The TV Detective Draft. Plus, ‘Department Q’ Is Scott Frank at His Best.

Chris and Andy chat about some TV they’ve been watching this week, including ‘Sex and the City’ (8:58). Then they talk about the first episode of ‘Department Q,’ the new detective show from Scott Frank, and how, similar to ‘The Pitt,’ this is good TV done well (18:30). Then, in honor of ‘Department Q,’ they draft some of their favorite TV detectives (39:53). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Production and 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.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:27Chris Ryan?

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• 0:59Speaker 02

  I need support staff to clear the room. Stand up and walk now.

• 1:05Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the Ringer dot com. And joining me in the studio, watching the Detectives, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 1:17Andy Greenwald?

  Nice intro.

• 1:18Chris Ryan?

  Do you like Elvis Costello?

• 1:20Andy Greenwald?

  Of course, I'm an American of a certain age.

• 1:22Chris Ryan?

  Um, I understand it's one of those guys that you and I never really talked about. Before we talk about anything, let me just mention that you can email us.

• 1:28Andy Greenwald?

  Start listing your favorite Imperial bedrooms. I'm like, that would be such a wild.

• 1:32Chris Ryan?

  Top 100 Elvis Costello songs, actually, would be a good pod.

• 1:35Andy Greenwald?

  You can do it.

• 1:36Chris Ryan?

  The Watch at Spotify dot com is the inbox. Ringer dash TV is the YouTube channel you can watch us on. You can also watch us on Spotify where you're hopefully listening to us. And you can follow us on Instagram at the Watch Pod underscore. Shockingly, our political debate from Monday during the Mountain Head Pod did not make it into a social clip.

• 1:55Andy Greenwald?

  I did notice that. I did notice that. Interesting. Interesting.

• 2:00Chris Ryan?

  Is this what they mean by silencing?

• 2:02Andy Greenwald?

  We pour gasoline everywhere for you guys. You didn't choose to light it?

• 2:06Chris Ryan?

  Um, it's great to see you, man. I feel like Monday, we did the, we did the Mountain Head Pod. I'm sure we talked about other things, I just don't really remember. And then.

• 2:15Andy Greenwald?

  Because the spirit of Karl Marx took over your body? What do you mean?

• 2:20Chris Ryan?

  I was more like new rule guy. I feel like.

• 2:24Andy Greenwald?

  You were.

• 2:24Chris Ryan?

  I had like just like a couple of random things for you.

• 2:26Andy Greenwald?

  I have one random thing for you too. Doesn't have to be first.

• 2:28Chris Ryan?

  You go first. You bet lead off.

• 2:30Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, so maybe it's a nice bridge idea from our political talk of last week.

• 2:34Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 2:35Andy Greenwald?

  To.

• 2:35Chris Ryan?

  Monday, yeah.

• 2:36Andy Greenwald?

  Is.

• 2:37Chris Ryan?

  Forty eight hours.

• 2:38Andy Greenwald?

  My microphone still working?

• 2:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we're recording this on Wednesday, by the way.

• 2:40Andy Greenwald?

  Am I getting shut down?

• 2:40Chris Ryan?

  In case anything happens.

• 2:41Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, so as you know, Chris, because you follow him closely on X, Elon Musk has come out against the big, beautiful bill.

• 2:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he did. He called it an abomination.

• 2:53Andy Greenwald?

  Which, you know. Stop clocks.

• 2:55Chris Ryan?

  And I don't follow him on X.

• 2:56Andy Greenwald?

  Stop clocks, right, twice a day.

• 2:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:59Andy Greenwald?

  I did want to know, get your thoughts on this, just purely, remember we used to do a bit? Remember, we always say we did bits and we never do them? But there was this idea that I like where you were the Hollywood fixer.

• 3:08Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:08Andy Greenwald?

  Where we would, I would give you a, an issue, a problem facing the industry and you would just, you know, just seat of the pants, just real talk. You'd fix it.

• 3:17Chris Ryan?

  It's so funny you mentioned this because I have a question about this.

• 3:19Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, good. Often like I thought you would do it, this is the first time we've talked about it since I wear glasses, but Jonas Serra style.

• 3:24Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:24Andy Greenwald?

  From the New York Times, you take it off and you just think about it.

• 3:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, just, just like, hmm.

• 3:29Andy Greenwald?

  So, okay, so Hollywood fixer. There is a film coming out this fall that is hotly tipped, whatever that means anymore. Sean could tell us more. It is potentially an awards contender. It is based on a blacklist script. It stars big movie star Margot Robbie and our favorite actor Colin Farrell.

• 3:46Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:47Andy Greenwald?

  This movie is called A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. Koganata directed it.

• 3:54Andy Greenwald?

  What are the conversations like inside of Sony right now? Because I swear to God, I have mixed up the names of this government wrecking, budget wrecking bill and this.

• 4:06Chris Ryan?

  Oh, the big, beautiful bill.

• 4:07Andy Greenwald?

  This like eternal sunshine, but in Scooby Doo's Mystery Machine.

• 4:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:12Andy Greenwald?

  Movie that's coming out this fall.

• 4:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:14Andy Greenwald?

  Do you think, what are the conversations like of do we have to change the name of a big, bold, beautiful journey?

• 4:18Chris Ryan?

  Well, but it's too late. The trailer's out.

• 4:21Andy Greenwald?

  It's too late, right?

• 4:22Chris Ryan?

  Although.

• 4:22Andy Greenwald?

  They have to own it.

• 4:23Chris Ryan?

  How do you feel about this? Are we too precious about titles? Because remember when Edge of Tomorrow was also Live, Die, Repeat?

• 4:31Andy Greenwald?

  And that's a better name, yes.

• 4:33Chris Ryan?

  I disagree.

• 4:34Andy Greenwald?

  Well, there were other names too, right? What were all the names of that? Go on, explain, say, do your, do your, do your bit.

• 4:39Chris Ryan?

  Well, my bit is that, like, why don't we have dynamic movie titling? Where when you're getting up to a point and it's like, has this, has this title been corrupted? Or are people like, what the fuck is a big, magical, beautiful journey?

• 4:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 4:52Chris Ryan?

  Whatever this movie is called? And no disrespect to Koganaru, I really...

• 4:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, these are talented people.

• 4:56Chris Ryan?

  Work, I'm just, I just, I forgot about it and I haven't looked at the words. And also, this is a very specific thing where I always mix up long titles like this. Like, I don't even think I know really what the Kanye record still is called. Is it my beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy?

• 5:11Andy Greenwald?

  You got it, you got it right. Just, just in time to pledge your allegiance on X.com to your favorite rapper.

• 5:18Chris Ryan?

  What if I only followed two people?

• 5:22Andy Greenwald?

  I'd have some questions. So, first of all...

• 5:25Chris Ryan?

  Why can't we, why can't we change? Like, they've, like, it was Ballerina, now it's Ballerina, like, a John Wick?

• 5:31Andy Greenwald?

  No, this, this stuff, especially since everything has become colonized, which sounds awesome. So, Live, Die, Repeat was the poster...

• 5:38Chris Ryan?

  That's in the big, beautiful bill, we all get colonized.

• 5:40Andy Greenwald?

  That's the big, beautiful journey that the scope takes. Ed, so it's Edge of Tomorrow, but it was based on a book called All You Need Is Kill.

• 5:48Chris Ryan?

  Oh yeah, that's right.

• 5:49Andy Greenwald?

  So there were three potential titles for that. I think that we actually are in an era of dynamic titling, but we don't even realize it. Case in point, Thunderbolts Asterisk was rebranded as New Avengers.

• 6:02Chris Ryan?

  Was it? They actually put that on the poster?

• 6:04Andy Greenwald?

  They put the posters up, but then...

• 6:06Chris Ryan?

  And then they answered the asterisk.

• 6:07Andy Greenwald?

  They answered the asterisk, but then they didn't actually change the marquise in like, the official name of the movie. But I don't see why we can't do this, because the formulation of these things is so hidebound and also it's not, it's not really responsive. So, for example, we were talking about this recently. Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning is the direct sequel to Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One.

• 6:30Chris Ryan?

  But then they dropped the Part One.

• 6:32Andy Greenwald?

  Did they?

• 6:33Chris Ryan?

  I think in in future publication of the title on like streaming services or whatever, I don't think it says part one anymore.

• 6:41Andy Greenwald?

  I think that's smart. So I think we can do it in small ways. But so

• 6:44Chris Ryan?

  I frankly

• 6:45Andy Greenwald?

  What if we called it a big, bold journey? What if you just drop beautiful? Do you think you're losing?

• 6:50Chris Ryan?

  I think fifty percent of the people at home are like, but is it beautiful? Is this a big, ugly journey?

• 6:56Andy Greenwald?

  I also think a story about a pair of strangers and the unimaginable journey that ties them together, starring Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell being released in the theaters in September, has a tough, tough hill to climb already.

• 7:09Chris Ryan?

  We'll see.

• 7:09Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying it does seem like, oh, we're doing, this should work. But it's 2025. We don't know if

• 7:16Chris Ryan?

  I'm gonna throw David Ellison some free game right now. David Ellison, who runs Skydance. If this, if this Paramount thing goes through, day one,

• 7:23Andy Greenwald?

  Big if.

• 7:23Chris Ryan?

  Day one, go in, every title on Paramount Plus of Mission Impossible, change it from Mission Impossible, Takeaway Three, Takeaway Rogue Nation, just be like, Mission Impossible colon tall building.

• 7:34Andy Greenwald?

  Yes.

• 7:35Chris Ryan?

  Mission Impossible colon Kremlin, Mission Impossible colon Philip Seymour Hoffman.

• 7:40Andy Greenwald?

  Mission Impossible colon long hair.

• 7:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:44Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, wait, so here's the series, right? Can we do this?

• 7:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Okay, Mission Impossible.

• 7:47Andy Greenwald?

  Mission Impossible.

• 7:48Chris Ryan?

  I can, yeah, it's fine. Knock List.

• 7:51Andy Greenwald?

  Or? Mission Impossible. Whoa!

• 7:53Chris Ryan?

  Okay, Mission Impossible two, long hair slash Mission Impossible two colon John Woo.

• 7:58Andy Greenwald?

  Mission Impossible colon John Woo is the best one. Yeah.

• 8:02Chris Ryan?

  Mission Impossible three, I would just go rabbit's foot or Philip Seymour Hoffman.

• 8:07Andy Greenwald?

  That's right.

• 8:07Chris Ryan?

  Four is Brad Bird. That's Birch Cleefah.

• 8:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, that's Big Building.

• 8:11Chris Ryan?

  Big Building. Five is Ghost Pro, right?

• 8:15Andy Greenwald?

  No, Ghost Pro is, is

• 8:17Chris Ryan?

  Oh, Ghost Pro is Big Building. Five is Rogue Nation.

• 8:21Andy Greenwald?

  Rogue Nation. Rogue Nation is pretty perfect.

• 8:23Chris Ryan?

  That's good.

• 8:25Chris Ryan?

  Is that Kremlin?

• 8:26Andy Greenwald?

  By Kremlin, yeah Kremlin boom.

• 8:28Chris Ryan?

  Kremlin boom? It's a touchy subject right now.

• 8:32Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it would be very popular in some parts of the world.

• 8:35Chris Ryan?

  And then, I think Fallout's good, but you could do Bathroom. Mission Impossible Bathroom.

• 8:40Andy Greenwald?

  No, Mission Impossible Armcock. Nope, that doesn't sound good. Let me rephrase. But isn't that what they call him? He's like cock in his arms? Right? Mission Impossible Armcock sells itself, but not to everyone. It is not a four quadrant title.

• 8:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 8:59Andy Greenwald?

  I'll give you that.

• 8:59Chris Ryan?

  And then I don't really know how to save the titles of Dead Reckoning and Final Reckoning.

• 9:03Andy Greenwald?

  Mission Impossible Upside Down Train. Mission Impossible Cole and Haley Atwell.

• 9:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and then Mission Impossible Internet.

• 9:10Andy Greenwald?

  Mission Impossible, well.

• 9:13Chris Ryan?

  Anyway, that's a great, I'm glad we talked that out. I had a question for you. You asked me about being a Hollywood fixer. I have a question of you as a once in a future showrunner.

• 9:23Andy Greenwald?

  Thanks.

• 9:23Chris Ryan?

  And guy working in Hollywood.

• 9:25Andy Greenwald?

  Guy.

• 9:25Chris Ryan?

  Over the weekend, this is gonna sound weirder than it is. I was watching Sex and the City with a couple of teens.

• 9:32Andy Greenwald?

  Let's just take a second.

• 9:33Chris Ryan?

  We were watching the show and it was my wife and her friend and her daughters and Sex and the City was on. We were watching it on Netflix.

• 9:40Andy Greenwald?

  It wasn't your dear friend's daughter saying, Uncle Chris, share us something that matters to you from your life. And you're like, there's only one project that combines my two favorite things. Sex and cities.

• 9:53Chris Ryan?

  Cities.

• 9:53Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 9:54Chris Ryan?

  This is my favorite arc of Sex and the City, I think, is the burger arc. Ron Livingston.

• 10:00Andy Greenwald?

  The great Ron Livingston.

• 10:00Chris Ryan?

  I feel like, you know, you and me really felt seen in those run of episodes.

• 10:04Andy Greenwald?

  Sure. Yeah.

• 10:07Chris Ryan?

  But there's a scene in one of those episodes where Carrie and Samantha are walking down the street in New York City.

• 10:13Andy Greenwald?

  This is not where I thought today was going.

• 10:14Chris Ryan?

  And in the background. You would think that Stanley Kubrick was directing Spartacus. That's how many people are behind them. Like, walking up the street.

• 10:23Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 10:24Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, oh, I forgot to say what we were talking about this, this episode, but I guess people see it in the title.

• 10:30Andy Greenwald?

  No, you said you had a really good Elvis Costello reference.

• 10:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but I didn't actually say with the shows that we were talking about.

• 10:35Andy Greenwald?

  Department Q.

• 10:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Uh, anyway, Sex and the City, there's like a hundred people walking behind Carrie and Samantha on the street. And I was like, why don't we do that anymore? Is it too expensive? Did extras get more expensive?

• 10:48Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 10:48Chris Ryan?

  Uh, why don't city, street scenes or TV shows feel populated anymore?

• 10:54Andy Greenwald?

  Well, also, I mean, start a little bit further. Like, they filmed the show in New York.

• 10:57Chris Ryan?

  In the great city of New York, yeah.

• 10:59Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, that's, that's rarer and rarer these days. Um, you don't, you don't enjoy the sight of just summertime crowds taking, taking the air in Budapest?

• 11:11Andy Greenwald?

  Well, while John Corbett's like, the city has surely changed. And Carrie's like, yeah.

• 11:17Chris Ryan?

  No, they shoot, I think they shoot in Just Like That in New York. John Corbett's character is currently living in rural Virginia, though.

• 11:24Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 11:24Chris Ryan?

  You don't know that?

• 11:25Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, has he been red-pilled?

• 11:26Chris Ryan?

  I could talk to you about it in Just Like That. We're on season three, dog.

• 11:29Andy Greenwald?

  And you say we, you mean you're part of the hive. You watch the show.

• 11:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Current, current watch rotation right now.

• 11:34Andy Greenwald?

  You just watch everything.

• 11:34Chris Ryan?

  And Just Like That, 100-foot wave, Top Chef, sticking with it, adults, Department Q, which we're gonna talk about today. And I think that's broadly it.

• 11:46Andy Greenwald?

  That's a lot.

• 11:47Chris Ryan?

  I did a little bit of a hacks check-in.

• 11:49Andy Greenwald?

  Did you?

• 11:49Chris Ryan?

  She got renewed for season five. Anyway, what's up with extras?

• 11:51Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it's, it's wins Emmys, of course. Yeah, of course it got renewed. Um, I cannot speak specifically to why there are fewer extras. Other, having never had the privilege of filming in a big city, shout out Albuquerque.

• 12:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Andy Greenwald?

  But generally, everything is more expensive and budgets are tighter. And it's, I think it's probably less about paying extras as it is about corralling, about shutting down parts of a major thoroughfare. And corralling the extras or the space.

• 12:20Chris Ryan?

  Do you always have to be like you're an extra to somebody?

• 12:24Andy Greenwald?

  Or can you just do a little found footage?

• 12:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, no, I mean, can you just have Carrie Bradshaw and Samantha walking up the street? And everybody's in the background is just like, I guess they're filming something today.

• 12:33Andy Greenwald?

  It's a great question. I have no idea.

• 12:35Chris Ryan?

  I wonder if it was just better in the 90s like that. You were just like, yeah, I guess I'm on Sex and the City. Who cares?

• 12:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, you didn't have to. You mean, you didn't have to get consent in the 90s?

• 12:42Chris Ryan?

  But I guess you would need people to be background actors and not be like, yo!

• 12:45Andy Greenwald?

  I like the way you just talked over that. I was trying to red, I was trying to just-

• 12:47Chris Ryan?

  Wait, what did you say?

• 12:48Andy Greenwald?

  I was saying, yeah, it was cooler in the 90s without consent. And you just kept going.

• 12:51Chris Ryan?

  That's not what I was saying.

• 12:53Andy Greenwald?

  I just wanted to give you a chance to refute the accusations from a second ago.

• 12:56Chris Ryan?

  I refuted.

• 12:57Andy Greenwald?

  Did you, well, did you ever do that? I mean, we lived in New York then. Did you ever see the little-

• 13:03Chris Ryan?

  I mean, they were shooting Law and Order constantly. I'm probably in a background-

• 13:06Andy Greenwald?

  Were you ever like, Briscoe? No?

• 13:09Chris Ryan?

  I was more of an Olivia guy.

• 13:11Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, okay, sure.

• 13:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, which we will talk about, because today on the pod-

• 13:13Andy Greenwald?

  We are gonna talk about that.

• 13:14Chris Ryan?

  We're gonna talk about Department Q, not the entirety of it. Andy and I are gonna have a broad conversation about Scott Frank's new show on Netflix that came out about a week and a half ago, I think, at this point, and we both adore, but we're not done yet.

• 13:27Andy Greenwald?

  Just a week ago. Time moves weird.

• 13:28Chris Ryan?

  It's nine episodes, and those episodes are somewhat long.

• 13:32Andy Greenwald?

  Quite long.

• 13:33Chris Ryan?

  Full hours. So we're gonna talk about that, and then we are gonna do a little dazzling two-man TV detective draft. So we're gonna be talking about some of our favorite detectives in TV history. We can get into that. Did you have anything else? Oh, I had one other thing, but it was really like, I don't know if it would be of deep interest to our listeners.

• 13:50Andy Greenwald?

  I guess, I guess the only other thing I had was about what you were just saying, like, did you notice the lack of vibrant cityscapes in your entertainment before you saw how good we used to have it? Like, is it something that you have been tracking before you watched Sex and the City and felt like it was-

• 14:06Chris Ryan?

  Oh, constantly.

• 14:07Andy Greenwald?

  You do notice that?

• 14:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, because like, that's one of the things that I think I respond to so deeply about, like, I don't know, 70s movies, is like, the feeling that the movies are actually happening and that there's life going on in the background, and it gives like, the foreground so much more vitality.

• 14:21Andy Greenwald?

  I think what I would say to that is, one of the, it's almost impossible to imagine that there are under-harolded aspects of Andor, but I think one thing that, that maybe goes slightly unremarked upon-

• 14:35Chris Ryan?

  Is that they shot New York City.

• 14:36Andy Greenwald?

  They shot everything on the same streets with you in the background going, Olivia! That's cool.

• 14:45Andy Greenwald?

  You can see the, you know, you can see the money spent in a lot of different ways, but maybe the sneaky, the sneaky best way to see how much money they spend on the show is the crowd scenes and is like, oh, this, the Imperial Senate, we are shooting in Valencia and we are filling the frame to the best of our ability, you know, because they're shooting at scale, you're showing the building, they have to fill it and some of that is filled in digitally, of course, and that's an expense too. But even just the degree to which, um, when Cassian and Bix go to their bodega.

• 15:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:17Andy Greenwald?

  That's at the Barbican in London. Like, they left the studio and they went to a place and they dressed it.

• 15:22Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I was gonna say, there are no bodegas at the Barbican.

• 15:25Andy Greenwald?

  Well, they don't call them that. They call them druggists and takeaways, but you can get.

• 15:30Chris Ryan?

  Can you have a druggist cat?

• 15:31Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, yes. Yeah, you can. Anyway, just the sense that like, even when we were watching the studio recently, I was thinking about this.

• 15:40Chris Ryan?

  This is a good example.

• 15:41Andy Greenwald?

  They filmed, despite what you may have believed, they did film on location at the casino in Vegas and they filmed, as Sean and Amanda confirmed for us, they filmed the CinemaCon scenes in the theater where they do the CinemaCon stuff. I, I'm doing this from memory, I was not prepared to talk about this, but I do feel like when they shot the reverse of Seth Rogen's Matt onstage, you could see the way, like all trained camera professional people, they cheated the crowd.

• 16:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, they did the rocky crowd, where it's, some of it's dark.

• 16:09Andy Greenwald?

  Some of it's dark, there's a couple of people in the front.

• 16:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:12Andy Greenwald?

  Um, no shame in that. I mean, you, you, it's just, it's just being efficient, but you kind of notice that, you know, you do notice the absence if you're looking for it, which is why I think it is important when we see abundance, shout out Ezra Klein, like we do in Andor, we should note it, because it is rare.

• 16:27Chris Ryan?

  Did you ever do a full Sex and the City watch?

• 16:29Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 16:30Chris Ryan?

  Did you watch any of it?

• 16:31Andy Greenwald?

  Barely.

• 16:32Chris Ryan?

  How did you do that? How did you get through your life doing that?

• 16:35Andy Greenwald?

  Unlike you, I hate both those topics.

• 16:37Chris Ryan?

  Sex and cities?

• 16:40Andy Greenwald?

  How did I avoid it? I don't know, I can't believe you're throwing this back on me. Like, we, I thought we had a pact that together, we could be like, television shows from 1999 to 2009, sorry, we were at bars.

• 16:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but then I started, you know, various women were like, let's, let's watch this show.

• 16:56Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, see, the women just wanted to chat with me. They wanted me to explain indie rock to them. And I was happy to oblige. Like, Top 100 Elvis Costello, go, I could do it. Cause that's, I think that's what the women wanted.

• 17:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, okay.

• 17:09Andy Greenwald?

  Was I wrong?

• 17:09Chris Ryan?

  No, I mean, maybe one of these days, we should do an SATC re-watch.

• 17:13Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 17:14Chris Ryan?

  Or first watch for you.

• 17:15Andy Greenwald?

  Do you, I mean, I, I, I get it. It was often, you know, it was, it was on in, in the apartment.

• 17:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:24Andy Greenwald?

  Cause there were random people's teenage daughters watching it. Like, you guys good? Can I go out?

• 17:31Chris Ryan?

  So you don't know the burger plot?

• 17:33Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, I, I, I could hum a few bars.

• 17:35Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 17:35Andy Greenwald?

  No, I have no idea what you're talking about. I was just nodding through it. What did he, what did he like indie rock?

• 17:38Chris Ryan?

  No, he was like, he was a writer as well.

• 17:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 17:42Chris Ryan?

  And he wrote a 400-page novel called, I think, Hurricane Pandora.

• 17:45Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:46Chris Ryan?

  That, and Carrie and him are dating for a little while. And

• 17:49Andy Greenwald?

  Can't believe it didn't last.

• 17:50Chris Ryan?

  They have a, a, some, a misfiring sex life. Like, they're really like, very full-on banter.

• 17:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 17:58Chris Ryan?

  Doing bits.

• 17:59Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 17:59Chris Ryan?

  But like, their sex life is fucked up. And then, they kind of get it together on that end. But he's starting to show signs of being like, a little bit of like, a competitive asshole.

• 18:08Andy Greenwald?

  Oh.

• 18:09Chris Ryan?

  He gives her his book. She reads it. And her thing is to like, make a joke about something he got wrong in the book. And he gets real fucking mad.

• 18:17Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:17Chris Ryan?

  And then it just spirals out of control from there.

• 18:20Andy Greenwald?

  Is he your favorite of her suitors over the course of the run?

• 18:23Chris Ryan?

  Well, I find him, I never met a guy like Mr. Big. You know what I mean? Like, I don't really know dudes like that. Aiden, I get it. You know, like, the furniture, the bar.

• 18:35Andy Greenwald?

  The Northern Virginia?

• 18:36Chris Ryan?

  Sure. But it was never like, I don't like Burger for her, but I'm like, I get Burger.

• 18:42Andy Greenwald?

  I see.

• 18:42Chris Ryan?

  Borishnikov, I thought was ridiculous.

• 18:43Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, I was a Borishnikov boy.

• 18:45Chris Ryan?

  I'm sure you were.

• 18:46Andy Greenwald?

  I was like, internationally classy, sweep me away.

• 18:48Chris Ryan?

  Take a girl of France and abandon her, it's just ridiculous.

• 18:51Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I was with you to the abandoned part.

• 18:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:53Andy Greenwald?

  I did watch the finale, so I was familiar with his game at the end, yeah.

• 18:57Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk about Department Q. This came out, like we said, last week on Netflix, nine episodes. It's an adaptation of a Danish Scandi noir series.

• 19:07Andy Greenwald?

  That I'm not familiar with.

• 19:08Chris Ryan?

  That I'm not familiar with either, but I do dip into some pretty weird, random Netflix Scandi noir stuff.

• 19:15Andy Greenwald?

  You do. This seems like a pretty big series.

• 19:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:18Andy Greenwald?

  Jesse Adler Olsen is the author.

• 19:20Chris Ryan?

  I don't know how, so I'm not familiar with how much Scott Frank and Tony Lacani, who did, co-created the series and how much they're borrowing from that plot-wise. It's set in Edinburgh, it's, all episodes were co-written by Frank and six of the nine episodes were directed by Frank. Obviously Scott's been on this pod a couple of times. He's been here to talk about Godless. I believe we talked to him about Queen's Gambit and Mr. Spade, right?

• 19:46Andy Greenwald?

  We love having Scott on.

• 19:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. He's been on for all of it. Hopefully he'll come back on to talk about Department Q.

• 19:49Andy Greenwald?

  Didn't we have him on to talk about his novel Shaker, too? Hasn't he been on a few times?

• 19:52Chris Ryan?

  Gosh, or did we?

• 19:54Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it was a good book.

• 19:55Chris Ryan?

  Uh, yeah, I liked it, too.

• 19:56Andy Greenwald?

  We love Scott.

• 19:58Chris Ryan?

  So, um, this stars Matthew Goode as Carl Mork, an emotionally scarred detective, is how I believe it's described, but I completely agree with that description.

• 20:10Andy Greenwald?

  Good job, Wikipedia. You nailed it.

• 20:12Chris Ryan?

  I, well, I was like, did I write that? I don't think so.

• 20:14Andy Greenwald?

  No.

• 20:14Chris Ryan?

  So I just didn't.

• 20:16Andy Greenwald?

  I thought we both had Wikipedia open. And I was like, why is he?

• 20:20Chris Ryan?

  I know, I know who this character is, though. Like, I've watched these episodes, so I'm sorry for leaning on the internet there. I'll just close my computer, how about that?

• 20:28Andy Greenwald?

  That's fine. Gemini, help Chris with this.

• 20:30Chris Ryan?

  No, not only is he emotionally scarred, he's physically scarred.

• 20:32Andy Greenwald?

  Why, why, Chris? Say it.

• 20:34Chris Ryan?

  Because early in the series, he is a victim of an in-the-line-of-duty shooting.

• 20:41Chris Ryan?

  He is your typical emotionally complicated, aggressive, abrasive, antisocial detective.

• 20:49Andy Greenwald?

  Brilliant.

• 20:50Chris Ryan?

  And brilliant detective. And we're gonna be talking a lot about some of the archetypes and types of detectives that we come across on television. So the series starts out, we have this crime committed against Mork and then we also have a parallel plot about a prosecutor who is trying a case against domestic violence and murder against this prosecutor is named Merritt Lingard, she's played by Chloe Perry.

• 21:16Andy Greenwald?

  Perry.

• 21:16Chris Ryan?

  Perry.

• 21:17Andy Greenwald?

  And the person she's prosecuting was the security guard in episode three of Adolescence.

• 21:21Chris Ryan?

  No shit.

• 21:22Andy Greenwald?

  I was like, that guy.

• 21:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:24Andy Greenwald?

  Great guy.

• 21:24Chris Ryan?

  There's a lot of that guys in this show. And yada, yada, we find out that by the end of the first episode, here's a spoiler for the first episode.

• 21:34Andy Greenwald?

  Oh wait, first, he, Mork's back at work.

• 21:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:37Andy Greenwald?

  He's seeing a therapist.

• 21:38Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 21:38Andy Greenwald?

  Played by.

• 21:39Chris Ryan?

  Kelly McDonald.

• 21:39Andy Greenwald?

  By the elite Kelly McDonald.

• 21:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:42Andy Greenwald?

  He doesn't play well with others and there's a windfall in the department where the government of Edinburgh is like, we will give you money to the great Scottish actress, Kate Dickey, who we've seen in Game of Thrones, seen her in a hundred things. She's chief police. We're gonna give you money to start a new cold case unit.

• 22:00Chris Ryan?

  Yes, because we know that these things like kick up a lot of like publicity and it's good for the department.

• 22:06Andy Greenwald?

  So she puts Carl in charge of the unit, stashes him in the sub-basement, like literally Department Q where they've run out of numbers to name the offices, it's a former bathroom or changing room, and the windfall goes to her and the upstairs cops.

• 22:18Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 22:18Andy Greenwald?

  With new laptops and things.

• 22:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:19Andy Greenwald?

  And then we're like, when are these, when are these two, and we're gonna spoil the pilot at least, right? So like, when are these two stories gonna meet? When is Carl Mork gonna run into this hard-charging investigator who still has a Danish name?

• 22:29Chris Ryan?

  They even actually do a great job like sprinkling in a couple of breadcrumbs that they will get an advocate if they want, like they'll have a lawyer attached to the Department Q.

• 22:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, and you're like, aha, that's gonna be Merritt.

• 22:42Andy Greenwald?

  Guess what? It's not.

• 22:44Chris Ryan?

  Nope.

• 22:44Andy Greenwald?

  Because his first cold case is Merritt!

• 22:48Chris Ryan?

  The whole episode that, all the stuff that we've been seeing from Merritt is actually taking place four years in the past and the episode one ends with Carl picking Merritt as the first, well, actually Carl's assistant, Akram, picking Merritt as the first, first case.

• 23:03Andy Greenwald?

  So good.

• 23:03Chris Ryan?

  That they're gonna do. It's an awesome twist and it's like, you're just so in on the conceit of the show. Tell me what you think of the show so far.

• 23:12Andy Greenwald?

  I love this show. I'm so excited to talk about this show. It makes me so happy. I don't know if anything makes me happier than good TV done well.

• 23:23Andy Greenwald?

  This is in the, if you are a listener who was like, "Thank you for the pit. Thank you for making me feel things again," television box in a way that is familiar, but still engaging and surprising. Mm-hmm. I think this is your next show. Because it is so wonderful to hear that familiar melody of like, "Oh, this guy's kind of an asshole, but he's a genius. Oh, he's putting the band together of a collection of misfit toys who are gonna become a found family." And the way that, and then when you have an elite, elite screenwriter like Scott Frank doing this, you feel that, you don't, you're still on your toes, but when you feel yourself being led through familiar halls, it feels thrilling. Yes.

• 24:06Andy Greenwald?

  So, for example, you mentioned Akram, who's played by Alexei Manvalov, who's a phenomenal actor, who's in Chernobyl, Swedish actor. He's playing Akram, who is a Syrian refugee. Mm-hmm. Uh, or immigrant in any way. We don't fully know why he came to Edinburgh. Oh, he came because his wife, his wife got hired as a doctor. As a doctor, right. They needed doctors. But he, seems like he also was ready to leave Syria for a number of reasons. Yeah. Um, when we meet him, we meet him through the point of view of, um, of what's her name? Rose. Played by Leah Byrne, who is a awesome-haired, uh, police cadet in the office. Lot of hairstyles in this show. Good choices, though. Visually really compelling. She's letting him sit there because he wants an interview, he wants an opportunity to pitch himself to Moira, played by Kate Dickey, the head of the department. He's making, his wife's making Syrian sweets for her. We see him, we clock him, he's waiting, he's waiting.

• 24:51Andy Greenwald?

  Eventually, of course, he ends up in, you know, being asked to like, help Carl mop the floor, help Carl like, you know. Organize files, yeah. But Chris, guess what? Akram's a goaded detective himself, in his little suits, and he knows just what to do. Yeah, man. I'm like, I love this guy. Yeah, Sherlock and Watson, we got these guys, yeah. Guess what? You guys, all you guys sitting around, still being like, "Boo hoo, I miss Dr. King. May I introduce you to Akram and Rose, my new best friends?" It feels awesome to be in a show like this with a larger world, and it's Scottish. We haven't spent a lot of time in Scotland on TV recently, here in America, anyway. Right. Um, with the, with the big, imposing building, stone buildings and heavy skies,

• 25:32Andy Greenwald?

  and just like, come on now, sense of humor and, and cut the shit attitudes. Matthew Goode, playing Carl. Yeah. May I suggest Matthew Best? I think he is, I've always thought he's very talented.

• 25:45Chris Ryan?

  Yes, but has always played, typically played dapper Dans.

• 25:50Andy Greenwald?

  And Pratt's.

• 25:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and this is like, he's got scraggly beard.

• 25:54Andy Greenwald?

  Great wool sweaters.

• 25:55Chris Ryan?

  He's got a lot of baggage. He's got a frustrated stepson who still lives with him, playing techno and at all hours of the night. He's got a lovely roommate, because this is Scotland, so like you are like a middle-aged man with a roommate and a son living with you. And he's got a lot of problems. And he's got his, during the shooting, his best friend and partner is left paralyzed. So his partner's in the hospital. His, the younger officer who was on the scene is killed. And we are starting to see as the episodes go on that maybe perhaps like there's some connective tissue between Barrett's disappearance and Mork's shooting

• 26:38Chris Ryan?

  and the conspiracy and maybe some, some problems within the department. I wanted to ask you this. I was thinking about something that you said, maybe it was last episode or the episode before. I can't remember what we were talking about.

• 26:48Andy Greenwald?

  I did just want to say, I think this is important. Matthew is playing Carl as an Englishman who's living in Scotland.

• 26:53Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 26:54Andy Greenwald?

  And everybody dunks on him constantly.

• 26:55Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 26:55Andy Greenwald?

  And as someone who, in my first time ever in Scotland, I was 15 and I was doing like a school exchange thing and there was like a party at one of the host family's house and there was a huge ruckus because everyone was in one room watching television. And I was like, what's, what is this noise? What is, why is everyone so excited?

• 27:11Chris Ryan?

  Are you guys watching Sex and the City?

• 27:12Andy Greenwald?

  And they were like, have you heard about this show? And they were like, it's the, it's the Euros. It's a soccer, a football, you know, it would have been major tournament. And I was like, oh, that's exciting. It's exciting. You guys are really into it. They're like, yeah, this is everything here. I was like, oh, is Scotland playing? And they're like, no, we didn't qualify. And I'm like, who are you cheering for? And they said, whoever's playing England.

• 27:34Andy Greenwald?

  So I love those details in the show.

• 27:35Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 27:36Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, go on, I'm sorry.

• 27:36Chris Ryan?

  He married into Scotland is what he says. We often talk about the idea of, especially cop shows, detective shows, crime shows as being Trojan horses for other ideas that the creator is trying to smuggle in. So trying to think of a good example of recent TV that we might want to say, I mean, even Monsieur Spade, which is Scott's previous work that was on AMC. It was about Sam Spade, the Dashell Hammock character, living his late middle age or middle age life in France and trying to have a quiet life, but finding himself embroiled in post World War II or post Algerian civil war.

• 28:18Andy Greenwald?

  Conflict.

• 28:19Chris Ryan?

  Conflict. All the stuff that was still bubbling up in France in the 60s, I believe it is. And it's really about getting older and getting sick and...

• 28:28Andy Greenwald?

  Just like this podcast.

• 28:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And reckoning with your mortality and everything else and reckoning with like your lack of legacy, lack of roots, lack of family, whatever it is.

• 28:40Chris Ryan?

  So there's, we often spend time celebrating that. There are things in Department Q that I think are being smuggled in one way or another. But I also think that it's just a really good horse. And that's kind of like, I want to celebrate that for a second.

• 28:56Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I agree with you.

• 28:57Chris Ryan?

  You know, sometimes we can be like, oh, you know, the great thing is he gets all these ideas about identity and with just like detective heal thyself stuff. That's true.

• 29:07Chris Ryan?

  But this is like a perfectly crafted machine in some ways. And it's playing a lot of familiar sheet music. It's the Angry Detective. It's the Who Gave These Guys Their Own Department? It's Cold Cases.

• 29:21Andy Greenwald?

  He's bantering with his therapist.

• 29:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:23Andy Greenwald?

  It's...

• 29:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 29:25Andy Greenwald?

  It's very familiar.

• 29:26Chris Ryan?

  There are hallmarks of like 25 years of prestige television that are leading into this, but each one is done expertly. Each one is done with humor. Each one is done with pathos. Each one is done with that little smidge of humanity or that little smidge of like creativity or individual expression, like even down to the hairstyles. Some of the people working there, the conception of the offices in the Edinburgh Police Department, the conception of people's homes, like it's just so well realized that I think it just is pure pleasure for me.

• 29:56Andy Greenwald?

  It is the same for me as well. I'm loving watching the show and I do think it's a testament to Scott's involvement. And as you said at the beginning, it is, he developed it with Johnnie LaCanny. There's an element of collaboration at play here without a doubt. But every time we talk to Scott, and hopefully we'll get to do it again, he kind of reiterates some of his core career learnings and belief, which is, remember, he was the go-to fix-it guy for two decades.

• 30:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:24Andy Greenwald?

  His names are on some major scripts.

• 30:26Chris Ryan?

  Of course.

• 30:26Andy Greenwald?

  But also they're not on even, his name is absent from even bigger movies that he worked on. He was the guy that you called and he couldn't say no to a challenge and he, that was very, very lucrative. And I think satisfying in ways and sometimes frustrating in others. And, you know, he made the decision a few years ago to stop doing rewrite work and to just pursue the things that he wants to do. And despite the fact that he now has his own voice and his own vehicles, his innate ability to fix things and to keep things moving and to keep trains humming and to allow projects to be the best version of themselves, that's just intrinsic to who he is. It's not necessarily the nature of the job. So the, the running thread between Godless and Queen's Gambit and Monsieur Spade and this,

• 31:10Andy Greenwald?

  isn't any kind of like hobby horse of, of themes or politics.

• 31:15Chris Ryan?

  Or worldview, yeah.

• 31:16Andy Greenwald?

  Or, and I also don't think it's any kind of particular like bravura pirouetting of language, you know?

• 31:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there isn't really a signature Scott Frank dialogue style that I can think of. I mean, obviously Queen's Gambit like is, is largely weirdly a, in some ways like a physical piece, you know, than as much as it is a piece of dialogue.

• 31:35Andy Greenwald?

  And, and I think, you know, we talked to him about it. I think like Scott and, and Tony Gilroy are, are friends. They're friendly competitors in the screenwriting space. Tony has a Tony Gilroy speech, you know, and it's not just a Luthen thing. It's like Michael Clayton explaining how the world works. I mean, like that is what he does. And he does the little things well so that he clears the deck to deliver the hammer.

• 31:56Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 31:57Andy Greenwald?

  Scott is a-

• 31:57Chris Ryan?

  He puts his characters in positions where a part of Gaz or somebody can give like a big, yeah.

• 32:02Andy Greenwald?

  He, he bring, he narrows the focus to these one-on-one like basketball games where someone is going to dunk.

• 32:09Andy Greenwald?

  What's interesting, I think, about tracking Scott's career, especially on the small screen now, is that where he does show off, and again, tastefully within the framework of something, is more as a director. Queen's Gambit, you said it was more of a physical piece. I mean, it was very beautiful and it was hallucinatory at times, you know, and kind of surreal in the way it presented the chess pieces on the ceiling or whatever. One of the striking things about Department Q to me was how absolutely lush and beautiful

• 32:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:36Andy Greenwald?

  the shots can be, the composed shots, the greens in the police station, which are then mirrored with the subterranean Department Q office, where you can see the feet walking above. There's a just casual, you never go back there shot, at least as far as I know, in episode two, where Mark is starting to warm up the cold case and he goes to talk to the cop who is the lead investigator of the disappearance. And Fergus has now quit the force and gotten sober and is working out of a church. And the church is lit as if Jesus Christ himself was a gaffer.

• 33:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:07Andy Greenwald?

  It is a kaleidoscopic rainbow just bleeding through this immaculate ceiling. And it's just for an interrogation scene.

• 33:17Chris Ryan?

  Sure, but I think that every-

• 33:18Andy Greenwald?

  It's not showy, it's beautiful.

• 33:19Chris Ryan?

  Every one of those choices is really purposeful. Like even in the flashback stuff that we wind up getting of Merritt's life over the course of the first few episodes. Her choice to live in a specific kind of house, in a specific kind of setup, and even the way that the detectives are piecing together, like her movements, her purchases, her affairs, or whatever, is like, it gives me the sensation of reading great detective fiction where you are, whether or not you've figured things out or not is not the point. It's about the experience you have reading or watching someone do the same. So like even if you, as a seasoned television watcher,

• 34:02Chris Ryan?

  start to get suspicious about a certain character on Department Q or whatever you're watching and you're like, I don't like the looks of this guy, you know, or I don't, it seems like they've brought him back a few too many times and accentuated his goodness. I'm worried about that, or whatever. Like- I think that the point more is to let the world rain down on you and to use Scottish weather, like to wash over you and just enjoy it moment by moment, twist by twist, interaction by interaction.

• 34:33Andy Greenwald?

  What were the loans called during COVID, like the PPP loans that people got? So I want to create something that maybe we can pull into into use when we're talking about shows like this or The Pit, which is the pure pleasure principle. Like, how many hours or like, how many, not even hours, how many screen minutes elapse before you're just locked in? And, you know, for me, it's like with this show, the twist at the end of the pilot was thrilling. But there's a moment relatively early on when Carl brings two cans of Lager to the hospital to visit with.

• 35:07Chris Ryan?

  Hardy.

• 35:08Andy Greenwald?

  Hardy, played by Jamie, Jamie Sees, another, just, this is another thing it has in common with Andor, it's the bench of actors in the UK. Two cans of Lager, now sharing can of Lager and just talking about work. I'm like, this could, they could say anything and I would be thrilled to be here.

• 35:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, the other thing I was gonna mention was, I think we knocked friends and neighbors a little bit last week for cramming, or I did, cramming three seasons worth of plot into the first season and somehow like knowing that it was gonna be a going show and that they had already started shooting season two and yada, yada, yada. Like, I, I was like, why are you rushing this character being framed for murder?

• 35:49Andy Greenwald?

  Yep.

• 35:50Chris Ryan?

  When really like this should be the character piece of like, he's getting into the criminal world and, but still trying to have his one foot in the suburban, rich milieu that he, it comes from. And you can kind of watch this show be constructed expertly to be like, it could go on, you know what I mean? Like, this could, this could be.

• 36:11Andy Greenwald?

  We're putting the team together.

• 36:12Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. And like, they could do this in any way that they wanted. Like, they've done nine episodes, they could come back and do a Christmas special, they could come back and do a, a three-episode season on Sherlock on BBC. You know, like, this is so malleable and you could keep bringing in detectives and moving detectives out and, you know, Carl could keep rising and falling within the department or whatever, but it's very, very, very, very good bones here.

• 36:36Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, like I find myself, I'm glad you mentioned that in terms of like, what speed is the mystery moving along at? And this is the highest compliment as someone who loves the genre, I think, can give this show. I'm, I've watched almost half, so I'm four episodes out of the nine. I don't, I'm not even speculating, like I'm okay. I'm in a wonderful state of anticipation and ignorance. I'm not trying to guess it. I'm not trying to solve at it. I'm not in a hurry for anything to happen. I mean, I think, I think Merritt's in a hurry because she's been, she's spent the last four years inside of, I want to say, a submarine tube of some kind.

• 37:16Chris Ryan?

  Doesn't seem good.

• 37:17Andy Greenwald?

  Doesn't seem good. I think that if, if she had been kidnapped after Mission Impossible, the final reckoning come out, she probably would have known a little bit more about torpedo tubes and how to manipulate herself through them.

• 37:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:28Andy Greenwald?

  As well as, you know, all it takes is the love of a good woman to get you back from the bends.

• 37:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:32Andy Greenwald?

  So I think that would have been fine.

• 37:33Chris Ryan?

  I don't want to comment too deeply on where Merritt is.

• 37:36Andy Greenwald?

  No, I, yeah, exactly. But, but she's, she's not, she's not in the world.

• 37:41Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 37:43Andy Greenwald?

  The bench of actors, I think we mentioned a little bit, the great Shirley Henderson, from literally everything, from Trainspotting to topsy-turvy to she was moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter. She, she's always excellent. She's playing a curious sort, a curious caretaker. Did you recognize Mark Bonar from?

• 38:02Chris Ryan?

  Of course I did, man.

• 38:03Andy Greenwald?

  Catastrophe?

• 38:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and from, I mean, from everything, really.

• 38:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. He definitely, his marching orders were, you're a suspicious prick.

• 38:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:12Andy Greenwald?

  I would say.

• 38:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:13Andy Greenwald?

  So I feel like there's a little bit of, maybe a little bit of leading the horse there.

• 38:19Andy Greenwald?

  I, I think, where do you rank and how do you, where do you rank and how do you rate Carl Mork on the scale of, and maybe this is a good segue into what we're going to be talking about, on the scale of difficult geniuses? Cause I, I think good is honestly a revelation in this part. And even though we don't have the full picture of why he is the way he is, I think I just buy it.

• 38:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I think he's probably, doesn't want to live where he's living, doesn't want to be in the situation he's in personally with like a stepson, a teenage stepson, living with him while his wife has left.

• 38:53Andy Greenwald?

  By the way, make you rethink your attitude towards wards?

• 38:56Chris Ryan?

  Well, I mean, the thing is, is the clock is ticking on Jasper, you know, it's like, he's seventeen and the second he can be sent, sent to wherever, you know, he can, he's gonna be like, you gotta go-

• 39:05Andy Greenwald?

  I know, but I think when you used to talk about how you weren't gonna have kids, but you would maybe adopt a sports prodigy at the age of like twelve, thirteen, or fourteen, I feel like in your mind, it's kind of like a Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson thing, like, your parents died in the circus, like, come live with me, kid, I'll show you the nightlife.

• 39:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 39:21Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like you're not really adjusting your sensibilities towards the modern era where you could be wearing like a monster mask, playing Call of Duty, listening to Rammstein, and have porn playing on a laptop.

• 39:32Chris Ryan?

  Me or the kid?

• 39:33Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I'm saying, he would interrupt, he would interrupt your Tuesday night.

• 39:38Chris Ryan?

  Pretty close to what I did Tuesday night.

• 39:39Andy Greenwald?

  That's what I'm saying. That would kind of really harsh your mellow, if you had another kid there, being like-

• 39:46Chris Ryan?

  Spider-Man meme.

• 39:47Andy Greenwald?

  Mr. Ryan, is that what he called you? No, what do you, what do you, would he call you, Pa? We never talked about this.

• 39:52Chris Ryan?

  Coach.

• 39:54Andy Greenwald?

  No, no, it's just, just perfect.

• 39:56Chris Ryan?

  It was perfect.

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• 40:28Speaker 04

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• 41:38Chris Ryan?

  Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Okay, do you want to talk a little bit about some of our favorite detectives? Do you want to keep talking about Department Q?

• 41:45Andy Greenwald?

  No, what I really want to do is end our podcast and watch episode five of Department Q.

• 41:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, isn't that the best thing? Is like, uh, my wife and I were like, the last two nights, she's had plans. We went out last night and both times we were like, what we really want to be doing is watching Department Q.

• 42:02Andy Greenwald?

  It's, that's a good sign.

• 42:03Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:03Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, yeah, let's do our thing.

• 42:05Chris Ryan?

  Okay, um, two man drafts, uh, historically are not the most entertaining things in the world, but I had fun last time. I think we did presidents?

• 42:14Andy Greenwald?

  We did SNL.

• 42:16Chris Ryan?

  SNL.

• 42:17Andy Greenwald?

  SNL cast.

• 42:17Chris Ryan?

  Oh, SNL like fantasy draft, right? So, obviously drafts happen a lot on the Bill Simmons Show, on the big picture. It's a, it's a ringer pastime here, ringer fantasy football. Everybody does drafts. We're just, we're just using this as a canvas from which to paint.

• 42:32Andy Greenwald?

  The sports leagues do them too.

• 42:34Chris Ryan?

  They are, they do. Uh, we will be drafting the Philadelphia 76ers with the third pick.

• 42:39Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, what do you think?

• 42:40Chris Ryan?

  We'll be drafting.

• 42:41Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 42:42Chris Ryan?

  If Chris Ryan had his way.

• 42:44Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, give me your Chris Ryan has his way, then also what's your prediction at the moment?

• 42:47Chris Ryan?

  I think Trey Johnson is my Chris Ryan has his way.

• 42:50Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 42:50Chris Ryan?

  From Texas.

• 42:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I disagree with that.

• 42:53Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I don't know what I think Daryl is gonna do. Ace?

• 42:57Andy Greenwald?

  I think it tastes pale.

• 42:58Chris Ryan?

  What if he's Rudy Gay?

• 43:00Andy Greenwald?

  What if he's what?

• 43:01Chris Ryan?

  What if he's Rudy Gay?

• 43:02Andy Greenwald?

  That's not what I thought you said.

• 43:04Chris Ryan?

  That's not.

• 43:06Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, I was like, I'm fine with it.

• 43:11Andy Greenwald?

  I think that with the situation that our team, our hapless team finds itself in, I just think you gotta, you gotta swing.

• 43:21Chris Ryan?

  Swing for the, just draw an ace, is what you're saying.

• 43:25Andy Greenwald?

  I think you have to try, because I don't know what another like, yeah, kind of glue guy guard is gonna get you.

• 43:31Chris Ryan?

  Would you like to have the first pick? Because I think that there's so many detectives on TV that we've loved that we're not gonna be like, oh, now my draft is ruined.

• 43:39Andy Greenwald?

  No, here's the thing, just a couple, couple of ground rules, I think, for this. We're drafting our favorite detectives from television.

• 43:47Chris Ryan?

  Are you necessarily picking based on their expertise or based on like, I'd like to love to get a beer with him or her?

• 43:52Andy Greenwald?

  I think in best case scenario, it's both. There are definitely some who should not be drinking beers or with us.

• 43:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 43:58Andy Greenwald?

  I would also like to say that this is an outrageously subjective experiment that we decided we would do last night. There are many, many out there, and I wonder, I don't know who you're gonna draft, but my guess is that we might go through this, picking five each, and canonically, the greatest detective of all time might remain on the board.

• 44:16Chris Ryan?

  I was gonna ask if you would like to leave Poirot, Sherlock, Columbo, and Monk on Rushmore and make them non-draftable.

• 44:24Andy Greenwald?

  And when you say Sherlock, you mean the Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock?

• 44:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 44:28Andy Greenwald?

  Not the Johnny Lee Miller Sherlock?

• 44:29Chris Ryan?

  But that dude is like, he can hear Jimmy, you know what I mean? Like, it's like, he's, he's kind of on another level.

• 44:34Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, Jimmy of the Baskervilles? You know him?

• 44:37Chris Ryan?

  He's like Tiger 99, you know, like?

• 44:40Andy Greenwald?

  I agree, let's take them off the board.

• 44:41Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 44:42Andy Greenwald?

  I'm fine with that, but I think that's a sign of how, how...

• 44:44Chris Ryan?

  I didn't watch a lot of Monk, but when I've read about what Monk could get into, like, I was like, Monk's a badass. Monk could like, read the first page of a detective novel, read the last page and be like, I knew it.

• 44:54Andy Greenwald?

  But doesn't it usually say who did it in the last? Oh, I see.

• 44:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but he was like...

• 44:57Andy Greenwald?

  I thought you meant he'd be like...

• 44:58Chris Ryan?

  He would know on the first page.

• 44:59Andy Greenwald?

  I thought he was like Jimmy, like Johnny Carson's Karnak, where he like, reads the first page, second page, holds it up, and it's like, the butler did it. Like, what's the trick?

• 45:06Chris Ryan?

  It's me being like, he is emotionally scarred.

• 45:10Andy Greenwald?

  Citation needed.

• 45:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:12Andy Greenwald?

  Anyway, alright, I'm good with that, so you want me to do the first pick?

• 45:16Chris Ryan?

  I didn't say that, but okay.

• 45:19Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, well, there's strategy here.

• 45:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 45:21Andy Greenwald?

  Because I think I know who you're gonna pick first.

• 45:22Chris Ryan?

  We're gonna do five each.

• 45:23Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. I have to pick, uh, Special Agent Dale Cooper first.

• 45:27Chris Ryan?

  I knew you were gonna do that.

• 45:27Andy Greenwald?

  I know. It's kinda obvious, but like, I had to pick the, the main character of my favorite show of all time.

• 45:31Chris Ryan?

  Did Dale, was Dale a good cop? Dale, Dale a good investigator?

• 45:35Andy Greenwald?

  Here's the thing about Dale. Uh, real straight shooter.

• 45:37Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 45:38Andy Greenwald?

  You know, um, he's a, he's a sensualist. Like, he's not above a, a slice of cherry pie or dating a teenage Heather Graham in town if necessary. But, um, he, what I like about Dale Cooper-

• 45:50Chris Ryan?

  Does he solve that crime?

• 45:52Andy Greenwald?

  Well, multiple times. The first time he solves it is when Laura Palmer appears to him in a dream and whispers in her ear who killed her.

• 45:59Chris Ryan?

  Oh, right.

• 46:00Andy Greenwald?

  And then he calls Sheriff Harry Truman, who also is a candidate for this list, honestly, and says, uh, "I know who did it. Yes, it can wait till morning." One of the most memorable and soon episode ever. And then in the next episode says, "I forgot." So, he's non-tradish, but I do appreciate his openness to other ways of seeing.

• 46:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:22Andy Greenwald?

  You know, in terms of walking into ancient repositories of evil, uh, that he finds in the woods.

• 46:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:28Andy Greenwald?

  And getting stranded there for 25 years.

• 46:30Chris Ryan?

  I just think he, he digresses a lot. Not unlike a podcaster, but it's just like, he seems to be-

• 46:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 46:36Chris Ryan?

  He gets distracted by quotidian things when it's like, there's a, "Who killed Laura Palmer?" is what we're all here for.

• 46:42Andy Greenwald?

  Have you listened to this podcast? All we do is get distracted.

• 46:46Chris Ryan?

  I have a note in my doc that's like, "Ask Andy if he thinks I should start buying Red October gear now so that I have a surplus and can sell if economy crashes."

• 46:56Andy Greenwald?

  That's what your note says?

• 46:59Andy Greenwald?

  I don't know.

• 46:59Chris Ryan?

  Because Bryce Homard, when he was, first came back last night-

• 47:01Andy Greenwald?

  I know, but did you see our guy, Jesus Lizardo, gave up 12 runs the other day?

• 47:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but like-

• 47:06Andy Greenwald?

  It happens.

• 47:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:09Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I, I, uh, he's my favorite. I love him. And I also do, I think that as we've gotten to a place of like some of our favorite detectives like Carl Mork are as dark often as the criminals they're pursuing. Cooper, as a product of David Lynch's, you know, very 50s soaked mind, like is intentionally an avatar of pure good. In a world in which pure evil also exists, and I find that very sweet.

• 47:34Chris Ryan?

  My number one pick in the detective, TV detective draft.

• 47:37Andy Greenwald?

  Right.

• 47:38Chris Ryan?

  Is Frank Pemberton.

• 47:39Andy Greenwald?

  I knew it, yeah.

• 47:39Chris Ryan?

  From Homicide Life on the Street.

• 47:40Andy Greenwald?

  That's the right choice.

• 47:41Chris Ryan?

  Played by the late, great Andre Brower, probably the first detective that I remember becoming mesmerized by as in my TV watching life in the 90s when homicide debuted in, after the Super Bowl. But especially in those first two seasons, Pemberton breaking in, uh, Tim Bayless, his partner, the rookie Kyle, Kyle Sequer. Played by Kyle Sequer and then, um, kind of lone wolfing it out on the streets of Baltimore. Having that incredible intuition, that incredible sense of style, that abrasive personality, but also the incredible intellect and, you know, um, Three Men and Adina, the, the box interrogation episode.

• 48:22Andy Greenwald?

  Which we talked about last year when it hit streaming?

• 48:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, one of the legendary, one of the great episodes of television ever made. Um, it's on Peacock, so you can, if you haven't gotten a chance to ever check out homicide, after a long time of being DVD only, it's available on streaming. And Brower gives one of the great TV performances ever as this character. So he's always been my favorite detective.

• 48:41Andy Greenwald?

  I think there's no better answer, maybe for this exercise, certainly not for you. I, I don't want to give it away, like, I definitely have on my maybe sheet, another character from homicide.

• 48:51Chris Ryan?

  I do too, and I, that'll be an interesting.

• 48:53Andy Greenwald?

  Alright, so we'll sit.

• 48:54Chris Ryan?

  So go ahead, you go second.

• 48:55Andy Greenwald?

  We'll sit on that. I am going to stay within the David Simon universe and I have to pick, pick Bunk from The Wire.

• 49:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:03Andy Greenwald?

  I know that there's some debate.

• 49:04Chris Ryan?

  Fuck.

• 49:05Andy Greenwald?

  As to who, exactly, who the greater detective is on that show.

• 49:09Chris Ryan?

  Lester or Bunk?

• 49:09Andy Greenwald?

  Lester or Bunk? Kind of depends, uh, depends how you like your, your jazz, you know? Uh, smooth or a little bit more discordant?

• 49:20Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:20Andy Greenwald?

  Bebop, saying fuck a lot? I, I think Wendell Pierce's performance is the heart and soul of that show. And I think his, uh, world weariness, but his just absolutely dogged moral core is, you can't make the show without it. In a way, it's like, you could point to that and say like, oh, that's the most TV part of it. You know, that there is a, there, there are heroes here on a show that, that maybe its, its mission statement was it's not about heroes and villains. But I think that in a way, he does reflect what David Simon found when he did his research in Baltimore, right? That there are, there are decent people here.

• 49:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:55Andy Greenwald?

  And, um,

• 49:58Andy Greenwald?

  the scenes, the scenes of him and, um,

• 50:03Andy Greenwald?

  Omar, the scenes when he just gets super, super drunk. I gotta go with Bunk.

• 50:08Chris Ryan?

  Incredible. Uh, Lester is more of a office detective, is a research detective.

• 50:14Andy Greenwald?

  He's cerebral.

• 50:15Chris Ryan?

  He's like, he finds things in the files.

• 50:17Andy Greenwald?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:18Chris Ryan?

  You know, it went, I believe if I remember correctly, well, he gets brought into Jimmy's conspiracy in the fifth season, right?

• 50:25Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, yeah.

• 50:27Chris Ryan?

  Right?

• 50:27Andy Greenwald?

  And he gets mad?

• 50:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:29Andy Greenwald?

  I have not rewatched that season in a long time.

• 50:31Chris Ryan?

  I will pick second.

• 50:33Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 50:34Chris Ryan?

  And I am gonna pick, um, Jane Tennyson, the detective.

• 50:37Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, classic, classic.

• 50:38Chris Ryan?

  Played by Helen Mirren on the long-running, uh, intermittently running, uh, BBC procedural prime suspect. Um, I would shout out, I was just watching a little bit of this last night to get ready. Uh, season six is my favorite Last Witness, and I think that's when, um, Jane investigates the murder of a Bosnian refugee woman.

• 51:01Andy Greenwald?

  Okay.

• 51:01Chris Ryan?

  Um, and that one's incredible. Mirren essentially grows up playing this character in a lot of ways. I mean, she played her for, I think, 15 years or almost 20 years.

• 51:12Andy Greenwald?

  On and off, I think that's right.

• 51:13Chris Ryan?

  And so, uh, you know, when she first starts playing Jane Tennyson in the early 90s, it's, a lot of it is about, um, women breaking into this kind of work in England, the kind of, uh, institutional misogyny and, and, um,

• 51:31Chris Ryan?

  And discrimination that they faced, or that she, that this character faced. And that's a big element of the early part of seasons, but she's also a very complicated character and is an amazing detective. So, uh, I always love watching these. Sometimes I watch them a little out of order, so I'm not exactly positive about like the chronology of the character sometimes. But fantastic shit. Have you ever watched Prime Suspect?

• 51:55Andy Greenwald?

  I watched one of the series decades ago. It's dark. It's super dark. It's one of the most influential shows of all time, I would say. What was radical about the show is now the normal television discourse.

• 52:10Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, great pick. Great pick. Kind of old school, I like it.

• 52:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, number three for you?

• 52:15Andy Greenwald?

  Um, I'm gonna, I kinda got a zag here.

• 52:19Andy Greenwald?

  My pick is Mike Ermantrout from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Because-

• 52:23Chris Ryan?

  I love what you're thinking there.

• 52:25Andy Greenwald?

  Because, A, he was a police detective in Philadelphia. And much of his behavior since his time in Philadelphia kind of mirrors the behavior of detectives in Philadelphia.

• 52:37Andy Greenwald?

  In order, what he showed us across those two series and what the creators gave for him to do were the most elite, uh, reverse detectiving you could possibly imagine. He knows the job backwards and forwards. He must have been one of the greatest detectives of all time in order to do everything that he did on the wrong side of the law in the series we watched it. You know, whether it was like, he could find anyone at any time. He could make problems go away. Instead of uncovering the truth, he could bury the truth in a way.

• 53:11Andy Greenwald?

  I also think that, and this is relevant too to the Department Q conversation, detectives and their mirror opposites are really only as good as the writers are smart and creative. And thinking about the Herculean tasks that Mike had to do to keep the operations running across those two series is a credit to Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould in that writer's room, you know, for like going really, really big with their ideas and then not shying away from it. There's a, there's a methodical nature to even the writing of the show that makes me think of a good investigation where a clue, let's say, in Breaking Bad, like there's a super lab underneath this laundry. It then becomes an investigation of how did it get there?

• 53:54Andy Greenwald?

  And the way they chose to express that investigation is we watch Mike Boots on the ground, put it together.

• 54:00Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 54:01Andy Greenwald?

  So it's not, it's, it's a little bit unconventional, but I think that he's an exceptional detective.

• 54:05Chris Ryan?

  So you'd not, you never thought about putting Hank in there?

• 54:08Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, I, I thought about making the joke you just did, but I decided not to.

• 54:13Chris Ryan?

  Um, my third pick, also a little bit of a curveball.

• 54:16Andy Greenwald?

  I love curveballs.

• 54:17Chris Ryan?

  Dr. Gregory House.

• 54:18Andy Greenwald?

  That's on my, ooh, you mother.

• 54:20Chris Ryan?

  Because it's not.

• 54:21Andy Greenwald?

  I thought I was gonna blow your mind with that.

• 54:22Chris Ryan?

  It's not always a criminal we're looking for. Sometimes the criminal is illness.

• 54:26Andy Greenwald?

  In retrospect, the way you were like, what if we agreed to put Sherlock Holmes on Mount Rushmore? It was a little too smooth. You just stole my list.

• 54:34Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Dr. Gregory House played by, uh, Hugh Laurie, uh, in The Great Show House.

• 54:41Chris Ryan?

  Really shaped my attitude towards, uh, medicine and wellness, as you know, um, a lot of the times.

• 54:47Andy Greenwald?

  Can we talk about that?

• 54:48Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 54:49Andy Greenwald?

  There was just a time when, you know, as young men in the city, falling prey to, to passing bugs and colds. I'd be like, Chris, I'm a little under the weather.

• 54:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, ma- many of our major organs were touch and go throughout the early part of the 2000s.

• 55:02Andy Greenwald?

  And yet, all of that, there was one sort of.

• 55:04Chris Ryan?

  The amount of rhinocerous that we were ingesting.

• 55:06Andy Greenwald?

  There's a unified theory of treatment.

• 55:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:08Andy Greenwald?

  You know, I think people today talk about like having a team of doctors, you know? I feel like you really took that onto yourself and, you know, you, you were, you were an army of one.

• 55:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I was doing differentials out here.

• 55:19Andy Greenwald?

  I am unwell.

• 55:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:20Andy Greenwald?

  In these ways, and you would say, did you throw a hot towel on it?

• 55:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we would, you would go out until three in the morning the night before, and then the next day.

• 55:30Andy Greenwald?

  What are these, banker's hours?

• 55:31Chris Ryan?

  And then the next day, you'd be back at the bar at 5:30 or whatever, after we got out of our, our jobs. And you'd be looking a little green, a little gray, and I'd be like, you know what you gotta do?

• 55:41Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 55:42Chris Ryan?

  And I was like, I think you got lupus, you know?

• 55:44Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, 100%, 100%. And I would be like, um, one of, one of my favorite tricks from that period was I, I thought I had like hacked the system in the human body, where I'd be like, it's not, you know, you, maybe you have a hangover or something. You take a little Advil, like it makes your headache go away. Like that's, that's just normal. Everybody knows that. But I was like, nobody knows, Advil cold and sinus makes you feel much better. And I'd be like, this is just between me and this Dwayne Reed. Nobody knows this. And someone was like, you know, that's speed, right? I'd be like, get the fuck, what? No, it's not. Anyway, that was before they made you go behind the counter to get it.

• 56:21Chris Ryan?

  Um, yeah, House is an incredible show, honestly.

• 56:24Andy Greenwald?

  It's so good. It is one of the great detective shows of our time.

• 56:26Chris Ryan?

  And not unlike Department Q, where he has like his team.

• 56:29Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 56:30Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Jennifer Morrison, Omar Epps, various others come through.

• 56:33Andy Greenwald?

  Olivia Wilde?

• 56:34Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Olivia Wilde, and they take on the most difficult, hard task.

• 56:38Andy Greenwald?

  Cal Pen, but he got done dirty.

• 56:39Chris Ryan?

  Did he?

• 56:40Andy Greenwald?

  Well, remember, he was, he was on the show, and then he was like, now I will become the Obama White House's liaison for talking about liaisons or something. And they were like, you're gonna die badly.

• 56:49Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's right. That's right. Well, I mean, there's a lot of like violence inflicted on TV doctors.

• 56:55Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, as long as you weren't the star. Yeah, totally.

• 56:57Chris Ryan?

  Um, anyway, yeah, like the way that he goes about, um, doing these differentials, finding behaviors in the patients that would lead to them getting meningitis because they like go into pools or whatever. Like, I feel like that happened like three times. Um, and he's also a gruff asshole addicted to painkillers from much of the show.

• 57:20Andy Greenwald?

  Great show. I feel like-

• 57:21Chris Ryan?

  And he has a Dr. Watson, Robert Shaw Leonard.

• 57:23Andy Greenwald?

  One of the things that we never talked enough about, at least on this podcast, we probably talked about it at Hi-Fi with John Dolan and Chuck Klosterman back in the day, was just like, the most, the biggest problem with going to that Princeton Medical Clinic or whatever where House is running wild wasn't his gruff demeanor.

• 57:39Chris Ryan?

  It's just a hospital, yeah.

• 57:41Andy Greenwald?

  Well, it was that-

• 57:42Chris Ryan?

  Princeton Urgent Care.

• 57:43Andy Greenwald?

  Whatever.

• 57:44Chris Ryan?

  You actually walked into urgent care. And you're like, my wrist is clicking, and the house is like, you got lupus. I don't wanna do that.

• 57:52Andy Greenwald?

  The problem, it's not too late for you to switch careers.

• 57:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:54Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like there's an Exor up on Eagle Rock Boulevard that could really use the extra manpower. Um, the, the glass walls, you know, which looked awesome on TV, but like that is the single worst thing I could ever imagine in a hospital. Like, that is not-

• 58:12Chris Ryan?

  Also, cuz it was on network TV, I feel like House had a great save rate. He was like Dennis Eckersley. Like, it was like, he rarely lost a guy, you know?

• 58:21Andy Greenwald?

  No, he did, but you had to make a meal out of it. Like, you had to like-

• 58:23Chris Ryan?

  Every once in a while, I know, he would lose somebody, but like, for the most part, it was like, this guy's got five minutes to live, and House would be like, that's because he ate berries in Brazil last month.

• 58:36Andy Greenwald?

  Keep going.

• 58:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and like, he's having an allergic reaction.

• 58:39Andy Greenwald?

  But then, then that patient would be cleared.

• 58:41Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 58:41Andy Greenwald?

  That was the bigger thing. There was no, there weren't very many lingering cases.

• 58:44Chris Ryan?

  No, it was an episodic thing.

• 58:45Andy Greenwald?

  Did you know that he was called House cuz of homes?

• 58:48Chris Ryan?

  I figured.

• 58:49Andy Greenwald?

  Did you figure that out?

• 58:50Chris Ryan?

  Just when you said it.

• 58:51Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Had you not realized that before? Are you serious?

• 58:54Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 58:54Andy Greenwald?

  That's awesome. Can we clip this?

• 58:57Chris Ryan?

  No!

• 58:58Andy Greenwald?

  So you thought-

• 58:58Chris Ryan?

  I thought he was called Dr. Gregory House. I didn't think about it as like, yes-

• 59:02Andy Greenwald?

  Do you know a lot of people who's last, like, I guess Eddie House?

• 59:04Chris Ryan?

  Eddie House?

• 59:05Andy Greenwald?

  You thought he was named after the great Eddie House?

• 59:08Andy Greenwald?

  There was House Party, but that was the first name.

• 59:11Chris Ryan?

  What's your next pick? Fourth pick?

• 59:13Andy Greenwald?

  You wanna move on from not knowing that?

• 59:14Chris Ryan?

  I feel embarrassed.

• 59:15Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's great. I think we all have our blind spots.

• 59:20Andy Greenwald?

  Okay, I have to pick Maddie and David from Moonlighting. You said, did you say Rockford is on the Mount Rushmore?

• 59:28Chris Ryan?

  No, I didn't. I said Monk, Sherlock, Poirot, and uh-

• 59:33Andy Greenwald?

  I'm walking it back.

• 59:35Chris Ryan?

  Monk, Sherlock, Poirot, and Columbo.

• 59:37Andy Greenwald?

  Forget it. I love you Maddie and David, but I gotta say Jim Rockford, from The Rockford Files.

• 59:42Chris Ryan?

  You know what? I've never watched an episode of The Rockford Files.

• 59:45Andy Greenwald?

  Well, so...

• 59:47Andy Greenwald?

  It's not the easiest watch these days. I have tried to go back to it, and it has been streaming. I don't know if it's streaming currently. I think it's on Roku Channel or something. It is dated, but the core conceit of it, which is the great James Garner plays a detective who lives by the beach and answers his phone and then like, has mysteries to solve, is so embedded in my being as like what I want there to be on television, and it's been so hard to get back to that. I think the excitement of Poker Face, a show which returned after three years and we have just not even engaged with due to like- There's been a lot. The most appealing thing about that show to me was Ryan Johnson saying, no, we're bringing that back. I feel like, in the same way that Jane Tennyson from Prime Suspect is hugely, hugely influential

• 1:00:32Andy Greenwald?

  and not often talked about, I think Rockford is hugely, hugely influential in people's imagination and conversation about what they want. But it's been perilously hard to recreate. Because ultimately, I mean, it's a clever mystery show, but it's also just an awesome hang with one of the most charismatic actors of the 20th century. And we were saying before about like, this is the detective you want to get a beer with. This is the detective who was on TV when our favorite writers like Elmore Leonard and Ross Thomas were writing their books, where people were a little bit, little bit chambly and dissolute and hanging out in bars and falling into stuff. And it's the closest that I think TV has gotten to recreating that.

• 1:01:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:13Andy Greenwald?

  All that said, try to watch it streaming. Your mileage may vary than mine. I, I, I'm championing the show. I keep wanting people to bring it back. There have been many attempts to bring it back, but it does feel dated. So I, I can't say I've solved it. Oh, and then, and I can't say anyone has quite figured, anyone has quite solved it, but the desire remains. Poker Face is close to it in spirit, but I think my ongoing issue with Poker Face is that it does seem like a museum exhibit honoring something like Rockford Files. Because Poker Face is so highly stylized and then also so contained and like only, you know, big deal about guest stars, takes two or three years to be on the air. It's lacking one of the crucial components of Rockford, which is, yeah, man, that guy's on the beat.

• 1:01:58Andy Greenwald?

  That phone is ringing. Check in and check out. And in a post-Pit universe, maybe we could get back to that kind of thing.

• 1:02:05Chris Ryan?

  Really dapping the pit up today.

• 1:02:06Andy Greenwald?

  The pit's awesome. And the pit has revolu-, not revolutionized, it's revitalized people's conversations about

• 1:02:11Chris Ryan?

  It certainly has.

• 1:02:12Andy Greenwald?

  TV.

• 1:02:13Chris Ryan?

  I mean, the, when the pit comes back early next year.

• 1:02:16Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:16Chris Ryan?

  And if, I want to see if people are like, oh, is that show back already? Or if they're like, holy shit, yes, this is like how it felt when TV used to come on every nine months.

• 1:02:26Andy Greenwald?

  And to be clear, like, I, I think if you were, if I were going to give you my You know, scratch top 10 for the year right now. I think Adolescence would outrank The Pit on my list. But I think we need both.

• 1:02:40Chris Ryan?

  I was gonna say we should do a top 10 so far, or a best of TV so far, but I almost feel like it's too obvious for us.

• 1:02:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, at this moment. Although you have all these secret things you're watching.

• 1:02:48Chris Ryan?

  I have secret things.

• 1:02:49Andy Greenwald?

  I feel bad about Maddie and David from Moonlighting.

• 1:02:52Chris Ryan?

  I'm gonna let you, you know what, they might still be on the board.

• 1:02:55Andy Greenwald?

  I felt okay swapping out Rockford because Rockford is the OG, and then those guys were in the shadow of that show.

• 1:03:01Chris Ryan?

  Um, my next pick, my fourth pick, Veronica Mars.

• 1:03:05Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, good. Yeah, great.

• 1:03:06Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Veronica Mars was a ingenious idea to basically take the hard-boiled detective and make, usually it's him, but make that hard-boiled detective a teenage girl in a fictional, like, kind of La Jolla-type town called Neptune. Her father is, it's played by Kristen Bell, her father is a private investigator in this town, and she applies some of his private investigator stylings to high school mysteries, and then also mysteries surrounding like the town itself, which is going through a lot of like, uh, haves and have-nots, gentrification, building up the beach, knocking down different things, like moving people out.

• 1:03:47Chris Ryan?

  And, um, Veronica Mars ran for, I believe, three seasons in its first run, I think. Came back after much fanfare and much like fan kind of, uh, rallying to do a more or less crowdfunded movie, I think, which was, to me, not as successful, but then came back again for Veronica Mars as an adult now mini-series. It was excellent.

• 1:04:10Andy Greenwald?

  I never watched that.

• 1:04:10Chris Ryan?

  It was really good. It was really good.

• 1:04:12Andy Greenwald?

  I'm really glad you put her on the list.

• 1:04:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:14Andy Greenwald?

  She's, there's a, I mean, there's two threads, right? There's the like, maybe there's three. I'm noticing in what we're talking about. There's the, there's the TV cop detective,

• 1:04:25Andy Greenwald?

  which you've given some great examples of. Uh, there's the, there's the, I am as dark as the criminal. I am struggling, you know, a lot of that came over from the British cop shows.

• 1:04:35Chris Ryan?

  Detective heal thyself.

• 1:04:36Andy Greenwald?

  Stuff. Uh, and then there is the, the knock-around guys, you know, um, and...

• 1:04:42Andy Greenwald?

  Rockford, I put Rockford on because he's the originator of it. I think Moonlighting is a great inheritor of that. I think Veronica Mars is a great inheritor of that. I feel like you would have expected me to have Terriers on this list.

• 1:04:53Chris Ryan?

  I really did.

• 1:04:53Andy Greenwald?

  Have Hank and Britt on here. I didn't because I think that's in that category and they only did one season of it. But that is the vibe that I'm always chasing and that I want. They were also near a beach like Rockford. Maybe that's the key to it.

• 1:05:04Chris Ryan?

  Your final pick?

• 1:05:05Andy Greenwald?

  I feel like to make, to balance out my list, I don't have any examples of the, what'd you say Detective Hulley self? I don't have any of like the broken British types and I thought about, I mean Olivia Colman played Ellie on Broadchurch. Great character.

• 1:05:18Chris Ryan?

  She was actually pretty-

• 1:05:19Andy Greenwald?

  But she was decent and it was more Tenet.

• 1:05:20Chris Ryan?

  It was Tenet, yeah.

• 1:05:21Andy Greenwald?

  So she didn't make the cut for me. Sarah Lancashire on Happy Valley. I feel like deserves a spot on this list, but I have to look you in the eye and say I only watched the first season.

• 1:05:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:31Andy Greenwald?

  But Catherine Cowherd was an incredible character, probably worthy of inclusion. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do the, probably the second most obvious thing and put Elizabeth Moss's Robin Griffin on the list from Top of the Lake.

• 1:05:43Chris Ryan?

  Great pick.

• 1:05:44Andy Greenwald?

  Because she is absolutely a blood relation descendant of Jane Tennyson. This is Elizabeth Moss basically making a fever dream detective mini-series for the brilliant director Jane Campion. It's set in New Zealand. Elizabeth Moss has a very passable accent and it is one of the better examples of-

• 1:06:05Chris Ryan?

  That show ruled.

• 1:06:06Andy Greenwald?

  The show was so odd and so-

• 1:06:08Chris Ryan?

  That first season's incredible.

• 1:06:10Andy Greenwald?

  Dark and gnarled and messed up and like, you know, one of the great things about detective fiction, when you get really into it, are detectives who are essentially investigating themselves. Where like the crime scene is their own history, their own past. And I also just love the show and I really liked the sequel too. It was Top of the Lake, China Girl, Nicole Kidman was in it. Really excellent chance to be back in that world, although I don't think it was overall as successful. I really liked it because it was a brilliant filmmaker, Jane Campion. And at that, at that particular time, I mean Elizabeth Moss is still one of our best actresses, but she was really ascending. And what she, coming off of Mad Men, and she wanted to play an iconic archetypal character like a detective.

• 1:06:54Andy Greenwald?

  I think that, I love that. I wish, I hope, you know, in the sense that like famous actors are like, I want to work with these directors. I want to have a chance to make every kind of movie. I want to do a sci-fi. I want to do a musical. I want to do a historical epic. I want to ride a horse once. Playing a detective should be in that list.

• 1:07:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:10Andy Greenwald?

  So Robin Griffin from Top of the Lake.

• 1:07:11Chris Ryan?

  Okay, that's great. That's your last pick?

• 1:07:13Andy Greenwald?

  That's my last pick. There's a lot of good people on the board.

• 1:07:15Chris Ryan?

  All right. I'm gonna go a little bit of a, probably a zag from what you would think I would pick, or maybe we haven't even ever talked about this, but I'm gonna go with Gil Grissom from CSI.

• 1:07:27Andy Greenwald?

  We never, you're leaving Benson on the board.

• 1:07:29Chris Ryan?

  I am. I love Olivia Benson. I love-

• 1:07:32Andy Greenwald?

  What?

• 1:07:32Chris Ryan?

  John Munch. I love Matty and David. I have a lot of people I could have picked here. But I think, I got into CSI when it got announced that Tarantino was working on it.

• 1:07:44Andy Greenwald?

  I'm shocked by this.

• 1:07:46Chris Ryan?

  So that would have been like 2005, I think.

• 1:07:48Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:50Chris Ryan?

  CSI, especially like the early few seasons of CSI when it was like, obviously like a 30 million people an episode juggernaut-

• 1:07:57Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:57Chris Ryan?

  Was fucked up. It was like really, because it was set in Vegas and so every episode was like, this like perverted, kind of sexually disturbing, really bizarre-

• 1:08:10Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:11Chris Ryan?

  And very like eerie show.

• 1:08:13Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Chris Ryan?

  William Peterson plays Gil Grissom. I think I have a lot of like detective love for him anyway because of his performance in Will Graham in Man Hunter. This show is just really cool in the first few seasons and I like the idea of a detective, he's obviously a crime scene investigator, working with inanimate objects and basically trying to piece together a crime by reading, like, you know,

• 1:08:37Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:37Chris Ryan?

  The pieces on the floor, the photographs, the residues, the fluids.

• 1:08:43Andy Greenwald?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:44Chris Ryan?

  That's Grissom's way of investigating.

• 1:08:47Andy Greenwald?

  One thing I think that was a barrier for entry for me was that when CSI premiered starring William Peterson, I was woefully ignorant of William Peterson's past as maybe the weirdest leading man of the 80s.

• 1:08:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:58Andy Greenwald?

  I had not, I had not seen To Live and Die in LA. I had not seen Man Hunter. I have remedied that now. Those are two of the greatest films of the decade. And his performance in both, those performances are so extra.

• 1:09:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:11Andy Greenwald?

  And so weird and a performance of a kind of masculinity that I don't know if it's good that we've left it in the past, but it is very striking.

• 1:09:19Chris Ryan?

  It was a type of guy.

• 1:09:20Andy Greenwald?

  It was a type of guy that maybe still exists, but is rarely like the lead of movies anymore. And so in retrospect, if we had been older, him being the lead of the latest CBS crime procedural would be like Shia LaBeouf leading the new Dick Wolf show this fall, you know, like it's just like, excuse me, after you've done that, you're going to do this. And I feel like bringing that energy would have made me watch. But again, one of the unexplored, and there aren't that many left after 13 years, but I do think one of the great unexplored topics of this podcast is how you found the time. Because.

• 1:09:54Chris Ryan?

  This was, I haven't done CSI recently.

• 1:09:56Andy Greenwald?

  No, then, because now, one thing that's been very flattering for me and it's helped me out a lot is that we'll be like, how did you watch these other 16 shows? And then you will kindly say, oh, well, I don't have kids or whatever. So I like, I'm like, oh, thank you. But my kids are older now. They, they, they look at like stuff on the iPads on their own. Like I could be watching stuff, but I felt like we both spent the 2000s mostly together.

• 1:10:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but like, I think that first of all, CSI is an incredible rerun show. Like it's on four different channels.

• 1:10:24Andy Greenwald?

  All right.

• 1:10:24Chris Ryan?

  For.

• 1:10:25Andy Greenwald?

  You are a keep it running guy.

• 1:10:26Chris Ryan?

  And I am a big like throw the TV on when I get home and be like, oh, are we, do we have like a SVU marathon going? Like I haven't done that as much recently because I think streaming really broke the ability to deal with commercials. So like if you have your cable channel on and every three minutes it's breaking away, like I've even like, you know, when I'm waiting for some game to start on TNT, like I've watched some Chicago PD or Rizzoli and Isles or whatever, and I'm not, not interested, but I just can't do the, the, the commercials.

• 1:10:58Andy Greenwald?

  I, I have to say, I think we did really well. I enjoyed this. I'm pretty shocked that we don't, we ended up not having anyone from either the Botchko verse or the Wolf verse, right? Like maybe it's because like, like, like a Bobby Simone or a, um, any of Dennis Franz's characters. Or I think John Munch would have been a good one. He was, he would have been my next pick because he played, um, Richard Bellz or played this part across, I believe, 10. Yeah, 10 different series on five networks, beginning in 1993.

• 1:11:32Andy Greenwald?

  An incredible run for just an acerbic comedian.

• 1:11:35Chris Ryan?

  I just, Munch was, I don't know that Munch was a great detective.

• 1:11:38Andy Greenwald?

  He was a good hang.

• 1:11:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:40Andy Greenwald?

  But he was never the lead guy.

• 1:11:41Chris Ryan?

  He, I mean, he solved some shit on homicide.

• 1:11:44Andy Greenwald?

  Benson just like, has ended sexual violence in New York, right? She just fixed it.

• 1:11:48Chris Ryan?

  Well, no, because that show keeps.

• 1:11:50Andy Greenwald?

  Is there more?

• 1:11:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:53Andy Greenwald?

  Is there more?

• 1:11:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:54Andy Greenwald?

  No one from NYPD Blue?

• 1:11:56Chris Ryan?

  One day I want to do an entire SVU episode.

• 1:11:58Andy Greenwald?

  Why don't you?

• 1:11:59Chris Ryan?

  Well, I have nobody to talk to about it.

• 1:12:01Andy Greenwald?

  That's okay, I'll just hang out with you.

• 1:12:02Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:12:02Andy Greenwald?

  I'll sit on your side and just like, be like, good job.

• 1:12:06Chris Ryan?

  Pepper me with questions?

• 1:12:06Andy Greenwald?

  Great point.

• 1:12:07Chris Ryan?

  Uh, let's recap our picks.

• 1:12:08Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. No one from NYPD Blue or Hill Street Blues?

• 1:12:12Chris Ryan?

  Sipowitz, uh, I gotta say, I was watching Caruso in a horror movie the other day. And he's just a really dynamic performer.

• 1:12:21Andy Greenwald?

  He's a, he's a, he makes a lot of choices. That's what acting is.

• 1:12:25Chris Ryan?

  Go ahead, recap your picks.

• 1:12:27Andy Greenwald?

  Um, Special Agent Dale Cooper, FBI, um, Bunk from The Wire, uh, disgraced Philadelphia Police Detective Mike Ehrmantrout, current whereabouts unknown, Jim Rockford calling in on the landline from the beach, and, uh, DSI or DI Robin Griffin.

• 1:12:45Chris Ryan?

  From Top of the Lake.

• 1:12:46Andy Greenwald?

  From Top of the Lake.

• 1:12:47Chris Ryan?

  I did Detective Frank Pembleton from Homicide Life on the Street, uh, Dr. Gregory House from House, Jane Tennyson from Prime Suspect.

• 1:12:55Andy Greenwald?

  Nice.

• 1:12:56Chris Ryan?

  Veronica Mars from Veronica Mars, and Gil Grissom from CSI.

• 1:13:00Andy Greenwald?

  Man.

• 1:13:01Chris Ryan?

  Not in that order.

• 1:13:02Andy Greenwald?

  These are good, these are pretty good squads.

• 1:13:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:04Andy Greenwald?

  They'd figure some stuff out.

• 1:13:07Andy Greenwald?

  You know, they'd get to the bottom of that big, beautiful bill.

• 1:13:10Chris Ryan?

  They would have read it. Greenwald, great to see you, man. We're gonna be back next week, uh, Monday, we will chat a little bit. We have Alan Segal coming in to talk about his Simpsons book. So we'll talk a little bit of Simpsons, but we're also gonna be talking, maybe we'll finish Q by then, who knows?

• 1:13:24Andy Greenwald?

  I'm gonna go watch it right now.

• 1:13:25Chris Ryan?

  Um, and then, uh, special guest next week, so we're excited for the second show next week, but we'll, we'll wait for it to happen before we count our eggs.

• 1:13:32Andy Greenwald?

  We don't usually get burned by that.

• 1:13:33Chris Ryan?

  Uh, thanks, John, thanks, Akaya, thanks, everybody for listening. We'll be back on Monday. Everybody have a safe weekend.

• 1:13:38Andy Greenwald?

  A great weekend, Brains.

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