of became established phenomenons and the actors probably started having more movie offers. But I think one of the things that is sort of crippling a sense of continuity and also a sense of liveliness from shows is the, the almost routine two-year delays between seasons.
25:30 Andy Greenwald? Yeah. And by the way, that really should be only because of VizFX. Like, I understand, you know, now being a little bit more inside of the machine, like, why House of the Dragon takes so long to make?
25:43 Chris Ryan? Sure.
25:44 Andy Greenwald? That is intentionally a statement completely separate apart from like my personal feelings about it or subjective feelings.
25:50 Chris Ryan? Yeah, I understand why, for sure.
25:52 Andy Greenwald? Extremely hard for it to make. I do not understand why it's so hard to make Euphoria. That seems like a different kind of issue or problem in terms of scheduling or traffic running or just whatever. You know, it's almost like the pendulum has swung so far that maybe we should stop. I don't want to do this because, you know, we love the guy, but it's like we almost should stop praising Chris Dorr for making a TV show every year because it's just insane that he's the only one that seems to know how to do it.
26:19 Chris Ryan? The next question I had here was one that I, I almost had a hard time conceiving of an answer. Daniel asks, if you weren't covering TV and movies professionally, what would you be watching? Would you still try to keep up with current releases or would you re-watch old favorites or things you missed?
26:37 Andy Greenwald? I feel like the older I get, the lacune in my knowledge of things just feel bigger, like great great grand canyons of things that I just don't know about. Like, I remember being so proud of myself, like 20 years ago when the Netflix red envelope started. And I was like, ah, finally a time to educate myself on the great works of cinema. And I used like, I used like a whole year of my life, it felt like, to just be like, the 1970s, what was that all about? And then also, because I was living outside of New York City for a year, that was also the year where then red envelopes brought me The Sopranos and The Wire and the shows that I hadn't kept up on. So like, I just felt like I was gorging myself with this beautiful trough of culture.
27:21 Andy Greenwald? And I was like, surely the rest of my adult life will continue to bring such delight. And then, uh, work got serious and then the kids come and you don't have those moments again. And then all of a sudden I'll be talking to someone just about like movies that you probably love quite a bit and invested time knowing about. And I'm just sort of nodding my way through it, like just really big. Yeah. What was the other one the other day? Never seen The Deer Hunter. Like, can't say that I'm usually in a mood to be like, ah, this is the perfect time. But like, come on, man. You know what I mean? So I, all this is to say, shout out to Sean and Amanda. Like, I kind of think I would be
28:00 Chris Ryan? A movie person.
28:01 Andy Greenwald? Continuing my cinematic education. Uh, I hadn't seen Lawrence of Arabia till we saw it.
28:05 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah, that's right. My best answer for this question is that I would try to be more like Steven Soderbergh. When you read his diary at the end of, of any given year, it, it is a perfect snapshot of who I would like to be. It was like watching Below Deck, watching like true crime docs that he comes across on Netflix, which a lot of which are quite bad, but it's like what he likes. And it's just what he wants to do with like his downtime and his free time. And then there is the greatest movies ever made, movies that he's discovering, movies that he's rewatching for the seventh time because it has something to do with a project. I would like to be Steven Soderbergh in a lot of ways, but the thing I think I
28:47 Chris Ryan? geolocate with that is this feeling of like intense curiosity, a mixture of high and low, and a voracious appetite. So I do think that if I did not feel professionally obligated, I probably would not start and not complete tons of one hour drama shows.
29:08 Andy Greenwald? Totally.
29:08 Chris Ryan? Like, I would probably be like, I just don't need to be watching this right now, so I won't. You know, I would maybe check some stuff out, but I think that there's probably a little bit more. There's like, there's a lot that I think I indulge in, check out, pursue because of the job that I probably would be like, do I need to watch another hour long sci fi drama? Probably not.
29:27 Andy Greenwald? You wouldn't be like, Phoebe, brew up some popcorn. It's time for Skeleton Crew.
29:31 Chris Ryan? Exactly. Well, you know, I maybe I would if somebody was like, if there was a version of The Watch in my life when I wasn't doing The Watch and they were like, Skeleton Crew is the best thing since Andor, I would probably check it out.
29:43 Andy Greenwald? I heard The Ringer has another TV pod.
29:44 Chris Ryan? It's true.
29:45 Andy Greenwald? You can check it out.
29:46 Chris Ryan? Maybe I should just listen to them and not do this anymore.
29:49 Andy Greenwald? I think that's fine. I have a question for you. First of all, shout out Steven Soderbergh, child free king. No one is doing it better. Two, this is kind of an old guy question, but I think it's adjacent. Chris, do you read a lot of nonfiction?
30:02 Chris Ryan? No, I don't.
30:03 Andy Greenwald? I don't either. And I used to make fun of like, I remember I would, like back in New York when I would go see my therapist, who was quite an old man, he would invariably just have an 800 page book on Congress, just sitting on his desk. Like, ah, it's just, it's a good way to spend his 70s. You know, it's just a really, really get to the bottom of the antebellum South. But I also kind of like my feeling about movies. I think that I smugly thought that like, I was pretty well educated and that would just continue to grow.
30:32 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
30:33 Andy Greenwald? And I never really read nonfiction because I love fiction so much. And I also like historical fiction when relevant and I can learn about eras through that. But now I'm starting to worry the clock's ticking and maybe I'm dumb about stuff and maybe I should become an old guy reading about the Civil War all the time, even though I don't necessarily want to.
30:50 Chris Ryan? I had a run.
30:54 Chris Ryan? I should say that I do, there's plenty of nonfiction writers that I do really love reading like William Finnegan and Patrick Raddenkeef and there's like, so and I will read some of their collections and David Grand, I'm sure some people who don't worry for The New Yorker, but like, I do enjoy nonfiction, it's just that when I have time to read for pleasure, it's almost always a novel.
31:15 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, and, you know.
31:17 Chris Ryan? And hand to God, I'm getting dumber at that, too. Like, I was trying to read Dostoevsky and now I'm just like, where else can we hide Nazi gold and have five people hunting for it?
31:26 Andy Greenwald? For what it's worth, you, one can learn a lot about the world, including this country, through crime fiction. I am also, I've really painted myself into a corner here because, you know, again, it's not really relevant to get into details, but I may or may not have spent some time this year really reading a book series aimed, you know, not necessarily at 47-year-old men. The problem is that that has inspired my daughters to be like, I'm so glad now you can, now it's really time to get into Percy Jackson. And here are the 12 books to start with.
31:59 Chris Ryan? You're in trouble.
32:00 Andy Greenwald? And I was like, I know, I was like, did I tell you about the book about the publicist in LA? Just like covering up all the dark shit? And they're like, what?
32:11 Chris Ryan? This failed middle-aged spy has a shot at redemption.
32:16 Andy Greenwald? Literally, he does.
32:17 Chris Ryan? Oh, my God. Here's a good one. This one comes to us from Johnny. Are there any particular shows from this year that you think you would have, that would have definitely worked better as full-length features and vice versa, I think, for films? So films that would have been better as television. I can go here first and keep it topical. I just did the big picture about Gladiator 2. I won't spoil anything for you because I don't think you'll have a chance to see it yet. But as unwieldy as something of that level of production would have been, I think a six-hour version of that particular story would have been very cool. And some of the pacing issues and... Weird Ridleyisms that happen when he's just like, "Cut, got it, clear the gate.
33:02 Chris Ryan? You know, check the gate, I'm good." You know, like, let's keep moving. Like, I think, uh, he's also always like, "My director's cut his four and a half hours anyway," so he's almost there. I was reading about how there was a full character cut out of Gladiator 2, and I would, I would be interested in the, the Apple TV, Netflix version of that, that movie, if, if one could be assembled. On the flip side of that, I don't mean this as a criticism, I just am saying that Apple TV has been very good about making TV shows that 30 years ago would have been movies. They are adult, you know, mystery comedies, adult dramas. So disclaimer for all those slings and arrows we've got for it.
33:43 Chris Ryan? I, there's a two and a half hour movie, two hour movie in there that I think would have been fascinating. Uh, Bad Monkey, I think, would have been way more charming to me if they had chopped off a lot of the kind of Shaggy Dog stuff. And Presumed Innocent, I think, I think I am coming to a little bit more of a like, maybe a, whodunit twisty thriller like that works better as a two hour film.
34:07 Andy Greenwald? I think you've, you've answered it almost completely. I have not seen enough movies this year, let alone enough movies that I had, uh, mixed or complicated feelings about, to say. I haven't gotten into any of the Oscar, would be Oscar bait yet. I know it's slightly controversial, but I still, I'm, I'm gonna hang on to my take from last year, which is Killers of the Flower Moon would have been an incredible television series. I don't mean that it was a bad or failed movie. In fact, I would like to watch it again, and I have, and I really, really, really admired and I think enjoyed it. It's just that it was a wild thing to get your arms around. And what we were left with was, and I think, and I mean this as a compliment, what we were left with was Martin Scorsese's vision for what was interesting to him. And I found that very moving, and I found that very compelling.
34:52 Andy Greenwald? And I think that that is a hallmark of what cinema can do when it's done well. It's like, oh, well, this is this person's take on this, and that's vibrant and interesting. But the world, and the story, and the depth of it, and the ramifications for the country, I think, you know, there's a version that could have been longer in. Television-y, you know, we're watching.
35:12 Chris Ryan? Something happened with our country? Does something happen with our country?
35:15 Andy Greenwald? Not that I know of. I think everything's going great, but I just mean theoretically. And then I just want to second what you were saying about Apple TV. I don't know if I totally agree with you about Bad Monkey or Presumed It Isn't just to say that like, I wish we still had movies like those. I think that just from the ways that they were constructed, like, they were, Presumed It Isn't more than Bad Monkey for me, but they both worked perfectly well as TV shows, I think, ultimately. I just miss, I miss when those two flavors were movies. Disclaimer is the ultimate answer here in that disclaimer was a, I was gonna say fascinating failure, but it actually wasn't even that interesting in the end. It was fascinating because it was a failure, I think, but it wasn't even,
35:58 Andy Greenwald? but it's not like it was that interesting to watch or look at after two hours. But if you told me that Alfonso Cuarón was making a kind of twisty, pulpy, tabloid-y story about perspective and sex and judgment, fucking sign me up. Put Cate Blanchett in it. Like, it would move. It would potentially sing and it would be, it would, it would be something that I think you and Sean have talked about a lot too. I think it was coming up when,
36:29 Andy Greenwald? what was it? That there was, oh, that the new Nolan movie was maybe a horror movie, right? And we, didn't we, like, this idea that like, what if our greatest directors were just like, fuck it, I'm making a genre movie? You know, and like, I'll do a big one and then I'll do like a small lean one. Like, that would have been so cool. So I feel like that's fueling some of my frustration with that show, which for the record, I finished and you didn't.
36:49 Chris Ryan? Do you think that Sugar would have been a better movie?
36:52 Andy Greenwald? Uh, no. Sugar didn't work for reasons that weren't to do with, I don't think that, I don't think it had anything to do with its, what box it was in. Like, Colin Farrell as a private eye is just a, that's an automatic yes for me, dog. And say it's a movie, awesome. Say it's TV noir, awesome. Say that there's gonna be a labored twist in the fifth episode that is as preposterous as this one was. And I'm, for some reason, I'm still protecting it because I guess it was renewed and so maybe some people want to explore the magic of Sugar. Yeah, that's a no.
37:24 Chris Ryan? We got a question from Darren. Top three shows that were generally panned by critics that you guys unironically loved all time or recent? I have a couple. I know that you were having a hard time thinking of this because you're just, you're just part of the herd, man.
37:39 Andy Greenwald? I totally am.
37:40 Chris Ryan? You're part of the critical hive mind.
37:43 Andy Greenwald? No, I'm like, I'm like Marquette University polling, you know what I mean? I'm just like, too soon.
37:48 Chris Ryan? I'm Anne Seltzer out here, baby. I'm just kind of like my own data. I, I legitimately loved Too Old to Die Young, Nicholas Winding Refns, completely batshit Amazon show with Miles Teller. I sincerely liked and, and think it obviously had a very complicated rollout, but I sincerely enjoyed watching the idol. Like, it wasn't a bit.
38:15 Andy Greenwald? Wow.
38:15 Chris Ryan? I wasn't fucking with people. I actually was just like, this is so much more entertaining and, and interesting to look at than most stuff I watch. So that there's that.
38:25 Andy Greenwald? Chris, just blink twice if this is why you fell silent when I said Euphoria's absence from our airwaves is inexplicable.
38:30 Chris Ryan? They're shooting it currently in my yard. And the last one, I guess I would say Lioness, because Lioness only has a 56 on Metacritic. So I would say critically, maybe it's not been panned. I've seen some good reviews for this season, but generally speaking, I don't think people, you know, they don't honor our warriors properly and.
38:50 Andy Greenwald? I mean, I think that there probably are examples, if I had dug in the Grandland Archive, of things that I was like, just bizarrely championing, and I wish I could remember them because I would, I would definitely try and defend myself. I think that, from what I understand, like, is Landman our new favorite show? Has that been critically adored or reviled?
39:09 Chris Ryan? Uh, I think people are like, this is actually like better Taylor, but I think that's also because it features less extrajudicial killings so far.
39:16 Andy Greenwald? God, I'm so hurty. I'm just like, God, I'm so normcore. The only thing that I thought of.
39:21 Chris Ryan? You're like, is it okay to like this Emily Nussbaum?
39:26 Andy Greenwald? Just backchanneling with Alan Sepinwall and Dan Feinberg being like, what do we think, guys?
39:32 Andy Greenwald? No, I just, the example I was gonna give, I feel like isn't fair because it's not like it was critically reviled, but genuinely, one of my favorite shows from the Grantland era, when I was covering TV in that way, was Banshee, which should be on people's radar anyway, because the co-creator of Banshee is a novelist and TV showrunner named Jonathan Tropper, who has a Apple show coming out, it's just announced in April, with Jon Hamm, called Your Friends and Neighbors, and Apple is so bullish on the show that they've just renewed it. I mean, Apple renews everything for a second season, but they rarely announce a season two renewal four or five months before the show premieres.
40:08 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
40:09 Andy Greenwald? And that show looks absolutely sick, and I'm very excited about it. But Banshee is not for everyone, but if you like absolutely hardcore pulp fiction, not the movie, but lowercase pulp fiction, like 80s movie vigilante justice, super violent shit, but with some wit and cleverness, like, that show rules.
40:33 Chris Ryan? You made the sale, man. You can stop selling.
40:35 Andy Greenwald? I know. I don't know why you did. And it stars Anthony Starr, who is now famous for playing Homelander, and all four seasons are streaming on Max, and I just unambiguously love that show.
40:44 Chris Ryan? Jon asks, I thought we could just do this together, and then I have one fun one for us before we go. Jon asks, how would you rank the major streaming services in their present state? I think we can take this in a bunch of different ways. You know I love to talk UX, user experience, but I think we could probably talk, what do you think is current, kids aside, most used for you right now? Okay? What are you opening the most?
41:10 Andy Greenwald? You're asking me to put my kids aside? Wow. How dare you, sir.
41:16 Chris Ryan? It would be Netflix, or would it be Disney?
41:20 Andy Greenwald? Honestly, now that there is a Hulu tile on Disney, I think it is Disney just in the household.
41:27 Chris Ryan? Okay.
41:28 Andy Greenwald? Because I've been watching a lot of stuff on FX and Hulu, and they're obviously watching quite a bit on Disney. I think...
41:36 Andy Greenwald? Yeah, I would say probably just by volume Netflix would be number two.
41:43 Chris Ryan? If I was, if I was being honest about the stuff, I mean, I'm currently probably watching Paramount Plus the most because I watch Lioness, Landman, Yellowstone for my sins, and also Survivor, and sometimes Elsbeth. So that's five shows currently on one network.
42:01 Andy Greenwald? Do you know how much, how much petroleum advertising I would be consuming if I did that with my ad tier?
42:09 Chris Ryan? I still use Hulu a lot to watch. I don't go to Disney to watch What We Do in the Shadows. I think it's just-
42:15 Andy Greenwald? Are you up on What We Do in the Shadows?
42:17 Chris Ryan? Oh, I sure am. It's so funny. Yeah.
42:19 Andy Greenwald? What?
42:20 Chris Ryan? Yeah. I talked about it with Joe a couple of weeks ago when you were like in transit somewhere.
42:24 Andy Greenwald? I kind of bailed last season and have not come back this season. I don't know why.
42:29 Chris Ryan? They just did an Apocalypse Now episode. There's like a whole Tim Heidecker plotline this year that's basically Wolf of Wall Street and Guillermo goes and works at a bank that's only open at night. You know, it's-
42:41 Andy Greenwald? Can I, can I just, can I, can I like mask off and just be the old me for a second? And just be honest with you, like you were just honest with me about which streaming services you use more? That was just very brave of you. I felt like the, the plotline in the penultimate season of What We Do in the Shadows that suggested that Guillermo might have turned was a bridge too far for me.
43:07 Chris Ryan? Oh, yeah.
43:08 Andy Greenwald? I was like, this is, this violates the, and I know what happens in the rest of the season, but I was like, this violates some core tenet of the show. And it was changing my relationship with it and like the stakes of the Joe. I was like, this just is not working. And I walked. What's wrong? I don't even know why I did that.
43:23 Chris Ryan? You have so many, so many great things to, to see in this new season. It's so good.
43:28 Andy Greenwald? You know what? I don't want to, no spoilers, but I have to return to London, England very soon. And I'm going to download the shit out of that season.
43:37 Chris Ryan? You really should. You'll enjoy the hell out of it. Okay, let's wrap it up here with.
43:43 Andy Greenwald? So did you so you're so generally the what we mentioned the most were Disney slash Hulu.
43:48 Chris Ryan? Yeah, if it's like, just kind of like, I don't have anything to watch. What am I going to check out? It would be Netflix or Max. And that's just an easy way to be like, oh, they have this like, you're Detroiters kind of thing where it's like, oh, I'll just, I'll just check this out. But in terms of most used right now, it's Paramount, Hulu, Disney's pretty low down there, I think.
44:10 Andy Greenwald? Remember when we briefly had our, our, our Peacock assants?
44:14 Chris Ryan? I do. Yeah.
44:15 Andy Greenwald? Peacock, man. I enjoyed it.
44:17 Chris Ryan? Why don't we wrap it up there? That was a, that was really fun. Thank you for all the questions. We got way more than that. So we'll use them again. Sometimes soon, probably before Christmas.
44:25 Andy Greenwald? What was the you? You're the one that is brave enough to go through them. Like, what was the percentage of questions that were like, really rich, deep, thoughtful questions like that versus questions about like, what you do on a Saturday night? Like, how many pints you consume before you start reaching for darts?
44:40 Chris Ryan? 80% really, really good. And then the rest of them are like, how come you haven't watched, you know, talked about Pachinko this year?
44:45 Andy Greenwald? Or Interview with the Vampire.
44:47 Chris Ryan? Thank you to Kaya. Thank you to Andy. We'll be back next Monday. Everybody have a great Thanksgiving and thanks for listening.
44:52 Andy Greenwald? Happy Thanksgiving, friends.
45:29 Chris Ryan? All right. Thanks to Andy, obviously, since this is 50% his show. That was a really great mailbag. Thanks again for the questions. I just wanted to do a little bit of Taylor talk at the end here, just for
45:40 Speaker 05 You can't skip it.
45:41 Chris Ryan? For all the heads. You know what I mean? So Lioness, let's go there first.
45:45 Speaker 05 Okay.
45:46 Chris Ryan? Lioness has adrenalized me unlike any show I can remember since like 24, honestly. Like I I literally just watched this thing riveted mostly on like a scene to scene basis, just because I really have no idea where this show is going. And I do think it's gambling with like the highest possible stakes in terms of like, I'm not really sure anybody is safe on the show. I have no idea. Like they are foreshadowing a lot of the war coming home to Joe's doorstep stuff.
46:17 Speaker 05 Okay.
46:18 Chris Ryan? And so I
46:19 Speaker 05 Do we have a fake TV president on Lioness?
46:22 Chris Ryan? No, we have a, I believe, fake Secretary of Defense in Morgan Freeman, if I remember correctly what his designation is. And then obviously, like a lot of people who are in the intelligence community and military community, they're represented by like Bruce McGill and Jennifer Ely and, and, and Michael Kelly. This was a great episode. It's, it's, I guess, the most notable thing to comment on with this show since we last spoke about it was that Cruz, the protagonist from the first season, the Lioness from the first season, has returned.
46:54 Speaker 05 Oh, wow. Okay.
46:55 Chris Ryan? Yeah, she is now the kind of minder for the new Lioness. So Joe felt like Correa needed some kind of like around the clock minding and, and lifeguarding and also providing Joe an out if she needed to get out of this situation. So Cruz, against her own will, because Joe just assigns her to the Lioness team again, has rejoined. And it's honestly kind of like giving the show like a nice layer where there's some continuity now between seasons one and two. I didn't really mind one way or the other. If Lioness was just going to be like a kind of each season was its own discreet story situation. And in some ways, season two is really like followed the beats of season one pretty, pretty similarly
47:40 Chris Ryan? with an international crisis. A lioness mission, that lioness being brought in under incredible duress in some way or another, and then sent out into the world and, and learning the ways of, of, of this kind of like gray work that happens in the show. But in any case, I just thought the crews really, and Lacey D Olivera, really brought like a cool continuity from the first season into the second season. And this is just like every episode now seems to have like a major action set piece that I think would do fine being on a big screen somewhere. Like just goes to show you how little we're getting these kinds of thriller action movies that aren't big IP anymore. So I, I think it's going in really interesting directions. Like it's kind of like, not to spoil it for you, but there is a fake cliffhanger where
48:25 Chris Ryan? Jo has been shot and she's on a private jet back to, I think DC or somewhere. I can't remember where she was really going, but they have to land in Mississippi so that she can get surgery because she has been shot in the liver. And like, it's like, is Jo gonna live? I'm like, I'm fairly certain she's gonna live at least through this episode. But there's a huge kind of like looming plot line here of this character played by Kirk Acevedo, Acevedo, who's playing a DEA agent who seems to be going rogue against the DEA. Still seems to be a good guy, but his, um, his plot line in this show, in this episode is this culmination of basically such a fever dream of like Twitter hot button topics of
49:09 Chris Ryan? like, there's a suicide-
49:11 Speaker 05 I would love to know what Taylor Sheridan's media consumption is.
49:13 Chris Ryan? I wonder if he even has it. I don't know. I don't even know. Like I would like to know too, but there's human trafficking, a suicide bombing, advanced interrogation. So really some of the greatest hits of the last 30 years. And it kind of all culminates with this DEA agent who they're thinking might have been working for their cartel or doing something nefarious. But turns out, at least he swears that the reason he doesn't have a file on this whole thing and the reason why he has put a mole in the house where Creo's father works or lives is that he's trying to stay off grid with this stuff. He doesn't want the cartel to find out about it. So that that's where we are with Lioness. It's still incredibly thrilling. I hope people are checking that out.
49:58 Chris Ryan? And then Landman, you know, it's funny. I was, I saw a tweet from a writer I like a lot, a guy on Twitter who I've always really enjoyed. Matt Zeitlin, who's a like a financial and does a lot of finance and economics writing and a bunch of other stuff. But he was kind of like, we need a, we need a name for the genre that's just guys solving problems. And it's not driven by like a crime or a mystery. And that's, it really touched the nerve of like what the pleasure of Landman is. Where it's like so far, we're three episodes in. This episode was just ridiculous on the home front with Ali Larder finally comes back from Mexico, but immediately gets tanked on margaritas and tries to sleep with Billy Bob Thornton.
50:43 Chris Ryan? But really at the end, just has like a real tender moment with him.
50:47 Speaker 05 That's beautiful.
50:48 Chris Ryan? But there's nothing going on on this show. Like
50:50 Speaker 05 It's just competence porn.
50:52 Chris Ryan? Yeah. And it's also just like, this is just these guys doing their jobs. And like, I guess there's an OSHA complaint against Billy Bob Thornton that they're gonna have to do a deposition about. But usually by about episode three or four in any show, and you're kind of like, oh, this is the question that this series or this season is going to have to answer is how does Marty get away from the cartel? Or how does Adam Scott find out that he's experiencing severance or whatever?
51:20 Speaker 05 Adam Scott's in Landman?
51:22 Chris Ryan? No, I wish. I was season two. He could be like the East Coast twerp who comes in and tries to like tell Billy Bob what to do. Yeah. So it's just been such a pleasure to watch this because the stakes are incredibly high. But the story engine and the, the sort of the way that the mechanics of the season are working is it's just a hangout show, you know? And if you're interested in this world, which I up until this point was not really, and now I'm deeply fascinated by. It's fantastic. There are obvious like. It's like a series made up out of rants, you know, like, like there's a scene in this most recent episode where Jon Hamm is playing golf and these guys come up behind him and
52:05 Chris Ryan? he's walking and the guys are driving in carts and they're like, can we play through? And he goes on like a two minute monologue about why they can't play through because he doesn't wait for anyone. And I was like, this is just something dudes on golf courses say and they put it, they put it into television series. It has no bearing whatsoever on the plot. I guess it's sort of illustrative of like what Jon Hamm's character, Monty, is like, but I got the fact that he was like a powerful person who didn't wait for people before I watched him play golf. Nice swing on Jon Hamm, a little bit. He saws it off a little bit, I think, like he doesn't have like a really-
52:40 Speaker 05 Do you think he golfs in real life?
52:42 Chris Ryan? I think, I think he does. I think based on, they did a wide shot of Jon Hamm golfing and it was like, I could tell that was Jon Hamm being like, my swing's okay. You know, like, I'm okay with having, we don't need to body double my golf swing. So shout out to him. I definitely wish I had that swing.
53:00 Speaker 05 If you weren't in before, now you're definitely in.
53:02 Chris Ryan? I know. I know. And yeah, like the, the sort of major takeaway is just that this is going to be a very, a show that has its own currents. Like it's really more about these characters and frankly, the Billy Bob performance and his character is so enjoyable to me. It's just like, he's got a comeback or a fun line for every single one. You know, like his ex-wife orders a margarita and he says to the waiter, if you get her another margarita, you and me are going to have a fucking problem. And you know, it's just like, no more tequila. He's just really, really enjoyable to watch. So these two series are-
53:40 Speaker 05 So for Landman, I'm thinking that when I go home later this week for Thanksgiving, this could be a good dad show.
53:47 Chris Ryan? Yes, but there are some moments that I would feel awkward watching with my, my, you know, like with my parents and I'm in my, well, 80s, 40s. So-
53:55 Speaker 05 Okay. All right. Well, good to know. Good to know.
53:57 Chris Ryan? Keep that in mind. But yes, like I think your dad would like Landman. I think Lioness might be- A tad violent for Thanksgiving, but you know, different strokes.
54:06 Speaker 05 Yeah, I don't know if that's for the whole family, but my dad was telling me that he's still on the Yellowstone train.
54:11 Chris Ryan? So let's talk about Yellowstone. Great segue. Uh, thank you, Mr. McMullin. Um, it is, I think it's rounding third. So what I, here's my, here's my relationship to Yellowstone. I think the pilot is one of the best pilots I've ever seen.
54:27 Speaker 05 Yeah, the first season is really strong.
54:29 Chris Ryan? The first season is incredible. The second season is cool. And as we go on, and now we are in this weird like five B, season five B.
54:40 Speaker 05 And Kevin Costner is.
54:41 Chris Ryan? No longer with us. His character was thought to have killed himself, but has now it's been proven that that was a murder. Um, we always kind of knew he was like this season, but you know, the, the problem with the show for me was that it took what was the most powerful part about it, which was this family interacting with each other in a very enclosed space. That was ironically in a wide open, uh, ranch, but they always seemed to be bouncing off of each other at this place and decentralized the show. So you've got like an entire plot that's taking place in Texas, which many people speculated was like a kind of backdoor way of Taylor Sheridan just moving the show to Texas where he lives.
55:21 Speaker 05 Right.
55:21 Chris Ryan? And then you've got Beth and Rip on one side, Casey and Monica on another side, like, you know, Jamie and doing his stuff. So the, the characters are kind of spread apart. They all seemingly hate each other, which is too bad because after a while it gets a little tiresome to watch. And when you subtract Kevin Costner from the mix, it's a show without a flagship. You know what I mean?
55:41 Speaker 05 Yeah.
55:42 Chris Ryan? So I, I think that the idea that this show could have just continued on without him is probably been proven false.
55:49 Speaker 05 I feel like he just lent a lot of like gravitas to the show. I mean, he's such a like talented actor. And like you said, really just like anchored the entire cast. And so.
55:58 Chris Ryan? Yeah. And there's a world in which this show probably could have gone on for like four more seasons, you know, if they.
56:03 Speaker 05 Was there rumors that like Matthew McConaughey was going to step in?
56:06 Chris Ryan? So that there was a original idea was that there was rumors that the show might up and move stakes to Texas and that Matthew McConaughey would be the new. I don't know whether he would have been a Dutton or what, but he would be the kind of
56:19 Speaker 05 The new patriarch.
56:20 Chris Ryan? And the new central character and that some characters from Yellowstone would join the series and it would be a continuation of the Yellowstone story. From my understanding, that has kind of fallen through. There is going to be a new series with Kurt Russell and Michelle Pfeiffer and a bunch of other people with some people from Yellowstone, but I do not know how the two are going to connect or whether it will have the same, like the exact same vibe. It's about power and family in Montana, or whether it will take place elsewhere. The, the log line I read was that Michelle Pfeiffer's character is living in New York when she finds out she's got some relationship to this ranch or something. But, you know, in Taylor, we trust.
57:03 Chris Ryan? Like I, I guess, like, I'll be interested to see where we wind up in like a month when Yellowstone is concluded. Lioness, season two is over and we get a sense of whether or not there's going to be a season three. I don't see why not. I think it's
57:16 Speaker 05 Yeah.
57:17 Chris Ryan? A successful show that
57:18 Speaker 05 Well, cause this is the last, this is it for Yellowstone, right? This is
57:21 Chris Ryan? This is it for Yellowstone, but I don't think it's it for the Yellowstone characters.
57:25 Speaker 05 Interesting.
57:26 Chris Ryan? So I think that, that Kelly Riley, who plays Beth and Cole Hauser, who plays Rip, will at least they and possibly Casey will be in whatever next iteration they decide to do. And maybe that will
57:39 Speaker 05 I saw a lot of Beth and Rip Halloween costumes this year.
57:41 Chris Ryan? Did you really?
57:42 Speaker 05 I did. Like at least two.
57:44 Chris Ryan? In Santa Monica?
57:46 Speaker 05 No, just not in Santa Monica, just people I follow on social media.
57:50 Chris Ryan? Oh, okay.
57:52 Chris Ryan? I was like at Whole Foods.
57:57 Chris Ryan? Okay. Yeah. So that's where we're at. I'll be curious to see whether Lioness is set up for more seasons. This one has way more of an interesting story structure than Kingstown. I think Kingstown was a little bit like, how many times can this guy go have the same scene over and over again? And that's why I kind of started losing interest in season two. Season three of Lioness, I mean, like they're really setting this show up that it could just be about this program. And I would never want Zoe Saldana not to be a part of it, but
58:27 Speaker 05 Yeah.
58:27 Chris Ryan? I do think that they have like a lot, a lot, a lot of talent on this show. So I guess it's up to Taylor and then Landman to me is obviously going to go on for as long as they want to do it.
58:37 Speaker 05 Right? Yeah.
58:38 Chris Ryan? And the fact that they haven't put An internal clock on like, well, once this question gets answered, there's no reason to keep doing the series. Like you could just keep doing this show. You can do, you could have this show go on for years and I still don't know why Demi Moore is in this so far. She is swam laps in a pool.
58:56 Speaker 05 Okay.
58:57 Chris Ryan? So she, she, in the first episode, she's swimming laps in a pool.
59:00 Speaker 05 Great.
59:00 Chris Ryan? In the second episode, she goes to a charity dinner and doesn't have any lines. And in the third episode, she swims laps in a pool and then tells Jon Hamm to take his blood pressure medication. So.
59:10 Speaker 05 Okay. We'll see.
59:12 Chris Ryan? This is Demi Moore, you know, like it's, it's not a big deal. But yeah, I'm really enjoying it. It's kind of given me a little bit of like, uh, it just is very nostalgic for almost like, these are the stories that I watch on Sunday night, like in the absence of a Sunday night HBO show. Yeah. Cause I'm just not really super into the Dune show. I think I found my limits of my interest in Dune and, but I have not found my limits in the, my interest in the West Texas oil business, apparently.
59:41 Speaker 05 I'm excited to re-fire up my Paramount Plus. I think I'm going to go for it this week.
59:46 Chris Ryan? Yeah.
59:46 Speaker 05 I think it's time.
59:47 Chris Ryan? Yeah. And like, do you watch Survivor? Like you could catch up on this season if you wanted to. There's a bunch of stuff on there. There's, there's some.
59:53 Speaker 05 Colin from accounts.
59:53 Chris Ryan? Colin from accounts. Yeah.
59:55 Speaker 05 They also have like an amazing movie selection on Paramount Plus. So yeah.
59:59 Chris Ryan? Okay. Well, it sounds like your Thanksgiving week is planned out. I hope everybody else has a good Thanksgiving week. Thanks to Andy, thanks to Kaia, and thanks to our listeners. Enjoy your holiday and we'll be back with you next Monday with the first episode of The Agency. So we're really excited for that.
Previous ‘Landman’ Shows That Taylor Sheridan’s Still Got It. Plus, Is Cable Officially Dead? Next Are We in a Golden Age for Spy Television? Page updated November 6, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated