‘The Last of Us’ Steps Into New Territory. Plus, ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ E3.

Chris and Andy talk about last night’s momentous episode of ‘The Last of Us.’ They discuss Mark Mylod becoming the go-to director for huge episodes of TV (02:14) and where the series will go from here (36:45). Then they break down the latest episode of ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ and talk about how the show’s closest comparison is increasingly becoming ‘Billions’ (48:26). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Senior Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Production: Marcelino Ortiz Video Editing: Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Chris Ryan?

  Hey everybody, before we get into today's episode of The Watch, where we'll be talking about The Last of Us, Episode 2, as well as some stuff on your friends and neighbors, just want to mention that Andy and I will be back on this feed tomorrow night to talk about the first three episodes of Andor broadly, but more importantly, to be joined by Tony Gilroy, the creator of Andor and one of our favorite screenwriters of all time. Tony has been on the pod a couple of times and is always an incredible interview, and he was so thoughtful and interesting in talking about this second season of Andor. So please make sure you keep your eye on your feeds tomorrow night for that Tony Gilroy interview. Let's get into today's show.

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• 1:26Chris 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, he won't be visiting Jackson anytime soon, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 1:42Andy Greenwald?

  Let me begin by saying, I thought the new promo campaign for No Laying Up has gone too far.

• 1:49Chris Ryan?

  Lots of golf jokes coming. That's why I wore the Masters hat. We are going to jump right into our Last of Us, Episode 2 reactions. I will say that we will be spoiling going forward from this very second.

• 1:59Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 2:00Chris Ryan?

  I will also say, just to be the nice guy that I am.

• 2:04Andy Greenwald?

  You are.

• 2:05Chris Ryan?

  I probably will casually mention other momentous episodes throughout television history.

• 2:10Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, so you might just spoil everything?

• 2:12Chris Ryan?

  No, I'm trying to, I'm going to try and be mindful about specifics, but I think when we refer to say other things that Mark Mylod has done in his directorial career, we may refer to other character deaths. We may refer to momentous occasions. Honestly, I assume if you watched- Last night and you're listening to us and you listen to The Watch. You probably watched Game of Thrones.

• 2:33Andy Greenwald?

  Huh, that'd be interesting to find out if it's, there's some people that didn't.

• 2:36Chris Ryan?

  Maybe you watched Succession, I hope, you know?

• 2:38Andy Greenwald?

  I would also say, because I'm more concerned about this, if you'd like to know some of our just regular Monday morning bants and Chris's thoughts about Easter weekend, just skip forward about 15, 20 minutes.

• 2:49Chris Ryan?

  15, 20? This is a momentous episode of television, man.

• 2:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, we could knock it out.

• 2:54Chris Ryan?

  Alright.

• 2:55Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, maybe longer.

• 2:56Chris Ryan?

  Well, sir, you have the honors. Andy, we're gonna talk about, uh, this episode Through the Valley. It was written by Craig Mason. It was directed by Mark Milat, as I referred to earlier. Obviously, this is an episode where Abby gets her revenge, uh, and the horde breaches Jackson, so... Two things that I think on any other show, in any other moment, would be penultimate or season finale moments. Crushed into one episode.

• 3:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 3:23Chris Ryan?

  Um, I guess I want to start with you.

• 3:27Andy Greenwald?

  Thank you.

• 3:28Chris Ryan?

  Because A, you've been a little bit, uh, immune to the, to the cordyceps crawling all over my body here.

• 3:37Andy Greenwald?

  Once bitten, twice shy.

• 3:38Chris Ryan?

  No, but like, you've been a little bit immune to some of the show's charms, and this is obviously a takeout, like, put it on the mantle, put it on the shelf episode. So what did you think?

• 3:49Andy Greenwald?

  Before I answer in full, I do want to, like, I do want to say, completely unspoiled.

• 3:54Chris Ryan?

  Yes, congratulations.

• 3:55Andy Greenwald?

  Nothing.

• 3:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it must've been cool.

• 3:56Andy Greenwald?

  It was pretty lucky, pretty great.

• 3:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:59Andy Greenwald?

  Things are really breaking my way, just as an American. Um, I, I mean, there was some ambient. People don't like the Abby character.

• 4:10Chris Ryan?

  That's what I was telling you. I think I, I may have been the ambient, like...

• 4:13Andy Greenwald?

  Well, that, and then also, other ambient was like...

• 4:18Andy Greenwald?

  Any complaints about, boy, they're really just gonna settle in to

• 4:22Chris Ryan?

  Jackson.

• 4:22Andy Greenwald?

  To ski life is probably premature.

• 4:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:26Andy Greenwald?

  So I didn't mind having those, that sense.

• 4:29Chris Ryan?

  Cool. Did you guys have a great New Year's Eve? What did you? Great show.

• 4:32Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I feel like the year doesn't start till February, am I right?

• 4:35Chris Ryan?

  Have you noticed nobody in California will return my calls?

• 4:39Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, now it's Sundance? Try January, it goes on forever. Uh, so that was cool for me, and I would hope cool for many other people who weren't spoiled and don't play video games. Um, I, I, I don't mean this to be in any way like a half compliment when I say that this was on a craftsmanship, on an aesthetic, on a, um, uh, technical level. This was TV on the highest, at the highest possible order.

• 5:07Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 5:08Andy Greenwald?

  It was outrageous. Um, it was so brilliantly directed. Uh, and yes, I'm saying this not just because we are fans of Mark Mylod. I will disclose that I'm now, I've been working with Mark Mylod. He is awesome and, uh, a genius. And also, just sidebar, the least director energy of any major lead director I've ever been around. He's a nice guy who is really good at, um, uh, doing the mise en scène for Mass Def.

• 5:34Chris Ryan?

  Can I ask you a question? I was gonna save this for later in the conversation, but what, what do you think makes him? Not necessarily because he's such a great guy to have tea with, but like, what makes him such a good director? Because he is obviously this chameleonic presence throughout the last 10 years or so of television.

• 5:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, people, it's hard to realize that his first producing directing gig, meaning the one that he was like part of the, the, the team for the show across the season, was Entourage.

• 6:00Chris Ryan?

  I don't think I knew that.

• 6:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, that was what brought him to LA, uh, for the first time.

• 6:05Chris Ryan?

  What an interesting entree.

• 6:07Andy Greenwald?

  I know.

• 6:09Chris Ryan?

  I know. Our little town here, yeah.

• 6:10Andy Greenwald?

  I know.

• 6:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:11Andy Greenwald?

  So, anyway, so what, what, I-

• 6:13Chris Ryan?

  I was trying to kind of develop like a, not a theory of Mylod or an understanding of his aesthetic, but I think the reason why I like him so much is that he's a throwback, not a throwback, but I think he reminds me of- Film directors like Sidney Pollack or Mike Nichols, who does what's needed because the material demands a certain approach. Now, you could say Mark Mylod is very good at directing handheld. So like, I feel like when there are moments where we're dealing, we're inside of a character's perspective, or he's trying to unnerv the audience. Obviously, Succession uses handheld almost exclusively, it feels like.

• 6:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, he kind of created the visual language, or mastered the visual language of that show.

• 6:54Chris Ryan?

  But he brought a little bit of that. You know, I thought like, compared to the first episode that Mazen directed, this one feels a lot more jittery, and for good reason. But then he also has in his bag, oh, I can direct 6,000 zombies running after one person down a mountain. And, you know, that is just an incredible array of talents.

• 7:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I think that, I think what you said hits the nail on the head in what makes him rare in this day and age, and maybe it was less rare in the past. But I think that he does exactly what's needed for the project. And I think that often in TV, which is really kind of a, you know, an independent contractor, freelance, jack-of-all-trades kind of industry for directors.

• 7:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:36Andy Greenwald?

  That, that can be a really useful thing. You can just show up and get your shots and get out of there. But it doesn't really make for, um, it makes for competence, not always excellence. And it definitely doesn't always make for like visual, uh, just visual, visual, um, like show off.

• 7:53Chris Ryan?

  It's not necessarily memorable, yeah.

• 7:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. And somehow he is able to do that. And I've not been on set with him, so I can't speak to like his technical stuff, which is clearly at an elite level, having done this for Thrones, having done this for Shameless, having done this for the menu, Succession, and now this. But what I can say about him, from having been around him, is that I don't remember any director being as warmly welcome in a writer's room, let's say, just in terms of his, uh, his ability to listen and share, and to get granularly into the storytelling to a degree that I have to assume makes it possible then to dunk on everybody once you're actually on set that day. So I'm blown away by it.

• 8:36Andy Greenwald?

  And, um, I couldn't get over the scale of the episode, the size of it, the expense of it, but the money well spent in terms of where to put the camera. And when, you know, when you're talking about like the Jackson, uh, assault, like. Being able to follow characters within that story and understand the scale of it and sort of modulate the hopeful hopelessness of it, I thought was just really, really remarkable.

• 9:02Chris Ryan?

  It's also really good writing. I mean, like, the, the opening Maria and Tommy scene, Tommy's speech to the town.

• 9:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 9:10Chris Ryan?

  Where he's like.

• 9:11Andy Greenwald?

  I'm a Ramirez guy now, by the way.

• 9:13Chris Ryan?

  On the off chance that there's a, a huge invasion by the horde.

• 9:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 9:17Chris Ryan?

  We're gonna like basically funnel them down Main Street so that we have high ground. We're gonna send all the women and children into the basements and then we're gonna fortify the basements. It's like, everything kind of was laid out. Now, obviously, when he's doing that speech, you're just like, oh, well, then this obviously will go bad today. But, that being said, I thought, like you said, you were just able to see and feel exactly where this action was happening, even down to the point where Tommy is like going head to head with the, I don't know what the hell that thing was, the Berserker kind of.

• 9:49Andy Greenwald?

  I, I have some notes on that. I have some questions.

• 9:52Chris Ryan?

  Main dude, main mushroom. I kind of knew where that was, like that it was on a side street. It was on a, yeah.

• 9:59Andy Greenwald?

  So, all of that said, I also think it's really, we have to commend the show for going for it.

• 10:09Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:09Andy Greenwald?

  Like, one of the, we've been talking, we, we talk about this constantly, and I was talking about it last week with Dope Thief, this idea that like, one of the main challenges to making good TV is knowing the right shaped bucket for your story. And sometimes it's a two hour bucket, and sometimes it's an eight hour bucket, and when you mix that up, not great things happen. The other factor that is worth putting into that conversation is speed, speed of story, like how, you know, when you hit the gas, when you pump the brakes, when to delay, and when to just go for it. And I'm sure that there were conversations, and I'm sure there were notes, and I'm sure there were questions about how quickly do we hit this plot point? That, you know, as we experienced with Game of Thrones, viewers or players in this case knew was coming.

• 10:52Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:53Andy Greenwald?

  But also, we have a star who is suddenly one of the most bankable stars in the world, the most recognizable faces and a beloved actor, and are we ready to do this, this soon into the second season? Could we extend it? Could we have this, the, the?

• 11:10Chris Ryan?

  Based on the amount of movies he's in, I think Pedro Pascal was ready.

• 11:13Andy Greenwald?

  I have a lot of comments about that, so please let me, let me cook in about 10 minutes. His, we, all I'm saying is. The biggest spoiler was my guy's IMDb page since 2023. 10 movies since 2024. So I think that really was the tell that none of us, it was hiding in plain sight.

• 11:32Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 11:34Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway, they went for it, obviously. And I think that it was thrilling, it was earned, and I was excited to sort of re-access that part of my TV-watching lizard brain, which does the, I don't know if you ever have this, but sometimes I find my reactive audience brain getting conservative in real time. Like, clearly, clearly his story is over in that moment. Abby has been very clear.

• 12:02Chris Ryan?

  Oh, you're like, could Ellie come crashing through the window and save him?

• 12:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, the hope and the manipulation of the hope by the creators, not in a bad way, but in a, you know, an artful storyteller way. Could he find a way to delay? Could he say the right thing that would give them pause? Will her crew of super, super woke TikTok army kids?

• 12:22Chris Ryan?

  Step in and do the right thing?

• 12:23Andy Greenwald?

  Step in, you know? The brain does that. And I think good storytellers, which Mazen clearly is, know that our brain is doing that and then denies us that hope in a way. So there was a moment when the more cynical person who does this for a living, like, and watches TV for a living at this point, was like, oh, they're doing this. I see it, I respect it. But the lizard brain hope remains, and I like that collision. It's been a while.

• 12:50Chris Ryan?

  It's the reverse of every time you watched Don Draper driving Sally anywhere, and you were like, oh, no, oh, no, please don't turn off the road. It's like, they're not gonna have him kill his daughter and himself in a car, you know?

• 13:00Andy Greenwald?

  Episode four of season five.

• 13:03Chris Ryan?

  I love this episode. I knew it was coming. I was pretty sure it was coming.

• 13:09Andy Greenwald?

  You were loose with the Google.

• 13:10Chris Ryan?

  Well, I think I was very excited for Caitlin Dever's casting. And so any engagement with that casting inevitably led to lots of people being like, protect Caitlin Dever at all costs. This is a very controversial character within the realm of the game.

• 13:24Andy Greenwald?

  Is Dever Fever still on Tumblr? Or have you moved it to Substack?

• 13:28Chris Ryan?

  Dever Fever is going straight to Blogspot.

• 13:32Chris Ryan?

  And I think that I've been fascinated with the writing about, like Nicholas Quarr wrote about this, but like, a lot of the sort of discourse around. Some of the ideas about the adaptation process of this TV show, video game to TV show now, often like when you have something, I don't know, what's a good example of something like, this is stupid but Tomb Raider, or something like that where you're like, essentially like, it's a first-person shooter that you're kind of moving through a world and like, it's a very identifiable main character, that's the avatar for the player. Last of Us, apparently, I've never played it, moves POV around. So, one of the reasons why Abby is such a complicated character in the game is that you play as Abby when Last of Us Part 2 came out.

• 14:16Chris Ryan?

  Like, you're playing as Abby and I guess, I don't know this for 1,000% sure, but like, you kill Joel. Like, you're forced to kind of live both sides of this kind of issue that they've got at the heart of, is Abby doing something right? Did Joel, is Abby doing the right thing? Did Joel do the right thing? For these two choices that these people made at various points in their life.

• 14:39Andy Greenwald?

  Wow. That's like you with all your steel stocks. You're like, you know this is bad for the world. But I gotta say, maybe it's time to take some medicine.

• 14:50Chris Ryan?

  So there was that. I felt while I was watching it, I gotta, we gotta come up with the German world word for, something bad is gonna happen or something big is gonna happen on this episode of TV. It's basically the hair-on-your-arm stand-up, but I have felt that a couple of times, even though I knew something was happening, there was just too much buzz about this episode. I don't think I understood that it was gonna be paired with this invasion of Jackson, which is apparently a show invention and is also like, you know,

• 15:20Andy Greenwald?

  That's cool.

• 15:20Chris Ryan?

  About like, kind of wiping the entire whiteboard clean of this, of this series. I was thinking a lot, obviously, about Reigns of Casimir while I was watching it. Because people were like,

• 15:31Andy Greenwald?

  And that's the Red Wedding.

• 15:32Chris Ryan?

  Last of Us just had its Red Wedding episode and- I was kind of fascinated by the fact that Reigns of Castmere happens 29 hours into Game of Thrones.

• 15:40Andy Greenwald?

  That's really hard to remember.

• 15:41Chris Ryan?

  And how much TV has changed since then?

• 15:44Andy Greenwald?

  That was the day Game of Thrones became precedent.

• 15:46Chris Ryan?

  But it's like, Game of Thrones introduced this idea that nothing is sacred, that there aren't these sort of fixed identities within shows of like, this is obviously the guy who's gonna leave the show for the 10 years that it's on. That, they taught us that early on.

• 16:00Andy Greenwald?

  They taught us that with Ned.

• 16:01Chris Ryan?

  But I don't think that we, I don't think I was prepared and it was also a different time on social media and a different time in terms of like, how much time people were spending online, where you could blissfully be unaware of what, what happens in Reigns of Castmere, what happens at the Red Wedding.

• 16:17Chris Ryan?

  There's also a level of shock that's attendant, that comes with being with these people for 30 hours.

• 16:24Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 16:25Chris Ryan?

  That's a little different for being with them for 11, I think, which is the case with Last of Us or however many episodes it's been. You know, I think it's, how many episodes of that first season? This is one of our great.

• 16:36Andy Greenwald?

  We love this. We have no idea. Sadly, there's no way for us to know.

• 16:39Chris Ryan?

  10 or 11 hours or whatever it is, that's how long we've been with Joel. And it's a lot different than the relationship to some of the people who perished in Red Wedding. I don't, it's not a qualitative judgment, it's just an observation.

• 16:53Andy Greenwald?

  Now, I would say that that's one of the things that makes HBO really good at what it does institutionally because that, and it also reinforces why casting Pedro Pascal was so important retroactively. I'm sure people noted this at the time who'd played the game. You're casting someone who has baked in familiarity, audience goodwill, carries himself on screen and when you see him, it's charisma, it's kindness, you'd follow him, you'd trust him. You don't have to do the legwork to get him to a place where you believe in him. You do from the beginning because frankly, you don't have enough time to establish it otherwise.

• 17:22Chris Ryan?

  Right. I guess I want to talk a little bit about the scene, you know, and his death. Because obviously it's one of the more.

• 17:30Andy Greenwald?

  Let's put the Jackson stuff on ice for a minute.

• 17:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:34Chris Ryan?

  Because I think it would probably be a, like, it's a very challenging scene to depict. Obviously, it's, it's torture, you know, both what's happening in that room, but also to watch. You have all this affection for Pascal as an actor and as like a persona. You also have a lot, I personally have a lot of affection for like Dever.

• 17:53Andy Greenwald?

  Which is why you cast her.

• 17:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and what did you think of the way they staged it? And what did you think of the performances within it?

• 18:01Andy Greenwald?

  Two things to get out of the way, that, just two small bumps that I, that I'll just get out of the way first. One is, the show is real, is testing, honestly, my credulity in terms of tiny, bird-armed people being, you know, what's the, what's the, what's the, what's the fighting?

• 18:18Chris Ryan?

  Krav Maga.

• 18:18Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that one. They can all do that.

• 18:20Chris Ryan?

  You don't know what Krav Maga is? Come on.

• 18:22Andy Greenwald?

  After last week's Ronan slash Ronine pronunciation debacle, I am retreating, frankly.

• 18:29Chris Ryan?

  From what?

• 18:29Andy Greenwald?

  From foreign words for a while. I'm just taking a break.

• 18:32Chris Ryan?

  So are you trying to say that you don't know that Dever had the ball speed to make that happen? The club head speed?

• 18:39Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just, no, no, once she went to the bag.

• 18:42Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:42Andy Greenwald?

  Without the benefit of a caddy, but for a while, she was just using, using, you know, using the fisticuffs.

• 18:48Chris Ryan?

  Yes. I think she'd been training for a long time for that moment.

• 18:52Andy Greenwald?

  For this one moment.

• 18:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:53Andy Greenwald?

  Um, I think the other aspect of it ties into something that I'll say at the end, which is just like, it's, it's not just that the show is the best possible version of a zombie show. I think it is the best possible version of an absolutely nihilistic, dystopian anguish world that I don't love being in. And the sound of her beating a beloved character to death was not my favorite way to spend a Sunday. That said, um, I respect that they, that they did it, you know, that they went for it and it was the, um,

• 19:28Andy Greenwald?

  You know, what am I thinking of this? Recently, I was just watching something where someone says like, would you rather have like, was it one in the head or like bleed out slowly from the stomach? I don't know, I feel like that was a text you sent me probably. Some action movie.

• 19:41Chris Ryan?

  One of your other friends.

• 19:42Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, no, it doesn't matter. The point is, this was the headshot of super violent, uh, character death scenes. And I thought it was like, to that degree staged for the best, I don't know, respect, level of respect.

• 19:56Chris Ryan?

  I didn't think it was self indulgent.

• 19:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 19:58Chris Ryan?

  I didn't think that it ever border, uh, never crossed over into torture porn. I thought Dever kept it really grounded. She had just the right amount of menace, but also vulnerability and kind of always keeping it tethered to the emotional motivation for doing it in the first place.

• 20:15Andy Greenwald?

  And to that point, I mean, this is something that we talked about, um, in a more, um, spiritual sense. When we were talking about White Lotus, but I think it's just actually a core tenet of effective drama. When you see the full chain of decision making and you feel the weight of the butterfly wings in one episode, and then the storm hits wherever later. And you can sort of see the beat by beat logic to it, even if you don't agree with it, or even if you wish it wasn't so. So the re, so doing it earlier, even though five years has passed in the show, but doing it earlier in the season really didn't allow either Joel or the audience to move past what he did in that Firefly hospital.

• 20:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 20:55Andy Greenwald?

  So you understand as he did, that this was coming for him. And you understand in a way, I think, and Pascal played this really well, that all of this was one action in a way. And that saving this person who killed him was also part of the kind of dark symmetry of this post apocalyptic world, right?

• 21:17Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 21:17Andy Greenwald?

  That he was always going to be himself. And at the very end, there was nothing, he couldn't argue. Because it was him, he saved Ellie, he saved this girl. That is his nature is to sometimes be quite violent, if necessary, to save the people he feels are worthy of being saved. And at the end of his road, that was, he understood how, how he paved the road that he got there.

• 21:39Chris Ryan?

  He's watched everybody he loves die. I mean, many of the people he loves, he's watched die. And so he wasn't willing to let Ellie go.

• 21:48Chris Ryan?

  He knows what he did. He obviously is ashamed enough about it, or, you know, knows how divisive it would be for it to be an open, for everybody to know, I made a choice to save Ellie, but possibly doom the rest of humanity. If she indeed is this like miracle vaccine inside of her, she has to die to give up. That being said, you know, I thought, I thought Dever was like,

• 22:18Chris Ryan?

  the, the speech about lawlessness and this, I,

• 22:21Andy Greenwald?

  I noted that too.

• 22:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, what, what did you think?

• 22:23Andy Greenwald?

  A little rich to be worried about lawlessness.

• 22:24Chris Ryan?

  No, I think she was like, there's, you, you're supposed to stick to,

• 22:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 22:29Chris Ryan?

  even, even in these moments of like, everything is falling apart and society is kind of dissolving, that there are things you don't do. And she's like, and now you've made me into you, because I'm going to do that to you.

• 22:41Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 22:42Chris Ryan?

  I liked that. I mean, I thought, I mean, it was a very effective piece of writing. I don't, you know,

• 22:46Andy Greenwald?

  I think it was an effective piece of writing, and I thought it was really well played. And there was an element to it that I really, really liked, where it felt theatrical.

• 22:55Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 22:56Andy Greenwald?

  Dever, the way that she's performing this character, and I mean this as praise, I can sort of feel the consideration as to how she's modulating it. It, it feels like this scene and her scene in the beginning of the season premiere, felt to me more like a soliloquy on stage, not necessarily in the writing, although certainly can make that case. But kind of in the way she seems to sort of savor the language, and she's not losing herself in the character. She's delivering the lines in a way. And it's, this is maybe even a weirder, a weird observation to make. But there's one moment when she's kneeling and she's delivering the lawlessness speech. And there's a cutaway to Pascal, and you know, the way these things are cut up, we don't know if this is a,

• 23:41Andy Greenwald?

  a live reaction shot to that, or they just had footage of him from a different take. But he, he seems receptive.

• 23:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 23:49Andy Greenwald?

  He's listening.

• 23:50Chris Ryan?

  I agree.

• 23:50Andy Greenwald?

  It, it feels like an acting class in the sense that what your job in a scene when you're not delivering lines is to be present and to, to, to listen, even if you've heard it a hundred times before. And I just had a moment of being, so then an hour later, when I was reading a little bit about the episode, and you see someone throws up, or, or, or I guess one of them had put on social, like a picture of them palling around on set.

• 24:10Chris Ryan?

  All right, for a second, I was like, what if the ex-fireflies has socials?

• 24:15Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, it's incredible.

• 24:17Chris Ryan?

  Peace the fuck out, Jackson.

• 24:19Andy Greenwald?

  What's weird is that they still didn't shut down TikTok, even though the virus took over. No, in that moment, I'm like, this seems like they were very generous performers with each other and got along and I made sense. That's maybe that's a trite observation, but I felt like this speech was being delivered, but it was also being received. And that helped keep me in it, even though it was horrifying.

• 24:40Chris Ryan?

  Do you feel like the horror of that moment was offset by balancing it with what was happening at Jackson? Like, if it had just been cutaways back to Jackson and people are like, boy, we really gotta check these pipes out.

• 24:54Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 24:54Chris Ryan?

  Oof, I'm hungover. Seth, I hope you've really come to realize that homophobia has no place in this town. Like, over, like, just kind of moving through the, like, beats and then also, but overhear Joel's getting killed by a six iron, like.

• 25:08Andy Greenwald?

  Side note, homophobic Seth's steak sandwiches reminds me of the Palestinian chicken episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, where it's just like, sure, he hates who I choose to love, but goddamn, those sandwiches are good. They look, I didn't even see them, but they were like real thick cut, you know, like butcher paper. I'm sorry, Seth, like, your hateful ideology has no place here.

• 25:28Chris Ryan?

  Court Street grocery over here.

• 25:29Andy Greenwald?

  Seriously, but I can't kick you out of my kitchen.

• 25:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:34Andy Greenwald?

  You're Chick-fil-A, pretty good.

• 25:35Chris Ryan?

  Basically, I, you know, there is another way to play this, and I think in the game, like I said, the show, I think, invents the idea of Jackson being invaded, at least contemporaneously with Joel's death. I think there's another way to play this that feels a lot more excruciating.

• 25:53Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, if it's just a one-on-one.

• 25:56Chris Ryan?

  Joel has been captured for half an hour.

• 25:58Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, no, no, I loved that part. And I also, again, this is.

• 26:01Chris Ryan?

  Because meanwhile, you're kind of like, Joel's here, but I'm like, are the other guys okay?

• 26:04Andy Greenwald?

  Like. Sometimes when you get into the weeds with, like, story structure.

• 26:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:08Andy Greenwald?

  It is a little bit like when you read people say why Joe Madden was a really good baseball manager, you know, of the Rays. It's like, well, you know, he really, you know, he hit the pitcher eighth. And I'm like, okay. So I don't want to get too far into that, but I do think that when you have the reps and the experience, and certainly the budget and time to think about these things, you can be a much more effective puppeteer.

• 26:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:30Andy Greenwald?

  And in this case, it's that. There's so much danger happening at once that our attention is split, our heart is split, and it's playing into a foreknowledge of audiences savviness that we know, we know someone's not making it out of this episode.

• 26:50Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 26:50Andy Greenwald?

  We know someone we care about, and you find yourself, again, in those edge of your couch moments, making these calculations, being like, okay, I could sacrifice Jesse and maybe, you know, you throw in a Seth or whatever, and is that enough to get me out of this episode clean without losing one of the lead? And you start doing that, and I think that that makes for a more engaging episodic experience.

• 27:15Chris Ryan?

  I love the idea of you watching like Pascal try to like, like his fingers twitching as he tries to get up the last time and just being like, look.

• 27:22Andy Greenwald?

  Listen.

• 27:23Chris Ryan?

  That's, that's a long rehab.

• 27:24Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 27:25Chris Ryan?

  But we believe in our sports science team and we can get him back, back on a horse by season three.

• 27:30Andy Greenwald?

  I do have these questions of like, maybe this is actually makes this show more like paradise in the sense of like, we pick who survives, but like Dr. Neil L. Atroche, the guy who like fixes everyone's knee tendons?

• 27:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:41Andy Greenwald?

  Let's save him, because as soon as, truly, as soon as Abby shoots Joel the first time, I'm like, okay, well, he'll have a limp, but he's on horseback a lot. It'll be fine, for sure, for sure.

• 27:55Chris Ryan?

  They let Ellie live, obviously, that they need to for the show. Um, they also, technically, that was what Abby said. They're not gonna hurt anybody. She's just gonna kill Joel. So like, obviously, this kind of gets into, where do we go from here? There's a couple of other moments from the show that I want to shout out, but like I-

• 28:16Andy Greenwald?

  Within that group scene, though, do you want, like, did you feel, did you think Ellie was gonna save the day? Did you think that-

• 28:23Chris Ryan?

  I mean, but I also knew what was gonna happen.

• 28:24Andy Greenwald?

  Right. As soon as, I, as soon as she showed up, I was-

• 28:27Chris Ryan?

  Because once you get like, half spoiled, you're just like, well, now I want to know.

• 28:31Andy Greenwald?

  You do the full spoil?

• 28:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. So I'm just like, just, I, I go to like, I go to my sights.

• 28:35Andy Greenwald?

  Do you? Your black sights? Your rendition sights? What are you talking about? As soon as Ellie showed up, I was like, oh, he's dying.

• 28:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 28:43Andy Greenwald?

  Because they needed to be, they had to have one more scene together.

• 28:46Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 28:46Andy Greenwald?

  Even if it was a little one-sided, I would say. Um, I also thought that, I mean, I made a joke about, about Abby's paramilitary elite force, um, but-

• 28:58Andy Greenwald?

  There are some.

• 28:59Chris Ryan?

  That's Danny Ramirez and yeah.

• 29:01Andy Greenwald?

  Well, no, no, Danny Ramirez is.

• 29:03Chris Ryan?

  That's Gabriel Luna.

• 29:04Andy Greenwald?

  Who am I mixing up here?

• 29:06Chris Ryan?

  Danny Ramirez is the guy with.

• 29:09Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, Gabriel. I'm so sorry. Yes, I've been swapping them for this whole episode.

• 29:15Andy Greenwald?

  He's they're good. You know what I mean?

• 29:17Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 29:17Andy Greenwald?

  Like, and they're I see now the show is so well cast that I make a joke about it, but like,

• 29:24Andy Greenwald?

  it was this episode that I realized that was Ariella Bear in the group, who was one of the stars of How to Blow Up a Pipeline.

• 29:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:30Andy Greenwald?

  And and Marvel's Runaways back in the day. And I'm like, OK.

• 29:33Chris Ryan?

  So she's like the medical.

• 29:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yes. So I'm like, there are no. There are no weak spots. They are not like, well, we we've run out of budget here. We're gonna we're gonna skim.

• 29:42Chris Ryan?

  It's really well cast and also each one of those people without a lot of dialogue is communicating a different response to what Abby is doing.

• 29:48Andy Greenwald?

  That's what I mean. And so you have that ability. And this is something that my lab probably would speak about, too, like, he could cut to those people.

• 29:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:54Andy Greenwald?

  And get what he needed to tell the story.

• 29:59Andy Greenwald?

  100%. And so. And then also, it's the, you know, it is in keeping with the storytelling language of the show of like, more butterfly flaps, like, well, I just left you alive. So now the show continues.

• 30:14Andy Greenwald?

  I want to I want to talk about where it goes from here, but I also just want to shout out. I feel like we've we've praised the individual people, but.

• 30:22Andy Greenwald?

  The scene where Abby falls down the mountain.

• 30:27Chris Ryan?

  That's incredible. And the chain link fence is fucking insane.

• 30:29Andy Greenwald?

  And the chase to the chain link fence. Single handedly caused me to wish to recant everything I said last week about being, maybe I don't need zombie shows. Oh.

• 30:41Andy Greenwald?

  Still a little mushroom meat on that bone. That was so.

• 30:45Chris Ryan?

  It's amazing to be you. Just to just to.

• 30:47Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just fresh every day.

• 30:48Chris Ryan?

  Chips go out, chips come right back in.

• 30:50Andy Greenwald?

  That's why I don't gamble. Just enjoy myself. Live.

• 30:54Chris Ryan?

  I definitely think I'm getting 21 on this hand.

• 30:56Andy Greenwald?

  See what I do? Live moss.

• 30:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:58Andy Greenwald?

  That's how I do it.

• 31:00Andy Greenwald?

  It was so. Awesome. It was riveting. It was cinematic. It was thrilling. It was so well shot. It was just like that. I don't know what I don't know what kind of drones he's using or cranes, but like, yeah, OK, you're making the case for yourself and for all of it in such a cool way.

• 31:17Andy Greenwald?

  It in Jackson.

• 31:20Andy Greenwald?

  I'm down with like fast mushroom zombies throwing themselves into stuff like, okay, I get that.

• 31:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:26Andy Greenwald?

  I see the terms of debate. I am a little less into Hulk smash mushroom monsters who do the thing.

• 31:36Chris Ryan?

  They got that homie from Helm's Deep.

• 31:37Andy Greenwald?

  This is what I'm saying. All larger foes in fantasy, whether they are like giants, like 1-1 or whatever in GOT. Don't act like you don't know. We did an after show.

• 31:51Chris Ryan?

  I remember 1-1.

• 31:52Andy Greenwald?

  Wasn't he named after Eli Manning because George R R Martin's a Giants fan?

• 31:56Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. That's very funny if that's true.

• 31:59Andy Greenwald?

  What's up, Jason and Mal? Miss you guys. All big creatures. When they burst through the thing they're trying to get through and all their little guys run through, they all pause to flex a little bit. They all pause to be like, ah. And I'm like.

• 32:14Chris Ryan?

  In your war room, that's a red flag on a prospect.

• 32:18Andy Greenwald?

  Well, no, it's just like the guy.

• 32:20Chris Ryan?

  You want a guy who's just like, I just did my job and I'm resetting, getting back into my stance.

• 32:24Andy Greenwald?

  When, yes, when Jaden threw the Hail Mary and there was the Bears cornerback who was just like waving to the crowd, like there'll be time to showboat later. Secure Jackson.

• 32:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:35Andy Greenwald?

  Also, you have no brain. You're an animated fungus.

• 32:38Chris Ryan?

  That guy had the brain. I thought that guy was the sort of, he was sort of Ray Lewis, you know, like he was setting.

• 32:44Andy Greenwald?

  He had the green dot?

• 32:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:45Andy Greenwald?

  He was setting the coverages? I mean, he was.

• 32:47Chris Ryan?

  Because they all went left when he went left, right?

• 32:50Andy Greenwald?

  True, and also when.

• 32:51Chris Ryan?

  And I think when he gets finally incinerated, that's when people, they all lose a little bit of their edge, you know?

• 32:57Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 32:57Chris Ryan?

  And Jackson kind of, they get a leg up on them.

• 33:00Andy Greenwald?

  When Gabriel Luna's just like, I want you.

• 33:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 33:04Andy Greenwald?

  The guy's like, me? And then he follows him. I just felt a little too.

• 33:09Chris Ryan?

  I can't believe Craig Mason rejected your writing packet to be the dialogue guy for the head mushroom.

• 33:16Andy Greenwald?

  I could have been.

• 33:17Chris Ryan?

  Me?

• 33:18Andy Greenwald?

  Well, like, you know, when they do the Guardians. When they do the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, Bradley Cooper's not on set, right? Like Sean Gunn's just like, this is what a raccoon would do. I could have been that guy, except I don't like the cold and I don't like zombies and I'm busy. But other than that, no, I just feel like we've only had a week to get used to the idea that some of these shrooms. I'm thinking.

• 33:39Chris Ryan?

  Well, we only had 15 minutes to get used to the idea that there were thousands of them buried underneath dead bodies in the mountains.

• 33:47Andy Greenwald?

  It's really true. And then, less than that, actually, they say like, hey, some fun fact we've discovered. They didn't even show us that.

• 33:53Chris Ryan?

  Like, maybe they should have done less bantering on patrol and more like, hey, check out that frozen ground, make sure it's frozen.

• 34:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, if we run back the tape, like, when there is the sort of like, you know, truth and reconciliation committee about what happened at Jackson, I feel like they're like very

• 34:09Chris Ryan?

  The porn report.

• 34:10Andy Greenwald?

  They're very credulous of

• 34:12Chris Ryan?

  They'd be

• 34:12Andy Greenwald?

  They'd be very credulous of like, many, many zombies hiding under dead zombies. But when Ellie is just like, I personally witnessed a smart zombie, they're like, come on.

• 34:26Chris Ryan?

  I think they're more just like, we gotta get through New Year's Eve, and then we'll worry about this.

• 34:29Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, in this episode, Jesse's like, good morning, please kiss my girlfriend, no problem, but stop telling lies.

• 34:36Chris Ryan?

  I think he was like, you're just making people really like, wound up about this.

• 34:40Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, but then like a minute later, the captains of the town are just like, hypothetically, we're just, bear with me.

• 34:48Chris Ryan?

  Let's just say

• 34:50Andy Greenwald?

  Let's play this out.

• 34:51Chris Ryan?

  Ray Lewis comes storming through.

• 34:52Andy Greenwald?

  No, bad, Ray Lewis and the entire Legion of Boom, different team, I know. Riddle me this, guys, let's just play this out, no bad ideas. Okay, so here's the only other thing I want to say about, well, okay, I have a couple less things. One, just shout out Pedro Pascal, who has figured out how to stay nimble in this economy to a degree we've never seen before. What I mean is, he is nominally the star of one of, inarguably the biggest shows in television. It was a 10-hour commitment. He was also the star of one of the other biggest shows of the last 10 years, Mandalorian. It was arguably a 35-minute commitment, and then a couple, couple hours in a voice booth.

• 35:37Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 35:37Andy Greenwald?

  Right? He is the star of the only Star Wars movie currently on the schedule. Will he appear in the movie?

• 35:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:46Andy Greenwald?

  TBD.

• 35:48Andy Greenwald?

  It made me shout out-

• 35:49Chris Ryan?

  He was also in Triple Frontier.

• 35:50Andy Greenwald?

  Well, do you want to take- Do you want to take the mic for a minute?

• 35:56Chris Ryan?

  He just does great work.

• 35:56Andy Greenwald?

  He does great work. I've just, it made me want to shout out-

• 35:59Chris Ryan?

  I miss the Netflix Pedro era.

• 36:01Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, when he was just showing up and stuff?

• 36:02Chris Ryan?

  No, he was just Narcos and he was-

• 36:03Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, he was in Freaky Tales. Like, this guy likes to work.

• 36:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 36:05Andy Greenwald?

  But it did make me want to shout out to the god Beatrice Straight, who I know you know and the rest of the Rewatchables crew, is the woman who won an Oscar for delivering a five-minute monologue in Network.

• 36:16Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:17Andy Greenwald?

  Five minutes is actually only 24 minutes less than Pedro Pascal appeared onscreen in Game of Thrones.

• 36:24Chris Ryan?

  I feel like Zach Lowe's arrival at The Ringer has really made us more of numbers-oriented.

• 36:28Andy Greenwald?

  I'm crunching, I'm crunching numbers, I'm crushing tape. That seems to work here. I was just trying to get noticed. But like, it is an incredible run. I mean, Oberyn Martell is so memorable, also died so terribly in a shocking way. 29 minutes of screen time, and now, now he's my Reed Richards. I don't know if he's yours, but it did make me think, it did make me think. I wouldn't, if I was John Krasinski, I wouldn't give up hope. You know what I mean? Pascal's here for a good time, not a long time in these movies.

• 37:00Chris Ryan?

  What do you mean, Krasinski, oh-

• 37:01Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe there's another Mr. Fantastic coming in another universe. Maybe that's the twist. You know, it's possible. He is very, very-

• 37:09Chris Ryan?

  Why not two of them? You know?

• 37:11Andy Greenwald?

  Two versions of the same hero in one cinematic universe, Chris.

• 37:14Chris Ryan?

  Um-

• 37:15Andy Greenwald?

  Last thing about this. Where, let me just do a little temperature check for you on The Rest of Us, The Rest of the Last of Us, because it's a different proposition now.

• 37:26Chris Ryan?

  Is this a going-forward question?

• 37:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 37:27Chris Ryan?

  Okay, I have, I have a way into this.

• 37:29Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 37:30Chris Ryan?

  Uh, a lot of things are obviously gonna get swept off the table now, because Jackson is diminished, I would say, probably not much of a stronghold.

• 37:38Andy Greenwald?

  It's a big cleanup crew, too.

• 37:40Chris Ryan?

  Presumably Ellie, sorry, Abby and the ex-fireflies are on their way back to Seattle, I guess. You know, the, the WLF patch on their backpack, uh, talking a little bit about, you know, she's like, "I wouldn't go to Seattle if I were you, but you're not gonna have that problem."

• 37:55Andy Greenwald?

  They said some stuff. They said too much.

• 37:57Chris Ryan?

  Um-

• 37:59Chris Ryan?

  I would say that I wonder whether there is going to be any, obviously ramifications. Ellie has now sworn a blood oath to kill Abby, uh, anyway.

• 38:08Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 38:09Chris Ryan?

  But, um, whether there are still any ramifications about the secret. The secret being that Ellie, the Fireflies wanted to sacrifice Ellie for the greater good.

• 38:19Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 38:20Chris Ryan?

  And Joel saved Ellie because one life matters.

• 38:24Andy Greenwald?

  Right. Did they know?

• 38:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I was curious about that. Did, did everybody in the room, does Abby know? Does Abby know that the dad was about to kill a little girl?

• 38:34Andy Greenwald?

  See, that, that was the one unsaid thing.

• 38:37Chris Ryan?

  Because it's kind of like you killed an innocent doctor and I get it. I get like broadly what she's saying.

• 38:42Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, RFK Junior.

• 38:43Chris Ryan?

  But they're like, she's like making this big, I, I think there's some nuance to the story at least.

• 38:50Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I, I, I was curious your take on that because you were, I mean, you, you led our conversation last week with, uh, like, is Joel biting his tongue too much for the purposes of drama? And in this case, in this case, I, I, I think the show did an effective thing where what he does say is get on with it.

• 39:05Chris Ryan?

  Yes, but he could have said your dad had a scalpel in his hand and was about to kill a 14 year old girl. So I shot him in the head.

• 39:12Andy Greenwald?

  Well, so, but I think that in this particular example, I think that it's justifiable because what the show did over the course of the 90 minutes preceding that moment, was establish that Joel is in emotional agony and is trapped with this and believes on some level he deserves punishment. And so he was open to that punishment arriving. Maybe not with that particular handicap on that park horse of his face.

• 39:35Chris Ryan?

  It seemed like everybody was also moving on from like, he's, he's stuck, you know, tinkering with like little gadgets in his workshop and overseeing sewage replacement.

• 39:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 39:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Ellie has moved on and people are moving on.

• 39:48Andy Greenwald?

  But, but, um, but you are right in that I do wonder what they thought was going on and what the goal was. Because if they, I mean, clearly their medical capacity has been diminished by his actions. But if they knew that it was all for the girl who they have now just cracked a couple of her ribs and left her.

• 40:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:07Andy Greenwald?

  Why would they do that? I don't think they knew that, right? And I don't know why that is, and maybe that'll be explored.

• 40:13Chris Ryan?

  And who will talk, and you know, who's going to talk, does, I assume Tommy knew.

• 40:20Andy Greenwald?

  I don't remember what Tommy knew or didn't knew, didn't, didn't know.

• 40:24Chris Ryan?

  I ask because does this create a world where the secret still matters? You know, does that, does that secret have any weight anymore? And then also like, I think it's a very exciting proposition. One thing that's really invigorating about this show is even if it's

• 40:40Chris Ryan?

  pretty heavy to watch, it moves so much. And like you said, you were a little worried that we were about to settle into apres ski for the entire season.

• 40:49Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 40:50Chris Ryan?

  Obviously now Ellie is probably going to recover. And now be like, I'm, I'm going to follow these people. I saw this patch.

• 40:58Andy Greenwald?

  For sure.

• 40:58Chris Ryan?

  You know, like, I imagine Dina will go with her.

• 41:02Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 41:03Chris Ryan?

  I, I don't, I don't know. I mean, I, this is the limit of like game spoilers that I had. So I'm very curious about how much time we spend, do, are we cutting back and forth between Abby and Ellie? Like, do we see a whole other part of the country through other characters?

• 41:18Andy Greenwald?

  It's also worth noting that the show is renewed. So whatever closure we're seeking is likely not to come this season, but though.

• 41:26Chris Ryan?

  Well, I, I kind of don't want it. I, I don't want closure. I want to go all over the place.

• 41:30Andy Greenwald?

  Right. I guess I'm saying, I don't know what the shape of the show will be through the remainder of the season, or what the shape of the show ultimately will be, because I don't really know how long the road goes.

• 41:39Andy Greenwald?

  I, I'll just, I'll, I'll, I'll hang my hat on the concern peg and just say, it's a, it is a very different proposition. I have not, in the way that the character, the Ellie character has been written and performed thus far, it has been mostly reactive. Obviously the character is young and is more of, in the very beginning, she is the package that has to be delivered and the, the, the weight fell on Joel's decision-making and charisma and all that.

• 42:10Andy Greenwald?

  Craig Mason knows what he's doing. So I think that, that there's probably going to be an opportunity in a few weeks' time to say, ah, we were looking at the larger structure wrong, or maybe prematurely, and that Ellie's development as a person and as a leader and as a hero of a show was, this was in process here. This is her. The complaints of her being like a petulant teen in last week's episode was intentional, because that was the teenage adolescence of the character in a way.

• 42:39Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 42:40Andy Greenwald?

  And that there'll be a different version going forward. I, I think that's very possible. I have some doubts about.

• 42:47Andy Greenwald?

  I have some doubts about it, about the show being hung entirely on that character as performed thus far.

• 42:52Chris Ryan?

  More Abby. That's the answer.

• 42:54Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's more Abby, and I wonder if that's also the calculation that the game made that people have issues with, like because, as you said, that apparently she is a playable character. I think that's cool, and that's a cool, that's a dynamic we haven't seen in these types of shows.

• 43:10Chris Ryan?

  What do you think happens to all the menswear stores that have flannel-lined wax trucker jackets in stock?

• 43:17Andy Greenwald?

  I would genuinely watch a web series about Tommy.

• 43:24Chris Ryan?

  A web series?

• 43:26Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it's not gonna be like main content, you know what I mean? But maybe like an expansion pack for the video game of life of Tommy and his pals scouring the Mountain West, all the boot barns in the Mountain West, you know what I mean? Like all the REI outlets just to get the most beautiful all-weather gear and then also all of the ammunition. I, it doesn't matter, and also you can't be like, are you gonna run out of guns and ammo in America?

• 43:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:52Andy Greenwald?

  Not really gonna happen, but they were quite free with it when they were dumping fire.

• 43:56Chris Ryan?

  They have all the best houses. They're like a 7-Eleven full of weed.

• 44:00Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 44:01Chris Ryan?

  You know, all the guns in the world.

• 44:03Andy Greenwald?

  Did you see there was a CVS? And you know what? I bet toothpaste wasn't under lock and key there. So I'm saying there are upsides to this dystopia. I love, I love, I love all the clothes.

• 44:18Andy Greenwald?

  I do wonder about, and I know they're on TV, but it's like if, what's the girl's name? The Ellie's girlfriend character who gets this?

• 44:25Chris Ryan?

  Dina.

• 44:25Andy Greenwald?

  Dina. If Dina gets frostbite in this weather, Joel could put on a hat. You know what I mean?

• 44:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, right. Right.

• 44:32Andy Greenwald?

  You're a hat guy.

• 44:33Chris Ryan?

  I am, yeah. I mean, you wouldn't catch me dead outside in a blizzard without a knit beanie.

• 44:38Andy Greenwald?

  I could barely make it through like a London autumn without a hat. The ears get cold. You know what I mean?

• 44:45Chris Ryan?

  All right, well, well done to that show.

• 44:49Andy Greenwald?

  Well done to that show.

• 44:50Chris Ryan?

  Talk a little bit about your friends and neighbors.

• 44:52Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I just.

• 44:55Andy Greenwald?

  It's, it's, I, I continue to feel like at the end of that episode, I was like, absolutely elite. Also, I really don't want to spend my Sunday nights like this. Genuinely, like it just, it's a, I feel like at this, especially at this moment in the world, like it is a bad, dark, violent place to be in, and I don't love that. But what I do love is HBO being like, Sunday nights. Better tune in. I like that. I like, I like the, I like the chatter. I like the excitement.

• 45:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:24Andy Greenwald?

  And I like the focus. I like grabbing, grabbing focus of the culture and be like, no, no, pay attention to this. We're gonna do something.

• 45:30Chris Ryan?

  It's, it's really impressive to see when TV spends in the right places and really invests in something, how captivating it can still be, you know?

• 45:43Chris Ryan?

  I, I, I think it's a, it's a strange biggest show on TV. I, I don't know how to like geolocate why that is aside from like, obviously people love post-apocalyptic dystopian stories. People have a very big investment in this video game, perhaps as we're learning from the success of Minecraft. People have way more investment in video games than we could possibly have even calculated.

• 46:04Andy Greenwald?

  Then we could, but I think other people are less surprised.

• 46:06Chris Ryan?

  Obviously, examples like Halo where it's like, that did not set the world on fire, but there are, there is, there are generations of people who, for whom video games are their stories. You know, they, these are the like sacred texts that they grew up on. And Hollywood seems to be noticing, so, I mean, if they're on this level, if they're on the level of Minecraft, then so be it.

• 46:29Andy Greenwald?

  For what it's worth, and this might be a, a future conversation.

• 46:31Chris Ryan?

  I saw Katzenberg and Jack Black at the Lakers game, by the way.

• 46:34Andy Greenwald?

  Did you?

• 46:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, just lording it up.

• 46:36Andy Greenwald?

  Were they just, just?

• 46:38Chris Ryan?

  Just laughing.

• 46:38Andy Greenwald?

  Just chicken jockeying? Is that what they were doing? Kaya laughed. Kaya's, Kaya's more online than us. She knows.

• 46:44Chris Ryan?

  I refuse to find out anything about it. I'm very happy for its success.

• 46:47Andy Greenwald?

  But, but it's interesting, you bring up Halo, which was like, that was our Last of Us, but.

• 46:51Chris Ryan?

  Oh my god, dude.

• 46:52Andy Greenwald?

  But for what it's worth, that was a game in which the.

• 46:55Chris Ryan?

  Sweet Master Chief.

• 46:57Andy Greenwald?

  But no, but literally not that. The experience was us listening to like Wu-Tang Clan albums and playing that game and having fun. I don't think any of us were like, oh, if only Cortana could secure the ring world.

• 47:08Chris Ryan?

  That was the problem.

• 47:09Andy Greenwald?

  And then when they make the movie or the TV show about it, it's like slavishly devoted to a story that was.

• 47:15Chris Ryan?

  That you would skip the cutscenes of.

• 47:16Andy Greenwald?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 47:18Chris Ryan?

  And so I want to kill the horde.

• 47:19Andy Greenwald?

  The successful content is, I think, these types of games that missed us completely, that that are crafted with the level and thoughtfulness. You know, it does seem of a lot of Hollywood content. Or certain things that are just so culturally transcendent, like everybody knows Mario. So a movie that sort of tries to be like, this isn't this fun to be in Mario, like is gonna do really well with kids.

• 47:41Chris Ryan?

  I'll leave you with this. If this show successfully does what I understand the video game does, which is force the audience to put themselves in Abby's POV.

• 47:51Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 47:52Chris Ryan?

  And if this show now makes Caitlin Dever fifty-five percent, fifty percent of the show. And forces viewers to spend time with and empathize and ultimately love a character that killed Zaddy. That's gonna be a major accomplishment. That's really cool that they're that they're gonna be if they if they're able to pull that off.

• 48:13Andy Greenwald?

  It's gonna help ad sales of your fansite, too.

• 48:17Chris Ryan?

  What's my fansite?

• 48:18Andy Greenwald?

  Dever fever.

• 48:20Chris Ryan?

  It makes it sound worse than it is.

• 48:22Andy Greenwald?

  When I say fansite? Okay, I retract.

• 48:25Chris Ryan?

  It's more like a meteorological, kind of like, we're just keeping an eye on the fronts, you know?

• 48:30Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 48:30Chris Ryan?

  The pressure systems.

• 48:31Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, like, like the is Joel Embiid hurt tonight website? It just provides information?

• 48:37Chris Ryan?

  I was gonna start another one for the rockets called he thought it was him dot com. I talked about this with Bill, where it was like every night a different rocket is like, I'm him. And it's like, it doesn't really work out.

• 48:47Andy Greenwald?

  He can't just.

• 48:49Chris Ryan?

  So last night it was Fred Van Vliet. And he was like two for sixteen.

• 48:53Andy Greenwald?

  And it wasn't. Wow.

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• 50:36Chris Ryan?

  of both for 1+ year versus non-member or club member pricing/fees. Excludes membership fees. See Walmart Plus terms and Sam's Club terms for more info. I want to talk about your friends and neighbors. Yeah. Briefly. Sorry we didn't alert people at the beginning of the episode, but you'll figure it out.

• 50:50Andy Greenwald?

  This is really, nobody does it like us, you know that?

• 50:53Chris Ryan?

  I mean, I could go back and be like, also stick around for some incredible friends and neighbors chat. I, I thought this episode was the continued TV seriesification of this show, which I think is completely fine, because I find it to be a soothing balm to watch. I increasingly, when I watch the show, think of Billions. I think of, um, all of the like little nooks and crannies it's like enjoying, burrowing itself into in, in this world. You know, uh, obviously we just talked about like the amount of money Last of Us must have caused. I think you can see it with friends and neighbors as well, as they build out the kind of universe of stuff that, um, that Coop visits with any regularity.

• 51:36Chris Ryan?

  And I was like, I don't know how they did this, but like Nick's house is a fully realized like dwelling and realm. As is Amanda Peet's house, as is Olivia Munn's place.

• 51:44Andy Greenwald?

  So this is legitimate, shout out location scouting.

• 51:47Chris Ryan?

  It's location scouting, but it's also like, it's the same sensation you get from watching Taxi, where you're like, now I'm in this room, now I'm in this room. But like watching a shot on set show where the, the production winds up becoming a character, because it's so familiar, it's the friends' living room, it's Cheers. But they're doing it with like 15 mansions throughout Connecticut or Long Island or wherever they shot this thing. And, uh,

• 52:13Andy Greenwald?

  I think Westchester, I think they're up there, oh.

• 52:14Chris Ryan?

  Well, the Billions piece that I was gonna mention is just, I always thought like, there was an initial kind of like twisty, you know, and a, a, a DA or an attorney general and a master of industry and they're on a collision course and who, only one can win. But then it was like also, what if he tries to buy the Yankees? And also like, he loves Pearl Jam and also like, we have like a whole plotline about like the sexual kinks of everybody involved. And it was like basically created to run on the long term.

• 52:45Andy Greenwald?

  It's the Showtime model.

• 52:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I, I feel like I can hear notes of that. In Friends and Neighbors, because even though you've got this very tight premise that has like a little bit of a ticking clock, because it's like, is he gonna get caught?

• 52:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 53:00Chris Ryan?

  You also have an increasingly wide gallery of characters.

• 53:05Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 53:05Chris Ryan?

  Who are getting more and more grace notes.

• 53:07Andy Greenwald?

  It's getting wider and

• 53:08Chris Ryan?

  And getting wider.

• 53:09Andy Greenwald?

  Not necessarily deeper.

• 53:10Chris Ryan?

  So we're like a dozen people into this show on the third episode of like, oh, okay, so now.

• 53:15Andy Greenwald?

  So I think my first, I think that's very well observed, and I think my response is actually appropriate to what you were saying.

• 53:25Andy Greenwald?

  We may have to recalibrate ourselves, because it has been a long time since we've engaged with a show that was this open-ended with this much road promised to it. This is, in many ways, the opposite of a Last of Us conversation, because there are no major plot points that are just preset, that they are writing to and then writing from.

• 53:46Andy Greenwald?

  That's very exciting, and it's one of the reasons why I

• 53:48Chris Ryan?

  Except for what happens in the first scene of the flash forward.

• 53:50Andy Greenwald?

  Great, but they created that, so you're right about that.

• 53:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:52Andy Greenwald?

  But, but, so I, I, I wanna, I wanna reiterate my feeling after watching the first two, which was very positive and being like, it's kind of fun and exciting. And, but part of fun and exciting with a long-running show, or a hopefully long-running show, is there's gonna be some bumps along the way.

• 54:08Chris Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 54:09Andy Greenwald?

  They are going to have to, I can't sit here and say, I love it when, uh, when, you know, you discover Aaron Paul, that you don't wanna kill him off, you know, in a show, and you, these little things that you just, oh, these characters are good together, well, write for their chemistry.

• 54:22Chris Ryan?

  Aaron Paul, is that like a Wake Forest guard that the Sixers would like?

• 54:26Andy Greenwald?

  He's a 10-day contract guy. I really think he could be a part of the rotation next year. Shout out, Daryl. Yeah, the, um, I can't, I can't say like, the best things of TV come from those happy in-the-moment accidents, and then not tolerate the unhappy accidents, or things that maybe aren't playing out, that then the writers can adjust from.

• 54:47Andy Greenwald?

  That is a very, very long way of caveating this fact that I thought this was generally a bad episode of TV. It doesn't mean the show is bad. It doesn't mean that you need shows, episodes like this to figure stuff out. But I thought that like, to be on the third episode, and to already be doing the, what's the wife plot? She's got bugs. That seemed early. You know what I mean? That seemed a little early.

• 55:14Chris Ryan?

  It's a metaphor.

• 55:15Andy Greenwald?

  What?

• 55:17Chris Ryan?

  It's her past life, it's still on the walls, Coop's still there, man.

• 55:21Andy Greenwald?

  The wife metaphor plot, I feel like could have, we could have, probably some other stuff for her to be doing first. Similarly, just the machinations of like, guys' night and girls' night to get the people fighting each other, like, yeah, you could sort of see,

• 55:38Andy Greenwald?

  you could feel Jonathan Trumper and the creative team, they're wrangling, they're getting their arms around what kind of show it's going to be, and that's totally reasonable.

• 55:48Andy Greenwald?

  But it made for a tougher watch, and one of the, and then my attention goes a gear lower, where I'm like, okay, they're figuring it out this episode. So then you start paying attention to the stuff you might otherwise not nitpick, because the momentum of the A-plot is so, so strong. And then, and on that level, it's things like, what is the show's attitude towards this kind of ultra wealthy suburban on week?

• 56:13Chris Ryan?

  Well, I think it's trying to have it both ways.

• 56:14Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's trying to have it both ways, and I feel like that's, makes sense, and it's safe, and it's apples, notes, early, but I would like it to ultimately have an opinion, because-

• 56:24Chris Ryan?

  I don't care.

• 56:25Andy Greenwald?

  I kind of do, because it feels soft without it, like, it's not-

• 56:27Chris Ryan?

  Well, I think that in interviews, Ham has described it as a criticism, or a critique of like, mass consumption, of consumption on this level.

• 56:36Andy Greenwald?

  But it's not, so far it's a critique of, it really is boring to only talk about whiskey. It's not actually, so, and so this is a premature moment to bring up this argument, but, but, but when it gets a little soft, that's when I start to notice it. Again, the show is snapping into place.

• 56:54Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 56:54Andy Greenwald?

  And that is totally fine. The only other note of criticism that I'd like to bring up is, I do think that, you know how you've, you had volunteered years ago, and I feel like more people should have taken you up on this, that you would be a filmed basketball consultant-

• 57:09Chris Ryan?

  I mean-

• 57:09Andy Greenwald?

  For shows like, and I'm not even talking about the basketball in this, but you were, you know, Mr. Robot, season two, had a pickup game that, you know, drew some criticism from you. And you were like, let me just, let me just see the tape, let me just walk the court.

• 57:22Chris Ryan?

  Let me just cast the guys. Like, you could really, you can go into most gyms and just find like, 10 dudes who could probably like, stand in the right place camera-wise, like, for blocking, and like, they'll be able to dribble.

• 57:32Andy Greenwald?

  Is Rusillo available?

• 57:33Chris Ryan?

  No, but you draw, I, I remain dedicated to the idea that you cast basketball players who can act, rather than actors who pretend like they can play basketball.

• 57:41Andy Greenwald?

  Fantastic point.

• 57:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:42Andy Greenwald?

  What I would like to suggest is that there should also be, and you'd have to structure it differently because of child labor laws, but I do think you need a teen or tween on call when you are writing a show that involves contemporary teens or tweens. Because I held my tongue last week on mic, I think.

• 58:00Chris Ryan?

  So brave.

• 58:00Andy Greenwald?

  When we, I am brave, thank you. When they cut to the 15-year-old's bedroom and the only thing in his bedroom was an artfully hung, perfectly angled poster for the French electro act M83.

• 58:13Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 58:14Andy Greenwald?

  I was like, okay.

• 58:15Chris Ryan?

  But.

• 58:15Andy Greenwald?

  So that's, that's our direction.

• 58:17Chris Ryan?

  OX Blockhouse is coming back.

• 58:18Andy Greenwald?

  But just, okay, okay.

• 58:19Chris Ryan?

  The sleazy OX are back.

• 58:22Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, pitchfork. Let me just say.

• 58:23Chris Ryan?

  That dude has Cobra Snake on the Wayback Machine.

• 58:28Andy Greenwald?

  That, I'm willing to accept any of that. I just, I draw the line at a drug-addled teenage house party in the year of our Lord 2025, being brought to a absolute riveting, like, silent standstill by a high school cover band performing Matthew Sweet's Sick of Myself. One of the great songs.

• 58:52Andy Greenwald?

  But respectfully, respectfully, show me the tape. Show me the 15-year-old in 2025 who's just like, I got it.

• 58:59Chris Ryan?

  I have been surprised by the popularity of alt-rock. Like, 90s alternative rock hits that has just been coming back. I feel like that style of music is very popular right now.

• 59:10Andy Greenwald?

  This is, by the way, this is like every political Substack I have where people are like, the mood among young people is strong, they're taking to the streets.

• 59:18Chris Ryan?

  I'm just saying that when you hear younger bands, they're talking about like, oh, we really wanted it to sound like Teenage Fanclub or whatever.

• 59:24Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, totally. Like, the band I like, Mama, just sounds like, like, what if, what if helium breeders and Third Eye Blind, but now? I'm like, great, I love this formula.

• 59:33Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 59:33Andy Greenwald?

  But I also.

• 59:34Chris Ryan?

  They're in their twenties, so would a 15-year-old be playing Matthew Sweet's Power Pop anthem?

• 59:39Andy Greenwald?

  While wearing a Cure t-shirt?

• 59:40Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 59:40Andy Greenwald?

  I think we all wish that's the case.

• 59:43Chris Ryan?

  Jonathan Traumber does, yeah.

• 59:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and I don't mind also, like, a lot of the creative arts are fantasy, right? Even if they don't involve a giant named 1-1. Like, I, I have a fantasy that my children might one day like a song I like. One day they might, and maybe in a future screenplay.

• 59:59Chris Ryan?

  Can I ask you just to get personal?

• 1:00:01Andy Greenwald?

  Please, it's about time.

• 1:00:02Chris Ryan?

  That matters to you?

• 1:00:03Andy Greenwald?

  Um, no, but it would feel good once.

• 1:00:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Andy Greenwald?

  It, it, I want them to have their own distinct tastes.

• 1:00:10Chris Ryan?

  I'm trying to remember, like, I think, I, I think my parents' love of the Beatles actually is one of the original reasons why I'm probably more of a Stones person.

• 1:00:20Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I don't.

• 1:00:20Chris Ryan?

  Like, I just think you're, you're, you're, you're always gonna be in opposition to their tastes.

• 1:00:25Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, but here, I completely agree, but I also think, and I spend a lot of time thinking about this, I'm closing the laptop and let's really talk about this. Uh, I think there's a fine line, because I do want them to...

• 1:00:37Chris Ryan?

  I don't need my laptop either.

• 1:00:38Andy Greenwald?

  No, this is...

• 1:00:39Chris Ryan?

  These are your kids.

• 1:00:40Andy Greenwald?

  What are you playing? Have you just been texting them?

• 1:00:43Chris Ryan?

  I'm updating Deefer Fever.

• 1:00:46Andy Greenwald?

  Um, I think that, uh, I want them to have their own distinct taste, but I also don't want my opinions and taste to be a completely closed circuit. Because, for example, like, at my house growing up, my father liked the music that he liked.

• 1:00:58Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:59Andy Greenwald?

  And it was very avant-garde classical, which I don't have any opinion about. But sometimes I'm like, I wonder if he had been like, "I like this because of these reasons." I would have been like, "Oh, that's interesting. That shows like a..."

• 1:01:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:08Andy Greenwald?

  Whatever. And then maybe I also wouldn't have spent not insignificant parts of my high school life being like, "Dad, uh, this is Automatic for the People. It's by R.E.M. I feel like, um, Find the River is a lovely, um, you know, there's a folk tradition to this song that maybe you'd appreciate."

• 1:01:23Chris Ryan?

  Wait, why are you doing your dad as you, as a teenager, talking to your dad?

• 1:01:27Andy Greenwald?

  Because that's how I would address him. The only artist that he ever liked

• 1:01:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:32Andy Greenwald?

  was Pulp.

• 1:01:33Chris Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 1:01:34Andy Greenwald?

  Of all the bands that I liked, he's like, "Oh, there's a clever class consciousness at play."

• 1:01:38Chris Ryan?

  And now you bring that same energy to your...

• 1:01:40Andy Greenwald?

  To the podcast, yes.

• 1:01:42Chris Ryan?

  When you're watching...

• 1:01:42Andy Greenwald?

  When I'm criticizing your friends and neighbors.

• 1:01:44Chris Ryan?

  A TV show made by a technology company.

• 1:01:46Andy Greenwald?

  A hundred percent the case.

• 1:01:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48Andy Greenwald?

  But, uh, anyway, to answer your question, no, I do not force my children to listen to Matthew Sweet albums, not even Girlfriend.

• 1:01:54Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:01:54Andy Greenwald?

  But it would be cool, but it's not up to me.

• 1:01:56Chris Ryan?

  I, I think that you will find, hopefully, that they, as they get older, will maybe embrace more of your film tastes.

• 1:02:04Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 1:02:05Chris Ryan?

  But music is a really like, it's, I think it's a very possessive and oppositional kind of passion when you're younger.

• 1:02:12Andy Greenwald?

  I think it historically is. I do think that the avenues towards discovering oppositional tastes are choked now.

• 1:02:21Chris Ryan?

  Do you?

• 1:02:21Andy Greenwald?

  I do. I do. I do think that, and also just generally... A generational shift in terms of feelings about popularity has changed, you know, like for us, like popular things were met with some degree of skepticism.

• 1:02:35Chris Ryan?

  If only they could hear Matthew Sweet.

• 1:02:36Andy Greenwald?

  If only they could hear, if only they could appreciate Jarvis Cocker's incisive observations about entrenched class culture. No, I mean, I just think that like, like, I like a lot of, I like a lot of pop music. But I think there's other stuff out there, too.

• 1:02:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, didn't see you at the Circle Pit at Death Heaven this weekend, so.

• 1:02:54Andy Greenwald?

  Brother, I can't believe you dodged our Monday banter on a weekend when you.

• 1:03:00Chris Ryan?

  I did not, you didn't see me at the Circle Pit either. I was viewing from a high, high ground.

• 1:03:06Andy Greenwald?

  But our listeners deserve to know that in one calendar day.

• 1:03:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:11Andy Greenwald?

  In 2025, you went from a Lakers playoff game to a Death Heaven concert that began at 10. Okay.

• 1:03:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Andy Greenwald?

  That, that is our Iron Man.

• 1:03:21Chris Ryan?

  It was pushing the limits.

• 1:03:23Andy Greenwald?

  I can't believe you did that.

• 1:03:24Chris Ryan?

  When you see guys and they're like, you know, they've done.

• 1:03:27Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:27Chris Ryan?

  They're finishing Tour de France and they've just done the Pyrenees and they're just like, I'm, I don't know if I've got anything left. That was me as I was walking through downtown Los Angeles on my way to the Bell.

• 1:03:36Andy Greenwald?

  Were you able to change your blood the way Tour de France?

• 1:03:39Chris Ryan?

  I mean, those blast beats certainly reinvigorated my stream. I, I had a great time. Uh, thank you. I went with Yasi and when I went with Mansoukis, so it was really fun.

• 1:03:49Andy Greenwald?

  That's really fun. Uh, I, I was, I was obsessed.

• 1:03:53Chris Ryan?

  The singer from Death Heaven, I think either greatly injured or tore his calf while playing, but like absolutely you wouldn't know it watching him.

• 1:04:01Andy Greenwald?

  He sunk the free throws despite.

• 1:04:02Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 1:04:05Andy Greenwald?

  Who had a better weekend, the singer from Death Heaven or Fred?

• 1:04:07Chris Ryan?

  Philip Rivers with a broken leg.

• 1:04:09Andy Greenwald?

  Fred Van Vliet or the singer from Death Heaven? Who was more him?

• 1:04:11Chris Ryan?

  Definitely the singer from Death Heaven.

• 1:04:13Andy Greenwald?

  I'm just impressed, like I, you know, I'm just impressed that you are still finding the limits. You know what I mean?

• 1:04:19Chris Ryan?

  You know, I will say this, just since we're talking today.

• 1:04:21Andy Greenwald?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:22Chris Ryan?

  Uh, and we're now a minute, whatever. Uh, I have reached this weird spot where if you, you, you have to wear earplugs when you're seeing Death Heaven.

• 1:04:31Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:32Chris Ryan?

  But when you wear earplugs, like unless you have like the really great, like some auditory doctor made it for me. Like, it's a little, like, everything is a little underwater, and then you pull them out for a second, and you're like, "Oh, I would, I would be having massive brain hemorrhages if I had my earplugs out." And then you put them back in, they're like, "Oh."

• 1:04:53Andy Greenwald?

  So you're just...

• 1:04:54Chris Ryan?

  And you're like, "Take them out." You're like, "Ah!" And you put them back in, you're like, "Yeah, I can't really hear." So it was like, it was like a very, like, I was, it was right there, but they, they were, they were great. They were, they were awesome. They played mostly Lonely People with Power, which is the album.

• 1:05:07Andy Greenwald?

  Were you really focused on the drummer, or were you...

• 1:05:08Chris Ryan?

  I was entirely focused on the drummer. This is drummer week for me.

• 1:05:11Andy Greenwald?

  This is really a new chapter for you.

• 1:05:13Chris Ryan?

  I was, I was watching everybody, it was a great, it was a great vibe, but like, the drummer is just like, unbelievable.

• 1:05:18Andy Greenwald?

  And you weren't, you weren't in the pit. You were never a pit guy, were you?

• 1:05:21Chris Ryan?

  No, not really. Not really. I've worn, I've worn glasses for such a long time, it's just not, not really something I want to find out what glasses in the pit are like.

• 1:05:28Andy Greenwald?

  I think because people in the pit are like...

• 1:05:29Chris Ryan?

  I did see an older man in the pit, I think it was an all ages show, and I saw an older guy wearing a neon green Aphex Twin t-shirt.

• 1:05:38Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:39Chris Ryan?

  Just absolutely getting destroyed, but clearly loving it.

• 1:05:43Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:44Chris Ryan?

  And knowing all, like, and I was just like, "Maybe I should be him," you know? I don't, I don't have any kids I gotta worry about making sure they're okay.

• 1:05:51Andy Greenwald?

  Was it a 45-year-old man, or was it a 15-year-old on your friends and neighbors? What's up, fellow metalheads?

• 1:05:59Chris Ryan?

  Death Heaven's combination of shoegaze and black metal sure gets me fired up.

• 1:06:03Andy Greenwald?

  But what do they think about capitalism?

• 1:06:05Chris Ryan?

  All right, we'll wrap up. Obviously, we're gonna be coming at you tomorrow with a special episode because we've got Andor returning, uh, tomorrow night.

• 1:06:13Andy Greenwald?

  And we've got...

• 1:06:14Chris Ryan?

  Tony Gilroy joining us, so we're really excited, uh, to share that episode with folks. We'll be talking broadly about the three episodes.

• 1:06:21Andy Greenwald?

  The first three.

• 1:06:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that are airing tomorrow night. Obviously, with Andor, it's, you know, everybody's on a different schedule in terms of watching three hours of TV, um, about. But Tony spoke broadly about the season. I don't really find there to be a lot of spoilers in there. And we'll try to keep our conversation about the three episodes a little more light, and maybe we'll dive in more depth on Thursday.

• 1:06:43Andy Greenwald?

  Sure.

• 1:06:44Chris Ryan?

  Um, great seeing you. Maybe we'll talk about all sorts of stuff on Thursday, but I'm just, I just hope your kids finally open up their hearts to Matthew Sweet.

• 1:06:51Andy Greenwald?

  Maybe my dad will call in with a top 10 songs he didn't hate from 1994. Sting's "Fields of Gold," he thought, spoke, you know, echoed with sounds of English folk music. I think he liked that one.

• 1:07:03Chris Ryan?

  Talk to you guys soon.

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